It’s flaming June already….

by Prue Bray on 5 June, 2012

What with the election aftermath and Winnersh Meadows opening, and writing Winnersh Matters parish magazine, and some diamond thingie, haven’t had much time to post lately.  However, we are now well in to the new municipal year (which actually started in May).   What lies ahead this year?

There will be signficant planning policy to deal with:  the Managing Development Delivery development plan document is coming out for consultation.  That shows where the houses not in the Strategic Development Locations will go, as well as covering general policies.    The future of the library service will be decided  – although the date of the decision is yo-yoing in and out of the Executive Forward Plan.     We have concerns about primary and secondary school place planning.   The Council needs to make progress on affordable housing, and to demonstrate that it is doing the right thing with regard to the regeneration of Wokingham town centre. 

All of these major decisions have one thing in common:  they will be taken by a very small number of Executive members, with extremely limited opportunities for anyone else to influence them.    The Liberal Democrats have talked many times about the lack of proper consultation and discussion, leading to poor decisions.   We think that it would be a good idea for the council to look at its decision-making structures.  Perhaps the Council should take advantage of powers in the Localism Act to give backbenchers more of a role?  This is something we intend to explore this year. 

One particular piece of poor decision-making is the new waste collection contract.  The performance of the new contractor has been poor, and the terms of the contract itself are far from what we would have wanted.  We have had 1000 responses so far to our survey on waste and recycling, responses which give us confidence we have the support of a large section of the public over this.   Reviewing and improving the waste collection service is one of our priorities for this year.  In order for a review to be worthwhile, however, the majority group needs to be prepared to listen.   But are they?  Only time will tell…..

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