Local
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Candidates Announced!!
The Scottish Greens are proud to confirm its South Lanarkshire candidates for the upcoming council elections on May 5. The party will be standing in 14 of South Lanarkshire’s wards. The selected candidates are as follows: Clydesdale West – Neil Barton Clydesdale East – Claire Watson Clydesdale South – Ann McGuinness Avondale and Stonehouse – Erica Bradley-Young EK South – John McKechnie EK Central South – Alan Cresswell EK East – Kirsten Robb Rutherglen South – Emma Smith Rutherglen Central and North – Alex McRae Cambuslang West – Tom Lauckner Cambuslang East – Marie Gallagher Blantyre – David McClemont Bothwell and Uddingston – John Stubbs Hamilton West and Earnock –…
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What will your councillors do on play? Space to Play is asking you to write to them.
The Space to Play campaign wants South Lanarkshire to be the best place to bring up children. So we want to know what our elected members will do to act on play. To do this we need your help. Please use this letter as a guide to contact your councillors where ever you are in South Lanarkshire. Change it to mention any particular issues around play in your community. And please send this Space to Play a copy of the reply on spacetoplaysl@gmail.com. The letter is also available as plain text if your device cannot read .odt files You can find contact details for your South Lanarkshire councillor here.
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South Lanarkshire Council removal of play park ‘unlawful’
South Lanarkshire Council acted unlawfully when it removed Hazelhead Play Park. They should have applied for planning permission to make this material change to land. When they acted without consultation, they also ignored their own planning guidance which states that communities should be involved in the management of their open spaces. These are the conclusions of the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland (https://www.ercs.scot) who have looked into the Hazelhead Park case. We have now submitted a formal complaint to SLC raising these points, as follows: Stage one complaint Removal of Hazelhead play park equipment I wish to make a stage one complaint as per the Council’s complaints procedure regarding the…
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Green MSP Gillian Mackay takes Space to Play Campaign to Parliament
A South Lanarkshire campaign group is calling on the Council to recognise the importance of play for children’s’ wellbeing and to take action to improve play opportunities in local communities. The Space to Play campaign is asking South Lanarkshire Council to prepare a play strategy, to open up Multi Use Games Areas (MUGA) out-with school hours and to renew all local play parks. The group has been backed by Scottish Greens MSP Gillian Mackay who recently raised a motion in parliament. The Central Scotland MSP believes that implementing these actions will help ensure that South Lanarkshire upholds the rights of children to play and be heard, as enshrined in the United…
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Greens secure reopening of multi-use games areas after ‘Space to Play’ campaign
Campaigners are celebrating the re-opening of community facilities, some of which have been closed to the public for many years. In January, Kirsten Robb from the Scottish Greens and The Space to Play campaign wrote to South Lanarkshire Council (SLC) to highlight that in and around one council ward, 4 of the 7 multi-use games areas (MUGAs) attached to new primary schools were closed. This is despite the intention for these MUGAs to be open out of school hours for community use and only to be closed for a short period if there were vandalism issues. After several emails and meetings between SLC and the campaign, another 3 MUGA’s were…
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Space to Play
Many local people told Green activists that one of their top concerns is a lack of things for young people to do. Since then, local resident and Green campaigner, Kirsten Robb, has been investigating local play spaces and working with the community to get improvements.
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EK Litter Pickers
The EK Community Litter Pickers movement started in March 2021 with a few events and an online group (now at 1600 members).The group has collected up 2316 bags of rubbish to date.
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Greens help tackle housing emergency
Local Green activist, Kirsten Robb, who was contacted by a desperate resident, has highlighted the poor state of some council flats and now the council is now taking action.Kirsten was sent a video by a resident of a block of flats in Westwood. These image above shows the extent of the disrepair in their communal hallway. Kirsten passed the videos and photos on to council, emphasising how unsafe this was for residents and visitors to the flat. She followed this up with phone calls to the Housing Department and to a local newspaper to highlight the issue. The council acknowledged that this is an emergency, apologised and then fixed it within…
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Take action on common complaints
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Can South Lanarkshire Council use resources better?
We sent a letter to the Chief Executive with our thoughts on how the council can improve. Earlier in the year, South Lanarkshire Council put forward a series of potential cuts to services and asked for comment. At the time the South Lanarkshire Greens wrote a letter to the council making a number of points. Part of the letter is reproduced below, let’s see if any of the points are addressed over the next year… N.B. The consultation is now closed, though you too can still make suggestions on how the council can save money and do more with their resources if you’ve got any thoughts on the matter. Excerpt…
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Stewartfield Way dualling- will never be Green
Central Scotland Lead candidate for the Scottish Greens, Gillian McKay commented on the SLC decision last week to approve the revised business “The latest version of the Stewartfield Way dualling project tries to dress up the project in green clothes but the Greens are not fooled. The project’s aim is to provide more space for road traffic and so open up more greenfield sites for private development, which may not even happen. It will destroy more greenbelt and create more climate busting emissions. I am urging Holyrood, South Lanarkshire Council and the City Deal to scrap this project and commit to a truly green recovery from covid instead.” Local Green…
