Good news for those wanting to start up small businesses. Today the National Insurance Holiday for small business start ups in our region comes into effect. It might just make the difference for someone contemplating a start up. Another good policy from the coalition government. Help for the regions which most need it!
I spent some time today looking through and discussing plans for spending a very small budget in the Western Area (Yarm, Eaglescliffe, and part of Western Parishes wards) for helping people who want to get into jobs. Some taster sessions from Tees Achieve on such topics as computer skills, first aid, crafts and more are going to be offered alongside some work on helping people to manage their finances, find suitable housing and ensure that they have the right advice on tax and benefits. I hope we get a good take up when the plans are finalised.

Credit Help

Eaglescliffe, Yarm and the other parts of the Western Area Partnership Board's responsibility are traditionally seen as fairly affluent and not in need of the kind of help and advice which is readily available in some less affluent parts of the borough. The credit crunch and recession have seen that perception change and at long last we've succeeded in getting recognition that there are people in need in this area too.
Last year Stockton Council's cabinet agreed with Western Area councillors that there should be some funding for this neck of the woods and a small amount was allocated to the board to help deal with the problems of helping people to get back into work if they lose their job at a time when the job market is shrinking. The board decided to use the fund to enable the Tees Credit Union to work with the Citizens Advice Bureau to set up collection points in the area, to improve the accessibility of advice and to help with small loans so that people don't get into a spiral of debt by trying to pay off exorbitant doorstep lenders. After some hiccups and delays the new Collection points have been established in Eaglescliffe Village Hall, Yarm Library and at Challoner House for the benefit of people at that end of Yarm. These are very welcome and should have been the subject of a leaflet distributed to every household in the area. However, I haven't received one at my house. If any readers from the Western Area have received it I'd be pleased to hear from you.

Credit Crunch again

I had a meeting this morning as chair of the Western Area Partnership board to check on progress on our project to lessen the impact of the credit crunch in our area. We know that we're fortunate in this area compared to some, but nevertheless there are people facing redundancy or short time working and in some ways, especially emotionally, it can be harder to be in that position in an affluent area than in a deprived area where many more people understand your situation. Which is not to denigrate at all the problems faced in deprived areas - not at all.
The little bit of money which was allocated to the Western Area is to fund a support and advice package for people in this area, but it's been slower to start than I'd expected. We hope that it will now launch in September and people of the Western Area will be able to access the support and advice which they need to cope with the difficulties caused by the recession and so won't get into unavoidable problems.

Feeling Cross!

One or two people in Eaglescliffe have, quite understandably, raised questions over recent months about the expenses and allowances paid to councillors. The questions are usually deceptively simple and the answers are anything but simple. Councillors come in all shapes and sizes from all sorts of backgrounds and with a wide range of personal wealth or lack of it. The system that's in place tries to cover for all the possible eventualities, giving an allowance which recognises that people give up a lot of hours to do the job and that if we're going to have councillors who represent the wide range of people in the Borough not all of them will be able to afford to do the job without some financial recompense. In order to be open and fair about the allowances the information is published annually by the council for all to see - what each councillor has had as an allowance and what expenses have been claimed for things not covered by the allowance. These range from travel to council meetings to attending conferences and trainings some distance away.
Contrast that with Westminster, where it seems that expenses were until very recently considered on a par with the exact location of our nuclear deterrent - something never to be revealed to mere mortals. Now that expenses are routinely being publicised by zealous campigners we find that an allowance originally designed to ensure that MPs for constituencies away from London could do their job properly by having a pied a terre in the capital is being abused to provide a second income for some Parliamentarians. But it's all within the rules they say! Well my view is that the rules need to be changed. Perhaps the government ought to build a hostel and house them all next to the Palace of Westminster. Being serious for a moment, I'm amazed that the broadband connection for the Home Secretary's family home should be claimed on expenses when the same government moves more and more information onto the internet and expects ordinary citizens to pay for their own broadband in order to access it! In this day and age it's quite common to run 2 or more computers from the same router at no extra charge. Are they trying to say that the family living in the house wouldn't have broadband if she weren't the Home Secretary?
This afternoon I chaired the monthly meeting of the Western Area Partnership Board. Under the heading "Area Partnership improvement plan" we discovered that the Central Area Partnership has been chosen to pilot a Youth Area Partnership. Very nice for Central Area young people, but the Western Area has been asking for this for years. We were the first of the area partnerships to appoint young people to the board with full voting rights. We were then copied by the other area boards. We've held meetings jointly with groups of young people, we've changed our meeting time and day to enable a youth club to host the meeting. And then we find that the thing we've been asking for is to be done elsewhere, but don't worry we were told "you'll be kept informed of what we learn from the pilot and if it's a success we'll hope to roll it out to other areas". Now excuse us, but the Western Area is a very different partnership to the Central Area, so who says that what works for one will work for the other? Members of the Board made it very plain tonight that we weren't happy at being treated like this and we want to give young people in our area a voice. Whether anything will change as a result we wait to see.

Partnership Working

Today saw a good example of partnership in action. Earlier in the year Stockton Council decided, much to my surprise, that a small amount of money would be allocated in the Western Area to help with employment related issues. We were told that we could be quite creative in how we handled it but it needs to be spent by the spring of 2011. The Western Area Partnership Board set up a working group to make some recommendations - two Borough Councillors representing the 2 complete wards in the Area, a Parish councillor with experience of representing the community for many years on panels relating to health matters, and a community member representing a group which spans the whole area.
The group was supported by officers from Stockton Borough Council who have a lot of experience of handling funding across the Borough. The second meeting was yesterday and thanks to an idea taken from another area we came up with what we hope will be a really useful way of working in our area, supporting people who are starting to struggle with debts including mortgage payments but also the debts incurred probably by trying to have the same kind of family Christmas they had last year even though this year money is tight. By all sitting round the table and talking frankly about the area in which we live and the problems that some people will experience over the coming years of the recession we were able to leave party politics and cross-community issues to one side and come up with a really inclusive plan.
When I put it to the full board at last night's meeting it was welcomed by all, including those from villages which sometimes struggle to have their voice heard at Borough level. So the officers will now put together invitations to tender for the project and we move forward in January all being well.
At the same board meeting we heard of a rare success story from the Youth Service, with the youth club workers in Eaglescliffe going out to talk to older teenagers who didn't attend the youth club with the result that they're now part of the club and applying for funding from the "Playing Out" fund to access sports training and encourage other young people to take part in active play. The number attending has almost doubled - a real achievement especially as this is young people wanting to take an active part instead of hanging around outside. Well done Chris and others. There was also good news about the numbers attending the other clubs in the Area so perhaps we're going through that part of the cycle where young people want to belong to clubs, or perhaps the clubs are now providing the sort of activities the young people want. Only time will tell.

A Long Day!

The day started well enough with a meeting about the programme for the Western Area Partnership for the next couple of months. Zoe brought down the graffiti canvas which has been produced showing the Board's responses to the issues raised by the young people earlier in the year. It looks good and we're going to arrange to have them both on display in libraries so that people can see and read them.
Then it was on to the Council's Forward plan - a necessary but not very exciting meeting to go through the programme for the coming year and discuss any slippage in target dates, any extra consultation which needs to be done and so on.
Time for a quick dash to Norton to deliver an important package then back to Stockton ready for the planning committee. This afternoon was a marathon - starting just after 1 reading update reports and trying to get clarification of some of the issues in advance. There was a long report and longer debate on the new Energy from Waste plant at Haverton Hill. Eventually it was approved, and I was pleased to hear that SITA are hoping to have contracts to supply not just power to the grid but heat to neighbouring companies.
The very long saga of an unauthorised development in another part of the borough finally came to a conclusion today, or at least I hope it did. I hope the developer now complies with all the conditions and completes the job properly.
The Urlay Nook Rd industrial & warehousing development took a very long time to decide. There was a good debate, with lots of good points made by a resident who spoke and by members of the committee but in the end there just didn't seem to be a sustainable planning reason for refusing it. I'm cross that the council decided last year that the land wasn't needed for industrial use but the consultation process needed to get that change of classification accepted is so long that in the mean time the owner could put in plans, have them refused, modify them and come back and get them accepted. There's no sense in us spending time debating the merits of the classification then being told that the change can't take effect yet because we haven't consulted enough.
The Rookery demolition was deferred until the applicant can show to the committee firm evidence that the economics of underpinning aren't viable. That followed a long debate on a particular part of Stockton's policy which says that demolition in a conservation area can be allowed if the building can't be repaired economically (my paraphrase). I don't hold out a lot of hope for its preservation but at least I'll be sure we've done all we can within the present law.
There were over 10 more applications to consider, thankfully not all as lengthy to debate as these, but all important to the people involved and all deserving of careful consideration. By the end of the meeting, over 4 hours after I'd arrived at the library, everyone was pretty tired but it wasn't the end of the day for members - full Council met at 7.
Often the council meeting is very quick and non-contentious because issues have been ironed out at various committees and other meetings, Cabinet has taken a decision and everyone is more or less in agreement with it. On this occasion there were two items which needed a vote.
The first was a good example of a member (John Fletcher, a fellow Eaglescliffe councillor and this year's mayor) working with another member who is also mayor of Thornaby Town council, to find a way through a maze of red tape and bad feeling so that the chains which were worn by the mayor of Thornaby in the days before unitary authorities were invented could be safely returned to Thornaby. This issue has been a sore point between Stockton and Thornaby councils since the latter was formed as a Town Council some years ago. Thanks to John's analytic and logical thinking and persistence on the part of both members the final hurdle waa crossed last night with a vote in favour. I look forward to the handover on the Victoria bridge!
The other issue was more technical but in some ways more important. At times the planning committee refuses an application even though planning officers have recommended that it be approved. Sometimes that's on a balance of fairly subjective views on design or amenity. At other times it's because the committee knows that it's the last thing residents want but under present planning laws it can't be refused. Nevertheless in the heat of the moment we can't bring ourselves to approve it. If the applicant goes to appeal the inspector grants the latter kind as a matter of course, and we win some of the "on balance" type. In an effort to stop the "democratic wishes" kind of refusal the planning officers had proposed a protocol which would mean such decisions weren't taken immediately but sent to review by the Head of Planning and the Corporate Director of Neighbourhood Servicies with a solicitor who would then come back to the planning committee 3 weeks later and advise again on whether or not to refuse it. Many of us thought this process gave the impression of officers putting undue pressure on members. If it happens in the open, in a meeting, everyone sees and hears. When part of the deliberation is behind closed doors it leaves a bad feeling on the part of the people who end up on the losing side and the reputation of the council suffers with its residents.
A lengthy discussion by email and face to face meant that members of every party but Labour supported an amendment to get a rethink on that, despite the Tory leader siding with Labour. A follow up amendment which I proposed to tidy up a really badly written recommendation even got some Labour support - the first time I've known that on something which was not agreed in advance with their leader. A triumph for Democracy on Democracy day.

Money reared its head again this morning when I had a meeting with a member of the Independent Remuneration Panel. This is the body which recommends levels of allowances for Councillors, trying to take into account all factors including how much time we spend doing things as a councillor, how much responsibility we take on over and above our ward and basic committee work and local expectations and attitudes. They had one try last year but the council couldn't reach agreement on some of their proposals so we asked them to try again, listening to what came out of the various discussions over the year. We shall see what happens this time, but one thing's for sure - Stockton Councillors get a lower allowance than almost any other equivalent council and the work we do doesn't get any easier.
At lunch time it was Fairtrade Borough group meeting with a very small turnout of committed people. It's proving quite difficult to get people to meetings at the moment and yet we need more help than ever to fulfill the plans we have.
Today we spent some time planning for the stall we intend to have at the Greener Living Road Show in Preston Park on June 8th. If you're in the area do pop in and see what's on offer - lots of things apart from Fairtrade. The range seems to run from wind turbines to hybrid cars and healthy walks - something for just about everyone I think.
A real contrast later in the afternoon when I paid a visit to Challoner House in Yarm. This was a residential home for elderly people until quite recently but is now being converted into a community centre. It was strange to walk into somewhere which is being hired out for meetings and community activities and see the bookcase still in the corner, full of books. Strong, high seated armchairs and china ornaments around the room all spoke of its previous life and looked so nice and clean that I fully expected a resident to walk in at any moment. We'll be able to use it for some of our Western Area Partnership board meetings, taking the meetings out into the heart of one community they're supposed to serve.
I hope the centre is a success for the people who live around that area, because it's in a lovely setting and would be tragic to lose.
After that the sun called me out into the garden to do the weeding that didn't get done at the weekend. My compost bin is now nicely filled so I need to let it rot down a bit before putting any more in - what a good excuse for a bit of pruning of the bramble! That's the only sort of garden waste which goes in the green waste bags from this household - even if we shredded it the result would be full of thorns and not very user friendly.

Resource or Rubbish?

This afternoon I chaired the first meeting of the Environment Committee on the Review of Waste Management. An hour and a half wasn't bad for such a broad topic, and at the end of it we'd agreed the scope and the project plan. We aim to have carried out a comprehensive review of Stockton's handling of waste from households by the end of March next year, so lots of hard work between now and then. We want to know what's collected, where it goes and how much it costs as well as what residents would like to happen and what theat might cost. As a borough we don't have a problem with landfill targets because we have the Energy from Waste plant at Haverton Hill but we do have a problem with recycling targets and the amount of rubbish generated. Of course, because the rubbish goes to the EfW plant it's also a resource! It's going to be a huge challenge to meet the targets set by central government for recycling and reduction of waste, especially as we have an increasing population in the borough and the targets are set on 2002 figures. There'll be a lot of public consultation so do watch out for it and join in if you live in the borough.
This evening's meeting was of Western Area Partnership board and included a lengthy discussion on play areas in the borough and in this area in particular. Again there's going to be a public consultation to determine what people want in the area so watch out for that and make sure your voice is heard.
I reported on the Connect2 bid for cycle and footways to link Ingleby Barwick, Eaglescliffe, Yarm and Thornaby. The voting for the winning bid for the lottery funding starts next week, 26th Nov online and on December 7th by phone after the TV programmes start (11pm for 4 evenings on ITV1). Please do vote for the Sustrans bid - it's a massive £50m bid for 79 communities across the country whereas its rivals are much more local bids. Our share would be about £600,000 to go towards improving our links with more paths and bridges over the Tees and Leven. If successful it will mean that people from Eaglescliffe can very easily get to Ingleby Barwick and enjoy the new park being developed there, as well as safely get to work there or in Thornaby for example without using a car.