What is the Bishopston Community Council precept and how is it spent?

The amount you pay for the Bishopston community council precept covers spending on service delivery within the community. With regulations in place to manage the precept, our finance committee have a duty to provide value for money when planning this annual financial budget, which is spent on the following community facilities, events and activities:

• Managing, maintaining & enhancing our parks, recreation grounds, and community hall

• Providing key bus services from Bishopston to Caswell Bay, via Manselfield & Mumbles.

• Annual events, including May Day, Fireworks, Christmas parade and Carol Service

• Employing key staff: Bishopston Community Council clerk and Facilities groundsman

• Managing contracts: Grass cutting, cleaning, servicing, maintenance

• Supporting communications: recently launched website, newsletters, social media.

• Community engagement, surveys, feedback

 

Additional Sources of Community Council Income

Over the last 2 years, our team have also been busy generating income through external funding to support the provision of additional, accessible, and free events, activities, and facilities. A total of £15,000 was generated in 2022 and 2023, thanks to the National Lottery, allowing us to re-direct some of our precept budget to cover the cost of inflation on our utilities and services during this time, however this is not sustainable.

 

Increases to the 2024-2025 Budget

Our local community councillors have developed a plan for the 2024-2025 budget and have had to include the following increase in costs and additional priority needs:

• Cost of inflation over the last two years:

• Increases to additional service & maintenance contracts.

• Utilities Inflation, including the addition of Wi-Fi in the community hall.

• Increase in key staff hours and adherence to national pay awards.

• Community bus service: If sustainable the income may reduce cost in future.

• There has unfortunately been increased vandalism in our local community area and resident feedback indicated the need to update security cameras and security lighting.

• A considerable increase in rainfall over the last year has left the Murton Green site completely waterlogged and unusable: leading to cancelling the fireworks display and some of our King’s Coronation activities in 2023. Priority remedial work to address drainage issues will progress as soon as possible.

 

Additional Planned Projects for 2023-2024:

Last year’s budget focused on the refurbishment of the whole community hall, painting internal and external, new flooring, toilet facilities and furniture. We are excited to open the doors to the refurbished hall in April 2024.

 

Additional Grant Funding for 2024-2025:

Since the submission of the 2024-2025 budget, our clerk has been successful in generating a Biodiversity grant for £25,000, which will provide our community facilities with solar panels, including battery storage and 5 new LED lamp posts for our car park. Therefore, improving security and driving down our future utility costs.

Longer term spending plans include enhancing our changing rooms, shower facilities / toilets for sports / community events and providing more accessible pathways around our village.

 

Our vital asset: volunteers who provide their time for our community

Through our community engagement, we are listening to you and with the help of our volunteers we have developed additional groups and activities to support our community. These include our monthly coffee & cake mornings, leading health walks every 2 weeks, launching our Gower Gateway Community Shed and creating Bishopston historic videos. This year we have launched a working group dedicated to a greener more sustainable community, who have already started to plant an orchard and are developing a phosphorus free community.