Cooksbridge, Offham & Hamsey

CHURCH SERVICE: Sunday at St Peter's Church, Offham, 10.15am Sunday School in the church hall, 10.30am Family Communion followed by coffee in the hall.

REMINDERS: Friday, October 5, is the Harvest Supper in St Peter’s Church Hall at 7pm. Tickets are £8 per head. Please let Chris Glover 01273 400981 or Angela Spinks 01273 890805, know if you wish to attend as places are limited.

HARVEST FESTIVAL: St Peter’s Church, Offham will be decorated for Harvest on Saturday October 6 from 10am. Gifts of flowers, foliage etc will be very much appreciated, with lots of willing pairs of hands to help make the church look beautiful for this most lovely season. Suitable items of produce will be most welcome also.

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HARVEST FESTIVAL SERVICE: At St Peter’s Church, Offham on Sunday October 7 will be Family Communion at 10.30am followed by coffee in the all. Sunday School on October 7 will be at 10.15am in the church hall.

WINTER AT HAMSEY CHURCH: Following the last Evensong of the summer, which was on September 2, the Friends of Hamsey hope to continue keeping the church open at weekends and occasionally during the week. Anyone wishing to see the church when it is closed should contact Caroline Featherstone on 01273 477151, [email protected] or visit the Friends of Hamsey website on www.friendsofhamsey.org.

PARISH COUNCIL: East Chiltington PC met on September 12 in the village hall. A Plumpton resident presented her plans to commemorate the end of WWI. She said there were different displays around Plumpton in 2014 to commemorate the outbreak of WWI but she was not involved with that. She wants to stage an event for November 2018 with displays in Plumpton Village Hall to show what life was like in 1918. Possibly a booklet might be produced, or a website. There could be a poppy walk, but it would be better to do that in June. She said 59 residents of East Chiltington and 145 from Plumpton were involved in the war in some way. Plumpton Parish Council will grant £400 towards the event and she asked if East Chiltington could do the same. At present there is only her and one other Plumpton resident involved, but a request for volunteers was placed in the last parish magazine. They will be opening a bank account and have put terms of reference on their web presentation. Cllr Tingle said the War Memorials Trust have money for these kind of events and suggested contacting them. Cllr Symes asked what would be in the booklet? This will depend of material received. A booklet would probably not be ready until 2019 and would be sold at a reasonable price. The chairman asked which of the items listed on the presentation would be likely to go ahead? Possibly not the band as the booklets would be £220 for 50. Costs would cover the display in the village hall but the booklet and a website will depend on what material she receives from the public. The chairman explained that websites need not cost anything other than time and suggested putting a section within an existing Plumpton website, this could be linked to East Chiltington website as a history page and had already been put on, but was taken down through lack of content. The chairman also asked how the Plumpton event would link to British Legion events. There will be a collection at Plumpton Village Hall on the day. If there was enough funds available a soldier silhouette at each war memorial would be nice, but they cost £250 each. Council had no more questions and thanked the resident for attending.

LANDSCAPE STUDY: Cllr Farmelo asked about funding for the study. Council had understood this would be covered by the Vale of Sussex Society and were unsure why letters requesting donations to cover the costs ad been circulated to some residents.

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TECT: The East Chiltington Trust. Apple pressing and a bring and share harvest Supper is on Saturday, October 6.

FINANCE AND STAFFING: Cllr Farmelo had looked at the budget for 2018/19 circulated by the clerk/RFO. He felt the council was run as efficiently as was possible and could see very little room to make savings.

HIGHWAYS: The development at Gradwell hs begun and construction traffic was causing chaos in Mill Lane, it is very dangerous, especially with Greenacres and the school expansion planned for the same period. Cllr tingle was to meet with ESCC before there is an accident.

VERGES: The chairman has been approached by a resident interested in promoting wildlife verges. The chairman asked her tow write to the PC with her request.

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BEACON LIGHTING: Council considered a request for grant funding towards an event on November 11 and discussed lighting of the Beacon Brazier jointly with Hamsey PC at 7pm on that day. The parish council can only award grants to groups that have an established constitution. They cannot give public funds to individuals. However, they applaud the enthusiasm behind the proposals presented at the start of the meeting and felt that a grant could be given to Plumpton PC towards the event. The did not feel they could match the £400 offered by Plumpton PC whose annual precept is £54,963 compared to just £4,817 in East Chiltington and agreed that a donation of £100 would be appropriate. Cllr Smith would contact the Chairman of Hamsey PC to discuss arrangements for lighting the Beacon.

PLANNING POLICY: Cllr tingle said the planning policy guidance will be published in November. There is concern that the policy statement regarding release of farmland for development rules in favour of the developers. CPRE is looking to try and challenge this. The next meeting for East Chiltington PC will be Wednesday November 7 in the smaller meeting room, Plumpton Village Hall.