After asking my question at Cabinet (see The Future of Hardy Street) I stayed on to listen to two other agenda items that were of interest.

One was the decision to advertise for an Empty Homes Officer to help deal with the number of empty homes in the District.  This interested me as for the last couple of years I have raise this very issue with the Council only to be told that there wasn’t really a problem and anyway the (Labour) Council are dealing with it.

Now we find out the Council is going to pay in the region of £34,000 to employ someone to deal with an issue that last year they claimed wasn’t a problem!  Either previous Housing portfolio holders have not been telling the truth or they are now pay someone to do nothing, either way it smacks of Labour incompetence which we, the residents of Bassetlaw, will end up paying for.

The other item was an update on the Bus Station development with the Labour Councillors lining up to claiming the credit for a development that only happened after the Lib Dems in Bassetlaw started a campaign back in April 2011 to get the issue up the local political agenda and was pushed through by the Conservative led County Administration earlier this year, despite delays in (Labour led) Bassetlaw Council identifying an appropriate site.

The update was not much more than is already known but you can bet that when the long overdue new Bus Station is opened, the Labour Councillors will be lining up again to claim it all down to them.

Full details of the reports for Cabinet can be downloaded from the Council website at http://www.bassetlaw.gov.uk/pdf/CB110613.non.pdf.  The Report on the Empty Homes Officers is on pages 61 to 66 & the update on the Bus Station is on pages 67 to 70.

Finally I should also point out that the press table was left empty for the entire meeting with neither the Worksop Guardian nor the Retford Times deeming that the meeting was worth reporting.   This is not the first time I have attended Cabinet of full Council meetings where the press has been absent.   How can the public can expect to find out what is happening at Council meetings if our local papers cannot be  bothered to report them>   Without the information, local democracy suffers and we end up with decisions being taken almost in secret.