My latest monthly column for the Times and Citizen newspaper reflected on the recent widespread disorder seen in London and elsewhere, and on how the uplifting scenes people taking part in spontaneous clean-ups and joining 'broom armies' got many of us thinking about our own communities and how precious they are to us. In case you haven't seen here, I've reproduced it here:
As you may be aware, Bedford Borough Council must find £36 million of savings - over a quarter of its current net budget - over the coming four years in order to balance the books. We cannot hide from this - the Council has a legal requirement to balance its budget and £36 million is the funding gap which has to be closed to achieve that. What we can do, however, is to work with all parties on the Council, with staff and crucially with residents to make sure the savings are made carefully and in the fairest way possible. To that end, the first set of proposals on how to make those savings, agreed by all groups on the Council, are now out to public consultation. You can find details of the proposals, and take part in the consultation online, at www.bedford.gov.uk/budget2012. Also, in order to make it as easy as possible for people to give the Council their views, we have for the first time produced an interactive 'budget tracker.' This online tool gives you the opportunity to put together and submit an indicat
If you get either the Times and Citizen or the Beds on Sunday delivered to your home you will know this already due to the 'wrap-around' advertising in the last week, but today saw the new bus timetables for urban and rural parts of the Borough come into force. As I've written here on mayordave.org.uk recently (http://bit.ly/p0Pgf9), as with any changes to bus routes it is not uniformly good news for everyone, but overall across both urban and rural parts of the Borough access to decent bus services is being maintained and even improved. Most buses in Bedford and Kempston are now running until as late as 11pm. It is the first time in decades that we will have late evening buses in Bedford and Kempston, and I am delighted we have been able to reach an agreement on this with Stagecoach and achieve a significant extension of bus services into the evenings. We are also continuing with the new Sunday services we introduced last year, which see the Monday to Saturday routes replicated on Sundays and a minimum frequ
On May 9th members of Wiltshire Council western area planning committee deferred the scheme for a cinema, supermarket, restaurants and pub on the Bowyers site in Trowbridge, asking planning officers to come up with details of the conditions and legal agreements which would be required if the scheme were to be approved. The application returned to the committee on June 20th with details of all the conditions (43 of them) and legal agreements, though still with a recommendation from the planners for refusal.
The Government has announced a further 11 Enterprise Zones across the country, designed to boost local growth and create more than 30,000 new jobs by 2015. These Zones will have simplified planning rules, super-fast broadband and over £100m tax breaks for new businesses over the next four years.
Results are in and schools across the borough are celebrating, following the release of provisional 'A' Level results today. Notable successes include: