Area Meeting

Last night Royce and I attended the Area meeting of the City Council.
During the open session, I was given time to present our concerns.
I kept it very short and focussed on the following:

-Flooding getting worse
-Waste Water flooding
-Complexity of causes
-Conflicting advice/info from different agencies
-Impact on residents
-Public Health problems

I then asked for help understanding and coordinating the different agencies involved.

The committee was very supportive of our concerns and there seems to have been more action than we were aware of.

The Environment Agency attended the last area committee meeting, and minutes from this will be available soon.

The chair, Councillor Bryan Keen, proposed that a delagation will come to see us - and assess our issues directly. They will set up a meeting and provide resources to help with this.

Angela Cristofoli, the Area Coordinator (North East and Cowley) is bringing all the agencies together and is going to get involved with us to help. I think that this is very positive, as she can coordinate the issues of many residents, apart from us in Campbell Road - and bring a little more clout to our needs - especially with Thames Water!!

Anyhoo - there is a little bit of uncertainty about how much this will help us in the short term, but Royce and I were heartened by how much they were aware of our issues - with councillors being aware of the permanent piles of sandbags on our road.

Also, having the resources of the council to help us (meeting rooms, etc) will be good too!

Thanks to Royce for bringing this valuable meeting to our attention and for the work he has done raising it with councillors in the past.

It is possible that councillors might read this blog - but we should not worry about who else is reading this - as it is for us. It is important that we feel we can be honest with each other here - as we need to air and coordinate our concerns.

Please comment - ask questions and share information here - as it is a way for us to move faster to get help. So far 4 other residents have access to posting to the site - but none have yet! - Please help me by contributing to this blog - and the more of us use it - the more support our group can demonstrate.

I will be posting a few common concerns to promote some more discussion next - please get involved!