The first meeting of the newly-elected Durham County Council met this morning. It was a lively affair.

The first business was to elect a new Chairman and say farewll to Edna Hunter who was the previous Chair and who lost her seat on 1 May. While I have been celebrating the increase in Lib Dem representation at County Hall and the slashing of the Labour majority, I am personally sad for Edna who, with her husband Roland, has been excellent ambassadors for County Durham during her year in office. She has been the first female Chairman of the Council in over 100 years and broke the male glass ceiling at County Hall with great distinction.

But then it was on to the politics.

First the political ‘balance’. As things stood at the start of this week, Labour had 67 members, Lib Dems 27, Conservatives 10 and there were three independent groups, one with 15, one with 6 and one unaffiliated individual. By this morning the independent situation was unclear, one rumoour was that it had gone to two groups 19-3, although the seating in the chamber appeared much more like 16-6. We shall see.

The relevance of the independents is that, in relation to Overview and Scrutiny and after some strong lobbying from the minority parties, Labour said they would agree to minority parties having chairs/vice chairs of some scrutiny committees.

That was the good news, the bad news was that it was only two out of 12 possible such positions (i.e. two vice chairs) and, in a snub to the Lib Dems and the larger Independent group, they would be offered to the smaller Independent group.

Not surprisingly my members were not amused and in response we decided to put forward an alternative slate for the Leader and Cabinet of the Council.

In the end we were defeated by about 66-39 (there are so many councillors now that the clerks had difficulty getting an exact count and I suspect the pro-Labour vote was higher than this). Disappointingly the Conservatives voted against us and with Labour, so now we know where their sympathies lie!

Even so, once the smoke had cleared, both the new Labour Leader and I did agree publicly to work co-operatively to create an effective structure for the new unitary council that will be in place from April 2009.

It cannot be stressed too much how important it is to get effective arrangements in place to bridge the enormous potential gap between what goes on in County Hall in Durham City and the real day-to-day needs of local communities and neighbourhoods across this great county.

Around 70 parents attended a meeting late yesterday afternoon at St Margaret’s School to discuss the change in admissions criteria for Durham Johnston.

The meeting was called by two of its governors, Vanessa Kind and Sue Lyons and I attended to try to explain the situation and how it got to where it has. Grenville Holland, the other recently elected County Councillor was also there.

After a lively discussion, Vanessa Kind, one of the two governors gave a presentation on the working of the Office of the School Adjudicator.

The meeting then agreed to submit a group objection to the Adjudicator on the change of criteria.

Here are the documents from the meeting:

My briefing note for the meeting

Presentation on Schools Adjudicator

Letter detailing the outcome of the meeting

The City Council is holding one of its periodic Residents’ Forums on Wednesday 21 May at Durham Town Hall (6.30 for 7 pm start).

The Forum is on the topic of Premises Licences and is for residents of Crossgate and Framwelgate, Elvet, Neville’s Cross, Pelaw & Gilesgate and St Nicholas wards.

Representatives will be there from the City Council and Durham Constabulary as well as local councillors.

Please do attend and have your say.

I have been getting a lot of e-mails in the past few days over the changes that were made in April to the DJ admissions criteria (see earlier postings on the subject).

In particular, I was contacted by Vanessa Kind, a Governor of St Margaret’s Primary School, who has now arranged a meeting at St Margaret’s on Tuesday 20 May for local parents to discuss the issues.

Vanessa has allowed me to re produce the letter to parents for those who want to know about the meeting.

Over the weekend (in between marking examination papers) I hope to put together a side of A4 setting out the history of the situation and where things now stand and I will post it here.

I had thought that the recent elections might put and end to the bickering and in-fighting that has been going on in the Labour Group at County Hall for the past two years, but I was clearly wrong.

The news that five of the recently-elected councillors from the Easington district had been suspended by the Labour Party over the issue of women selections means that it is business as usual in this regard.

The five include Albert Nugent, former County Labour Leader, Alan Napier current Easington District Leader and three other newcomers to County Hall, including two women.

This is a really strange collection. After all there were 24 Labour candidates and 19 were elected. What did this famous five do to be picked out? Why not the rest?

Initially Albert and Alan were reported as showing interest in being Leader at County Hall although Alan dropped out of the race early.

The conspiracy theorists might say this was a ruse to prevent Albert being elected Leader (suspension means he and the other four would technically be barred from the Labour Group).

Taking the suspension argument one step further, if these five cannot be members of the Labour Group, then the Labour Group is reduced to 62 and is in a minority of the 126 councillors.

I am looking forward to speaking to the legal eagles at County Hall over this rather interesting state of affairs as it would affect the allocation of committee places in a significant way.

More importantly I shall be trying to get hold of Councillor Simon Henig who was elected Labour Group Leader yesterday to discuss the much more serious issues around moving to the new unitary authority.

County Durham Primary Care trust is holding a series of meetings across the county over the coming fortnight or so to discuss the development of plans for health and health care over the next five years.

The meeting for Durham City area takes place on Thursday 15 May at County Hall (Committee Room 2) between 6 pm and 8 pm.

All members of the public are welcome to attend.

More information is available at http://www.countydurhampct.nhs.uk/

My Colleague for the Neville’s Cross Division on the County Council and City Councillor for Crossgate and Framwelgate Councillor Grenville Holland, was yesterday elected Mayor of Durham. I wish him well for his year in office.

This morning the Northern Echo referred to Grenville as the last Mayor of Durham City. This is, of course, untrue as provision has been made by the Government for the mayoralty to continue under a Charter Trust arrangement from 1 April next year.

The Charter Trust will be controlled by the members elected to the County Council within the area of the current City Council (22 in total for the time being, 15 Lib Dem and 7 Labour) who will elect a mayor annually from among their number. All the civic dignities, such as the Mayor’s Bodyguard, the Mace Bearer and the Sword Bearer will continue along with the pomp and ceremony that goes with it.

Of course, it will cost to keep this going (I have heard the sum of £80K mentioned as the cost of ‘running’ the mayor) and a small supplementary amount will have to be added to the council tax in Durham City to cover it, but everyone I have spoken to is more than happy to pay a few pence per week to continue our centuries-old traditions.

The New 27 member Lib Dem Group met for the first time yesterday evening to have a preliminary discussion on the way forward to oppose Labour at County Hall.

I was delighted to be re-elected unanimously as the Group Leader. In accepting the position, I committed the Lib Dems to be a vigorous and constructive opposition and one which will challenge the ruling Labour Group at every turn.

The key issues in the coming year are around the transition to the new unitary which is due to start on 1 April 2009. The arrangements for working with town and parish councils and for the proposed Area Action Forums (or whatever they are to be called) will be key to making the council work effectively with local communities.

And of course, we in Durham City must get on with the process of creating a Town Council here.

Exciting times!

The count for the Neville’s Cross Division election was declared just after midnight this morning. The figures are:

Across County Durham it was a very bad night for Labour who lost the equivalent of 39 seats with the Lib Dems gaining 17, Independents gaining 16 and the Conservatives gaining 6.

The balance across the County is Labour 67, Lib Dems 27, Independents 22 and Conservatives 10. Labour now has an majority of only 8 over all other parties.

As I predicted we remain the second party and the main opposition to Labour.

The Lib Dem gains were 5 in Durham City, where we took both pairs seats in Framwellgate Moor and in Sherburn, and one of the two seats in Deerness Valley where our candidate, John Wilkinson topped the poll.

Elsewhere we gained one seat in Derwentside, two in Easington, three in Sedgefield and 6 in Wear Valley.

Some big Labour names lost their seats including a former Leader Ken Manton, a former Deputy Leader Brian Walker and the current Chairman of the Council, Edna Hunter, for whom I have particular sympathy as she was the first ever woman to be Chairman of the County Council and has been a particularly good ambassador for County Durham.

So whatever happens now, there will be a breath of fresh air running through County Hall in the coming years.

Exciting times!

I received an e-mail from Banks at 3.40 pm today informing me that they are withdrawing their current application and are not proceeding with the appeal.

This is not the end, however, as they will be putting in revised proposals ‘in due course’.

So we remain vigilant.

Here is the Banks Letter.

Well, polling day is here at last. If you are reading this before 10 pm and have not voted, please go out and vote. As the saying goes, if you don’t vote, you can’t complain.

This goes especially for the new voters who have reached 18 over the past year. Please go and make your cross. Get into the habit now and make it last a lifetime.

The Northern Echo is calling it a close election with a good chance that the County Council will end up in no overall control tomorrow.

On the ground, the Lib Dems are best placed to challenge, both in seats contested and seats currently held.

But now, dear voter, it is up to you!

I hope to get the Neville’s Cross result details posted here first thing tomorrow.