Report for May 2013

From the outside, it may seem that the process of forming an administration was long winded but when no group has overall control, or indeed, no group is significantly bigger than another there are sensitive discussions to take place. Indeed, the sizes of the groups have changed since the election result on 3 May with them currently standing as 36 LibDems, 36 Independents, 30 Conservatives, 8 Labour, 6 UKIP, 4 MK and 2, including 1 Green, unaligned to any of the groups.
At the first full council meeting on 21st May, John Pollard, Independent councillor for Hayle was elected leader of the council. His deputy leader is Jeremy Rowe, Liberal Democrat for St Issey and St Tudy. The cabinet consists of a total of 10 portfolio holders, 5 from the Independent group and 5 from the Liberal Democrats group. The leader of the Independent group, John Wood, member for Roche, was elected chairman of the council and Ann Kerridge, Liberal Democrat member for Bodmin St Mary was elected the vice chairman.
The only committees that have had councillors assigned are planning and licensing and although a conscript rather than a volunteer, I have been allocated to the West Area Planning committee so will attend the training and do my best to wade through the mountain of papers and contribute to the team making the right decisions for the West. The portfolio advisory committees and other committees are being sorted now.

Locally, I am keeping an eye on the situation at Tregiffian, where following the dumping of licence waste there was damage to the road; I have met Mike Peters, regarding the flooding on our patch and will be monitoring progress to reduce risks here; I have become aware of problems with our local schools funding that can cause money to go to repair where replace may be more cost effective, in the longer term but this may involve co-operation from government to fix; and as already reported I have been having conversations over noise and nuisance being caused by local young people riding their motorcycles around a field at Calartha Road, Pendeen. Councillors will join me in being sad that several local residents and a family of tourists were affected by vandalism to cars in our Lafrowda car park in the early hours of Saturday morning and I will speak with PCSO Andy Tonkin as there maybe community safety issues we need to take forward.

I shall be holding local face to face surgeries – at the Centre of Pendeen every 3rd Saturday of the month and at the Legion in St Just every 4th Saturday of the month between 11 and 12, starting in June.