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?

The latest report from the County Council shows that the Kenilworth Station project is making some good progress.

The first key task is to decide the “Joint Promoter and Funder” - i.e. the private sector company that the Council will work with to bring this project to a successful conclusion. The tender documents were completed last month, and a contract notice published on the 28th November, for expressions of interest by no later than 13th February 2009. Invitations to tender will be issued in March, with the contract to be awarded in May 2009.

Discussions with train operating companies are in progress, and the original outline business case has been reviewed and is still showing a very positive return for this project. The aim is to deliver the new station by March 2012, and a possible bid for new regional funding may assist this further.

I continue to be a strong supporter of and advocate for a station for Kenilworth, and will do everything in my power to help bring this venture to a successful conclusion.

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.

Last Friday was the first anniversary of the Big Lottery Win by Sustrans Connect2, which secured £50 million of lottery funding (and at least the same again of matched funding) for 79 walking and cycling projects up and down the country. I was very pleased to have led the local Connect2 Kenilworth campaign, and have continued to chair the local Steering Group as we push forward our local project to link Kenilworth town centre with the Greenway and the University of Warwick.

On 4th November the Kenilworth scheme became only the second Connect2 project in the country to have its formal agreement signed, to allow the release of lottery funding as the various stages of work are completed over the next three years.

In April, surfacing and improvement work was completed on the first section of the Greenway route out of Kenilworth towards Burton Green, opening up this part of the route for all-year recreational use. Throughout the year, a lot of planning and preparation has gone involving Sustrans and the County Council, together with its partners Warwick District Council and the University of Warwick.

The original Steering Group for the project has been strengthened with additional representatives from the Town Council, the University and local resident groups. It meets every two months to ensure that the local community is involved in all stages of the project through to final completion.

Later this month, tree works will commence along the track of the old railway line at the rear of Woodland Road and on the edge of Kenilworth Common. This work will be guided by the results of a detailed ecological survey carried out earlier in the year, and will aim to preserve and enhance the natural habitat for reptiles and other wildlife. All residents in the immediate area were informed of these works by letter last week.

Other works due to start soon are to widen and resurface the existing walking/cycling path from Bridge Street to Manor Road, and to widen the existing footbridge leading from Forge Road on to the Common. Preliminary design options for a new bridge over the Coventry Road have been commissioned.

I took part today in a special Environment Scrutiny meeting today, reviewing proposals for Warwickshire CC to join Coventry CC and Solihull BC in the development of a major new “Energy from Waste” plant to replace the current Coventry residual waste incinerator. The decision as to whether to proceed with an application for goverment PFI funding for the project will be taken by the WCC Cabinet on Thursday and the Full Council next week.

The meeting, which I pushed for, was held in public, and with inputs from members of the public as well as officers and supporting consultants.

The outcome of the meeting was a unanimous recommendation to increase the underlying recycling and composting assumptions behind the plan, which should reduce the required size of any future residual waste facility. It’s up to the Cabinet and Full Council now to decide whether or not to accept this recommendation.

Today’s announcement by the Government that it is to scrap all national schools tests (SATS) for 14 year olds from next year is welcome but long overdue. It seems (despite denials) that it has taken this summer’s marking fiasco to force a decision which the teaching profession has long called for.

However, it seems that national tests for 11 year olds will carry on, and presumably therefore the whole system of school league tables which is so counterproductive and divisive, and largely irrelevant to the education progress of individual pupils. Why won’t the Government listen to teachers about this as well?

The Post office announced its decision today to confirm the closure of the Albion Street, Kenilworth Post Office.

It’s a very sad day for the local community in the Albion Street area, who had demonstrated clearly its support for the current branch through survey responses, petitions, letters to the Post Office and Postwatch and attendance at the public meeting in July.

Some elderly and vulnerable residents are going to be very badly affected by this decision, which is based purely on cost-cutting rather than meeting the needs of the community.

The Post Office’s decision document released today also makes no reference whatsoever to the knock-on effects on other shops and businesses in the Albion Street area when the post office branch closes. Many local shopkeepers are very worried about this.

I have today asked county council officers to pick up the Outreach Services alternative again as a matter of urgency, to see if it could offer a solution to keeping some sort of local service to residents in the Albion Street area.

In my role as vice-chair of the Children’s, Young People & Families Overview & Scrutiny Committee, I presented the committee’s recommendations to the County Council’s meeting today. The Cabinet approved the recommendations unamended.

The issue of personal data security has become a critical one over the past year, following a number of well-publicised losses of data by both central and local government. It is essential that the county council ensures that its own processes and safeguards are as tight as they can be, and the Portfolio Holder promised that our recommendations would be fed into a review team that was already working on this.

There was wide support for our recommendation to challenge the need for central government to collect data on children, young people and families that is not anonymous. If the requirement is only for statistical analysis there is no justification for this.

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.