Amenities Committee Review

John Wells, Chair of the Amenities Committee gave a review of the Committee’s work at the recent Parish Meeting.

Amenities Report 24/25

Apart from its core remit, Amenities tends to be the committee that picks up ‘stuff’ that doesn’t naturally fit into any other Committee. That means it’s quite diverse in what it covers. So here’s a brief look at what we did in the past year:

• We’ve redecorated the Parish toilets and carried out maintenance work in both sets. Also minor repairs have been carried out as necessary, sadly due to petty vandalism.
• We have now appointed on a temporary contract, new external cleaners for the loos. The previous contractors having recently gone into liquidation…or liquidisation as Tracey calls it.
• From our budget, we’ve funded and installed a new defibrillator in Gunnislake.
• Turning to car parks: some patching work has been done in-house in Harrowbarrow car park
• We have installed a new ticket machine in the Gunnislake car park. It’s a bit of a mixed blessing at the moment, but hopefully its teething troubles will soon be a thing of the past.
• We’ve recently carried out preliminary feasibility studies, and costed the installation of 2 fast charging Electic Vehicle (EV) points in each of the Gunnislake and Calstock car parks. We haven’t had time to implement these yet, but doubtless they will be high on the agenda for the new council after the May 1^st local
• Still on car parks: I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Calstock Volunteers led by Malcolm Wright for the work they’ve undertaken in the car park down there.
• This next point technically relates to the recently devolved waterfront Committee, but as it used to be part of Amenities, Alex & Clare have lobbed it back to me to detail the key point of what has happened as part of this report, and that is there has been collaboration with the Tamara Landscape Partnership and the Electric Ferry Service. Tamara have acquired a grant from Defra and we are hoping to work with them to renovate the parish stores which sit on the quay
• We had an unexpected spend when we had to repair the unsafe wall in Gunnislake Gardens
• We have installed a new waste bin opposite Honicombe Manor. That’s number 12 general waste bins now in the parish and 23 dog waste bins that the Parish Council pay for (all new bins now take general and dog waste)

Some of the above may appear to be minor works but they have all been important to anyone who would have been affected by them not happening.

I have used the term ‘we’ a lot in the amenities section of my report, but I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our Outside Services Team, ably led by Pete Gadd, who are doing an amazing job around our parish, which I understand is now the largest rural parish in Cornwall.

John Wells, 11-03-2025