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.
It can be signed at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/newtonhallpostoffice
Council Houses currently available
The properties below are available for rent with Durham City Homes. Some may be being renovated others will be available immediately. This is not the complete list of available properties as homes come available every week. It is a list of properties the Council is currently promoting where there hasn’t been as much interest. Contact the Council or visit www.durhamkeyoptions.co.uk
If you have any problems registering with the council so that you can bid for properties get in touch with one of us and we will try to help. Councillors cannot influence who receives a particular property, but we can check that you are in the correct banding and take up issues if you feel you are not being treated fairly.
Current available properties:
Brandon (more…)
Clothing allowance – Official: Lib Dem success getting it scrapped
Interesting story about the Labour Clothing allowance in the Northern Echo today. Whilst we told residents that this was being scrapped a while ago. Official confirmation in the press.
Of course the chairman still gets a whopping great £6650 chairmans allowance pls £13300 for being a councillor, and can claim expenses instead of the clothing allowance, so they are not hard up by any means. Good old Labour socialists eh? Labour councillors claimed the £12000 clothing allowances for the chair and vice chair for 30 years without anyone knowing about it until we unearthed it by accident after looking at the cost of councillors.
Perhaps those chairmen still alive who claimed this behind closed doors should consider a donation to a local charity which helps struggling families with cheap or free clothing.
PITY ME WALKABOUT
I spent four hours this afternoon walking around Pity Me delivering leaflets and chatting to residents. Plenty of casework to deal with – mainly footpath issues.
Get in touch if you have any concerns.
Big campaign about to start against dog fouling in the village, led by your local councillors please contact us if you have details about a specific person causing problems with their dog, or about a particular location where there is a dog poo problem.