Stephen

WEST BEDLINGTON TOWN COUNCIL

To: ALL MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL

You are hereby requested to attend a meeting of WEST BEDLINGTON TOWN COUNCIL to be held at Bedlington Salvation Army Hall, Hartford Road West Bedlington on Thursday 04 February at 6 pm

The agenda for the meeting is set out below.

John Nicholson

Town Clerk 29 January 2010

OPEN SESSION

The Chair to invite members of the public present to put questions to, or draw relevant matters to the attention of the Council prior to commencement of business. This question time will last for a period of 15 minutes overall (which may be extended if the Chairman deems it necessary) and each question is limited to 3 minutes per person.

In order to give every member of the public a fair chance of asking a question, each person will be limited to two questions at each session. The above covers both verbal and written submissions.

Any member of the public who asks a question should first state their name and address.

1) APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

2) MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING

To sign as a correct record the minutes of the West Bedlington Town Council meeting held on 13 January 2010

3) MATTERS ARISING FROM THE MINUTES

4) DISCLOSURE OF INTERESTS

To receive from members in respect of any terms included on the agenda for this meeting, disclosure of any personal or prejudicial interests.

5) ANNOUNCEMENTS

To receive announcements on any matters which the Chair wishes to bring to the attention of members.

a. Update to the Council by the Chairman from the NALC larger councils forum.

This meeting was held 28 January 2010

6) CORRESPONDENCE

To receive any items of correspondence addressed to the Council

7) UPDATE ON BEDLINGTON OLD SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT

To discuss progress the progress in raising awareness of the result of the planning appeal, and the progress in raising a petition stating disagreement with the planning decision.

8) UPDATE ON LIBRARY AND COMMUNITY CENTRE

a. To make the Council aware of Northumberland County Council's position on public library's.

b. To discuss the current position with regard to Bedlington Community Centre

9) BUDGET AND PRECEPT

To approve the draft budget and approve a precept to be raised in tax year 2010 / 2011, and to make Northumberland County Council aware of the amount of the precept.

10) CHANGE OF NAME: BECOME BEDLINGTON TOWN COUNCIL?

a. To update the Council on the process on how to change the name of the Council.

b. To discuss whether or not the Council are ready to make a decision whether or not to proceed.

11) NEW WORKING GROUP

To note that a new working group is currently being set up to review how the Council can help the local community with financial support and assistance.

Councillors Shephard and Hedley will manage that group.

12) WORKING GROUPS

To receive reports from working groups:

a. Finance (Councillors Aynsley, and Allen)

Budget and precept has been taken as a separate agenda item

b. Communications and Events (Councillors Barret and Shephard)

c. Premises (Councillors Harratt and Pegg)

d. Planning (Councillors Major and Todd)

- The Council's decision on planning applications:

09/E/00535

09/E/00536

09/E/00542

09/E/00543

10/S/0003

10/S/0008

09/E00547

09/E/00548

There may be additions from planning applications after the agenda is issued

13) CLERK'S REPORT

a. Schedule of payments for Council approval

b. To update the Council in discussions with Northumberland County Council on IT support available from 1 April 2010

14) ANY OTHER BUSINESS

To consider any other items for information only including items to be brought forward to the next meeting.

15) DATE OF NEXT MEETING

The next meeting will be held Thursday 11 March at 6pm in the Salvation Army Hall

There'll be a meeting of West Bedlington Town Council on Thursday 4th February at the Salvation Army Hall at 6pm.

The agenda will follow soon but the main items will be:

UPDATE ON BEDLINGTON OLD SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT

To discuss the progress in raising awareness of the result of the planning appeal, and the progress in raising a petition stating disagreement with the planning decision.

UPDATE ON LIBRARY AND COMMUNITY CENTRE

a -To make the Council aware of Northumberland County Council's position on public libraries

b -To discuss the current position with regard to Bedlington Community Centre

BUDGET AND PRECEPT

To approve the draft budget and approve a precept to be raised in tax year 2010 / 2011, and to make Northumberland County Council aware of the amount of the precept.

CHANGE OF NAME: BECOME BEDLINGTON TOWN COUNCIL?

a - To update the Council on the process on how to change the name of the Council.

b - To discuss whether or not the Council are ready to make a decision whether or not to proceed.

NEW WORKING GROUP

To note that a new working group is currently being set up to review how the Council can help the local community with financial support and assistance.

leave the twenty acres alone! hopefully this convenant will stand for another hundred years, otherwise we'll have no open fields left.

How would you feel about some playground equipment on the 20 acres though or, say, a crazy golf course, as long as most of it was left as open field?

Not really, NCC put on the pre-Xmas stuff there but was never going to keep it up. The town council was talking about maybe putting stuff on there as is the Bedlington Partnership so you never know......

Yes, by next week the town council should be in a position to say how much it has in its budget to spend on events.

it's also at a minimum 38 million kilometres closer to the sun.

But Venus is hotter than Mercury which is some 61 million km closer to the sun than Venus.

I am wondering what this night time economy people are talking about actually is? I presume its not just pubs and restaurants?

I think it is just pubs and restaurants but needs to be more than that to be successful. Perhaps late night shopping one day a week with other services (the library at the moment) timed to match it.

We're working on a grants policy for the town council in Bedlington. The aim of this is to help people who want to organise their own activities, i.e. clubs, teams, groups etc who have ideas for things to do in town but need a bit of help to get started, or expand. We're talking about small grants for things like kit, equipment, materials, venue hire etc

There's already another thread about a leisure centre and Bedlington Forum has been working on that, so we're looking at what can be done to bring Bedlington back to life in the meantime. Things that will encourage people to spend time in town, hopefully helping the local economy too.

So while this policy is still being written you have a chance to influence the kind of activities we should be trying to help - what would everyone here like to be able to do in Bedlington?

Reading the NPL article it appears that this is not an official council survey, but a political one carried out by Ashington Lib Dems. Actually there seems to be a lot of resistance to replacing the existing Ashington Leisure Centre with a new one although the County appears to believe they can run a new leisure centre at less cost than £300,000 a year for ALC. My guess is that the survey is an attempt to find if the wider public i.e. not just those involved in the ALC campaign would support this.

The survey Malcolm mentions will be a far more professional one that won't just ask whether people want leisure facilities in Bedlington, but what they should be, where and how much they would cost.

My view is that we've always been told that there might be funding available for a new leisure centre e.g. from Sport England, but we would never be able to afford the running costs. This has been based on the assumption that all leisure centres cost as much as Ashington to run, but Morpeth (for one) is a lot cheaper.

If the money could be found to build a leisure centre, perhaps from a combination of grants and council funding if available, then you could well get interest in a private company to run it on behalf of the council as they would not have had to take the risk of making a big investment up front.

I don't necessarily agree we need 'light engineering' tagged into the back of Front Street to legitimise the high street, I think the costs would be prohibitively too high, even if it was possible. We certainly need that mix within a sensible distance to give diversity to our local economy both in terms of sustainable local jobs and wealth creation.

I do agree with the point that the planners have a lot to answer for as far as Bedlington is concerned.

I agree with this. I think Bedlington has in some ways suffered because it has had relatively high employment, unfortunately though most people are employed outside the town. I think it would be easier to find office space than factory space in the town centre and would guess that many of us have those kind of jobs. Keep people in the town from 9-5 and we will spend more money in local shops.

Another suggestion mentioned at a recent Forum meeting was to build a night-time economy, in other words if people have to commute away for work, try to get them when they get back home.

Monsta,

Councils don't set tax in the way you propose, apart from property based ones that is, this would be so far out of their remit, or competence, as to be unthinkable.

Good thread though...........

Although... the town council is currently working on a grants scheme to try to help groups and clubs get activities going on in the town (sports, entertainment, events, music, arts, crafts, hobbies etc).

If there was a local currency and there were enough suppliers of sports equipment, kit, musical instruments, venues etc participating in it, then the council would get more value for money i.e. a bigger positive effect for Bedlington by buying and making grants in Bedlington pounds.

Actually Brown has cost us even more than I thought.

We have to pay this back, or our kids do!

http://www.debtbombshell.com/

Anyone who isn't shaken rigid by this isn't living in the real world. It's not just another big number it's our declining standard of living for the next quarter of a century.

Nor is it "a global problem" - it's OUR problem.

It's terrifying. It isn't just the debt, it's the budget deficit - £20 million an hour being spent that we don't have. Or to put it another way I reckon it's about 36p on top of the basic rate of income tax. So if the next government is to achieve the target of halving the deficit in four years, it will have to make huge cuts in public spending and no doubt big tax rises too... and even if successful then the debt will still be going up by £90 billion a year.

Stephen,

Reduced the settlement figure? I know the county has always had bad settlement figures in the past but having it reduced because of projected, possible, probable savings would seem to bestow a level of competency on the people involved that the first part of the sentence doesn't? You can't penalise someone for being inefficient then expect them to out perform overnight?

In a time of recession etc I can see why all settlement figures are reduced as less cash flows into treasury so they have less to dish out.

If you are right about VAT returns being the driver for local gov settlements that only works in times of consumer booms, allowing for annual increases to match inflation at least. I understood local authority spends were made up of about 25% domestic rates, 25% business rates and 50% direct taxation, like income tax and VAT. Obviously something like a recession will hit 75% of that income immediately.

Hi Malcolm,

I was being a bit too cynical there about the settlements in implying cause and effect, but if the projected savings were £17 million and the settlement reduction is £20-30 million, then all the savings will go to the UK taxpayer rather than the local taxpayer. Northumberland isn't alone in having a big settlement reduction though, I know Gateshead and South Tyneside are having to make similar cuts.

I didn't explain the VAT issue very well... basically under the poll tax everyone was expected to pay a significant fee to their council. When it was replaced by the council tax then large numbers of people became exempt due to their financial circumstances. So central government had to make up the difference (otherwise the council tax would have been enormous for those who were paying it). To raise the money for the national pot to replace the money now going to councils, the government put VAT on fuel. So if they are now reducing the amount of the national pot that goes to local councils, we ought to see a reduction in national taxation but of course you are right, due to the recession then the government is receiving less income tax and VAT (the effect is probably worse than the unemployment figures would suggest as of course you had a lot of eastern europeans working here and paying income tax who have now gone home). Our councils will also receive less council tax too as more people will have lost their jobs and become eligible for council tax reductions.

With an annual budget approaching a billion quid and estimated savings of 17m after conversion that is not even a feasible reason economically. Because of the state of finances county now find themselves in we won't get the much heralded savings but will face increases and more and more cuts in services as they try to balance their budget.

Malcolm, I think you've missed the point. It's central government that will get the promised savings because they've reduced the settlement and once you realise that then you can spot the motive for the government going for the County option, despite the fact that the public, and every district and borough branch of the local political parties (and every group except the ruling group at the time on the County itself) opposed it.

We ought to get that money back in reduced income tax or other national tax breaks (or a VAT reduction as ultimately the central money that was put into local government ever since the poll tax was abolished came from VAT increases). Except of course we won't, due to the massive national budget deficit.

The county haven't suggested we take it on or even made any offer, to date anyway. We're making our own enquiries to see what can be done, which might just be coming up with new ideas for the county and lobbying on behalf of Bedlington. Can't be certain until we get the breakdown, but it must be possible to run the centre for less than £78000 a year

Looks like a step in the right direction.

This would be 'entirely' voluntary for you guys to take on wouldn't it?

First - I'm not necessarily suggesting the town council take it on, really I just want to see what the financial position is and therefore what the options are... that might be the answer but I wouldn't get too carried away with it just yet.

Second - not sure what you mean by your question about 'entirely' voluntary? Are you asking if the town councillors would be looking after the rooms and whether they would want some payment for it? I can only speak personally here but I already have one full-time day job and one voluntary job so I wouldn't have time to do it. As for payment, we all stood for election to the council in the full knowledge that it would be unpaid and nobody has ever expressed any desire to change that.

We do have some groups that are longstanding users of the community centre and who I think could be trusted to collect the key from somewhere before they use the room, and lock up and hand the key back afterwards (or even have their own copies, assuming that's OK with the insurance company). Perhaps for new groups you could ask for a deposit. So again, I think there are other ways of running the centre.

Arthur has been promised a breakdown of the costs so we should get some hard facts soon.

If we found out what the minimum running costs were - maintenance and utilities etc, then it might be possible to run the centre with volunteers to handle the room booking and access, and paying for a daily cleaning service.

Stephen,

Not trying to be too pedantic but the figure you mentioned of 78K is supposed to represent the SUBSIDY cost not running costs. I presume that is what must be put into the pot once any contributions from the centre itself are eaten up? I would therefore assume we are being told even your figures are not the true running costs?

Without an independent audit or the figures released to the public at large I don't see why we should just accept what looks like arbitrary calculations?

Good point. I don't know how the figures break down but as I work for another large organisation (BT, though it's been getting rapidly smaller in the last year) I'd bet there are management overheads included i.e. senior people in the Leisure department whose costs will be divided between all the amenity budgets.

I wouldn't want to write a business plan based on my back of an envelope sums but I do think it shows that marketing the community centre to increase its usage isn't going to turn it around by itself, which is why I was trying to think of something that would share the cost.

After some rough calculations, if the Community Centre really costs £78,000 a year to run, then to break even it would have to be earning £30 every hour, for 10 hours a day, every weekday, 52 weeks of the year.

Jen: The tragedy is that it's not our "only" claim to fame - not even our second claim to fame - but I suspect you knew that already.

I first posted the line about our claim to fame and I probably shouldn't have used the word claim - as yes, we have better claims to fame. For actual fame around the world though, I think the dog has it.

Lack of accommodation shouldn't put anyone off though, Bedlington is an easy day trip from Newcastle though the fact that the only way to get here by public transport is by bus rather than train makes that less obvious to visitors.

What's happening with the library?

There was a story in The Journal saying that the County council would be looking at the least used libraries as part of the budget discussions. According to the Journal Bedlington Station was in the bottom six, and Bedlington was outside this six but in the bottom 12. So we don't know if anything will happen to the library, but can't assume it will be safe either.

The Community Centre used to be the library!!

How long ago was that? I suppose that means it must be possible unless the old library had any big problems.

It could be argued that this would be a step backwards then, but I think it might be a way of keeping what's most useful about the community centre. You can book much better small and medium sized rooms at the Salvation Army, and there are other places to drink if not so many as there used to be. The one facility that doesn't seem to have any substitute is the big room available for public use.

This is my own opinion and not a Town Council suggestion...

As there is apparently a question mark over the library too, I wonder how feasible it would be to move the bookshelves from the library to the ground floor of the community centre, with the bar area being the main part of the library (and the librarian working behind the bar), and the children's library in the youth room. Then potentially you could have a library on the Front Street, opposite the new Market Place, guarantee the future of a decent looking building on that side of the street, keep the use of the room on the top floor (I don't think there's any other room of that size available in Bedlington?) and sell the land that the current library building is on.

WEST BEDLINGTON TOWN COUNCIL

To: ALL MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL

You are hereby requested to attend a meeting of WEST BEDLINGTON TOWN COUNCIL to be held at Bedlington Salvation Army Hall, Hartford Road West Bedlington on Wednesday 16 December at 6 pm

The agenda for the meeting is set out below.

John Nicholson

Town Clerk 14 December 2009

OPEN SESSION

The Chair to invite members of the public present to put questions to, or draw relevant matters to the attention of the Council prior to commencement of business. This question time will last for a period of 15 minutes overall (which may be extended if the Chairman deems it necessary) and each question is limited to 3 minutes per person.

In order to give every member of the public a fair chance of asking a question, each person will be limited to two questions at each session. The above covers both verbal and written submissions.

Any member of the public who asks a question should first state their name and address.

AGENDA

1) NEW TOWN CLERK

Introduction of new town clerk: Mr John Nicholson

2) APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

3) MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING

To sign as a correct record the minutes of the West Bedlington Town Council meeting held on 12 November 2009

4) MATTERS ARISING FROM THE MINUTES

5) CO-OPTION TO THE COUNCIL

A "show of hands vote†is required to formally co-opt Councillor Headley to the Council.

6) DISCLOSURE OF INTERESTS

To receive from members in respect of any terms included on the agenda for this meeting, disclosure of any personal or prejudicial interests.

7) ANNOUNCEMENTS

To receive announcements on any matters which the Chair wishes to bring to the attention of members.

8) CORRESPONDENCE

To receive any items of correspondence addressed to the Council

9) VOTE OF THANKS

A vote of thanks will be given to Margaret Penny for her help in past years with regard to the remembrance service.

10) WORKING GROUPS

To receive reports from working groups:

a. Finance (Councillors Aynsley, and Allen)

b. Communications and Events (Councillors Barret and Shephard)

c. Premises (Councillors Harratt and Pegg)

d. Planning (Councillors Major and Todd)

11) ANY OTHER BUSINESS

To consider any other items for information only including items to be brought forward to the next meeting.

12) DATE OF NEXT MEETING

To agree a date and time for the next meeting of the Council

I agree, if Bedlington has any international claim to fame then it's the Terrier, but so far we have nothing trying to exploit this to attract any visitors.

what exactly is getting built in the gap site?according to the ncc "creating a highly attractive public space."

does that mean there going to turf over the rubble!

I don't know any more about it than what's in that press release, but it seems to be saying that the whole marketplace will be the highly attractive public space, and that Tesco will be putting a new facade on their store and extension to fit in with that.

The new market place does look very nice, but I think the important thing is having plenty of events taking place in it.