This week saw me chair my first ever overview and scrutiny committee for city renewal. Having spent alot of time recently researching, learning and preparing for this task i was excited at the prospect of taking forward this committee in scrutinising our city’s regeneration.
City renewal is probably the most important factor in Stoke’s evolution through physical building regeneration, jobs, employment and skills – things that i am quite passionate about and things that i know are on the verge of happening…The new city centre, bus station, fire stations, city centre improvements to roads, jobs and skills employment intervention programmes and the new central business district. All of these things will combine to make our city a better place to live and i want to be involved in making sure they happen in the best possible way!
Our first agenda item was around the local transport plan, the most important point for me is that research tells us that 60% currently travel by car. If we are trying to drive forward jobs and raise aspirational levels which im sure will include cars then what will happen to the roads that are already congested with more road users?
The second item was around executive housing, houses with a value over £400k a rarity in stoke on trent and something that is being put forward for us to look into. I was saddened to see myself a victim of constructive journalism in the sentinel the following day where it stated that i was not impressed with this. Actually my first impressions were negative however when looking at the bigger picture if it costs us nothing as a council to explore it then lets get exploring! The journalist had just written the first thing i had said and not included the other 95% of my generally supportive message!
The local enterprise zone was then dealt with simply for information only and we asked for information to be provided at the next meeting.
Our work programme selected to begin our first task and finish group with the city council’s relationship with the theatres and how this could be better managed or arranged.
The following day i was upset to hear Mike Barnes raising in full council the fact that 4 documents were missing from the meeting, This saddened me as i had put alot of hard work and effort into this meeting. The claim he makes is also incorrect..
Firstly there could possibly only be 3 documents…
• Minutes of the informal meeting – Something which keeps being brought up as if something wrong is going on? A totally crazy comment when this was simply a preperation meeting to run more efficiently throughout the year. We did not scrutinise anything we merely arranged some topics for the work programme and minutes for this meeting would not be for him as a member of the public.
• Plans of executive housing locations – Not for public documents as this is still in its feasability stage and no formal arrangements have been made.
• Details of our membership of industrial communities alliance – This was brought forward by an officer with a view to saving over £10,000 from our membership of an outside body that we are unsure of the benefits in exchange for membership. I asked for a briefing note so we could make a decision as to our membership but the information even though requested would not be available for a couple of weeks (This itself leads me to question the validity of our membership if the organisation we pay a substantial amount of money to cannot respond promptly)…
So in reality the only document could actually be this one and i only brought it forward because i thought we could be more efficient as the membership is up for renewal soon….
Anyway im looking forward to the next one and all the exciting things in the pipeline in terms of city regeneration!
