SAMRA meeting last Friday week

I had such a busy week that I completely forgot to blog about the excellent SAMRA meeting. There must have been seventy or so residents listening to the Navitas presentation which I thought indicates the growing interest in this matter. Incidentally, I have the latest graphics produced by Challenge Navitas of the vista from Hegistbury, quite disturbing. If any resident’s association want to use this for their meeting let me know. The questions from the floor to Councillors were also very interesting ranging from the Dorset Waste Partnership to licenses for traders on Mudeford green, I thought the Councillors there showed a good awareness of the issues at hand and answered the questions to the general satisfaction of the audience. Certainly the comments after as we got stuck into the wine, were very positive. I am conscious of the concerns from residents about the reasons we at CBC are having to look at every aspect of our activity as our funding from central government is cut and this includes the reasons for the 'one management for two Councils' direction. This brave decision taken by a previous administration is now well on the way to being delivered by this administration and should be completed by early 2015. The savings are already considerable and whilst we still face uncertainty about future funding this partnership has enabled us to maintain the level of service our residents expect. This point was clearly made to SAMRA in the discussion about our making sure that all CBC assets are put under a 'fit for purpose’ scrutiny and we make sure that income from every source is maximised and costs kept to a minimum. Tough times indeed but CBC officers are up to the task at hand and in my opinion excited about their changing role from prescription to innovation. All in all a very positive meeting, well done to the SAMRA team.