Campaign launched to donate unwanted holiday food to foodbanks

My Lib Dem colleague Joyce Duffin has helped to launch a campaign to encourage visitors to Cornwall and holiday home owners to donate unwanted food to local foodbanks and other projects which help homeless and vulnerable people.

There are 23,000 second and holiday homes in Cornwall and each week there can be tons of uneaten food left behind. Especially in the case of holiday lets, cleaners go into the property and often put the whole lot into black bags for the bin men to collect so that the property is completely clean and ready for the next visitors. The new scheme encourages holiday home owners and visitors to donate this to those in need.

Cornwall's foodbanks can accept unopened tinned and dried food that is in date and demand for their services is rising. Many projects can also take toiletries and good quality clothes, beachtowels and suchlike too. They cannot take out of date, fresh or opened food.

So if you own a holiday let or you know someone who does, please have a word and encourage them to pass on uneaten food to their local foodbank.

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Cross party support for campaign to keep fire control in Cornwall

There was overwhelming cross party support among Cornwall councillors at yesterday's meeting for a motion opposing plans from the Home Secretary to hand control of the fire and rescue service to the Devon and Cornwall Police Commissioner.

The principle reason for this opposition was the loss of local control. Cornwall's fire service is unique. It is built around our towns and villages and in response to the needs of each town. There was a significant fear that moving control to Exeter would lose this tailored approach and also result in cuts to our brigade in order to support the less efficient Devon service.

Cornwall's fire and rescue service has not always been so good - but huge strides have been made in recent years by the staff, the excellent leadership and by the council itself. Why would we want to go backwards?

I'm delighted that there was also massive opposition from the Conservative group to the idea that the inefficient Tory Police and Crime Commissioner should take control of Cornwall's fire service.

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Launceston season ticket prices confirmed

A bit of really good news from today's council meeting was confirmation from the council that the £200 season tickets in Cornwall Council long stay car parks in Launceston will continue.

The news came after my colleague Jade Farrington asked the cabinet member for parking - Bert Biscoe - about plans to trial cheaper parking. This was a key plank of the Lib Dem budget passed in February.

Bert confirmed that the reduced season ticket price would stay and he also said that trials of cheaper 'pay as you go' parking would start soon. There is no certainty that these will include trials in Launceston, but I hope they will prove the benefit to all concerned of lower prices which bring in more drivers. Drivers in other towns would also start to see season ticket prices lowered as the trial in Launceston has shown that prices can be lowered without significantly affecting the overall income for the authority.

Some Launceston season ticket holders may have been quoted a renewal price of £500 by mistake. The council has confirmed that this was an error and they have apologised. The price remains the same and, if anyone did renew at the higher price, then they will offer a refund.

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Opening the council up to all

Cornwall Council currently restricts the rights of those who might wish to film its meetings. To do so, you need to give 48 hours notice. This is seen by some to be overly restrictive and has been challenged by a local journalist. The government has also suggested that councils adopt a more open stance.

Our current rules are also unclear in the case of non-professional media - an increasing market.

Today, in my role as cabinet member for communications, I announced that the council will be seeking views on whether and how to open up the system to encourage people to film us and to do things like live blog or tweet from meetings. My personal view is that it will do us no harm to welcome more filming and other coverage and, by doing so, we will engage more with the public.

All councillors are being encouraged to have their say, but we also want to hear from journalists and from the public about what rules they want to see in place.

The views of everyone who wants to have their say will be fed back via the council's Constitution and Governance Committee and will then be voted on by the next meeting of full council on September 3rd.

The mechanism for having your say will be announced shortly. But, in the meantime, if you have any thoughts, please leave them in the comments section.

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Cornwall Council asks for recall system for councillors who breach code of conduct

Cornwall Council today voted in favour of calling on the government to introduce a system of recall  for councillors found to have seriously breached the code of conduct.

The punishments available to the council in cases where a serious breach has occurred are relatively flimsy. In the past we could suspend a councillor or even refer them up to London to the Standards Board who could disqualify them for up to 5 years. Now the system has changed and the most that can be imposed is a censure and a suggestion that they apologise and undergo training.

Today councillors backed a call for the previous sanctions to be made available once again. But they also backed a proposal by my Launceston colleague Jade Farrington for a system of recall.

The details of a recall system would have to be determined. But typically they work like this. In a situation where the independent standards regime of the council found there had been a serious breach of the code of conduct, electors in the division of the offending councillor would have the right to demand a recall election. There would have to be a threshold for such a petition - say at least 10% of the electorate signing a petition within 2 months of the finding of misconduct. If a valid petition were presented then a new election would be held at which the offending councillor could be a candidate. It would then be up to local voters to decide whether they felt that the offence was grave enough that they wanted to remove the councillor from office.

Introducing recall would require a change in the law - as would restoring the previous sanctions. Cornwall Council today voted to ask the government to consider both.

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Collin Brewer censured and resigns

Collin Brewer has announced his intention of resigning from Cornwall Council. His move came after the council's monitoring officer produced a report censuring him for outrageous and grossly insensitive comments about children with disabilities.

The story of Collin Brewer's remarks has been a long and tortuous one. Two years ago he made comments to a representative of Disability Cornwall saying that 'disabled children should be put down'. After a long standards board process, Cllr Brewer resigned. He then stood for re-election in this May's contests and was re-elected by two votes.

At that stage we thought that was the end of the matter. Many of us were unhappy to see him returned, but the will of his local electorate has to be respected and they had voted him back in the full knowledge of what he had done.

However, he then made more comments during a telephone interview with a journalist from Disability News Service. These included remarks which appeared to compare children with disabilities to 'deformed lambs whose heads should be smashed against brick walls'.

Mr Brewer immediately entered the standards process once again and the results of that were announced today.

The report of the monitoring officer found Mr Brewer guilty of the offences complained about. In a very strongly worded judgement, he was censured, ordered to apologise and banned from council premises where services for children with disabilities are commissioned or delivered. He was also ordered to go on various training programmes.

Some people have asked why more could not be done. Why could he not be disbarred from the council or suspended at the very least?

Sadly, these sanctions have been taken away from councils by the government. In the past we could have suspended him or referred him to what is known as the 'first tier tribunal' which could have disbarred him from public office. These sanctions are no longer available. The most we can do is the rather pathetic censure and ordering him to make an apology.

Tomorrow, Cornwall Council will debate calling on the government to return to us the power of suspension. I will listen to this debate with interest. Clearly the Collin Brewer case has demonstrated a good case for why the removal of these powers was wrong.

In the meantime, Collin Brewer has announced his intention to resign from the council. To be effective, such a move must be made in writing and so will only become official when his letter arrives in the post in the next couple of days.

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Link Road Morrisons gets the go ahead

Cornwall Council's strategic planning committee today gave the go ahead for the new Morrisons supermarket on Launceston's Link Road. The committee also gave outline consent for a hotel, fast food restaurant, pub and 275 homes.

The vote was 20 in favour and just one against.

Both I and colleague Jade Farrington spoke to the committee. We both broadly supported the plans but had concerns about the loss of up to seven of the Millennium Avenue of oak trees. We both argued that an alternative entrance would have been better and we regretted that the developers had not been able to find one in order to preserve the oaks.

However, it is clear that the majority of people in Launceston support the scheme. The developers found 80% support and Jade found just over 70% support in her survey. At the same time, we found broad opposition to the idea of a supermarket on Race Hill car park with around two thirds opposed.

So the supermarket will go ahead and bring over two hundred new jobs to the town. It will also bring competition to Tesco and there will be mitigation measures in place to offset any damage to the town centre.

The rest of the scheme - the hotel, pub, housing etc - will need to come back for detailed planning permission. When it does I will be looking to see that the housing has not encroached onto employment space, that the much needed southern loop road is properly formed and that there are works to the South Petherwin Road to widen this and make it suitable for the extra traffic it will be asked to carry. 

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