'My' lights

Here is the welcome in lights from the arc to 'the old town', a new feature of Bury's Christmas lights, funded by Suffolk County Council from my locality budget. A good investment? (Photo courtesy of Cllr Richard Rout.)

Thank you!

...to the kind person who, seeing my bike lock presumably lying somewhere near here, locked it round this bike stand outside Haarts on Thursday. In my haste to get going I must have thought I'd locked it back onto the crossbar but actually dropped it, or it soon fell off.

Later that day I returned to town for another appointment, and traced my journey very slowly on foot, without looking in the obvious place.

By the way, the bike shown is not mine. The yellow arrow marks the lock beneath, and now in my garage.

What an exciting life I lead.

Town Council Referendum Result

The following is the verbatim summary of the report by the independent pollsters:

"There were 18,143 forms sent out in total. From this 252 forms were returned by the Post Office as undeliverable, making a total valid mail out of 17,891 consultation forms.

There were 4513 consultation forms returned, of which 4310 had valid responses, with 203 invalid responses (either rejected or improperly completed).

The total valid response rate = 4310/17,819 = 24.2%

The result of the Bury St Edmunds Town Council consultation was conclusive and did not require a second round count of redistributed preferences, with ‘Option 1’ receiving 76% of first preferences, ‘Option 2’ being the second most preferred with 16% and ‘Option 3’ third with 8%."

Welcome signs

At last the additional signage deterring vehicles from going the wrong way into Bridewell Lane is in place. Together with the refreshed road markings, I am told there has been a marked improvement. This is one of those achievements that take an enormous amount of time and energy to fulfil. In this case the Churchgate Area Association have played a leading role, with my steering them in the right direction. Without the relevant CAA committee member's tenacity and patience I doubt I could have achieved this alone.

Welcome to Central Walk

Photo:R.Rout

Having not been at the crucial retail interface for a couple of days, I am delighted to see the Christmas lights which are being paid from my SCC locality budget. For the first time this vital link (there's no other word for it) will be lit in a way that draws and welcomes arcytypes (I just made up that one) into the 'old town'. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing them lit.

On a totally different subject, here is a picture of a local ginger cat relaxing on top of a tree. How it got there I don't know, but this morning another cat was half way up it and there was much screeching. Here is a blurry close up with a wide angle shot, both taken from my office at home.









I suppose there is a connection between these two tales (ouch) but its a bit tenuous.

Can you believe it?!

This has been a busy week for those of us involved in trying to balance StEd's budget for the next financial year. The challenge is finding savings or new income to bridge the gulf between what the government gives us and what the council taxpayer forks out. This year and next we are looking to fill a total £2.5m gap, as a result of:

a very small increase in grant (1% this year almost certainly reducing to a minus ?% in 2011/2012);

plummeting interest rates on our capital, itself reducing because of the massive investment in the borough's two towns;

an increased demand for our services such as benefit claims; and

a decrease in fees from planning applications and building control.

Put those factors together and the eye-watering result is not surprising. Having predicted this via our continuous financial forecasting, staff have been working since February to find about £1.3m 'soft savings' or income' without reducing front line services. The next part of the gap is harder, and councillors will be asked to approve savings or income of about half a million pounds on more tangible projects; hence the stories in the local press.

Sadly newspapers do not thrive just on good news, and local authorities are always ripe for criticising. Look at the following negatively spun facts this week alone.

Headlines proclaiming the success of the council in bridging a large part of the gap make way for:
CASH CRISIS.

Creating a fantastically good value heritage' season ticket for Moyse's Hall/West Stow becomes:
charging entry to Moyse's Hall.

Relocating to more appropriate accommodation in Haverhill is:
closing the Haverhill office.

Consulting with UNISON about how to get better value from different working practices and thus saving staff costs - which may involve staff redeployment, natural wastage and possibly redundancy (with twice the state redundancy payment) becomes:

Toilet attendants may be axed...

£2.5m = millions of pounds

I could go on, but I think you get my drift.

Westley crossing success!

Here I am with Mark Ereira, at the very point where we proposed a pedestrian crossing on behalf of campaigning parents of Westley middle school pupils.

We're delighted that this has been agreed by our fellow county councillors from this year's Quality of Life programme. It will probably cost in the region of £30,000, the vast majority of which will be paid for by Suffolk County Council and the remainder by SEBC. If we are lucky our 'personal' locality budgets will not be affected.

The shot above was taken by a press photographer but using my not very professional camera. Mark (with his dog, Albert) is looking at where the crossing will go - and believe me, Mark, this really was the best shot of you on this particular occasion.