Last night a cabinet meeting was held in Melton by East Suffolk Council where our petition was briefly discussed, it can be viewed on East Suffolks Youtube channel from minutes 6.27 to 11.20,  under May 6th Cabinet Meeting for those interested, where Councillor Beavan spoke on the subject and was NOT in favour of the ban being changed. His points were: 

Southwold is a Blue Flag Beach and they don't want to lose that status.

However, the only other Blue Flag Beach in the county is Felixstowe, who's dog ban dates are the same as all other bans in the county of May 1st to 30th September, which means Southwold is still being singled out by being banned from April 1st, which makes no sense at all to his reason of it being a Blue Flag Beach issue. 

Other points raised were that Southwold beach is a small beach with a high tide issue making it difficult to keep clean of dog mess. However, this part of the beach is walked daily by many people and as a dog walker I've never seen dog mess on this part of the beach. What might be of more concern is the amount of raw sewage that is being pumped into the sea, which was also a point  addressed in the meeting by Councillor Beaven with reports of Anglian Water dumping sewage when they said they hadn't!

Another point was that the beach is busy at Easter, but our point is that we have very little "decent weather" time that we are allowed on the beach with our dogs and we are just asking for Southwold to be the same as every other beach in Suffolk. Surely 30 more days a year is not too much to ask?!

Councillor Beaven did comment that most comments online are in favour of the ban being changed to May 1st, but he has also received some objections personally by people afraid to speak up publicly because of the antagonistic nature of commenting on the subject. I have to say that the most antagonistic comments i've seen have come from the anti-ban change commenters!

Aside from the meeting, I spoke yesterday with Councillor Sally Noble and had emails from Lorraine Fitch | Democratic Services Manager and Cllr Caroline Topping | Leader of the Council. Their advice was that no decision on the ban is to be made until their June meeting. If the petition was to reach 1200 signatures by June, then it would be considered and debated at a Full Council meeting. 

So the conclusion is that the petition continues until June, please keep sharing so that we can achieve the 1200+ signatures required to get this matter considered and debated at the Full Council Meeting. 

Many thanks for all your support,

Jenny Cook