At tonight’s meeting of Cabinet, four of our local Champions asked questions of Bassetlaw District Council on the issues that matter to local people.

Leon Duveen asked Cllr Greaves, Leader of the Council, what help had been offer to Doncaster & Bassetlaw Hospital Trust to help recruit the staff need to reopen the Children’s Ward overnight.  After some waffle, the answer was none!

Stephen Ware asked about the possibility of a short free parking period in town centre car parks.  In this case the answer was that Council might consider this at the next review of car parking.

Helen Tamblyn-Saville raised the issue of recycling, especially for class & tetra packs and what the Council was doing to lift it up from being the 4^th worst Council in England for recycling.  This time, the answer was that the Council was hoping that the Brown Bin scheme (where residents can pay the council to take garden waste away) will help improve the District’s lamentable position or recycling and anyway it was the fault of the County Council imposed waste contract with Veola (even though every other Council in the County do better than Bassetlaw).

Finally, Phil Ray asked if the Council could introduce an app for mobiles & tablets so residents could report local issues (dog, fouling, fly tipping, etc.) quickly & easily.  The response here was that councillors already have a portal to let them do this and this would be rolled out the Parish & Town Councillors in the new year.  However, this ignored the request for an app to allow ordinary residents to report problems quickly and also means that (as they have no Town Councils) the portal won’t be available to many in Worksop or Retford except the few Councillors.

The response to these simple questions showed how unresponsive the Council is to the problems of ordinary people across our District.

We in the Lib Dems will continue to hold the Council top account so if you have an issue you want us to raise, be it small or large, we do have a portal you can access on a mobile or tablet you can contact us through.  If you contact us, we will do what we can to help, that it our promise to you