I have had an extremely busy month since I last posted on this website.

I have been elected to the Chair of St Cleer Parish Council. I have taken part in a very intensive two day Select Committee hearing into the Cornwall Council budget process with its attendant pre-meetings. The St Cleer Neighbourhood Development Plan First Draft is now posted on the Plans website www.bodminmoorplans.net and the work continues. Currently in production is a consultation/newsletter to go to all households to see if the residents agree with the work done so far.

The funding bid to Locality for the money to progress the Plan has been successful and the whole amount agreed.

St Neot have held their first Steering Group meeting for their Neighbourhood plan and will be starting on the work for St Neot parish.

Taken with ongoing other work this has meant that as well as daytime meetings almost every weekday in the month has also had an evening meeting, and I have found this intensity a struggle. I have therefore looked at what other outside work I am doing and decided that I must step back from the SE Cornwall Locality Group (which I have recently had to give apologies for on several ocassions due to clashes with Cornwall Council meetings) and the Umbrella Forum for Patient Participation Groups which feeds into it. I shall be suggesting a way forward for the work to be taken on by someone else who will have the time at the next meeeting on 20th November. I have also recently resigned for the SW Forum on Ageing, more to do with the way that organisation way heading than workload, and that is one less area to think about. The Caradon Hill Area Heritage Project is about to come to an end and I feel that this has done much for the area as well as being interesting and rewarding to be involved in.

This is all designed to free me for the work which needs to be done here, in the parishes which have been good enough to put their trust in me to do the very best that I can for them. Although a varied range of interests is a good thing and helps to make one a better councillor overall there is a limit  which if exceeded means that nothing is done as well as it might be, and for this reason I have decided to concentrate my focus.