Response to Comment.

Hi Anonymous, 17 August 2013 @12:59

Response to an anonymous comment under “Parish Council Intimidate Post Office”, the comment reads “The Council abdicated responsibility for the Community hall by electing a Community hall committee, the Community Hall committee have worked very hard to achieve the results we see and use today”

We agree the council did abandon responsibility for the community hall for the reasons you state. To their credit the committee worked extremely hard and against the odds to achieve what they have and we take our hats off to all those committee members and residents who volunteered and carried out work on the hall for the village. All involved has done an exceptionally good job.

Let us not forget the residents who originally opposed the demolition of the hall in 2010 who ensured its survival until its refurbishment.

Let us also not forget that the council obtained planning permission to demolish the hall in January 2007, their intention was to demolish it and then saddle the village with a large debt by building a new one. This was without any consultation with residents and despite a Civil Engineering report by Alan Wood & Partners of Hull, commissioned by the parish council in 2003 which gave the village hall a clean bill of health, structurally. The report listed a number of items that needed attention, these were mainly superficial and the hall was deemed to be fit for refurbishment.

It is relevant to mention the parish council initially denied the existence of the report, presumably because of their preference to demolish it.

The cost of the planning application to demolish and build a new hall was approximately £10,000, this was never taken forward, there are no council documents to support otherwise, therefore that expenditure of Preston taxpayers money was wasteful and unnecessary. It may also be worth pointing out that on this item their appears to be no council minutes confirming this expenditure was approved by the parish council, if that is the case it would also make this item an illegal expenditure of public funds. Although minutes relating to the approval of this expenditure have been requested from the council some time ago, to date they have failed to supply the minutes that would confirm it to have been lawful.