Free Hospital Parking…..for Wales

Unfortunately I’ve recently had to visit hospitals in Essex and Kent for various reasons. Whilst travelling to local hospitals might be feasible by public transport, travelling to Kent by public transport isn’t the easiest, so inevitably we’ve traveled by car. Hit by expensive car parking charges, sometimes I wish we were more like Wales (except from the rain) – free prescriptions & now free parking at ALL their hospitals.

More on this here

All NHS hospital car parking charges scrapped in Wales http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-45347166

Pot Luck on Potholes

Today I write out of sheer frustration on the situation with our potholes on our Counties roads. There doesn’t seem like one short journey you can make on our roads when it is sheer ‘pot luck’ if you don’t inadvertently hit a pothole in the road. I know, as I’ve just been presented with a bill from the garage for nearly £200 due to part of the suspension on our car being damaged. I’m convinced this occurred during a journey along the A130, or was it the A1245, now come to think of it, it might have been the A129….mmmmm maybe it was when I was driving through the High St. You get my drift, they are everywhere!

Speaking to a local resident recently, he told me how he hit a pot hole on the Hullbridge Road and it caused his air bags to go off! Not just one but a few of them.

Well, I’ve had enough of this ‘dodge the pothole’ game, I’m writing to our County Councillors to see if they will step up and get our roads repaired. Essex Highways May have limited funds but are we getting our share? Time to find out.

Do You Want To Build a Snowman?

Totally unrelated and non political post….. if we get snow, while everyone else is panic buying bread and milk you’ll find me over at Sweyne Park building my own Olaf. He’s soooo cool

Meanwhile if you’ve got to get some place and you want to track Essex County Councils gritters…..

http://www.essexhighways.org/Roads-and-Pavements/winter-travel/track-the-gritting-lorries.aspx

 

A Criminal Misuse of Public Money?

Disclaimer – All views are my own, as this is written on my own website, paid for with my own money – These are NOT the views of any Council that I am a member of or a view of the Liberal Democrat Party. They are simply written as a personal view of a Rayleigh Resident. Hope I’ve got the point across….

There is an idea by the Police & Fire Crime Commissioner, that town and parish councils could now ‘buy’ their own Special Police Constables, to police their local area. Each ‘Special’ would cost the council (or taxpayer) £1000. This is an idea that has been put to Rayleigh Town Council. The role of the ‘special’ is something like this

Call me cynical, but isn’t this just another way to extract additional money out of the taxpayer? We already have community policing teams, that are paid for from our council tax and the PFCC is now asking if we are willing to pay more in our council tax to increase policing. So it’s a double ask. The town and parish councils have to find the money from somewhere, right?

If we are so hell-bent on having additional policing, I think someone has missed a trick here. With some crude calculations, I worked out that the £135,000 that has been spent by the district on new public toilets and the £20,000 estimated from the town council to maintain them, then this could have funded 155 special constables for 1 year. Or over the 10 year lease of the toilets, around 15 specials for 10 years. Each special averages 40 hours per month, so on this basis it would have provided funding for around 4 FULL TIME specials for Rayleigh for the next 10 years.

Did we have a choice? No, because we weren’t asked. Could, therefore, new toilets be a criminal misuse of public money?

Specials play an important role in the police service, and if you are interested in becoming a special you can find full details on the Essex police website here

 

 

Infrastructure, Housing and the ‘Outsiders’

As landowners eye the potential rewards for putting forward their land for development, we are still faced with a lack of infrastructure to accommodate further housing needs.

Have we been blind to the ‘unlocking’ of land in here in the Rochford District with ‘bigger’ infrastructure investments taking place right beneath our noses? Crossrail is due to commence in December 2018 and there are the second Dartford Crossing plans.

These major infrastructure projects have the potential to unlock our District to people who can’t afford to live in London but want to be able to get from ‘A to B’ in reasonable times. Will this put further strain on the supply of ‘affordable housing’ and is this a challenge our ‘local’ residents will now face as they try to compete for the same properties?

Some might argue that this competition already exists and I would agree to a lesser degree, but we could see a further deluge of ‘outsiders’ coming into our areas. Our housing policies must be robust to ensure that those who already live in our district are not priced out.

Will our district be able to cope with this housing crisis in the years to come? This is something that we need to work hard on to ensure that the District prospers for all.

 

Pavement Promotion Problems

Tonight’s review committee meeting brought up the issue of the pavement promotions problems. The reference to ‘pavement promotion problems’ is really to A boards.

The blight of A boards through the High St (Rayleigh) seems to get increasingly worse – however, this may only be a ‘perception‘. Taking in to account the number of reports the council receives about this specific problem, it could be that we actually think this is a bigger problem than it is and it would be interesting to hear what residents think about this problem.

Other unauthorised advertising in our district was also raised as a concern, from banners to illuminated signage located in inappropriate places, if its not approved by the council, at some point the owner (land owner, business owner etc) could be prosecuted and the council could even apply to recover some of money made through the illegal advertising through the proceeds of crime act. A criminal record is not something I’m sure a business would want to advertise!

If the matter proceeds through the Court, as well as leaving the offender with a criminal record, a successful prosecution allows the Council to apply for a Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) Confiscation Order.

Update on the Mid and South Essex Success Regime

One item on the agenda at last nights full council meeting was

To receive a presentation from Dr Celia Skinner, Chief Medical Officer for the three NHS Hospital Trusts, Southend, Basildon and Broomfield, providing an update on the latest plans to reconfigure and redesign hospital services across the three sites to meet growing demands and pressures, prior to the end of the public consultation period in December 2017.

The last time the success regime came to council, as reported by the late Cllr Chris Black, we were extremely doubtful of the proposals that were being presented to us. This time it really didn’t get any better, as these dodgy double glazing salesman in white coats tried to persuade us of their new master plan.

It didn’t start well for the success regime as the motion at the last meeting included inviting Dr. Caroline Howard back to the Council along with the Success Regime team. It was not to be, as they had decided to uninvite Dr. Howard and proceed with their brief presentation. After some debate, the Chairman decided that the presentation should proceed.

I don’t think that I was the only one that was perplexed as to why Dr. Howard was absent from the meeting. Was it that she was simply unavailable? was she ill? had she disappeared? Should someone file a missing person report for her? No, panic over,  there she was sitting at the back of the room, prepared to listen to the new sales pitch. Dr. Celia Skinner quickly explained that she was best placed to give us an update on the changes that had been made to the plan and Dr. Howard had contributed towards some of these changes. Regrettably by this time, my confidence in the new plan had been lost due. I couldn’t help feeling that by not allowing Dr. Howard to speak they had something to hide.

It seemed to me that we could read the glossy brochure but not have the small print explained to us by someone knowledgeable.

Isn’t there usually more than one side to a debate anyway? The presentation concluded and Cllr Webb eagerly jumped in with a motion which was seconded by Cllr Gooding. (I didn’t catch the full motion as it was quite long…). At this point, we were unable to ask any questions of the regime and it swiftly brought the ‘debate’ to an end.

The success regime duly ended their time in the council chamber assuring us that next time they would bring along clinical leads – ahhh so we may get some clinical evidence to support that these changes are in the best interests of patients. We will wait and see. For now, I will reserve judgment.

 

 

 

The Final Flush – Crown Hill Toilets

Dedication

Join Us

When I joined the Lib Dems back in 2015 I wasn’t too sure if they’d be the ‘right fit’ for me. Now 18 months later, I’m a Lib Dem District & Town Councillor representing residents in Rochford & Rayleigh.

As a ‘younger’ member of society, they were the only party for me that was dynamic and actually seemed to have their own voice and gave their Councillors the freedom to express themselves in their own way.

Nationally their policies seemed to make sense and in fact were the common sense policies that I’d been seeking.

If you fancy becoming a member of the Lib Dems and share the same common values click here to find out more. As a Lib Dem member, you can get involved as much or as little as you want.