Agenda item

CABINET MEMBER FOR POLICY, LOCALISM AND PARTNERSHIPS- UPDATE

Minutes:

Councillor Paul Myers, Cabinet Member for Policy, Localism and Partnerships addressed the meeting.

 

He said that his portfolio was a new one and designed to bring together a lot of the issues relating to liaison with the parishes.

 

The Parishes Charter Working Group was now ready to begin work and was looking to meet for the first time in November. This would be followed by a workshop in December. His aim was for a new and updated Parish Charter to create a framework for joint working between the Council and parishes. He hoped this would help solve some of the communications gaps, for example about the Parishes Sweeper Scheme, which had come to light at tonight’s meeting. The Parish Charter should set firm ground rules and allow discussions with individual parishes, which could move as fast or slow as they liked on particular issues, but with a level playing field and clarity about what was on offer.

 

He had attended the AGM of ALCA at the weekend and had been impressed by some of the ideas that are working in other parts of the country.

 

He congratulated South Stoke on completing the purchase of the Packhorse Pub as a community value asset. He understood that there were now eight of these assets in B&NES; training on them could be arranged for towns and parishes, if there was sufficient interest.

 

Work was progressing on the proposal for additional powers for Kelston Parish Meeting in connection with their broadband project.

 

Presentations had been made at Connecting Communities Forums on community libraries, which had sparked requests for presentations from other parishes. He encouraged delegates to attend presentations at the Forums. He suggested that it would be more productive to use the Parishes Liaison Meeting for detailed discussions, rather than for it to continue to be taken up with multiple presentations.

 

The content of Connect magazine was changing; the last issue contained more about what communities were doing. Connect was delivered to all households in B&NES and was an excellent means of communicating news and sharing ideas from parishes. It could be a means of making residents aware of Christmas events, for example.

 

In conclusion he said there was still time to make nominations for the Chairman’s Community Awards; the deadline was 25th November.

 

The Chairman said that every year the Chairman of the Council supported fund raising for charities. This was usually done by means of a large event with rather expensive tickets. He had decided on a different approach, and would sponsor a number of smaller events. He invited parishes to consider organising their own events to raise funds for the Chairman’s charity. He said that this year he was supporting three charities. The first was RICE (Royal Institute for the Care of Older People) a dementia research and treatment centre located at the RUH. The second was Designability, who provide Wizzybugs, small powered wheelchairs, to children under five with cerebral palsy. The third was Butterflies Haven at Keynsham, a voluntary group for children with autism and their families. He would welcome invitations from parishes to attend any events that they organised and would attend every one he could. They should send such invitations to the Chairman’s office.