What's happening on Wednesday?

I'll be chairing the South of the Borough Neighbourhood Committee as usual this Wednesday. Everyone is welcome to come along and join in the discussions.

The meeting will start at 7.30pm at the Hook Centre. But the Neighbourhood Manager, Barry Allen, will be available from 6.30pm if you want to drop in and chat with him about anything to do with the Neighbourhood. He is usually joined by one of the local Police Safer Neighbourhood Teams.

The main planning item is the proposed development on the site of St Mary's Church Hall in Church Lane. The church have now taken over the old Youth Club premises and renamed it the St Mary's Centre - and it is thriving. So the old hall is now redundant, and the plan is to build flats.

If you have seen the agenda in advance you will see that officers were recommending that the application should be refused. However, amended plans have now been submitted and the planning officers are now recommending that it should be permitted.

Apart from that we have to consider some very worthy reports on youth unemployment, and on the parking strategy in district centres such as Tolworth.

Another item is on the policies that underpin the Local Implementation Plan, which is how we are going to bid for funds from The Mayor of London's Transport Strategy. Although that may seem dull, it could mean many £millions to be spent to improve traffic and transport in the borough.

There will probably be some interest in the item on planned highways maintenance for 2010-2011. The Committee has £104,000 to spend on resurfacing roads and pavements across all three wards - and I can assure you, that doesn't go very far at all. The highways engineers do a full analysis of all the roads and pavements using a standard form of assessment known as the UKpms. They then identify the worst ones and we councillors have to make decisions based on that information. It's not easy!

This year the officers' recommendations will only be available on the night. That is because the icy weather over Christmas and New Year has damaged a number of roads, and the officers wanted to do some further assessments.

I'm also rather pleased to see that the Hook Centre has actually underspent by £7,800 so far this year. This is due to the efforts that have been made to reduce energy consumption, mainly by improving the heating system.

If all that hasn't put you off, then do come along on Wednesday.