Minutes of the Annual Parish Meeting held 27th April 2018 at Cranage Village Hall
Present: Councillor R Hurst who chaired the meeting, Councillor R Hocknell, Councillor G Morgan, Councillor M Hodge, Councillor J Swithenbank, Councillor M Cohen and the Clerk.
Public:
11 members of the public
Apologies: Cllr D Bennett, Cllr A Kolker Cheshire East and Cllr L Gilbert Cheshire East.
Minutes: The minutes from 18th April 2017 had been circulated and were signed as a true and accurate record.
The Chairman welcomed everybody to the meeting. She summarised the Chairman’s report on the last twelve months in the newsletter, which had been distributed to every household.
The Clerk summarised the financial report for the last year.
Presentation by Dorothy Davidson from Friends of Dementia in Holmes Chapel.
Dorothy Davidson had attended to explain all the work that the community of Holmes Chapel were completing. She began her journey of understanding dementia when her neighbour started the onset of the disease. The “Friends of Holmes of Chapel “ and Holmes Chapel partnership had completed a great deal of work in the village to help the local people. A few individuals had met in the Methodist Chapel since September and the group was growing all the time. Two people attended initially and now the group had grown to 25 members. They were trying to make Holmes Chapel a dementia friendly like Alsager.
They had tried to engage local businesses but the attendance at the initial meeting had been very poor. They are now visiting the businesses in Holmes Chapel and promoting awareness this way.
The ‘Memory Café’ was a becoming a great success, they played bingo, cards and listened to music, which attendees all enjoyed. You do not have to be a dementia sufferer to attend.
Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School have been amazingly supportive. In the lower school it was becoming part of the curriculum and all the 6th form were now dementia friendly trained and had visited friends in the Village.
The Health Centre had also participated and created a dementia awareness pack in the surgery. This is being promoted in the Village.
The scouts had also achieved 1,000 “helping hands”.
Many of the venues where people with dementia visit also were trying to accommodate things that they had learnt e.g. the church had changed the toilet seat to red so as to have a contrast in colour which is a positive thing.
There was a lot of valuable background information shared and Dorothy wished to pursue training with the people in the room and make everybody dementia friendly. This would be another step to completing the journey of making dementia people more at ease and comfortable.
It was National Dementia Week W/C 21st May 2018
The Chairman thanked Dorothy for attending and all the valuable information she had shared.
Village Hall Presentation
Mr T Mallows gave a summary of the events the Village Hall committee had organised in the community and the successes they had achieved. The Village Hall website https://www.cranagevillagehall.co.uk/calendar/ lists all the events that had been scheduled. These include:
- Musical Bingo, date to be confirmed;
- Beer Festival, 24/25/26th August 2018, with live bands and many activities; and
- Murder Mystery night, 3rd November 2018.
Question and Answer session
A resident reported on the inadequacies of Cheshire East Council when dealing with Councillor complaints and the Monitoring Officer’s responses. He recalled the recent complaints over the past two years and the lack of resolutions from Cheshire East.
The Chairman of the ‘Homewatch’ area (of which there were 140 members) in Cranage had attended as he was concerned about the recent youth’s behaviour on Needham estate. There had been a swing burnt on the small children’s play area and evidence of drugs and smoking around the bowling club area. He had attended to ask for support from the Parish Council.
Meeting closed at 8.20 pm
Tea and Coffee were served for everybody.