Full Council 8th Oct

Full Council – 8^th October 2013 

The Conservative Leader of the Opposition Cllr Howard Jones presented a motion, seconded by Cllr Priyen Patel, on the future of our high streets titled “Give back the control of the Community to Residents”. The motion called upon the Council to lobby the Government alongside other Local Authorities in order to gain more control in planning law to stop clusters of shops (like estate agents, betting establishments and pay-day loan companies) from blighting our high streets. 

Cllr Jones said that in New Malden there are already 5 betting shops and with the current law as it is this may increase. Cllr Dennis Doe noted that having lots of the same type of shop in one area doesn’t benefit our local economy and we needed the power to be able to prevent this. Cllr Patrick Codd explained that Kingston was once 3^rd on the league tables of the most desired shopping centres to shop in but we have dropped to 14^th because of a failure in traffic infrastructure. If we didn’t deal with the issue of the current overload of road works, we would not only lose customers from betting shops infiltrating our high streets, but also lose customers from all shops due to the current gridlock throughout Kingston. Cllr Priyen Patel concluded that if we did not act, we may become a town centre like Harrow, which has been considered to be family unfriendly and scares away prospective shoppers. Cllr Lynne Finnerty and Cllr David Cunningham also spoke on the motion. 

The motion passed unanimously.

Cllr Julie Pickering asked the Lib Dem Administration 2 questions. The first was regarding the Surbiton Health Centre Needle Exchange Service and the Leader of the Council’s decision to act without adequate evidence to support her. The second question was regarding why the Administration failed to inform residents and ward Councillors about Orchard Hill College using the Beaconsfield Resource Centre during building works, despite requests to be kept informed. Both questions were inadequately answered by the Administration and the Lib Dems openly admitted they had made a mistake with the failure to communicate to residents regarding Orchard Hill College.

Finally, 4 items passed quickly and unanimously. These items were the Council Tax Reduction Scheme, the HIV Prevention Consortium section 106 agreement with Croydon, the Health and Wellbeing Board working arrangements and the changes to Committee appointments.