Council Meeting - "Dear Father Christmas...." and Volunteers

It's not that long until Christmas, and so one of the important tasks of the evening was to organise the Senior Citizens' Christmas party. This will be at the Swan on Tuesday 10th December at 1pm, and every house in Hay has had a leaflet so nobody is left out - and so invitations are not sent to people who are no longer with us. Dial-a-Ride are acting as the point of contact, as their office is open more often than the Town Clerk's and they can pick people up to take them to the Swan. There was mention of Bingo, and possibly the school choir. There was also mention of limiting the amount of wine available, after several people almost fell over last year!

It's Nigel Birch's turn to write the council's half page feature in the Wye Local for Christmas - a job which he accepted very reluctantly! And started writing on the spot with the words "Dear Father Christmas...."
Ellie Spencer did it last time, but the times given for the Remembrance Day parade were wrong, because Father Richard changed it after the article went to press. The correct time for the Parade will be 2.30pm on Sunday 10th November. Earlier on Monday, Gareth spent an hour cleaning the cenotaph.
St Mary's has also applied to the Recycling Fund for £500 towards the toilets they want to have at the back of the church, and this was agreed.

Also discussed was a TV programme about affordable housing which featured timber framed houses that could be built for £75,000, which included environmentally sustainable features like solar panels, which could be something for the affordable housing group to consider.

Hay Together put in a tender to provide volunteer services for Hay, now that the Community Support is no longer in existence, and PAVO have given them the contract. Ellie Spencer will be working for them for two days a week (Thursdays and Fridays) at the Hub in the Castle, and there will be someone else in the office there on Tuesdays. This will be an entirely new contract, and not taking over what the Community Support were doing, so they are starting off by finding out exactly what volunteer services are needed in Hay. One of the things they have to think about is how to offer volunteering experiences to "difficult" groups like ex-offenders, and people with mental health problems. As a lot of work needs to be done on the Bailey Walk and down by the riverside, this might be something that Hay Together could look at as a volunteering opportunity.
Betty Maura-Cooper was among the members of the public at the meeting, on behalf of the Community Support, and she said that their job had basically been made impossible by the demands put on them by PAVO - who wanted them to find 40 new volunteers, some of them from a certain age group, while at the same time cutting the funding by over 8%. This bore no relation to what was actually needed in Hay; it was just a numbers game and box ticking exercise. She was concerned that Hay Together were taking on something that would become difficult to make work.
Meanwhile the Powys Probation Service are looking for work for their volunteers to do, but it seems that they are only able to do work on Council properties, which may be something to do with insurance cover.