Welcome to Broxtowe Enews, brought to you by the Liberal Democrats and edited by David Watts, the leader of Broxtowe Borough Council.
1. Mayors Ball
The Broxtowe Mayors Ball, to support his charities Help For Heroes and Hope Nottingham, will take place on Saturday 12th March 2011 at The East Midlands Conference Centre. Tickets (£30 each) are still available.
2. Paradiso Cinema
Paradiso Cinema presents Another Year, a Film by Mike Leigh on Sunday 13th March at 7.30pm At Chilwell Arts Theatre, Chilwell School, Queens Road West, NG9 5AL. Tickets on the door are £5 or £4 for concessions. Refreshments are available from 7pm. Further details are available from www.chilwellartstheatre.co.uk
3. AV Referrendum
I was pleased to see that the first Ipso/More opinion poll on this put the Yes vote 12 points ahead. However many people are still undecided so we still need to keep making the case for a Yes vote for reform. I was however appalled by the adverts run this week by the no campaign. If you haven’t seen them they involve a 2 page advert with a picture of a baby saying words to the effect that this child needs a dialysis machine, not voting reform. If that’s the level that they’ve already sunk to then they have lost the argument. I have added my signature to a letter to the Advertising Standards Authority objecting to this advert, and if you are equally appalled I would invite you to do so as well. You can do so via http://www.yestofairervotes.org/demandmore-demandbetter
4. Village Ventures
On Friday 11th March at 7.30pm Village Ventures present Frankenstein Live!, a play by the Angus & Ross Theatre Company, based on the novel by Mary Shelley. at Chilwell Arts Theatre, Chilwell School, Queens Road West, NG9 5AL. Tickets on the door or in advance from 0115 925 2698 or 0758 426 3893. Tickets for this are £8, £6 conc or £24 family (2 +2). Further details are on www.chilwellartstheatre.co.uk
5. Fair Trade Fashion Show.
Last week I mentioned the Fair Trade Fashion show at St Margarets Church in Aspley, but I didn’t have all the details. The start time is 7.30pm for 8.00pm and the organisers aim to finish around
9.30pm. Further information is available from Estelle Turner on 929 1738.
6. Greasley Wind Turbines
I’ve seen some claims in the last week or so that one councillor or another has arranged for the consultation period on this application to be extended. This simply hasn’t happened, but the reality is that even if comments are submitted late they will be considered. When I was chair of the Development Control Committee I introduced a system where the officers prepare a summary of any late items on the day of the meeting, so even if your comments only come in after the deadline they will still be considered.
7. Stapleford NHS Walk In Centre
I’m pleased to see that over 1,900 responses have been submitted to the consultation on plans by the NHS to close the Walk In Centre in Stapleford. This remains a really daft idea and the whole basis of the argument to close it has been shown to be false by my colleagues from Stapleford Liberal Democrats. In short the figures published by the NHS didn’t add up and the other arguments they put forward contradicted each other. There will be a further public meeting about this on 16th March and the decision should be made by the end of next month. The Green Party have been in touch again to ask if they can use the campaign in their material! It’s a shame that they couldn’t find things that they’ve been doing to talk about.
8. Drink problems
Broxtowe Borough Partnership are organising training to help people spot the signs of alcoholism. The aim is to help people spot the first signs of alcoholism, so that problems can be avoided in the future. The class will be on 15th March, and further details are available from 0115 917 3492 or www.broxtowepartnership.org.uk
9. Conservation Area
The Beeston Civic Society have submitted an application to the Borough Council to have an area around Beeston Station designated as a conservation area. This is a step that I have been encouraging them to take, and I will be pressing the officers to assess this as soon as possible. There is already a list of areas being considered and we can’t jump the queue on them, but we can certainly try and get this added to the end of the queue.
10. Housing Revenue Account
The Housing revenue Account is a part of local government financing, showing how we finance council housing. The government want to reform this, and the original consultation paper on reform suggested that Broxtowe would be tens of thousands a year better off. A revised consultation paper has now been produced and this suggests that we would in fact be nearly half a million worse off a year. Needless to say I’ll be objecting to these changes.
11. Council Industrial units
Although the footfall figures for Beeston a couple of weeks ago were disappointing better news comes from the industrial units that the council rents out. These now have a 97% occupancy rate, which provides crucial income for the council as well as jobs for the local community.
12. Erewash Valley Trail
You may well have seen signs appearing over the past few weeks for the Erewash Valley trail, a 30 mile walking and cycling route around Broxtowe. This will be officially launched in the spring, but has involved 3km of towpath improvements to the Erewash canal and 6kn of footpath improvements in Broxtowe and Erewash.
As ever thank you for your support for this project. Any feedback will be very gratefully received.
David
