Community space at St Catherine’s School
At the regular Area Panel meeting on Thursday 9th October at 6pm, the Panel will meet at St Catherine’s School at Firshill to listen and decide on three issues. First, the latest report on local community provision. The old Roe Lane community centre (now demolished) provided a well-used room and kitchen. However, the newly enlarged St Catherine’s Catholic Primary (to be opened next year) will not only take another class of children every year, but it will also have a much larger and better equipped ‘community space’ for local people’s use. St Catherine’s and BCAF will report on where we’re up to on this project.
£50,000 for Libraries, Parks or Streets
Secondly, every Area Panel has been asked to look at whether or not up to £50,000 of the budgets for the library service, the street cleaning service and parks maintenance can be moved around – say from parks to have longer library opening hours. In helping to decide, the councillors have been provided with a lot of detailed information. At the meeting the decision will be made to either change some of the local spending for a four month period (December to next March), or suggest an alteration within each service, or not to make any changes.
Community Assemblies
Lastly, the meeting will hear from a senior politician on the Council’s plans to create Community Assemblies as a way of strengthening local people’s involvement in running Council services and these services, in turn, being more responsive to local needs. This means great changes for us and all the people and communities in Burngreave. In our area it would mean losing the Burngreave Area Panel, the Brightside/Shiregreen Area Panel and the Owlerton/Southey Area Panel and replacing them with one large Community Assembly. It also means losing each of the three Area Coordinators and Area Support Officers. This is a major change and I would encourage everyone to come along to the meeting , to listen and make their voice heard about the proposed changes.