Councillors reading material

That pile of papers in the photo is just two envelopes of post this week - admittedly the fattest 2 envelopes, but photographed yesterday to give Blog readers a taste of the reading material councillors get! Here's a brief look to give a flavour of the issues they raise:

- Development Control papers for next week's meeting with all the planning applications - they usually take quite a few hours to read - managed to read some earlier in the week and send off corrections to the previous minutes - need more time later this week to look at the applications in detail. The papers don't include the weekly lists of decisions that are delegated - they come on email - pages of them to read as well.

- Cabinet meeting on Thursday is responsible for several inches thick of papers - and can (in my view) only be read with espresso and chocolate croissant. I'll go to Cabinet this Thursday evening but it is really only a time to find out stuff - maybe to ask questions - other meetings are for looking more at the details - for example 'Scrutiny' will be looking at the details of the next stage of the Environment Green paper. Nevertheless there are issues to take up with the Cabinet papers - for example the recent Housing Needs Inquiry is on the whole very good but in my view does not look properly at the private rented sector - the final report does include this point I made but I think it should go further and I'll be urging the Council to look more at this - our waiting lists for Social housing are growing and the availability of homes is shrinking - we need more private rented to fill the gap.

Yesterday I started reading some of this post - and in the afternoon had a Green party councillors meeting - a chance to look at a whole range of issues and how we will respond to them - like the Regional Spatial Strategy, canal regeneration, the White paper local gov reorganisation, the hopes for an SDC Ethical Investment Policy (after the Green amendment), Sustainability Appraisals, the County waste strategy, Stratford Park's contract renewal, SDC's Budget and Aston Down - and much more.

I did also have to go to Nailsworth first thing in the morning - I lived there for some 10 years and very much loved the town - it has changed though - more of those lifestyle shops but still great - usually go to Green Spirit but ended up in Hobbs for a coffee (see photo) - they have just extended upstairs - very nice and a great coffee. And talking of Nailsworth we have a Green party meeting here later this week - starting to look at election next year and whether we want to set up a Green party group in Nailsworth that will meet more regularly seperate from Stroud - would be good as we can have 20 people now at the monthly Stroud party meeting - do call me if you are interested in seeing what they are like!

And dear oh dear re the photo of me in Citizen today at the film event - see left - caught off guard by camera with a mouthful of popcorn - how unfair! But great popcorn - and who will recognise me anyway in that!