With spring just around the corner, TCW clambered up into the hide and squeezed between Kate Humble and Bill Oddie in order to observe that most fascinating of wonders from the natural world: Wymondham Town Council in full flight.
And after two months of their YouTube streams failing in December and January, TCW was left counting his lucky stars that all was well with the service this month - because frankly the February full council meeting was an absolute belter.
So get out your massive binoculars and lace your thermos flask of tea with something a bit stronger, because the contents of this month’s meeting are enough to turn anyone into a twitcher. It’s a Town Council Watch birdwatching special.
But at what point will TCW get in the inevitable tit joke? Right now is your answer. Shame on me.
Flying The Nest
Unconventionally for this column, we’ll start at the end of the meeting. And that’s because for the meeting’s swansong, we got to witness something that TCW will be filing in his special folder marked “Top Notch Parish Council Kerfuffles”.
In the segment normally reserved for updates from outside bodies, Cllr Tony Holden leant forward with a request for some leniency to read out a statement.
“For 9 years”, he began. “I’ve been a member of this council and although I haven’t always seen eye to eye with fellow councillors, I think I've served the people of my ward and the wider town with energy and enthusiasm and to the best of my ability.”
Uh oh. Where’s this going?
“I’m proud to have set up the Bright Future group which led to the appointment of the Town Coordinator and I’m happy to see that this administration is carrying on with that work.”
Well that’s all good then. Next item!
“But I’m also saddened…”
Uh oh…
“I am saddened to see this administration allows itself to be led so heavily by the Clerk”, he continued, triggering a dawn chorus of uproar among some of his fellow councillors.
“EEEEERM I think… I bet-ter… cut you off. Thank you very much” interrupted the meeting’s chair, Mayor Cllr Suzanne Nuri-Nixon (Lib Dem) as Mr Holden tried to continue. “If you carry on, I will have to suspend the meeting!” she warned as he continued to chirrup away. “Alright!”, the Mayor honked. “Suspended for 10 minutes!” she ruled, banging her gavel on her desk and scaring off a flock of nesting wigeons.
“Well the bottom line was: and for this reason I’m resigning from this council with immediate effect” continued the North Wymondham councillor, as a general commotion ensued in the room, before just about audibly continuing:
“Well actually as the meeting’s suspended, I might as well carry on! As long as you continue to vote down ideas based on party politics rather than merit, you’ll achieve nothing…”
Well, that ought to ruffle a few feathers.
Meanwhile, still on microphone, Mother Goose the Clerk could be heard hastily swooping in to advise the Mayor:
“If you just introduce the next item, so we can switch off the [inaudible] (YouTube)”, he murmured. The next item was to exclude the public and press for the next two items where “confidential business would be transacted”.
“Ok, I’ll just go to item 13 actually” announced the Mayor looking for rapid agreement from colleagues to clear the room of witnesses, while Mr Holden finished up his sweet evening song.
But we weren’t quite done:
“Hang on a minute!” hooted Cllr Michael Rosen (Lab) from his perch, as the Mayor and Deputy gesticulated to the public to shoo, like a flock of seagulls when you’re eating your chips.
“You can’t ask them to leave while you’re making the resolution for them to leave! You’ve got to wait until it’s resolved.”, the North Wymondham man continued. “I’m not clear what is the confidential nature of the business to be transacted? We’re talking about a draft emergency plan and the railway station. What’s confidential?”
Erm. Keep your beak out actually.
But he never did get an answer, as councillors sat back and roosted while the public started to migrate out of the building - all slightly baffled about events.
A Meeting Also Happened
Anyway, there was a meeting that happened before all that, for anyone that’s interested.
First we learnt that the council had so far been unsuccessful in attracting funding for works to improve the small park on Rothbury Road in town.
Undeterred, Greening Wymondham had submitted a request for £12675 to hire a project manager to ‘draw up proposals’, ‘finalise specifications’ and ‘get some quotations’ for the works. The idea being that these plans could then be shown to external funders to get them to invest.
Councillors were broadly in agreement with this strategy and voted it through.
Let's hope some nest eggs do come in then.
WOODS FOR THE TREES
Moving from one project struggling to get funding, to another where an external moneybags donor seems to need to beg the Town Council to take its cash, we came to a presentation from South Norfolk Council's ‘Community Infrastructure Officer’ Joel Pailes on the topic of town centre regeneration.
Yes. That one's still rumbling on.
In October, Town Councillors had asked for some visual impressions of the types of things that ‘town centre improvements’ could mean, to get their imaginative juices flowing.
Presenting these, the besuited Mr Pailes seemed at pains to make one thing clear:
“It’s important to frame it”, he pleaded. “These are visions, concepts. Perhaps don’t focus on the detail of what you see. Some of it you’ll like, some of it you probably won’t like. Nothing is set in stone. These are just concept designs to show what could be done.”
Gotcha chief. Say no more.
“I appreciate they're concept designs”, clucked Cllr Dave Roberts (Lib Dem) “but the first two concept designs quite clearly show that the concept is going to take out two disabled spaces.”
Ah. Right. He did say don't focus on the...
“I'm actually rather concerned about what I've just seen in terms of the detail”, pecked Cllr Rosen.
Sorry Joel. Welcome to Wymondham btw.
“There seems to be an awful lot of money that's going to be spent on improving pavements and changing road layouts.” continued the Labour man.
And in keeping with this birdwatching TCW special, it was the trees in poor Joel's presentation that came under particular gaze of councillors, who had declared a ‘Climate Emergency’ in August and enacted a biodiversity policy in December:
“What strikes me at the moment is that the economic problem is people don't have enough money in their pocket to spend in the shop, as opposed to people aren't incentivised to go to the shop because there's not a tree outside it.” said Cllr Joe Barrett of the Green Party.
“I feel that this is very much a case of aesthetics, very much a case of form over function.”
Cllr Roly Frosdick (Lib Dem) was feeling uncomfortable too: “I don't know what I'm going to be committing to other than what I saw in the presentation with a few more trees and things... is that going to give us the plan we need to enhance the town centre and get more footfall in to get businesses thriving?”
Maintaining any new trees was worrying Cllr Lucy Nixon (Lib Dem).
But Cllr Lowell Doheny (Lab) hoo-hooed some owl-like wisdom for us: “Money can be spent well or it can be spent badly, can't it? And I think a large part of that will come down to what the steering group decides”, before asking what voice Town Councillors would have on the cross-council panel. “An equal voice” came the reply.
So no sense of universal enthusiasm for it all then ahead of March's final decision.
Meh. Having a nicer town centre environment is overrated for tourism and retail anyway. It’s why nobody ever visits Holt and everyone in Norwich flocks to do their shopping at Anglia Square.
Taking The Pesticides
With councillors having spent 15 minutes discussing the town's long-term economic prosperity, we next came to a 20-minute section on the contents of the Clerk’s store cupboards.
A simple proposal from Cllr Alex Perry (Lab) asked for an audit of the pesticides the council uses and a pledge to replace their usage with less harmful alternatives.
Now. Given TCW’s adopted status as a persistent pest to the council, their potential usage of pesticides is a topic of great concern to your beloved columnist.
An amusing exchange ensued that a casual reader might interpret as code for ‘Get your tanks off our lawn. You can't out-green us, sunshine. Now on yer bike’:
“Point of order!” crowed Cllr Dave Roberts before recalling a meeting on the council's biodiversity policy: “The Clerk of the Council did confirm that Wymondham Town Council does not use pesticides therefore why would we have a proposal about how we use pesticides that we do not use?” Likewise Cllr Lucy Nixon cooed: “We do not use any pesticides in the Town Council therefore a proposal looking at assessing our pesticide use is null and void.”
The ever chirpy Cllr Perry seemed unphased:
“The Pesticide Action Network actually give four classes of what they consider to be pesticides. They consider herbicides to be pesticides, they actually do consider insecticides to be pesticides, they consider fungicides to be pesticides and there's one also called growth modulators which I hadn't heard of before which they also consider to be pesticides.”
'The Pesticide Action Network'. Crumbs. You don't want to mess with them, trust me.
Mr Perry's follow-up question on the contents of the Clerk's cupboard revealed there was indeed some herbicide in there.
But it wasn't enough. The resultant vote was lost after the Lib Dem/Green majority decided the 'living document' of their bio-diversity policy ought not be updated with the Labour councillor's contribution.
Last Bird Pun Going Cheap
So there we are then. Another month gone by. An exciting resignation. And the Conservatives at council now resembling the woodpecker species Dendrocopos minor (that's the Lesser Spotted variety).
Even woodpeckers get fed up banging their heads against the wall eventually.
