An application has been made to upgrade footpath26 (shown alongside on map copied from Blaenhonddan community council’s guide to public rights of way) to a bridleway.

If anyone has any comments, could they send them to me, or to the Head of Legal Services of the City of Swansea who is coordinating, by 7th December.

Even so, I will do well to keep up my record of attending council meetings. I was fortunate enough to miss only two county borough seminars and one community council meeting because of ill-health in the spring. It is unlikely that I will be able to keep this up through the winter, but I shall try. I also am prepared to defend my attendance record in public, which is why I want to see Neath Port Talbot being brought into line with other councils, which publish such details, along with the register of members’ interests, on their web-sites. I understand that a review by officers of the council is already looking at this, and I hope that there will be a favourable outcome.

The councillor surgery will take place as planned on Saturday 29th November in the small room at Cadoxton Community Centre, between 10 and 12 in the morning.

I assume that people will have more important concerns during the festive season, so I do not intend to hold a surgery at the end of December, unless there is a public demand.

Local Authorities and the Icelandic Financial Crisis  

Conference Notes

1. The Global Financial Downturn, dramatic fall in stock exchanges and the collapse of the Icelandic financial system.  

2. That nine local authorities and three police authorities in Wales have over £60m in frozenIcelandic bank accounts.   

3. That under the FSC scheme the first £50k of savings is protected per person, per institution.   

4. That the UK Government and WAG have stopped short of announcing protection for thoseLocal Authorities whose money is currently in frozen Icelandic Bank accounts  

5. That responsibility for local government is devolved to WAG.   

Conference believes  

1. That WAG will need to work with the UK treasury to find a joint resolution to the situation as quickly as possible.   
2. That Council tax payers should not pay the financial price for Icelandic banks freezing accounts.
3. That guarantees from WAG need to be given that frontline services will not be cut as a result of assets in Iceland being frozen.  

Conference calls for

1. WAG [the Welsh Assembly Government]  to provide appropriate transitional relief to local authorities who have lost money or interest payments in Iceland.

This is a tough ask, as the situation is changing hour by hour, but council tax-payers need to be reassured. In particular, we need to know what assistance the UK government can give.

Update: the council has responded with a statement. It is clear that this is not the final word, and I and my councillor colleagues will continue to monitor the situation.

I didn’t recognise any faces from Cadoxton there, even though I was assured the ward had been comprehensively leafleted. However, if you do know of a family which has been affected and would like free advice, Bleddyn Hancock will be available in the Owain Glyndwr centre (that’s the new community centre in Waunceirch) between 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. next Saturday, 4th October.

It should be stressed that the consultative group is non-party-political. It is putting together an advice paper, and publicity for it (including, hopefully, a web-site).

As this masthead clearly shows, I am a Liberal Democrat. Further, although the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors supplies the template for this newsletter, saving me a good deal of design work (though, unfortunately, diminishing the name of this excellent ward), it does make an annual charge for the privilege.

While on the subject of subsidising newsletters, perhaps I should repeat what I have posted on another blog:

“Cadoxton constituents may ask why I continue to deliver Focus leaflets, which now contain council news, instead of making use of the council’s facilities. Well, firstly, I won election on a platform which included casting a beady eye on council costs. It would be hypocritical of me to dip into a subsidised service when I don’t need to.

“Secondly, however much the [council] member services department weeds out party political messages, there is inevitably an element of self-promotion in a newsletter for a constituency which goes out over the signature of the sitting member. Why not be totally honest about ones politics, avoid censorship, and provide information at the same time?

“So I will continue to put out Focuses as and when I have enough information to fill them, and pay for them out of [local] party funds and my own pocket.”

On the subject of access to GPs generally, mention was made of health minister Edwina Hart’s initiative to open GP surgeries into the evening. However, a GP from the body of the hall pointed out that the money provided for this was not new, but taken from other GP programmes.

My question was not answered directly, but it was revealed that there would be work in the next couple of months on an additional kind of facility which would reduce the pressure on acute bed space.

Hanging over all was the uncertainty about the future in the future of the NHS in Wales envisaged by Edwina Hart.

There is a couplet in Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” I think everyone in the AGM today was already thinking of the possibility of the loss of local public access to primary care administrators which we have enjoyed since 2003.