Alpington with Yelverton Parish Council’s Year

As 2020 draws to a close it’s a good time to reflect on what has been achieved in Alpington and Yelverton during the year.

Much of 2020 has been dominated by the Coronavirus pandemic – something that we couldn’t have envisaged in January and February when we were planning for the Annual Parish Meeting due to be held on 16th March. That meeting had to be cancelled, but thanks to having our Community Emergency Plan already in place we were quickly able to activate the Plan and coordinate volunteers in the villages to assist residents who were self-isolating or shielding during lockdown with shopping and collection of prescriptions.

Despite the pandemic a number of projects sponsored by the Parish Council were completed. The Village Play Area behind the Village Hall was refurbished and expanded and reopened in time for the summer holidays and is now able to be safely enjoyed by children in the villages.

Last month we reported on the progress with the Village Pond restoration project and since then a small group of volunteers cleared some dead trees from the central island and tidied up the vegetation on the banks.

Thanks to all the rain we had in October the Pond is now almost completely full of water and looking good.

Both these projects were managed by parish councillors and made possible with grants from the Community Benefit Fund which receives annual payments from the local Solar Farm.

The Community Benefit Fund is administered by the Parish Council and local groups can apply for grants for projects and activities that benefit the community. We will be letting this year’s applicants know whether they have been successful by the beginning of December.

If you have driven or walked by the Pond recently you would doubtless have seen the restored Yelverton Village Sign.

The old sign was in a very poor condition and the Parish Council approached the local Men’s Shed to ask if they would help restore it. In the end the sign had to be completely replaced and the gentlemen at the Men’s Shed did a fantastic job.

Another project completed this year was the launching of a community website for the villages https://alpingtonwithyelverton.com. You will find lots of useful information here and regular posts of local news. This project was a passion of Kevin Gotts, Parish Councillor for the past ten years.

The Parish Council would like to thank all the volunteers who have helped out this year. We wouldn’t be able to achieve our goals without them.

The Parish Council meets every two months and meetings are open to the public. Due to coronavirus restrictions we have been holding virtual meetings via Zoom since July but the public are welcome to join in.

Agendas and meeting details are posted on the Community website and Village Noticeboards. The next meeting will be on 4 January 2021 at 7.30pm.