Roy While –Wiltshire Councillor Melksham Without South 2011
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Roy While –Wiltshire Councillor Melksham Without South 2011/2012 Report for Annual Parish meeting. It certainly does not seem like another year has passed since my previous report. An eventful year – I would not wish it to be otherwise. It keeps me busy. I only wish that the financial situation was a little easier, but I think that we are going to have to continue to cut our cloth for some time yet. My work falls into three areas - first and foremost helping to look after the needs of my division and this I try to achieve working closely in partnership with the Parish Council and Bowerhill Residents Action Group supported by WC officers. We have had a bit of a challenge this past year as a result of the continuing transformation of services – I have had to build on my network of contacts and knowing where to go is vital. Then there is the Melksham wider community – I am a member of the Area Board which has a key role in strategy and development of services and finally my involvement in the wider Wiltshire Council activities. I have tried to attend all or most of your Council meetings and you have given me a ‘slot’ on the agenda which enables me to provide an update on WC activities and answer questions. I have distributed a couple of newsletters during the year introducing my website. I encourage people to get in touch with their concerns if they cannot get any joy with service managers. These cover a wide range of issues, including some who did not want a blue bin. There are the usual planning, parking and noise problems. I enjoy ‘helping those who help themselves’ and this particularly includes BRAG – the Bowerhill Residents Action Group who are making things happen and the Parish who achieve quite a lot with the available resources. To me the ‘big society’ is about encouraging local people to volunteer in developing the community. Hopefully the Parish Council, working with Persimmon will be able to achieve development of the community land .This will include a small amount of housing plus community benefit. I am currently trying to help move this along. I am calling interested parties together to see what can be done about lorry parking along Hampton Park West – though it is doubtful there is a quick fix. Turning to the Melksham wider community I am the Area Board (AB) representative on the SCOB – the shadow community operations board appointed by the AB to take the project forward. I have been appointed chair and am fortunate to have with me a superb team. The Melksham House site presents a number of opportunities (and some challenges!) which will help to change the face of the town centre and lift the community. We shall all benefit Substantial consultation was carried out by the Community Area Partnership last year and we are now augmenting this with more localised gathering of information /views. A website plus blog has been launched recently. www.melkshamcampus-scob.org.uk We want to get in touch with people; we want them to get in touch with us. We are working further on our communications plan with posters etc. Now Wiltshire Council...........I am chair of the Audit Committee – we have recently supported the transfer of the internal audit service to the South West Audit Partnership; vice chair of the western area planning committee, and a member of the appeals committee which is interesting and can be rewarding. I attend a number of service seminars e.g. help to live at home , library services, business rates relief, finance which help me to know what’s going on.. Recently we have considered the planning core strategy at full Council, and this is currently out for consultation. Perhaps the employment land allocation for Melksham is a little light - but this does not preclude future proposals coming forward. This week the Council agreed the 2012 budget and the financial plan, interesting reading The net spending, excluding schools, is almost £327millions. This is a balanced but challenging budget, and there are adequate reserves to cover unforeseen events and service pressures.. Income from government grants is slightly better than expected. In order to AVOID an increase in the council tax the Council has agreed a savings target of almost £29 millions. Most of this will come from procurement and changing the way we do things and becoming more efficient. I am not being political here but this is being achieved without slashing services such as some council have done. Investment in vulnerable childrens and older peoples services has increased Life has not been easy and there has been a reduction in the number of service managers, we now have just three corporate directors at top level. Front line services, however,. have been maintained. In another ‘life’ I was involved in the public sector for a number of years. There were difficult challenges at times, but nowhere near the scale currently being experienced. .