Yesterday I attended my first meeting of the Warwickshire Waste Partnership, which brings together elected members and officers from both the county council (the waste disposal authority) and the five districts and boroughs (the waste collection authorities). From first impressions the rate of progress towards real partnership working has been painfully slow! Liberal Democrat policy is for a single waste collection and disposal authority for Warwickshire, which would be a far more efficient structure in my view.

However, the rates of improvement in the waste management statistics (recycling rates etc) in 2008/09 were good, and improved targets for 2009/10 and 2010/11 were agreed at the meeting. This further reinforces the need to downsize the waste growth projections currently underpinning Project Transform (replacement of the Coventry incinerator in 2016).

I also attended my first meeting of the Project Transform Members Advisory Panel last Friday. Important undertakings were made that the ‘reference project’ (a 305,000 tonnes incinerator) is not a done deal in terms of either sizing or technology. I shall be playing an active role in overseeing this major project over the next 4 years.

Last week I attended an exhibition showcasing the achievements of pupils attending Warwickshire’s Early Intervention Service Teaching and Learning centres during the past year. Elizabeth Featherstone, Head of Service for Family and Community, showed me round the exhibition.
The work exhibited is by students who have either been reintegrated back into mainstream schools, participated in work-based learning or improved their learning behaviour through working together, or had success in GCSE exams.

Very impressive - some real talent on display.
 

Tonight I heard that Warwickshire County Council is to sign up to the national “10:10” climate change initiative launched at the Tate Modern in London last month.

As an individual I signed up on Day 1 of the campaign, and am committed to trying to reduce my personal carbon footprint by 10% by the end of 2010.

At last week’s full Council meeting I asked the Leader of the Council whether the council would sign up to the initiative. Today I heard that the decision had been taken to follow the example of other councils by joining in this nationwide campaign.

An initiative like 10:10 is an opportunity for public leadership, and momentum is all important. I’m very glad that my question has accelerated Warwickshire’s thinking and had a positive outcome. Now it needs to deliver the results!

My blood boiled seeing our local Tory MP on TV on Monday night, standing in front of Kenilworth Fire Station and promising to fight its closure.

 What hypocrites the Tories are! They have a dominant majority on the County Council, and it’s the County Council that is proposing to axe seven fire stations across Warwickshire, including that in Kenilworth.

What’s that old adage - you can’t fool all of the people all of the time? Well, they’re trying to!

Yesterday Warwickshire Fire & Rescue Service (WFRS) announced proposals to close seven of the current twenty fire stations serving the county, and to merge two others. Included in the list of planned closures is Kenilworth Fire Station, located in the heart of my county electoral division.

These proposals have been known to county councillors since a Cabinet meeting in July which approved them for consultation, but until yesterday we were unable to say anything publicly about them.

I released the following statement to local media today:-

The news of the planned closure of Kenilworth Fire Station has come as a great shock, but less of a surprise. Rumours have been circulating for a long time, and the Conservatives running the County Council have done residents a great disservice by keeping their plans and intentions secret for so long. The plan was agreed by the Cabinet in July, but it is only now that county councillors are free to talk about it.

The documents released yesterday show that Kenilworth Fire Station costs ? 95,000 a year to run, or about ? 4 a head for every man, woman and child in the area it covers. This seems remarkably good value to me, and a small price to pay for the security and peace of mind that people get from having their own local fire station based here in the town.

The Fire Service state that they can meet the County Council’s current response standards (10 minutes urban, 20 minutes rural) for the Kenilworth area from the fire station based in Leamington’s busy and congested town centre. Kenilworth residents will find that very hard to accept, especially given the traffic delays between the two towns at peak times. It seems that no allowance is being made for traffic delays, or for other unforeseen events such as road closures, flooding etc.

The plan even assumes that the whole of Burton Green, at the northern edge of my county division, will be covered from Leamington fire station, despite the fact that it adjoins the city of Coventry and is only a few minutes away from a major West Midlands fire station.

There is now a twelve week consultation period before the final version of the plan is drawn up and presented to the Cabinet in January for decision. My promise to local residents is that I will use that time to make sure that proper and effective consultation takes place, and that their voices are heard by those making the decisions. Let’s be clear though - it’s not the Fire Service who will make the ultimate decisions, but the Conservative-run County Council.

Since June I’ve become Environment & Economy spokesperson for the Liberal Democrat group on the County Council. I still retain an interest in the children’s agenda, but a Stratford colleague Peter Balaam (an ex teacher) has taken on the spokesperson responsibility in this area.

I’m very excited by the challenge of my new role, because it encompasses many of the big issues and challenges facing the council. Not least of these is “Project Transform”, a joint project between the County Council and neighbouring authorities in Coventry and Solihull to build a major new facility to process residual municipal waste, to replace the current Coventry incinerator.

This is a huge project, costing over £1 billion over the lifetime of the proposed facility, and it is vital that the right decisions are taken on financial, technical and environmental grounds.

I have been appointed to a Members Advisory Panel for Project Transform, made up of three elected members from each of the three local authority partners, and our first meeting is next week on 25th September. Watch this space …..

On Thursday I managed to hold my county seat by the massive majority of 15 votes!! I’d hoped for a bit more breathing room after winning by 56 votes four years ago, but it wasn’t to be. Kenilworth Abbey has always been like this ….

Anyway, I’m extremely grateful to everyone who voted for me, and I look forward to an interesting four more years on what will be a very different County Council. The Conservatives now have overall control with 39 of the 62 seats, and two net Liberal Democrat gains put us on 12 seats ahead of Labour’s 10 - so we are now the official opposition.

The new Lib Dem county group has an initial meeting tomorrow, and then the first full council meeting on 23rd June will establish the shape and structure of the new council. Will the Tories rejig the committees, and will they grab all the chair positions? We’ll have to wait and see …..

I helped to launch the Children In Care Council at Warwickshire County Council yesterday, and to sign the ‘Warwickshire Pledge’ which sets out our promises and commitments to looked after children and young people. It was a great event compered by ‘Dreadlockalien’ (aka poet Richard Grant),, and with graffiti artist Richard Inwood helping the young people create their new logo in a giant graffiti mural.

Coincidently, the launch happened on the same day as the publication of the MPs’ Select Committee report into children in care, which highlighted the extent to which our society is still failing so many of these vulnerable children and young people. The Warwickshire Pledge is a good set of words backed by a lot of good intentions, but it will be actions and results by which it will be judged in the end.

Yesterday I went to collect the nomination forms for the County Council elections on 4th June and to receive a briefing from the local Electoral Services officers. Although the formal notice of poll is not until 28th April, getting the forms in my hands made it all seem suddenly very real!

This year’s county campaign is a month later than usual, and of longer duration, due to the Euro elections being held at the same time. In recent years the County elections have coincided with parliamentary elections, so it will be interesting to see how things are different this time.

I was delighted to win the backing of the Cabinet today for the County Council to commission an external study of the feasibility and costs of introducing a concessionary travel scheme for young people in Warwickshire. The work will now be done in time to inform decision making at the time of the next County Council budget next year.

Over the last year or so I have led a cross-party group looking at this subject, and we did a lot of work with officers and with young people, and also looked at experience in other part of the country. This matter has been a major campaign issue for the UK Youth Parliament over the past couple of years, and it was important that Warwickshire responded positively and constructively.

The changing patterns of education for 14-19 year old young people are putting increasing strain on existing transport provision to and from school and college, which are becoming less fit for purpose. Also we want to encourage young people to particpiate in sport and other leisure activities, but the costs of public transport are often a barrier to this.

Introducing such a scheme will not be cheap or easy, so it’s vital that we have the best possible data on which to make informed decisions. Today’s decision to commission the work necessary to achieve this is an important step.

Yesterday we held the last meeting of the County Council’s Children & Young People Overview & Scrutiny Committee before the elections on the 4th June. I have been a member of the Committee for the last 4 years, the Lib Dem spokesperson for the last 3, and the vice-chairman of the Committee for the last 2 years.

As always it was a full and interesting meeting, with an agenda ranging over a wide range of important issues - future Early Years funding (of nurseries, nursery classes and private/voluntary providers); inclusion strategy (how to keep “problem” children in schol and reduce exclusions); the anti-bulling strategy; child poverty; demand for school meals.

I have greatly enjoyed this aspect of my work as a county councillor, and if re-elected on the 4th June would hope to be able to continue in my current role. The Committee is unusual in that includes not only councillors but also school representatives, so that the knowledge of subject matter is good and the quality of debate usually high.

For the fourth year running I’ve been successful in winning a share of the County Council’s Minor Works budget for 2009/10, a record I’m proud of.

£13,000 has been allocated to upgrade the lighting on the popular Blundells footway running betwwen Priory Road and Southbank Road, and between Southbank Road and Abbey End car park. This follows the work carried out at the St Nicholas School end of the Blundells in 2008/09.

I set a high priority on good street lighting, which brings benefits in terms of both community safety and road safety - and also modern lighting is more energy efficient than most of the old lighting stock.

As an experiment this year, the County Council’s Warwick Area Committee allocated a sum of £2,000 to each county councillor, to recommend small grants to suitable voluntary groups and organisation in their areas. The final batch of grant awards for 2008/09 were agreed at the Area Committee meeting yesterday evening.

I think this scheme has been a great success. In my area, the grants went to three very different groups serving different parts of the local community: Kenilworth Teapot - a drop in group for older residents; Spring Playgroup, and the Kenilworth Allotment Tenants Association.

I hope very much that the scheme can continue next year, despite the overall 8% cut in overall Area Committee grant budgets - which the Lib Dems opposed, by the way!

Over the past few weeks the local Sustrans Connect2 scheme has been ’sniped at’ in the local press by Kenilworth Conservative town councillors, although they won’t come clean as to whether they want to oppose the scheme outright or not.

 As chairman of the local Connect2 Steering Group, I have been defending the scheme vigorously in the local media, as have other non-councillor members of the Steering Group. The accusations of failure to communicate or consult properly with local residents and councillors are a nonsense, but so far numerous attempts to set the record straight have failed the stop the weekly drip of “concerns” in the local press.

One is left with the clear feeling that the Tories want to play politics with this issue in the run-up to the County Council elections on the 3rd June. What I say is - let them try! The level of local support for the Connect2 scheme was and remains high, I have no doubt of that.

It seems that the’SPARK’ public transport scheme for Warwick District is a dead duck. Launched in a fanfare of publicity by the County Council 3 years ago, it succeeded in winning potential government funding of nearly £13 million to deliver a “step-change in the quality of public transport in Warwick District”.

Now, because of the failure of the Stratford Park & Ride scheme to stem operating losses, a similar scheme for Warwick District is being dropped, and with it the whole of the SPARK scheme.

The Conservative Cabinet tried to slip a decision through without discussion back in October, but at my insistence and with the support of other Liberal Democrat and Labour members the matter received a proper public airing at the Warwick Area Committee last night.

It’s been a costly exercise to achieve nothing - some £300,000 to put together the winning bid to government, and then another £50,000 on consultants’ fees etc in deciding to drop it!

The matter now goes back to the Cabinet for final decision, but the outcome is clear. The Conservatives claim that the intended benefits of SPARK are being or will be delivered in other ways, and at no greater cost to WCC council taxpayers, but I and other opposition members are left feeling that a great opportunity has been squandered.

At last night’s meeting of the Warwick Area Committee, we saw the strange spectacle of all but one of the Conservative councillors voting for an amendment which would have directly contravened the County Council’s speed limit policies, which were re-stated and re-confirmed by the ruling Conservative Cabinet only last year. Even a Cabinet member supported the amendment!

Liberal Democrat and Labour members of the committee supported the officers’ recommendations in line with current policies, as did one of the Conservatives - to her credit as she clearly came under pressure from her colleagues. The vote was tied, and then decided in favour of current policies on the casting vote of the Lib Dem chair.

 I wonder what the Cabinet Member for the Environment will make of the indiscipline of his Conservative colleagues?

Today at the County Council we scrutinised the senior officers’ and Conservative Cabinet’s budget proposals for 2009/10. This is just one more stage in an ongoing process that will culminate in the setting of a budget next February. Because Warwickshire is a “hung” council with no overall control for any one political party, final agreement on a budget depends on the support of at least two of the political groups on the council.

This year’s budget decisions will be much tougher than usual. The financial settlement from central government takes little or no heed of the real cost pressures facing local government (energy bills, an ageing population, increased demand on children’s services etc). Also 2009 is an election year for county councils, so cross-party agreements may be much more difficult to achieve. As ever the Liberal Democrats will seek to act as a responsible opposition, promoting our clear and consistent priorities for local services in line with our manifesto commitments.

The saga of the review of secondary education in Nuneaton & Bedworth took another unexpected turn at today’s meeting of the Conservative Cabinet of the county council.

After eight months of review, debate and consultation, the Cabinet had been presented with detailed proposals to renew and redevelop secondary school provision in Nuneaton & Bedworth district. The proposals were controversial but had a clear logic behind them, with the most contentious area being in East and Central Nuneaton, where declining pupil numbers argued for two schools rather than the current three. Wrapped up in all the proposals was the apparent opportunity to achive early release of BSF (Building Schools for the Future) funding from the government, and also the assertion that this would only be possible if at least one Academy was included.

At the Cabinet meeting today these proposals were unexpectedly replaced with a new set of recommendations, which ducked the contentious issue of three schools into two, and called for more analysis and discussion pending the opportunity to find out what the latest government thinking was on both BSF and Academy funding - the goverment seems to moving the goalposts yet again.

I am not in favour of Academies in principle, nor are the Liberal Democrats as a national party - nor by his own admission is the Conservative leader of the council, and many other members of all parties. Yet they are basing their whole strategy around academies on the grounds that this is what the government wants - ignoring the Conservative party’s advice yesterday to councils to stop co-operating with the Labour government on policies they don’t agree with! The only remaining question seems to be is it two Academies or only one?

In the meantime, the uncertainty hanging over Nuneaton schools - staff, pupils and parents - is allowed to continue on into the Autumn. A very sorry state of affairs.

This week’s meeting of the County Council Cabinet showed the ruling Conservative group in total disarray.

First they rejected their own proposals  for restructuring and reorganising the management of Youth & Community Service premises across the county. The Lib Dem group had already made it clear we would “call in” the decision for scrutiny review if it had gone through, but in the end this was not necessary.

Then they took a number of decisions about secondary education in Nuneaton & Bedworth that conflicted with or went totally against previous decisions or pronouncements - notably deciding suddenly (and with no word of explanation) to withdraw support for the co-location of two colleges in Nuneaton town centre. The knock-on effect of the new decision was to kill the project to build a new library in Nuneaton, which they had fought for vociferously against Lib Dem and Labour opposition - we had said it was not good value.

The most likely reason for the complete change of direction in Nuneaton is that the local borough council had recently been won by the Tories from Labour, and there was disagreement between the Tory borough and county groups.

What a shambles!

Yesterday I fell foul of the ”Sort It” rules governing the new recycling and waste collection rules imposed by Tory-controlled Warwick District Council!

I put out my green (garden waste) bin for collection, together with another bag of garden waste - something that previously I had done many times before. But no, under the new rules the extra bag is not allowed, and I received a stern warning notice stuck to my green bin detailing my sins!

And yet, under the new red box (household recycling) rules introduced at the same time, I would be allowed to put as many extra bags out as I wanted alongside the red box(es) -but if the extra bags were of glass bottles and jars they could not be in the purpose-designed bags provided by the council. No, these are for plastic bottles and cardboard only! The extra bags have to be plastic bags, which of course we have far fewer of now that we all take re-useable bags for supermarket shopping ………

Confused? Well I am.

Talking to one of the red box collection men out on their rounds today, I asked him if things were getting better after the first month or so of the new scheme. His “no!” answer was not a great surprise!

However, I’m lucky compared with some poor souls who have had no grey bin (residual household waste) collections at all since the new scheme started.

The message to the Tory-controlled district council is clear - “Sort It”, quickly!

Caring for older people is one of the top priorities for local councils, as the demographic changes (increasing average age of population, increasing percentages of older people with dementia etc) put massive demands on resources and current facilities.

I attended a seminar on this subject yesterday, which set out the County Council’s strategy which is due to be endorsed by the Cabinet next week. One of the key elements is the rapid introduction of an “Extra Care” accommodation option, not currently available in Warwickshire - essentially a form of sheltered accommodation allowing older people to continue to live independent lives, but with good support services on hand as and when needed. Residential homes will continue to be an important part of total provision, but increasingly specialising on care of older people with dementia.

This is a complex and emotive subject, but the issues it raises cannot be ducked. I think the senior officers responsible for the programme are on the right lines, and the strategy has my support.

Tomorrow Warwick District Council launches a major public consultation on the “Core Strategy” element of its Local Development Framework, which will set the broad framework of planning policies that will shape developments in the District up to 2026.

Within the context of the Government’s agenda of building 3 million more houses over the next 20 years, the question for Warwick District is very simple - where will all the houses go?

As a county rather than district councillor I shall be a consultee rather than a decision maker in this vital process. When I have had the opportunity to read all the papers thoroughly I will comment further.

At the Annual Meeting of the County Council yesterday, the Conservative leader announced a number of changes to his Cabinet, to serve for the next year and until the county elections in May 2009.

The most striking change was the removal of a Cabinet member specifically for Schools, with these responsibilities now being subsumed entirely within the much broader responsibilities of a single Cabinet member for Children Young People and Families.

While understanding the statutory requirement for a single lead member with Executive responsibility for Children, Young People and Families, I do not see why the Schools portfolio could not have been retained in a separate but subservient position - there are precedents in national government for this. Certainly the change could reinforce the view of many people in the Warwickshire education world that the focus on schools has been diluted in the move towards more integrated working with Children’s Social Services.

The new Cabinet seems to me to be even more unbalanced, with the two members for Adult Services and Children Services respectively responsible for the vast proportion of the County’s expenditure, while the other eight Cabinet members cover a variety of other roles, some better defined than others.

The local press ran a lead story a week ago quoting Cllr. Norman Vincett, the leader of the Conservative-controlled town council, saying that plans for a  ”showpiece” civic centre at Smalley Place in Kenilworth were in trouble. This was confirmed at the Town Assembly on Thursday evening, when Cllr. Vincett admitted that current plans were financially unacceptable and unaffordable, but that work was continuing although no timescales could be promised.

I find it unacceptable to hear such news via the press, when I am a member of a joint Steering Group of county, district and town councillors that is supposed to be co-ordinating efforts to secure this prize for the people of Kenilworth. Until last May, under the then Lib Dem/Labour administration, a senior District Council officer was driving the project hard and keeping everyone regularly informed of progress. Since the Conservatives won the District Council, project leadership has effectively transferred to the County Council (also Tory controlled), but all sense of urgency and real commitment seems to have disappeared, while non-Tory members of the joint Steering Group have been kept largely in the dark.

The Lib Dem group here in Kenilworth has been forced to go on the attack, accusing the ruling Conservatives of letting down local residents by not being prepared to put up any “new” money to make this showpiece a reality - despite having moaned for years when they were in opposition on the District Council that Kenilworth “did not get its fair share”!

I spent most of Thursday over in Harbury, helping Liberal Democrat Bev Mann in her campaign to unseat the Conservative incumbent in the Stratford District Council elections. Bev is fairly new to the Lib Dems, but very well known locally after six years as a parish councillor, and coming from a long-established local family.

The result was incredibly close, but ended up with Bev winning the seat by a margin of 11 votes (861 votes to 850). Perhaps those last few people that I “knock up” at 9 o’clock at night made all the difference!

Anyway, winning is a great feeling, especially as the Lib Dems made a total of five gains from the Tories across Stratford District as a whole. I’m off to the post-election party tonight, which will definitely be quite a celebration!

Last year I took part in an in-depth review of the Demand for School Meals in Warwickshire, which resulted in the acceptance by the county council Cabinet of a wide range of recommendations to improve school meals and promote healthy eating. The background to this was of course the Jamie Oliver programmes on TV, that had had the unfortunate consequence of putting people off school meals across the country, so that demand was down and many local authorities school meals services had been pushed into deficit.

Yesterday at the Children Young People & Families Overview & Scrutiny Committee we had our first review of how our recommendations had been followed through in practice. There has been limited but real progress in some areas, and the good news is that demand is creeping back up again and deficits are reducing. A lot more remains to be done, though, and we shall review progress again in another six months.

I am a governor at St. John’s Primary School and Nursery in Mortimer Road, Kenilworth. The road is part of the diversionary route for buses and other vehicles during the 25 week closure of the Warwick Road which commenced yesterday morning.

It was therefore the worst possible morning for the usual school crossing patrol person to be away ill, as traffic volumes were much higher than normal. Conditions were so difficult for children and parents crossing that the headteacher ended up going out and stopping the traffic personally - far from an ideal state of affairs.

Luckily in the afternoon the local police Safer Neighbourhoods team were able to respond with a PCSO on duty, and this morning the sergeant did the honours, for which the school was extremely grateful. Hopefully our usual crossing person will be back on Monday.

What this demonstrated was that there is no back-up available in the system at all, not even in such exceptional circumstances. The county council’s Road Safety Unit, who manage the school crossing service, could provide absolutely no one to cover on an emergency basis. While the legal position is clear, that parents are responsible for their children’s safety until they reach the school gate, the reality is that many families come to depend on the school crossing service to enable their children to walk to and from school unaccompanied.

I plan to take this matter up with Cllr. Martin Heatley, the county council’s Cabinet Member responsible for the Environment. While I know resources are tight, the safety of our school-age children must be a paramount concern for all elected members.

With a number of high profile data loss stories very much in the news recently, the spotlight has fallen on the vast quantities of personal information being routinely collected by central Government on children young people and families. Most of the data is collected and transmitted to central government by local councils, who however have no discretion in the matter - the data requirements are enshrined in law.

County councillors reviewed the full extent of central government’s data requirements this week in our Scrutiny Committee - see the committee papers at:

www.warwickshire.gov.uk/AgendaManagementSheet26-2-08

Although I accept the need for central government decision making to be based on statistically sound data, what they ask for today is already overkill and yet still growing. For school children in particular, there can be no justification for the data to identify names and addresses. Each pupil is already allocated a UPN (unique pupil number) when they enter the school system, which should be quite enough.

I think our concerns about this whole system are entirely justified, and I shall be supporting strongly all efforts to get central government to change course. 

On Monday we had yet another Government initiative on ‘failing schools’, with Ed Balls threatening to put hit-squads into any school not achieving at least 30% of students with 5+ A*-C grades at GCSE including English and Maths.

As chance would have it, the very next day the WCC Childrens Young People & Families Overview & Scrutiny Committee was reviewing the Key Stage 4 (i.e. GCSE) performance of Warwickshire schools. We are fortunate to have very few schools at around the 30% achievement level or less, but those that are serve some of the most deprived communities in the county.

Has Ed Balls not heard of the ‘Contextual Value Added’ (CVA) measure of achievement, which is the main yardstick used by Ofsted and most people who understand education? Why do he and his civil servants persist in looking at raw attainment scores? CVA is the best measure we have of the real impact a school has on its pupils - i.e. is the quality of pupil they turn out better than what they take in.

The irony is that at least one Warwickshire school that might be on Ed Balls’ hit list is nearly the top-performing school in the county in terms of CVA, with an inspirational head and excellent leadership team.

I wish national goverment would just set the ground rules and leave local people to get on with the job. Some hope …… !

Last week I attended a SACRE meeting held in the Chapter House at Coventry Cathedral. The venue was wonderful of course, especially as we were given a guided tour of the cathedral before the meeting. What an inspiring place it is.

SACRE is a most interesting body, with representation from all the faith groups represented in Warwickshire schools, including Humanists and most recently Pagans. It has a number of statutory duties, advising the local authority on matters connected with religious worship and education in schools

I visited the Kenilworth Greenway yesterday to see how the works were progressing on the stretch between the Coventry Road and Hollis Lane. All of the encroaching undergrowth has been cleared and the track levelled, on which is to be constructed a 2.5 metre wide walking and cycling path with a grass verge alongside for horse riders.

This work is being funded by the County Council as part of its contribution to the overall Connect2 Kenilworth scheme, and is going ahead now while we wait for the release of the new funding from the Big Lottery Fund.

Right now it looks a bit of a mess, of course, but I am assured by the Countryside Rangers that it will soon regain its natural charm much loved of local people, but with the new path offering all year round and all-weather access.

I attended the Kenilworth Town Council meeting on Thursday evening, something I do only occasionally - partly because their meetings sometimes clash with other commitments, but also because curiously I have no real role to perform there anyway.

When I attend meetings of the parish council that covers part of my electoral division - i.e. Burton Green and the University - I have a regular slot on the agenda and the opportunity to speak and contribute on any item under discussion. At town council meetings, however, I am effectively a member of the public. This can be frustrating when the town council is discussing a subject that I know a lot about, and where a shortage of real facts is apparent!

The problem is that county and district councillors are usually also town councillors, and the town council doesn’t really know how to interface with them if (like me) they are not. This issue is not unique to Kenilworth - county councillor colleagues from other towns in Warwickshire tell me they experience similar issues.

I think there’s often too much formality surrounding council proceedings anyway. At our Area Committee meetings at the County Council we’ve managed to strip away most of this, to good effect I think, and made ourselves more accessible to the general public as a result.

Today I attended the Youth Parliament Election Results event at Kenilworth’s De Montfort Hotel. 29 young people from across Warwickshire had put themselves forward for election for 8 positions - 4 members and 4 substitutes. After a record number of votes, up 19% on last year, the winning candidates were chosen. I congratulated the new members personally and gave certificates and thank you gifts to the outgoing members.

An early task for the new members will be to meet the Young People’s Concessionary Travel review panel next month, and to give us their perspective on the needs of young people in Warwickshire. The Youth Parliament has been campaigning on this issue for three years now, so I was delighted that we could announce a major step forward for them today.

One of the key objectives of the Kenilworth Town Centre Partnership is to improve the pedestrian links between the castle and the town centre. Kenilworth Castle is a major tourist attraction, with visitor numbers likely to grow this year as the wonderful Elizabethan garden project nears completion. We want to encourage visitors to the castle to also visit the town, its shops, restaurants and other facilities.

Yesterday I met with two county officers at the castle to explore all the possible options for better pedestrian access, and in particular how to cross the busy Castle Road. It’s not easy, otherwise it would have been done a long time ago! However, we’re working closely with English Heritage on this, and I’m hopeful that between us we can come up with an acceptable and affordable solution.

Last year the Liberal Democrat group on the County Council won all-party support for a motion backing the importance of concessionary travel schemes for young people and urging action at national and local level.

I have been asked to chair an all-party panel of councillors to review this subject in depth, and to report our recommendations back to the Council. The panel held its first meeting yesterday to scope the work and establish our work plan.

An important input to our work will be the voices of young people themselves. Members of the Youth Parliament have already been campaigning on this issues nationally and locally, so we shall certainly want to hear from them, plus as wide a cross-section of other young people’s views as possible.

Yesterday brought new developments in the campaign to win a pelican crossing on Beehive Hill, Kenilworth on behalf of pupils and parents of St. Augustine’s School and Beehive Nursery and local residents.

I arranged a meeting between county officers and representatives of the School Crossing Action Group, with the opportunity for the officers to witness at first hand the problems and dangers for pedestrians - in this case at school finishing time. I feel that the meeting went some considerable way to convincing officers of the need for action.

We agreed a number of next steps, with the objective of bringing matters to a conclusion within the next month. This is a fight which I am determined to win!

Although Warwickshire didn’t suffer as badly as our neighbours Gloucestershire in last Summer’s catastrophic floods, we had it pretty bad in parts of the county. Since then, a lot of effort has gone into analying what happened and why, what measures should be taken to prevent or mitigate flooding, and how the various agencies involved can work better together.

As part of this effort, the Environment Overview & Scrutiny Committee has been looking at the subject in depth, and yesterday I met with Severn Trent and county officers to understand in particular the issues around surface water and drainage.

Good news is that in Tuesday’s budget debate the County council voted for an extra £1 million spending over 2 years on highway drainage - the Liberal Democrats voted with the Conservatives to get this agreed in the face of Labour opposition. The additional funding is a big increase on current spending levels, and should both tackle the backlog of regular maintenance activities (gulley flushing etc) plus new measures to deal with known “hot spots” around the county.

It was also clear to me how much scope there is for better co-ordination of activities and communications between agencies. This was highlighted in the interim Pitt Report (commissioned by the government), and will be a major focus of the final report due this Summer.

Well, the County Council has today agreed its budget for 2008/09, but not without a few surprises along the way!

For reasons only known to themselves, the Labour group chose not to release its proposals until 25 minutes before the start of the budget debate! This forced an unnecessary first adjournment to give time to take in the details. However, it was soon clear that Labour did not intend to compromise with anyone, so the rest of the day was spent with the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives hammering out a revised budget that both parties were willing to support - with Labour voting against.

Next year’s council tax increase will be 3.9%, but more importantly the Liberal Democrats succeeded in getting every single one of our budget proposals into the final agreement, albeit with some adjustments to amounts allocated in some cases.

An excellent day for the Lib Dem group, who demonstrated that we know how to play grown-up politics in a “hung council” situation even if Labour don’t!

One of my personal highlights last year was the opportunity to lead the Kenilworth Connect2 Steering Group, as we campaigned locally for public support and helped Sustrans Connect2 win an amazing £50 million prize from the Big Lottery Fund. The result was announced just before Christmas.

Today I met with Stuart Ikeringill (the county officer who will manage the local Connect2 project implementation) and Edward Healey of Sustrans to discuss next steps and the ongoing role of the Steering Group.

There’s a lot to be done, some of which will take some time to bring about, but some things can be started quite quickly. In fact, work to upgrade part of the existing Kenilworth Greenway started today!

I attended a regular management committee meeting of Warwickshire’s Pupil Reintegration Unit yesterday evening. The “PRU” operates county-wide as a single entity, out of five centres, and is there to help and educate pupils who have been excluded from school, with the objective of reintegrating them back into mainstream education as rapidly as possible. The PRU staff are a skilled and dedicated team, working with some often very troubled young people and achieving fantastic results.

In the past it has sometimes proved hard to get excluded pupils accepted back into mainstream schools, but much closer working with school heads under the county’s overall Behaviour Strategy is starting to break down these barriers. The objective for the PRU must be to see it as a “revolving door” - with the great majority of its pupils getting back into mainstream schooling as quickly as possible.

It’s Budget time again at the County Council! Yesterday we received the details of the budget proposed by the Conservative administration, and put the finishing touches to the budget proposals of the Liberal Democrat group. The full Council debate on the Budget is next Tuesday.

Because Warwickshire is a “hung” council with no overall majority for any political group, the reality of the budget process is usually that some form of agreement has to be hammered out between at least two of the parties. Last year’s budget was jointly agreed between Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour, but I think that the same is  unlikely to happen again this time.

As usual, it will probably be a long day next Tuesday ….. !

Youth Development Grants are awarded to voluntary organisations working with 11-25 year olds, and are managed and awarded at a district level. I have joined a new Panel of three councillors and six young people (from the local Youth Forum) which will meet regularly to agree how the grants should be awarded in future -some £50,000 a year in total for Warwick district.

We held our first meeting at Kenilworth Youth & Community Centre this evening, and will meet again in March. It is quite a responsibility that the young people involved are being asked to take on - it will be interesting to see how well they deal with it.

I was consulted today about local government plans to establish “localities” at a level below current district areas - so that the three Kenilworth county divisions would consist of a single locality, for example. National government has been making a big thing about the localities agenda, but as usual it’s up to local government to try to make sense of the latest Whitehall idea!

The principle of trying to devolve power and decision-making closer to local communities is sound, but there are many pitfalls - in particular the risk of adding to existing structures rather than replacing them.

I’m still listening, but I remain to be convinced!

This afternoon I attended the memorial service at Coventry Cathedral for the four firefighters who died in the warehouse blaze at Atherstone-on-Stour on the 2nd November 2007. It was a deeply impressive and moving occasion, attended by nearly 2,000 people and with representation from Fire & Rescue Services across the UK.

All county councillors are jointly responsible for Warwickshire Fire & Rescue Service, although my own focus and responsibilities on the council are in other activities.

The Schools Forum is a statutory body to be consulted by the County Council on matters of schools finance and funding, and with specific decision making powers. It is made up of headteachers, governors and other non-school representatives. As the Liberal Democrats’ spokesperson I attend in a non-voting capacity.

At yesterday’s meeting we had confirmation from the Conservative cabinet member that the proposals to change the schools funding formula - which caused huge controvery last year but were suddenly withdrawn without reason - were now dead. As schools are now being required to draw up budgets for the next 3 years, the opportunity to change the current formula (which everyone accepts is flawed) has gone - probably for a long time.

What a huge effort for nothing, and what a wasted opportunity!

At yesterday’s Environment Overview & Scrutiny Committee we reviewed progress made by Warwickshire County Council against its own Green Transport Plan originally produced in 1999 and updated in 2004.

The report made sorry reading! Lots of good intentions, but no real shift in the travel behaviour of council staff. Much ‘harder’ measures need to be taken, but will the Conservative administration and senior officers be prepared to show the leadership required? Watch this space ………..

I chaired a meeting of the Finance sub-committee of school governors last night. We’ve recently received the “pack” from the local authority for us to produce a 3-year budget for the school.

Uncertainties abound! Just before Christmas there was an almighty row going on about proposed changes in the schools funding formula in Warwickshire, but the Conservative administration suddenly withdrew these so leaving the status quo in place for now - but for how long? Also, as a primary school with a nursery class, we’ve been told that the funding formula for early years provision will change for 2009/10, but no details as to how this might affect us. Yet the school is asked to produce detailed line-by-line budgets covering the next 3 years. Can this really make sense?

A key role for opposition councillors on the County Council is Overview & Scrutiny. A number of Overview & Scrutiny Committees (OSC’s) exist to scrutinise and challenge the Conservative administration’s running of the council’s activities, and these are chaired by opposition councillors.

I am vice-chair of the Children’s, Young People & Families OSC (CYPF OSC), and also a member of the Environment OSC.

Today’s meeting of the CYPF OSC was a very good one. The highlight was a presentation of a review of bullying carried out by members of the County Youth Panel, culminating in a large number of recommendations that were backed by the committee and recommended to Cabinet for approval. We also finalised a review of Child Poverty and passed this on for Cabinet approval and action.

Both of these reports highlighted the fact that the work of OSCs is about policy development as much as scrutiny of others’ activities.

The Warwick Area Committee is made up of all the county councillors whose electoral divisions fall within Warwick district, and its role is to give a more local focus to certain aspects of county council decision-making - including local transport issues, maintenance and safety engineering.

Last night’s meeting was very long (nearly 4 hours), preceded by a seminar, but partly this is a problem of success - public awareness of and attendance at Area Committees is greater than any other aspect of the county council’s activities.

I was pleased to win support for two street lighting improvement projects within Kenilworth Abbey division - in The Blundells and in Henry Street. I also presented a residents’ petition in support of a pelican crossing in Beehive Hill, to support further the St. Augustine’s school parents’ petition presented at the last meeting. Officers are reluctant at the moment to accept the case for this crossing, but I am determined to win this battle on behalf of the school and the local community.

This morning I participated in a strategic conference with a number of primary and secondary headteachers from across Warwickshire, together with senior county officers and county councillors. The focus of the conference was on the changing agenda for schools within the national and local agenda for children’s services, and the development of a shared vision for the future.

Many of the messages coming back from the headteachers were common - a frustration with too much bureaucracy and regulation, a desire for partnership with and involvement with the local authority, and a willingness for strong leadership from the county to address national priorities in a local context. My party is in opposition on the county council, but I shall be looking to see how and if the Conservative administration responds to the very clear messages we heard this morning.

Yesterday I attended a briefing about the Joint Area Review for Warwickshire which will take place this summer. The “JAR” (as it is affectionately known!) is a massive central government inspection by Ofsted of local services for children, young people and families, covering not only the county council but also all of its partner agencies.

While recognising that central government has a need and right to monitor the quality of local services, I can’t help wonder whether the huge amount of effort, time and money that goes into these inspection processes is really worth it! Do they really affect positively the outcomes for children, young people and families in Warwickshire? I doubt it.

Yesterday I substituted for Cllr Jerry Roodhouse, Liberal Democrat group leader on the County Council, at a Leaders’ Liaison Group meeting.

Warwickshire County Council is a “hung council”, i.e. no political group has overall control. There is a minority Conservative administration, with a 10-person Cabinet. Labour and Liberal Democrats make up the chairs and vice-chairs of the various Overview & Scrutiny Committees that monitor and review all aspects of the council’s activities.

The Leaders’ Liaison Group comprises the leaders and deputy leaders of the three political groups, and provides a regular opportunity for information sharing between the groups.

Yesterday I attended a major conference organised by the County Council at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, attended by about 150 people representing a wide range of organisations involved in the provision of services for children, young people and families in Warwickshire - spanning education, social services, health, police, the voluntary sector etc. The aim of the conference was to develop priorities for the new Children & Young People Plan for Warwickshire.

The day demonstrated both the opportunities and difficulties for partnership working across so many different bodies in trying to deliver “joined-up” services, working together to avoid duplication of effort and resources. This principle is of course right in principle, but making it work in practice is not easy!