City Regions
Thursday, December 15th, 2005The New Local Government Network (NLGN) has recently published this report about city regions.
The NLGN have a nack of being one step ahead with local government issues and they seem to have done it again – quietly beavering away over the past 12 months with their commission, and publishing it just at the moment [...]
Local planning authorities generally improving but 27 getting worse, says ODPM
Wednesday, December 14th, 2005This report on the public technology website shows that West Lancashire has been getting worse in their processing of planning applications over the past year. We’re one of 27 authorities in the country where the performance is “significantly worse”.
I raised it tonight at Overview and Scrutiny, asking that we should have a report on [...]
West Lancs tenants reject stock transfer
Monday, December 12th, 2005The results of the stock transfer ballot were published today
Overall Total number of votes for YES: 1984 (43% of valid vote)
Overall Total number of votes for NO: 2678 (57% of valid vote)
Turnout: 61%
This rejection of the proposed stock transfer comes despite the massive amount of money spent by the Council and Arena to try [...]
Bickerstaffe Parish Poll
Sunday, December 11th, 2005Typical of the District Council…
This press release is a mean sprited report of the referendum taking place on Thursday.
They’ve tried every trick in the book to try and stop the poll, including writing to John Prescott! Here, they point the finger at one person in Bickerstaffe when for the poll to be called [...]
Meeting as an assembly update
Sunday, December 11th, 2005At the full council on the 7th December, the council voted that the next meeting should be held in Ormskirk, despite it having been held there for the past three years. The council put forward a report saying that future meetings should be held at the Ormskirk Civic Centre or other similar venue. Since their [...]
Housing Stock Transfer Vote
Sunday, December 11th, 2005Tomorrow evening we’ll know the result of the stock transfer vote, and it could go either way. When we’ve been talking to people on the doorstep most people have wanted to stick with the Council as the landlord, but there has been a lot of pressure on tenants to vote for transfer.
For every one [...]
Council meeting as an assembly
Sunday, November 27th, 2005The council leadership recently announced that the next “meeting as an assembly” will be held in Ormskirk in January – for the fourth year running. Do they realise that less than a third of the population of West Lancs lives in Ormskirk?
The council constitution clearly states that the meeting should be rotated around the district [...]
Aughton Street “Pods”
Wednesday, November 16th, 2005The Champion reports today that the Council’s plans for "pods" at the end of Aughton Street, Ormskirk will not be put forward at tomorrows planning committee. The article states that "the proposal has now been moved to allow for the ‘actual scheme being proposed by the council’ to be properly considered". The implication being that [...]
West Lancs Homes Video
Tuesday, November 15th, 2005Following the rather unexpected front page on the local Advertiser last week (Ebay’s Worst ‘Home Video’), I’ve been asked a few times if I had put the auction up just so I could then call the papers about it. I wish I’d been that smart!
Basically I use something called Google Alerts to keep me up [...]
New Site
Tuesday, November 15th, 2005I’m starting a new site today. The database on the old website had broken, and I hadn’t noticed. It could have been down for a while because I hadn’t checked it for a long time.
So I’m starting afresh. I hope that, over time, there is something of interest here.
Cheers, s.
