2026-05-11 Draft Minutes

Source page 1

North Petherton Annual Town Meeting
Held on 11 May 2026 starting at 19:15hrs in the Small Hall, Fore Street, North
Petherton, TA6 6QA
There were 11 North Petherton electors attending the meeting (plus the town Clerk
and Senior Administrator).
The Mayor, Councillor Linda Hyde welcomed everyone to the meeting.
1. Apologies
Apologies for absence were received from the Deputy Mayor – Councillor D
Baker, and Mrs E Smith
2. Welcome & Opening Remarks – Councillor Linda Hyde, Mayor
The Mayor thanked everyone for attending the meeting and drew attention to
the Town Council’s 2025/2026 Annual Report explaining that this was the first
time the Council had produced an annual report and it was intended to be
about activities and news.
The Mayor then reported that the tree carving at the cemetery was due to be
finished during the week. There was a lot of local interest and many positive
comments have been received about the work so far.
A person attending the meeting said he would like to thank the Town Council
because communication had improved tremendously over the last year.
3. Minutes of the 2025 Annual Town Meeting
It was agreed that subject to the date of the 2025 meeting being corrected the
minutes were a correct record.
4. Introduction to Repair Cafés

Biddy Hammond, who set up and organises the Highbridge and Burnham on
Sea Repair Café explained how she went about the initial set up. The
information provided included:
• There are over 800 repair cafes in the UK and there is at least one in
Taunton and one in Bridgwater
• The original concept was about a way to improve the environment by
not needing to continually buy new items
• Repair Cafes are about building communities
• The Repair Café “bible” can be bought on-line
• Burnham & Highbridge Repair Café took about 5 months to get going
• A conscious decision was made not to duplicate any service that was
provided by local businesses e.g. no bicycle repairs because there was
already a bike repair business

Source page 2

•
•
•
•
•
•

The Burnham & Highbridge Repair Café has now been operating about
3 years,
The Repair Café provides an opportunity for people to learn new skills
The Burnham & Highbridge Repair Café does not charge to repair
something but accepts donations
Community Action Group (CAG) provides training
One of the services that the Burnham & Highbridge Repair Café offers is
a thermal imaging camera that they will take out to people’s homes to
identify where a property is loosing heat.
The Burnham & Highbridge Repair Café is open to receive items 10:0012:00 so that they can have work completed and go home at 13:00

5. Open Forum
No questions or topics had been notified in advance of the meeting.
The following was raised at the meeting:
• What is happening about the cumulative transport & flooding
assessments?
It was explained that the documents were available on the Town Council’s
website and had been shared with Somerset Council Planning Officers. The
Local Community Networks (groups of similar parish and town councils in
Somerset) had shown interest and the report authors had been invited to a
number of meetings to share the approach to tackling these major planning
issues.
The meeting closed at 20:22hrs