Beverley Town Council: In And For The Community – August 2011

August is a great month for getting out, and that’s exactly what happened at the skate park at Beverley Leisure Centre this month.  Beverley’s youth workers organised an educational and healthy living event for young people both in the town and that come to the use what the town has to offer.  It was a great chance for a bit of fun with some covert education thrown in, covering how to eat healthy, sexual health (and taboos) and the importance of exercise – important stuff for any age.

I was glad to be invited to attend it, along with the Mayor Beverley Cllr. Pete Astell, and fellow town councillors Martin Cox and David Eldvidge.

The skate park was funded using “commuted sums”, the application receiving the backing of the previous Town Council.  “Commuted sums” is a pot of money built from a levy on all major construction and developments in the town which do not include a public feature of open space.  The money is available for community groups to apply for to fund publically useable, open space features.  The current Town Council have discussed applying for Commuted Sums to fund public wifi (wireless internet) for Beverley’s town centre, and to fund equipment for an “outside gymnasium”.

Commuted sums is little known about despite being a sizeable pot of money.  Beverley Town Council are always looking to support the community.  If you have or know of a community project which is in need of funding, Beverley Town Council can help support your application.  Get in touch!

Some Town Councillors, including myself, are organising our own surgeries together which will take place every second Saturday of the month, 10am-12noon, at the Cherry Tree Centre in Beverley. All are welcome to discuss local issues.

The Town Council is a civic organisation, but a town’s society spreads beyond a town’s walls.  This may be a local politics piece, but I cannot write it and ignore the game changing political events that overwhelmed the country this month. The riots shocked us all.   They attracted the stern condemnation of our MPs, and the rioters going through the courts are facing the sterner condemnation of our judges.

Polls say 70% of us want harsher than normal sentences for rioters.  It is impossible not to be disturbed watching CCTV footage of individual looters.  However, there are too many individuals to judge each individual, individually for their misconduct.  The Government say the protests-cum-riots are not political, but politics is about how people live together in groups, in societies.  The response we as a society make to any group is always political.  Therefore we have to ask ourselves political questions.  As disturbing as the riot images may be, what solution does increasing the exclusion of the already excluded from society?

After the riots, it was said to me by someone in Beverley, why are we filling already full prisons and not, where we can, using community service as a punishment?  I couldn’t disagree.

This is why some of us Beverley Town Councillors have been learning about Humberside Probation’s Community Payback scheme.  It might not work for all offenders, but where people can put something of worth back into a community, to prove their worth to it, it has to be a good thing.

Cllr. Stuart Pearce
Beverley Town Council