Blogging and Council Work

To all my regular readers I would like to apologise for the somewhat irregular postings of late. Since I was appointed as Reading Borough Council’s Lead Councillor for Strategic Planning and Transport I have hardly had a single evening without at least one meeting, and on some occasions as many as four. In addition the number of emails I am receiving has approximately doubled. They all need reading and responses, often generating further meetings. Oh and by the way I also have a full-time job based in London.

I am not complaining but I want readers to understand why I have not been posting almost every day as I was before. I expect that things will begin to settle down and the summer Council “recess” should help reduce the number of meetings. One of the reasons for so many meetings are the issues that Labour left behind when they lost office. They left a situation where the bus shelter contract expired and the new contractor had a lead time of several months before new shelters are to be installed. Many people are rightly angered at finding no shelters at most of the previous shelter locations and having to stand.

I seem to have inherited a summer of road works, with works around the station coinciding with necessary utility works to replace gas mains etc across the town. The workload has then been added to by the Government’s need to sort out Labour’s national economic mess with the resultant cuts in some Council grants, including some transport grants.

It has not all been problems and cuts though. I have been working with Council Officers on a range of radical measures that should go some way to getting Reading moving again and mark a change from Labour’s failed local transport policies. I will be making an announcement shortly when the final pieces of the plans are finalised.

It is fantastic to finally be a part of a team that will deliver real change for Reading after so many years of Labour’s stale thinking and ever higher spending. The work load is huge but if we get this right I believe that the benefits will be huge for Reading people. In the meantime I will attempt to keep up reasonably regular postings.