NON EMERGENCY telephone calls to police the number are now made by dialling “101”.
There will be flyers and posters going up soon but I thought you might find this useful, please feel free to pass it on.
Remember, 101 is for non emergency calls ……………999 in an emergency situation remains unchanged. Click on the blue graphic for the police web page on this.
Vince's Happy Face
Just after the Election, Dr Cable was made President of the Board of Trade and Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills.
Despite these accolades, there wasn’t much smiling going on.
At the subsequent party conference, he said people had accused him of being grumpy because he wasn’t made Chancellor. He said, “what people don’t realise is … this IS my happy face” (to huge applause).
However, as this recently leaked picture reveals, there are clearly different levels of happiness and his visit to Yeovil in August put a proper smile on his face. Happy days.
One of the successes of the coalition over the last year has been to oversee a massive increase in the number of apprenticeships. In the first year of the coalition 103,000 extra apprenticeships have been created – twice the number originally planned. This is not only a positive story generally, but it also helps show the determination of the coalition to turn round the economy and particularly to support the younger unemployed. You can read more about the story here on the BBC website.
The Payments Council is today (12 July 2011) announcing that cheques will continue for as long as customers need them and the target for possible closure of the cheque clearing in 2018 has been cancelled!
The “Larkhill Open Space” is well used but the project is far from complete. I sometimes call it “shoestring park”, which seems to get more and more appropriate the way budgets are going.
Discussing the decaying infants play equipment with John
Back in 2005, the public consultation slated the small children’s play area off Akeman Close after much anti-social behaviour. It was removed.
If you look at the Parish notice board (by the lower bridge), you’ll see that the King Arthur Drive play area was then identified as needing to grow to cover all ages and the extra load from Percivale, etc.
The old "multi-play" unit
Although the KAD play area is heavily used, it provides fairly poor quality play – at times it’s little more than somewhere to “hang out”. Part of the problem is the equipment which is to an older design and in places, decaying. There also isn’t much variety and the area is having to cope with about three times the number of people it was designed for.
Although the adjoining woods provide some excellent “free play”, that is only really attractive for certain ages and only in spring/summer.
The kick-about area is kept fairly tidy but the surface slopes unevenly (it is the top of an old landfill which has settled over the years). It would be nice to improve the grass surface.
During the recent election campaign we heard a lot “on the doorstep” about anti-social behaviour in the Larkhill area, often reporting “bored youths and older children”. Of course, very little of this gets reported through formal systems, perhaps because people don’t like to bother the Police.
Getting the local perspective
John and I have been speaking to local residents to get their views. What we’re hoping to do at this stage is to arrange a detailed consultation later this year, with a view to refurbishment early next year. Of course, everything about the LOSP project is done in conjunction with Brympton Parish Council, who are a key funding partner and who normally take the lead on consultation. We all need to make sure that whatever is done is going to deliver attractive play without becoming a problem for neighbours.
All we have to do now is find the funding …
We chose Ric Pallister to be Leader of the Council and he has made me a Cabinet member with the “Regulatory and Democratic Services” portfolio to look after. (The SSDC Press Release can be seen here and the full list of appointments is here).
John Richardson, your other Ward Councillor, was elected to the important Audit Committee. This committee makes sure that taxpayers money is spent wisely and that it is all accounted properly.
Of course, for both of us these are distractions from our primary task, which is to ensure that Brympton residents are looked after and that their voice is heard. That is the real honour, being elected as Brympton’s representatives.
A couple of years ago, I was interviewed by BBC Radio. We started recording outside on the cycle path which was once the bed of a Victorian high-speed rail link – Yeovil’s always been a town of leadership in technology. Travel one way and the path takes you to Pittards with it’s specialist leathers. The other direction takes you past AgustaWestland, Boeing and BAE Systems to Screwfix, Silverline and many other leading companies, yet sat here, in the middle of town, is Foundry House.
We went inside because the BBC likes its interviews to have “ambience”. Walking on crushed glass and echoing our way through the empty ground floor, I explained that the building had been listed after a public campaign to save this iconic glove factory. That had constrained the Council’s plan for regenerating the town centre but we had still found a way to launch work, in the depths of a recession. We had persuaded the Department for Communities and Local Government that we could create a town centre regeneration project, centred on a listed building and achieving the very highest standards of energy efficiency. In turn, they had agreed to grant-aid the project provided we threw the doors open and showed the world how it was to be done.
The development has been scaled back slightly … it turned out the Minister didn’t actually have the money to give away! It also turned out that the site was a contamination nightmare and so we ended up without affordable housing in this phase. Nonetheless, The Glove Factory remains a bold statement, a success when others are failing. Hopefully entrepreneurs will see that Yeovil has heart and confidence … and bring their business investment here.
You may have wondered what’s happening. After six weeks of non-stop door-stepping by John and I, accompanied by leaflets and papers galore, you’ve not heard a peep for days.
We’re currently busy forming the administration, confirming leadership and who will get various key jobs. This takes a little longer than it does at “Number 10” because we have no staff and many of your councillors have “day jobs”. Instead, we are doing this by phone, e-mail and informal meetings.
On the 19th you’ll see the Council AGM in my diary. This is the final stage of that process where the positions, such as the ten members of the Executive (or Cabinet), are formally confirmed by full Council. Watch this space.
Until then, officers of the Council are continuing to work for the existing team.
I am pleased to say that after a tough campaign, John and I remain your District Councillors.
Now that we know the full story, it’s clear we were right to be worried. A very effective campaign led by Graham Pritchard (who also enjoyed a very strong personal following in the ballot) meant that part way through the day we were neck-and-neck and Brympton’s two seats meant that control of the Council was in serious doubt.
In the late afternoon, both sides went all out to find their missing voters and some people (especially neighbours and friends) had a very unexpected late evening knock on the door. I even met Veronica doing my own street.
The response we got to the “knock-up” was brilliant and the last, crucial 133 votes were all cast in the last hour, with the very last voter arriving at 9:58 pm!
The results are:
With good weather and both parties trying hard, turnout was a full 8% of the electorate up on the 2007 election.
John and I would particularly like to thank all those kind people who took a moment to say a friendly word on the doorstep, or at the Polling Station after casting their vote. “Feel-good” moments are rare in politics and those personal thanks are the best of the best.
The SSDC elections have, happily, resulted in no change in political control.
Key here in Yeovil is the loss of two seats in Yeovil South (due to the vote being split with Labour and the Green Party) and one in the Cokers (under an unwarranted fear of development). For the first time in a while, there will be three Conservatives on SSDC’s Area South Committee. My main fear is that the collaborative, cross-bench working which South Somerset is famous for may be the price we pay for this power struggle.
Other than that we had a fairly robust result and South Somerset DC remains the blob of orange on the UK local government map.
The results for the 39 district wards, showing the number of votes given to each candidate and who was elected for each ward, are on SSDC’s Local elections results page. The district turnout was 47.66%.
John and I will now move on to deliver our pledges and to serve all of you to the best of our ability.
Peter Seib, 6th May 2011