I spent a thoroughly enjoyable Sunday morning at Witton Dene with the Friends group raking an area where a new woodland glade/meadow is to be grown. We then seeded the whole area with grasses and wild flowers and moved on to do a second area which included clearing out leaves and pulling up some Himalayan Balsam seedlings.

Later in the spring/summer there will be a number of  days when I will be joining in pulling up the balsam which takes over the countryside drowning out our native species. I will be posting the dates on this site as and when I know them.

The whole area is being transformed by the hard work of  the friends of Witton Dene. If anyone wants to get involved please get in touch and I’ll put you on to the organiser.

At recent meetings at County Hall, off the back of the Lib Dem campaign on Small Business Rate reductions, the Council managed to put together a letter to accompany all business rates bills and inviting businesses to get in touch for a reduction – Lib dem action is starting to make a difference. Next I will be checking up how many more businesses have taken up the small business rate and look at visiting those which have not. This could potentially keep tens of thousands of pounds in our area instead of in London.

After months of bouncing down the two despressions in the car as you drive up Front St into Fram, it is great that they have been fixed, as well as the not so well done job near the Abbey Road roundabout. Looking forward now to the new road markings to try and slow everyone down a bit.

I challenged the Cabinet at County Hall today about the pathetic 13 tests they have carried out across the entire county to check if outlets selling alcohol are selling to under 18’s. How can we possibly hope to reduce underage drinking if outlets know that the chance of them getting caught out is so small. We have thousands of pubs, off licences, clubs and supermarkets selling alcohol yet we only have the time to test 13.

The portfolio holder promised me at the meeting today that the council will look at increasing the number of tests. I hope this is the case, but wish it wasn’t down to me to challenge this – it’s common sense and should have been done long ago.

The overall waste recycled by Durham County Council remains stubbornly below 30%. The aerobic digester still hasn’t been fixed, and council taxpayers will be landed with a £6m pound landfill tax next year as a direct result of the failure of the Labour-run council to put in place a proper waste strategy. The Council can’t even hit its own miserly 35% target.

I asked at Cabinet today when the aerobic digester would be working again and after a repeated failure to answer the question, the best I got was that we should know in the summer. Not that it will be fixed and running in the summer – just that we will know when it will be repaired. This is unacceptable and comes of the back of my challenge a few weeks ago after finding out that we are spending just £30k of council money and £100k of national money on waste reduction schemes – woefully inadequate when you consider the £6m landfill charge which is likely to rise to £7m the year after.

Come on Labour get your act together and stop costing residents in Durham the Earth for waste.

The first part of the road safety scheme for Pity Me/Fram Front Street has started with new road markings off the roundabout. i will update when further works are completed.

Your Lib Dem councillors today secured £25,000 towards a new multigames, tennis courts,  and play areas for King Georges Field, Framwellgate Moor.

We have been working for the last six months with officers, fellow councillors on the Parish Council (with members of the independent group – this is more important than politics) – to get this funding, and as a direct result of your County Councillors work we now have  moved a step closer to achieving a new facility for everyone to be proud of. The result was a close vote and I hope the schemes which were not sucessful will be able to continue for other areas with other funding, but this is a clear testament to our commitment to our local community.

Lets hope we can get the remaining funding and community support we need to give Framwellgate Moor the facilities we deserve.

The launch of the Area Action Partnership for Durham City will be on May 7th at County Hall. Please contact Lee Stephenson if you would like to attend in any of the following ways or call me on 01913725866. It would be good if it was not the same old crowd turning up atthese events.

I have created a separate page (Link on left of blog) with more information.

Contact Lee:

lstephenson@durhamcity.gov.uk

tel: 01913018898

post: FAO Lee Stephenson, 17 Claypath, Durham DH1 1RH

OF 168 SMALL BUSINESS OUTLETS IN FRAMWELLGATE MOOR DIVISION ONLY 34 ARE CURRENTLY IN RECEIPT OF THE SMALL BUSINESS RATES DISCOUNT

As a Lib Dem group we have been campaigning for all small buisnesses to be personally consulted to check if they are receving these discounts. This would give businesses in our villages thousands of pounds more money to invest and to keep them going through the current economic crisis at no local cost to taxpayers. It is unacceptable for the government to require businesses to seek these discounts. In Wales it is automatic. I hope that the new initiative being launched to find out which businesses should recive this discount will do everything it can to make sure that our local businesses are getting the discounts they should have.

As a Lib Dem group I am impressed that we have managed to change policy on this but feel we should not have had to get political to acheive something which should be automatic.

If any business wants to contact me please call me on 0191 372 5866. I hope to get in touch with as many as possible in the coming weeks.

The proposal for how the new parking scheme will operate can be seen here:

Parking Proposal

I have created a page on the left to update on progress and discussions.