Firstly, football. Last Wednesday, one of the West End Community Council members and I had a really productive meeting with the University of Dundee's Institute of Sport and Exercise and the City Council Leisure & Communities Department to progress a proposal to establish an Under 11s junior football team for the West End.
The Community Council member has good experience of this prior to moving to the West End and we're confident of the support of others in the local community including local primary schools, but for this to succeed, access to facilities is vital and we were very pleased with the positive co-operation of the University and City Council. I am now on the trail on a local business to sponsor things like football strips, etc!
Although the Mitchell Street Centre and Blackness Library, for example, are excellent local facilities, it is important to build up the amount of organised popular activities for the area's young people and this proposal is an excellent one and, I'm pleased to say, one the West End Community Council has been keen to support us with.
Another West End activity I attended last week was the first get-together of the West End Local Community Planning Partnership on Thursday, which started with an initial induction session. Local Community Planning Partnerships are being set up across the eight wards in Dundee to support the development of the Local Community Plans, help address local problems, bring together representatives from local organisations and the City Council and hopefully improve community involvement.
Lastly, yesterday's Courier also featured an article about moving forward proposals for a Park and Ride facility on the south side of the Tay. You can read the full article by clicking on the headline above. JMP Consulting has been commissioned to do a cross-Tay study by SEStran, the statutory transport partnership of eight councils—Fife, Clackmannanshire, East Lothian, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Midlothian, Borders and West Lothian. As Chair of TACTRAN, the transport partnership for Tayside and Stirling, I was pleased that we have contributed to the project, as the proposal would not just assist communities in North East Fife but would also bring benefits to relieving traffic congestion in Dundee. As I said,
"I am well aware, as a ward councillor in the west end, of the significant problems caused by vehicles parking in residential areas and a number of local employers, particularly Ninewells Hospital and the University of Dundee, have a lot of staff coming over from Fife.
“Clearly, having a park-and-ride system is something we would greatly welcome."