I feel I must respond to the comments that Cllr Parry has made regarding the accuracy of my online report.

1) Cllr Parry states: “St Andrews Parish Council agreed to take on the responsibility for StreetSmart activities with the parish”

My response: The Borough by then had stated they could no longer afford to run their StreetSmart services and parishes in the future would be responsible thus putting the burden of cost onto precept payers. The Borough began to sell off their vehicles and equipment which meant if we did not take on this responsibility, we would not have had any StreetSmart services and all within the parish could have been left to grow wild!

2) Cllr Parry states: “We have not asked Cllr Tomlinson nor the parish council to vacate their accommodation at Waterside this was her choice”

My response: Absolute rubbish, completely untrue and I stick by what I said in my report online as an accurate version of events.

3) Cllr Parry states: “We recently indicated that we would raise the rent from the existing peppercorn rent to one that was still competitive but clearly higher than what they had historically been paying”

My response: Again, not quite accurate. The Borough have not bothered to collect the so-called peppercorn rent for the first year but then informed us that in future the rent would rise from ‘peppercorn’ to £10k per year. On behalf of our parish, I strongly objected to this and in fact persuaded them of its unfairness and got it reduced to £3,300, then when they put this in contract form, they included extra terms which were:

Year 1 £3,300 as agreed

Year 2 £6,600

Year 3 £10,000

4) Cllr Parry states: “We have supported Cllr Tomlinson with permission to use a former play park for the site of new area to hold the parish equipment and we will continue to support her in any way we can”

My response: This statement is once again very far from the truth. To date, I have not sought any such permission to build our depot on any play park in the parish nor to our knowledge has any such permission been granted.

I can fully understand Cllr Parry not being up to speed regarding the accuracy of events as he has only had his cabinet post for just a matter of weeks, however, I would respectfully remind him to check his facts in the future before putting his comments in print which is both misleading and concerning to the residents in my parish and to the general public at large.

As to continuing to support me as Chairman of St Andrews Parish Council my question in response to Cllr Parry is “When did it start?”