In 2015 I was
asked to continue to serve as a member of the cabinet.
In addition
to the role of cabinet member for resources I was asked to add the role of
community safety to my responsibilities.
Council
Work
Meetings
I have attended and committees I am a member of:
- Full Council Meetings
- Fortnightly meetings of
Cabinet
- Personnel Committee
(Sub-committee Cabinet)
- Employees relations sub
committee
- Weekly Cabinet
Briefing
- Weekly individual portfolio
briefing
- Rural district committee
- Member of heavy woollen
planning committee
- Member of strategic planning
committee
- Cabinet committee local
issues
- I meet weekly with the
leader and chief exec
- I chaired the councils
assets board
- Historic buildings trust of
which I am a director
- Huddersfield South tenants
and residents meetings.
- I am a trustee of the Denby
Dale community project
- I am a Councillor on Denby
Dale Parish Council and have been for 25 years
- I am Chair of the friends of
Skelmanthorpe library
- Migration Yorkshire
- Yorkshire and Humber
employers association
This
year the largest part of my work as cabinet member for resources was to redesign the library service.
In
line with the constant reduction In the Councils budget caused by cuts in the
money we receive from central Government, we have had to reduce the budget we
have available to provide a library offer for the residents of Kirklees.
However I was determined that I and officers would do all we could to ensure we
deliver the best possible service we could, on a much reduced budget.
This
was a huge challenge and took up many hours of time and, I along with officers
attended and in some cases organised public meetings. We went all over Kirklees
and spoke with hundreds of residents who were concerned about the future of the
library service, in taking on board those concerns we developed a plan that
involved recruiting volunteers for library’s to work alongside paid members of
staff and support them.
Unfortunately
we had to include in the plan we proposed the total removal of our mobile
library provision, as this service was far too costly and in many cases under
used.
A plan
was developed following the biggest consultation Kirklees had ever undertaken,
and that with the help of the fantastic volunteers we have in Kirklees, would
result in the closure of only two library’s. This is not the case in most of
the Country who have seen the effects of budget cuts decimate what local
authorities can provide.
Our
plan will only work with volunteers, but early indications are that the
residents of Kirklees will rally round and provide the help and support we need
to deliver a comprehensive library service.
We had
many meetings with officers and colleagues to try to deliver a balanced budget
despite the cuts in our budget forced on us by central Government. Despite the
financial difficulties the budget we delivered in February did manage to
protect the services that are most needed by our poorest and most vulnerable
residents. It was not possible to ensure that all services were not cut or
reduced but given the financial challenges I believe it was a budget that
delivered the best possible outcome. Protecting vital services in the
future will become much more difficult as we know our budgets will continue to
be cut for the next 4 years.
The
cabinet will do all it can to ensure we look after our most venerable and those
with the greatest need, but this will be very challenging with the present
Government policy of austerity, and falling financial resources and rising
demand for our services.
Community
safety covers many things, from ensuring our roads are safe for our residents,
to working with the counter terrorism unit. It is a very large portfolio and
it’s important that we do all we can to ensure the safety of our residents. A
lot of work was done around preventing those that wish to harm our residents
from doing so.
As
part of that drive to ensure our residents live in a secure environment I went
to the home office to lobby the security Minister to ensure we received
sufficient funding to protect our citizens.
Ward
work in the Year
 |
| Me and Paula Sherriff MP |
- During the year I have
organised and attend 4 coffee mornings in various parts of the ward
- I carried out 11 street
surgeries around the ward
- I have dealt with large
amounts of e mails and telephone calls from residents, on issues ranging
from personal issues to pot holes, speeding traffic etc.
- I have delivered several
thousand leaflets
- I have knocked on many
hundreds of doors and spoken with residents
- I have sent out many
thousands of letters to residents to keep them informed of specific issues
- I have attended meetings
from local groups and several public meetings around the ward
- I do a joint static surgery
every month with Paula Sherriff MP at Skelmanthorpe Council offices on the
third Saturday of the month
- During the year Paula
Sherriff MP and I also did static surgery’s in Emley and Denby Dale.
- As part of the consultation
on the local plan I held 3 public events, where I was able to take maps of
the plan and also very importantly, the maps of the sites that had been
rejected by the officers who are developing the plan. These 3 events
attracted large numbers of residents who wanted to see the plans and
discuss the impact on them and the village they live in.
It has
been a challenging year for the Denby Dale library and community project, but
after a huge amount of work by the trustees we finally managed to raise
sufficient funds to start to build the new facility. We were not able to raise
as much money as we had hoped, so we modified the design and are now well on
the way to finishing a slightly smaller building that will have space for a
library and a small retail area and coffee shop that will be run by Kirkwood
hospice, which will pay rent which will help with the running cots of the
building, however we will still have to raise some funds as the rent from
Kirkwood is unlikely to meet all the costs of the building. The new building
will also allow community groups to use t and I and sure that it will be a
valuable addition to Denby Dale.
Following
the public meetings in Skelmanthorpe that I organised and presented last year
to discuss the future of the Skelmanthorpe library a friends of group has
emerged and I am proud to be the chair of that group, the group meets monthly
and is now in a very strong position to help support the library in the future.
I am very grateful that members of the community have stepped forward to help
secure the village library.
A
large amount of excellent people now work in the Skelmanthorpe library as
volunteers, and it’s a credit to the community spirit that exists in the
village that when the changes to the library’s service that comes in to effect
later in the year, and we in Skelmanthorpe will be able to hopefully enhance
the service let alone maintain it.
As a
member of the heavy woollen and strategic planning committee I have always
voted and spoken against all inappropriate development not only in my ward but
throughout Kirklees. I believe that the current planning system is flawed and
does not meet the needs of our residents and fails future generations, it is a
constant battle with developers to get them to provide affordable homes despite
the huge profits they make from developing sites within Kirklees. The system
now makes it very difficult for the committee to object to plans as legislation
has been changed to favour developers over elected members, and this can
sometimes quite rightly cause friction between the committee and members of the
public.
It is widely accepted that we have a housing
shortage in this country, but the current planning system does nothing to
address this, it just allows developers to make large profits and removes the
rights of residents and elected members to ensure we have the right homes at
the right prices in the right places.
A
major piece of work that has taken some time to put I place was finally
completed when the funding for extending broadband in those areas within the
ward that don’t have it was secured, and a 2 year programme was agreed with open
reach to install fibre to the vast majority of our street cabinets, which will
enable residents to access very much improved broad band speeds. This project
has taken quite a considerable amount of time and was a very large piece of
work, in securing the funding from several different funding streams, but this
will pay huge dividends in the next couple of years.  |
| Me and John Orna Ornstein, Director of Museums - Arts Council England |
Kirklees
museums service which falls under my responsibility was asked to supply some of
ancient Egyptian artefacts for a major exhibition in London, and as part of
that exhibition one of our face masks was used on the front page of the
exhibition guide and the poster adverting the event, so we enjoyed a little bit
of fame in the capital as our face mask appeared on posters all over London.
It was
a pleasure to be invited by my own local fire station the launch of the first
responders initiative, a scheme where local firemen, are trained to be able to
respond to medical emergencies, saving vital minutes, for those in need. Living
in a rural area where response times are more challenging for the emergency
ambulance service, this is fantastic development and I have no doubt will prove
to be a real life saver. And I would like to thank all those local retained
firemen who have been trained to help the residents in the Denby Dale ward
Training
- I have carried out the
relevant planning committee training up dates
- I have attend courses on CSE
- I have attend several
training sessions with our directors on enhancing my role as a cabinet
member including public speaking, media training, and speech writing.
- I have helped to deliver
training to some of our new members, as the perspective of existing
Councillors can be very useful.
