Cllr Chris Lockyear
Chair, Sidmouth Town Council
Sidmouth Town Council made the decision last year to close the Manstone Youth Centre building as it had come to the end of its natural life and was costing an excessive amount to maintain. What the Town Council did not do was to close down support for our young people, exactly the opposite, we have sought new ways help the next generation.
At our Town Council meeting on 3rd March we were briefed about new initiatives designed to help all the Sid Valley young people play an active role in the community. The Sid Valley has a huge number of clubs and societies that young people can join but when asked, many either said they weren’t aware of the opportunities, or were not able to participate for financial reasons. Sidmouth Town Council is seeking to address both issues. Many of the clubs have been approached and invited to be part of a Youth Hub Directory, which will be available both online and hard copy, as well as participate in a Freshers Fayre planned at Sidmouth College on 28th March. These initiatives are designed to let young people know what is available and to encourage them to get involved. To address the funding issue, as small amount of money is being made available via our ‘Give it a Go’ scheme to allow some disadvantaged students to join clubs, where funding might otherwise have been an issue. Pressures on young people are significant at the moment, but we know that being involved with others in some sporting, cultural, or physical activity can provide positive motivation. It can also critically give them a support network that can help them develop into the successful adults they would all wish to be.
I write my monthly articles to try and explain what the Town Council is doing on your behalf. This is very varied as I hope regular readers of my articles can appreciate. Some of it is very public but a lot of other things happen in the background. The services provided by the Town Council are important and so is their continuity. However, we are increasingly living in an uncertain and risky world for economic, environmental and geopolitical reasons. One of the background tasks the Council has undertaken is an assessment of risks to delivery of our services, and this was covered at our meeting on 3rd March. This is a fairly dry subject but I thought I would mention it as it is important. It is a bit like an insurance policy which you only pull out when you need to make a claim, only to find you hadn’t read the small print closely enough! A small group of Councillors and Staff reviewed risks under the categories of finance, assets, legal, liabilities, compliance, members, and staff. We consider what could go wrong, and made a judgement about the probability of that happening and its consequence. We then considered whether the mitigation measures were strong enough to reduce the risk to an acceptable level, recognising that you cannot remove all risk. We were generally happy with the procedures in place but identified a few where we thought further action was needed. These things will now be addressed.
And whilst I am demonstrating the variety of what we do, I will mention another topic that came up at our meeting and that was our annual the support for Sidmouth as a Fair Trade Town. We have been a Fair Trade town since 2016 and the Fair Trade movement is an important way that we can support suppliers in some of the poorest parts of the world get a fair price for their goods.
The next Town Council meeting is our annual Assembly, and this takes place on Monday 7th April. We particularly welcome members of the public and we will be reviewing what has been achieved in the past year as well as hearing from the Folk Festival and Jazz and Blues Festival about how they have spent the grants the Town Council has provided. It will be held in the Guide Hut and I hope to see many of you there.