highbarnet.org » Council meetings http://highbarnet.org News from High Barnet Thu, 17 Mar 2011 09:05:56 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Council meeting 26 Jan http://highbarnet.org/2010/01/26/council-meeting-26-jan/ http://highbarnet.org/2010/01/26/council-meeting-26-jan/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:49:44 +0000 duncan http://highbarnet.org/?p=280 Tonight is the full meeting of the Council. I will be speaking on the administration’s policy item whci is about improving recycling rates. The main thrust of the item is that it is better to incentivise   people to recycle by rewarding them in some way rather than taxing their polluting behaviour. I shall be arguing that we need both and that Green taxes rather than taxes on income are far better if they are not applied as a stealth tax but as part of a redistribution of the tax burden from good things like work to bad things like pollution.

]]> http://highbarnet.org/2010/01/26/council-meeting-26-jan/feed/ 0 Only 54 http://highbarnet.org/2010/01/25/only-54/ http://highbarnet.org/2010/01/25/only-54/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:05:19 +0000 duncan http://highbarnet.org/?p=278 At the last Council meeting I asked how many staff were in the community protection group. The CPG is the group within the council tasked with enforcing things like dog fouling, littering and some parking offences such as parking on the zig zag lines outside a school.

There are 54 staff in the CPG. There are 21 wards so that makes just over 2.5 staff per ward. The Safer neighbourhood team in High Barnet have 9 staff who could be enforcing these powers. When I asked how many of the CPG staff were street based the number goes down even further because the CPG staffing includes CCTV operators, admin and technical staff. This means that the Council has effectively no staff in High Barnet who are capable of enforcing these laws. Even if they did the Council does not possess the means to issue penalty tickets for these offences. In other words much of the minor but ant-social activities that take place in High Barnet are not in any way controlled. The police who have the resources are not allowed to because the council has reserved the powers for itself. This urgently needs review if we are to have any sanction against the small minority of people who act in an anti-social manner.

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