The Chair, Councillor P Hayes, welcomed forum members and 15 members of the public to the area forum at Harrison Hall. He also welcomed Pat Glasman to the forum. Pat is the new Councillor for the New Brighton ward.

On behalf of the area forum the Chair thanked Bill Duffey for all the hard work and effort he gave as a Councillor for New Brighton.

Apologies were noted from Tony Pritchard, Sue Taylor and Acting Inspector Justin Diggns

The Area Co-ordinator, Andy Brannan, went through previous minutes pointing out the matters arising on page 9. There is a written update for all the issues raised at previous forum.

Dave Hanlon gave information was given on the changes to some of the bus services and asked if the forum would consider inviting a representative from Merseytravel to a future forum to answer any questions residents have.

Ø  Come along and choose how you would like to spend £20,000

in your area

The ‘You Decide’ Scheme gives local people the opportunity to make a difference in how council funding is spent in this area.  Each area forum has £20,000 to spend on additional council services.

David Green gave a presentation on the You Decide Scheme, and explained how the voting would take place.

The vote took place after the discussion using location cards and will be reported back at the next meeting.

The Chair thanked everyone for their patience and participation during the vote.

4.1) Inspector Kolokotroni: Merseyside Police

Newsletters are available on the top table for anyone to taken away. Crime figures have reduced from last year as a lot of positive work has been carried out in the forum area.

An operation was carried out on the 28^th May targeting local parks including Belvedere Playing Fields and Harrison Park. The late nights have seen more youths congregating in the areas. The operation was successful and saw the police working with partners to engage with all young people in the areas. 36 young people were stopped and alcohol and tobacco was seized.

40 young people have recently been taken on a sailing adventure around France and Britain. The young people were chosen because of their good behaviour.

The Police are introducing a new community engagement process. They will be holding open public meetings for residents to attend every month to raise any issues and concerns they have.

4.2) Srg Andy Bragg; Merseyside Police

Anti Social behaviour is an issue they are facing at the moment.

We have been spending time on the Tower Grounds giving warnings to people using vehicles. This has usually involved people using mini-motors and scooters on the grounds.

A member of the public has been given 180 community hours for growing cannabis in his property.

4.3) Tony Mooney: Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service

There is a comprehensive update from the fire service in the coordinators report.

A lot of work has been undertaken with the fire service and partners around reducing grass fires and accidental homes fires. There has been a positive reduction in accidental fires so hopefully the new project will exceed its targets.

The new Youth Hub has just opened in Wallasey Fire Station. So far the Hub has been successful and the young people helped with the design and activities that will be available there.

Q) Dave Hanlon: Are there any figures on how many young people had attended the Hub?

A) Attendance figures have not been realised yet as the Hub has only been open for a few weeks.

4.4 Dr Mukerjee: NHS Wirral

A full update has been provided in the coordinators report.

4.5) Older Peoples Parliament (OPP)

The OPP representative gave an update and informed the forum that members of Wirral’s OPP attended a conference on Personalisation and the different committees that the OPP has.

Q) Dave Hanlon: There is a lack of information being published by the OPP to attract new members.

A) The OPP has just distributed its half yearly report and information is in all the libraries and One Stop Shops promoting what it does.  Attracting new members is priority for the OPP.

No questions were raised other than the ones asked to the partners

The presentation was started with apologies from United Utilities for the recent disruption that has been caused by the repair work.

There were 3 separate incidents that led to the major disruption. When they realised the scale of the disruption, they made bottle water available. However they now realise that this wasn’t enough and that their communication should have been better.

United Utilities have learned from this experience and communicating with residents will be a priority for them in the future.

Those people affected by the disruption will receive compensation. This includes residents and local businesses.

Q) Cllr Leslie Rennie: I was critical when the disruption first happened but after meeting with representatives of United Utilities I can see the difficult position they were in. Better communication and coordinator between the council and United Utilities will happen from now on as too many vulnerable people were left without water and everyone needs to work closer in the future.

Q) Cllr Paul Hayes: How is the compensation worked out because some businesses only received £100 when some of them had to shut all day?

 A) Compensation is worked out using the national Guaranteed Standards Scheme. In most cases United Utilities paid out more than they had to.

Businesses can appeal the amount of their compensation. This information was not on the letters sent out to businesses and again it is something that will be taken away and improved in the future.

Q) Terry Sullivan: Will the compensation be paid from the profit the company makes, which is effectively comes customers money?

A) The compensation will be paid with stakeholders money and will not be coming from any profits that the company makes.

Q) Joe Fish: On Thursday 10^th June 2 people visited Arrowe Park. They were stuck in the large carpark for 25 minutes because the traffic was so bad. They also witnessed a nurse being verbally abused by someone as she had parked in a disabled parking space.

Q) Fred Evans: The bowling green in Harrison Park is not being maintained to a high standard, even though the club he belongs to pays fees towards it. The greens were meant to receive 3 tonnes of lawn seed. Unfortunately the lawn seed was thrown away because it was not put on the grass in time.

There was no other business to be declared and the Chair thanked everybody for their comments and attending.

Ø  Wednesday 20th October 2010 (Venue to be confirmed)

Agreed the next forum will be Wednesday 20^th October 2010

Venue to be agreed.