Full Council: Environment Strategy adopted - great stuff!

I'm just back from three days at my parents down in Devon - very nice to see the sea and also discovered this Labyrinth that I hadn't known was in Seaton.

Photos: Seaton Labyrinth and left Napoli on right of photo viewed from Sidmouth.

Further along the coast, Sidmouth was surprisingly busy - many coming to catch a glimpse of the stricken Napoli - more stuff has apparently been washed ashore - indeed a walk on Seaton beach yesterday and there is much rubbish to be found - one man walking his dog excitedly told us he'd picked up 60 to 70 bottles of shampoo that morning - certainly there were still dozens left but all I tried were empty!

Photo: debris on Seaton beach

Anyhow this afternoon I came back from Devon for Full Council meeting! Perhaps foolish as I could have stayed on longer at my parents - meetings should be better planned - half term is the time that many councillors with families have time to see family or go on holiday - having meetings then makes no sense.

Hilary Fowles, Labour Leader at the Council, put forward a motion this evening calling for DCC meetings to move to the afternoon - see my blog for 9th February for more info on this - as I said at the meeting I couldn't support it as current DCC members hadn't been consulted but Labour are absolutely right to be looking at how we can improve access to meetings by councillors. This just wasn't the best way in my view to go about it. However I did get applause for coming back for the meeting!

The Government has launched a Commission into this just a couple of weeks ago - I will be writing to SDC in support of more work to look at how our meetings can be improved to encourage wider participation in council work - but we need to also talk to existing members before those changes can go-ahead. I hope members will listen.

Anyway other items at Full Council were setting the Council Tax which most agreed with - plus various other bits and pieces - the most important being the Environment Strategy paper. Leader of the Council Chas Fellows and Cabinet member Nigel Cooper have done an excellent job with this paper. Greens have welcomed this and also welcomed the process and indeed applauded officers and councillors from all parties who have helped put this together- see press release earlier this week.

Greens particularly welcomed that this strategy incorporated a considerable amount of what Greens have proposed as the way forward - we have produced 3 reports on the strategy at the various stages and attended many meetings - at last people are listening - much of this strategy is what Greens have been saying for 15 to 20 years - let us hope that continues!!

The success of the paper was slightly marred by confusion over two items which had been agreed in Scrutiny committee and were then in the initial council papers for approval. Somehow they were dropped when the paper was finally presented this evening. No one could give an explanation. The Green party's Martin Whiteside raised the issues - you can see his important points on the webcast on the Council website - and of course see the rest of the meeting.

One of the points was a crucial target about reducing waste - we thought this would be accepted but it was pushed to an amendment which Martin Whiteside proposed the - the Conservatives inexplicably voted against it - I am hopefully the issue will be picked up by them as the strategy develops - it is important. There also seems no reason why it shouldn't be picked up.We'll see. Anyhow time for bed.