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Considering how long it has been since my last post, I think an obvious New Year's resolution for me must be to update this site a bit more often - along with my usual resolution to give up smoking (again) and be generally more healthy. The week between Christmas and New Year was quite restful for me - a chance to catch up on sleep, if not paperwork (which I don't think I will ever be fully up to date with unless I employ someone to help me with it!) but things are starting to get back to normal now, and the diary is beginning to fill up again.
There are some interesting scrutiny reviews coming up - one proposed by Transportation on Building Bus Use (there was a very good review last month on Travelling to School, but I can't help but think we need one on Travelling to Work as well), and a review on Anti Social Behaviour for Local Services Scrutiny which will start soon. I'm hopeful that this year will see some interesting developments in Kingstanding as well - there are a lot of projects starting, changing or opening soon which will have some real impact on the area so I am trying to keep on top of things as much as possible for now.
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The Birmingham Post leads today with this story about residents being asked to pay for the cost of scaffolding on properties damaged by the tornado earlier this year. It doesn't specify who is providing the scaffolding, but we have had ongoing problems with scaffolding for council house repairs in Kingstanding for some time. Either scaffolding has not been available from Morrisons (the repairs contractor) over the last few months "because of the tornado" or once it is up it is not removed once the work is done, but is left because apparently Morrisons aren't charged for the length of time the scaffolding is there, but just for the initial set up (or that is what we have been told). So why would the Council be trying to charge people on a weekly basis for scaffolding when the repairs contractors apparently have a better deal? I find it hard to believe that Morrisons are apparently getting something for nothing, but surely there is a better solution than trying to squeeze money out of people who have already lost so much before they have even had a chance to get back on their feet.
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Unfortunately the busier I am, the less time I have for updating this site. The last few weeks have been particularly frantic for various reasons - leaflet deliveries, lots of meetings both in the ward and in the council house, and preparing for an AGM at work which means reviewing the entire year's work to date.
A couple of highlights from recent work; I attended the Community Steering Group at The College High School a couple of weeks back. A little over a year ago, the school was pretty much in freefall - GCSE results stood at 11% A-C grades and there were numerous vacancies. This year's student got 34% A-C grades, attendance is up, truancy is down, we have a full complement of staff, the school is bidding for specialist Performing Arts status and a complete rebuild- lots of positive stories in the press, and congratulations from the Minister just go to show that we are getting somewhere with this.
We had a final evidence gathering session this morning on our recycling review, with presentations about procurement, sustainability, and from an organisation called Urban Mines which aims to reuse waste materials in a beneficial way. One of the thoughts that occurred to me during this presentation was that whilst many products now advertise the fact that they are recyclable, there is no standard mark for advertising which products contain recycled components. I was thinking of something like the Fairtrade mark; something that could indicate adherence to a certain standard in terms of use of recycled materials. I'm not sure who would actually lauch something like that, but I liked the idea - especially because of lot of recycled goods have a potential for non-obvious everyday applications.
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One of the increasingly common problems that people come to see us about in Kingstanding is homelessness and the homeless applications process. Whilst every case is different, one of the worst I'd come across since I became a Councillor was this case, which was compounded by errors made by the Housing Department over a period of almost 7 months. This story was published on the front page of the Great Barr Observer on Friday 30th September. On the following Monday morning, an offer of accommodation was made - the offer was accepted and she moved in last week. Evidently I should try the media approach with all my homeless cases as it seems to yield results, where months of telephone calls, emails and letters on behalf of a constituent have failed and been ignored.
Throughout the entire homeless application process, including moves between B&B and hostel accommodation and the two offers, the Housing Department failed to send any letters - no confirmation of a homeless decision, no letters about offers, and despite repeated requests no explanation as to what was going on after offers had been withdrawn. I'm still waiting for a response to my own questions about what went wrong in this case - the fact that they finally got something right shouldn't change the need for answers and assurances that no-one else will have the same problems.
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Of all the nights to be locked out of the Advice Bureau, it would be the night when it's tipping down with rain. Still, two people had braved the weather and since it was an issue better seen than told I did go and have a look at some problem trees..not an uncommon problem in Birmingham given all the Lime and Beech trees we have around the city.
I had my first meeting of the Local Services and Community Safety Scrutiny this morning, having rejoined the Committee after a four month absence. We are told that until the Lib Dems get around to appointing a new Cabinet member, Mike Whitby himself will be overseeing the portfolio. We have asked if he could attend the next meeting, but we were assured that the vacancy will be filled by then - though no suggestions so far as to who will get the job..
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Tomorrow's Local Services scrutiny meeting should be interesting, given that the Cabinet Member has not only been sacked, he has also resigned from the Liberal Democrats, and therefore has no issues about going to the press. I'll be waiting to see who gets the Cabinet promotion now..
We're back on schedule again now after the August lull. I went down to Greenwich a couple of weeks back to look at recycling for a Transportation review- Greenwich has a facility for sorting dry waste (paper, glass, tins, and plastic) which looks really interesting. It's almost all automated sorting, with just a few human 'pickers' to help the process along, and it's a very impressive set up. Apparently we already do send some of our waste from Birmingham to another one of these facilities further north, but it would be a real boost to recycling levels here if we had one of our own (and it would also resolve the stupid problem of our recycled waste having to be transported around the country in order to be processed).
Last week I had the odd experience of going to an open evening for College High - odd because I haven't been to an open evening since I was a prospective pupil myself. College High is bidding to become a specialist Performing Arts school, so they held a launch event for the bid, an open evening and a parents evening all on the same night, so as to have as many people there as possible.The bid launch went well - the school has a strong record on Performing Arts, with students doing work with the RSC and other organisations, but they do need to raise £50,000 in order to go ahead with the bid, so I think this event will be the first of many. I didn't manage to get very far on my tour of the school - we started off in the Learning Support rooms, and as a SEN Governor I had so many questions that I only got to go to three rooms - on the upside I now have three invitations to go back and see the work in action, so it was a productive evening!
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Yesterday was a long day of meetings. We started with Transportation and Street Services Scrutiny in the morning, where typically there was a row when we got to the 'report' on the Tyburn bus lane; then we failed to get an answer as to why the Tory-Lib Dem coalition feels the need to spend £125,000 on a second feasibility report on the Underground option when they have yet to publish the findings of the first report becuase the question was deemed to be 'too political'. This was followed by full Council - our first under the new meeting structure. This meant that Mike Whitby gave his 'State of the City' Report, which principally consisted of listing all his overseas visits.
We also had a new section for 'Issues of the Day', which allows councillors to raise topical issues. It's an odd format - the Councillor raising the issue gets five minutes (depending on the number of issues raised - it's a half hour slot, so it might be fun to see what happens if we all raised an 'Issue of the Day') to speak, and then one other member (at the discretion of the Lord Mayor) gets a chance to respond. So we had a curiously disjointed speech from Bruce Lines on the Licensing Act, a scaremongering speech from Deidre Alden on the fuel crisis that isn't (at least according to today's news), a motion of congratulation to the England Cricket Team , and another non-answer on the Metro.
We did manage to get a motion submitted by John Hemming ruled out of order, on the grounds that a motion about Ken Livingstone's current troubles with the Standards Board was not a suitable issue for debate in Birmingham's City Council Meeting; we then lost our motion proposing the establishment of a relief fund to help to provide assistance to some of the residents who have lost their homes and businesses due to the Tornado last month. Labour members in those wards have been working with community organisations to try to establish an appeal fund, but it really does need the leadership and perhaps more importantly, the independence that an appeal headed by the Lord Mayor would have. Instead the Tories and the Lib Dems have told Birmingham residents to get on and sort it out themselves.
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