East Sussex Conservatives

East Sussex County Council has walked away with a top green award for its Compost Doctor service. The service scooped a Gold Green Apple at the 2009 Green Apple Awards for Environmental Best Practice. The award was presented at a special ceremony at the House of Commons on Tuesday 17 November.

The Compost Doctor service was launched in 2007 to help and encourage the county’s residents, schools and community groups to compost more of their kitchen and green garden waste. The Compost Doctors have attended more than 150 events across East Sussex and spoken to more than 6,000 people in the past year.

East Sussex County Council’s Lead Member for Transport and Environment, Councillor Matthew Lock, said: “I’m really pleased the Compost Doctor service has been recognised with this fantastic prestigious award. By offering this service, we’re showing how composting is something straightforward and practical we can all do to make a difference. It’s simple - for every item you compost, less is going to landfill; and you save money on buying compost too.”

East Sussex County Council has won a total of 13 Green Apple Awards in the past five years.

Let’s beat Brown’s Recession!

The UK is suffering from a worldwide recession made worse by Gordon Brown’s over-borrowing. Within its limited powers, the County Council is helping to ease the pressures on individuals and businesses by:

• Funding the Sussex Enterprise Business Link service to advise smaller businesses on how to manage their way through the recession and making it easier for them to bid for County contracts.
• Helping the East Sussex and Hastings Credit Unions raise more money and reach people in need of low cost loans - we must keep the loan sharks out of our communities.
• Providing resources (including use of County premises) to voluntary bodies advising and counselling people on how to cope with the credit crunch.

A Council Tax freeze/cuts

The election of a Conservative Government will be critical to what we can deliver on Council Tax. By combining back office functions with other councils and public services, such as police and health, we could reduce operating costs still further. Put that together with a Conservative Government which remove Labour’s discrimination against us, then we believe that we could first freeze the tax for two years and thereafter start to cut it.

Passenger Transport - a new Top Priority

Having sorted the mess in adult social care that we inherited in 2001, we have now identified passenger transport services as the public’s key priority for the next few years. Following consultation with our towns and villages, we hope to introduce the following:

• Customised services for groups of towns and surrounding villages using mini buses, taxis and, where appropriate, ordinary buses to meet identified local demands (including individual demands e.g. for hospital/youth club visits) rather than relying on traditional bus services.
• Links with surrounding Counties/Cities to develop long distance bus routes.
• Work with Network rail and others to develop Parkway Stations between Bexhill/Hastings and Polegate/Eastbourne to facilitate faster links to London.
• Better mobility will improve the daily lives of people and contribute to the economic regeneration of our County.

Personalised Care

We plan to put power back into the hands of individuals in our services for older people, by delegating funding to them to buy the care services that they need. We intend to extend support to carers, expand access to independent advisory services and create “not-for-profit” community businesses to provide real jobs for service users.

Let Young People design their Services

We have a successful Youth Parliament and Youth Cabinet in East Sussex and we want them to be our partners in the design and planning of services and activities for young people in their communities. We will underpin those services:

• Using all available sources of funding to build new schools or refurbish existing ones.
• Create Academies to provide further drive to raising standards, starting in Hastings and Eastbourne.
• Work with our partners through the Children’s Trust to safe guard young people, especially the most vulnerable.
• Further expand our network of Children’s Centres into our rural communities - in cooperation with local families.