Monday, saw a meeting of the development plan select, to agree the statement of community involvement prior to it going before the council’s executive.
Also considered was a presentation on how conservation area’s are reviewed, and how in order to meet the latest government target on the issue, the council will in my view need to look at some additional resources to ensure we are able to produce the necessary information require to do these reviews.
One issue I raised (part in jest) was about when 60’s style council housing will be considered for conservation, and whilst the style of housing on Gamesley isn’t due for consideration yet, there are some area’s of council housing from the 30’s, through to the 50’s there are already part of some of the conservation area’s.
Tuesday, saw the end of the Mayor show or annual council, as it is more often know, where the mayor is elected for the year and all the chairs and committee places are formally decided.
This year’s was more poignant as it saw the end of the my Dad’s (Cllr Robert Mckeown) term of office as Mayor, which was well noted with a vote of thanks highlighting some of the things done during the year by Cllr Vicky Mann from Hadfield.
This year’s new Mayor Derek Udale, is quite a popular choice having served as deputy mayor for the last three years.
The rest of the business was fairly standard, although the Labour Group did achieve success on two motion’s, one with regards to the police, the other on supporting the work of the New Mills Town Council on developing a community facility, more details on both are available at www.labourhighpeak.info
In terms of community place, in addition to my existing committee’s (Development Plan Select, Environment Select, Audit and Regulatory and Licensing) I am now also a member of the Corporate Select Committee, which reviews a lot of the cross cutting issue’s on the council, including work around the budget.
Wednesday, saw good news in the form of an announcement from the Department of Health in relation to where Glossopdale will sit in terms of Primary Care Trusts.
The new proposals consulted on earlier in the year, could have seen Glossopdale, moved from it current based as part of a Tameside and Glossop based setup to a Derbyshire wide setup. The new setup would not necessarily meet local needs as well and would most likely reduce what influence Glossopdale would have on the health and hospital services we receive from Tameside and Manchester.
This lead to a campaign which saw strong public support for the status quo to be retained and for Glossopdale to remain where it was, this campaign was also strongly supported by various health professionals along with cross party support locally and by the MP.
In fact out of the 1200 + responses to the consultation only 3 were in favor of any change to the current arrangements with unfortunately one of those 3 been Derbyshire County Council.
Fortunately however the announcement has taken into account the views of local people and the various professionals with the decision been for Glossopdale to remain where it is as part of a Tameside and Glossop based primary care trust.
The important thing now will be to ensure that all the various bodies involved in providing health services work better together to improve local health and the facilitates for health within Glossopdale.
No meetings for the rest of the week, so on Friday, I went to see the Divinci Code, which has created a bit of a storm in the media / with the church for the alternative view that it presents.
Whilst not necessarily agreeing with the view of the book / the film, it was in my view a good film conversation from a book. The reason I say this is that it stuck fairly closely to the book, but removed enough bits of the story and contained enough action and entertainment to keep the audience entertained for the two hours or so that it was on.
The only thing that I will say about the uproar from various people about the content of the film, is that the publishers must be very happy with all that free publicity.
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