My notable contributions can be seen on the web cast here:

Statement on Kingsdown School being temporarily closed, followed by answering a question regarding increased costs for parents.

I was asked about a section of the Southend Skills Strategy, well sort of. Here the Leader of the Independent Party was trying to suggest that we didn’t taking Leigh’s fishing industry seriously. Rather silly when at the same Cabinet and scrutiny meeting we had had a separate paper on a grant for that area and we have had many other grants over the years and invested money (quite rightly) into this area.

It was the Lib Dems’ turn to raise Kent Elms Crossing (petition) this time, and I added my voice to the call to get on with sorting it out – the Administration certain wants to, we just have to get the money from Government first… something I know my colleague Tony Cox is keen to do, partly because I keep on at him about it!

We also had a discussion on the cross-party Working Party’s recommendations on the Future of the Youth Service, which Cabinet had endorsed in full. A little bit of politicking  going on here, but I and I think all members of the Working Party were quite pleased with the outcome of our review.

At around 1:15am we went into “Part 2” as we like to call it (private session with the public not allowed)… but not before we all gave a round of applause to the one gentleman who had managed to stay all the way through! Here we had a discussion on the performance of our schools, before all being allowed to go home to bed at approximately 1:40am.

27th February 2014 before we get the chance to do it all again!