AXBRIDGE NEWS: Axbridge Town Council Blog Post, 17th April 2020

The Coronavirus outbreak is clearly having a major impact on residents, businesses and visitors in Axbridge.

During this time the Town Council remains committed to maintaining services and advocacy for townsfolk.  Although we will not be delivering printed copies of OYEZ! during this time, we will be maintaining regular blogs on this website to keep residents informed with Council business and other useful information.

As always – if you would like to contact us to request more information, ask a question or raise a concern please do so through email or post to the Town Clerk. We’d love to hear from you and understand what you’d like us to prioritise or raise any concerns you may have.

Updates:

• Full Council Meeting Monday 20th April 2020 will be undertaken on Zoom video conferencing platform and is open to the public and members of press using this link.
• Online Council Meetings –  We warmly welcome residents to join us at online Council meetings and to enable business to be conducted efficiently we would ask attendees to take on board the following guidance:
  • Agenda – agendas for the meeting are available on this link.  Please familiarise yourself with the agenda ahead of the meeting, in particular noting agenda item for public participation.
  • Public participation – please keep public participation to the allotted agenda item, follow the guidance given to you by the chair and be respectful of others at all times.
  • Use your full name – when joining a Zoom call the system asks participants to provide a name.  Please use your first name and surname, so it is clear to Clerk who is taking part.
  • Unmute only when needed – we politely ask attendees to mute their lines when not speaking, whilst the Chair has the facility to mute the lines of others we would prefer this to be done on a courtesy and voluntary basis.
  • Arrive on time – the Council meeting will commence at 7.30 and we ask participants to arrive on time.  We may choose to lock the meeting to new participants after 15 minutes if appropriate.
  • Bandwidth management – ideally we would like all participants to keep video switched to on so that we can see and converse with each other in as normal a way as possible.  However you may find that if your internet speeds are severely limited this will disrupt the overall call quality – in which case it is recommended that you use the ‘Stop Video’ function to reduce bandwidth required.
  • Bear with us – conducting Council meetings via video link is new to us, so please bear with us if we encounter any technical or user error issues.
• Updated Information on Coronavirus – our web page for Coronavirus information has been updated and is where you will now find; local authority helpline information, links to grant applications for Coronavirus response & recovery and a lot more.

We appreciate this is a difficult time for all of us as social distancing is set to continue and cases of Coronavirus continue to rise across the UK.  However as we all know Axbridge is built on its strong community spirit and the care we have for one another, which will carry us through this.  Please continue to observe government and NHS advice, wash hands regularly and stay at home.

Cllr Andy Corp – Website Editor.

–AXBRIDGE TOWN COUNCIL BLOG POST, 6th APRIL 2020–

The Coronavirus outbreak is clearly having a major impact on residents, businesses and visitors in Axbridge.

During this time the Town Council remains committed to maintaining services and advocacy for townsfolk and have had to adapt our procedures in the following way:

• Council will not meet at the Town Hall for monthly meetings or in committee until the health guidance permits meetings outside of family groups once more.
• Instead, the Council will replace monthly meetings, committee meetings and advisory groups with online Council conference calls.  Residents are invited to join public meetings online and a link will be provided on the Council Meetings page  alongside agendas and minutes of meetings.
• We urge residents to communicate with us through email, post to the Town Clark. We’d love to hear from you and understand what you’d like us to prioritise or raise any concerns you may have.
• Deliveries of printed Oyez! will cease until it is safe to resume. However, residents should rest assured that if we have news we need to get to all residents, we will resort to print and delivery to ensure that everyone gets the information they need.
• We will keep residents updated through regular blog posts here. Please do share information with friends and neighbours if you are concerned that they do not have access to the internet.
• We ask all residents to read, listen to and abide by the guidance provided by the Government, NHS and Public Health England and to maintain social distancing at all times.  More advice can be found on the Coronavirus Information page. We know this is particularly difficult for parents, but it is important for all of us in the community to keep each other safe at this time.  If we identify groups of people who are ignoring the regulations they will be reported to the Police and we encourage other residents to do likewise.

At these challenging times, we wish you all the very best – together we will get through this.

Cllr Andy Corp – Website Editor.