Ian Robertson, Councillor RMBC

... for the next year anyway.
The elections are out of the way, post mortems have been conducted, committee places allocated. Now back to business. For my sins I am this year's Chair of Middleton Township, replacing (temporarily I hope) my colleague Peter who was defeated by a whisker of 19 votes. My other colleague Jacqui takes over as Chair of Corporate Scrutiny but I will maintain my interest as a member of that committee. I couldn't list from memory the other committees I'm on.
Last Thursday was the first Township meeting. As is usual, the most interesting part is the session on questions from members of the public. I can't get enough of them. The first one was the star - a question asked by the aforesaid Peter Williams in his capacity of a resident of Alkrington asking if the Township had been consulted in the controversial decision of the local PCT to advocate Locality Hospital status for North Manchester General Hospital. There is a long-standing legacy promise to Middleton people to move paediatric services there from Booth Hall (soon to be closed), so it is a very sensitive issue. We agreed on a condemnatary motion.
The rest of the agenda was routine - allocating places on Township Commmittees, nominating school Governors, agreeing to the disposal of an area of allotment land, and in addition the controversial new Town Centre Traffic Orders. There was disquiet from Councillors about the latter, and ultimately we agreed the Orders for three zones but deferred a decision on the fourth. The issuues centred around disabled parking, 24 hour taxi rank and location of bus stops. It is the perennial problem of compromising between what people want, traffic management, and road safety in a confined space. Watch this space.
The meeting concluded with agreeing the split of this year's Township funds (not a lot), establishing  Town Centre Management, confirming the Regeneration Framework for the township and the new enforcement policy (most welcome) on environmental matters.

»9:47 PM    »Write comment     »Send entry    

Posted by: ianr    in: My entries

Modified on May 29, 2006 at 9:49 PM

Well, the silly season's just about over. The elections are done, we've just got to see how the new administration is set up. Back to almost normal with a number of issues on the back burner that merit overdue attention.
Its not that the political process is unimportant, its just that from time to time  it gets in the way of what's more important, and that is representing the interests of the community.  So, 'normal service will shortly be resumed'.