Your Residents Association Newsletter

Business outlets within the airport are very nearly fully occupied. As a result, the Airport has no facilities to offer potential new tenants, nor the planning permission to generate new opportunities.

An internal road link between the business parks has been investigated and a planning application will be submitted in April along with two other applications designed to enhance the business park. It is hoped to have planning consent by September, with development of the road starting in October or November.

Airport use has increased with 2018 being 3% better than budget and new routes for 2019 have been added to the programme. 

There has been a greater emphasis placed on customer service and thought given as to how the Airport can enhance the experience of using its facilities for its passengers.  To that end, Ground Handling Services have been brought in-house from the 1st April 2019 and over £900,000 of new equipment has been ordered. The Airport will be hiring an additional 50 to 60 new staff.

The Airport will open a Premium Lounge on the 1st June 2019, which is already taking bookings via the Airport’s website.  Aimed at both business and leisure passengers, the Lounge will offer a quiet and relaxing place, with comfortable seating, complimentary refreshments, newspapers, magazines and unlimited high-speed wi-fi.  

One of the questions asked at our AGM concerned possible sites for an office block to house the new BCP Council.

The answer drew attention to the rate at which technology is greatly reducing the need for banks of clerks siting in large office blocks.

As an example, millions of people across England and Wales can now sign their mortgage deeds online, as high street lenders use the new HM Land Registry service, which is making buying a home simpler and quicker.

The digital service enables people to sign their mortgage on their phone or computer. It removes the need for pen-on-paper signatures, and witnesses no longer need to be present when the documents are signed.

Homeowners no longer face delays from having to print out forms, find an independent third party to witness their signature, and pay to return the forms by post.

More people are applying for their mortgages using paperless processes and HM Land Registry’s free service brings the sector one step closer to an end-to-end paperless process.

This and similar developments are removing the need for expensive office blocks

Part of the debt held by the old DCC was attributable to work undertaken by them for and in Christchurch (in care for the elderly for example). Under the somewhat strange accountancy arrangements that applied the debt was not shown in CBC accounts but rather was hidden in the overall DCC debt.

A great deal of work has been undertaken by council officers to try to quantify that debt. We contacted Adam Richens the new Director of Finance at BCP and he told us that agreement has been reached on the principles that will be applied in splitting the Asset and Liabilities of the old DCC between BCP and the new Rural Dorset Council

This split will be based on the DCC balance sheet as at the 31^st March 2019. This position is not likely to be confirmed until after the end of July to enable the 2018-19 accounts of DCC to be drawn up and audited. 

It is anticipated that the DCC loans – and particularly the LOBO loans - will transfer to the new Dorset Rural Council and no liability for those loans will be attributable to BCP. That is good news. By August it should be clearer whether BCP will have to borrow to pay the Christchurch transfer fee to the Dorset Rural Council.

The average Band D in England is £1,1750 a year. Had we stayed in rural Dorset the rate is about £2,038 a year. Only Rutland is higher than that at £2,043 a year

About 16% of our tax funds the emergency services.  We are also all now funding local parish councils to the tune of about £3 a month.

Council tax was born in a rush, after the disastrous failure of the poll tax. It is easy to collect. However, it is a sizeable bill that forms a significant part of most resident’s expenditure - an unfair, regressive tax that is riddled with problems and anomalies.

The values used for calculating the band of council tax to be paid are based on house valuations in the 1990s. Although they were supposed to be revalued periodically, that has never happened in England. The absurd consequence of this is that when a new property is built, someone must work out what it would have sold for more than 20 years ago.

Council tax is regressive. The occupier of a large house pays perhaps three times as much tax as somebody in a small one, but their house might be worth more than five times as much. It also takes little account of ability to pay, which is why large increases create genuine financial difficulties particularly for those on fixed incomes.

At least the council can function. There is a major problem across rural Dorset where several Parish Councils have attracted no candidates at all – meaning that the Council can’t operate immediately, and further action will be required.

Our candidates Sue Fotheringham and Jim Biggin have been kept busy. They both managed to get to grips with the paperwork needed to register them as candidates in consultation with Council Officers.

We published over 8,000 election leaflets which Sue, Jim and their teams of volunteers then distributed across our ward. This and other associated costs involved us in spending nearly £600 of our fighting fund, which is money we set aside for just this sort of purpose.

Remember, we are doing this because we believe that the new council structure will remove our reason for existing if we don’t manage to have councillors that represent us on the two councils. Don’t worry, we still have over £6,000 in reserve! 

Election Day is Thursday 2^nd May