Here is an update on what I’ve been doing in the last two months since my previous blog. I would love to hear from you. What should I and the Council be prioritising? What particular challenges are you facing, if any? Do you have ideas for how we can improve things in Congleton? Please get in touch with me and let me know your thoughts:
Email cllrkay.wesley@congleton-tc.gov.uk Call or text 07711 459740
Or you can come to one of our surgeries – the next one is on Monday 11th September on Zoom at 5pm. You can accept the Facebook event here.
Congleton Pride
The Congleton Pride event took place on the 22nd July. It was very successful and we saw thousands of people of all ages flocking to the town centre to join in. With performances from ‘Princess Impersonations’ for the children, to crowd-pleasing entertainer Andy Hofton, there was something for everyone. We also had a second, Community Stage, which featured school choirs and local acts as well as members of the LGBTQIA+ community giving short talks about ‘What Pride Means to Me’. The Maker’s Market provided the stalls and we had a mix of foods, crafts and community stalls offering support to LGBTQIA+ people. There was also a fun evening event in the Town Hall.
We had our first Pride Parade this year, and lots of local groups and organisations joined in. It was a lot of fun, and town-centre shops and businesses had decorated their premises in rainbow colours.
You can see a report about Congleton Pride on the Town Council website.
I wear multiple hats on Pride Day. As a Pride Trustee I have been helping with the organisation, in my case especially on the communications side. I was a marshal for part of the day and also helped on the WEP stall and helped set up the White Ribbon stall. My company, Kanga, is a Pride Sponsor and some of my colleagues marched in the parade, as did WEP and Elizabeth’s Group.
Now the Pride team is recovering and planning activities for the next 12 months. The Pride AGM will be in September. (Congleton Pride is an independent charity, supported by CTC)
Congleton InBloom
I joined in with the Town Tidy in the centre of Congleton ready for the InBloom judging day.
On the day itself I dressed up as an Edwardian Suffragist and stood in Elizabeth’s Garden to explain about Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy to the judges.
Later that day I supported my colleague Cllr Susan Mead with the judging of the Bromley Farm Friendship Garden, which was looking fab after a last-minute tidy up by the team.
Congleton Green
I attended the first Congleton Green Working Group meeting and also helped set out the Green communications activities for the coming year, working with the marketing team of the Town Council.
I help set up the Green Calendar in which we celebrate national days, weeks and months. For September we have ‘second-hand September’ and will be doing press and social media posts around this. We are also looking forward to the Green Fayre on the 30th September.
We will also be refreshing the website content we hold for Green Council, Green Living and Green Business.
Transport and Travel
Congleton Sustainable Travel (an independent group) asked some questions at the Community Committee about barriers to motor scooters and wheelchairs on Biddulph Valley Way and other footpaths. We agreed to follow up with Cheshire East Council. I have also spoken to the Group leader about the shared space in the centre of Congleton, and how we can keep motor vehicles off it and make it safer for both pedestrians and cyclists. We are looking into options and consulting Highways for advice. I attend the Sustainable Travel Group meetings whenever possible.
I worked with Officers on a paper responding to the Cheshire East Consultation on Criteria for supported Bus Services for the Community Committee, which voted to send the response to CEC. The final comment on our response is “We would like to see Cheshire East take a much more proactive approach to applying for more funds to retain and expand bus and public transport options for Congleton.”
Disability Inclusion
Together with the Deputy Chief Officer I met with disability advocate Deborah Lawson to discuss ideas to make Congleton more inclusive for those in wheelchairs/mobility scooters, those with visual impairment, or other particular needs.
I was very grateful to discover that in preparation for that meeting Deborah had interviewed people in the town and written a very informative report for us. I was quite shocked at how inaccessible parts of Congleton are, and interested to learn of some ‘quick wins’ we might implement to improve things, as well as longer-term solutions.
We presented the ideas to the Health & Wellbeing Working Group, who agreed that we should work up some proposals that can be brought to a Council Committee for approval.
Community Safety Working Group
We had the first meeting of this new Working Group (replacing the Antisocial Behaviour WG) and I was elected Chair of the Group. We discussed current ‘hot spots’ for criminal behaviour in the town and the statistics for different types of crime in recent months.
Congleton Town Council has signed up to the Community Safety Charter and we now have the materials on our website here. Please take a look and share the training modules if you think they are useful: https://www.congleton-tc.gov.uk/discover-congleton/community-safety-charter/
White Ribbon
White Ribbon is an international organisation engaging men to stand up against men’s violence towards women, and the behaviours and attitudes that lead to it. Congleton Town Council is a White Ribbon Accredited organisation and our goal is to ‘eradicate men’s violence against women and all gender-based violence and abuse from Congleton’.
The new White Ribbon Working Group has been established to continue this work. The White Ribbon initiative has been very successful in Congleton, with 12 male Ambassadors taking the word out to the community, including schools, that unhealthy masculinity and sexist behaviours can lead to harassment, abuse and violence, and we should call these things out. Our Police colleagues are unequivocal in their view that violence against women and girls is a top priority for Cheshire Constabulary and has launched a campaign ‘Stand with women, not against them’, shifting the focus to perpetrators.
Our White Ribbon Ambassadors met and elected Cllr Richard Walton as the Group Chair. We ran a White Ribbon stall at Congleton Pride in July, and myCWA provided us with some LGBTQIA+ banners saying ‘All Genders Welcome’ and similar. This was a very successful event for the team, with over 35 White Ribbon Promises made and lots of good conversations. Many thanks to the team who manned the stall.
Meanwhile, The National Association of Local Councils has now become a White Ribbon Accredited organisation and will be encouraging all local Councils to join Congleton and the 60+ local authorities who are White Ribbon organisations.
We are now planning for White Ribbon Day 2023 and one of the Ambassadors will attend the national White Ribbon Conference on our behalf.
If you’d like to get involved in White Ribbon or make your promise, please contact me or visit http://www.whiteribbon.org.uk.
Working with the Police
Supt Claire Jesson of Cheshire Police gave a talk at the Community Committee meeting, which I chair, about the Safer Streets Programme by Cheshire Police. This initiative includes funding from national government to keep people safe from crime on the streets at night. One of its components is the Safety Bus which can help people out late who need support to contact family or get home, and we arranged to have the Bus on display at the Christmas Lights Switch on in Congleton.
The Cheshire Police EDEI (external diversity, equity and inclusion) Board, of which I am a member, put together a set of questions for the Cheshire Police Ethics Panel, about how Cheshire can respond to the Casey Report on Institutional Misogyny, Racism and Homophobia in the Met Police. We are meeting a representative of the panel in September to discuss these questions.
Domestic Abuse
I attended the Cheshire East Domestic and Sexual Abuse Partnership (CEDSAP) Board meeting to hear about all the different agencies (CEC Officers, Police, Social Services, Housing, Health, myCWA and others) are working together to support families affected in Cheshire East. The Whole Housing Project (a funded-multi-agency pilot) is going very well and cross-agency working is excellent.
We reviewed the CEDSAP Annual Report which will be published shortly and will explain in detail the progress of this group for the past 12 months.
Council Website
I have joined the task-and-finish group to lead the development of a new website for Congleton Town Council. The existing website is 7 years old and no longer fit for purpose. Also, we now have the Congleton Information Centre under our control and the website needs to include this aspect of our work too.
Using skills from my ‘day job’ in digital communications, I facilitated a requirements workshop with the other members of the group (Councillors and Officers). We considered some other councils’ websites and captured the needs of our many different stakeholders in Congleton, as well as the statutory requirement to provide information on Council business.
The next step is to run a tender process and find a partner who can deliver the project.
Civic Events
I joined in the Congleton Mayor’s Civic Parade, which is a traditional day to ‘show’ the new Mayor and Councillors to the public. We march through town then have a service followed by a reception at the Town Hall for neighbouring town Mayors.
As Deputy Mayor I represented Congleton at the Biddulph Civic Service and the Leek Civic Parade, both of which were good fun and it was very enjoyable to meet the other Mayors and learn more about surrounding towns.
Neighbourhood Plan
I attended a meeting of the Neighbourhood Plan working group. This project has taken too long for a number of reasons, and I will do all I can to help bring it to a conclusion this civic year.
The Neighbourhood Plan should state how Congleton people want their future town to be designed and built, and will therefore be an important document as input to Planning Decisions.
Council Transparency
At our August Council meeting we had two decisions on transparency. The first was to publish meeting attendance, and the second was to live-stream our meetings. I was in favour of both (and made the proposal for the second, having helped set up and test the live streaming facility in the Town Hall in recent years), but unfortunately, in a close vote, the Council voted against both measures.
I and my colleague Cllr Susan Mead publish our meeting attendance in this blog every two months, but it is a shame that the public will not have easy access to this for everyone.
In my view it is regrettable that those who cannot physically attend our public meetings, due to disability, lack of transport or caring responsibilities, are excluded. But that is the decision of the Town Council and we must live with it for the time being.
Council Casework
I have been supporting residents with a number of matters during recent weeks:
- Signposting a woman who is being stalked to get advice and help to report it to the Police.
- Supporting a family struggling with neighbours’ behaviour.
- Helping someone to get advice from the Citizen’s Advice Bureau on benefits and cost-of-living matters.
- Following up on overgrown hedges and weeds
- Helping residents follow up on perceived planning breaches by highlighting these to CEC
- Supporting a refugee family with their primary school application
- My colleague Susan and I are working with residents of Bailey Crescent about nuisance parking outside their houses.
Non-Council Activities follow:
Bromley Farm Hub
The Bromley Farm Hub group is thriving and I am helping mainly with organisation and administration, publishing meeting minutes and volunteering with the Friends on a Tuesday afternoon.
I met with the Board of Plus Dane to explain to them all the different groups that are now being run out of the Hub and the leadership of my colleague Cllr Susan Mead. They were very impressed with everything Susie and the teams are doing. We now have the Friends on Tuesday afternoon, The Residents’ Form, the Peer Support Group, Stay & Play and the Bromley Bloomers.
The Bromley Bloomers entered the ‘In Your Neighbourhood’ section of Britain in Bloom and I helped with preparing the new Friendship Garden for judging day.
Plus Dane has recently added responsive lighting on Parnell Square so that the area is safer for evening meetings in the Hub and for pedestrians after dark.
There will be a ‘Work Hub’ in the Hub on the 28th September for anyone who wants help getting back into work.
The NHS will be running a 12-week ‘Recovery Programme’ in the Bromley Farm Hub starting in November, and I met with them and Plus Dane to explain the facilities available.
If you’d like to get involved with the Bromley Farm Hub or any of its sub-groups, please contact Susan or me. Our next Committee meeting is on October 3rd.
Elizabeth’s Group
Elizabeth’s Group has continued to promote the life and work of Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, with Chair Susan Munro taking the message out to events and groups far and wide. My own role is mainly in the back office, helping with the website and emailing out the newsletter.
We had a half-day workshop to discuss the next steps for Elizabeth’s Group and came up with some interesting ideas for the future. Later this year the group is planning to publish a book of writings about Elizabeth and women’s rights.
We were alarmed to hear that Moody Hall was on fire during August. This Grade II listed building is where Elizabeth founded a girls’ school in Congleton, and is an important part of our heritage for this and other reasons. It has been unoccupied for some time and people have been gaining access at the back, and we think this is how the fire started.
Elizabeth’s Group is campaigning for the local authority (Cheshire East Council) to do something about Moody Hall – to encourage the owner to restore it or take direct action. The Group has started a petition – ‘Make Moody Marvellous’ – that you can sign here.
Other
I’ve been asked to help the National Association of Local Councils with both their Women Councillors’ Group and on their White Ribbon Steering Group.
In other news, away from volunteering, my business Kanga Health Ltd has been shortlisted as a finalist for as ‘Digital Agency of the Year’ in the PM Live awards – our sector’s principal awards body.
My Council Meeting Attendance
Overall, my Council meeting attendance in these two months has been 82% for all council meetings and working/other groups, either face-to-face or virtually (18 out of 22). For the principal council committees my rate is 100% (2 of 2). (This includes the full Council and the Community Committee, which I Chair. All other Committees are ‘ex-officio’ for me as Deputy Mayor, although I attend them when I can.)
I am a member of 21 other Groups as well as the Council Committees, some of which are council-related, some are other local charities and community groups.
The Town Council’s remit does not include things such as Social Services, Health, Transport, Waste, Recycling – these are the domain of Cheshire East, but we can lobby in these areas.
The Equality Party 