I trust you will allow me to enlighten the electors of Hullavington about a recent circular that has been distributed to all houses in the village.

Following the parish council election in May, only five candidates stood for the nine available seats and so were duly elected.

As a legal requirement North Wiltshire District Council notified the clerk that as there were still four vacancies on June 26 a further election would be held, if ten or more electors requested one, in order to fill the vacancies.

At the July meeting of the parish council, concern was noted by a councillor that the council was not actively seeking people to request an election and then stand as candidates to fill the casual vacancies.

The council accepted his offer to create and deliver information to every household in the village pending approval of the text.

Councillors received the first draft and comments were made as to alterations in the text, most importantly concerning the inclusion of the cost of an election to the parish (approximately £1,000) that did not appear in the original draft.

This comment was taken on board and alterations made to the text. However, this final version was not given to councillors for their approval before it was distributed throughout the village and was therefore not authorised by the council.

The last sentence included the statement "your parish council has spent in excess of £20,000 a year recently."

I would like to point out that the precept for 1999 was £9,000.

In 2000 the precept was again £9,000 in 2001 the precept was raised to £13,500 and it remained at that level for 2002.

In the current financial year the precept was raised to £19,338.

The statement in the circular is therefore untrue.

As an elected parish councillor since 1999, I have written to the clerk saying that I wish to be disassociated with the circular.

Maggie Bawden

Parish councillor

Hullavington