Doina Cornell, the leader of Stroud District Council, returns with her weekly diary.

This is my first diary after a long break, due to both the summer holiday and an injury to my leg (playing rounders in a SDC charity match)

I still have limited mobility, something that’s really made me appreciate the importance of good accessibility in public places.

I attended the opening of the Wool and Water festival at the Museum in the Park – it was easy to access and I could even enjoy the walled garden as it was designed with full wheelchair access.

The festival celebrates the wool and canal heritage at various locations around Stroud, see woolandwater.org

SDC’s work continues all year round but summer is always quieter for committee meetings, and these are now starting up again.

Last week the community services and licensing committee met and adopted SDC’s health & wellbeing plan which supports so many people and community projects in the district improving people’s mental and physical health.

One good piece of news is that work is about to start resurfacing the cycle path between Stroud and Nailsworth.

Once completed it will be a great place to train for the new parkrun that SDC has just introduced to Stratford Park.

If you’ve never heard of parkrun it’s a free, weekly, timed 5k run that’s open to everyone - not just the super fit, but slow runners and walkers too, and it complements the parkruns already established at Stonehouse and Wotton.

The government has announced the local government finance settlement for next year so planning can now begin for the budget and council plan for 2020-21 which will be adopted early in January. We plan to involve members, officers and residents in setting this plan, which will of course also be informed by local elections.

So if you want to have your say in who represents you locally, and nationally, do make sure your voter details are up to date by responding to the Household Election Forms that you received in the post in August.

You need to respond even if there are no changes to make.

And if someone in your household is about to go to university they can be registered at home or their term-time accommodation.

There’s lots of information on the SDC website, stroud.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/elections