Last night was one of the regular meetings of the Council’s Executive Committee. As a Leader of one of the opposition parties I sit on the Committee, even through the vast majority of members are from the group currently in administration of Bury, the Conservatives.

It was a very short agenda, and in fact the most pressing issue was a presentation before the meeting from the owners of the Millgate Centre in Bury who are looking at ways to develop the centre. Firm proposals are on their way in the coming couple of months, so more information to follow.

There were three issues on the formal agenda of the Committee:

- Neiborhood Renwal Strategy - the Committee agreed to recommend this major strategy to the full council meeting in December

- Bury Values Prospectus - this was a draft set of “values” for Bury and hopefully its partner agencies. All very “good word”, and I asked how the report would be put into practice rather than just “sitting on a shelf” at the town hall!

- Sustainable Commities Strategy - again this strategy, which will develop into strategies for each of Bury’s “Areas” (e.g. Prestwich) is recommended for approval at the next meeting of the full Council. There was some concern from both Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors that the strategy hadn’t been considered fully by the Scrutiny process, we agreed that the Economy, Environment and Transport strutiny would consider the report before it was approved by Council.

You can see copies of the papers for the meeting here

The next meeting of the Committee is on the 28th November 2008 - papers are on the Council’s website from about 8 days before.

Tim