Community Meeting 03/03/2008
HDC has been running these ‘Have your say’ evenings for a couple of years now and although I have always meant to go to one, I never have due to them clashing with football or Karate. This time I had no excuse so I went along for a look.
Hosted at the Evangelical Church on Bath street this event was chaired by Councillor Beverly field and the agenda was set to review the stroke unit provision at St. Luke’s, the commons car park upgrade and the football pitches at the Harborough leisure centre. There is also an any other business section to deal with community members (for some reason I shudder when I hear the word citizen these days) questions.
The update on the new hospital gave source for some derision in the crowd (which apparently was the largest attendance to date) due to the fact that the hospital had been put back once again, that no one seemed to know who controlled the stroke unit in St. Luke’s with it being stated that it was not the Primary Care Trust whilst someone had been told only the day before it was the PCT that ran it.
The commons car park, revised, plans had just been sent out to tender and the football pitches at the leisure centre had been fenced off using £9000 or section 106 money and there is a consultation about the leasing of the pitches to the Harborough Football club.
In the any other business section I raised the question asking being as the council provides 98 allotments and their waiting list is currently 144 (146% over subscribed) do they intend to review allotment provision at all. The answer was unsurprisingly, No, there was no intention to provide extra capacity but equally there were no plans to reduce provision. Answer was from Matthew Bails (sp).
Marion also asked a question which I did not catch but I think it was to do with how ‘Transition town Market Harborough’ could work more closely with the council.
While I do not see this kind of meeting as an integral tool for the TT initiative I feel that we should table questions as it is a great way to communicate with the council and to find out, more importantly, who is who in the council so that we know who to deal with.
Darren