Monday 10 December, 4pm – Culture Portfolio meeting
6pm – Labour Group meeting
Tuesday 11 December, 10am – Duke of Edinburgh Award presentation, St James Palace
Wednesday 12 December, 10am – Meeting about Youth activity provision in North East Ipswich
6pm – Ipswich Borough Full Council meeting
Thursday 13 December, 6pm – Scrutiny meeting
Friday 14 December, 9am – Canvassing for a ‘No Cold Call Zone’ in Whitby Road
10.15am – Coffee with staff at Sidegate Primary School
Saturday 15 December, 10am – Labour Campaigning in East Ipswich
7pm – North East Ipswich, Labour get together, Golden Key
Forget a slow down as we approach Christmas, the coming week looks like the busiest week so far this year. But the good news is that a number of those meetings are focused on improving our own part of North East Ipswich.
We also have Full Council on Wednesday and the Tories have proposed a motion that is centred on our plan to start building council houses again in Ipswich. This week I attended councillor training on Housing, and there is no doubt that the Tory/Lib Dems plans to cut housing benefits plus other changes to the benefit system are going to cause problems for may Ipswich residents and not just those living in social housing, The pilot schemes in Wakefield have seen residents who have never before been in debt find it hard to keep up with their renal payments.
The Housing department at Ipswich are going to find there services and skills are needed more than ever as people find they become homeless.
It seems strange that the Tories in Government are so willing to penalise those who may have one bedroom more than they think they should have but at the same time ask rich donors for large sums to fight against any proposals for a ‘Mansion’ tax.
We have over the last day a leading Ipswich Tory state that it is right to reduce housing benefit as we all have to share the pain – have not heard her say we should have a ‘mansion’ tax and that the rich should share the pain. It was also a concern to me that the local Tory lead on Housing was not able or did not feel he needed to attend the councillor training on housing this week.
2 comments:
That is more than a little unfair on Cllr Pope. Was he consulted about the date the training was arranged? You don't know he didn't have something planned months in advance. People have lives. If the Borough wants to hold training sessions, maybe it should consult more widely with opposition councillors about the dates they might be free.
Training for Cllrs is planned well in advance and two sessions are run - afternoon and evening - Cllr Pope may have had a good reason for missing- I hope so as if not it would be a shame that their lead on housing had not attended.
It was one of the best training sessions I have attended
Happy For Cllr Pope to use this blog to say why he could not make it
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