Action: St Oswald and Ruyton-XI-Towns meeting

Opportunities for older people, and ways to improve the environment, will be just two items on the agenda when the next meeting of Action: St Oswald and Ruyton-XI-Towns local joint committee is held next Thursday (10 April). The meeting will be held at Knockin Assembly Rooms starting at 7.00pm, and all local residents in the area are invited to attend.

The meeting will give people in the St Oswald and Ruyton-XI-Towns area another chance to meet with local councillors, get involved in decisions affecting their community, and help decide how the committee spends its budget.

Funding applications for equipment, and facilities to help improve the environment, will be considered at the meeting. A decision will be taken to allocate a budget of up to £15,000 towards opportunities for older people.

More than 30 people attended a previous meeting in January, which agreed to spend up to £5,000 on equipment and facilities to help improve the environment in the area.

At a special meeting held in February the committee agreed to spend £12,800 on improving facilities and activities for young people in the area.

Dilys Gaskill, Shropshire county councillor for Ruyton-XI-Towns, said: “Action: St Oswald and Ruyton-XI-Towns is giving local people a real chance to say how they think services and facilities in the area could be improved. The meetings held so far have offered some valuable suggestions about how and where the committee should spend its budget.”

June Drummond, Shropshire county councillor for St Oswald, said: “A number of important issues have already been raised and discussed, but we are really keen for people to come to our next meeting to tell us what else they think we could or should be doing to improve the area.”

The meetings have a committee of county, district, town and parish councillors drawn from the area, and a small budget which the committee allocates in response to issues raised by members of the public.

Action: St Oswald and Ruyton-XI-Towns is one of five local joint committee pilots that have been meeting in Shropshire for the past year.

The Shropshire Council Implementation Executive recently agreed that, following the success of the pilots, each should continue for at least another 12 months, and that six further local joint committees should also be set up.

3 April 2008