All eyes descended on Centre Court at Ketts Park on Tuesday 6th June 2023 for the new Wymondham Town Council’s first full council meeting of their four-year stint. Fascinated to see how the new wildcard entries would fare on-court alongside some veteran sloggers, TCW sat atop his perilously tall chair to umpire the whole thing and report back to you. So sit back, grab a bowl of strawberries and cream, and pour yourself a suspiciously dark Pimms and Lemonade, it’s time to enjoy your ‘Today At Wymbledon’ highlights package.

Players Are Ready

The councillors warmed themselves up with an entertaining hitabout, about whether to move a Greening Wymondham item earlier up the agenda, so that the larger-than-usual number of public attendees wouldn’t have to sit through the first rounds of more-mundane council business.

Cllr Michael Rosen and his Labour colleagues plus Cllr Tony Holden (Con) were for the move. Mayor Nuri-Nixon, her Lib Dem colleagues and the Greens were against. The order stayed the same.

Greening Wymondham and the public would just have to join ‘The Queue’ like everyone else.

But they’d have plenty to entertain them while they waited.

Quiet Please

In the updates section, Cllr Holden wanted a Hawk-Eye review of the council’s annual kick-off meeting in May, as he’d noticed some committees and working groups had vanished, like the council’s Communications Working Group:

“At the moment, we don’t really have any communication with the public and I thought the idea was that the group was going to come up with suggestions?”, the North Wymondham representative served up.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Cllr Holden, but this is actually a new administration”, came Mayor Nuri-Nixon’s backhand slice: “so perhaps we’re trying to do things differently?”.

It’s certainly one way to do things differently, yes.

Second Serve

Next up, Cllr Michael Rosen wanted to know why an item hadn’t been discussed by the Finance Committee as promised, to do with how much the Town Council’s Clerk can spend without asking round for quotes or councillors’ approval.

After some toing and froing about illness preventing the committee’s last meeting happening, and whether that meant it should be discussed immediately now or not, Cllr Todd Baker (Lab) decided some crowd interaction was in order:

“Apologies to the members of the public gathered who are having to witness the back and forth here. I think it’s why we wanted to bring the Greening Wymondham proposal up the agenda”, he said.

Before coolly sitting back down to drink his barley water and slowly peel a banana.

But Cllr Rosen was in urgent form and had a dramatic dropshot in his arsenal. He proposed that there should be a total freeze on all non-contractual spending at the council, until the Clerk’s spending limits were agreed - something the Clerk warned would cause things at the council to grind to a halt.

Perish the thought. Just imagine if Wymondham Town Council didn’t do anything. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

The idea was put to a vote and supported by all 4x Labour members and 1x Conservative but was defeated by 6x Lib Dems and 2x Greens.

No need to bulk buy tinned food. Wymondham Town Council can continue to function.

Summing up, Mayor Nuri-Nixon opted to pull the covers over the issue and delay play until the rain had subsided.

“I still think it’s not the time to do it now unfortunately. This is not any attempt to cover anything up... …I would prefer that we leave it until after the finance committee which is meeting in two weeks’ time.”

Where’s Cliff Richard when you need him to fill in while we wait?

Tender Spot

We then came to an eye-opening section about the replacement of electrical pop-ups on the market place.

Cllr Holden had noticed a payment of £3630 for a single pop-up was the third of its kind in recent months, and wondered why all three pop-ups hadn’t just been replaced in one job:

“Surely it would have been financially advantageous to do them all at once, rather than doing them separately? Although I do realise that by doing them all at once, we would have gone above the ten thousand pound limit…” (at which the Clerk would have to seek 3x quotations from suppliers for councillors to choose from).

The Clerk offered an explanation about some pop-ups being in poorer states than others, and that the total cost of doing all at once would have been the same as doing them separately.

But that caught Cllr Michael Rosen’s attention and we entered a fascinating interchange:

“The Clerk has just said that they knew that three items in the square needed replacing. The total value of those required a tendering process. They chose to do them separately, which then avoided the tendering process. I have to say, in my experience of local government finance, that doesn't sound right to me.”

In response, the Clerk sought to reassure any members who were worried the matter might not exactly be as tight and white as John McEnroe’s shorts:

“It wasn't a ploy to avoid the tendering process...", he began.

Phew.

"...it was simply to do them one after the other to make sure that they could all be done in time for various events to be held."

But Cllr Rosen was having none of that, saying that this sort of staggered approach could have just been built into the tender.

He then sent down another ace to the Clerk:

“What you've done is just say that you knew that over the course of the financial year, you'd be spending a sum of money that was of a level that required proper tendering and it seems that that hasn't happened."

Ouch. New balls please.

After Mayor Nuri-Nixon, now in her 6th year as a councillor, interjected to plead for more time as a new administration “to get our heads round this”, Cllr Rosen had one final flourish for us at match point:

“That's exactly why Cllr Baker and I were keen for this to be discussed tonight: so that we could get these things as a new administration in place as quickly as possible. So that we could be operating to the highest financial standards and really be able to show the residents of Wymondham that we are doing things in a new way, as a new administration. And that we expect this to be done properly.”

A roar of appreciation erupted on Henman Hill.

Then, for the first time while TCW has been covering the council’s meetings, a considerable number of councillors voted against approving that month’s expenditure (4x Labour, 1x Conservative). 6x Lib Dems and 2x Greens voted to approve it.

High drama, worthy of the entry fee alone.

Top Lob-Bying

After a fire and brimstone speech from Greening Wymondham on the perilous state of the planet, we then moved onto the main event that the public had gathered in their numbers to support: the group were asking the council to approve in principle their plans for improving Rothbury Park.

The scheme envisages nature-friendly planting, forest-style play areas, better paths, picnic areas and better seating and was put together using the group’s own money and voluntary labour.

Councillors were unanimously in favour of the idea of making a park nicer, with Cllr Alex Perry (Lab) summing up the mood: “Green spaces are vitally important for everyone’s physical and mental health.”

Nuts were top of Cllr Lucy Nixon (Lib Dem)’s questions. And plums. Would fruit and other food-bearing trees be included in the planting scheme?

And with all that fibre floating around, talk then moved onto whether toilet provision needed to be considered, mainly led by Cllrs Baker and Rosen, who were worried about residents getting court short.

Cllr Paul Barrett (Green) bemoaned the current “monoculture field” at Rothbury Park.

Just to translate, that means grass, dear reader.

Cllr Alex Perry brought up the rusty state of current play equipment there.

With all the talk of nice new stuff, the conversation inevitably came round to how the improvements would be paid for and how previous CIL (charges paid by developers) has been allocated. Cllr Holden pointed out £411k of CIL had been allocated to a new cemetery, when a public works loan could also be an option to cover it.

The previously built-up cemetery fund had of course been raided of £213k in 2019 to help pay for, you guessed it, the Town Council's £2 million+ offices.

Cllr Rosen suggested the issue of CIL allocation be looked at as whole by the Finance Committee.

Expect a renewed tussle over what projects get what money down the line.

Back to the Rothbury Park proposal and councillors voted unanimously in favour of approving the scheme in principle and putting together a group to look at the next steps, including funding.

A long slog could lie ahead before it's game, set, match for the project...