Welcome to the second edition of my regular monthly column for the Erewash Conservatives Website. The last report was certainly well received and I am grateful to those who commented favourably.

Last month I closed with the Erewash Triathlon and I should like to congratulate all those who took part. I am sure the first man and woman home will be looking forward to taking part in the Frankfurt Triathlon as part of the team from our twin town of Langen. We are lucky in Erewash to have active Twinning Associations in both Long Eaton and Ilkeston and we are looking forward to our friends from Romorantin Lathanay, Chalons-en-Champagne and Langen coming to Erewash in their turn.

Many residents have been away over the last few months, as have I, so it should have been a quieter month, but the Boundaries Commission announced their decision on the size of the Borough Council whilst I was away. After considering the results of their consultation they have decided that Erewash will have 47 Councillors, a reduction of 4, with effect from the next elections in May 2015. This will have a major impact on the number of Councillors representing each ward and indeed the boundaries of those wards. It was most surprising that only two Labour Councillors supported their own Party’s submission, which perhaps demonstrates some dissension in their ranks. Personally I am very pleased the Commission went along with our Conservative view as this should mean that many wards will be largely unchanged. There was a real risk that our villages would lose their current representation and end up having to share a Councillor with another Parish. There is still work to be done however, as the Boundaries Commission are now looking for people’s views on arrangements for new wards, with their consultation finishing in November.  A lot of hard work is being done using large scale maps and calculators to produce wards which will give each Councillor 1,893 electors each, plus or minus 10%. This means 1 member wards will have between 1,703 and 2,082 electors, 2 member wards will have between 3,406 and 4,164 with 3 member wards having between 5,109 and 6,246. Hopefully this exercise will be completed soon, so that we can start consulting on our ideas.

September 10th saw the Breaston Parish Council by-election following the sad loss of Councillor Alan Beadling.  He was an enthusiastic and effective Parish Councillor who is sadly missed. Alan would have been pleased with the result with the Conservatives trouncing UKIP by 618 votes to 372. The other significance of the by-election was the absence of a Labour or LibDem candidate. The LibDems have now largely disappeared from Erewash, but it was surprising that the Labour Party did not give their supporters the opportunity to vote for a Labour candidate. Perhaps they just could not find anyone in Breaston willing to stand for Labour or perhaps they were hoping that all the anti-Conservative votes would go to UKIP and so defeat the Conservative candidate. Either way it did not work.

I spent a useful few hours at the Jobs Fair organised by our excellent and hard-working Member of Parliament Jessica Lee. We had a busy time at West Park Leisure Centre with over 1,300 residents coming along to talk to some 60 employers.  There were many really good quality job seekers there and I am sure that lots of them found work or made useful contacts to help them in their search for a job.

As I write this, I have just returned from Ilkeston Market Place where Erewash Partnership had organised a large gathering of vintage cars and motor cycles and also other historic vehicles.  It was a pleasure to see the old double-decker Barton bus which I used to catch to and from Ilkeston Grammar School.  There was a large number of people there taking photographs and looking around and I hope that our coffee shop owners took advantage of this opportunity.  It was one of a number of special events which the Council and others are organising to increase footfall in our market towns.

There is no doubt that the economy is getting better but we cannot cease in our efforts to keep and attract businesses into Erewash.  It is good to read that the vacancy rates in our High Streets are now much lower than the national average of 14.1%, with Long Eaton at 9.62% and Ilkeston at 10.15%.  We would of course like to see our figures fall even lower but it is certainly a good sign of the progress we are making using the Council’s £250,000 regeneration fund.