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. May I give a special welcome to the new readers that we have
this week and wish everyone a very happy new year.
1.
Lydia Ball
May I start this weeks newsletter by congratulating Awsworth
Councillor Lydia Ball on being awarded the British Empire Medal in the New
Years Honours list. Lydia has represented Awsworth for many years and this
award is richly deserved.
2.
Housing Debate
As regular readers will know there has been a significant
amount of discussion about housing numbers in Broxtowe over the next 15 years.
The council has to develop a plan for the area and has been doing so for the
past couple of years. Matters went to a public enquiry in November and the
inspector has asked for further details from the council. This will be debated
at a special meeting on 13th January at the Town Hall is Beeston and
everyone is welcome to attend and watch. I have written an open letter to all
our councillors which you can read on my web site at www.davidwatts.org.uk
3.
Stapleford By Election
There will be a double by election for Stapleford Town
Council on 23rd January for Stapleford North Ward. A Liberal
Democrat (Christine Wombwell) and a Labour councillor have stood down, both for
family reasons. There are five candidates standing, two Liberal Democrats –
Matt Holden and Goff Walt, two Conservatives and one independent candidate.
Surprisingly Labour have not fielded a candidate even though they held one of
the seats. Locally Labour have been saying that they couldn’t find any
candidates hence their absence from the list. The council would have had the
option of co-opting members if no-one had called an election and this could
have happened here, but the so called independent group went through the process
of calling both elections. It was therefore very surprising that they only put
up one candidate.
4.
Open Cast Mining
I reported just before Christmas that Notts County Council
had given the go ahead for open cast mining at Shortwood Farm between Trowell
and Cossall, despite the very strong objection of local residents. Now Eric
Pickles, the Secretary of State, has announced that he is considering “calling
in” the application. This would mean that he would personally take the decision
about whether the scheme could be allowed or not. The media did report a few
days ago that he had already decided to do this but these reports were
unfortunately premature.
5.
Eastwood police station
Nottinghamshire police have announced that Eastwood police
station front counter will be closed until at least April, in an attempt to
save money. This will be very disappointing news for local people, although the
police will still be operating out of the station and they can be contacted by
ringing 101 or 999 in an emergency.
6.
Nottinghamshire search and rescue team
A new volunteer search and rescue team is being launched to
cover Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. The aim of the group will be to assist
the police in finding missing people. The group has been set up by a retained
firefighter from Stapleford, Dunk McCondach, and it is being officially
launched in January. The volunteers have been undergoing training in first aid,
life-support and navigation, and I’d like to wish them every success in their
new venture.
7.
Beeston Square
Work to renovate Beeston Square, a project which is long
overdue, will start later this month. Everyone will be delighted that it is
happening, but I am personally disappointed at the lack of ambition in the
plans put forward by the developers, Henry Boot. I did vote against them when
it came to the planning committee, not because I don’t want the square to be
developed but because I thought they could do something better than they have
put forward.
8.
Car Park Charges
There was a lot of publicity in the media over Christmas
about council’s apparently making huge amounts of money out of car parking
charges. Here in Broxtowe that isn’t the case. Car Parks cost us about £300,000
each year and we get in about £200,000 from tickets. This means that we still
pay about £100,000 towards the costs from general council tax. We have just
entered into a new agreement with Gedling and Rushcliffe council’s to share
some of the work in administering these and this should lead to more savings.
9.
Garden Bin Charges
The Borough Council’s cabinet on Tuesday will consider
whether we need to introduce an annual charge for collecting garden waste. This
is a hugely difficult decision as we need to try and find ways of raising extra
money, but equally we need to encourage people to recycle and I would rather we
did not penalise people for doing that. The matter will be debated on Tuesday
evening and I will report the result next week.
10.
School Places
The Government have announced that they will be providing an
extra £50 million of funding to Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Council’s to
provide extra school places. We have a growing population and this means that
we need more school places, so the extra money will be very welcome.
11.
Beeston Railway Station
Network Rail is applying for permission to carry out a
significant improvement to Beeston Railway Station. They want to install better display screens,
an improved public address system and wi-fi for commuters. As a regular
commuter from the station I welcome all of this.
12.
European elections
later this year we will have the elections for the European
Parliament. Most of the polls suggest that new kit will win the majority of
seats, but their policies would be a complete disaster for this country.
Siemens UK, who have a long history with Broxtowe, are the latest in a number
of major firms to suggest that they would pull out of the UK if we were no
longer in the European union. I am unashamedly pro-European and will be
campaigning hard this year for the Lib Dems. We will be going into this
election as the only major party to support the European union. (This doesn’t
mean that we don’t think it can be improved, but that doesn’t stop is being
supportive of it. I also think that the British Parliament could be improved,
but that doesn’t stop me supporting that either.)
As ever thank you for your support for this newsletter. Any
feedback is gratefully received.
Best wishes
David
Follow me on Twitter @davidwatts12.
