Sent out by the County Council below – Please support Earth Hour next week. It is an excellent event. The more we can do to cut energy usage the better.

From council:

Buildings across County Durham will be turning their lights off next week in support of the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Earth Hour.

Durham County Council will again lead the way in promoting Earth Hour on both the 22 and 23 March when non-essential lighting is switched off. Council buildings will be joined by DurhamUniversity, numerous schools and DurhamCastle in turning off lights to reduce their energy use and encourage staff, residents, businesses, and visitors to think about their impact on the environment. (more…)

Following on from the good work our litter pickers are doing, my investigations uncovered a few other things, including the totally ridiculous levels of management above the guys on the ground.

Here is the story I sent to the press today:

Durham County Council which has had to make big cut backs still has EIGHT layers of management between the Council Leader and the guys on the ground litter picking.

Liberal Democrats have worked out that the North East Authority which says it has cut back on management is still massively top heavy. Worried about the quality of frontline services Lib Dem councillors are continuing their campaign to investigate where all the council tax is going. (more…)

So having voted down our motion on changing the way the council is run (see last post from me), we moved on to a motion about Health funding in County Durham which the government is providing to the County Council.

Here is the story in lib Dem councillor Owen Temple’s words from his blog:

Today the Labour Party voted down my motion, even though I’d changed the wording to meet their objections. (more…)

So my attempts today to change the way that the council is run failed. They were voted down by Labour as we pretty much expected. We wanted to scrap the cabinet system and replace it with a committee system.

This is because so many decisions are made by the 10 person cabinet meaning that all the other councillors hardly get a say in the decision making.

This is why our leisure centre was threatened with closure by Labour, and why the Library opening hours were slashed too. (more…)

Back after a few days away to discover that the litter picking team have tackled all the litter in the hedgerows between Pity Me and Fram Moor. It is great that the changes to the structure we reported on a few weeks ago have made a big difference so far. All credit to the guys on the ground as i had asked repeatedly in the past for this to be done with no action.

Update: BT have apologised for the errors

So, just got an email from the Council PR department to say that despite sending to BT the list of County Councillors and their phone numbers well in time and fully correct, the new phone book is to say the least wrong.

Out of 126 county councillors less than 30 have been listed. At least three are listed but are not county councillors.

Utterly embarrassing.

Council Email: (more…)

I have today launched a petition to get the unacceptable £12860 clothing allowances paid to Durham County Council’s Labour Chair and Vice Chair scrapped for good.

It is utterly deplorable that this hasn’t been stopped yet. Labour refused proposals from us in the budget a few weeks ago to cut this allowance. Instead they saw fit to cut citizens advice bureau funding. Then after the national press published this and residents started to find out about it they have come back and said they will review it. This is simply not enough. It should be stopped immediately and every extra person who signs this petition can add weight to that cause.

Please sign the petition online by clicking here, or download a paper copy and get your friends and neighbours to sign it, then post back to us by Freepost.

DurhamClothingAllowancePetition

Changes to the speed limits on the C17 through Bearpark were approved today by the Highways Committee of the Council.  I attended the meeting and voiced my support for the scheme which will help to reduce speeds through the village at both ends. 40mph buffer zones are being introduced and more prominent signage.

In addition, the installation of a speed visor is only a matter of months away.

My only regret with this is that it took the council five years to bring forward these plans despite repeated requests from myself and others.

Framwellgate Moor Parish Council provides a bowling green for residents to use. This will cost in the region of £8000 this financial year. It has cost more and less in previous years but overall this is still quite a substantial sum and may be an under estimate of the overall costs.

The Parish Council receives about £42000 from residents through the council tax so that works out at about 20% of the money the council gets being spent on the bowling club.

There are around 35 members of the bowling club at any one time with less than a dozen of these members living in the parish council area. The parish council area has a population of more than 10,000 including under 18’s.

Of course residents can go along and use the bowling facilities for upto 20 hours in any week should they chose, but the reality is that few do. This in effect means that one fifth of all the parish money is being spent for the benefit of one tenth of one percent (0.0012%) of residents. (more…)