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Parish for Greatstone

The Greatstone Website supports the residents of Greatstone in their desire for the creation of a separate Parish Council for Greatstone.

Present Governance

Greatstone is at present split into two with the area from Littlestone to Dunes Road coming under New Romney Town Council and the other from Dunes Road up to, but not including, Hull Road falling under the control of Lydd Town Council. (see Greatstone Map).

However, the majority of residents of Greatstone feel that, being part of Lydd Parish, does not reflect the views, aspirations and interest of the people of Greatstone.

Many Greatstone residents also feel that Lydd Town Council have consistently failed to provide any major expenditure to Greatstone despite an ever increasing Council Tax burden upon its residents. They feel that there should be equanimity throughout the parish in the allocation of funds etc and not spend a disproportionate part of the parish precept on Lydd town.

Greatstone Parish Council

There was a referendum held in September/October 2009 of voters living in the Greatstone area of Lydd Parish, on the creation of a separate Parish for Greatstone. It resulted in more than 70% of voters supporting the creation of a new parish.

The result of the referendum was:

The question posed in the referendum was; "Do you support the proposal to set up a parish council for the Lydd DC polling district? (Greatstone area of Lydd Parish)"
The electorate for the polling district numbers 1607. There was a 49.3% turnout.
556 voted in favour of the proposal and 232 against  ie 70.6 % of those who voted favoured the proposal.]

Next Steps

Following the referendum, the General Purposes Committee of Shepway District Council, at its meeting on 23 February 2010 (Minutes file), agreed the way forward as set out in council Report GP/09/04 ( file), the recommendations of which were:

"That the Committee supports the creation of a new parish but that before making recommendations on this that the terms of reference for the review be amended as follows:

That Shepway District Council undertakes a Community Governance Review under the provisions of Part 4 of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 in respect of the area comprising the Lydd DB Polling District. The objective of the review will be to determine whether or not the area should be included in a new parish for that area and the Lydd DC Polling District and if so, to decide on the name of the parish and the electoral arrangements for the new council (number of councillors), warding arrangements (if any) and ordinary year of election.

To carry out a referendum on the possible inclusion of Lydd Polling District DB in any new parish by way of postal ballot with options of Internet, freephone and text voting;

To receive a further report on the results of the referendum together with final recommendations on the Community Governance Review."

Lydd DB Polling District are the Lydd-on-Sea and Dungeness areas of Lydd Parish.

The indicative timetable contained in the report is:

The only change to the report was that the 28 April 2010 date may go back to June or July 2010, given the forthcoming General Election.