At the Meopham Annual Parish Meeting on May 17th 2024, a Parish Poll was proposed and agreed, in accordance with the Local Government Act 1972, on this question:

Meopham Parish Council should reopen the public toilets on Pitfield Green?

An important parish asset closed without any public consultation!

The vote will be on June 20th 2024 from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. at your usual polling station

Postal voting and proxy voting will not be permitted. Photo ID is not required.

There will be polling stations at: Meopham Village Hall, Chinnery Court, Meopham Scout Hall (at Judson's Recreation Ground), Harvel Village Hall and Culverstone Community Centre

If you are unsure which polling station to use phone Gravesham Borough Council on 01474-337253 for advice. NO POLLING CARDS WILL BE ISSUED.

Keeping the toilets open would cost about a penny a day for each household in the parish. The Parish Council has decided that your household's penny is better spent on adding to its 'Council Administration' budget, which went up by no less than £46,000 this year as part of a 31% increase in the Precept.

Vote YES on June 20th to ask the Parish Council to reconsider its priorities and REOPEN an important public facility

YES flyer PDF (front)    YES flyer PDF (back)
Official calling notice from Gravesham Borough Council

Facebook posting by ex-parish councillor James Ferrin on January 17th 2024
Shows 95% support in a Facebook poll by 425 voters for keeping the public toilets open. (They were closed on March 31st.)

Background information from Max Bramer, a local resident, the lead proposer for the poll
Posting on Facebook May 18th 2024
Posting on Facebook May 26th 2024
[Summary] The parish council shows no interest in engaging in discussion with or consulting its parishioners. A 95% vote to keep the toilets open in an online Facebook poll in December was ignored. They cost about 10K a year to run, which is about one penny a day for each household in the parish. That penny has been diverted to council admin, which has gone up by 46K this year. They are now considering selling or leasing the building for commercial use. Which do you think is the better use of a penny a day: a public facility or more admin?
Posting on Facebook June 9th 2024
[Summary] An important public facility which was open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., 364 days a year. Disabled facility was accessible 24/7 all year round to anyone with a RADAR key, including parents with babies or small children. Cost: about a penny a day for each household in the parish, now diverted to more spending on Council administration.
Posting on Facebook June 12th 2024
[Summary] Council usage and cost per visit figures seem plucked out of the air as well as irrelevant. Community Toilet Scheme not an adequate substitute.
Posting on Facebook June 16th 2024
[Summary] Claims about the cost of the Parish Poll seem to have been plucked out of the air. The council is circulating a leaflet that gives a ridiculously low six-month toilet usage figure based on a recording device that never worked, followed by a guess about annual usage and a statement about the progress of their partial replacement 'community' scheme that does not appear to be borne out in fact. The real cost of the toilets is about a penny a day for each household in the parish, now diverted to more spending on Council administration.
Posting on Facebook June 18th 2024
[Summary] The toilets could be modernised over a period of years without necessarily increasing the Precept at all.
Posting on Facebook June 18th 2024
[Summary] As an ex-parish councillor of 20 years standing I am disappointed to see unjustifiable numbers and questionable claims repeated over and over and some even posted on notices around the parish as facts. The parishioners of Meopham deserve better than this!

POSTING ON FACEBOOK MEOPHAM NEWS AND VIEWS - JUNE 18TH 2024 MEOPHAM PARISH POLL: JUNE 20th 2024 Vote YES to REOPENING an important public facility closed without any public consultation! meophamvillage.org.uk/poll/ A recent posting by one of the parish councillors referred to the cost of reopening the Pitfield Green toilets and the long-term cost of modernising the facilities. He stated a figure of £50K and warned about the possible effect on the Precept. However, combining the two costs is potentially very misleading. Reopening a building that was in daily use up to March 31st would obviously cost very little. Modernising the facilities would certainly cost money but this can be spread over a period of years and there are many possibilities for raising money that do not involve increasing the Precept at all. The Meopham Village Hall committee raised a much larger sum to replace the hall roof a few years ago by a range of activities, without any call on taxation. There are grants available for refurbishing buildings but little effort seems to have been put into obtaining them or looking for sponsorship or other fund-raising opportunities. But there is another possibility······ The Council had £220K in its reserves last November. This came from taxation collected from the public in the past through the Precept but not spent in full. The reserves are used to fund future projects or to meet unexpected expenses. The council recently had an opportunity to apply for 50% matched funding from the government's multi-million pound Community Ownership Fund, but says that putting in the £9K that was all it had earmarked in the reserves for toilet refurbishment would have made a total of 'only' £18K. That would have been enough to make a very good start on the job, but if the will had been there and more of the reserves had been released, the whole job could potentially have been 50% match funded using just a small part of the reserves. All without the slightest increase in the Precept. The council has spent a lot of the public's money in the last few years. Why was it so indifferent to modernising or redesigning the only public facility that it owns? It is still not too late to apply for matched funding! Vote YES on Thursday!