Minutes of Neighbourhood Watch meeting held on 17th May 2010.

7 members present; 3 apologies for absence.

Meeting chaired by Mike Stephens.

Details of 2 e mails received were read to the meeting. They concerned reports of a) two cars being broken into. No details of loss of property were given, but damage to the vehicles was sustained and b) lead thefts. This, fortunately, not in our village- yet! Again, we are warned to be on the look out for possible similar cases.

Details were passed of a presentation given to the NW Steering Group meeting held at Somerton on 15 April, by Stuart Hunter of the South Somerset Community Speed Watch, relating to the structure of that organisation. The main reason for the information was to advise individual NW organisations of the way the Speed watch system is structured and to suggest that this structure could be a model for the NHW Steering Group which has recently been set up by the police. They, the police, feel that if the individual NW organisations were to combine under an area umbrella, then they would, as the speed watch organisation has over the last few years, become more of a force to be reckoned with by the local authorities. This strength has enabled Speed watch to obtain larger grants to further its work. There are at present some village NW organisations that already have the required structure in place viz. Long Sutton. In other instances NW and Speed watch have combined and obtained the support of their Parish Council. It was suggested at the Somerton meeting that maybe using these ideas as a starting point a suitable area structure might be formed.

The meeting variously discussed the above, but the general feeling seemed to be that such a move would unnecessarily centralise what is, in this village at least, a fairly low key organisation. However, although support was muted, it was agreed that more positive information of what was being suggested was needed before we could decide whether to ‘sign up’ for the proposal.

The meeting was informed that a new address list has been prepared and issued.

M G Stephens