I HOPE everyone is well as we go through September. As I write this, we have just had a meeting of Cornwall Council’s full council.

At the meeting, I was pleased to see my motion called ‘Keep Cornwall Clean!’ voted on and passed almost unanimously by my fellow councillors.

My plan is to work with the council and partners to better promote and highlight the resources available for community litter picking and beach cleaning, in order to establish a joined-up network of groups, such as the ones I already work with in my division, across Cornwall.

I see this as a process to look at simplifying and making less bureaucratic the really good bits that Cornwall Council and its partners already do but many people don’t know about, for example, provide insurance for litter picks/pick up/equipment lend for litter picks/advertising litter picks.

I want to feed into the relaunch of the council’s website and online resources on this and work with Clean Cornwall and some of the amazing people already doing good work in this area, to do videos on our social media platforms and with print and broadcast media to spread the word and push on the environmental, social and health positives of community litter picks.

Recently, it was great to visit the new Cornwall Council offices at Chi Austel in St Austell town centre.

In particular, it was good to see the space for the Together for Families team, which I know from my previous role is a big improvement on the previous building in Woodland Road, as well as a new register office.

I wish the people working there all the best and, hopefully, this is a good new central location for people from St Austell and the surrounding communities to access support.

And it means a big boost to hospitality in town from all the office staff getting their lunch, which has already been welcomed by nearby businesses!