Darlington Green Party councillors work hard to represent their communities and fulfil their duties. As well as representing their ward residents, this means fighting for the best outcomes for all residents of Darlington Borough.
One of the ways they do this is to publicly hold the party running the council (currently a Labour / Lib Dem coalition) to account for its decisions. Highlighting and questioning decisions made and policies proposed forces the cabinet members and council officers to carefully consider all relevant factors when making a decision, and ensure they are in the best interests of local people. Decisions should be transparent, as well as fair and based on sound evidence.
Our Green councillors do this all year round, for example, at the council meeting held on 8th October. Green councillors asked the following questions and made the following points:
Senior management changes
The role of economic growth – we must make sure that the senior officer is focused on the right kind of growth – sustainable industries with secure jobs. We should be working to bring a greater proportion of the nation’s wealth to the North East, Teesside and Darlington. As the seventh richest country in the world, we should be splitting the ‘wealth pie’ more evenly rather than than pushing for damaging growth at all costs.
Reporting of Climate change progress for the Borough
The reporting of council and borough carbon emissions and the trajectory to net-zero should be comparable. We welcome the fact that the reporting method has now changed to show the progress of overall Borough emissions reductions, rather than only those that the Council is directly responsible for itself (through its own activities and service delivery).
Funding for climate change investment
Since we first declared a climate change emergency the council has saved £4.7 million in energy bills. What are the plans to re-invest some of these savings back into the climate change actions the council needs to undertake?
Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) for planning applicationsThe council needs to look beyond the new major planning applications for applying HIAs, and ensure that applications already ‘in the system’ meet the requirements as well. Just applying HIA to housing developments is not good enough, we must embed the consideration of health impacts on everything that the council does – in every department. The causes of poor health are wide and diverse. We have to act holistically to counter the declining health of many groups.
School absence fines for SEND pupils
Families with SEND children are facing fines for non-attendance. The procedure is that schools contact the Council’s ‘front door’ service in the first instance. This should allow the parent and children to work on the reasons behind school refusal and put in place a programme to help them return them to school. Instead, schools are going straight for issuing fines. This is not right and it needs to stop.
Safer Routes to school
Is the Abbey School scheme still going ahead as it was not mentioned in the programme of works published in the documents? We were reassured that it was omitted in error.
Single use plates at Hopetown
The plates and bowls use at Hopetown are made from palm leaves. This is better than plastic, but why didn’t we plan to use washable, and therefore reusable crockery?20,000 new trees – but how many are still alive?
There have been problems in the past of trees removed, mown down or areas with very low survival rate. Recording how many trees have been planted is not accurate. Can we have a list of areas planted, dates and numbers plus the survival rates?
Bus reliability
Better bus timetable information at bus stops is welcome, but what is being done to make the buses more reliable? There are economic knock-on effects when people can’t rely on buses to tun up on time or at all. Forcing people to turn to driving cars makes significantly worse economic sense than getting the bus service to run properly.
CCTV not consulted about plans that affect them
Darlington Borough Council operate CCTV cameras around the town centre and in several areas in the urban area. The cameras that are further afield use ‘line-of-sight’ signalling to bring images back to the control centre. When Darlington Borough Council approved the plans for the new train station car park it didn’t notice that the new building will cut off the signal to cameras in the east of the town.
In a related issue, the camera system for Hopetown was specified, commissioned and installed without consulting with the CCTV department. Now we find that the cameras are not compatible and they can’t be monitored from the control centre. More expense is required to put some compatible cameras on the outside of the building.
Both of these issues highlight that Council departments are not talking to each other.
Lack of any progress at Ashcourts
Why are there no Environment Agency updates or Compliance Assessment Reports published about the persistent stink coming forms the land fill operated by Ashcourts? Recent figures recorded are just as high as in January – before the remediation work was started. When will residents of the northern areas of town be able to enjoy their homes again?
Independent Autism advocacy
When autistic patients are admitted to hospital, there is a need for independent advocacy. There is no service offered anywhere in the North East. The tragic consequences can be seen in a recent case where a patient took her own life. A group run by Saint John of God are active in the town, at the Edge Centre. We need to increase awareness of this group to ensure adults with autism can access the care they need.
Impact on council of withdrawal of Winter Fuel Allowance
When Labour removed this universal allowance, unbelievably they did not conduct a risk assessment. Has Darlington Borough Council conducted their own risk assessment? What extra cost burdens will be borne by Darlington Borough Council and the local NHS services as a result of the withdrawal of the Winter Fuel Allowance?
Reclaiming our Communities
Recent work by Reclaiming Our Communities was very constructive. A recent meeting set out to ‘asset map’ voluntary and charitable organisations in the Borough. One week later we learned that another organisation, Youth Focus North East were commissioned to undertake very similar work. Why was this work duplicated? Can the ruling group be more transparent and open in their plans?Will Teesside Airport ever return to profit
In August Lord Houchen’s press team were gushing that Teesside Airport had returned to profit. However, looking at the accounts more closely shows that this is a very narrow definition of profit that excludes many costs. Not least among the reasons to doubt the financial stability of the airport is the growing debt mountain, which currently stands at £95.6 million. Given that no UK airport with fewer than 2 million passengers a year is running at a profit – will Darlington Council ever get their money back?
St Teresa’s loss of contract
It is deeply concerning to hear that the NHS have ‘out-bid’ St Teresa’s Hospice for the end of life care on-call service. The terms offered by the winning bid are far below the excellent care offered by St Teresa’s. They were reaching 98% terminally ill patients within two hours.
Local Cycling and Walking investment
The process of gaining ‘sign-off’ from Active Travel England (ATE) for the investment in walking and cycling infrastructure can lead to long delays. Are officers in Darlington Borough Council gaining sufficient training to ensure that plans are submitted right first time – to avoid time wasted by repeated re-submissions and corrections
It’s easy for any member of the public to get involved in local politics, or to just keep themselves informed about what the people who represent you are up to. Members of the public can attend full council meetings and cabinet meetings (both held every two months), and can submit questions, to which the council must give an answer.If you’re interested in finding out more, information is on this page of the Darlington council website [https://democracy.darlington.gov.uk/uuCoverPage.aspx?bcr=1], [any other good resource, maybe something from the AGC?). And the Green Darlington councillors are always happy to talk to Green Party members and volunteers and give information and advice when they can.
If you want to attend a meeting or submit a question and you’d like some help or guidance (or just someone to go with so you don’t have to turn up alone) please email us and someone will contact you.