I had a lovely email from a resident last week expressing thanks that we had managed to get a bus shelter which had been broken for months repaired.
After making enquiries, we found out that the entire budget for bus shelter maintenance had been spent in just a few weeks earlier this year.
We had a similar issue to raise of dog poo bins not being emptied and overflowing bags of dog waste. It may not be the sexy side of local politics but it turned out this was happening right across Bedford Borough.
After our constructive intervention things thankfully now seem to have been sorted.
And my inbox reflects the huge variety of issues me and my Liberal Democrat councillor colleagues have raised as we serve the residents of Bedford Borough all your round every year.
Only last week, Cllr Christine McHugh (Lib Dems, Goldington) raised residents’ concerns about school crossing patrols that had gone missing without any communication from the Council. School crossing patrols are not just a nice thing to have, they save lives and must be protected.
Cllr Jon Abbott (Lib Dems, Clapham and Oakley) has also been campaigning about essential flood warning signs which are important for safety and have not been maintained this year.
These things are the basics of running a council. They may not be immediately headline-grabbing, but they do matter and are the reason many Councillors (of all parties) do what they do and why many got involved in the first place.
Much of the failure is down to lack of funding and these small items of spending are being put at risk by eye-watering borrowing and wasteful spending. For example £338,000 was spent recently on repairs to Oasis, only to then announce its closure.
An overpayment was made by a staggering £455,000 for a high street building. This is a chaotic minority Conservative administration where the Mayor’s own Finance Portfolio Holder (the person responsible for the council’s budget) has announced his resignation.
Politics is also about sharing what is going on in our local communities and singing the praises of local businesses. Thankfully, Bedford Borough has so much to offer this Christmas, despite what is going wrong with the Mayor and his political leaders.
I absolutely loved opening local Eagle Gallery’s Christmas exhibition a few weeks ago – they are based on St Peter’s Street and have an amazing array of local artists’ work (including cards!) to buy.
Sadly, Small Business Saturday and Bedford Flea, and even the Christmas Light Switch On were all hit by Storm Bert and Storm Darragh.
It has never been more important to shop local and back our local businesses this Christmas.
You can support the Flea on their Facebook Page where they are promoting some of the businesses that were hoping to trade last weekend, and you can check out Bedford Independent’s amazing guide to independent businesses in their own Love Letter to our local traders.
Bedford Borough’s small businesses invariably pull out all the stops to make Christmas special.
There are stunning window displays in the arcades, Silver Street, St Peter’s Street, and Castle Road… not forgetting our well-decked Harpur Centre and independent stores in Kempston and in our villages and parishes across the Borough.
So, wherever you are and whatever you are looking for, please shop local. Please keep in touch and report anything you are concerned about to your local Liberal Democrats, and Happy Christmas to you and your family when it comes.
This is a monthly guest column provided by Cllr Henry Vann,
leader of the Bedford Borough Liberal Democrat Group.
It is published unedited and does not reflect the
views of the Bedford Independent.
