Yardley CSP met on Monday, under the new chairmanship of Cllr Mike Ward, following Jim Whorwood’s retirement from the Council in the May elections.

There were discussions about the Prosperous Yardley Delivery Plan and the Healthier Communities Delivery Plan. To me there is a slight air of unreality about such discussions at the moment as we wait for the inevitable impact of the budget cuts to work through to the detail of such plans. With £1 in every £4 of public spending being borrowed at the moment, we need to move back to living within our means, and those that pretend otherwise would lead us into a tragedy of Greek proportions. 

Inspector Agar then gave a presentation about the new Ward Tasking arrangements. These result from the recent decision by the Police to realign their operational boundaries with the Council’s Ward boundaries. This is a welcome move that will save on admin costs. The first of the new Ward Tasking meetings will take place this Thursday evening (1st July) in Acocks Green Police Station. There will be one such meeting per Ward per month (hopefully each Ward’s meeting will take place on the same day of the same week in each month). Housing, Environmental and Consitutency Officers from the Council will attend too to ensure a wide range of issues can be picked up and actioned. The old, more local Tasking meetings, which I think have served a very useful purpose in the community, will continue, but will now be called Police Surgeries. It will no doubt take a few months for the new arrangements to bed in, and we will have to see if they need tweaking at that point.

The next CSP meeting will be on Monday 13 September at 6.30pm in South Yardley Library.