OCTOBER NEWS 2010

News from your local, Independent Councillor,

Giving Local support

Coleby Play Area

Well done all involved in this brilliant new play area, which I helped to open this week. Star of the show was our own Kirsty Moore, ex Coleby School Pupil and the first woman Red Arrows pilot - what an inspiration!

Congratulations to Nocton and Dunston

Nocton had a great village fete which included a produce show and scarecrow competition where they gave me a tough time judging!

Lives

The new Cliff Villages LIVES continue to gather excellent volunteers and more funds to save lives. Thanks for your support of the coffee morning which raised £363.

Coleby Ball

This was, as always a brilliant event raising substantial funds for the village.

Relate & LCC

Relate are “the relationship people”, with over 70 years experience. Relate Lincolnshire, where I am a Trustee, won a bid for £¼m from national government in partnership with Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) to help families regain their lives.

This contributed to LCC winning the highest score in the country for the service of safeguarding children. Working on the committee improving the service prior to assessment and on the panel being assessed, I was impressed with the contribution made by young people themselves when we gave them a “front seat”

Relate was also shortlisted in National Awards for its pioneering work on “Relate for Parents” and won the prestigious Charity Times Award for the Best Use of Technology and shortlisted for best use of the web, important in our rural areas. www.relate.org.uk Tel 01522 524 922

Bus services

More than 150 people signed the petition which I presented to Dave Skepper, Operations Manager for Stagecoach and made our case clearly. I looked at the detailed timings of the number one bus which, like all routes, does have a few minutes contingency built in. I asked for these to be spent travelling to Leadenham and back. The bus companies can suffer a huge fine if they do not meet their target for timeliness, which is why all of the routes have a few minutes contingency, especially if they involve getting in and out of Lincoln.

We need bus priority lanes from Lincoln, coming in early next year. This should create more time on the route so that the half-hour service to Welbourn and Leadenham could be restored. There have been no objections to the bus priority routes, and Stagecoach has agreed to review our service when they are in place.

It now seems likely that the Bus Service Operator’s Grant will be removed by government, further threatening some of our bus services locally.

Information

Road repairs on the A607

The road repairs of the worst parts are working their way southwards along the A607 to Wellingore. These are the improvements we fought for. Thanks for your support.

Road Safety

The road safety presentation “Too Fast, Too Soon” for young people is powerful and well worth seeing. It is coming to Sleaford Schools on Oct 4^th & 5^th. This is highly recommended for all young and not-so-young drivers or soon-to-become-drivers.

I put a motion to support road safety to full Council and it will be now considered by councillors. I also moved that we write to national government to ask that cuts will only be made to local government at a rate that still protects front-line services. If you can ignore the politics, see the full County Council Meeting on www.lincolnshire.public-i.tv/site/player/pl_compact.php?a=44930&t=0&m=wm&l=en_GB