Tuesday this week saw the beginning of the month double bill of Planning Committee followed by the full meeting of Kendal Town Council. Planning Committee excelled itself by recommending all the applications for approval, which meant we finished in time for the new format ‘prayers’ / ‘thought for the evening’ session as agreed last month. Possibly it was the novelty value, but I counted 13 councillors who took the trouble to arrive five minutes early to hear the Deputy Mayor give us a ‘thought for the evening’.

The main Council Meeting had a presentation on future plans for Kendal Museum, which is looking for funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund to give the Museum a complete makeover. There was also a request to make a currently unused building on the site available to The Mountain Film Company, who run the mountain film competition during the the Kendal Mountain Festival. The Town Council has an interest, as councillors are also ex-officio trustees of the charity which owns the site.

By the end of the meeting I was interested to discover that councillors are ex-officio trustees of a total of three local charities: Dowker Bindloss, Schools of Science and Art, and the Allen Institute and Museum. In most cases I would expect the aims of these charities would coincide with those of the Council, but it will be interesting to see how councillors manage to juggle their different hats should a conflict of interest arise.

One final note on the environment front – the Council has officially replied to the SLDC’s Air Quality Progress Report 2010. Having read the report and the ‘Action Plan’, I personally feel that the words ‘Progress’ and ‘Action’ are wildly optimistic. Take this glorious non-sequitur issued in March and then repeated in June:

South Lakeland District Council (SLDC) has launched a consultation with affected residents on whether the council should widen the existing Air Quality Management Area (AQMA).

The existing area currently includes Lowther Street but recent monitoring shows targets for Nitrogen Dioxide levels will not be met in the street or in traffic hotspots across the town.
…
By including an enlarged area it’s hoped levels of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) from traffic will be reduced making our air cleaner and healthier.

My emphasis – it’s good to see the quality of the air we breathe is in safe hands.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 at 7:46 pm and is filed under Kendal Town Council. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.