We start the new year on Illogan Parish Council from the Annual meeting on Wednesday 19th May 2010 and I hope some of you will come along to Penwartha Hall to join proceedings and support the new Chairman and Vice-Chairman who will be elected at that meeting.

It will be an important year for the Council not least in getting used to dealing with the Cornwall Council and probably finding the dire economic situation in the country and  Cornwall will call for some additional work for all our councillors.

We have the Parish Plan to publish and future objectives to set arising from that. I will return to this in future reports but we are currently concentrating on improving communications and  involving the local community as much as we can. Take a look at the parish website www.illoganparishcouncil.gov.uk to see what is going on now and in the future. We have also taken over responsibility for the Illogan Review which has been delivered to all households.

Other interesting developments are the Play park development in Tolvaddon and the Green Ripple project, also in Tolvaddon but eventually spreading to all parts of the Parish area in the future.

I will report on all these things in due course so watch this space.

It has been a while since I posted a comment on the site. I have had to take a breather after the Cornwall Council election and the very disappointing personal result. I think we faced a number of particular difficulties in Camborne.

So the bad news is I will not be able to contribute to the new Cornwall Council as I had hoped but the good news is I will have a lot more time to concentrate on Illogan Parish Council and my other personal interests. One of these is sailing and I will do a piece on my activities with BATS, or Blind at Sea, whichich is a charity organisation that provides sailing and other watersport experiences for local blind and visually handicapped people.

The council is having its summer break! but I am sure you will be glad to know that the Parish Plan household survey data is being entered and will be analysed by the steering group shortly. We had around 450 forms returned, nearly a 25% return , well done to those who responded.

At least tthe sun came out today and hopefully provided a little cheer for all after the recent gloomy weather.

I have created a new Group on Facebook titled  David Ekinsmyth for Camborne North.

Please visit in when next on Facebook and don’t forget to specify me as a friend!

For those getting used to Facebook this is proving an excellent way to keep in touch.

I am very disappointed that the Budget presented by the Chancellor yesterday did not tackle many of the long term issues that it could have done. It cerainly did not do much for the hard pressed residents of Illogan whether they be young people, working/non-working families or pensioners. The local housing planning fiasco highlights the need for a big increase in affordable rented houses, aka council houses but the piffling amount allocated to this  will hardly touch touch the number required. I will expect that our new Cornwall Council will take a lead in this area. The opportunity was missed to reduce the tax levels of the lower and middle income earners, who are the very people who would spend the additional amounts because they have to rather than save.

If you would like to see what our MP Julia Goldsworthy thinks then go to her piece on YouTube as follows :  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJUvGf

I am now actively campaigning in Camborne North Ward of Cornwall Council.

This ward includes my home base of Tehidy, and extends into the Tuckingmill and Roskear areas of Camborne via Tolvaddon and Roscroggan. This is an area of differing needs and requires a strong advocate and hard worker to represent it. I aim to fulfil these requirements.

This does not mean that I will cease to be active in Illogan Parish which remains unchanged and includes Tolvaddon , Tehidy and Roscroggan. So life will continue to be very active  and interesting from now on.

I am currently doorknocking in Roskear, Tuckingmill and will shortly move on to the Pendrea Park and Tremarle Home Park area . I am keen to find outviews on current issues to enable me to campaign effectively and on things that really matter to people.

So far the issue of proposed planned increases in new housing and anti-social behaviour seem to top the list.

Thanks for the welcome I have already received and I look forward to meeting more people over the next few weeks and months.

Working together we can get things done to enhance and improve the current environment.

The survey will be delivered to every household in the parish. Illogan Churchtown, Illogan central, Tolvaddon, Tehidy, Park Bottom, some 3500 addresses.

At least one response from each household would be ideal, but as many as qwe can get is probably more realistic. It looks long but the questions are really short and to the point and should not tyake too long to answer. If another person in the house wants to respond then get another form from theParish Clerk, or me or from shops and other public places in the parish.

REMEMBER  :  this is your opportunity to influence parish development for the next 25 years. SO please take the time to fillit in.

There will be a window envelope enclosed within the survey form and all you have to do is fold the form so that the FREEPOST address shows in the window and post.

We hope to have them out by the end of April and would expect returns by the middle of May.

After this they will be analysed and a report written on the findings. This will be taken to a public consultation meeting in late summer before the Plan itself is drafted. Another public consultation will follow before the final publication of the Plan. A long process but hopefully really worthwhile.

Now Labour wants to snoop on your Facebook activities

Liberal Democrats have uncovered the Governments latest installment of ‘Big Brother’ society with plans to monitor activity on social
networking sites. Home Office minister Vernon Coaker revealed the shocking proposals in a series of exchanges with Liberal Democrat Home
Affairs spokesman Tom Brake.

In the admission, Vernon Coaker disclosed that social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace may be forced to retain private
information about users’ web-browsing habits including the name of every person they correspond with on the site. This mass-surveillance strategy
will be executed under a terror strategy guise, even though almost half the British population – some 25 million people – are members of social
networking sites and are unlikely to have any links with terrorism.

The illiberal move has been attacked by Liberal Democrat MPs, security experts and civil liberty groups alike with Tom Brake describing the
proposals as, “the most expensive snooper’s charter in history”. “It is deeply worrying that they now intend to monitor social networking sites
which contain very sensitive data like sexual orientation, religious beliefs and political views. ”

Tom Brake added that, “Given the Government’s disastrous record with large IT projects and data security, it is likely that data will leak
out of every memory stick, port and disk drive when they start monitoring Facebook, Bebo and MySpace.”

You can back the Liberal Democrat campaign to restore people’s privacy and freedom at http://freedom.libdems.org.uk

April 6th, 2009 in News |

Leave a Reply

This week has seen a lot of interesting activity with the completion of the parish Plan survey (you should shortly see a copy on the Illogan Parish Council website) and the meeting of the Parish Plan and Unitary Authority Committee agreeing the method of delivery to all households in Illogan parish.  Our new litter contractor has contracted to deliver to every household and this will occur from the middle of April. Other copies will be available in boxes in shops,doctors surgeries and other community facilities. So there is no excuse for failing to get one. PLEASE COMPLETE AND RETURN.The greater the return number the more relevant the data and the more powerful the community case in future developments.  So watch the letterbox. They will come complete with a Freepost return address and window envelope, so please send them back.

I look forward to the data analysis and public meetings to discuss the outcomes. After this the plan can be written and published.

Another issue that was discussed was the extaordinary decision of our County Councillor Paul Holmes to press ahead with his road calming scheme at the village end of Paynters Lane despite total opposition from the Parish Council and local residents,traders and community groups. We learnt that as this was a Members Scheme there was no way it could be stopped. What a strange version of democracy!  Councillor Holmes stated that he had support for the scheme but refused to show the Council any proof when asked . This led to acrimonious exchanges on the council and astonishment in the assembled public gallery. Unfortunately he arrived too late to hear the main submission from the Chapel most involved. The scheme seems to be going ahead but this episode did not show local democracy in a good light. As he said himself however the voters will have the opportunity to pass judgement in the forthcoming election.NB teh funding for this will come from the Members Allowance and other monies he has acquired. The parish Council withdrew its previous offer of part funding once it was realised that it was not to be consulted and the schemem as implemented was against its wishes. It felt there were better ways of achieving a safer environment in the area without losing parking space and causing difficulties to traders. Remember wherever this money comes from it is still public money.

I attended a meeting of the |Trelawney Alliance in Camborne, set up to fight the housing plans under the Regional Spacial strategy and Kerrier’s Area Action Plan. This mirrors the work we have been doing in Illogan and Park Bottom. The meeting decided not to go ahead with a planned referendum at this time as it would be inappropriate until the final plans had been approved. They are going ahead with a march on April 4th at 2 pm in Camborne and I expect many of us will attend. We had our own meeting that decided to call for a Parish Poll on the issue of opposition to the planned 2350 houses in Illogan and Park Bottom. Again Coucillor Holmes was very much in the forefront of this call. This was discussed by the Parish Council but it quite rightly decided it had no part to play in this process. A Parish meeting has been called for Friday 27th March at 7.30 in the Wellbeing Centre, Illogan, to call for a poll. I have to say I hope themeeting will follow the example of Camborne and delay this decision until the overall picture becomes clearer. It will be expensive and ineffective if badly phrased and mistimed. TheParish Plan Household survey will serve the same purpose and do it better without additional cost to the hard pressed council tax payers of Illogan Parish.

Other than this the Council had its regular monthly Planning and Transportation Committee meeting , and a seperate meeting to discuss its response to the latest version of the Area Action Plan mentioned above. As the plan hasn’t changed despite all the consultation nor has the Council’s position on it. Complete opposition is again the position.

Parish Plan   I am glad to say that the Household Survey has been drafted and agreed after much hard work by the Steering Group. Many thanks to Rachel Osborne of the Kerrier Regeneration team who has arranged the format and printing for us.

The next stage will be to organise delivery to every household in the Parish and this will be discussed at the next meeting of the Parish Plan and Unitary Committee (see Parish web site link for date and time).

We need as many responses as we can get so please do. There are a lot of questions but none of them will take very long to answer. All members of the household can respond so if you need more forms contact the Clerk or me.

Area Action Plan  There have been further consultation meetings with the Kerrier planning team where they discussed any amendments to the plan following earlier consultations. Some movement has been detected with regard to houses around Park Bottom, but by no means enough for the residents of the area who want none!

At a meeting of the Park Bottom Action Group it was decided to seek a parish poll on the issue and this is going to be discussed a the full council meeting on March 18th. There should be an interested audience there so come along and here the debate.

I do not think there is much chance that any development will take place in the near future with the situation in the countrry at the moment. Developers will not build if they cannot sell or more importantly cannot raise the finance from the banks. However it is very important to maintain pressure on the planners to make sure we don’t get large scale building in the future. Camborne are organising similarly as they have belatedly woken up to the significance of the  plans as it affects them. In the end we will need to look at the area as a piece and the new Community Network Area will be the place.

The Parish plan household survey has a section on  this and will be a poll in its own right that will enable us to look forward.

Unitary Authority  The date of the election for the new Cornwall Council has been decided by the Government as Thursday June 4th in line with all other local elections in England and the European election.

The first of these weeks has been unusually quiet for the parish council. This is usually the case when our excellent clerk Sue Ballinger takes a well earned break!

I did go to a well attended meeting of the Park Bottom action group where the matter of housing plans for the area was discussed. It is difficult to find anyone local in favour of the plans as they stand and most are clear that they do not want any building at all. A call for a parish poll was met with general approval and signatures collected for that purpose. This is being taken to the next full Parish Council meeting on 18th March. I expect quite a few of those attending this meeting will go to hear the debate.Polls or a referendum are as good as the question asked and as relevant as the number of people participating. They are notorious for making grandiose claims on sparse statistics. For this reason I think the more measured questions on the issue in the Parish Plan household survey are a more effective way forward. Time will tell.

This week I shall,be at the aforementioned Council meeting and will report back next week. Mark James ,the newly appointed manager of our new Community network Area will  be attending to give an update on progress so far. As I expect this body to be of increasing significance in the future I am looking forward to his presentation. We will also be looking at designs for the proposed new logo for the council, and hearing more details of the scheme for a road safety build out at Paynters Lane End opposed by the council and local residents, traders and organisations but put forward as a Local member Scheme by the County Councillor. Finally to add further excitement we are discussing plans for a proposed Vodaphone base station in Richards Lane. This meeting should noy be missed!

On Friday I will be attending a meeting of the Trelawney Alliance which is Camborne’s response to the building plans.