Welcome to Broxtowe Enews, brought to you by the Liberal
Democrats and edited by David Watts, the leader of the Lib-Dems on Broxtowe
Borough Council. Many apologies that the newsletter is a day late, normal
service will hopefully be resumed next week.
1.
Splitting Broxtowe
Nottingham City Council have made it clear in a number of
statements recently that they are keen on splitting Broxtowe into two so that
the south of the borough (Beeston, Chilwell, Toton, Bramcote and
Stapleford)becomes part of an enlarged city council area. My personal view is
that this is an appallingly bad idea as I do not believe that the city’s desire
is motivated by a desire to look after residents of Broxtowe but instead it is
driven by a desire to get their hands on Broxtowe’s spare land. If they succeed
we would not be facing the possibility of 6,000 new houses but a much larger
number instead. I’ve said what my view is but we as a party would like to know
what you think. We have created a very simple one question survey on our website
at www.broxtoweliberaldemocrats.org.uk
and I’d be grateful if you would take a moment to complete it. We really do
want the views of as many residents as possible so please can you mention this
to your friends and neighbours as well.
2.
NHS Events
NHS Nottingham West CCG is holding two public events in
October and you are warmly invited to attend. Come along to find out more about
your local NHS, share your views and help shape priorities for future
healthcare. The events are open to all and are being held on Tuesday 15
October, 6-8pm, Highfields Fire Station, Hassocks Lane, Beeston, NG9 2GQ and
Thursday 17 October, 1pm-3pm, Durban House, DH Lawrence Centre, Mansfield Road,
Eastwood, NG16 3DZ. Dr Guy Mansford, local GP and Chief Officer said: "We
know the NHS is facing huge challenges, both locally and nationally. This
includes more people living longer with complex conditions, an increased demand
on services and greater public expectation. That's why it's important for us to
understand the needs of our patient population to ensure high-quality,
patient-focused services. These events provide perfect opportunity to
participate in our future decision making." Our CCG is led by local GPs
and other health professionals who are responsible for the planning and
purchasing of almost £100 million worth of health services for patients living
in places such as Eastwood, Kimberley, Stapleford, Beeston, Bramcote and
Chilwell. Everyone is welcome to attend the events. The organisers would be
grateful if you could register your place so that they are aware of numbers.
Light refreshments will be available 30 minutes prior to the start time. Please
register by emailing nottingham.west@nottinghamwestccg.nhs.uk
or telephoning 0115 8835100 (office hours) or online www.nottinghamwestccg.nhs.uk/nhsevent
3.
Polling Stations
The council is currently reviewing the location of polling
stations within Broxtowe. If you have any comments on where you go to vote
please let me have them and I will pass them on to the team. Any proposed
recommendations will be published later on this year.
4.
Credit Union in Kimberley
Volunteers in
Kimberley have decided to set up a credit union information point at Rumbletums
(probably commencing late October/early November) with a view to this then
being developed as a collection point for Nottingham Credit Union. Through the
information point, people will be able to get details on the full range of
services offered by Nottingham Credit Union and become members. This service
will be staffed by local volunteers. There will be another meeting and initial
training session for prospective volunteers at Rumbletums Cafe, 2a Victoria
Street, Kimberley at 6.30pm on Tuesday 15th October. Anyone with an
interest in supporting this new venture would be very welcome.
5.
Crossing The Floor
No, not me. I’m a Liberal to the very core of my soul. However
we were recently joined in the party by former Labour activist Sarah Brown, and
she has written an excellent piece on her reasons why for the Beestonia Blog.
You can read it here: http://beestonia.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/breaking-the-political-taboo-sarah-brown-on-switching-parties/.
You can see Sarah speaking at the Lib-Dem conference earlier this month here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KKTUveKX54
and she has written an article for Lib-Dem voice, one of our in house
publications, which you can read here: http://www.libdemvoice.org/a-tale-of-two-conferences-36389.html#utm_source=tweet&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=twitter
6.
Britain’s Greenest Borough
At a meeting of the council’s Climate Change Working Group
this morning I unveiled a set of suggestions and proposals that I think could
help to propel Broxtowe towards being Britain’s most environmentally friendly
borough. This is a target that I would like to see us adopt and I’m pleased to
say that the proposals were met with a strong level of enthusiasm. Broxtowe got
on board with tackling climate change early on in the process but over the past
few years we’ve lost our way a bit. I’m hoping that (in my new role as chair of
the Climate Change Working Group) we can not only get the council freshly back
on track but also to enable us to make it easy for people to adopt a greener
approach to their own lifestyles. I’ll provide more information about how the
council is getting on over the next few months.
7.
Housing Land Availability
At the council’s cabinet last Tuesday we endorsed a review
of housing land available in the borough. The council faces significant
pressure to provide new housing and we cannot accommodate everything on
brownfield land, but I am pleased to say that the total number of houses that
may need to be built on the green belt seems to be falling. We have been able
to accommodate more housing on existing sites and we are committed to ensuring
that no land will be taken from the green belt unless absolutely necessary. If
anyone wants to see the list of sites that we’ve looked at just let me know and
I’ll send you a copy. Linked to that we also agreed to carry out an extensive
public consultation from now until next year seeking the views of residents
about where future development might take place. I thought that everyone would
be in favour of asking local residents their views but surprisingly the
Conservatives decided to abstain. I am disappointed by that as I think that it
is vital that local residents are given every opportunity to share their views.
8.
Oxylane Development
As regular readers may know Oxylane, the company who own the
Decathlon Sports Store in Giltbrook, applied to build a sports village on land
next to Junction 26 of the M1. This application was withdrawn at the last
minute but Oxylane have now approached the council about the possibility of
developing a leisure centre on the site as well. The council have agreed to
discuss this with them on the explicit understanding that this will not
prejudice the independence of the Development Control Committee to determine
the planning application in due course. Potentially this could give the borough
a state of the art sports centre along with the Oxylane Site, which could also
generate hundreds of jobs. However the Conservatives again refused to back
this.
9.
999 Calls
New figures published by the police this week made very
disappointing reading. In the last twelve months they dealt with move than half
a million emergency calls but only 12% of these related to crimes. If you
believe that a crime is being committed or someone is in danger then 999 is
absolutely the right number to dial, but for routine calls it most certainly is
not. Notts Police operate a 101 number for these.
10.
County Councillors Allowances
The Liberal Democrats on Nottinghamshire County Council
proposed to reduce councillors allowances as a money saving exercise. The
county council needs to save £154 million next year and reducing councillors
allowances was seen as a sensible way of helping. Sadly however the Labour
councillors voted against this and as a result the proposal was defeated.
11.
Artists Display
Beeston artist Pam Millar will be opening her studio for
people to look at her work on 5th and 6th October. This
will be at Barrydale Avenue in Beeston and will start at 10am each day. She
will be on hand to talk about her work and to provide advice to others, and
light refreshments will be available.
As ever thank you for your support for this newsletter. Any
feedback is gratefully received.
Best wishes
David
Follow me on Twitter @davidwatts12.
