This month’s meeting was a far more friendly affair than the first RBWM Council Meeting of the new term in June.
It came down to two main events…
- The latest plans for the Nicholson Shopping Centre
- and Cllr Donna Stimson’s motion for the RBWM to encourage the growth of Wild Flowers on the boroughs verges.
My big concern with the Nicholson project was the Broadway Car Park. They’d been talking freely about borrowing £35m and then giving it to a company set up last year, accepting they are supported by a billion pound company, the legal entity itself has not submitted any accounts because it is less than a year old.
If you are a small business and want to do business with the council then you need to have 3 years of accounts, demonstrate a steady growth and then you can go for contracts up to around 30% of your value…
For my own sanity I just wanted to make sure the £35m wasn’t a given and that we only pay out what is necessary at any given point in time… so if it costs £20m, that’s what we pay… I felt reassured enough to give it my vote on the evening as the detail will come later and be managed by the RBWM.
Cllr Wisdom Da Costa has gone into some detail on his thoughts on the motion for wild flowers over on the WWRA blog… he’s good at that 😉
Personally, my over riding priority is that we look to the professionals when choosing the seeds and do not encourage the local residents to simply sprinkle seeds they may buy from a non local source freely.
That could be disastrous!
Cllr Amy Tisi said that local wild flowers will be of benefit to 1400 insect species but those provided by say Monsanto, will only be of benefit to say 14 species… so we best be very careful in ensuring the right information is given to local people to prevent any damage to our local ecology.
Thank you.
Jon
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