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Cllr Rodger
Here are some notes of a meeting I attended on behalf of the Council on 25 January. The committee is one of the NCC's Overview and Scrutiny Committees, which looks at things such as waste, traffic and local services. This OSC is quite good at opening its meetings to Parish and Town Council representatives and to giving them opportunities to address the Committee.
The meeting took place at Stannington Village Hall last week. The attendance was high - about 70 would be my guess. Also, as it is an OSC it is able to get high level attendance from the Council and other agencies (in this case a senior representatives form the Environment Agency, the Police and the Speed Camera Partnership. The Leader and Deputy leader of NCC both in attendance.
Four items:
1. Neighbourhood services - cleansing. Generally this did not seem to be contentious - so at least reasonable satisfaction with NCC performance. One local council raised that it was now necessary for councils organising their own 'clean ups' to pay for skips. An explanation was given that the service felt skips were abused in these circumstances with people clearing out all sorts of material, not just street rubbish collected. Environmental services were willing to assist by providing a free clearance of bagged rubbish at a time and place agreed in advance.
2. Environment Agency - new system for prioritising flood work - upside means more schemes, downside is that funding is likely only to be partial. Significant implications for some places but the nearest scheme to us is Wark.
3. Speeding - longest and most contentious item on the agenda and there was a paper (probably on NCC web-site). Very polarised views on whether speed cameras (static and roving ) are an effective use of the quite considerable costs. Also, as they are in few locations (determined by previous accidents) on main roads, they do little about speeding through settlements that most of us experience. The final decision was that the OSC will recommend support of keeping the current cameras, which will be digitised. A clincher was the fact that most/all the money is only available through the speed camera partnership. General support for the penalty of the speed training course if the speeding caught on camera only slightly in excess of the speed limit. There will be some extension of the percentage over the limit allowed for this penalty (as opposed to points).
4. Delegation of services. The Council Leader at pains to stress that the notes sent to all councils re possible cost of services was only indicative (a heads-up is the new buzz-word). Still a lot of concern around in the councils especially small ones with services like public wcs. An interesting concept for us should anything arise on say grass cutting (Anick Green), is of 'strategic importance'. This allows the NCC to take account of benefits of facilities to non-residents.