STROUD District Council leader Geoff Wheeler keeps you up to date with what is happening at the council

Monday, November 17 – GFirst LEP, Gloucester THE council’s chief executive and I met up with Diane Savory OBE and David Owen — the chairman and chief executive of Gloucestershire’s local enterprise partnership, GFirst LEP. We covered the local growth deal, local plan, future development in the Stroud valleys and Sharpness and the GREEN Academy in Berkeley.

December meetings An interesting few weeks ahead before the council offices close for the Christmas break. As part of the budget setting process for the next financial year the council’s committees will be looking at budgets and plans for 2015/16. The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s autumn statement will take place the day before the first of these meetings, so it will be interesting to see its impact. Additionally, December will also see a full meeting of the council as we decide on the revisions required for the draft Stroud district local plan. You may remember that a government planning inspector fed back to us in the summer and advised us to revisit our calculations on housing numbers. Our planners have been working hard on this since then and will be presenting the information to councillors to decide upon.

December Initiatives As part of our health and wellbeing work, we will be launching a new sports initiative to encourage people to take up or improve their badminton. There will be a range of activities to encourage people of different ages and abilities. We will be promoting this at the start of the month but if you want to find out more now you can call 01453 754508 or visit stroud.gov.uk/badminton December will also see the introduction of a new national system for food allergy labelling.

From December 13, restaurants, takeaways and other caterers will have to comply with new rules by providing information about the ingredients in their food. The changes mean that information will need to be provided for food sold without packaging or wrapped on site. Rules on labelling ingredients in pre-packed foods will also change to make it easier for people to identify and avoid the 14 main allergens. If you want to find out more, visit food.gov.uk/allergy or call us on 01453 754478.