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.

At the (brief) full council meeting today which all councillors attend, I threw into the public domain some investigations I have made into the Niehbourhood Services dept at county hall. The department has over eighty senior managers in the top layers of the structure but I have learnt that the Labour run council is considering cutting  huge numbers of frontline staff, including two thirds of pest control officers and many neighbourhood wardens.

It is simply shocking how badly run the Council is right now. Hard working front line staff at risk in a top heavy organisation which is supposed to have been properly reorganised by now. I am sure that there will be more to report on this in the near future.

I also understand that the council is considering transferring all leisure centres into one or more trusts completely separated from the County Council control. This could have benefits as the service might get run better without Labour interference but given the past history of this council we will be keeping a beady eye on this too.

Following concerns raised by residents about anti-social behviour in Brasside I can confirm that there have been regular paterols by the police in the area recently including at least three times this week, with no problems found. When the next PACT meeting dates are announced I will post them here, but if you do have any problems with anti-social behaviour or other police issues please make sure that you call them whichever area you are in as they can’t fix a problem if they don’t know about it and need to here first hand from residents of problems to ensure that issues are properly logged. The switchboard number for the police is 03456060365. I am confident that the police are working very well in Durham at the moment which can be born out by the figures showing very low crime statistics and also by the excellent work they did over the Christmas period in for example the Arnison centre working with the council and local shops.

Further to the post below, this is  a link to the leaflet set to be delivered shortly to residents about the new system:

15-13809 Changes bin leaflet

This is a parliamentary report on Alternative bin Collections we were provided with:

Alternate Weekly Collections

Many of you will have noticed that changes are coming regarding refuse and recycling.

To simplify it: General Waste will be collected one week, recycling the following week, so fortnightly for each service. You will get a new wheelie bin for the recycling of paper, plastic and metal and keep the green box for glass. The green bag will be collected and recycled by the council. Garden waste service will stay the same.

The council has issued a list of questions and answers which I have posted on this site. Click on the Waste Collections link on the left of this page. or click here

My view: A few years ago when recycling was not as widespread I was against a move to fortnightly collections. Recycling has increased considerably reducing the amount of general waste. A lot of people have also started composting which helps to cut waste further. The new system has been shown to improve recycling rates in other areas of the country. This aspect has to be a good thing.

Since this scheme was announced last year and I delivered a leaflet mentioning it to nearly every household in the area I cover, I have received only two complaints about moving to this scheme and more than two supporting it. I know some people will have problems with this, but hopefully across the area most will find it to be easy to deal with. Where there are individual issues, please get in touch and I will see if I can help to address them. Most questions are answered by the council list in the link above. This change is going to save the council at least a million pounds a year when taken with all the other efficiencies from scarpping the district councils this should mean that other services are not cut back but as the Council is currently badly run by Labour, I don’t hold out much hope of that.

The council is offering subsidised compost bins and these can be ordered here including a buy one get one half price offer: http://www.getcomposting.com/