Monday, 12 January 2009

Today, before circulating anything more widely I sent off my two draft papers to key people at Watford Borough Council – it is important to make sure that the Council are broadly supportive!

I also met with people wanting to set up a new group to formalise work they are doing to support people in the Ratala district of Pakistan. It is sometimes easy to overlook the amount of voluntary effort that goes into supporting overseas communities– particularly the original communities of first-, second- and third- generation migrants to Britain.

Later in the afternoon I met with our Mayor Dorothy Thornhill and with Emma Gadsby who supports the work of the One Watford local strategic partnership. I was very disappointed to learn that Emma is leaving Watford to take up a post nearer her home in Northamptonshire: she has been a brilliant source of support and her knowledge and good humour will be sorely missed. Meanwhile, though, we had a very helpful discussion on implementation plans for the latest iteration of the Community Plan (I can barely bring myself to call it a Sustainable Community Strategy). We agreed that in the first period, we simply need to focus on getting in place a series of partnerships to oversee particular areas of work.