Paul Crossley1

In Bath we have a tradition of two community services each year lead by the Mayor - a Call to Prayer for the Christian Community and the Multifaith service where all faiths come together for a collective service. The services take as their theme the current Mayor's theme for the year in office. Sharon Ball's theme is Care - both those being cared for and those providing care. This week we had the first of the two services and the Banquetting room was packed out. The Mayor also has a chaplain for the year who leads these services. This year it is Rev Richard Wilson of St Michael's in Twerton. Richard is a dynamic vicar and works hard and effectively with the community. The service had an opening from yet another of Bath's many varied and great choirs - The Bath Youth Gospel Choir - who entertained us at other parts of the service as well. Bath really is a singing city. Apart from good hymns that everyone knew and could sing along easily with we had three personal statements - from a lady who has been a foster mum for 30 years and who has looked after 350+ children, from the chair of a local Alzheimer Charity, The Peggy Dodd Centre and from a group of young people aged 7 to 15 who themselves are carers looking after parents or family. They were all powerful testaments and things like this really bring home to you just how much we as a society owe our carers and also just how much we as a society undervalue the work they do for us all. I have been a Bath Councillor for nearly 17 years and this was the most moving Call to Prayer I have attended - and I have attended most of them in that time.

This afternoon met with one of our Council officers to discuss what happens to the Bath Communities Partnership(BCP) in the next few months. We applied for a regeneration bid from the SWRDA several years to address social needs with our pockets of deprivation that we have scattered across Bath. The RDA dismissed our bid calling it a pepperpot and told us to resubmit a bid based on economic outcomes with a geographical base and a key community type. We resubmitted one based on the Southdown and Twerton triangle and our ethnic minority communities. It has been hard work to meet the terms of the fund because what we needed was social interventions not econmic generators. What next - well the fund ends in May and we will put on an event to celebrate all the grants, many successes and projects we have funded. What happens to BCP - well thats not clear yet. We have regeneration parterships now established in Keynsham and Norton Radstock. Whatever happens BCP will have to change if it is to continue into something that serves all the communities of Bath and not just the two imposed on us by the SWRDA.