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  Lesley, I hope you don't think I'm complaining or giving negative comments, just putting across a realistic viewpoint. We heard Vic's plan at a Lydden parish council meeting but as usual he came up with it out of the blue without a request for it to be an Agenda item so we couldn't have approved expenditure on it anyway.
  
  We decided there was no need to do more than we were doing at present as any new expenditure would be unrealistic with our small precept - we have a village hall with a kitchen area and male/female/disabled toilets and several keyholders; we have all the local contact knowledge we need via the clerk and councillors as we know and are known in our community; our contact details are published in the monthly village newsletter which we subsidise and which goes to all households except a few outlying ones, in notice boards and on our website; and we maintain contact with the necessary authorities by having a regular agenda item for our district and county councillors and PCSO, who are invited to speak or send a written report and usually turn up in person if they can.
  
  As for Vic saying camp beds only cost a few bob this is an example of how we have to be realistic in deciding how to spend our precept - we could fit about 50 camp beds in the village hall and that might be a realistic target for an emergency situation (about a coachload of people), but the cheapest I can find on a quick look on Amazon are £15 without blankets - and we would have nowhere to store them securely. Even if we could find storage, beds and blankets in total would be about 10% of our total annual precept and more than 50% of our uncommitted funds, not something we feel our residents would welcome.

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