Bishop's Hull Local Action Team AGM October 2009

Chairman's report

We've continued through 2009 as a small group with the aim of contributing to the community in Bishop's Hull and we've reached our second birthday. A small group we may be, but I'd like to acknowledge the commitment that all of you show in continuing the group's existence. Our most active line of activity continues to be the traffic monitoring carried out by the Speedwatch team - thanks to Pete and Dave and all members of the team for all that they do and for reminding people of the importance of responsible motoring in the parish. It was a great leap forward to get our own speed camera - funding came both from public sources, including Taunton Deane and Cllr Alan Paul, and a very generous personal donation from Dave Smith.

We have contributed to village life in other ways - Tom, Rod and Dave have supported the Village Events Group (VEG) in organising, fundraising and supporting the Party in the Park on a soggy summer's day, and we've all turned out to help with the equipment for the Youth Group meetings.

We use our six-weekly meetings not just to review our current activities, but to ensure that what we do is co-ordinated with the police, Parish Council and Taunton Deane. It has been tremendously re-assuring to have Claire and Simon as our Beat Manager and Police Community Support Officer respectively - some sense of continuity has returned and their knowledge of the parish and the work they put in to tackling both low level and serious crime, and the time they put into explaining their work to us, seems to me a good demonstration of visible community policing in action. It is also important to the Local Action Team that we have good contacts with the Parish Council and Taunton Deane and having Ken, Malcolm, Nigel and Alan regularly attending (as well as the newly appointed chairman) have been very helpful in this regard.

Our meetings are also used to develop plans and explore how we might add to our activities. We have had a number of interesting ideas and the initiative suggested by Dave and supported by Simon to ask for ideas at a car boot sale helped contribute to this. My sense is that we are all keen to find further strings to add to our bow and some of the more promising ones include supporting a resurrected Paintball scheme and contributing to the development of the youth centre at the Trident in Galmington. Our capacity however remains limited while we continue at our current size.

I'm very aware of the commitment you show to the LAT and its goals. I'm looking forward to our third year and to what we might make happen.

Nick Mott, Chairman, Bishop's Hull LAT
18 October 2009