Our campaign for a separate Parish Council for Muxton has been moving forward albeit not as a rapidly as myself and Cllr Nigel Dugmore would have wished.

We collected signatures from the summer last year on-wards and a very big thanks for all those residents of Muxton who kindly signed up to our petition.   I estimate that around 90% of residents are in favour of the split and it is across the political spectrum including former Donnington residents who have now moved to Muxton.

Over the last 10 years or so Muxton has developed more of its own identity distinct from that of Donnington and residents now wish for a Parish solely focused on the needs and requirements of our residents.

There is also a lot of resentment in Muxton that Donnington spends all of the precept and very little money gets spent on Muxton, a lot of our precept goes to fund Turreff hall and all of its staff, but when I asked residents if they ever make use of its facilities some were not even aware of where it was!  For the last 8 years there has been a growing call for the uniqueness of Muxton to be recognised through our own Muxton Parish Council.

Donnington is more deprived than Muxton which residents accept, but that translates into some weighting of resource spend to support initiatives in Donnington, but residents are really shocked to discover that the reality translates into almost a complete exclusion of Muxton from resources, we have after all only two bus shelters compared to the £100K’s of capital tied up in Tureff Hall and Casey’s hall, yet most of , or the majority at least of the Parish Precept comes from Muxton Council Tax payers.

The Council has rejected a number of our signatures as invalid so we are collecting a few more in order to represent our petition this will be complete in the coming weeks and the process can then progress again.

If the Conservative Group is lucky enough to gain a majority on the Council we will ensure there is no more stalling by officers at T&W Council.

All being well the election on 2nd May 2019 will be the last one for Donnington and Muxton Parish Council and from 2023 onwards we will at last have our own parish and the freedom to focus on the priorities of residents.

Residents are around 90% in favour of a separate Muxton Parish Council and that can be evidenced by the door to door canvassing done by myself and Cllr Nigel Dugmore when we collected signatures during the summer of 2018 to kick off this process.

I am working hard to bring our vision of a separate parish to reality, 2019 should at least be the year when residents finally get a vote on it.