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The Bradworthy Wind Turbines
Councillor
Christie's Weblog
From your Torridge District Councillor Peter Christie
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12th Oct '08
At a recent council meeting councillors were presented with Torridge’s ‘Budget Monitoring Report’ which gives us a snapshot of the current financial situation. This reported that at the end of July there was a forecast overspend of £23,000 mainly because budgeted car park income was down 32% or £50,000 lower than expected. This was blamed on ‘poor weather conditions’ but I had to point out that as a Bideford councillor I am still getting complaints about the prices charged in our car parks. One other figure caught my attention – we have budgeted £736,000 to cover the costs of ‘Concessionary Fares’ for pensioners – an outlay artificially increased by people coming here on holiday and making use of local buses which Torridge council tax payers then have to pay for. We were told that the government has given us another £246,000 to help cover these costs but whether they will be covered or not will be an unknown until the end of the financial year. If they are higher than we have allowed for then other budgets will have to be raided with consequent downgrading of services/facilities – so being entirely cynical I suppose the bad Summer weather might still have a silver lining after all if it affected tourist numbers!
Mentioning tourist numbers reminds me that the town council played host to David Howell, who is chair of Bideford’s Chamber of Commerce, a few weeks ago. He admitted that the current state of the economy had ‘made life pretty difficult’ for the town’s traders – and even the opening of Asda, for example, hadn’t ‘lifted’ business at Atlantic Village. On a more cheerful note he reported that undercover tourist attractions had actually been reporting a good Summer as rain-lashed holidaymakers crowded in to enjoy themselves. Inviting questions he was asked by councillor David Fulford about ‘the complete degeneration of facilities to house tourists’ in the area. Visitors often asked him where they could find accommodation and he wondered whether the Chamber had addressed this need? Mr Howell replied that this was very much a ‘chicken-and-egg’ situation in that the more tourists that came to the area the more people would be willing to open facilities such as bed and breakfasts etc. The problem here, as always, is the weather but given the parlous state of the economy possibly there will be many more people taking holidays in Britain next year – so perhaps now is the time to start thinking about a holiday letting business? Clearly there are openings here but how many would be willing to explore the possibilities?
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