At last night's Annual Council meeting I enjoyed listening to the speech by Barry Compton, the outgoing chairman (and fellow Oxted South councillor) last night relating the story of his year wearing the chain. The three things that stick out were 1- the number of engagements attended by the Chairman and Vice Chairman (around 180) and distance travelled, 5000 miles, attending them, 2- the amount of voluntary work undertaken in the district which provides so many of the support services to those in need (which proves David Cameron's point that there is such thing as society, it's just not the same thing as the state) and 3 - the ability of a Chairman to do things well beyond the remit of the Council, adding sparkle - however briefly - to people's lives, most notably for this Chairman by instituting some very well received awards for the voluntary sector.
On the business aspects our leader, Gordon Keymer, set out three priorities for the next council year and three challenges to meet.
The priorities are:
1- persuading Government to allow service delivery to occur by the most efficient means (and that this should be determined locally). Joint working should take pace between the best placed partners, regardless of tier of government and county borders.
2- Making the 2 tier district and county system work.
3- Working with the County to improve the state of the highways.
And the challenges are:
1- Dealing with the consequences of the Government's 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review
2- Dealing with challenges to our level of funding thrown up by the unitary authority debate
3- expanding weekly recycling to 2 new areas.
And finishing on a high, the NAO Quality Satisfaction Survey has put Tandridge in the top 25% of Councils, so we must be doing something right...
