CRACKING DOWN ON IRRESPONSIBLE DOG OWNERS

Your local councillors have started a campaign to crack down on dog fouling . We have started the campaign in the Pity Me area with wardens out patrolling, but it is local residents who can help us the most.

The Carrs Nature Reserve, the path from Pity Me to New college and various estate roads will be targetted. But if there is anywhere in Brasside, Framwellgate Moor, Newton Hall or Pity Me where you spot a problem let us know.

Wardens will give £80 on the spot fines. It taken to court, this fine could rise to £1000.

If you have details of when someone is allowing their dog to foul and not cleaning it up, please contact the council on 03000 261 000. The more details you can provide, the more chance we have to stop this.The name of the offender, their address, when they walk the dog, the type of dog and any other relevant information will greatly increase our chances of stamping out the fouling so residents aren’t standing in it.

Dog waste is dangerous. It can cause blindness and other serious illnesses. Please help us to crack down on it.

Household Waste Recycling opening hours

NEW winter opening times for County Durham’s household waste recycling centres will come into effect next week.

Revised opening hours for sites operated by Durham County Council will begin on October 1st and stay in force until the end of March.

The Household Waste Recycling Centre (HWRC) at Potterhouse Lane in Pity Me will be open seven days a week from 9am until 3.30pm.

The centre will be closed on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

Protecting the environment in our area – Your views

Over the last few years as your local Lib Dem councillors we have done a great deal to help protect the environment and help promote a sustainable future. This has included:

  • Funding for solar panels on the Parish pavilion.
  • Planting of trees and plants in various areas, and most recently a wildflower meadow between Framwellgate Moor and Newton Hall.
  • Fighting to improve bus services and promoting sustainable transport.
  • Securing funding for energy efficiency improvements to community buildings including Framwellgate Moor Community Centre, Durham Indoor Bowling Club.
  • Fighting to make sure the Council becomes more environmentally friendly and saves money through installing millions of pounds of energy saving measures across the County which are now saving hundreds of thousands of pounds each year in energy bills and cutting CO2.
  • Stood up for residents in trying to protect our Greenbelt from Labour’s building plans.
  • Funding to improve The Carrs nature reserve in Pity Me.
  • Secured £300,000 of flood prevention works and helped with other flood issues in the area.
  • Pushed to make sure that planning applications for housing and community buildings include the highest sustainable standards.
  • Provided details through our leaflets to residents about ways to cut your water usage and energy bills, and to promote energy efficiency schemes.
  • Challenged plans to charge for garden waste collections and promoted home composting.
  • Actively assisted in arranging and joining in litter picking to help tidy the area and reduce the impact of rubbish on wildlife.
  • Pushed to secure cycle and footpath improvements across the County to promote sustainable travel.

These are just the ones I can think of of the top of my head. We are always keen to hear about other proposals from residents about ways we can do our bit to protect and improve the environment, including measures which save money.

Please let us know about any ideas you think could help our area.

Dryburn Road Works Start

The repair works to Dryburn Road which we pushed for have started. The whole stretch is to be resurfaced, and there will be some traffic problems for the next few weeks whilst the work is done, but after it’s finished the patchwork quilt of filled in potholes will be gone. Funding for this has come from the Coalition government. We have been pushing the council to repair this road for quite some time. Great result.

BEECH ROAD RESTRICTED PARKING COMES IN

Restricted parking in front of the Beech Road shops has now been implemented. We wanted to make sure that visitors to the shops had somewhere to park. Mamie, Amanda and I have used local funding to make these changes. By having three hour parking, it reduces the risk of people parking here and going off to Durham or the Hospital all day. Hopefully it will now mean the businesses here will be boosted and customers have somewhere to park.

We are monitoring it for the next six months to see the overall effect.

COUNCIL SICKNESS ABSENCE AND LACK OF APPRAISALS SHOCKING

As well as the reserves issue, we again thrashed out concerns about sickness absence levels today.

Sickness absence is running at nearly 12 days a year per employee (that’s on average). Over the last twelve months the council has lost over 93,000 employee work days to sickness.

What is just as striking is that more than thirty percent of staff did not have an appraisal in the last twelve months. How on earth can an organisation run properly when nearly a third of its staff haven’t even had an annual meeting with their boss to discuss their past twelve months performance.

Labour-run Durham County Council is failing its staff. Your Lib Dem councillors have been going on about sickness absence and staff appraisals for years and years. (more…)

Challenging the Council on Reserves

At Corporate Issues committee today I challenged officers on reserves. (The Council have 50 pots of money). Some allocated to nothing, others apparently allocated for future needs). We were told that the Council is/wants to use £75m of reserves between 2011-2017.

So for example if reserves were £100m you would expect to have £25m left wouldn’t you?

That is what officers and the Labour Party want the public to think. The reality is though that they are saying they will use £75m but not telling us how much they are putting into reserves. They add money in and then take it back out but:

If you add £100m to reserves but only take out £75m then you have more left than before. You can’t then say in a public meeting that you have used a lot of reserves because quite clearly you have actually added to reserves. (more…)

County Plan update

Full Council 17th September 2014

Today, a report goes to full council to approve the addition of 86 comments into the County Plan submission which were “overlooked” previously. As most people know, most public comments have been ignored throughout this process, but the report makes for interesting reading as it is clear that if you are a developer, your comments are taken very seriously. So the Developers Charter that is the County Plan marches on.

Interesting reading for those who have been following the County Plan. The report says at one point that any requests for greenbelt land to be erased are being passed to the examiner. We can only hope that those views against destroying the countryside are also equally considered.

http://democracy.durham.gov.uk/documents/s44008/County%20Durham%20Plan%20Feedback%20Supplement.pdf

Website hits pass 550,000!

I was checking the stats this week and suddenly realised that this site has now had more than half a million hits. I will update the hit counter page today. Thank you to everyone who reads the site and emails me comments off the back of it. We are currently delivering our quarterly leaflet (a bit late this year), to make sure that everyone including those not online get to know about what we are doing in the local area. If by next week you haven’t received a copy please do let us know in case we missed a few houses.

Newton Hall Post office Update

We have discovered there have been significant responses to the consultation on proposals to downgrade the post office.

The consultation ended last week into plans to move Newton Hall Post Office into a neighbouring business. The branch would be downgraded from a Mains to Local which would see reduced staffing and services.
Yesterday I contacted Consumer Futures, which is part of the Citizen’s Advice Bureau. They are responsible for independently assessing Post Office branch changes.
I was really concerned as to whether or not they were receiving all the relevant data. I also wanted to raise various concerns about the consultation process. What I was told was that they were looking very carefully at the comments put forward by ourselves and residents. They were aware of the publicity in the Northern Echo and the community and had received far more than the average number of responses to a consultation of this type.”
As local councillors we are committed to making sure that we retain a Mains branch for Newton Hall. I am reassured by the comments from the CAB that they are looking very closely at the proposals and their impact on the local area.”
Online and paper petitions with more than 1000 signatures have been added to the consultation process. Possible options which could come out of the consolation are the protection of the Mains status, the re-running of the consultation or for the proposals to stand.I have been told that because of the number of responses, the findings of the consultation may only be known in November, although it is hoped a response will come earlier.
The petition will remain online for residents to sign until the outcome of the consultation is known.