Creeting St Peter: hail to the Chief?

In recent times, the period around the close of nominations for local elections has been slightly more fraught than for most people. As a serving councillor, the concerns come in two parts:

• can I successfully submit my nomination papers?
• am I actually going to have to fight an election?

The second question is, I admit, more of a Parish and Town Council thing - principal authority elections are seldom uncontested - as many contests… aren’t.

Having handed in my nomination papers in person on Tuesday morning and had them vetted by Mid Suffolk’s Head of Election Services, I was pretty confident that I had been validly nominated (and how embarrassing would it be if an “out” bureaucrat screwed that up?). All that was left was to await the formal publication of candidates.

Having clicked on the link on the Mid Suffolk website yesterday afternoon, I was somewhat surprised to find that the total number of Town and Parish Council contested elections was… one. And it wasn’t Creeting St Peter.

And so, I am gloriously re-elected. Four years ago, I noted that it wasn’t so much an endorsement of my ability and hard work as a sitting councillor as a sense that I wasn’t annoying anyone enough to provoke a challenge. I suspect that this is less the case now after more than four years as Chair, including over the pandemic. People appear to know who I am and what I do, which is nice, and events of the past year have demonstrated that the role isn’t as easy as my colleagues think I make it look.

I even delivered upon the goals I set four years ago. The street lights have been replaced at far lower cost than I had feared (thanks must go to the County Council for offering us an exceptionally good deal) and the emergence of village Facebook and WhatsApp groups has allowed me to convey useful and/or important information to most village residents quickly and efficiently.

So, what are my aims for the next four years? It would be nice to support our Parochial Church Council in raising additional funds to refurbish the Church Room, and the recent discovery that they could apply for Section 106 funding is very encouraging. We also would like to improve our playground, especially given that we have a surprising number of small children in the village.

I’d also like to finish off the job of dragging Council into the twenty-first century in terms of how it operates. The appointment of a new Clerk and Responsible Finance Officer was a big leap in that project, but the work is still ongoing. As Chair, if they’ll continue to have me, that does put an onus upon me to actively engage rather than just acquiesce but that might not be a bad thing.

So, another four glorious years are launched. Maybe I ought to crack open a bottle of champagne?…