Tuesday

A breakdown in "the system" meant that I realised this morning that minutes of a previous Fairtrade meeting hadn't been sent out, nor the agenda for today's. Consequently no-one but the two of us responsible for doing that had remembered the meeting! We took the opportunity to sort out some things which we've been meaning to do and not done because of pressure of other work, so it was a very productive 45 minutes but not what we'd intended when we set the date a month ago.
My second appointment of the day was to discuss the agenda for the next Western Area Partnership meeting on 30th June. We're trying out a new venue, using Challoner House in Yarm, so it'll be interesting to see how it works. One of the items on the agenda is the Momentum consultation and as part of the proposal is to extend services in Yarm it should provoke an interesting discussion.
I had a quick meeting with my two ward colleagues, John Fletcher and Alan Lewis, before our ward surgery, to discuss the proposals for Larch Crescent green space. We need to try to stop the older children playing football and kicking the ball into the pensioners' gardens but still leave a pleasant place to look out onto and perhaps some space for any young children to play. Not easy but we're arranging a meeting with the Tristar staff involved to come up with some designs.
Ward surgery brought another intractable problem - the poorer bus service which now operates up Durham Lane past Orchard estate, compared to what it used to be. Sadly, the council has no power to make the bus companies provide a better service and can only encourage. In our experience encouragement doesn't produce results and our residents continue to be frustrated.