Blackshaw Parish Council

Minutes of Parish Council 

Upcoming Meetings

Contact Parish Councillors

Allotments Committee

 Accounts, Policies & other Formal Business

Archive Area

Blackshaw Parish Council Emergency Plan



Blackshaw Parish Community Award
The 2024 award was given to Finn Jensen who was nominated by Roger Munday. In the nomination, Roger said:

Finn has been the initiator of two powerful movements in our community.
A couple of decades ago Finn founded BEAT – Blackshaw Environmental Action Team. Out of that have come the village clean-up, the community orchards and local food production, wildlife protection,  eco-improvements to the chapel, renewable energy generation and retro-fit insulation for homeowners, and the community wind generator, amongst others. BEAT now reaches far beyond our village and is pretty much a Calderdale-wide environmental agency.
Then, ten years ago Finn, along with his wife Laura Beesley, created Together We Grow. This was initially a support group for refugees and asylum-seekers living in Rochdale, where Laura worked, bringing them into our village (their home or the chapel)  for recreation and play-space for children, and putting into practice ethnic skills, including growing fruit and veg, cooking, craft and music activities, and more. This too has now grown beyond Blackshaw into a larger organisation.
For me, Finn has for many years engendered and fostered environmental awareness and active compassion in our community, along the way successfully attracting grant aid for a variety of community projects, and he would be a very fitting recipient of this award.

GDPR
To comply with the General Data Protection Regulations, which came into force on 25th May 2018, Blackshaw Parish Council has published a Privacy Notice, which you can access here

About Blackshaw Parish Council

Blackshaw Parish Council was created in 1894 out of the much larger and ancient Stansfield Township as part of a major national re-organisation of local administration.

The Parish Council has seven Councillors, who are elected every four years.  For a list of current councillors, click here.  The Council normally meets in Blackshaw Head Methodist Church although meetings could be held in the nearby Hebden Bridge Town Hall, as part of an agreement with Calderdale Council dating back to 1974. Meetings are held on the fourth Monday of the month except in May and December.

Meetings discuss such things as local planning applications, issues with roads and footpaths, reports from other meetings in the Calderdale area, and often have invited speakers. In recent months we have had speakers from Calderdale Council on the potential of CCTV in Blackshawhead, from BT and Superfast West Yorkshire on fibre broadband, and Yorkshire Water on the steps taken to resolve issues with water mains stoppages.

The Parish Council owns and manages the allotments site in Charlestown (for which there is an allotments committee), and the area of land around Great Rock.

The council also produces a newsletter once a year, plays a role in events such as the annual fete, pays for and helps manage this website, and keeps residents updated on local issues using the googlegroups email list.

The May meeting is also the Annual Parish Council Meeting when the Chair for the year has to be elected. According to statute the Chair is still known as “Chairman”. The May meeting is normally held on the second Monday of May because Parish Council elections are normally the first Thursday in May after which the Council is legally required to meet within ten days.

The May meeting is preceded by the Annual Parish Meeting to which members of the public are invited. All meetings of the Parish Council are open to the Press, members of the public and at the discretion of the Chair everyone is allowed to speak – though it is preferable to notify the Clerk or Chairman at the beginning of the meeting if you do wish to speak. Meetings are publicised on the two official notice boards (at Underbank in Charlestown and on the road beneath the Methodist Chapel in Blackshawhead) on this website and via email to the Blackshaw Googlegroup.


You can read/download a variety of older documents in the PARISH COUNCIL ARCHIVE AREA