Joint wards Neighbourhood Committee

Last night was the first meeting of the new cycle of the joint six wards Neighbourhood Committee. Our committee, Kensington and Fairfield, Everton and Picton is joined up with Kirkdale, Riverside and Central wards for a "super" committee. It was actually only our second ever meeting and I was pleased to be nominated again as the Deputy Chair.

We talked about how the new structure, with its emphasis on double devolution - solving local problems at a local level, might actually work.

After a couple of hours of debate with both politicians, council officers and partners, we agreed that in future our meetings will have the usual agenda of information provision and discussion about wider matters but will also have a local neighbourhood forum element. We have agreed that our six wards will split in geographical ways that make sense into five smaller groups. Our group is Kensington and Fairfield with Picton. We have very similar wards, similar housing issues, similar retail issues, similar environmental issues, Smithdown Road and Wavertree Road have a lot in common with Kensington and Prescot Road, we share Edge Lane, the CPOs and the Kensington Regeneration area. I think it makes sense.

So what it means is that when the cycle of meetings of either the three ward set-up or the six ward set-up meet in either Kensington or Picton (we have never met in Fairfield, perhaps we should, the police club would be ideal) then we will focus on Kensington and Picton issues.

Conversely, when we meet in Everton, Kirkdale, the city centre, the Dingle and the Waterfront we will talk about their issues.

We agreed a whole raft of routes whereby problems can be solved and where interested partners, residents groups, community groups (issue based or geography based) can come together to resolve things.

Now we have to work out what the priorities are for each area - things like the physical environment (fly-tipping, graffiti, litter, broken stuff etc), health, jobs, training, housing, old people, young people, community safety, but in detail.

If you have not yet had an input into what you think really matters at a micro level in Kensington and Fairfield, please contact me or post a message here and I will see that it is considered.

I am really looking forward to see how it works.