I WAS away visiting family last weekend so took the opportunity to reflect on the last two years since I was elected to Cornwall Council.

A lot has changed since I was on the council in 2017, before the COVID pandemic, when meetings were in person, and frequent trips to Truro were routine. Now Teams meetings have taken the place of in-person training and telephone calls for speaking to officers, especially useful when you need to get advice on a project from more than one officer.

There are lots of emails to deal with, so I check them frequently, unlike Facebook, which I don’t monitor all the time as it can be somewhat toxic. However, technology can save time and I always encourage residents to use the “Report It” system for all highway issues such as potholes.

The system will show you if the defect you are reporting has already been reported. We are gradually reducing the backlog of repairs caused by the wet weather and, hopefully, that will get better if we have more dry weather.

The main thing to change since last May’s election is that I am now part of the ruling coalition. This administration is committed to more transparency and openness, which was missing under the Tories over the previous four years.

Decisions like privatising car parks to allow automatic number plate recognition were done by the previous Tory administration without any consultation. We’ve held a consultation on car parks, which covered tariff increases, introducing charging over winter in some car parks, as well as charging for car parks which have been free.

After the responses were analysed, Cllr Dan Rogerson, portfolio holder for transport, attended the overview and scrutiny committee to listen to all councillors debate the revised list of affected car parks, which omitted several which had been on the original list, such as Kit Hill and those on the Camel Trail, due to comments from the public.

Dan will now listen to the debate at cabinet where the decision will be made, but he, and other cabinet members, have to make sure that the budget set for transport is sufficient to maintain our highways and car parks, as government funding has not increased in line with inflation, and car park income tops this budget up.

Currently there is a consultation on the proposal to increase the monthly fee, which covers the administration of the Tamar Bridge Tag accounts, that closes on April 6.

This meant that the debate at the Tamar Bridge and Ferry Joint Committee last Friday was fairly restricted, as we were unable to discuss the consultation, although I did take the opportunity to congratulate the Chief Officer and his team for over £700,000 of cost savings. The next meeting in June will see decisions made.

We are, however, still awaiting the meeting with MPs, officers and portfolio holders from both sides of the bridge, as it is vital that we all work together to abolish the tolls, for which there is a petition live on the Liberal Democrat website.