Communities and Money Matters

Today was another busy day at full Council in Oxford where a couple of things of interest came up in our Liberal Democrat motions.

Firstly, I had a motion to urge us to support the Sustainable Communities Act. This Act sets out a process to give local people more control over improving their communities by allowing a community panel to suggest ways local spending could be better used to improve services and quality of life. My motion would kickstart this process and get things moving. At the moment, there is plenty of talk and no action and as a councillor who is keen to get things done in my division I am keen that Grove and Wantage get a fair crack of the whip.

Unfortunately, Tories at County Hall didn't want this to happen, unable to see the advantages despite many of their MP's voting for the Act in Parliament. Julia Goldsworthy MP (Lib Dem) tabled the Act. Even more bizarre they voted for a similar Labour motion 10 minutes earlier - so what a muddle! Do they agree or not agree or maybe they don't know themselves? Doesn't give much confidence in them running the council.

I would also like to see devolved budgets to councillors where we could help our communities with real money if we want to see things happen. Unfortunately it now looks like this won't be on offer unless things change after elections next June.

At least one motion from our group got through today which was about improving the financial investment procedure at the County Council to help ensure that we don't get bitten again by the Icelandic bank situation. We had £5M invested, but many other councils and authorities had more. We are hoping that we will get this back in due course. We shall wait and see.