West End Community Council

On Tuesday I attended the February meeting of the West End Community Council.  There was a wide range of topics discussed.  Firstly, there was a discussion about the City Council's debate about its policy towards dogs which was debated on Monday. There was clearly a great deal of interest in this policy among people in the West End and I took note of what local people were saying and I hope that their views will have be reflected in the final policy.

I was also able to report back on the progress that I had made on the issues around the width of the road outside Harris Academy.  The council has agreed to change the road markings on the stretch of road outside the Perth Road site.  There were a number of concerns raised about the construction phase of the Harris project and I will raise a number of them.

There was also a discussion about community policing in the West End.  Members of the Community Council commented on fact that since the change-over to Police Scotland Community Police officers have not been regularly attending meetings of the Community Council.  This is not a criticism of any of the local officers.  I think that there seems to have been a change of policy about attendance at community meetings by Community Police officers.  I understand that attending every meeting may not be the best use of police officers time but I do think that community officers should be attending Community Council meetings regularly.  This was clearly the unanimous view of the meeting.  After all, the Community Council is a statutory body and I think that my experience of Community Police officers attending meetings is that this is valuable both for the officers and the community groups.  I will be contacting Police Scotland and seeking an assurance that Community Police officers will attend the West End Community Council on a regular basis in the future.