Court security staff to strike

HE SAYS ‘COMPLAINTS’ COULD SKEW VOTING ON UNPOPULAR PLANNING SCHEMES

the Conservatives’ Clr Martyn Bolt (Con, Mirfield), who said committees and members “have to be accountable for our decisions and our comments”.

He said: “Members do need holding to account and if the avenue for that is through the press then when a member of a planning committee, about a controversial issue where an area is likely to flood, says that on balance ‘I think it’s worth taking a risk,’ that’s quite legitimate.

“The media would quote that and quote the person who said it.”

Clr Bolt was directly referencing comments made by senior Labour councillor Carole Pattison in relation to building houses on a notorious floodplain at Granny Lane in Mirfield.

Speaking in December 2019 she said: “We are strapped for housing. The houses are protected.

“I think it’s worth the risk and I think that’s what the developer has decided.”

The Strategic Planning Committee is made up of Labour councillors Steve Hall, Mohan Sokhal and Carole Pattison, Conservatives Donna Bellamy and Nigel Patrick, Liberal Democrat Andrew Pinnock and Clr Walker. In recent months it has approved a number of large housing schemes as well as the contentious plan to site a cafe and visitor centre on Castle Hill.

In January it green-lit 260 homes at Chidswell in Dewsbury.

In February it gave the go-ahead to a massive re-development of the derelict former Kirklees College site in Huddersfield.

Also in February following months of wrangling the Granny Lane plan was thrown out on a 5-2 vote.

Clr Walker was one of two members to oppose refusal, the other being Clr Pinnock.

HUNDREDS of court security staff are to stage strikes in a dispute over pay.

Members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) at courts in England and Wales, employed by contractors OCS, will take action from April 13-15 and April 20-22.

The union said the action, by almost 400 of its members, is expected to cause “significant disruption” to the running of courts.

Workers voted for action after years of “chronically low pay”, the PCS said.

General secretary Mark Serwotka said: “OCS staff have played an integral role in keeping the court system running during the pandemic and to offer them a pay rise equivalent to 13p per hour is beyond insulting.”