RESIDENTS TO BE SQUEEZED OUT OF COUNCIL & POLICE DIALOGUE

PCC's Carbon Chief Richard Hodgson is seemingly way too 'posh' to use a microphone, talk at normal speed and unable travel by Bus!

RESIDENTS TO BE SQUEEZED OUT OF COUNCIL & POLICE DIALOGUE says PCC taskforce

According to the Peterborough Evening Telegraph [report below], residents are to be politically shortchanged by merging Neighbourhood Council Meetings with Neighbourhood Police Panel Meetings, making the whole event less formal (no minutes) and with a Ward Forum where Ward Councillors can chat informally with Council Officers and residents. That can already be done over tea and biscuits before the meeting so no change there. What does go out the window is the already short time allocated to residents issues as under the new proposals, all the business will have to be shoehorned into one single evening session not two as at present. Effectively cutting the business time by half or the democratic 'Big Society' by half.....

Clearly Neighbourhood Council issues have little or no overlap with Local Police issues, where we are facing almost immediate dramatic cuts in budgets, reductions in manning, wholesale redundancies for civilian police staff and the prospect of officers and cars no longer attending residential call outs on none life threatening matters - you'll have to report it in person at a police station!

BBC Cambridgeshire on Paul Staintons Breakfast Show
(MONDAY 7 MARCH at around 7:50am) will broadcast a series of interviews on Police Budgets...

So someone legitimately complaining about road works, street lights and potholes or even pavement parking in Hampton will have to compete and listen to trunkated time challenged presentations from police about manning levels and anti social behaviour hotspots? Clearly this task force proposal if accepted this week will then enable the PCC to present the new idea as agreed policy and we the residents have little say in the matter? A done deal.

The latest Neigbourhood Council Meeting (last Monday, and a full formal report will appear in later issues) finally broke up at 9:45pm with a start time of 6:15pm (to view an associated exhibition) and to find out from a repeatedly challenged Mr Richard Hodgson (The Carbon Challenge Development and the STEM Centre Project at PUFC) that Barry Fry could well be running the council carbon neutral policy if the current proposal for the 'parking light' football ground/ riverside residential/ business redevelopment goes through!!! (Should explain Barry Fry is not aware of this yet!)

The clearly vocally challenged Richard Hodgson then rudely refused to use a microphone for his gabbled breakneck speed presentation and a PowerPoint presentation (challeged by one resident as being 'dishonest') which seemed to show residential tower blocks (with sun/power roof panels!) more appropriate to East Germany during the GDR era.

Richard Hodgson thus neatly ensuring that many residents in the audience with hearing difficulties could not hear what he was saying - so a full transcript of his remarks has now been requested and we will carry them on here! If we don't get the transcript we also have notes.....

Richard Hodgson also admitted that he does not want to subject the football club to democratic scruitiny by "meetings such as these" and therefore had not formally agreed the project with the Club! But from first view, so much has been planted on the plot that football supporters (seating capacity increased by 4,000)/ residents and businesses servicing the development (294 residential units) will find very few car park spaces and goods vehicle parking and Hodgson (who admitted using a car to get to the neighbourhood council meeting) asserted that "everyone (including the 4,000 extra football supporters) could use the bus, walk or even possibly use electric cars!!!!

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PFNW who had three representatives at the Neighbourhood Council Meeting confirms that no one from PCC has approached PFNW for a view on the proposal below and frankly it stinks. This so called PCC task force has without publicity or consultation put the report before the Councils Strong and Supportive Communities Scruitiny Committee who meet this Wednesday. For the record, based on the PET report. PFNW totally oppose the proposal as being without merit and wholly from a neighbourhood watch point of view unworkable. We would be happy to expand on this premise.


From the Peterborough Evening Telegraph Saturday 5th March 2011 http://bit.ly/fIrz8i

A PROPOSAL to re-name neighbourhood councils as “Area Committees” and merge
their meetings with neighbourhood police panels has been put forward to
Peterborough City Council.
A report that goes before the council’s Strong and Supportive Communities Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday makes the recommendation as a way of creating a “one-stop shop” for the public to better raise issues to representatives from the police and council.
The report, put together by a council task group, also suggests the “Area
Committee” meetings would follow the police panel meeting and a “Ward Forum”
meeting, an informal session where ward councillors and council officers can
talk to residents. The report said: “The recommendation is to create a
single, seamless approach to neighbourhood engagement by creating a structure which enables Ward Forums, neighbourhood panels and Area Committee
meetings during the same session.”

(C) Park Farm Neighbourhood Watch Peterborough UK Tel: 01733 345581 Broadcasters direct call ISDN 'down the line' 01733 555319 ISDN Codecs G722 & APT All Press Enquiries Julian Bray 01733 345581