Children's Centre in Wantage

This morning I visited the Children's Centre in Wantage which is run from the Butler Centre next to the museum in Church Street. There is a whole range of activities happening here which can be seen from the Wantage Parish website. As regular readers will remember on a previous blog posting in September, I was at a meeting to discuss the Children's Centre coming to Grove next. At the moment, all children from the catchment area can visit the Wantage Centre, especially for the 'drop in' sessions.

Young mums were there this morning with their young babies and toddlers, and it was lovely to see everyone enjoying themselves (especially the babies). Healthy food was on offer for lunch and there was a health visitor to give advice when needed. This is an excellent local facility and I hope that this posting will help spread the word!

Turf-cutting at Fitzwaryn

This morning I had the pleasure of attending the turf-cutting ceremony at Fitzwaryn Special School in Wantage. We all braved the artic winds to watch headteacher Barbara Harker lift the spade as the first cut was made. Children and staff were there along with the builders Rok who are to start work on a £2M extension for the school. This has been long-awaited by everyone and it will be good to see the improvements once they are completed at the end of next year. Read this press release to find out more about it. We are fortunate to have such an excellent school in our community which has been recently rated 'outstanding' by Ofsted for a second time.

County Councils Network

I have just returned from the County Councils Network (CCN) conference which was held in Oxford this year. This tells you a bit about the organisation which represents all 37 County Councils in England. The event was held at the Oxford Barcelo Hotel at Wolvercote yesterday and today. We covered a broad range of topics not least the credit crunch and the impact of the financial downturn on local authorities. The theme of the conference was 'Counties in a Changing World' which is very apt at the moment considering the elections in the US, the global economy and the pressures on all authorities to continue to deliver high quality services.

The highlight for me was last night's dinner at Somerville College in Oxford, where our guest speaker was neuroscientist Professor Susan Greenfield (now in House of Lords). An excellent speech which highlighted education in our changing world. Briefly, she touched on how our brains react to learning and how more research needs to be done on the effects of children's brains where they are repeatedly exposed to games consoles and television. An interesting topic and one I am sure many of us would like to explore. Ironically, my son chose her book 'Brain Story' when he won a physics prize at school, so now I am keen to read this myself.

Of course, these events are always useful for networking with colleagues and catching up with events elsewhere in the country. I think visitors to the conference have enjoyed their stay in Oxfordshire.

Millbrook Thistlewood Felled

Delighted to see that at long last the unsightly 'Thistlewood' which had been growing abundantly at the side of McColls supermarket in Millbrook Square has been cut down. Now, the area has been turfed and a new tree planted, so hopefully this area will be restored to how it was before the metal compound was erected without planning permission. When the compound was removed the weeds took over and were left to grow profusely - until now.

The problem with this strip of land is that it is not owned by the same landowners who manage Millbrook Shopping Square, so when I wrote to ask them to mend the potholes (now mended), they were not able to deal with this too. However, happy now that this has been done and what a difference it makes!

Rememberance Sunday at the Eden Project

I was away this weekend at Fowey, Cornwall, and spent Sunday at the Eden Project. They were just assembling an ice rink for skating as we took 2 minutes silence to remember all those who have fought for us in the two great wars. Usually I would have been at the cemetry in Grove, but this time could not be there, but still took time to remember. We were not skating, but looking round the huge biomes which was a fascinating experience. The ice rink is used during the summer for concerts where there have been a number of famous names.

The Eden Project was worth the visit, all built in an old clay pit - reclamation at its best. It is a symbol of hope and very thought provoking on this particular day. It is a growing environment and will change every day with the seasons - very impressive and a place one can always return to. Nine million visitors have crossed the threshold since 2001, many of those coming back for more.

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.