Tag: Peastonbank

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Pencaitland Community falls short of full Council – Seeks new Reps

A recent letter in the East Lothian Courier laments the lack of locals stepping up to look out for their local area. Click to read.
A letter in the Courier laments lack of locals stepping up. Click to read.
Nominations recently closed for the twenty community councils within East Lothian. Most will return with no need for elections.

This has been the picture in the Pencaitland Community Council area for many years, with no elections ever having taken place for seats in this ward.

In all there are fifteen seats on Pencaitland’s Community Council with twelve taken up for the next session. Sadly, this means that we are under-represented.

We really want local representation for other parts of this ward including Peastonbank/Glenkinchie, New Winton, Boggs Holdings, Fountainhall and everywhere in-between. Equally, for a rural area we have no-one from the farming community nor anyone in their teens or 20s. Did you know you can be 16 and sit on the Community Council?

Pencaitland Community Council Area MapWe are searching for new blood to join the team. We need more voices on issues which directly affect you and your local environment. If you care about local matters then take the next step – come along to your local community council and see if you’d like to become a co-opted member.

Interested? Next Steps

Want to know more? Contact the current Community Council Chair, Ralph Averbuch, on 01875 340 641 or 07920 094 923 to discuss how you can get involved. Or you can email chair@pencaitland.org.

This is your chance to represent your local community and directly affect the way it develops in the future. Come along and be part of the team.

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Pencaitland Community seeks council secretary

Nicky Neighbour steps down after many years, as both a Community Councillor and in the last year as Secretary, on the 4th of October.
Nicky Neighbour steps down after many years, as both a Community Councillor and in the last year as Secretary, on the 4th of October.
Pencaitland Community Council, which covers Boggs Holdings, New Winton and Peastonbank/Glenkinchie, is seeking a person to take on the role of Community Council Secretary. The post includes a modest financial allowance.

Pencaitland Community Council represents the local community, seeking to liaise with other local bodies and East Lothian Council. This includes ten Community Council meetings a year which usually take place on the last Wednesday evening of the month.

The role involves minuting the Community Council’s ten meetings and managing and re-distributing correspondence. This is increasingly delivered via email. You can see a recent example of the Community Council’s minutes here.

In the last year the Community Council has made much greater use of the web and social media to update the local population of news and events. As well as this website, the Community Council can be found on both Facebook and Twitter. Whilst not part of the post, training will be given to any Secretary interested in this area.

If you would like to know more about what’s involved please contact the current Secretary Nicky Neighbour. Nicky steps down on the 4th of October but would be delighted to tell those interested in the post about what’s involved. She can be contacted on 01875 340 115 or by emailing secretary@pencaitland.org.

Thanks

And finally, we’d like to say a big thank you to Nicky for her many years of involvement both as a community council member and, in the last year, as our Secretary. She will be sorely missed.

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Check out the new Pencaitland Parents page

There’s a new Facebook page especially for mums, dads and extended friends and family living in or near Pencaitland and other nearby communities of Boggs Holdings, New Winton and Peastonbank / Glenkinchie.

Pencaitland Parents on Facebook - click to check it out

Called Pencaitland Parents it’s hoped that over time it will become a useful message board for parents with kids of all ages to share information on both school and non-school events and activities in and around the village and other communities in the immediate area.

Of course, not everyone likes (excuse the pun) using Facebook. For those not so keen on it, we recommend following Pencaitland Parent Council on Twitter.

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Broadband Survey Update

We would like to thank all those who have already participated in our Broadband Survey. This is in order to establish whether there is sufficient demand to investigate provision of high speed wireless broadband offering a starting speed of 20Mbps which would cover Pencaitland and other outlying rural areas and villages.

But we still need more participants in order to make the survey sample as representative as possible. If you have already taken part in the survey, please take a moment to tell your neighbours and ask them to visit this site to take part.

We’ve created a shortlink to make it easy for people to find the survey, which can be filled in at: http://bit.ly/BB-survey

Meantime, here’s a snapshot of how people use the Internet in and around the village. It comes as no surprise that almost everyone uses the Internet to access email and the web, but a surprisingly high 87% also use services such as the BBC’s iPlayer catch-up service. Nearly half also upload material to services like YouTube or Flickr.

What do use broadband for?

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