Councillor’s surgery

This coming Saturday sees a councillor's surgery taking place from 11.30am
until 12.30pm in the GRA Office. For this surgery we are been joined by Tom
Levitt MP, along with representatives from the Gamesley and Charlesworth
Safer Neighbourhood Team who are holding a Police Surgery along with the
Councillor's Surgery.

Whilst for the last few surgeries we have not had a set theme, this month
the theme is looking for all you comments, compliments and queries with
regards to anti social behaviour or policing issues in general.

The surgery will runs from 11.30 until 12.30pm in the GRA Office on Winster
Mews, and please feel free to call in, even if you don't have a particular
issue that you wish to raise with us.

Update

The blog is having a little bit of work due to it, meaning that just for a
short while posts are a little more sporadic than normal.

Coming up . . .

This coming Monday (13th July) sees the latest meeting of the council's
development control committee. The meeting this time has 3 main applications
for consideration, one in Buxton, one in Whaley Bridge, and one in Glossop
on Talbot Road.

The application in Glossop is for ground and first floor extension and
appears to be strongly opposed by local residents objecting to this
proposal.

Things to be aware of - National Recycling Week

This week from Monday 22nd June until Sunday 28th June is National Recycling
Week, a week of events aimed at highlighting and improving the amount of
rubbish that we currently recycle.

Further information on the week and suggestions on how you can improve your
recycling can be access by going to the Recycle Now website at
www.recyclenow.com

One thing I think we need to look at tackling better locally to improve
people's involvement or willingness to recycle is around the plastic bottle
bins, which from the local examples on the shops at Gamesley and the one at
the back of the Co-op in Glossop both seem to suffer from the problem of
people either not been able to get there recycling in the bin or choosing
for whatever reason not to put there recycling in the bins and leaving the
area around the bins generally looking a mess.

To improve this we need to both improve the information on how to use the
bottle banks along with ensuring that if the area's are a mess, there is
better monitoring / cleanup of the problems as quite often it is a number of
days before problems at the bins are often addressed leaving the area's
looking quite untidy and potentially putting people off using them.

Neighbourhood Watch

Yesterday I attended a celebration of reaching over 50 neighbourhood watches
in the Gamesley and Charlesworth Safer Neighbourhood Area.

The event which was attended by a number of the local neighbourhood watch
co-ordinators highlighted a number of the achievements that have occurred
since the work to increase the number of neighbourhood watches started from
various measures around tackling anti social behaviour to stop nuisances
motor bikes all of which have been done by a closer partnership between the
local community and the police.

Now whilst reaching the number of 50 is good to do, from the information on
display there are still a number of area's within Gamesley and Charlesworth
that are not yet covered by a neighbourhood watch, something which the safer
neighbourhood team will be working to change.

If you are interested or would like to check if you area is covered by
neighbourhood watch team please contact a member of the Gamesley and
Charlesworth Team in person via the High Peak Community Housing Office on
Gamesley or by phone on 0345 123 33 33

Development Control Meeting

Yesterday's (Monday) development control meeting saw discussion's take place
around an application for the Mount Pleasant Church in Glossop to be
converted to flats.

As there often is, the application received a number of objections with a
range of concerns particularly around parking availability, and on the day
of the meeting (from what I've been told) many of those objectors attended
to make their views know.

Now as you will no doubt see elsewhere the development control committee
resolved to refuse the application citing amongst other reasons that parking
and traffic issues were a concern.

All good and well you may say - a good victory for the committee listening
to local people, my only concern is that whilst the traffic concerns may
well be valid, the application was recommended for approval by officers with
no objections been raised by the traffic experts at Derbyshire County
Council meaning that it may well be a hard job for officers on defending
this decision if the developers decide to take the application to appeal.

Coming up ..

Tonight (Tuesday) sees a meeting of the Environment Select Committee which
unfortunately due to another commitment I will miss, items for consideration
are reports on transition Buxton, national indicators on Climate Change and
Fuel Poverty, tree strategy, and update on Waste and Recycling and the
review of the Council's Environment Statement.

Wednesday sees an event to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the opening of
St Margaret's School along with in the evening this month meeting of the
High Peak Community Housing Board.

Monday sees a meeting of the council's audit and regulatory committee which
will amongst other items consider reports on the audit commissions annual
audit and inspection plan, internal audit reports and two reports on
delegation schemes around building control fees and Environmental Protection
Powers.

Chinley to go

As will no doubt be covered extensively in the press this week, last
Thursday evening's meeting of the corporate select and executive have
resulted in a decision to sell the council's current site at Chinley, and
push for improvements at both Glossop and Buxton.

Now whilst I can agree with many of the reasons outlined for making the
change, there did seem to be a missing voice from the meeting on Thursday
with the apparent absence of the councillors representing the ward with the
current Chinley offices in it, now whilst that may just have been a clash of
dates due to this been an extra meeting I do hope that their views and as
such the views of their electorate whether in favour or against have been
considered as part of the process. I say this because whilst various surveys
may highlight that the two other offices are better; locals may like their
local office as it is.

The next steps will be interesting to look at with one of the things under
consideration been where will the full council / council committee will meet
as they current meet at Chinley. Early plans are that the meetings will move
around different venues across the High Peak, which I think will be a good
move and will allow easier access for people to see what goes on.

I do hope however that all the venues under consideration will include
better public transport from all parts of the High Peak, and that
consideration will be given when or if venues or outside of the town centres
how accessible these are when the meeting are scheduled to take place.

School Fair's General Comment

As well as St Margaret's school fair on the Saturday, Friday night sees the
St Charles school fair on one side of Glossop and Simmondley School on the
other.

Now whilst in a sense each school is in its own area of Glossopdale and won't
attract people from across Glossop, you would think that given most of the
head's must talk, you would think that they would perhaps plan the various
school fairs amongst themselves to try and ensure that each school in a
sense has a free attempt to attract / have the opportunity to get as many
people there as possible.

St Margaret's School Fair

This Saturday from 10.00am until 2.00pm is the summer fair for St Margaret's
school. As well as all the traditional summer fair items, they are also
having a car boot sale running alongside the school fair.

Things to be aware of – Men’s Health Week

This week (15th to 21st June) is Men's Health Week which sees a series of
events up to and including Father Day with the aim of heightening awareness
of preventable health problems and encouraging the treatment of these
problems.

In previous years, events have been held locally around the issue, but so
far this year I'm unaware of any events taking place locally.

Further information on the issue including a men's health week survey is
available from the men's health forum website at www.menshealthforum.org.uk

Things to be aware of – Refugee week

This week (as flagged up by a friend on Facebook) is Refugee Week a week of
events organised by the refugee week partnership to celebrate the
contribution of refugees to the UK.

The refugee week partnership is made up of a whole group of bodies including
Amnesty International UK, British Road Cross, the Children's Society and
Oxfam.

This year as well as the range of events taking place, the refugee week
partnership is highlighting the simple acts campaign and is asking people to
complete one of 20 simple act to highlight the campaign.

The act's range from simple things like cooking a dish from another county,
to watching a movie about refugee's.

To find out more about the campaign or sign up for one of the simple act's
go to www.refugeeweek.org.uk

Glossop Labour Club

This coming weekend starting with the annual general meeting on Friday 19th
June at 8.30pm sees a series of events to celebrate a £200,000 renovation of
the Glossop Labour Club.

The events continue on the Satuday (20th June) with a barbecue with the
Powderkegs border morris dancers from 2.00pm and the Clarion Choir from
Nottingham in the evening.

Finished off on the Sunday (21st June) with the Red Ramblers going on a five
churches walk from Whaley Bridge with lunch at the Little Mill Inn in
Rowarth.

Lost rail lines

Many locals will have seen flagged up on the news yesterday details of a
report by ATOC who are the association of train operating companies, about
the need for expansion of the rail system by the restoration of lines lost
since the time of Beeching, along with around 40 new stations.

Now whilst unfortunately our own plans for a station at Gamesley aren't
considered as part of this report, the former Woodhead line from Hadfield
across to Sheffield dose get a mention as been a potential link line worthy
of further consideration.

Further details on the report are available from the ATOC website at
www.atoc.org and the report itself is available by clicking on the following
: http://www.atoc.org/general/ConnectingCommunitiesReport_S10.pdf