I will be chairing the District Council’s City Forum, the body which concentrates on issues affecting the ‘parish’ of St Albans ie the part of the district not covered by a parish council.

This is going to be an interesting challenge. There are some key issues coming through: the City Vision project, the Local Development Framework and the nature of the street scene. And we can’t get away from the fact that there is a crisis in some of the services provided by other institutions – not least the lack of primary school places in central St Albans and the effective failure of the secondary admissions system.