Meeting with Bovey Castle

Please see below message from Alex Austin, Chairman of the North Bovey Parish Council:

Further to concerns raised, the Parish Council met yesterday morning with the General Manager and Estate Manager at Bovey Castle.

This message is being emailed to all those whose emails we have available, is being posted on the Parish Council web page on the village blog and on the community Facebook page.

For those reading on Facebook, there will be no further comments made on behalf of the Council from myself or any other members of the Council on this media, it is for information purposes only. If you wish to raise any comments with myself or the clerk, then please do so via our emails.

Prior to the meeting Mr Fehler expressed his apologies over the tone of the original email sent from the hotel, and assured us that this had been looked into and more consideration to this type of communication will be given in future.  By return I expressed regret over some of the more ‘passionate’ emails and comments made, but highlighted that it does reflect the height of feelings over these matters.

Fireworks
In the last 6 months there have been 6 displays including New Years Eve.
Having highlighted concerns with the hotel last October about fireworks the hotel have put in place a policy which:
A) does not actively sell the use of fireworks
B) created a system to flag up any events booked requesting fireworks, which allows the event team to see any conflicts with potential bookings requesting fireworks, in order to avoid a run of firework displays such as we encountered last September.

After discussions with their provider, each display is set up as close to the hotel as possible and the weather conditions on each day are taken into consideration to stage trajectories away from the valley and the village centre. In addition advice was given to the hotel to start displays gently to build to a crescendo, as this allows animals in particular to become desensitised to the noise as the display unfolds.

Shooting
All shooting at Bovey Castle is small bore and utilises silencers.

They do have clients who wish to shoot bigger bore. Silencers are not able to be utilised on these guns and therefore their clients do go to Chris Clayton. It is not only their clients who shoot from the land adjacent to the byway.

They have an option to take their clients to another site, which they will happily do but that would be at the expense of currently one of our Parishioners.  This was discussed at the Parish Council meeting so please see minutes for greater detail.

It had already been highlighted from Bovey Castle that the provider of the shooting adjacent to the byway needs to put a warning notice in place on the days of the shoots. This is something the Council will follow up.

In both cases, Bovey Castle and Chris Clayton are limited to 28 days of shooting a year and they both currently come in on 28 days and just below so they are working within their legal rights.

Helicopters

Firstly it is important to state that any clients who choose helicopter transport to the hotel are directed by the hotel not to choose a flight path over the village.

With regards to the event planned this weekend, the helicopter will take off and rise immediately above the hotel and head straight out over the 18th green towards Dartmoor.

The helicopter is a small helicopter and produces far less noise than those we experience from the military.

This has arisen from a private corporate booking of the entire hotel and is the second event in 11 months of this nature.

It is not something that Bovey Castle sell as an experience, but has been requested. It is not likely to be a regular occurrence due to the nature of the costs involved.

I realise that many  Parishioners will read the above comments and feel that the answers given do not fully take into account the issues they have raised and the question of feeling that Bovey Castle can do what it likes, but are possibly well prepared and reasoned defences for a commercial outfit, that some have expressed looks to solely benefit financially from their surroundings at the expense of the Parish or our National Park, our home. I can assure you that the discussions held were extensive and very constructive from both sides.

 

 

Two key things to emerge from the meeting were that communication between the hotel and the Parish need key improvements and the hotel are very keen to do this and we are now organising another meeting between the hotel and those who run the village blog.

The second point to note is that the hotel does a very considerable amount of work to really help limit intrusion into our lives and into the National Park and they work very hard to utilise local business, often at a higher cost than necessary to themselves.  There is too much here for me to give examples but we have a solution!!

Therefore in order that the Parish as a collective is given the opportunity to bring forward their concerns and worries regarding these activities, that Bovey Castle under the new ownership is given the opportunity to discuss how and why it operates in particular leisure activities, given the opportunity to communicate how they endeavour to limit intrusion and to help look after our surroundings and to address directly our concerns, Greg Fehler, the General Manager will be our guest speaker at the Annual Parish Meeting. A part of that meeting will be a question and answer session on this talk where Greg and Ian Wiley the Estate Manager will be able to talk with you on these issues.

THE ANNUAL PARISH MEETING WILL BE HELD ON TUESDAY 10th MAY AT 7.30pm in the Parish Hall.

Please do attend this meeting if you can, it is your chance to show collective support of the concerns raised.

In addition we will invite DNPA to send a representative who should be able to discuss these concerns in terms of their management as the Governing body of the Park and as those who set the policies in place and who should be ensuring these policies are effective.

I think it is important to highlight that whilst many of our concerns raised are highlighting issues we feel impact upon our lives here and the pets, livestock, wild animals around us etc. As a first step the Parish Council has to fall back to the legal limitations put in place as guidelines and in this respect I assure you that ALL operations do fall within the legal framework.

Beyond this the Council has put forward points based upon quality and enjoyment of life here and these will rely upon building good neighbourly relations and a clear understanding of the needs of each side of this particular equation.

A couple of Parishioners have raised some separate issues and I will reply to you personally.

 

PLEASE COME TO OUR MEETING!!

 

Alex Austin

Chairman

North Bovey Parish Council