How much?!

The cost of putting Cheshire East stickers on our vehicles? £50,000.

An odd thing keeps happening to me - people keep attacking me on the issue of scrapping the two tier council system and expect me to defend the formation of Cheshire East.

In fact, I find it rather odd generally the amount of people who expect me to defend the council's actions in many areas. I'm a representative of the people who talks to the council, not a representative of the council who talks to the people. Therefore I don't expect to be able to explain to you why certain positions are taken.

The use of shopper parking in Macclesfield as a fundraising exercise is one good example. I didn't do it, I don't agree with it, don't expect me to defend it when you talk to me about it.

Anyway...back to the Cheshire East thing. Whilst undoubtedly we have been successful in many areas of the new council, essentially we could have done this by improving the system we already had. It's just that the formation of the new council gave us the impetus to carry out the work to reform services.

But not everything is hunky-dory. I had a meeting with some members of the voluntary sector this week and it seems that they're more in the dark than they've ever been about how they should interface with the council and what commissioning opportunities are available to them. 12 months ago I understood that we were taking steps to improve this, but from the feedback I received this week it seems that nothing has improved at all.

In fact, many of these organisations get less cash from the council than they used to as well. When you consider that we've spent £50,000 putting new stickers on cars and vans, you start to wonder how much better that cash could have been spent by some of these 3rd sector organisations.

If we would have kept the two tier system