***ADA BELFIELD – BELPER INDEPENDENTS PLAN TO SAVE OUR CARE HOME ***

Belper Independents attended the rally and meeting about Ada Belfield at the weekend.

Whilst it was heartening to see such great support, it was extremely disappointing to see that the only plan our county councillor and our MP appeared to have consisted of getting angry and writing letters to councillors. This will not be enough.

TALK WON’T HELP – WE NEED ACTION,

Belper Independents are now taking that action.

Under standing order 6a We have today called for the chair of the council (The Mayor) to call an extraordinary meeting of Belper Town council with a single Agenda Item.

The purpose of the meeting shall be ‘To register Ada Belfield with Amber Valley Borough council as an ‘Asset of community Value’. ‘

Amber valley have a maximum of eight weeks to decide whether to admit the Ada Belfield to the register.

WHY?

Because once on the register, if it is put up for sale then it cannot be sold for a further six months until the community has had the opportunity to raise funds to buy it.

This means that it could not be sold, as proposed, in a short 8 week window before May’s scheduled elections, nor the end of this financial year. This means we would be buying time for either a judicial review of the decision making process, or hopefully a change of policy from Derbyshire county council (which would hopefully be then be under different control with a policy not to sell our care home). As a minimum it will buy the victims – the residents and their families – a little time to make new arrangements.

We hope that we will get support from the town councils Green Party and Labour Party councillors.

There is no cost and no downside to the Belper Independents’ plan – but it does offer perhaps the only option to stop – and currently it’s the only practical plan that there is.

Cllr Ben Bellamy

Belper Independents