November Community Select
The first item of note involved a presentation from the Tameside and Glossop Primary Care Trust around the current and forthcoming uses of the George Street Clinic. The presentation stemmed from questions that local councillors had raised and to a certain extent had been based on a recent presentation that had been given to GALOP (Glossop action for local order people).
The presentation was useful in terms of updating folk on how and what the clinic is been used for, but it did leave (at least with me) some concerns over how well it will be utilisied when the responsibility passes over to the GP consortium, who in the case of many of the Glossop GC surgeries already offer a number of the services that are or could be offered at the Clinic.
Next up continuing on the health theme was a discussion around deciding the council view on the proposals from the Derbyshire PCT on shutting the Corbur Birth Centre in Buxton. In a sense this was a follow up on the presentation from the PCT recived at the September meeting, when as was the case last night, there were still a variety of issues in particular around finance and service concerns if the centre was to shut.
After discussion the committee resolved unanimously that essentially the PCT had’nt conducted the process of consultation properly and that in addition to objecting to the proposal, that PCT should’nt make a decision itself and instead refer the decision to be made by the Secretary of State for Health.
Following on from that was a first look and consideration of issues around some of the possible changes to the council’s housing allocation policy with some of the measurers contained both within the recently passed localism bill, along with the details annouced yesterday in terms of the Government’s Housing Strategy paper.
After that was consideration of how the newly organised members initiative fund will work, along with consideration of how the council will look to engage better with local residents across the High Peak, including better working with some of the town and parish council’s across the patch.
On the member initiative fund, there was some concerns which we will try to address around the process been very buracratic for the expected sums of monies that are involved, however on the other hand with that, the process has been drawn up by officers to take acount of all the various legal and financial requirements – but I expect there is some middle ground in which we can meet those needs along with making the process simple and efficent enough to get people using the funds to help in their wards.
Finally we had a confidential report around looking at the arrangements for how CCTV will be monitored within the borough, following the decision by High Peak Community Housing to stop doing that work.
The recommendation that was agreed goes to the council executive at its meeting on Tuesday night, which will consider and agree proposals around the service.