Cleveland Ward forum meeting #1

We held the first Cleveland Ward Forum last night at the Brentham Club in Meadvale Lane.  Judging by the feedback from the appraisal forms we circulated, it was a tremendous success.  Everybody said they were very or quite likely to attend another meeting.  I chaired the meeting and my fellow Cleveland councillors John Popham and Greg Stafford gave feedback on a range of issues that were raised.

It is worth reflecting why we introduced ward fora.  They replaced the old area committees (which for some reason Liberal Democrat and Labour councillors got all dewy eyed about as their demise loomed).  We used to have to suffer the Ealing Area Committee, which comprised councillors from 6 wards around Ealing.  All we seemed to talk about was CPZs in various parts of Ealing and spent little of the usual 3.5 hour meeting discussing Cleveland ward.  They tended to be desperately boring and were attended by a handful of people (the usual suspects from a few residents associations).  The last Ealing Area Committee I think had 2 Cleveland Ward residents present.

By contrast, last night we had 50 Cleveland ward residents, at a meeting in Cleveland Ward, discussing issues affecting Cleveland Ward.  Issues ranged from streetlights to fencing and toilets to buses.  We’ve got a number of ideas of how to spend the £40,000 delegated to the ward, we’ve got a list of other issues to address and we were even able to make an announcement on trying to resolve the issue of Pitshanger Park toilets (I’ll post separately about that tomorrow).

We’re going to move the meetings around the ward so the next one will be in the Draytons at St Luke’s Hall.  Why not try to come along?

Explore posts in the same categories: Cleveland ward, Ealing

Tags: Brentham Club, Cleveland Ward Forum, Greg Stafford, John Popham, Pitshanger Park, toilets

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