Leader's blog - Wednesday 18 September

Highlights

• The first Pride in Gateshead festival took place in August and was an opportunity to celebrate our local communities. We want everyone to feel safe in Gateshead so find out more about support available and listen to our Pride in Gateshead podcast.
• The North East Combined Authority is committed to improving bus services across the region. Find out more about plans for the future on the NECA website (opens new window).
• Capital & Centric are working on plans to refurbish Gateshead Old Town Hall.
• We want to hear your views, so please join any of our engagement events to find out more about the work we are doing and give us feedback on how we can improve.

Transcript

Hello and thank you for taking the time to listen to this. There's a number of points which I want to bring people in Gateshead up to date with.

First of all, slightly looking back, last month, August, we had our very first Pride celebration. That was throughout the whole of the month, it was all the month of August. I think it was 25 events in total took place, there was events took place in the Metrocentre, there was a family picnic day in Saltwell Park, there was a bowling contest held at Pelaw Bowling Club. So there was a whole range of events, really important and we worked in partnership with Out North East, a local charity in Gateshead and it was enormously successful. That's something which we're going to do next August and hopefully become a regular annual event. The importance is that it's about celebrating really strong communities, about community cohesion, about pride in Gateshead and pride in who we are, whatever our backgrounds, race, sexuality or anything. This is an event for everybody and that was really successful.

Second point I want to raise is that people will be aware that we have established a new combined authority. That's all of the seven local authorities in the North East of England working together and in May just gone this year there was a new Mayor elected for the North East, Kim McGuinness and that body is now up and running and is working incredibly hard. First and foremost one of the issues which was highlighted during the election campaign and people have identified as a priority, and the Mayor was elected on, was about reforming our bus services. There has been a decline in bus usage for 40 years and that's been significant over the last few years and the intention is to reverse that and as part of that the intention is to regulate bus services. It will be very similar to the scheme that operates in London where fares are regulated, where the frequency of service is regulated and the quality of service is regulated. This is new legislation and new powers that give us as local authorities powers to introduce stronger regulation and standards of bus services. That will take some time to introduce because it will take probably a couple of years but that work has started and we're looking forward to improving bus services in Gateshead and across the whole of the North East.

Another point I'd like to raise and highlight is you may be aware that there has been some change in the position with Gateshead Old Town Hall. Significant building in Gateshead opened in 1868, it was the headquarters of the old Gateshead County Borough. Once Gateshead Civic Centre was built in the late 1980s of course the Town Hall lost its purpose and over the years has declined. So we did engage with a partner a few years ago. There was a proposal to have a museum of the supernatural and dinosaurama. It was a sort of gothic concept so the building would come back into use. Unfortunately that didn't prove to be successful so we've now engaged with a new partner and the intention is that that area, not just the Old Town Hall, the Old Town Hall will become a sort of community hub and partly refurbished for housing but all of the land around there is also going to be developed for housing. So that's something where the plans will be drawn up in the very near future and we're hoping to see that area of Gateshead regenerated as a consequence of that.

Final point I'd want to make is about this blog - thanks for taking the time to listen to this broadcast but also as a council we are arranging a series of what we're calling engagement events. That's reaching out to residents, to people who work for the council, for other public sector organisations, for young people. So there's a whole range of events being organised physically, so we'll hold a presentation, or we do some of these things online. They will be broadcast through the council's Facebook page and through other communication systems. Look out for them and please get involved.

The object of the exercise at the end of the day is that Gateshead Council is a public organisation- we belong to the people of Gateshead, we serve the people of Gateshead and we want to hear people's views, warts and all. We're not perfect by any stretch of the imagination and there's always room for improvement and we are looking to improve all the time. The best way of doing that is to listen to our workforce, to listen to young people, to listen to the residents of Gateshead and for them to tell us what they want us to do and how they want to see us improve.

Thank you very much.