In this morning’s Working Group meeting, we had a draft plan of proposal to move the market into Lees Yard which we worked on. A further (final ?) version will be brought back to us shortly. We’ll need to check the costs and urge Calderdale Council to fund it. It does look promising but it needs to be good enough to consult with market traders, local shops and local people. A big step forward, nonetheless !

This promises to be another interesting evening. Vegetable casserole and puddings £10. Bring your own drink. Any profits to the campaign fund

Friday 9 October: 7.30pm at Luddenden Civic Institute

contact: janetbattye@cix.co.uk

Two good things that came out of last night’s meeting:

1. Support for refugees, and

2. Decision to begin the process of getting Rose Street registered as a “community asset”

Tonight’s Town Council meeting lasted just over 30minutes. I’d expected that 3 items would stimulate some debate involving the whole Council. I managed to get to speak on and second the motion supporting refugees, but the Mayor didn’t allow any discussion of a short report back on a recent Town and Parish Council Liaison meeting nor something on a Calderdale Council Scrutiny Panel (relating to Flooding, I think) citing the decision taken by Labour Councillors (in the majority) at the last Council meeting rejecting our proposition that there should be a regular “Councillors reporting back” item on the agenda of each full Council meeting.

A member of the public, interestingly, asked why Committee meetings finish at 9pm. Why, indeed ? The recent General Purposes Committee started 10 minutes late and the Chair insisted on closing it at 9pm with a long list of business outstanding. I’m used to meetings doing whatever business is necessary. The Mayor’s response was something about letting staff go home …..

Some more good news this week ….Calderdale Council has just announced that it will take part in the government scheme to care for refugees from Syria and a Press Release has just been issued to that effect. It seems likely that they’ll start to arrive shortly and, because they’re in the scheme, will get support in housing, schools etc etc and be able to live here for 5 years in the first place.

I met the Manager of St Augustine’s Centre in Halifax today (and I’ll visit it again soon): it’s really impressive what they do – they see about 800 people/month and, besides running a Nursery, they have 4 staff but 70 volunteers. They can see and try and help anyone who comes to them regardless of their immigration status.

Local people are still contacting me offering to help – which is brilliant – and I’ll keep pressing the Council yo direct them to services who can make best use of them.

The Good News as the Cabinet meeting started was that they bowed to pressure and reason and withdrew the proposal to consult on moving Cragg Vale school down to Calder High school. Not a good idea at all – the government seems likely to give the Council a substantial grant to do remedial work on Cragg Vale school building but the Council appeared to want to use some of it on Calder High school building (also in a bad state of repair needing a lot of work doing to it). But Cragg Vale school is a small, rural, community school that parents have chosen to educated their child. And that’s it, I’m pleased to say, Not quite the end of the story because it’s important that the work is done and the money spent on the school.

The Bad News was that charging for testing private water supplies was called “esoteric” by the (Labour) Cabinet member. Not for those 1,863 households that are dependent on it (including us). I reminded him that it’s stuff of life for us and that we have to pay for it all ourselves but they’ve gone ahead and increased the charges anyway (and reserved the right, apparently, for the Director to change the charges if need be).

A number of items were recommended to Council for approval including the Medium Term Financial Strategy. Exempt items included the Council’s scheme to enable children in care to “stay put” in their foster placements after they officially leave care at 18.

I like going to conferences, seminars etc because I enjoy learning more and meeting and talking to people about the topic and just finding out more about what’s going on (so that I can take both some theory and practice back). And this conference was better than most because I really did learn more about an important topic, the speakers were all interesting, and the audience was very mixed. Thank you, Minding the Gap.

We assume that work is just a good thing in itself – but the most intriguing piece of research by the Work Foundation appears to show that while being out of work is bad for you, being in poor quality work isn’t as good as people might have hoped …. so the challenge is to put the Marmot “Reducing Health Inequalities” proposal to create fair employment and good work for all.

So the issue that I take back for us to work on in Calderdale is the Workplace Wellbeing charter as promoted by Public Health England.

At last the beginning of a response. The petition is being debated in Parliament today. I hope that Tim gets a chance to speak and I wait to see what the reaction is of our elected Parliamentarians. I hope that they’re listening to local people like those in my Council ward who, overwhelmingly, want the country to respond.

I’m pleased to say that Calderdale Council are responding to the new government intiative asking Councils to offer to take refugees from Syria – with the priority being children. I think that we can do more but this is a beginning.

The refugee crisis across Europe seems to be growing and continuous – and shameful that we seem to be doing so little to help here. So last week I signed the petition to Parliament: “accept more asylum seekers and increase support for refugee migrants in the UK”. This has escalated – 250,000 had signed when I did and now it’s over 400,000. And I am disapppointed that Cameron’s statement today was only about taking 20,000 refugees into the UK over 5 years.

I’ve been heartened by the number of emails over the weekend from local people urging me (and the Council) to do more. I raised this in a Leaders’ meeting with the Chief Executive today. It took a bit of pushing but I’m expecting the Council to start to get its act together. Key issues will be the need to prepare long-term for the refugees who come to live here – housing, schools, English language classes. Really important to work closely with local community groups and local people whose continuing support will be important.

I visited the collection of clothes and household good that some good women are organising in Hebden Bridge Town Hall – to take to people at Calais.

And I’m planning on going to St Augustine’s Centre on Wednesday to understand better what they provide. I was impressed by a presentation they did recently. I’ve been there before but it’ll be good to go back under the present circumstances.

The six weeks school summer holiday has been surprisingly busy …..

At Colden Junior and Infant school where I’m Chair of Governors, our new classroom has been completed and is now ready for the children to come back to school. The old Head Teacher has retired and a new one is taking up post. So it’s a new start ….I

I’ve been “walking my ward” in Hebden Bridge, asking local people for their views especially on parking (what can we do about it ? their ideas are largely the same as mine, reduce the number of cars around by encouraging people to use the trains, buses and walking, and provide more out of town parking) and health (largely satisfied with local services but concerned if hospital treatment becomes too far away to get to easily).

My real disappointment has been Calderdale Council’s decision to move the Customer First service out of Hebden Bridge Town Hall into the library where it seems that it’ll be delivered from the desk (not as confidential). This mustn’t detract from the Town Hall as the “community hub” for the area.

I spent a lovely afternoon at Wainsgate Baptist Chapel talking with the Historic Chapels Trust who own this important chapel. There’s a strong local committee who are passionate about getting more essential work done on the building. I joined in a photo of local people in Blackshawhead celebrating 200 years of the Methodist chapel. I’ve attended Wadsworth Parish Council to try and help them get an important local road improved, and make Keighley Road safer. I’ve been backwards and forwards along Lumbutts Road seeing local residents. I’ve participated in a site visit/Parish Council meeting in Heptonstall (more about that later).

I’ve had a number of meetings with other agencies (Council Officers, Police etc) about a number of local concerns – 4x4s on moorland, neighbourhood nuisance. We’re still working on designs for moving the market in Hebden Bridge and the implications of this for local shops and traffic congestion. I’ve been to Planning Committee several times with some disappointing results (is it getting to be more difficult for local people to have their real concerns listened to?). Most recently, we’ve got a decision deferred for a necessary site visit so members of the Planning Committee can see for themselves. But we did manage to get one application refused by Officers.

At last the Todmorden Development Board will have local people on it as well as Councillors – local people have expertise and experience to add to the role of Councillors and Officers. There’s still a lot to be done – there’s some progress with the Town Hall but, unlike Hebden Bridge, it’s not yet open all day every day. The controversy over the proposed sale of Rose Street continues. I’m pleased to see that Tod Pride has a list of issues that it wants to see tackled to improve the town – but at least there is some action on some of the derelict sites with Calderdale Council finally using its s215 powers.

On Calderdale Council, the Cabinet meeting in August was more interesting than some – concerns still about the future governance of Pennine Housing which the Council set up in 2000 and transferred its housing stock, but now they say they need to become more commercial. Strategies and Policies on Homelessness, Tourism (Visitor Economy) and Volunteering were agreed.

For Children and Young People, I’m pushing the Council to make sure that the Orangebox has a sustainable future. It should be a good place for young people. I’ve done two (reg 44) visits to a children’s home and sat on two Fostering Panels. We’ve started the recruitment process for a new Head of Learning and Schools.

Quite a bit of my time is also taken up as Chair of the Health and Wellbeing Board: in my former/professional life in social work, I’ve always spent a lot of time in inter-agency/multi-disciplinary meetings and enjoy partnership working. The Big Issue at the moment, of course, is the future arrangements for local and hospital health services. So I’ve been to all sorts of meetings and events principally about the development of Care Closer to Home. Undoubtedly a good thing, especially if we can base more services in the big building of Todmorden Health Centre. I’ve just come back from Expo2015 which was a really exciting “event” exploring new developments and ideas in health care.

And I’m enjoying the first few months as a newly-elected member of Todmorden Town Council: as Liberal Democrats, we’re trying to make sure that the Council involves and listens to local people, and takes a leading role in developing (and providing ?) services in Todmorden. It’s got an important role in standing up for local people. It’s got to press on with starting the Neighbourhood Plan to help realise the potential of the area.