Toft Newton Parish Council undertakes consultation with residents as and when we need to.
Details of previous consultations are listed here.
Asset of Community Value, Woodland off Alexandria Road, Newtoft, known locally as The Big Wood (2024-25 Financial Year)
In July 2025, Toft Newton Parish Council successfully applied to West Lindsey District Council to register the The Big Wood as an Asset of Community, this rund until July 2029.
The woodland is privately owned and as a result, the owner can sell the land. The Asset of Community Value status means that the Community, via Toft Newton Parish Council gets a say in what can be done with the wooded area. We can only prevent it from being sold, if we buy the woodland ourselves, and certainly that has been discussed, but is currently priced too high for the parish council to buy. However, the Central Lincolnshire Local Plan protects this site until at least 2040, which means that there is no chance of building work taking place on the site.
As part of the application to get the Asset of Community Value status, several Councillors, but especially Councillos Jackie Roson and Russ Gibbs undertook a door to door consultation around Newtoft. The feedback was overwhelmingly in favour of keeping the woodland accessible to all and as a woodland.
Thank you for your support.
Solar panels (2023-24 Financial Year)
Toft Newton Village Hall Association applied for funding from West Lindsey District Council and Toft Newton Parish Council to install 30 photo-voltic solar panels and a battery for storage of electricty generated, when in 2023 their previous energy supply contract came to an end and the new contract resulted in massive cost increases in the electricty bills.
Toft Newton Parish Council undertook some informal research in the community using social media.
There was an overwhelming support for the Parish Council and West Lindsey District Council to fund the solar panels. Some example comments can be seen below:
- It's a positive idea ... if our social club/village hall closed, it would be huge loss to many people from the estate.
- I 100% support the solar panels.
- In full support.
- Fully support this brilliant idea.
- Have my support.
- Very positive idea. It would certainly help a lot.
- Village Hall is a lifeline in our community.
- Great idea for the club.
- Solar panels are an excellent idea.
- Absolutely support this.
- The Village Hall is a lifeline to me.
- Good idea.
Community Energy Initiative (2023-24 Financial Year)
Following on from the solar panels idea, Toft Newton Parish Council also carried out a more formal consultation on the idea of a potential Community Energy Initiative. This would have required significant funding, to install a further 90 solar panels and to increase the number of batteries.
Possible ideas included ring-fencing the electricty produced by the 120 panels for use within the parish, perhaps powering the Church, keeping street lights on for longer each night or possibly to be used to give free electricity to each household. These ideas were just a few of the ideas that had been discussed.
While we only had a small number of responses, 100% of replies supported expansion of the solar panels on the Village Hall roof and any income / surplus electricity generated being used locally.
The Community Energy Initiative was discussed by the Department for Energy's East Midlands Office, and they concluded that the project would be too small scale to attract any funding or have any benefit.
Our former Clerk, Michael Lewis completed a Community Based Research course in 2024.