Leader's blog - 14 October 2024

"It's Stroud District Council's Full Council meeting on October 24. The agenda and reports will be published on the council website this Thursday. As always, members of the public are welcome to attend and watch in person - do come along and say hello! All public meetings are also broadcast live on the SDC YouTube channel. Full Council is the main opportunity for all elected councillors of all parties to debate and decide important issues facing our communities.

Did you hear our Litter and Clean Environment Champion, Councillor Gill Thomas on BBC Radio Gloucestershire last week? Gill will not only be running the Stroud Half Marathon on Sunday, October 27 but she will be collecting litter on the way. Every year Stroud District Council spends £770,000 on litter picking, clearing fly tipping, street sweeping, and emptying more than 1,400 bins across the district. We do our best to keep the district clean, but groups can borrow litter picking equipment from the council to target specific areas if they wish. Please email recycling@stroud.gov.uk or phone 01453 766321.

Good news for local community initiatives! The council has had a really encouraging amount of interest in the first phase of "Stroud Funding", our new crowdfunding campaign with an extra £100,000 available to improve local areas. The scheme is open to schools, sports clubs, community organisations and individuals, and projects could receive up to £10,000 of SDC’s £100,000 fund. More information is available at www.spacehive.com/movement/stroudand the deadline for applications to phase one is October 31.

Finally, I'm excited for the future of the leisure centre at Stratford Park, which is being returned to a publicly owned and managed service. From 1st November, SDC will run it directly, just as we do with The Pulse in Dursley. As a council service, we will have much more control over things, and I'm looking forward to seeing lots of improvements over the coming months and years. The leisure centre in Stratford Park will be closed November 1-8 inclusive – to find out more please visit www.stroud.gov.uk/active "

This week's blog was written by Cllr Pete Kennedy, Deputy Leader of Stroud District Council.