I attended the South West Durham Planning Committee  as a substitute for another Councillor this afternoon. Whilst there was some confusion over planning policy during the meeting, overall there was some good debate on two of the three items on the agenda.

However…there is usually a however… Half the committee is made up of councillors who don’t live in any of the three former district areas (Sedgefield, Wear Valley, Teesdale). This is and area covering 500 square miles, with several dozen County Councillors. The planning committee has 16 councillors (members), only 8 from these areas. The other 8 have to come from Derwentside, Chester-le-Street, Durham City and Easington.

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This evenings meeting fo Bearpark Parish Council was lengthy (Over 2 hours) and there were discussions about the County proposals in the County Durham Plan, particularly surrounding the effects of the new Western Bypass.

Despite numerous requests, the County Council has refused to hold further consultation events and has failed to put up displays in Bearpark for residents to see. I am now teaming up with the Parish Council and local residents groups to make sure that this happens with or without Council help. It is as if the County Council simply doesn’t want these issues debated.

COMMUNITY BUILDINGS

The Parish Council agreed to provide some funding to the Community Centre as they do each year. I did raise concerns that the review of community Buildings has not yet been completed and we must see the results of the report which is due to come in February. According to the initial report Bearpark Community Centre will not receive funding from the County Council, however I am certain that the residents of Bearpark will do all they can to protect their Community Centre and i will support this where possible.

Attended meeting of the Charter Trust which oversees the Mayor of Durham this afternoon. I have been pushing for another reduction in the Council Tax levy following successfully cutting the tax by 14% last year after negotiating with the County council and changing the way the Trust is managed. I could see no reason to have money in reserves which is not needed and given the excellent reduction in costs, wanted to see the charge reduced further for residents.

The trust has agreed that for the coming year the charge will be cut by around 11% ! All the services the mayor carries out will continue with additional funding to cover increased costs this year for the Jubilee celebrations and the Olympics, so all in all a great success. This means that the average cost per household for the Mayor of Durham and all the historic accompanyments will be less than £4 per household.

Another sign that one of the budgets the Lib Dems have serious influence in is being managed properly, with savings passed on to residents.

Following on from earlier posts, the Council is now set to consult on the reduction of opening hours for all libraries apart from Clayport (which they reduced last year). Once again we have the situation of frontline going and senior management staying.

It has occurred to a few of us as well that we have 10 cabinet members (politicians) each receiving an additional £13300 allowance (wage).

If all these services are being trimmed, why aren’t the cabinet posts or senior management. Time to think about merging departments and cabinet posts rather than cutting the services residents rely on.

So the news is out there in the press regarding the leisure centres (no apologies) – but also many other assets including libraries, hardwick hall, the gala theatre, DLI museum…… the full report is on the Northern Echo website: http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/council/durhamcountycouncil/9474772.Charity_plan_for_council_s_assets/

I am somewhat torn on this. In relation to leisure centres, if the Council had thought this through last year, Crook, Ferryhill, Sherburn, Abbey and Coxhoe and Deerness could still have been running as before – many of us offered these options to run the centres. Clearly the Council took all this valuable information and has used it to its advantage to look at other assets.

I am still disgusted that it didn’t consider this for the leisure centres in the first place.

Putting that to one side for a moment, if all these other assets are transferred out of council control it will indeed save a lot of money. It could also remove considerable political control from these assets – not a bad thing given how badly Labour runs the council. The way in which these trust(s) are set up will require a lot of scrutiny however to ensure that the Labour Party doesn’t just fill them with..well you get the idea. I think it is essential that we ensure that there is some minimal political influence on the boards of any trust, which must be cross party and non-party to make sure that any taxpayer funding is spent wisely.

Of some serious concern – and expect the unions to start to raise this –  is the implications for staff. I strongly believe that the way in which the neighbourhood services department is being run is unacceptable. If these changes come into effect and huge numbers of staff are transferred in effect out of council control, then there must be an equal if not greater cut in numbers at a senior staffing level within County Hall otherwise it will become even more grossly top heavy.

When the 2012-13 budget proposals come out, I am sure that frontline will bear the brunt since upper management never votes to cut itself – thats where the politicians in cabinet are failing – after all Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas do they.

More than ever the opposition in County Hall needs to keep its eyes open to what is going on in the coming year. Officers continue to run the council whilst Cabinet continue as puppets – or is that Muppets.

Presentation-Leisure-col

This is the presentation made to councillors about possible transfer of the ownership of all Council leisure centres out of council control. Some of it may not make much sense without context but the general idea is there.

See Waste collections  link on left for more info on this:

As you will be aware, Durham County Council is making significant changes to rubbish and recycling collections throughout the county.

Depending on where you live, changes will be introduced between April and June and, where necessary, will include the delivery of a new bin for recycling (between February and May) and a change to collection days.

Over the next two weeks your residents will receive the council’s Guide to Services with the introductory leaflet inside it, so you may see contact with residents on this subject increase as they receive this piece of literature.

In order to help answer any queries raised, I’d like to draw your attention to the following online information: www.durham.gov.uk/bins. This will give you all the information you need to answer any questions that may arise from your residents. Or you could just refer them to the website shown above.

In addition to that information, residents are also able to enter their postcode to My Durham, available on every web page, to find out exactly what the arrangements are for them.

A report is to go to Cabinet on the 25th January giving officers approval to look at options for transferring all leisure centres out of County Council control to save money.

This was mentioned at Environment Scrutiny last week under the title “Management Options Appraisal Phase 1”. You might say not exactly obvious title!

This report can be seen here: http://democracy.durham.gov.uk/documents/s16191/Report%20re%20Management%20Options%20Appraisal%20without%20track%20changes.pdf

If I get a copy of the presentation I will upload it. If the Council did transfer the ownership of the leisure centres into some form of trust – pretty much what a lot of the bidders wanted to do when trying to save the six the council tried to close – it could potentially save a lot of money.

This begs the question why the utterly incompetent Labour administration didn’t think of doing this earlier – instead of forcing communities to fight bitterly to keep centres open. They really are a complete shower. If I didn’t know how useless they are I would think they were evil.

The AAP  meetings I attended this evening agreed priorities for the coming financial year for the Durham City area and surrounding villages.

You can find out more about Durham AAP here: http://www.durham.gov.uk/Pages/Service.aspx?ServiceId=6508

I was keen to make sure that Village Development was one of the priorities and have been successful in this. I hope this will allow for both discussion and schemes in the villages surrounding Durham City to be developed in the coming year.

In addition my continued push to get action on Housing and Empty Homes has resulted in an unexpected boost. The government recently announced additional funding to develop local schemes to tackle empty homes problems. Local organisation DASH (see here for more info) is to put together a bid for funding and support towards the goals of affordable housing and empty properties. The County council had shown little interest in our area in relation to Empty Homes, now there will be some funding to kick this off from the AAP and potentially down the line some success in bringing empty properties back into use.

An additional change is that whereas previously there was a dedicated Climate Change group, the AAP has agreed that every task group will have a dedicated person for Climate Change within it so that all decisions and spending take this into account going forwards.

So the four priorities for the coming financial year will be:

City Centre Development

Village Development

Children and Young People

Voluntary Sector

As I see it, this will allow us to continue to improve facilities for young people, improve our villages and help the voluntary sector which has seen cuts from County Council funding. It may also allow for consideration of Community Buildings given the threats from the council to close community buildings.

If you are interested in joining any of the Task Groups let me know or email dcaap@durham.gov.uk

I attended the second of two meetings this week on job opportunities for Young People as part of a Council Scrutiny of the subject.

The council procurement team has come a long way in working on promoting apprenticeships through contracts awarded by the Council, following requests from Councillors over the last few  years for as much as possible to be done in this area.

The larger contracts advertised by the Council now include requests for information on past experience of companies in providing apprenticeships through new contracts as well as requirements for a certain number of apprenticeships to be created or protected. In one such case, that of the building of new primary schools, one company created 31 positions, six times more than originally promised by to the council. It is clear that in this area the council is making very good progress.

Collectively councillors from all parties are ensuring that promotion of opportunities is a key target. I am keen to see more done to promote local companies involvement in applying for work through the council and am sure that our pressure will make this even easier and more successful in the coming years.