Nuneham Courtenay Parish Council News

 

Playing Field

Do you realise next year will be the 75^th anniversary of the conveyance by which the Harcourts transferred to the village the piece of land originally known as the War Memorial Recreation Ground?

It should be an occasion for a celebration but isn’t it sad that with that anniversary approaching the field is completely closed to parishioners for the first time in its history after new gates were recently installed and padlocked.
Now it’s not just a patch of overgrown grass but a useless patch of overgrown grass you can’t even walk on. Is that what the Harcourts intended? Probably not.

 

Audit and Accounts

The Council’s 2021-22 accounts have been audited and, unusually, the auditor has not made one single recommendation for improvement. In his covering letter he wrote: “I don’t often get to review such a clean set of records”.
These were the accounts for Madhvi Saini’s fifth and final year as Chair of the parish council and what a transformation she achieved.
When she took on the chair in May 2017 the Council had failed to produce audited accounts to show where your money had gone in 2015-16 and none were in hand either for 2016-17.

At that Annual Meeting she was one of only two councillors left – the other three had resigned – so South Oxfordshire District Council (SODC) had to step in. They made it clear Nuneham Courtenay was the worst parish council in the whole of South Oxfordshire and they wanted you to agree they could abolish it.
You decided to try to get it back on its feet and Madhvi made it her mission to see it was properly run. Now it has achieved a clean bill of health from its auditors and there is no more talk from SODC of abolishing it. So, Madhvi definitely achieved what she set out to do.

You can see lots of stuff about last year’s accounts on the Council’s website but if you want to see more, just ask: it’s your money so you have the right to see where it’s going.

 

Meetings

The next ordinary meeting of the Council will be on Tuesday 28^th June, a week earlier than normal, so the Council can complete the annual audit by the legal deadline of 30^th June. The meeting is at the usual time of 7pm in the Village Hall.
If you want to address the Council about anything, please let John Peters, the new Chair of the Council, know before he starts the meeting.