About John
John is the County Councillor for Warsop, just north of Mansfield. He is the Shadow Portfolio holder for Children & Young People's Services. John has previously served as the Chairman of Nottinghamshire County Council, and also used to be the Deputy Portfolio Holder for Children & Young People's Services.
Latest News
Spring 2011
At the Nottinghamshire
County Council Budget Meeting on 24th February 2011 I joined my Labour
colleagues in voting against the Budget proposals.
While we welcomed the extra
spending being made by the County Council on child protection and services for
vulnerable adults, we did not agree with the proposals to reduce funding to
other areas such as the Libraries service, Supporting People programme and
grant aid to voluntary groups.
We asked the majority group
to consider a more detailed consultation with the public and partner
organisations in order to allow a longer term approach to making efficiencies,
with a view to many possibly not being needed as the economic situation
improved.
However, our proposals were
not accepted, and the Budget was eventually passed with a majority of five
votes.
27th October 2010
"At the Council Meeting on 21st October, along with my colleagues in the Labour group, I voted against the proposals being made by the County Council to make spending cuts of £150m over the next four years.
The Labour group made it completely clear that we welcome the extra spending in Children’s and Adult’s services but we also stated that we felt it inappropriate to withdraw funding from other vital areas such as Surestart and Supporting People, and that the Council was moving too fast with its cuts and not taking full cognisance of the impact on the most vulnerable.
The Labour group presented a longer-term alternative which would’ve seen the £50m from reserves currently earmarked for redundancies instead being reinvested into vital services, and enabling the County Council to retain skilled staff who wished to remain, while allowing others to leave through natural staff turnover.
We believe that our longer-term approach would minimise the impact on external partners, minimise the need for redundancy payments, retain valuable staff and achieve the necessary financial goals.
Our proposals were, however, dismissed, and the administration instead voted to implement their original plans to make immediate service cuts."
Councillor's Divisional Fund
The Electoral Division Initiative that we introduced a few years ago is now called the Councillor's Divisional Fund. However, the principle remains the same:
Each councillor receives £10,000 to help fund local organisations, causes, individuals and schemes, who would not normally have access to financial support for their smaller projects.
Please contact John if you would like to apply for some CDF funding. Here are just a few examples of the useful funding which was provided by John in 2009/2010:
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Eastlands Junior School received £3000 to purchase and install a Trim Trail adventure trail.
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Hetts Lane Holiday Club were given £1,000 to help pay for a school holiday club for 40 children.
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Warsop Parish Council were given a donation of £1,500 to assist with the costs of their community Christmas event.
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To help with their 100 year celebrations, the 1st Warsop Methodist Brownies received £750.
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Meden School received £1,000 to purchase equipment for the focus group.
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£1,000 was given to NetherfieldInfantsSchool for the building of a school garden.
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Age Concern Warsop & District received £1,250 to pay for the installation of a burglar alarm system.
