A scrutiny committee is likely to be set up to review the way Brighton and Hove City Council deals with snow.
Green councillor Ben Duncan revealed the news on his blog this evening saying that his party and the local Labour Party will call for its creation at the next meeting of the Environment and Community Safety Overview and Scrutiny Colmmittee on Monday 8 February.
He also detailed what measures his party will be calling for. He said: “Today the Green Party has called on the council to do more to help residents help themselves:
- to draw up “community snow plans”
- to install more, well-stocked, grit bins
- to provide “community spades” to householders wishing to clear the ice outside their own homes
- and to maintain registers of residents who are willing to help, either by making pavements safe or by checking on elderly or vulnerable neighbours.
“Many people were ready to clear pavements and help in other ways in the recent bad weather, but there was no way of co-ordinating their efforts. In addition, in Kemp Town and Queen’s Park many local residents don’t have gardens and they will need to be supplied with spades, if they are to help.”
The heavy snowfall before Christmas left many residents stranded because of ungritted roads, and led to a widespread outcry against the council.
Extra measures were brought in before this month’s freeze but, although many felt the council performed better, there were still calls for more to be done.
Are you for real Ben? How can you claim “there was no way of coordinating” people who wanted to help???? Back here on Planet Earth even the Labour Government was willing to congratulate the (Tory) council on the way it co-ordinated volunteers to help out the vulnerable (see http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/1431227). That was one of the few things they did get right from the start.
Yes, the council’s first attempt at dealing with the snow and ice (pre-Xmas) was woeful – but they learnt from their mistakes and got it right after Xmas without throwing more of people’s hard-earned cash at it than was necessary. Community spades? I’ve heard it all now! I’d love to know who would pay for them. Perhaps you should stick to declaring cultural events “racist” because they’ve got the word “white” in their name…and leave serious commentary on serious services to the sane.
Wow, council scrooges monitoring not just Argus comments but also brighton and hove news.org, glad to see all that tax payer money’s being spent well!
How anyone honest cant think the council’s reponse was owt but pants is beyond me. Would it have been better if Cllr Theobald, the man in charge of the council’s environment dept, hadn’t been wintering in South Africa during the extreme weather?