View From the Council - this week’s column in the Tamworth Herald
For the last 6 years that I’ve been involved in local politics I’ve always heard ‘after this, things will go quiet for a while’ but that still hasn’t happened yet and I have the grey hairs to prove it!
There is literally never a dull moment and now is no different; we’re entering the annual budget process period at the Council and we have two by-elections in Tamworth ongoing at the same time – one for the Council and one for Parliament.
Many people often comment and assume that public money is spent on leaflets etc, but that just isn’t true. We hold events locally to raise money for election materials and then we volunteer our own time to deliver and canvass – you have to really love it to be involved, as it takes up a lot of personal time and effort.
Since the last column, we have held another ‘pop-up engagement hub’ in the Town Centre at the Town Hall. We had over 30 residents use the hub on Tuesday and this shows we’re delivering on what we said we would when we announced our priorities in June.
The next themed hubs will be held on Tuesday 10 October between 10:00-14:00 about ‘Annual Resident Survey’ and Tuesday 24th October about ‘Housing’. Council officers for other areas, such as benefits etc, will also be present so I would encourage any residents to attend who need a face-to-face discussion.
Also on Tuesday we had a ‘Full Council Meeting’, this is where all elected Councillors come together to debate and vote on important items. It is also a chance for Councillors to ask questions directly to Cabinet members in a public setting.
We answered around 30 questions in total from Councillors across all parties, including our own. As well as being an opportunity to answer queries from Councillors, and for Councillors to be able to publicly ‘hold our feet to the fire’, it is also an opportunity for us to communicate out positive pieces we’re working on.
One of the items on the agenda was a petition to open a front desk of the Council again.
This was an interesting debate and one which led to the passing of our proposal, which was to bring back this question to the last Full Council meeting of the municipal year.
This wasn’t a case of ‘kicking the can down the road’ but was in fact to allow a robust and informed decision to be made. This was already one of the priorities we announced and is being worked on, so it made to sense to stick with the original timeline.
This approach got majority support amongst the Councillors. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the members of the public who signed the petition and to assure them that they have been listened to.
We then had a meeting of the ‘Nominations and Grants Committee’ which meets quarterly. This is always a nice meeting to be a part of. It is not about politics in any way and is to approve (or not) applications from business and third sector organisations for grant money.
We approved grants for some fantastic initiatives across our Town and which will have a positive benefit. The magic of such grants is that these organisations have a multiplier effect, where they can reach many more people than a Council could and for less money – a real win-win.
Cllr Thomas Jay
