Monthly Archives: September 2016

Libraries, Locality Budget, young people, Your councillor

Woodbridge Library Reading Challenge 2016

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Cllr Caroline Page, and Woodbridge Librarian Helen Scrivener hand out awards at the Woodbridge Library Reading Challenge awards ceremony 2016

Today we had the fun of the Reading Challenge awards ceremony at Woodbridge Library – one of the jolliest events in this County Councillor’s annual calendar.

To complete the challenge, each child has to read six books over the summer and discuss each of them with a volunteer.

In the autumn every child who has finished their six books gets a certificate and medal at a special ceremony at Woodbridge Library. It’s such fun – and helps support a love of reading. Some of the Woodbridge volunteers have been reading challengers themselve in years gone by.

400 children registered this year, 60% of whom finished  the challenge. This  meant Woodbridge Library volunteers spent 250 hours helping with the scheme over the summer!!!

This year I augmented the scheme by funding story-reading sessions for the children over the summer, a Dream Jar competition and a magic show to finish the afternoon off in style, once the certificates had been presented.

County Council Surgery, Uncategorized, Woodbridge, Your councillor

Woodbridge – happier because residents are fully represented?

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Surgery GENERIC ALLDATES YEARSThe Saturday after next I will be spending my usual morning at  Woodbridge library, running my regular open-access surgery for Woodbridge residents. I’ve run this surgery every month  for the last five years. It is supposed to be two hours long, but these days it’s closer to three, as the surgery is generally well-attended and I don’t leave until the last person has been seen.

In August, Rightmove published its annual report on the ‘happiest place’ to live in Britain – as identified by the residents *. Woodbridge scored 10th place nationwide – an amazing accolade for a town as small as ours.

Now, I don’t want to labour the point, but if your elected representative makes the effort to be available and to listen to your problems and ideas and tries to help with them, it  must have a positive effect on the town’s happiness!

This weekend,  I was in Hadleigh, whose County Councillor,  Brian Riley (elected 2013) moved to North Carolina in early 2015 – but kept claiming his allowance and shamelessly told his constituents  that he could be as good a Suffolk county councillor from the USA.

Mr Riley has now finally resigned shortly before being removed. He couldn’t even manage  to maintain the minimum council attendance requirement for a councillor (one meeting every six months) and having left his constituents voiceless and without adequate county representation for 18 months. A private communication I had from him by email last month suggests he thinks this all a very fine state of affairs.

Before Brian Riley won the seat for the Conservatives (who have been strangely reluctant to criticise their former colleague’s shoddy behaviour to those he was elected to represent), Hadleigh was held for 24 years by LibDem David Grutchfield, who worked tirelessly for the town, and  only stood down through extreme ill-health.

Maybe Hadleigh residents should ponder what it is that makes a town happy when they vote at the forthcoming by-election? They deserve so much more and better than what they have had in recent years

*    The 12 factors that Rightmove looked at were:

  • Community Spirit
  • Sense of belonging
  • I can be myself
  • I feel safe
  • Essential local services e.g. doctors, schools
  • Non-essential amenities e.g. restaurants, pubs
  • Opportunities to develop skills
  • I earn enough to live comfortably
  • The people are friendly and polite
  • Sports and recreational activities
  • Arts and culture
  • Nature and green spaces

 

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Park & Ride Update

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Anxious passengers at Ipswich P&R discuss its future
Anxious passengers at Ipswich P&R discuss its future

After deciding – once again – to cut a public transport subsidy, SCC’s Conservative administration have decided to honour their commitment to Park and Ride services by trying to make the Ipswich Park & Ride self-supporting!

The dream is to get the bus companies that operate alongside it to take over P&R services: Ipswich buses at the London Road end and First at the Martlesham end. (Many of us have used this system for years. It is called “catching a bus”).

The buildings in the carparks will no longer be ticket offices but will be offered to retail companies.

At the London Road End this plan seems comparatively simple: the 13 bus runs along the same route and Park & Ride tickets can already be used on it out of hours. There are, however, problems for users to the east. I was told, as LibDem Transport Spokesperson, that the 64 & 65 are the services which will become Park and Ride buses at Martlesham. However the Labour spokesperson has been told it would definitely be the 66. Asking the Cabinet Member for disambiguation, he had no idea whatsoever. We now hear it hasn’t been decided. The choice is important: neither service is ideal: the 66 service is slow and goes round a lot of houses. The 64/65 start out as far as Aldeburgh and Leiston and can often get deleayed.

In all, I am not sure how successfully this scheme will work, or whether it is a fudge to extend the operation beyond the forthcoming elections cobbled together by an administration which does not personally use buses.

Suffolk residents need the park& ride to help deal with the increasing congestion in Ipswich. The administration  requires it to be income generating. Of course, there is no reason why it should not be both if properly run. This administration has never shown much sign of wishing to run it properly.

The best way to make the P&R more income-generating would be to make it more responsive to demand and that would be to provide a speedy service for commuters to reduce the morning rush hour. This our local buses do not do.

At the moment I cannot see any very compelling reason why people should now drive to the P&R from Woodbridge rather than getting on the same bus in Woodbridge – especially as they will be able to use their bus passes in Woodbridge but will pay to sit on the same bus if they board it at the Park & Ride!
We will wait and see as more details emerge.