Monday 12 January 2009

Flood Meeting : No further forward

Left to right: Philip Bradbourn - Member of the European Parliament; Harriett Baldwin - Conservative Parliamentary Candidate, West Worcs; Adrian Hardman - Cabinet Member for finance WCC; Paul Tullett - Area Manager, Environment Agency; Anthony Perry - Environment Agency's Area Flood Risk Manager
Also on panel (not in pictured): Phil Grove and Tony Penn

Present in audience:
Richard Burt - LibDem Parliamentary Candidate
Cliff Slade - LibDem County Council Candidate
Bob Martin - Ex-Mayor

About 100 people attended this well run and good natured meeting. Noticeable absences were the retail community which found it impossible to attend due to the late notice and timing of the meeting.
The news is still that there is no news. The two staff from the Environment Agency stressed that if it was up to them Tenbury would have its scheme, but at this time no money is available.

It was raised that some of the flooding was caused by flash flooding, it appeared to be agreed that this was at least partly due to WCC's failure to fix the Bog Lane problem.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was there too!

Cllr The Revd Ian Williams

@WR15 said...

Just for the record. I wasn't there as I only heard about the meeting the day before and had already made other arrangements.

I thought it was still an event worth recording so asked for a short report from someone else.

Anonymous said...

If anyone added up the national costs of all the meetings and all the reports about all the schemes for which funding is not available, we would end up with more than enough money to implement quite a number of the schemes for which there is no money.
Having meetings and writing reports is all well and good, but shouldn't the focus be on making things happen - rather than on merely having meetings and writing reports?

Anonymous said...

The more important something is, the less likely the government is to fund it and the less likely the Council is to fight for it. For example, Tessa Jowell announced £33.4 million to go towards a new £60m library in Worcester, which already has a perfectly adequate library. But £5 million is not available to protect Tenbury from flooding. Which idiot decides these priorities?

Anonymous said...

There is always money for Culture and the Literati, because for every John Prescott in a position of power there are 10 David Cameron's with Silver spoons in their mouths.

Libraries, Opera and the Theatre find funding, Cinema, Swimming Pools and the Environment have to fight for every penny.