Petition Tag - consultation

Proposed plans to put offices on the skatepark site remain.

The council have said that an alternative location for the skatepark would have to be provided.
BUT there is no specific alternative for relocating the park.

The draft plans are not specific enough to guarantee the future of the skatepark and we ask that you join us in petitioning the planning department of Kensington and Chelsea council further.

!Do not allow the loss of this amazing community resource!

Thank you for your support, please spread the word!

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Our school is currently in the consultation process with parents, staff, and the local village community to assess the views of all in the event of school closure.

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The Council of the City of Edinburgh (CEC) has a deficit of #96 GBP and, mainly for that reasons, has intimated its firm intention to seek Council approval to carry out a programme of privatising vital public services.

The aim is simple enough. It is to save money in the short term by sacking most of its direct labour force. It has nothing to do with increasing quality of service and everything to do with the Scottish Government's arm-twisting over raising Council Tax to deal with the deficit. The petition seeks to persuade the CEC to allow the fullest possible consultation before putting out any, some, or all of its core statutory services to private tender.

Meetings are being held City-wide to allow people to voice their concerns. By signing this petition you are expressing your belief that certain services such as waste collection and disposal and park maintenance, paid for by local rates and should not be privatised because of the financial mismanagement of a City or County Council.

There are workable solutions to the Council's difficulties, which are explained at these public meetings but privatising services left right and centre is not one of them

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Nature of this Petition:
We the undersigned oppose the cuts in doorstep bin collections at farm, rural, outlying and hard to reach properties, resulting from the Special Meeting of the Council Cabinet on 26th January 2011, because of the negative disruption, cost and littering it causes to residents and all affected neighbours.

We call upon the Council to:
Reverse its decision to end doorstep bin collections. Also to continue doorstep bin collections at these properties, until and unless there has been fair, fully costed and wide ranging consultations with all residents who could be directly and indirectly affected.

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THIS SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN IS NOW CLOSED.

THE PETITION WITH 1,900+ SIGNATURES WAS HANDED INTO THE COUNCIL ON MONDAY 5 SEPT AND the council voted unanimously to overturn the cuts in bin collections at the full Council meeting on Wed 28th Sept 2011

PREVIOUS RESIDENTS MEETING ATTENDED BY 100 PEOPLE ON 10th AUG AND EVEN MORE PEOPLE ON 31 AUG.

Public Meeting Press Release – August 2011
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IN THE NEWS

Good news for rural properties in Rossendale

Threatened bin collections in Rossendale saved

'Laughing stock' Rossendale bin collection plans scrapped

Doorstep rubbish collections scrapped after 130 years

Council announces new plans subject to feedback being received

Lancashire Telegraph - Residents' fury at meeting over rural bin collections axe

ROSSENDALE MP Jake Berry Bin collection proposals are total rubbish Aug 9 2011

Lancashire Telegraph - Residents hit back as 700 Rossendale homes lose bin collections

Granada Reports - Rossendale Bins Anger

Channel 4 News - Rossendale scrapping doorstep bin collections

The Telegraph –Rural households denied home bin collections to cut costs

Express - Outrage of the families forced to empty their own dustbins



BACKGROUND
This petition opposes the cutbacks in household doorstep bin collections. These are being imposed in Rossendale by the council, without consultation or regard for the high cost and negative impact on residents.

Residents affected by the cutbacks pay high Council tax and have a basic right to have household waste collected from their properties. People living in rural areas are being unfairly discriminated against. These are valid reasons why cuts in front line services are not merited.

These cutbacks in front line services are likely to be just the first step. There is real concern that the council will go further in the future by having more residents handle and transfer smelly household waste to central collection points.

Thousands of residents from 700 properties in farm, rural, outlying and hard to reach parts of Rossendale who are having their bin collections axed and will have to take their rubbish up to two miles to their nearest collection point, known as a ‘dump site’.

Thousands of additional properties are affected and residents are opposed to the cuts in front line services and imposition of unwanted ‘rubbish dump sites’ nearby to their homes, to be used for dropping waste for storage and collection.

Waste has to be at the rubbish dump site by 7am on the day of the collection, but cannot be dropped off the night before, meaning residents have to get up at dawn to get there. There are widespread concerns that rubbish will unnecessarily blight residents around the collection points.

Rossendale Council claim they will save £75,800 by binning collections at farms and rural locations, however this figure is unsubstantiated and likely to be significantly overstated when the true costs of setting up the dump sites, changes to staffing practices and provision of car boot liners are taken into account.

Those affected by the cuts say they are being ‘short changed’ after handing over thousands in council tax every year. Many of the rural properties pay council tax of more than £2,000 per year but the council is cutting services with no redress for residents.

A council decision to introduce recycling to around 700 properties was initially taken by the previous Conservative council. However the current Labour controlled council is going further with cuts in front line services and seems uninterested in reversing that decision. Residents are supportive of recycling and are awaiting proposals from the council on a recycling scheme.

The council is claiming that consultations are taking place, but from the outset, continuation of front line collection services has never been an option. Many of the affected residents have not been fairly consulted and have raised concerns to councillors. There is a lot of ill feeling about the way this is being handled by the council. The council is attempting to claim that residents are readily accepting these cuts in front line services and impositions of dump sites, but there is little evidence of this and Councillors are coming forward to acknowledge that there has been an unfair lack of proper consultation before any decisions were taken.

Residents are in the process of organising further meetings. Check back here for details.

Please support your neighbours in opposing the cutbacks by signing this petition and inform everyone you know who has an interest.

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Impington Village College has just concluded a 4 week consultation on becoming an academy. Like most other schools in Cambridgeshire, the consultation has been rushed through and very little has been done to notify the local community, despite the governors saying that they wish to preserve the school’s “distinct ethos as an outward-facing village college true to the founding vision described by Henry Morris”.

We have collected around 300 local signatures on a paper petition, requesting an extension of time, to enable wider consultation, and expect the number to increase to between 300 and 400 by the time of the next governors’ meeting on 19th July.

At present the governors are ignoring the voice of the local community. The governors have not even acknowledged the petition*, let alone said they will consider it at the next full governors’ meeting on 19th July. A petition of this size should not simply be ‘swept under the carpet.”

We would like to extend the petition to include the wider Cambridgeshire community as every school that converts to an academy affects the neighbouring maintained schools and the services the Local Authority is able to provide. Changes of this magnitude should not be rushed through without broad and inclusive consultation. Please sign the petition if you live in Cambridgeshire.

We are also collecting signatures opposing the academy conversion – petition link here:

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/oppose-the-academy-proposal-at-impington-village-colleg.html

*petition since acknowledged by governors, after contact from local councillors, but still no indication that the consultation is likely to be extended.

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The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) consults on new draft quality standards and guidance on service user experience in mental health and patient experience in NHS services and has launched a new consultation.

HOWEVER an interested party has discovered that the only people able to contribute are 'Registered Stakeholders'. and finding out who these are, and being able to get your views represented is a process which guarantees little, if any success.

Some may not wish to provide personal stories to Registered Stakeholders (strangers), and there is no other facility to have YOUR important views heard.

This means the results cannot be fully representative of the Service User Community as a whole and we would call on NICE to consider changing the process by which they determine and gather the evidence they use in their guidelines.

This is especially important during this traumatic period of changes to the NHS, cuts in Mental Health Service budgets and an increase in cases of mental illness.

See http://www.nice.org.uk/newsroom/pressreleases/PatientExpAndAdultMentalHealthServiceUserGuidelineQS.jsp

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Derbyshire County Council (DCC) has announced plans to drastically change social care provision for vulnerable residents, particularly elderly and disabled people.

The planned changes include closing two thirds of all care homes in the county, making all service users pay up to £200 a week for care which has always been free at the point of delivery, changing the criteria for qualifying for care so that only those subjectively judged to have substantial or critical needs may access services, making those with stairlifts pay a further £122 a year for a 'warranty' and to remove the automatic top-up grants necessary to enable anyone who needs major home alterations to access district council funds.

DCC announced these changes before Central Government's Comprehensive Spending Review and despite the Council's wealth, as it has in excess of £85 Million in resources. Taking these two facts together, it seems clear that DCC's attack on these vital services is motivated more by elitist ideology and a desire for privitisation by the back door than it could be by necessity. DCC claims that "no decisions have been made yet", but their 'consultation' appears not to have been very widely advertised and ends at 5 p.m. on 5th November 2010, comments can be made via the online form at http://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/carechanges

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The closure of the Beacon Court sheltered housing scheme has caused many people a wide range of problems and raised a number of wider issues. This action was carried out by the Riversmead Housing Association without any noticeable consideration of the views of the community of Hertford Heath.

The Parish Council has had discussions with East Herts Council officers and there seems to be a danger that Riversmead can do "whatever they want” with the properties and land they own and manage as long as they meet their overall target for the whole of the East Herts District.

They are a very large property owner and have the ability to change communities at their fingertips, as the closure of Beacon Court has shown, without any explanation. We ask you to support our petition to our elected body, East Herts District Council, to urge them to put in place effective measures that prevent this from happening.

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Beacon Court, a sheltered accommodation scheme in Hertford Heath, is planned to be demolished in order to become a social housing estate without any consultation with the public and parish council.

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Preamble

Willie Coffey MSP has placed this petition online at the request of affected constituents in Kilmarnock and Loudoun. However, the issue is of concern to elderly and disabled people across Scotland.

The subject of the petition should also be of concern to those who believe that changes in UK-wide benefits must take place only after consultation with those affected in all parts of the UK.

The web address provided is a link to the consultation being conducted in England.

Background

Attendance Allowance is a benefit for disabled people aged 65 or over, who find it difficult to care for him or herself because of a disability or long-term health problem. It helps people meet the additional costs of disability - such as extra heating, replacement of clothing and transport.

Getting Attendance Allowance can also be a means to access extra Pension Credit, Housing Benefit, and Council Tax Benefit.

The Green Paper ‘Shaping the Future of Care Together’, suggests drawing Attendance Allowance into a central social care budget to help fund care and support needs in England. The paper proposes redirecting Attendance Allowance away from the individual into funding Local Authority social care.

The reform proposals for care and support services apply only to England; however, because Social Security is dealt with on a UK-wide basis, the funding proposals would affect disabled people in Scotland.

Currently, many Attendance Allowance claimants in Scotland receive no care input from local authorities. In December 2007, approximately 140,000 Scottish residents received Attendance Allowance, with just 41,000 of them receiving local authority care at home.

The concern of disabled people in Scotland is that if Attendance Allowance disappears into a central social care budget many of them will lose out.

That these changes may be introduced to Scotland after a consultation has taken place only in England is also concerning to many people. This raises the prospect of future changes to UK wide provision taking little account of the specific conditions experienced by disabled people in Scotland.

When asked about arrangements to consult those affected in Scotland, the consultation team replied:

“In answer to your question, as you know, Shaping the Future of Care Together sets out the Government’s vision to build a National Care Service which is fair, simple and affordable for all adults in England.

Any changes to the care and support system in England that integrate some disability benefits funding would affect the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales, and Northern Ireland may also choose to adopt the new care and support system. We will work closely with all three devolved administrations to reach a shared view on how to ensure the best possible outcomes for all people in the UK.”

The effect of this is that the UK government may make a decision to abolish Attendance Allowance in response to an England only consultation, with the devolved administrations, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, having to deal with the consequences for their care services.

Since the government’s proposal on Attendance Allowance would apply across the UK, we call on the Govt to consult those affected across the UK and not just in England.

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In 2007, the High Court determined that the Government’s earlier public consultation in 2006 on whether or not to replace existing civil nuclear power stations in the UK was unlawful.

This, the Court declared, was because the consultation breached the Government’s duty to hold a full and effective public consultation under the Aarhus Convention 2003. The Court described the consultation exercise as one which was “very seriously flawed”, “manifestly inadequate”, “seriously misleading” and “wholly insufficient to enable [respondents] to make ‘an intelligent response’”. These enormous failings were held by the Court to have frustrated the public’s legitimate expectation to participate fully and effectively in a decision with potentially very serious environmental and safety implications.

Following this ruling, which it did not contest, the Government decided to hold a new consultation in 2007. However, it failed once again to consult the public fully and effectively.

Instead, some one thousand persons were offered questionnaires on UK civil nuclear power replacement which many recipients considered “not [to be] of appropriate quality”. Among the criticisms made of the exercise were that “positive messages” for nuclear power “were presented as statements of fact” and respondents “were not able to answer the questions in a way that reflected the view they wanted to express” but “were led towards a particular answer” (see ‘Harrison Grant questions nuclear consultation for Greenpeace’, The Lawyer, 21 September 2007 and ‘Scientists take on Brown over nuclear plan’, The Guardian, 4 January 2008).

Following the exercise, a formal complaint was submitted to the UK polling regulator (the Market Research Standards Council).

We therefore petition the Attorney-General to consider whether the Government’s decision in early 2008 to ‘go ahead’ with the replacement of civil nuclear power stations, having assumed that the 2007 constitution has produced a ‘public mandate’ for new build (Guardian, op cit.) may constitute contempt of court.*

If she considers that the Government should be held in contempt, then we petition the Attorney-General to take appropriate subsequent legal action.


*Where contempt includes (a) failure to obey superior courts of record which prescribe certain conduct on one party to a civil action – including the executive since for it to assume itself immune to contempt of court would, as Templeman LJ ruled, be for it “to obey the law as a matter of grace not of necessity” (M v Home Office [1994] 1 AC 377) – and (b) from which it is no defence to claim that what would otherwise constitute contempt of court was committed in the discharge or purported discharge of official duties (M v Home Office; R v City of London Magistrates’ Court, ex p Green [1997] 3 All ER 551))

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I, the undersigned, oppose all three options that the Isle of Wight Council has proposed to reform education on the Isle of Wight.

The leading Conservative party have put forward three options to change the existing education system - all 3 see AT LEAST 28 schools closing - 23 of which are successful primary schools which are in the TOP 10% of the country.

This review should offer an exciting vision for the future, such as maintaining quality provision, phasing in change, reducing class sizes and taking into account the wider role that primary schools play in our communities. Instead it offers the wholesale slaughter of our successful primary sector whilst paying scant regard to the need for all our schools to be supported and nurtured.

There are plenty of alternatives to the three proposals which could be done to improve standards. Councillors need to listen to teaching staff and people who work in schools - most are there because they truly want the best for the young people of the Island and think they deserve a quality education!

If enough signatures are received, this will be printed off and delivered to the Council.

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S.V.P. VOTEZ NON - PROTEGEZ L'ÉCOTERRITOIRE DU CHEVAL BLANC

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In a pre-statutory consultation exercise early in 2006, Southampton's stakeholders in education were asked to respond to a set of 3 alternative proposals concerning the future of Millbrook Community School and Oaklands Community School.

All 3 proposals involved the merger of the two schools to form a new school. This was accepted as necessary given the falling rolls across the city.

On 25 May, the Southern Daily Echo reported that the proposal had been changed, without consultation, to one in which only Millbrook closes. Many of the arguments used to back up the proposal are ill-founded and prejudiced.

Closure only of Millbrook will ensure that the pupils and staff there will not get a fair deal. As staff look for a new employment they will leave and will not be replaced except by supply staff. Pupils' quality of education will be adversely affected. This is unfair to pupils who have helped the school become one of the 100 best schools in the country for pupil progress between Years 7 and 9.

Southampton City Council must demonstrate that "every child matters" by not allowing any proposal to be considered that sacrifices the education of one group of pupils for any reason.

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Monash Primary School is a small state school located adjacent to Monash University on Samada street in Notting Hill, Melbourne. It has a warm atmosphere and country feel.

In May 2005 Monash Primary School consulted with parents on a decision to close the school due to low enrolments. There has been no community consultation or information sharing! Closing the school will affect the future of the local children, the character of the suburb, the residents that use its open space and their land values if there is a shift in demographics.

The decision as to whether or not to close Monash Primary should not solely be in the hands of the school's council. A petition has been generated to draw the attention of the Education Department to the lack of consultation from the community.

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