Swanage to Wareham Rail link gets PDC support

July 30, 2010 in District Council | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Yesterday I attended a special full Purbeck District Council meeting that was called to discuss PDC support for including the Wareham to Swanage Rail link project to the Purbeck Transport Strategy. Rail services are not currently included in the strategy and by including the Swanage and Wareham raillink it will be possible to redirect money from transport projects that won’t go ahead to the rail scheme.

After probably the best debate I’ve seen in the Council since I joined in May the Council voted in favour which essentially means that it is committing itself to working with DCC to provide National Rail with £3m to pay for signalling works so that the line can be opened for passenger services.

You can read the Council’s press release here.

Swanage Shore Road Gardens and Seafront Consultation

July 24, 2010 in District Council | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Purbeck District Council, Swanage Town Council and the Swanage Town and Community Partnership are currently consulting on the future of Swanage Shore Road Gardens and Seafront, which are suffering from stability issues and could do with a revamp.

(Lytchett Matravers) Councillor Martyn Colvey the Council spokesperson for the Built Environment said: “The ideas and visions of the local community are crucial to making this place that all can enjoy, so we welcome comments. The consultation has been prepared to ensure that a unified vision is developed with realistic goals that can make a real difference”.

A series of consultation events is taking place to capture ideas and
views:

  • During Carnival week at Sandpit Field on 2 August (1-5pm)
  • Town Partnership Room Swanage Town Hall on 6 September (3-7pm)

The consultation runs until 30 September 2010.

To find out more or to make comments, visit www.dorsetforyou.com/purbeck_consultation or email alexclothier@purbeck-dc.gov.uk

Under 16s and over 60s have until end of month for free swimming

July 24, 2010 in District Council | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Back in June the Government announced some cuts that will affect the free swimming offered at Purbeck District Council. Basically the sports centre received a concession from the government to offer free swimming to 16s and under and over 60s, and this has now been cut from end of July.

So, if you’re under 16 or over 60, you’ve got till the end of July to benefit from free swimming.

Localism Bill will allow communities to deliver the development they want

July 23, 2010 in community | Tags: , | Leave a comment

The Communities and Local Government Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, announced today, plans for a Community Right to Build which will be part of a new Localism Bill.

This “right” will allow local communities to determine what kind of development they want in their area.

County make their minds up about school structure in Purbeck

July 23, 2010 in District Council | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Back in June I reported discussions in Council and details of the latest consultation from Dorset County Council on the restructuring of schools in the Purbeck Area – whilst it is not an issue that directly affects Lytchett Matravers and Morden who have a 2 tier system, I thought is was something that we’d all be interested in.

Anyway, yesterday DCC voted in favour of changing the school structure to 2 tiers which will mean that the middle schools across our District will be closing down (much to the dismay of many people!)

New Issue: Rubbish in the Spinney (now resolved)

July 21, 2010 in District Council | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A resident of the Spinney brought to my attention considerable amount of litter on the Spinney/Lockyers Way estate, so I got onto Purbeck Housing Trust about it.

You can find full details of the issue here.

Are Purbeck Housing Trust trying to drop ties with PDC?

July 21, 2010 in District Council | Tags: , | Leave a comment

(The views in this post are mine alone and not those of the Council)

At a Purbeck District Council Policy Group meeting last night one of the agenda items related to giving the Council officers some direction on how to address problems with Council representation on the Board of Purbeck Housing Trust.

Recently the PHT Board voted in favour of renumeration for their Board members. The Local Government Act doesn’t allow for appointed Councillors to be renumerated for their work on any outside body, so our two Councillors have had to be resigned by the Council from the PHT Board. Furthermore, I understand that the decision to renumerate the Board members has also meant that at least one of the tenant board members has had to resign as the allowance interferred with their benefits package.

This means currently there is no Council representation on the PHT Board. To restore that link it would seem quite easy for PHT to amend its constitution to allow Council members to not be renumerated and therefore end the conflict with the Local Government Act, but apparently PHT are refusing to do this. The result is that the Council will probably have to settle for a compromise whereby it puts forward a number of potential candidates to fill the places (these may be Councillors, members of the public or even officers) who are then selected by the PHT Board.

PHT seem to be saying that they introduced the renumeration to attract more experienced and “useful” board members, but it seems outrageous that they should refuse the Council their places by not allowing non-renumeration. One has to question their motives or wonder if this is a way that PHT can lose the involvement of the Council.

I sit on a Board where members are renumerated but others aren’t so it is clearly a matter of principle and stuboness than regulation.

We may be getting somewhere with recycling

July 20, 2010 in Parish Council | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Recycling of plastics particularly, has been a real issue in Lytchett Matravers.

We used to have a mini-recycling centre in the car park off the High Street, but because of the plans to beautify the village centre the Parish Council moved them to the Chequers Car Park. When the Chequers was taken over by new owners they asked for the bins to be removed and we’ve been without a recycling centre ever since (over a year!).

Whilst it is a PDC matter to place recycling, they need some input from the Parish Council to find a suitable location. After some consideration of suitable sites it looks like the go ahead is being given to place a plastics recycling bank at the British Legion. There’s still some work to be done in terms of determining what part of the car park the bins are to be placed, but it looks like we’ll shortly have a recycling centre again in Lytchett.

At last nights Parish Council meeting the Council agreed to commit £200 towards the project to help speed things along.

Thanks to ex-Councillors

July 20, 2010 in Parish Council | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

I hosted a reception after our Parish Council meeting last night in recognition of the four ex-Parish Councillors who stepped down at the last election – Peter Evans, Peter Burbidge, Roger Emmerson and Adrian Russell.

We had sparkling wine and canapes (ably distributed by my daughter) and I made sure we toasted our thanks to their service. It was great to see them again.

Whilst some of them had served longer than the last four years, I wanted to make sure we thanked them for their latest service. I find it odd that the Council doesn’t have a policy for thanking past Councillors and Councillors who have put in many years service (Peter B for example has been a councillor for 46 years! And the Council have also agreed recently to recognise the 50 year service of the late Angus McDonald), so hopefully I’ve put that right now.

Report from PDC Full Council 13th July 2010

July 18, 2010 in District Council | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Purbeck District Council held its monthly Full Council meeting on 13th July.

Here’s a summary of the key issues discussed at the meeting:

  • There was quite a bit of discussion during the public participation session about the current consultation/discussions from PDC within the Core Strategy regarding the provision of a supermarket in Wareham. As one would expect there is clearly resistance from local trade organisations and local shops. The key issue that has been raised is a lack of a “no” option to the proposals. At this stage though the plans are just suggestions and the Council need as much feed back as possible to determine how to proceed.
  • We also discussed the finances of the Council in relation to the current stream of financial cut backs from the government. The Chief Executive said that the current information is sparse, with only a loss in housing delivery grants known to be abolished which means a loss of £200k for the Council although this can probably be balanced across current budget plans. It’s also unclear whether the preferred cuts of 25% over the next four years are across the four years or each year or whether the salary freeze for civil servants will have an impact on Council employees (or indeed those that have been told they can have a pay rise given their low salaries) – it is expected the goverment will expect the salary freeze to apply to local government as well.
  • One Government statement that will obviously have an impact is the governments declaration that Council Tax is not to rise in the next to years. It’s not clear whether this will mean a loss of goverment grants in this area or what impact it will have on Parish Council precepts – I can’t see how it can’t have an impact.
  • The PDC 09/10 Corporate Srategy was reviewed with a note that housing targets had been heavily affected by the recession.
  • The local connection criteria for choice based lettings has been extended to mean that for villages with less than 3000 residents allocation of housing will be prioritised based on a local connection, unless safeguarding principles need to override.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you wish to discuss any of these issues with me.

Welcome to my community & political blog. My personal blog can be found at www.thelightside.org.uk.

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Mark Gracey, 48 Wareham Road, Lytchett Matravers BH16 6DS

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