New Council Website Up and running

durhamwebsite

 

Over a number of years as your Lib Dem councillors we have pushed the council for a better website and particularly for more services to be offered online.

The new County Council website is far easier to use and it is hoped that as more people order services, report things and pay for things online, it will free up staff at the council to answer calls more quickly. It should also save the council a lot of money in the longer term as requests go to the right person and will ensure better monitoring of responses.

Please let me know if you find anything not working on the site so that we can feed this back to council officers and get it fixed.

Also, if you do not get a response to something as quickly as it says you will, or as quickly as you would expect let me know that too.

www.durham.gov.uk

 

 

 

Hedgerow Planting Plans

We are currently looking at planting some hedgerows in various areas for a number of reasons. The areas we have looked at include Rotary Way in Pity Me and Finchale Road in Framwellgate Moor.

We would appreciate your comments on these proposals and any other areas you feel would benefit from hedging.

Areas being looked at

1. Rotary Way (Arnison Centre bypass), Pity Me – Two areas, one on the left as you travel from the A167 roundabout, the second on the right to fill in the gap near the Mc Donalds carpark

2. A small area near the Arnison underpass.

3. Extend the hedge running from Bek Road traffic lights up Finchale Road on the left hand side.

4. Possibly plant behind the metal fence farther up Finchale Road on the school side opposite Caterhouse entrance with a view to removing the old metal fencing.

5. We are also looking at whether hedging could be moved, improved or removed on the path behind Hudspeth, to make the area less likely to get overgrown

The reasons for the planting program include:

Helping to fill in gaps in existing hedging

Protecting areas from illegal camping and parking

Helping to cut noise and air pollution from traffic

Creating proper screening on the edge of the built up area

Reinstating areas which used to have hedges

Promoting wildlife and making the area look better

 

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.

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.

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.

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/11469508.Council_chairman__39_s___39_clothing_allowance__39__scrapped___but_has_change_gone_far_enough_/?ref=var_0

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.