Save our Cheque

Council tonight passed our motion calling on our MPs to lobby for and support David Ward's bill in Parliament to stop the abolition of cheques.  Until this issue came up I didn't even know there was such a thing as The Payments Council, but it seems to be a kind of union of big banks which has decided that we shouldn't use cheques any more as they cause too much work or they're inconvenient or they aren't secure - take your pick of excuses.  Can you imagine Christmas without cheques winging their way to grandchildren, nieces, nephews, the Salvation Army, Crisis at Christmas, hundreds of other worthy causes etc?  Apparently we're all going to start using Paypal and other such internet based systems.  Tell that to the thousands of people who have never accessed the internet!
Cllr Alan Lewis did an excellent job of proposing the motion, pointing out that although it's a Lib Dem initiative it isn't at all controversial and he hoped everyone would support it.  There must have been something in the water because not only did everyone agree to support it but one Conservative and one Independent actually stood up and spoke in favour of it.
In celebration Alan then wrote a cheque for the Mayor's benevolent fund - a very worthy cause indeed.  Unfortunately the mayor left the building so quickly after the meeting that he didn't get his cheque and it will have to be taken in to the office!  Could the footbal match involving his attendant's favourite team have anything to do with their haste?  I really wouldn't know.
A meeting earlier in the day with a senior council officer was spent in discussing where we are with the planning documents needed to ensure that Eaglescliffe doesn't go through another spate of garden grabbing.  We're not safe yet but there's another weapon in the armoury now, which hasn't been widely publicised but we'll soon change that.  Western Area Partnership meeting should be interesting.

The quarterly meeting of the Health and Wellbeing partnership today spent some time trying to work out how a new strategy could avoid repeating what is already in other strategies! If we didn't spend so long writing strategies maybe we'd have more time to implement them, or is that wishful thinking?
A serious question to which we found no easy answer is how to change the habits of the increasing number of obese people in the borough in order to improve their health. It seemed to us unlikely that government initiatives such as free swimming sessions would help much because those who want to swim will use them and those who don't but perhaps need the exercise most won't. Lots of education in all sorts of guises seems to be the answer as long as it's properly targetted but it's expensive and time consuming to deliver such help and not always possible to get it to the right people. It was interesting to hear just how much is being done though.

This evening the Western Area Partnership had a very interesting presentation on the work being done around the River Tees corridor to ensure an accessible enjoyable green corridor through the borough. Fingers were crossed all round the table for the success of the lottery bid to get some funding to start the ball rolling at Preston Park.
Then we had another very interesting discussion as part of the scrutiny review of Neighbourhood Policing, Neighbourhood watch and CCTV. The question of whether people know who their Neighbourhood PC and PCSO was received with some bewilderment. It was obvious that the message hasn't penetrated the community far beyond councillors and some well established groups. It was also clear that the plethora of numbers given out to contact the police is a deterrent in some instances. It'll be interesting to see the report when it is completed.