Cllr Rory Love (pictured) was first elected in May 1987 for the Folkestone Harvey Ward. He was elected with 1001 votes, on a turnout of 41.5%. Cllr Love is currently Cllr for Sandgate & Folkestone West. He has been a sitting Cllr for 30 years.
There are those who say of Cllr Love that when he starts speaking one might as well get one’s pillow and duvet out. But yesterday – Thursday 14th Dec, Cllr Love surpassed himself.
He managed to raise very pertinent issues with regards to the latest car parking charges and has managed to have the issue deferred. The Parking charges were to be introduced in April 2018. Officers will now go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate the figures and bring it back to Cabinet in the new year..
Cllr Love mentioned that running costs would double from £30,000 – £60,000
That the parking charges affect his ward and this came so soon after a consultation on parking in Sandgate. He mentioned that perhaps the parking charges proposed for the district should go to consultation and residents parking permits charges be linked to inflation. There was also some discussion about off street car parking (car parks) subsidizing on street car parking.
Cllr Malcolm Dearden (pictured) Cabinet Member for Finance – Hythe Ward, believed the council were making “policy on the hoof” but this was rebutted vigorously by Cllr Monk and Love.
Meanwhile, once the whole report was deferred, this lead to Frederick Miller, SDC Transportation Manger, Andy Blaszkowicz, SDC Head of Commercial and Technical Services and Tim Madden, SDC’s s151 & Corporate Director for Organizational Change (all pictured below) scurrying away for a very hastily convened meeting. It lasted no longer than 5 minutes before both Tim and Andy rejoined the meeting. Fred returned some 15 minutes later.
So, Cllr Love has got the matter deferred, whether he will be able to bring the matter to a consultation where you the people can have your say is yet to be decided. It would be good if that were the case, but don’t hold your breath people.
Cllr Ann Berry Cabinet Member for Transport & Commercial agreed to the deferral
The new report will come before the Cabinet sometime in the new year. We’ll keep you posted.
