To consider any announcements by the Mayor in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 3(2)(ii).
Minutes:
The Mayor asked members to join him in welcoming Councillor Hall to the Chamber and her first Council meeting as the newly elected Member for Dinnington following last week’s By Election.
He was pleased to be able to welcome to the meeting, officers representing the winners of the LGC Public-Public Partnership Award for ‘'Walk with Us'’ – A Toolkit for Supporting Children, Young People and Families affected or bereaved by Suicide to accept the award.
He was also pleased to invite officers to the meeting as winners of the Social Value: Public Sector Leadership Award. The award demonstrated the Council are leading the way in embedding social value into its business culture, processes and systems to ensure the needs of our communities are being met.
The Mayor was also delighted to hear that Rotherham MCVC had been awarded the prestigious ‘Silver’ status as part of the Ministry of Defence’s Employer Recognition Scheme. The Rotherham MCVC volunteers should be rightly proud of this fantastic news, it was a very well deserved and suitable recognition for the significant difference their hard work has made to the military community.
The Mayor held a round of applause to congratulate all the award winners.
The Mayor expressed his sadness to be informed of the passing of Mr Frank Wells, former President of the Rotherham Branch of the Royal British Legion.
Frank who served as a Royal Air Force Policeman and was Chair of the Royal Air Forces Association, originally moved to Rotherham from Wales to work for a local business and was also a Church Warden but he would always be remembered as a very active and long-standing figure in our Armed Forces Community and he had been a pivotal part of armed forces civic events – ever present at our town’s Remembrance Sunday Parades and Services and Armed Forces Day. Only last year after proudly performing the raising and lowering Mr Wells was presented with the Armed Forces Day flag by the former Mayor. To Frank’s son Russell and his Family, our thoughts were with you during that difficult time.
He was also very saddened to be informed of the untimely death of the former Vice Lord-Lieutenant of South Yorkshire, John Raymond Holt on Tuesday 30 May. He attended the service held for John at Doncaster Minster, the numbers in attendance, the heartfelt eulogies, and the sheer emotion evident were indicators of the regard in which he was held and how much he would be missed. The Council’s sincerest condolences went to John’s wife Lynn and his family.
The Mayor noted that since our last meeting in May his Mayoral diary has been extremely busy. Notably, he was honoured to lead Rotherham’s Armed Forces Day celebrations. The sheer number and variety of invitations was incredible, as were the universal warm welcomes he had received from organisations and groups, large and small, including from members across this chamber, he thanked them all.
His diary was filling up nicely and he looked forward to providing a further update on his activities at the next Council Meeting in October.