East Bergholt Parish Council Chair’s Report, 12.2.26

Brantham PC Liaison
• CPSO research
Held an initial joint meeting with the police service. Prices have risen to £52330 pa
including support costs for a full time 40 hr per week CPSO officer. PCSO will work as
part of a police-managed team but with their working area focussed on East Bergholt
and Brantham. Brantham PC would jointly fund costs, so time divided 50/50 between
the 2 villages. Also we held a reference meeting with Thurston PC who have funded a
dedicated CPSO since 2011. Thurston were very helpful in describing how to manage an
agreement with the police and what can be expected from a CPSO. I expect another
meeting with the police shortly to work on some example case studies to see how the
service could work for our village.

• Constable 250
Brantham PC have several initiatives planned including walking tour, and events. They
send a Brantham PC representative to our working group, Liz Baylham, who is also a
contractor to Babergh to manage events. She is leading on work to engage EB primary
school and High school in a virtual reality Constable event at the Constable Hall.

• Affordable Housing partner
Brantham have found Flagship a very helpful RP partner in building affordable housing.
They specialise in small projects suitable for village needs involving typically up to 10
houses.

Conservation Area
Our working group is working very closely and effectively with Babergh officers’ Vincent
Pearce and Tegan Chinnery – see item 11 on the council agenda.

Constable 250
EB Community Council potential Constable art work – a 6×4 ft canvass to be filled in by
EB residents.

East Bergholt traffic calming
We have finally managed to hold a joint meeting with our consultants, PJA, and 2
representatives from SCC Highways engineers.

Babergh Planning
Nigel and I met with Robert Feakes, Babergh senior housing officer, to ask questions
about a planning Deed of Variation Application from Hills. Robert explained to us the
impact of the variation which puts the planning condition on to a more standard basis.

EB CLT
EB Community Land Trust, after further research, have identified a possible project to
create up to 2 CLT homes for affordable rent by people connected to our village. If
further enquiry continues to be positive, they will in the very near future be applying to

both the Parish Council and Babergh District Council for help with funding. EBPC
currently holds £300,000 in our priority project reserves CIL funds for this purpose.

Red Lion planning application meeting
EBPC, acting as a statutory consultee, is considering a planning application from
Chestnut Group to replace the approved plan for permanent market houses on the back
field of the Red Lion pub with two blocks of B&B accommodation. This application will
be considered later in the meeting, but following concerns raised at the RFF Committee,
Nigel Roberts, John Price, Graham White and myself met with Henry Farbanks of
Chestnut Group separately so that we could discuss the impact of the development on
our lease of the car park. In this way we can separate out the “hat” that the PC wears as
lessee from the “hat” we wear as consultee on planning application policies.
The items we discussed in the lessee meeting were:
• The impact of moving the location of the gates into the field from the car park
• The impact of attempting to join the site sewage drainage into the toilet drainage.
• The quality of materials being used to cloak the toilets.
• The impact of the building construction on the car park use and availability.
• Reinstatement of any surface damage incurred by building works and vehicles.
Henry gave reassurance on these matters and Chestnut Groups intent to work with us
on these matters. We agreed that further discussion will take place to find mutually
beneficial resolutions on these details. These matters will not therefore need to be
discussed as part of the planning application debate.

Joan Miller
10/2/26