Ward Comment from Councillor Atwell

Note: This article, written by Cllr Atwell, was recently submitted to the Community First Magazine Editors. Cllr Atwell was not willing to make the editorial  changes requested so has withdrawn the article from the magazine. Below is the text of the submitted article. As always readers are free to comment.

COUNCIL TAX

Further increases in our Council Tax by 4.5%. This is the headline news from the Budget debate that took place at the meeting of the full Council in February.  As opposition members, we proposed an alternative budget to place before Council as an amendment to the ruling Labour groups budget proposals. We highlighted a number of alternative savings to reduce the impact of such a large increase, however, following much cynicism and Tory Bashing during the ensuing debate, our amendment was defeated. The Independent and Lib/Dem representatives also voting against the amendment but abstaining from the administration’s budget proposals.

 

GWENT MUSIC

During February, my wife and I attended both Concerts of the Music Centre which were held at the Celtic Manor Hotel. Both Concerts were preceded with extensive training courses during the pupils’ half term. Usually, these are residential courses but following the withdrawal of funding by Newport City Council, they took place at Caerleon School as non-residential and much reduced timing which caused a huge amount of extra effort for the Tutors and also the pupils, however, the results were amazing.

Needless to say, Gwent Music has also been penalized in the budget once again but not in the withdrawal of funding (because they do not receive any from the Council) but are being charged £50,000:00 for administration that the Council provide.

RUBBISH and LITTER

It is regretted that our lanes and lay-byes are once again falling victim to the Litter Louts who obviously have no thought or regard for the environment in which they or we live.  I must commend the Streetscene team of the Council who when advised by me of the problem, re-act promptly to clear up the mess.

If residents see the culprits dumping litter, please take a note of car numbers and advise me or the Police as we could take proceedings against them. But please do not challenge them face to face.

This takes me to the subject of the ‘green bags’ for the collection of cardboard. How is it for you? It gives me much exercise chasing them down the street when emptied and in the high winds! As ‘Miranda’s’ mother would say, “Such fun”.

 

POLICE MATTERS

I have spoken to the Superintendent of Police over a number of incidents of anti-social behavior that have taken place in the ward. The Superintendent is encouraging residents to advise them of any and all incidents of a criminal nature to help with their intelligence gathering. As he clearly stated at Council, the ears and eyes of our public are what we rely on to help resolve criminality.

OVERVIEW and SCRUTINY

This subject is now playing a more important role in the Policy and Strategy making of the Council. As advised in this newsletter previously, I am an opposition Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee for Community Planning and Development. This is an extremely interesting part of Local Government, and the subjects discussed are wide ranging from Community Centres to Homelessness and from Disabled Parking to hospital discharge.

The discussions usually take place around improvements to the service provided but not always, as the Committees are quite often tasked by a Cabinet member who has requested by referral, to comment on a proposal or decision that they would like to make.

I am pleased to say that a very full and frank discussion often takes place with politics set to one side. As in all matters political, our deliberations and recommendations do not always meet with agreement for whatever reason and we have to reluctantly accept this.

EDUCATION

I am not convinced that the EAS or Education Advisory Service is an improvement for our schools and young people. This took up an enormous amount of my time when I was the Cabinet Member for Education and Young People, which I relinquished 2 years ago. Being fair to the Council, we had no choice in this matter as the Minister for Education at the Welsh Government insisted that Local Authorities had to work in this way to improve standards.

I have yet to see any improvement and we remain at a status quo. This does not surprise me as on the whole, we had an extremely efficient and excellent Education system in Newport but we appear to have stood still save for one or two exceptions. Being with four neighbouring Authorities has not helped us, how could it, our standards were much higher than others in the first place and my view is that Newport has suffered as the result. The EAS is set aside from any influence or control of any of our Councils, moreover a scrutiny system was included in the documentation and as I write, no scrutiny has ever taken place, WHY NOT?