Councillor Robinson - December 2019

[Malcolm Robinson]

December 2019.

 

After taking the lads on holiday it was straight back into the thick of things with an Advance Board meeting.  We have eventually got through all the new policies which needed to be put into place and now there is just a few agreed amendments to make.  Its been a long hard slog with meetings lasting well over 6hrs sometimes but it really needed to be done to make sure the excesses of Arch never happen again!  Once again I raised the sore point about the Bedlington redevelopment and the parking problems.

 

 

Scrutiny meeting today and along with the normal cabinet scrutiny there was one special item, the Climate Emergency strategy. It emerged that there is special provision within the SE of the county for tree planting.  With up to 29 sites identified I asked for a map and was assured one would be forthcoming!

 

Friends of West Lea Cemetery tonight and again a well attended meeting.  Similar sorts of problems came up and I said I would invite the manager and head of service along to our next meeting so things might get resolved face to face.  A phenomenal amount of funding has been raised by the dedication of this group and a few very hard working members!  Well done Issey, Sarah and Susan!

 

 

 

WBTC Christmas meeting tonight with most getting into the spirit of the season early!

 

Site visit Hartford Bridge with head of service, cabinet member for housing and a couple of officers.  Pleased to say they are responding to my requests and I hope a solution has been found and agreed.

 

I had a meeting with cabinet member for local services and the head officer to ask about some requests we have for the cemetery.  It was agreed head of service would attend a site visit and see what could be done about my specific requests. The cabinet member did remark that there were other cemeteries in equally parlous states or even worse but I replied that whilst I might agree they aren’t in my ward!

 

LAC Meeting at Concordia tonight. I chaired the last one and had been asked several questions which I said I would have to find the correct answers to add report back. I had done so and gave the answers to the meeting when we went through the minutes.  This one was mainly planning and one application in particular about extending opening hours of a take away in Seaton Delaval. I did have some questions about this and the one which I still find curious was that a 12 month trial would be conducted with a 6 month review after close monitoring.  I had to ask again who would be doing the monitoring because the answer was the applicant?  So the applicant who wanted the increased hours would assess any incursions which might not allow that to happen.  A farce would be too kind a description! Anyway it was agreed by majority.

 

The rest of the month I was chasing stuff up for residents so we could get closure before the Xmas holidays.

[Canny lass]

5 hours ago, Malcolm Robinson said:

Anyway it was agreed by majority.

A farce would be too kind a description even for that!