Kimpton Road - Temporary Closure

I sere the Cheam and Worcester Park Area Committee will be soon considering whether to reopne the road. I hope the Committee backs the local residents on this issue. The businesses have a good new access Road in Minden Way which take traffic of residential roads.

Review of Scrutiny

I just want to say impressed with the proposals. They seem to strengthen scrutiny a lot and make use of it as a tool to improve services.

Two quick points:

1. It would be good if the Chair of Police Consultative Committee was made an "advisor" to the Sustainable Communities Committee. That would bring practice in line with Patients Forums contributing to the Health Committee.

2. Will the Tories now take up any chairs of these committees. I think they should whilst still arguing they should also have a respresentative on Strategy so they are able to comment effectively on policy.

Development Control - 14 Feb

Just a quick comment on the Sutton Arena planning application.

I think it is good to improve the amount of park sapce, but this must not be done in such as way that a piece of open space becomes a formal car park.

The current "temporary" approach works well and if that is expanded and partly relocated, then would be sensible.

Hillcrest Hall - Clockhouse

I noticed the recent petition about this community centre.

I hope this is resolved so the hall can continue. In recent years we have seen Government funding and Council investment create a number of new community facilities across the borough.

It would be a shame if this was now reversed and we saw facilities close.

Rosehill Improvements

Whilst I was not happy with us losing some section 106 money, I do not believe we should hold up spending the money we have, so I am pleased to see that investment is going into improving the shopping environment at Rosehill. The sooner the better in my view.

In addition the proposal to narrow the Halesowen steps is also sensible. I know it is far too difficult to close such paths, so improvment is a much better solution. My other bit of advice on this is that some residents get more anti-social behaviour than they deserve because to protect their privacy they allow large privet hedges to grow, but this creates sites for anti-social behaviour to go on unobserved. Thus cutting back on these hedges would actually reduce the problem.

Parks Police

I am grateful to Lord Tope for keeping me bried on this issue having raised a few points at Police Consultative Committee about it.

I am not against the transfer of responsibility and see some advantages. However my point is that it should not have been done through the Council budget process and seen as a saving.

As I undertsand it the new arrangment may be for two years, so the next issue is one of sustainability ans to ensure Parks Policing is seen as a mainstream activity that should be continuously funded.

Council Budget

Representations were made this week to Strategy Committee over the Council budget.

Despite the usual hype about massive cuts, there were only 4 representations.

This is a long way from the days when we had massive real cuts with much larger lobbies.

My gues is that the Council Tax increase will be slighly lower this year as I cannot see the Lib Dems wishing to create too much political space for the Tories to occupy on this issue.

Upkeep of Housing Revenue Account Land

I am pleased that Sutton Council and Sutton Housing Partnership have come to a sensible agreement over the transfer of some bits of land from the Housing Revenue Account to the General Revenue Fund as this is the most appropriate place to fund their present use.

Labour Councillors raised this issue for many years and I am pleased to see this issue is mostly resolved.

Well done!

Day Services Review

The brad approach to this and the consultaion seems to have been covered well. However the devil will be in the detail and how a reasonable approach is applied to the funding of individual day centres. No doubt I will be commenting further on this.

Sutton Arena - Re Tender

I am pleased to see this contract was retendered. It is a testament to good scrutiny and Councillor Tim Crowley deserves praise for persevering on this issue.

Institutionalised at Orchard Hill!!

The resent press coverage of Orchard Hill has been very interesting.

The criticism of this last long-stay learning disabled insitution was inevitable as it has been slowly run down over a number of years.

The people who must feel besieged are the elderly parents of some of the learning disabled people living there. They acted in good faith by placing their children there, when there was no community living options.

As things have changed, they have naturally defended their original decision and now feel attacked for making it.

We should therefore recognise that all the people in this saga have been "institutionalised" to some degree and thus coverage of this issue needs to much more sensitve to that.

My own view has always been that one or two community living facilities should be built on the site to respect parent wishes. I am also happy if Stanley Park school relocates there, but I still think this may prove difficult with resident opposition and financing issues acting as key barriers.