District Councillors Feb 2020 Newsletter

District Councillors Feb 2020 Newsletter Would you be interested in becoming an Environment Champion volunteer? There are opportunities within SSDC to directly contribute towards creating a region of rural environmental excellence.

The role would include being the link between SSDC and your parish by disseminating information through attendance at forums or via email. You would also be responsible for compiling and returning information from your parish to SSDC about environmental group activities, rewilding areas or any support required to champion ideas you have to help make your parish more sustainable. Collaboration with other parishes to maximise impact and share expertise would also be expected.

It's a vital role and integral to SSDC being able to fulfil their environmental strategy to ensure initiatives are followed through and opportunities are maximised. If you would like to sign up then please contact ssdcenvironment@southsomerset.gov.uk to register.

Continuing on the environmental theme you may of noticed the new slogan of 'Trim my waste' and 'Feed my face' appearing on your black bins and food bins respectively. Make of the slogan what you will! However, it is trying to serve an important message and that is to not use the black bins for food waste at all but to only use the brown bins. Unfortunately it would seem that many residents do not do this and not only does this impact on the ability to recycle effectively it also has cost implications too as well as a smell!

It would seem the council have produced another balanced budget for 2020/21 and are quick to thank their income generation and transformation initiatives for not having to cut services in the upcoming year. The jury is still very much out on just how effective their initiatives have been with many of you finding it difficult to contact SSDC via telephone and many of you having planning applications stalled in a black hole for months on end. Perhaps the success of these initiatives would be best judged after a few years when the true extent of income generation can be assessed by the effectiveness and ease of accessing services and customer care.

County Councillor -- Tiffany Osborne
tiffany.osborne@southsomerset.gov.uk
County Councillor -- Clare Aparacio-Paul
capariciopaul@somerset.gov.uk