Tuesday 26 March 2013

Strange Times

It’s been a strange old fortnight (and yes, by some miracle it’s only been two weeks since I last did my blog, and no, I don’t understand it either!)  In that time I’ve actually been able to fit in a bit more ‘life’ yet still been to, or done, ten council related events.

One of these was an informal meeting to look at issues which were raised at my first ever Community Centre meeting - yes, yet another first even after being on the council since last May.  I believe there is the will from the council to give support to help develop the activities put on in these centres.  Unfortunately the centre management committees spend a lot of their time on building related problems, so my aim is to give help on that front.  Then they can concentrate instead on what is far more worthwhile, making best use of the centre.

I mentioned the Wellbeing & Attainment scrutiny panel in my last blog, and this week have done the last school visit, to a special unit. The children, whose ages range from 3 to 19, all have some degree of physical and/or mental disability.  They are all different so the approach of the school is to recognise that fact by developing an individual education programme for every one.  The staff without exception were all friendly and welcoming, and their obvious patience showed in the way they worked with every child.  An amazing and quite humbling experience.

Les

Monday 11 March 2013

Planning for the Future

Scrutiny has played quite a big part in my diary over the last couple of weeks.  I’ve been attending some school visits as part of the Wellbeing & Attainment panel.  It’s been very encouraging to see the length & depth of the strategies in place to support pupils, both to get the most out of school and prepare them for the future.  There seems to be much more of a culture of two-way respect than I seem to remember from school life in ‘my day’.

As quite a contrast I have also been to one scrutiny meeting of the Allotments working party.  This turned out to be much broader than the term suggests, looking not only at standard allotments but also other forms of community growing.  All present agreed that there was scope for more meetings to follow up the initial positive discussions.

As well as other regular meetings we had the ‘full’ planning meeting last Thursday ie where all councillors are expected to attend.  In addition to the usual planning applications that had been defered to this meeting, there was a very interesting presentation on a proposal to have a Tidal Lagoon in Swansea.  This would be quite a long term strategy aiming for 2017, and would be finally decided upon by central government.  So it was just a chance for us to ask questions with no decisions involved, but personally I certainly think it is not only a very exciting project, but would also bring much needed jobs and many other benefits to Swansea.

Les