Log, June 2005

Here’s a quick summary of news, events and casework for June 2005

30th – Elliott Durham full governors;

29th – Tories in Mapperley Park publish leaflet ruing loss of cobbled streets – only 50 years too late; which street do they want restoring?

29th – NCT results for May 2005 maintains excellent progress; Service performance – 99.7% of all journeys operated; Service reliability – 96.4% of all buses departing the City on time; Service reliability – 94.2% of buses departing intermediate stops on time; Call centre – 94.2% of all calls answered by the Travel Centre; Fleet – 77% of the fleet now operating with low floor access; Fleet – average fleet age only 4.9 years; Reliability will be hit in July however, as Turning Point makes dramatic changes to the city centre during July;

28th – Nottingham Express Transit, Nottingham’s tram system, wins the Public Private Partnership of the Year at the awards evening of the local government magazine Municipal Journal; the PFI funded project was conceived by a partnership of Nottingham City Council, Nottinghamshire County Council and Nottingham Development Enterprise and delivered by Arrow Light Rail a private sector partnership including Carillion, Bombardier, Nottingham City Transport and Transdev; the first year of operation has been the best of any UK tram system, with 8.4 million passengers travelling from March 04 to March 05;

27th – Full Council - - Safe in Nottingham - a new package of measures to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour in Nottingham has been launched by the City Council, the Police and others; measures include - weekly review of intelligence to act on crime ‘hotspots’; extra Police foot patrols of the city centre at to deter alcohol-fuelled disorder; expansion of the "The Sherwood Project" helping drug-using prolific and persistent offenders, back to the mainstream; roll out of Neighbourhood Policing across Nottingham; a major expansion of operations to combat street drug dealing by arresting and providing an overt deterrent to dealers; figures show that gun crime and crime overall in Nottingham are both falling but that crime involving knives is rising across the UK so the measures include tackling all weapon-related crime; - debate the Council’s Performance in the previous year and Statement of Accounts; 58% of service indicators have improved on the last year;

26th – Great Inclosure Walk, from the station to the Forest; join the walk through the Arboretum;

26th – Mo Munir welcomes the Archbishop of Canterbury at a reception for the worldwide meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council; Mo mentions Nottingham’s most famous man of the cloth – Friar Tuck – but can’t help on his theology; the Archbishop ripostes that the Friar was probably a Christian Socialist - cos dropping Robin Hood in the water halfway across the river is the most dramatic “reversal of powers” he can think of;

25th – the play – “Old Big ‘Ead – the Spirit of the Man” - closes at the Nottingham Playhouse, to more standing ovations; written by playwright and Mapperley resident - Stephen Lowe - Brian Clough returns from the spiritual world to pick up a disparate group of actors and to give a working-class twist to the finale of the Tales of Robin Hood; and then sings “My Way”; “but Brian, you’re walking on water” – “Don’t look so surprised!”;

24th – the Waking Dreams exhibition of 130 Pre-Raphaelite works officially opens at Nottingham Castle and includes works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown and Edward Burne-Hones;

24th – visit new IT suite at Elliott Durham; and the fitness suite at the Mapperley SportsVillage; new investment of the behaviour programme (CDCM, used to effect at Haywood) announced;

23rd – Nottingham and the Core Cities meet David Miliband in Sheffield to explore developing a new momentum for the 8 English cities and their role in accelerating economic development outside of the South-East;

21st – Executive Board; agreed to publish of details of individuals subject to Anti-social Behaviour Orders; approved an investment of £1 million in 2005/06 to fund the expansion of the city CCTV network; approved a football development scheme for Southglade Park at an estimated cost of £2,324,000;

20th – Audit Commission raise the bar for future assessments of Councils performance – oh joy!; I wouldn’t mind, but government departments, other public agencies and private sector are not put through the same public test;

20th – Home Office announce crime down and public confidence rising; nationally, over the last twelve months, there’s been an 11 per cent fall in reported crime, a reduction in asylum applications and increased public confidence in the way crime is being tackled;

18th – Frenchman Richard Gasquet wins the Nottingham Tennis Open on his 19th birthday;

14th - 16th – CIPFA conference; John Birt cites 8 factors to managing improvement, without mentioning achievement once – wouldn’t you just love to know what he thinks about television programmes, such as the new Doctor Who, or are the actual programmes just the necessary consequence of management action; miss after-dinner speakers – Eddie Large and Gyles Brandreth;

13th – tour of Pearmain Drive estate;

12th –NCT’s 15 new red GO2 buses for Mapperley and Gedling start running; £2m of new Scania Omni Dekka buses are low floor buses branded in the eye catching Go2 colour coded livery, and offer the highest level of security to drivers and passengers alike, with a driver’s protection screen fitted to the cab door, an attack alarm and of course CCTV cameras and recording devices; new to these buses are flat digital screens which will show CCTV images from the 8 on board cameras, plus passenger information relevant to the service; the new 90 seater 12 metre vehicles, built on the N94 chassis and bodied by East Lancashire Coachbuilders; NCT hope “passengers really appreciate these light and spacious buses.”;

11th – further debt relief package for Africa agreed as part of preparations for G8 summit;

11th – City Council announces proposals to close some primary schools in St.Anns, as part of a programme to invest in the other schools and to configure them as 210 or 420 pupil schools; St.Anns Junior is proposed for closure cos the building and site is not sufficiently attractive; St.Anns Infants will be turned into a primary school; Sycamore is also proposed for closure, but the Elms was also considered; Walter Halls is proposed for a slight expansion to allow it to become a 420 school;

10th – Governors of Elliott Durham Comprehensive Secondary School, support the school being part of wave 1 of Nottingham City’s Building Schools for the Future;

9th – Gov’t announce a new national Road User Charging proposal for 15 years hence;

7th – Review of the East Midlands Regional Plan;

7th – Carbon Trust visit to review how Council can reduce its CO2 emissions;

4th – door-step collection of bulk waste for Sherwood Vale;

4th – A murder in Mapperley Park takes place in the early hours of the morning;

3rd – CfIT visit Nottingham to judge for the award of the National Transport Awards;

3rd – SIGOMA discusses proposed changes to local government finance;

2nd – Fitness Suite opened at the new sports hall at Elliott Durham; over 100 members join on the first day;