The first week as the nights draw in that was

Rocke · The first week as the nights draw in that was

Well, for those of you who'll still be here early next week while I'm up in the Arctic Circle, Midnight Sun etc. etc. ( And no - I'm not looking for a second igloo to spend my expenses on ).

Expenses are up before Council next Monday but I won't be around but I've no doubt you'll read about them.

Anyway, not so much what a week that was but what a day Tiuesday was.
4 meetings in the space of 3 hours.

Agenda-setting meeting at 2 for the next Ed & Leisure Scrutiny.
Taken by me in the Chair's absence.

The postponed ( since there wasn't enough of us last week ) Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Committee - also at 2.
I walked in around 2:20 and was surprised to find they were only on Item 3.

Items 1 & 2 are standard - Apologies/Declarations of Interests & Reading the Minutes of the last meeting.
The Minutes are for accuracy only - we don't have a 'matters arising'. That's covered by an action sheet that comes as part of the er... Minutes.
Anyway Item 4's more Minutes, of the special meeting we had 2 weeks ago about the grand master plan for regenerating the entire borough, the one where EV is the hub and the other towns are local hubs of activity.

Ok, so there's 6 or 7 pages of them but all that normally happens is that the Chair calls out the pages and any Member with a query eg. a typo, or not quite a true record of what he or she might have said, points it out. There might be a small discussion ending in them being amended but that's usually all.
Well, getting through these took about 40 minutes, I think.

This was a strange one.
Only 3 of us present were at the meeting in question and only I had a query on the Minutes themselves. That was that they omitted the fact that I had suggested that since various parts of the Borough lent themselves to things that other parts didn't ( bear with me and I'll explain ) then we should look to develop in a way that one area couldn't be jealous or get the idea that another area was having more of the pot.
Example ? Well, putting money into Bryn Bach Park couldn't be seen or taken to be robbing EV Works of building money. Similarly, developing industrial land in Blaina wouldn't be robbing Cwmtillery Lakes of money to develop tourism. This would also stop a lot of what's been going on for years. ( I'll leave you all to argue what could be meant by that ).

The reason the reading took so long ?
Well, those who hadn't been present at the VITCC meeting decided that they wanted a full debate on it, and the Chair let them get on with it.

Cllr. Scully got on his hobby horse regarding the Eisteddfod affecting The Works development. He was a little uptight that we hadn't had a promised report on the impact the event would have on the work and our roads ( and I supported him in that we also haven't had an economic assessment of the benefits for the individual parts of the Borough, which I asked for some time ago - it;s important that we all benefit to some degree ).
Following a lively chat Cllr. Scully them mounted another of his hobby horses, the Learning Campus, our state of the art provision of education for post-16s ( also at The Works ).

Then, perhaps feeling himself being outdone by his Lieutenants up steps the Leader of the Opposition Group to make pronouncements about the rail links. Cllr. McCarthy seemed to have discovered a new word - 'drivel' and seemed to relish in saying it for most of the rest of the debate on the rail links.
Seems the Labour Group have been down the Bay to get some sort of action. Cllr. McCarthy tried to imply that this council had withdrawn the bus links, Cllr. Wilcox ( Executive Member ) pointed out that the funding had been withdrawn, so Cllr. McCarthy then backtracked a little saying it was however fair to say that the bus links wwere put in by the Council and then withdrawn by ( a different ) Council.

At this juncture I managed to get the Chair's attention and point out that the reason the bus links were no longer running was because of the original failure to secure sustainable funding, until the rail links went where they were intended.

Cllr. Steve Thomas ( Deputy Leader of the Opposition ) then pointed out that there was always an understanding that the funding would be on a year-by-year basis or non-guaranteed basis.

Mmm - why hadn't Cllr. McCarthy ( and indeed 'hedleymccarthy ) been as up front about it then ?

I think Cllr. M likes to think of himself as the knight on a white charger that can come to the Borough's rescue. He made a point of pointing out ( a few times ) that he had been in contact and correspondence with Stagecoach in order to try to get them to change their bus times ie delay them a little in order that there was a jump off the train, jump on the bus opportunity at Llan. Almost everyone has tried that it seems.

Again, I managed to get the Chair's eye.
'Cllr. Rocke' he calls.
'Thank you Chair', says I. 'How about we approach this from another angle. Has anyone contacted Arriva and asked if they would consider running the train 5 minutes earlier ?'

Cue silence and Members and Officers looking around at each other.
I repeated the question. Apparently the answer is no.
Our officers will be asking it now though.

Next we had a presentation on Job Match.
This is a Government/WAG initiative to try to get the 'economically dormant' ( what a wonderful expression ) into work.
There's a number of reasons why people aren't in work and this scheme is designed to help those who have low educational levels, lack of qualifications and even schooling etc.
It's a joint scheme and runs in 5 council areas - RCT, Caerphilly, Merthyr, Us um - and 1 other.
This presentation was about our side of it.
1,089 people have been through the scheme in the last year ( but as I pointed out the computer only gave 1,088 when it came to a breakdown by age group. Always blame the machine, taht's what I say ).
One of the projects is Tools 4 UR Future. This has youngsters being trained in minor repairs and redecorating, such as plastering, bricklaying, painting and papering etc.
It's aimed at those young people who are far happier to work with their hands than sit on their backsides in an office ( or school for that matter ).
I've seen them in action and I'm very impressed - and told the Committee so.

Had a fair bit of community work to do.
Only 1 issue but a fair bit of work.
Warring neighbours is a nightmare, especially when one set isn't even a council tenant.
However, people need to realise that our Environmental Health Dept. dealing with noise nuisances from both Public and Private accommodation and the Council does have the power, properly sanctioned by a Court, to actually close down premises - even private ones - where extreme nuisance is being caused.
People also need to realise that sticking knives into footballs that come over thefence is actually Criminal Damage, just as the failure to return the ball constitutes theft.
Thank goodness for the Police - I'm leaving most of that to them.

Finished the week off today with a briefing and discussion with HR regarding CRB checks.
At the last FIP meeting 2 of my colleagues had queries on the process and I also had concerns that we were able to pick up where employees had convictions whilst in employment.
I've worked somewhere that one person was convicted of an offence that led to them having to sign the Sex Offenders Register, yet they carried on potentially working alone with office workers and in school buildings until someone pointed out a report on the case appeared in a local paper some two months previously.
A useful hour or so that will lead to some useful reviews of some of our procedures, and which also gave the 3 of us a measure of confidence.

Cheers.