Around 150 people attended the Town Meeting on 2 March to hear from the Council's five committees - Finance, Sport Recreation and Environment, Public Halls, Festival Hall Development and the Planning Committee (as the Town council comments on all applications the Planning Authorities consult on.)

Projects reported on were the £400k Council chamber upgrade, £255k on the Heath toilets, £283k for new lights rigging on the Festival Hall stage, £140k on the Penns playground and £55k on The Avenue tennis courts.

Lots of information was provided and Rochelle Halliday the Town Clerk, said it will all appear in the Council's Annual Report which will be available shortly.

We also hear from Robin Davison, the newly appointed Deputy Town Clerk.

The Mayor's charities this year - Winton House and the Scouts - made presentations about their work.

The South Downs National Park also spoke about the excellent working relationship with the Town Council. The park has 18.8m visitors overall and they gave details of the £800k town focused spending (from the section 106 levy on new buildings) which had been spent on, for example, the play area, signage, CCTV and the pond. Part of another fund - the Community Infrastructure Levy  - has also allocated £250,000 allocated to the Council.

Audience members had a few 'back and forths' with councillors about some things - the full costs of the Festival Hall work, trees being removed and not replaced, planning discussions but not involving local people.

The Mayor made awards for 'service to Petersfield' to Jenny Tickner from Winton House, Jenny Cummings from Home Start Butser, Jen King from the Free Shop, Jordan Beech from the Friends of the Heath, John Wade-Palmer from the Physic garden and Steve Field for Agencies Working Together.

Julie Butler and Mike Waddington report. 

As part of the effort to encourage attendance the Town Criers were used to publicise the event and Martin Johnson played a song about it on Rams Walk,