Owen Temple

The question of whether Consett and Stanley should have all five of their secondary schools closed, and replaced with two new academies, comes before Cabinet at County Hall today.

That would be in addition to just one other academy in the county which would replace Belmont and Gilesgate facilities.

Academies are schools run by a sponsor or sponsors, rather than by the local education authority. They bring in outside expertise, ideas and sometimes cash. At the same time, they leave a school with less local control.

The first thing that is clear is that the Government refused the original county proposal that its intended three academies would all be run by a consortium of Durham University, The Durham Association of Secondary Head Teachers, and the North East Chamber of Commerce. This is nick-named DEEP or Durham Excellence in Education Partnership.

Lord Adonis, who made that decision, was clearly influenced by an independent report, commissioned jointly with the council, and which described the consortium as a “partnership which does not exist”.

The same report added, “it has no track record of sponsorship of academies, and had little insight into the work involved.” The report concluded that the bid was “untenable”. The new proposal for Consett, however, is still that it should be sponsored by this consortium.

The other thing that’s clear is that Consett and Stanley getting new school buildings is being tied up with accepting Academies. Some would call it blackmail.

That’s not the position in Seaham, Sedgefield, Shotton Hall, Spennymoor, Bishop Auckland, or Durham Johnston. All these are getting new buildings without being forced to become Academies.

I want to see investment in school buildings in Consett - I taught here long enough to care - and I want the best possible education for all our children, but I do have reservations about the proposed academies which relate to:

• Their size (1,500 in Consett, 1,800 in Stanley)
• Who’s in control
• Lack of choice for local parents
• Whether this is just another “fad” experimenting with our children’s education

I’d be delighted to know what you think. Why not do the straw poll to the left? If enough people vote I’ll have something to go on more than my own prejudices.

Having promised you fireworks in the Consett v Darlington clash arranged for Belle Vue Park tonight, I turned up to find the lights were on but no-one home - literally.

Checking the website when I got home, I found that Darlington could not turn out a team, so Consett progressed to the next round with never a ball kicked.

The website has been changing servers, which is why there has been no update and some unavailability for some days.

Normal service will be resumed shortly.

The recent story in “The Advertiser” about Watling Woods has generated a lot of interest, verbally and by email. It involves a planning application to build a double-glazing factory which would involve the loss of three acres of Watling Wood in Leadgate.

In fact, as a decision outside my ward, and since I don’t have a place on the Development Control Committee, it’s an issue into which I will have no input, but I thought it might be useful for readers to know more about the planning process - and the parts they can and cannot play.

Planning applications are available online on Derwentside’s website. This one is at http://www.derwentside.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=8427&step=4&ref=1/2008/0543 People are also entitled to go into the Civic Centre to see the file. 

New Planning applications are listedeach week at http://www.derwentside.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=8427&step=5

People who want to object are entitled to do so, but it’s very important for them to recognise that the objection must be on planning grounds. The Development Control Committee is not allowed to take other grounds into account.

Here’s a list of the sort of things that are planning grounds:

As important is the following list of things that aren’t planning grounds for an objection. Putting them in an objection won’t help, but will damage your case by reducing its effectiveness:

• The perceived loss of property value
• Private disputes between neighbours
• The loss of a view
• The impact of construction work or competition between firms
• Restrictive covenants
• Ownerships disputes over rights of way
• Fence lines etc
• Personal morals or views about the applicant.

Having worked out your objections, and whether they stack up on planning grounds, you need to send them to the Planning Department where they will be logged and summarised for the committee.

If you weren’t logging on for an education, no doubt you’ve been disaapointed in this article. But if you ever want to object to a planning application you’ll find it very useful.

One thing’s for sure. If you aim an objection in the wrong direction you’ll certainly miss the target.

I’m just back from Birmingham where I’ve been on a course called “Effective Opposition: skills and tactics”. I’m indebted to Derwentside District Council for approving my enrolment.

Only a cynic would think that the strong antagonism between the district and county council, and the forthcoming end of the district council, might have motivated the willingness to send me on a course to sharpen up my skills to make me a more effective member of the opposition. Most of that opposition in the future will be worked out on the new unitary council - until Liberal Democrats take control, that is.

It was actually a very interesting course, giving me time to reflect on what people expect of us as an opposition, and what we are capable of delivering. It was also interesting to meet a mixture of other councillors. Some were Lib Dems who had recently been in control of their council, others were Lib Dems who had always been in opposition and expected nothing else. A few were Labour councillors, recently defeated and definitely smarting. Two were Conservatives, and one an Independent.

The Independent was an interesting man. Very straight. Very frustrated. Very sure that the problem with local government was the involvement of political parties.

It’s an attractive view, and one which some readers of this blog may share - “people not politics”. Local people working together for the local good. Despite the superficial attractiveness of it, I just can’t buy it. Everything he said, and everything I’ve seen locally, tells me that unless you have a core set of attitudes which bind a group of people together you’ll be unable to reach (or stick with) a decision.

That adds an extra dimension of difficulty to being an effective opposition both in Derwentside and in Durham County Council.

In Derwentside Independents make up the majority of the opposition. A few weeks ago when opposing the Derwentside Homes land-grab, as one of the independents put it to me “we were moving forward together like a rugby scrum”. Three weeks later, the scrum had broken down. There was not enough to bind it together.

On the county council, although Liberal Democrats are considerablty the strongest opposition party, to get anywhere near forcing the Labour cabinet’s hand we’d need all the opposition parties to unite. That will be a challenge, with two Independent groups, and no consistency of voting pattern, and with Conservatives who show little interest in the world outside their wards.

So being an effective opposition, holding the council to account, improving its policy decisions and offering an alternative administration will fall to us Liberal Democrats. I just hope that what I’ve learnt this week will enable us to do that better.

will have two way traffic lights operating on November 3^rd and 4^th  for work on electricity supply cables.

Understandably readers do not normally vist this site for sports information.

As an un-reformed supporter of Bristol Rovers FC my footballing agonies and ecstacies are not well synchronised with the local pulse.

Today it’s different. I’ve come back from a couple of days away, only to find Consett FC top of the Skills Training Ltd. Northern League. That’s fantastic.

I also find that as an alternative to the more conventional fireworks night display, on the night of November 5th Consett will be at home to Darlington in the second round of the Durham Challenge Cup. Let’s hope it’s Darlo’s hopes that go up in smoke.

For a more reliable source of information on Consett FC’s fortunes, I recommend http://www.consettafc.com/index.php or http://www.thebellevuebugle.com/

It’s easy to find stories knocking the health service, and it’s easy to knock statistics, but instead lets celebrate some good news.

Ratings released today by the independent NHS regulator, the Healthcare Commission, identify the performance of NHS services in the North East as the best of any region in the country.

This is the second year running that the North East has been rated this way with this year’s results even better than last year’s.

It’s good news for patients, the public and NHS staff in the region and shows that we can all be justifiably proud of our local NHS services.

Each hospital and mental health trust in the region, as well as the ambulance service, is rated either ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ for quality, giving easily the highest score in the country.

All in all, seventeen of the 23 NHS organisations in the north east are also rated ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ for use of resources – again, the best performing of any region in the country.

This achievement is a credit to the hard work and commitment shown by 77,000 NHS staff day in and day out across the North East.

I have received the following warning from Durham Trading Standards. If you have regular contact with an elderly person, please be alert to the problem and let them know if you think it is appropriate:

“ I have been alerted that a company called Medicare Health system Ltd is telephoning elderly people in

At the start of this month I explained about the new site counter, and why the numbers were so much less flattering than the old ones.

I also said that the new target would be 1,000 visitors to the site in a month, and I’m pleased to record that we passed that figure today. Thank you very much for the encouragement.

Actually I know that you’re interested in the numbers because the “blog statistics” page is the most read page on the site. It’s intriguing. Who exactly is looking at it? Is it our political opponents, hoping it’s low to show how little impact we are having? Is it our friends, rooting for it to go up? Or are you all just plain nosy?

That should make for some intriguing results next month. If it goes down I’ll assume that our political opponents are not logging on in order to put off the day we hit the next target which has to be 2,000 hits in a month. If it goes up, it will of course be a reflection of a groundswell of support for a changing political climate in Consett.

I must be turning into a politician. Whichever way the statistics go, they’re on my side.