A little over 12 months ago the good people of Howden voted for me to become their Independent Ward Councillor at ERYC -
This surprised many people - but believe me, no one was more surprised than me!
The easiest decision I have had to make was to remain a member of Howden Town Council - while representing Howden at county hall.
It is no secret that the reason I stood for election last May was because I felt Howden was missing out on support at county level and my sitting in both bodies gives Howden TC a direct conduit to Beverley and a far louder voice at a local level - and I hope my fellow councillors believe that this is the case.
When I turned up at Beverley for the first time I was given lots of ‘friendly’ advice from long serving Councillors - with some telling me how undemocratic the system was and complaining about the executive officers taking too many decisions to the detriment of councillors
My conclusion, a year in, is that this certainly not the case
Every officer I have spoken to (and there have been a lot) has been friendly, approachable and unerringly happy to help, no matter how stupid the question I have just asked.
These people are employed simply because they are experts - expert engineers, planners and administrators - they are very good at their jobs, at a time where funding is constantly squeezed between the forces of inflation on one side and a constant reduction in governmental support at the other.
The effect of these pressures means that the ‘stuff’ we rely on, the stuff that we take for granted - like bin collections, repairing potholes and parking enforcement, sometimes slips.
Things do sometimes move a a glacial pace and believe me, this is as frustrating for the guys who are being paid to deliver these services as it is for us, who rightly expect the highest standard of delivery
Being a county councillor has its advantages … if I email a request to an officer there is a service level agreement which means I will hear back within a certain time frame …. this doesn’t obviously guarantee that they will come back with a definitive answer ( that would be impossible) but a dialogue is opened and I have often received regular updates on issues I’ve raised.
We have had several wins - we are awaiting a start date for work to commence on the Knedlington Crossroads which will reduce the speed limit on the site, improve the signage and visibility and safety at the crossing.
This year we have seen pavement improvements on the Market Place and resurfacing on Selby Road and the junction of Bridgegate/Hailgate.
Work will commence in the next few months on the relief road linking Station Road and the A614 as part go the HOW development, which will take out around three quarters of the HGV traffic on Flatgate and Hull Road alone - which will be of great benefit
One issue that remains unsolved is our Station carpark
At the end of last year Network Rail pulled out of a land purchase that would have significantly increased the area of our car park - citing the cost of installing lighting being to great !
Northern Rail, manage the station (and are now, like Network Rail owned by the government) decided to start charging £2 a day to park on a muddy, uneven piece of wasteland. They soon backed down when the public made their opinions known
They came back with the promise of a properly finished surface, complete with lined parking bays and East Riding intimated that they might be able to contribute to the cost …… and five months on we still wait to hear if and when this is going to happen.
Thankfully some of the pressure at the station car park has been eased by the introduction of the Howden Goole Hopper service - which seems to be a great success.
Take up has been really good and I am assured that if the service remains successful and the demand is there, there will be the possibility of buying more buses for this service in the future.
The Future
Last year I was pointed to a mention of Howden on a commercial property website which stated "Howden featured in The Times' top 20 places with the best standard of living in the UK"
Much as I love Howden (and I do) I didn't really think that sounded right, so I did a little more digging, and lo and behold Howden really was one of the Times top 20 places with the best standard of living in the UK ...in 2005!
Howden is a great place to live, but compared to so many other towns in the East Riding, we could be doing so much better.
When I stood for council I had two pressing ambitions for our town - the development of a Youth Hub, to give our young people somewhere to socialise, learn and get help and advice and the founding of a ‘Community Shed’ where people of all ages can meet, share skills and experiences - which is particularly important in a society where men typically find it more difficult to build social connections than women and rarely share personal concerns about
health and personal worries.
In the past week we have had some really positive news on both of these projects , but I’m not going to jinx this by ‘speaking too soon’. Keep your eyes peeled for some exciting news soon!
One of the first things I learned was that money doesn't grow on magic money trees and there are a lot of hoops to jump through before we can even apply for grants and support.
The main lesson I have learned however is that if we want to make things happen and make things better, we pretty much have to do it ourselves,
After a lot of research we have set up Howden Action Group Community Interest Company, giving us a legal entity to apply for charitable and local authority funding to get projects such as these off the ground.
We has a launch meeting for Howden Action Group last month and over 30 people attended - and for us the most important outcome was the massive confidence boost we got from getting such a positive reaction to the ideas we put forward.
Now is the time to start putting those ideas into action.
Comentarios