Last week - a brief (ish) review

This week started with a meeting of the social inclusion committee, that I substituted at, items on the agenda included police call centre, children’s health care services, and community safety.

Now one of the reasons for attending this meeting was with regards to the police call centres, (based in Chesterfield and Ripley,) because last year when the police had attended this committee, the answers from the police officer in charge of the centre, did not satisfy the members present. The reason that some of the councillors were unhappy is that they felt (amongst other things) that proper systems were not in place to be able to identify some of the smaller places in the High Peak where people are calling from. This is as opposed to the local knowledge that was in place when calls were going locally to Buxton or Glossop.

However unfortunately the officer that attended (the same one as last year) was still unable and I think perhaps a little unwilling to satisfy members present that our concerns were being dealt with, and that the experience of local people using the scheme will improve, this is at odds to the local senior officers of the police who will usually do what they can to try and address local concerns.

Another issue that will now go to the executive for a final decision was around the theme of children’s health services, and the current consultation exercise going on across Greater Manchester on that theme. One of the main issue’s for the High Peak is around whether services are provided in future at both Tameside Hospital which is in the preferred option and for those in Buxton and the south at Macclesfield Hospital which is currently not within the preferred option.

Well after discussion, we decided the best way was to sit on the fence and recommend to the Council’s executive that the council’s response to the consultation is to support the preferred option to the consultation, with the addition of support for the retention of services at Macclesfield as well as Tameside.

Thursday, saw the public meeting over the proposed housing schemes, more details on this coming shortly !

Friday saw this month’s High Peak Labour Party meeting, which was also the Annual Meeting, no real changes, but a good debate on issue’s around the current education bill.