Some Cornwall Council News Fact Checking

Posted on: 12th September 2020

 

Some Cornwall Council news fact checking might be helpful to readers as there is much spinning of facts being reported. Could there be an election in sight and opposition groups are campaigning against the Administration, I wonder?

Leisure Centres

Leisure centre providers across the country are facing significant financial shortfalls as a result of the lockdown and the ongoing impact of Covid-19.

Cornwall’s main leisure centre provider is GLL. It faces a financial loss of around £5m and is having to make tough operational decisions.

As a charitable social enterprise/ not-for-profit organisation, GLL has not qualified for any government financial support schemes.

As with more than two thirds of Council leisure services in England, there has been no government funding for leisure services in Cornwall. Along with many councils who have been asked to provide financial support to leisure providers, we simply do not have the funds.

The Cornwall Council Cabinet and Officers have been working hard with GLL to find a solution. Together with local authorities across the South West they have been lobbying government to urgently provide a rescue funding package to safeguard the future of leisure centres. They have also called for the government to extend the furlough scheme and give more support to sectors which have been minimally supported.

GLL and Cornwall Council remain committed to re-opening more leisure facilities across Cornwall as soon as possible and we will continue to do all that we can to make that happen.

Some Estimates of Mileage & Carbon Saved by On-Line Meetings

During lockdown, the council’s  reduction in mileage (officers & members) per day was reported as: 42,000, equating to 8 tons / day. If we are to reduce Carbon emission, the Council must not go back to the old way of working.

Highways and Verges

With the temperatures starting to drop and many trees already showing a riot of colour, it certainly seems like autumn has come early this year. This has coincided with the start of our annual maintenance schedules for the strategic network, which includes verge cutting on the rural network, and I wanted to take this opportunity to provide you all with a timely update.

Highways teams will be starting work this week on cutting 2672 km (nearly 1,660 miles) of rural verges as part of the autumn ‘serviceability cut’ and new regime to help protect wildflowers and benefit flora and fauna. This follows on from the ‘safety cut’ which we carried out in the spring.

Our operations are designed to continue to support the role of highway verges as important networks for conservation, and we have been carefully monitoring the growth of vegetation to ensure they are cut at the optimum time for safety and environmental reasons.

The rural programme is generally undertaken on roads with a speed limit above 30mph and we anticipate it will take between ten and twelve weeks for us to complete these operations across the county.

We will be cutting to preserve visibility, to ensure that growth does not encroach into the carriageway particularly affecting cyclists or pedestrians, and improve the flow of water along road channels.

While the grass cutting takes place, we would also like to remind road users to be mindful and to take care when passing our cutting operations.

Of course, if you do spot a hazard caused by an overgrown verge then please report it to the Council online so that action can be taken.