Picking up where Cornwall Council fails

According to Cornwall Council, there are some streets that don't exist - at least as far as street cleaning and litter picking are concerned.

One such is Blind Hole in Launceston which runs down to the Orchard Centre, home of the youth partnership and other community organisations.

This street isn't classed as town centre and so doesn't get swept every day. But then, it isn't classed as a residential zone two street either (in which case it should get swept every six weeks). According to Cornwall Council's contract with Cory, it doesn't exist at all. Any sweeping or litter picking is done by local residents.

So today, local Lib Dem campaigner Jade Farrington and myself went and swept the street - picking up two bags of broken glass, cigarette ends and general litter.

We have asked the council to make sure that Blind Hole - and any other missed out areas - are added to Cory's list of streets to sweep. Street sweeping is a core service for the council, but it seems far too many areas are being missed.

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Litter, waste and street cleaning in Launceston

This evening saw a special meeting of the Launceston Community Network panel on the subject of litter, waste and street cleaning.

There was a good turnout from members of the public and two of the contract management officers from the Council came along to explain the new system and answer questions.

As readers will know, the new waste and recycling contract had a lot of problems at the start. Many people didn't get their bins emptied for more than two months and thousands more were left without recycling containers.

Thankfully, most of those problems have now been sorted - but there is a lot of concern about dog mess, fly-tipping and street cleaning.

The good news is that the town centre is now very clean indeed. There are two people whose job it is to clean it on a daily basis - seven days a week. Everyone at tonight's meeting was complimentary about the job they are doing.

The trouble is that this contrasts markedly with the lack of cleaning elsewhere. Although Cory have been doing a lot of street cleaning in the past two weeks or so, many people at the meeting complained that they hadn't seen their streets cleaned before that since April.

Apart from the very town centre, all the residential streets in Launceston are classed as being in Zone two. These streets should be visited at least every six weeks and cleaned if they need it (and after six weeks, they certainly will do). The trouble is that I do not believe that Cory have been doing that until very recently. I have therefore asked the officers to provide proof that Cory have been cleaning when they should be. If they have not been doing so then I will be asking for Cory to be heavily fined.

But the point was also made that there are many very busy streets - such as Western Road, Tavistock Road, Race Hill and so on - where a six weekly clean is nothing like enough. They might not justify the daily attention of a zone one street, but should certainly be visited on a weekly basis. We have asked the council to look at improving the cleaning regime there.

A further complaint was about Cory staff not cleaning up after themselves as they are meant to. Bottles dropped on the pavement during recycling collections leave shards of glass dangerous to children and pets and damaging to mobility scooters. Communal bins need cleaning every time they are emptied. We asked for better action to make sure that the contractor is doing the job they are being paid for.

The officers have agreed to take these and other points raised tonight away to be fixed. They will be coming back to the annual network meeting in the Town Hall in early February to report back and - hopefully - to be told that things have got better.

In the meantime, if you believe that your street needs cleaning, contact me and I will make sure it happens.

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Key Lib Dem wins at the heart of the autumn statement

It's easy to see the Lib Dem influence on today's Autumn Statement from the Chancellor.

The income tax threshold is going up by even more than was previously planned. That means that, from April the first £9440 that you earn will be tax free. It's tantalisingly close to the Lib Dem manifesto pledge of £10,000 by the end of 2015.

The other key wins are:

• an end to the policy of regional pay - something which the Chancellor proposed last year and Lib Dems battled against. It would hurt areas like Cornwall hardest of all as we have low pay levels already but very high living costs;
• the scrapping of the planned 3p fuel tax rise which would hit poorer people in areas without good public transport (like North Cornwall) harder than most;
• the basic state pension will rise by 2.5% whilst tax relief for top earning pensioners will be cut. This means that the well off will be contributing more to help the least well off
• the A30 will be dualled at Temple. This is a big bottleneck in the summer and puts off many businesses from relocating to Cornwall. The Local Enterprise Partnership thinks it could be worth £100 million to the Cornish economy.

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Have your say on new parking charges

Cornwall Council is consulting the public on the new parking charges which will apply in Cornwall Council owned car parks from next spring.

The major change in Launceston will see the abolition of the first hour parking rate. Instead of paying 50p for up to one hour and £1.60 for up to two hours, the two rates will be merged into a single £1 for up to two hour rate.

This was the preferred option of those who came along to our open meeting a few months ago. Of course, the options available all had to be pre-approved by the council and we weren't allowed to suggest lower overall rates.

Officially, the season ticket rate in Launceston will rise from £470 to £500. However, as has been noted before, the £200 trial will continue until the end of July and now includes the Tower Street season ticket bays as well as the Cattle Market. Our aim will be to ensure that this fairer rate is made permanent.

To see all the details and to have your say, go to the Cornwall Council site here.

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Planning proposal for Upper Chapel - public exhibition - UPDATED

A developer is looking at the possibility of building 100 or so houses on land to the West of Upper Chapel in Launceston. They are holding an exhibition in the Town Hall tomorrow and the public is invited to come along to have their say.

The consultation runs from 1pm until 7.30pm.

Development on this and neighbouring sites were considered by the framework steering group recently and discounted. The Framework is a planning outline for our town which will ultimately form part of Cornwall's core strategy. The process saw every green field site surrounding the town evaluated to see whether or not it would be possible to build new houses and employment sites there. The area to the West of Upper Chapel was discounted early on because of the problem of highways. Forcing more and more cars down Moorland Road and St Johns Road, or alternatively down St Catherine's Hill or Chapel Hill, was seen as hugely problematic.

Of course, any person or company can apply for planning permission and it would be interesting to see how they think they can solve the highways problems.

UPDATE - This afternoon I have been to see the exhibition. I can't see any attempt to solve the highways problems in the area - indeed, the impression given is that they don't consider that these are real problems. I was also disappointed that one panel of the exhibition makes the claim that the Framework group did not consider a scheme like this as part of our work. The truth is that we did consider just such a scheme and felt it would not work.

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Councillors have thirteen options - staff get just two

Full marks to Cllr Andrew Wallis who has spotted that Cornwall Council's staff survey on the potential privatisation of key services contains just two real options.

Staff are asked to rank four choices in order of preference. One is an in-house option. Two more are essentially the same thing (the BT bid and 'out-sourcing') and the final one is 'Undecided'.

So what happened to the thirteen different options that councillors were told were being considered when we had a briefing last week? The full council had demanded that a wide range of possibilities - which should all have been in the mix from the start - should be investigated. Why are staff being offered a choice of just two?

Last week a number of councillors felt that the advocates of the BT bid were trying to railroad the choice into one between BT and no change. The staff survey gives added credence to that fear.

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Collecting for Launceston Foodbank

This weekend, Launceston Foodbank are holding a collection at Tesco. They are after dried, canned and non-perishable goods to make up into food parcels to give to people who are facing a crisis.

This afternoon I joined the volunteers for a couple of hours to hand out shopping lists and to collect donations.

Many thanks to the hundreds of people who gave us items from our shopping lists. Every single can or packet will help an individual or family who are facing a really tough time.

Tesco are donating a lot of staff time to help the effort and they are also adding 30% to the total amount of donations received over the weekend. So far, we have collected more than 40 of the green pallets full of food - that's about half a tonne.

Some of the donations were quite incredible. One young boy handed over a packet of sweets from his pocket money whilst another gent gave us a whole trolley-load of stuff.

The volunteers will be there again tomorrow and don't forget that there is a collection basket permanently behind the check-outs in the store.

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