News from County Councillor Rob Kendrick
Concerns over representation on the new Lincoln Council
As residents will be aware the government have announced the new local government structure for Lincolnshire. It is basically the submission made by Lincoln City Council. It takes the form of an expanded Lincoln city area creating the new Lincoln Council ( sometimes called the “donut”) with the rest of the county being Lincolnshire Council. The expanded area goes out as far as Leadenham in one direction, to Metheringham in another. It also goes out north of Lincoln and west as far as Bardney. The distribution of candidates will be based on district/city council wards and not county council divisions. There will be multi-member wards.
There will be an election next year with the new councils coming into being in 2028.
However, concerns have been raised because of a Lincoln City Council proposal to have more councillors in wards deemed to have higher deprivation. This would mean some residents having more representation than others! To the best of my knowledge never have council wards been determined on anything other than population numbers.
If the government were to give approval it would mean that some inner-city wards would have for example two councillors and rural ones such as Metheringham only one. The concern is that this is being done for purely political reasons by the controlling city council group (Labour).
This proposal is being challenged.
New Community Speedwatch (CSW) to be launched
I am pleased to see that a new volunteer CSW team has been formed in Metheringham. We will see them out and about in due course. CSW has been shown to help reduce speeding across the county. We now have several teams in our area now. You will see them out in hi-viz with a speed “gun” noting the details of vehicles recorded as exceeding the limit. The details will be passed to the police not for prosecution as only the police can record and prosecute. Drivers reported by Speedwatch will instead receive a letter from the police, if they repeat the “offence” they receive a second letter and on a third occurrence a visit from a police officer. However, I have been advised that it’s very rare for it to reach stage three.
A very handy app
Recently a resident asked me about highways issue. I mentioned the Fixmystreet app to them, and they wanted to know more so we had tutorial on using it.
It is the recommended way to report all manner of problems not just potholes. For example, it includes problems with streetlights, footpaths, fly tipping and more.