Minutes:
The Mayor made the following announcement
I’ve just got two things I want to flag up, one concerns a proposal which I’m intending to take forward if I can and this is to stage in either March or April a Tamworth Festival of Youth, under the title ‘Young Tamworth’. This is a proposal to stage a celebration of youth and the aim is to provide Tamworth school and college students and youth groups with an outlet for artistic and sporting endeavours. A key objective would be to foster Civic Pride, something that I’m particularly, desperately, want to do in my term of office and make awareness of Tamworth’s history and culture and make all of these more accessible to young people. Tamworth Borough Council would be a key partner in organising the festival along with many voluntary organisations and groups which I’ll hopefully be able to put together, and with the aim of forging closer links between young people and the town in which they live. The initial idea is for a week-long series of events in March or April and various components would include an original writing competition all about Tamworth - all of these things would be about Tamworth - a photography competition: the good, the bad and the ugly, asking students to provide three pictures that they think aptly reflects the town in which they live, a painting competition, a film-making competition, a chess competition perhaps. A Young Tamworth quiz competition. If we can do it, a swimming competition, a 5-a-side football competition and athletics competition. These would all obviously require a lot of organisation if I can get it all together. A Youth Marathon perhaps we could include in it, along with a music competition and the other thing I’m looking at is to try to establish, is to put on a concert featuring our young people in whatever particular endeavour they’re going forward in so that we can stage and show the people of Tamworth the positive aspects of our brilliant, brilliant young people of which we have so many in this town. If I come across amongst you at some point asking for help, advice and anything else I can think of that will make this particular project come to fruition, I will be doing so, so I want to make you all aware of that’s what I’ll be doing in the next few months.
So thank you very much for that, the only other thing I want to tell you is I’m also looking to stage a Mayoral Concert and the initial date I’ve got is Saturday February 10th. This will be held at the Assembly Rooms with the sole proviso of raising funds for the Mayor’s Appeal, I hope to make it a really good show that will have wide appeal and hopefully will attract you all to come along to it, so that’s Saturday February 10th.
On behalf of Cabinet, Councillor S Smith, made the following announcement
Thank you, Mr Mayor. Right, I’d like to take a moment to provide a brief update regarding the Leaseholder matter discussed during Extraordinary Council on August 21st. Currently we’re in the process of initiating a tender for an external independent consultancy to assist us in conducting a comprehensive strategic review. We are finalising a scope of work which will be presented to the Cabinet Committee of all the pertinent details and I want to emphasise that I have requested that the scope of this independent consultancy remains flexible to accommodate any additional issues that may arise during the course of the strategic review and to allow for the input of stakeholders including elected Members. I understand that unforeseen matters may come up and we want to be prepared to address them. In the coming weeks I will reach out to the Chairs of Scrutiny Committees to invite Members to join a working group as previously outlined during the last Extraordinary Council meeting. My next update and report will be presented during the Cabinet Committee meeting scheduled for October 28th.