Report on North East Ipswich area Committee, 26 July 2012

Last night we had a good attendance from local residents at our latest North East Area Committee. The meeting started with a presentation from Hopkins Homes about the Colchester Rd/Fire Station development.

The main meeting started at 7.30pm and it became quite obvious that the Tory councillors were more interested in scoring cheap points than contributing anything positive to the meeting. Cllr Carnall asked for an amendment to the minutes to show that it was their idea to back the Cherry Tree Park request for funding. We accepted this but this then led to Cllr Pope wanting a number of amendments made to the minutes, including an attack on myself. Cllr Stroet then joined in the attacks on me, and informing me that I should attend a course on how to Chair a meeting.

Why their concerns with the minutes were not raised before the meeting you will have to ask them but it became obvious afterwards that the public had not been impressed with attempts to play party politics at the meeting.

We then had a number of questions from residents, many on parking issues in the streets near the hospital. The state of the pavement next to the Cemetery was also debated and will be an issue that I will be raising with Officers and Portfolio holders over the next few months.

Officers reported that work continues on a play scheme for Cherry Tree Park and also on the plan to solve traffic problems in Pearce/Orwell Road.

Cllr Alan Murray the Conservative County Cllr for Bixley then spoke about the bus service to Broke Hall, he thanked Ipswich Bus Company for stepping in with the new Number 4 round. Wonder what Cllr Carnall thought of this as if he had won the election two years ago we would have seen the Ipswich Bus Company sold off by now.

I finished the meeting by giving a verbal brief on our action plan for the North East, the plan had been worked on and agreed by Officers and two Labour and two Tory Cllrs but this did not stop Cllr Pope from setting that he had refused to attend the meeting as he did not believe in Cllrs setting the action plan. Cllr Carnall and Stroet just sat on their hands and said nothing.

Even with the antics of the Tory Cllrs the meeting seemed to go down well with residents. Our next meeting will be in the same location, St Johns Church Hall, Caudwell Hall Road on the 20th September at 7pm.