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Three Bridges is a special school at Blackwater, near Truro, which caters for autistic children aged 11-19. It has just been declared "outstanding" in all areas, following an Ofsted inspection. This is unusual for any school, never mind a special school. Three Bridges, run by the charity Spectrum, opened only five years ago. Well dones all round.

The thorny issue of Cornwall Council office accomodation will return to haunt us next month as officials struggle to reduce the floor-space per work-station and increase the number of staff per work-station.

At the moment there are 5,539 work-stations, with 0.9 staff per desk, occupying 12.6 sqare metres each.

The "vision" is to reduce this to 3,451 work-stations (I'm always amazed by the precision of these targets!) by 2015, with 1.4 staff per desk, occupying 10 square metres each.

Apparently central government's Department for Children, Schools & Families has already shown the way by squeezing its staff into just 7 square metres each.

Scrutiny next week, then Cabinet on 14th April. It won't be easy.

Tim Jones, former Liberal Democrat leader of Restormel Borough Council, has written to local newspapers urging voters to support Mebyon Kernow's Dick Cole in the St Austell & Newquay constituency at the forthcoming general election. There can be no escaping the fact that this is a blow to the Lib Dem candidate, Stephen Gilbert - and excellent news for the Conservatives' Caroline Righton.

Cornwall Council leader Alec Robertson surprised a few of his colleagues at the full council meeting today by not revealing the identity of the new Cabinet member, needed to replace Sally Bain. I can think of only one reason for this - that the new Cabinet member was not present. This narrows the field to just two: councillors Denise Mutton and Joan Symons. My money's on Joan.

The new Cabinet portfolio will be called "Customer First" and will embrace most of the services which went into Cultural Services, such as libraries, leisure centres and museums.

Alec promised an announcement in the next few days.

Tomorrow's full council meeting should learn who is being promoted to the Cabinet, to fill the vacancy caused by Sally Bain's resignation. Given that Neil Burden has already been reshuffled into her children's services portfolio, there is now much chatter about the need to maintain gender as well as political balance - which narrows the field to one of nine Conservative women councillors currently on the backbenches.

In 1964 the incoming Labour government set up a Select Committee to study the idea of allowing some broadcasting of Parliamentary proceedings. A three-day experiment followed in the House of Lords in 1968 but went no further.

The idea was raised again in 1972 but it was not until 1983 that the Lords finally agreed the cameras should be allowed in, with Lord Stockton (Harold MacMillan) stealing the show with the first broadcast in 1985. The House of Commons followed four years later.

So good luck to Cornwall councillor Andrew Wallis, who presents his first motion to a full council meeting tomorrow. Andrew is urging colleagues to trial the webcasting and broadcasting of council business.

At the moment, cameras and microphones are banned - Cornwall Council still lags well behind many other local authorities in the 21st century, despite last year's election of a younger, media-savvy cohort of councillors.

I hope it doesn't take 25 years for Andrew's proposals to become a reality.

Full marks to Cornwall councillor Chris Ridgers, who chairs the children's services scrutiny committee, and who shocked a few of his colleagues yesterday by daring to mention - in public - two Serious Case Reviews (SCRs) which have yet to be published formally.

The cases concern the deaths of two teenagers in Cornwall, in separate incidents, and the extent to which the various agencies involved might learn lessons for the future. One of the cases is already very well known, having made national newspaper headlines back in July.

Chris spoke about how he had been briefed on the SCRs without in any way breaching any confidentialities. Cornwall's children's services department is used to getting a bad press but actually has many more "good news" stories to boast, if only the culture of secrecy could be broken down.

It could be months, if not years, before these SCRs finally see the light of day. It's not unusual for them to stumble out more than a year after any public inquest. You might expect a journalist to call for openness and transparency - but I really do think a more pragmatic approach to scrutiny would not only help the troubled children's services department to improve, it would also go a very long way to restoring public confidence.

The Green Party's advice to voters in North Cornwall, and Newquay & St Austell, is a list of parties NOT to vote for. There seems to be one particular political party whose omission from this list is surprising. I suspect the Greens have simply made a mistake - one which illustrates the dangers associated with negative campaigning, and allowing your website to get out of date. Perhaps the Green Party would like to clarify.

I am grateful to my correspondents for contributing to the discussion about how many members Cornwall Council actually needs and how close this might be to the number it was born with (123.) I certainly accept that most councillors work very hard - but I'm not sure about the relationship between work-rate and the number of councillors.

There is no doubt that the job of the Welsh Assembly and that of the Scottish Parliament is somewhat different to that of Cornwall Council - but precisely how different? I can think of lots of similarities but only a handful of differences, of which Scotland's tax-raising powers and devolved responsibility for health and social policy are clearly the most important.

The really significant differences are at the bottom-end of the local government structure, where the Welsh and Scottish unitary councils carry far greater clout than the town and parish councils we have in Cornwall.

I wonder if Cornwall's town and parish councillors think that last year's re-organisation perhaps left Cornish local government rather lop-sided, with too many chiefs and not enough indians. If parish councils got more powers, would this attract a higher-calibre of candidate to seek election?

Am I being rude to even suggest that parish councils don't attract high-calibre candidates already?

It's now about half a day since this blog went public, so many thanks to those who have read a few entries and even more thanks to those who have commented and emailed.

Part of the inspiration for launching this blog was the "if you can't beat them, join them" response to those already using cyberspace to further discussion and debate about how we are governed in Cornwall. I know I am not the only journalist whose first duty of the day is to scan the blogosphere for stories which have yet to reach the mainstream media.

Particularly good in this regard is a group of Cornwall councillors whose blogs and "tweets" have greatly enriched our knowledge of what goes on at County Hall. In no particular order, but with due regard to political balance, I recommend councillors , , and .

Keep up the good work guys - but don't forget, if you have a really good exclusive, call me first!

Cornwall Council's education officials might be regretting their label of "second worst" in relation to St Tudy primary school, whose future comes up for

The description of course refers only to the fabric of the building, and not the performance of the school, which Ofsted prizes as "Good."

But it nevertheless begs the question which is the worst school in Cornwall, which is the best and so on - before you know it, you have a "league table" which some parents and governors might interpret as a hit-list. I suspect another application under the Freedom of Information Act might not be far away.

My thanks to Cornwall Council for supplying this information, in response to my question prompted by the recruitment freeze announced in October.

This is some way short of the "1,000 jobs per year" rate by which the council aims to shed workers as part of its target reduction of 500 - 600 posts. I don't read too much in to these figures. By June, though, we should see a clear trend.

I can reveal that ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Cornwall will soon be taking its "Any Questions" programme on tour to each of the six Parliamentary constituencies in Cornwall. Stay tuned for further details.

Forty years ago The Collected Essays & Journalism of George Orwell infected me with a disease for which there appears to be no cure. I'm sure that if he were around today, Orwell would be blogging furiously, 24/7, drawing attention to obscure but important facts and challenging his readers to think.

I cannot hope to match Orwell's talent - but maybe you can. It's taken a few weeks for the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to trust me sufficiently for this blog to see daylight, so there's an archive which might be worth looking at. Do please take a look.

And remember, although facts might be sacred, comment is free.

The sorry plight of Cornwall's children's services is well known: slammed by Ofsted in October, and without a director of that department ever since; under scrutiny from a government-appointed troubleshooter and with no effective long-term voice within the council's Cabinet since councillor Sally Bain resigned.

At the end of January, applications closed for anyone seeking to take on the job as the new director. Last week, in response to local newspaper inquries, the council issued a statement saying the search for a suitable candidate continues and that the application deadline is being extended.

Aha! we all thought - clearly it's a job that no-one would touch with a barge-pole. "The Crisis Gets Even Worse!" and similar headlines crossed my mind. But then (perhaps unusually) I thought: "hang on.....end of January.....still not out of March....is it really that unusual? Even the ´óÏó´«Ã½ takes at least several weeks to make relatively junior appointments...."

And so the story remains unwritten, at least by me. If there's no new director by May, then probably that is a story.

Of far greater significance right now is the impending departure of the popular and highly regarded deputy director of children's services, Sheila Smith, who is off to a new and better job in Somerset. Children's minister Dawn Primarolo is waiting to see her troubleshooter's first interim report. Let's hope she's a fast reader.

Not counting minor local authorities, Cornwall therefore has ten times as many councillors, per head of population, as Scotland and Wales have AMs and MSPs.

I hear word that David Owens, Cornwall Council's Head of Waste Management, is angry about the way he was forced to take the flak for the council's chaotic position at the St Dennis incinerator public inquiry, which opened last week.

The council's waste management department supports the proposed incinerator but the council's planners refused permission, hence the need for the inquiry. With his colours so firmly, and publicly, nailed to the pro-incinerator mast, David Owens is possibly not the most popular person in St Dennis.

But Mr Owens has good reason to feel hard done by. As a professional, he relies on the best available environmental, engineering and scientific advice in order to reach a judgement. It was the council which asked him to write to the planning inspector to articulate that judgement, while refusing to let him be called as a pro-incinerator witness at the inquiry and face cross-examination.

But environmental, engineering and scientific advice can take you only so far. Ultimately, waste disposal is a political issue - yet only a handful of (anti-incinerator) candidates campaigned on it during last year's elections. It is the long, sorry saga of political dithering, dating well back to the previous Cornwall County Council, which is responsible for the current council's schizophrenia - and the possibility of £200m additional costs if the private sector waste management contract has to be cancelled. It would be very funny if it wasn't so serious.

´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Cornwall tried repeatedly to get the council's political leaders before a microphone as the inquiry got underway. Instead, they ducked the invitations and ran for cover, leaving Mr Owens hanging in the breeze.

St Tudy is a lovely village with a charming primary school - but charm is a two-edged sword. Although Ofsted says the school is "Good" it was built in 1864 and fails to meet many of the standard requirements of the 21st century. It has no hall, library, room for Special Educational Needs or staff room; its three class rooms are all undersize and the only play area is across a road.

It is largely for these reasons that Cornwall Council's education officials have labelled it the "second worst" primary school in the county (out of 237.) It currently has 67 pupils - although 32 of them live outside the designated catchment area.

A plan to combine the school with neighbouring St Mabyn village, by building on a new site at Longstone, provoked a furious "hands off" local campaign which forced county hall to abandon the idea.

Next week councillors have to start dealing with the harsh realities of charming small schools. Officials have presented five options in respect of St Tudy, none of which please local villagers. Option Five is to do nothing and risk a poor Ofsted inspection at some point in the future. St Tudy's school governors are disputing the way officers have presented the case and believe a new school could be built, within the village, within the £1.3m budget.

One fact which tends to get overlooked is that Cornwall currently has 5,000 surplus primary school places. Hence the council's "Primary Strategy for Change" which encourages clustering, federating and sharing staff and resources between schools. The cost-per-child in a small rural school can be as much as £15,000 per year; compared with only £2,500 in a large urban school. So town taxes subsidise pretty villages. I forecast quite a rumpus in the weeks and months ahead.

(Declaration of interest: I live in a neighbouring village and my own children attended the local primary school.)

I'm about to go on the air with ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Cornwall's Martin Bailie to talk about a shocking case of child abuse. Five years ago, a little girl was the victim of a serious sex attack in Cornwall. She knew her attacker - it was her mum's boyfriend. The little girl was so badly injured she needed hospital treatment.

The Crown Prosecution Service decided there was little chance of a conviction and so this man was never charged and remains at large, in Cornwall, today. The Local Safeguarding Children Board has published a which makes clear there was no chance of earlier intervention which would have protected the girl, but criticises police and CPS.

This Review, which took more than four years to produce, is the only public acknowledgement of the child's ordeal. It runs to just five pages.

Advice from the Cornish Green Party on who to vote for in those constituencies, currently Newquay & St Austell and North Cornwall, where they do not have candidates:

"do not vote for either of the although they are pretty irrelevant in Cornwall) candidates as we regard them as indistinguishable and fatally weak on economic and environmental matters. We would also not vote UKIP as their little england attitude has no place in the modern world. If there is no one else you can vote for, we recommend you write in Green on the ballot paper."

Word reaches me that councillor Neil Burden is to be the new Cornwall Council cabinet member with responsibility for children, schools and families (CSF.) I'm not yet sure what this means for his current post as cabinet member responsible for culture... but it certainly shows that the leader of the Independent group is someone who Conservative council leader Alec Robertson feels he can rely on.

The CSF portfolio is arguably the most difficult job in the council - when something goes wrong in children's social services, it's usually pretty grim. And then there are all those small, horribly expensive rural primary schools...

The appointment is effective from 1st April.

Good luck, Neil - you're going to need it.

You have to feel sorry for councillor Julian German, the Cornwall Council cabinet member with responsibility for waste issues. He did not know about his department's letter, supporting the St Dennis incinerator planning application, until I told him.

Unusually for a politician, Julian declined the invitation to appear on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Cornwall tomorrow to explain Cornwall's waste strategy.

"But I'm not a politician, I'm a community representative," he tells me. As election slogans go, he could be on to something.

On the eve of the public inquiry:

I can reveal that after some dithering, it has been decided that the general election votes cast in Cornwall on 6th May will be counted overnight after all. Cornwall Council's chief executive Kevin Lavery, as the senior returning officer, had been keen to count "drekly" once staff had woken up the next day. Now the latest, and somewhat sterner advice from the Electoral Commission, has steered us towards the more traditional approach to democracy.

As local authorities are often among those who squeal loudest about the government's obsession with targets and statistics, I thought it would be instructive to look at Cornwall Council's own basket of performance indicators.

Introduced in May last year, the monthly monitoring tells us that some things are better than expected and some things not so good. Overall, though "65% of indicators are now achieving or exceeding target." Phew. But then 14% are worse than target and 21% are much worse. Doh!

As a hack journo, I was particularly amused to see how the council tries to steer its own public relations. Can you guess what percentage of council press releases are targeted to actually appear in the press? (Clue: it's not 100%) Or how about the target percentage of bad press articles? (Another clue: it's not zero.)

Here are the latest monthly stats:

As a self-confessed fan of the council's press office, which in my opinion is extremely professional and hard-working, I do wonder about the value attached to such targets. The report to next week's cabinet, which describes the percentage of good press articles as "much worse than targeted," seems unduly harsh - you can only spin a good yarn if there's a good yarn there to be spun.

Much more important, in my view, is the performance indicator which tells us that the number of social workers off sick is also "much worse than targeted."

Perhaps some of these statistics are related?

The Cornwall councillor to be elevated to cabinet rank will be named at the next full council meeting on 30th March. A new cabinet member is needed to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Sally Bain - but don't expect a straightforward like-for-like replacement. I understand a reshuffle is on the cards.

Cornwall's Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education might not have appreciated the potential for controversy when it agreed to convene a special conference to train teachers how to spot potential suicide bombers in the playground. Two obvious questions: if there is a serious terrorist threat to Cornwall, is the SACRE really the appropriate organisation to lead the counter-terrorism fight? And will having a demonstrably (overwhelmingly) white, Christian organisation in the driving seat really help reassure Cornwall's tiny Islamic community that this is not just a bit of Muslim-baiting? Methinks this story could run a while....

Cornwall Council

Ten General Principles of Public Life

Selflessness - members should serve only the public interest and should
never improperly confer an advantage or disadvantage on any person.

Honesty and integrity - members should not place themselves in
situations where their honesty and integrity may be questioned, should
not behave improperly, and should on all occasions avoid the appearance
of such behaviour.

Objectivity - members should make decisions on merit, including when
making appointments, awarding contracts, or recommending individuals
for rewards or benefits.

Accountability - members should be accountable to the public for their
actions and the manner in which they carry out their responsibilities, and
should co-operate fully and honestly with any scrutiny appropriate to their
particular office.

Openness - members should be as open as possible about their actions
and those of their authority, and should be prepared to give reasons for
those actions.

Personal judgement - members may take account of the views of
others, including their political groups, but should reach their own
conclusions on the issues before them and act in accordance with those
conclusions.

Respect for others - members should promote equality by not
discriminating unlawfully against any person, and by treating people with
respect, regardless of their race, age, religion, gender, sexual orientation
or disability. They should respect the impartiality and integrity of the
authority's statutory officers and its other employees.

Duty to uphold the law - members should uphold the law and, on all
occasions, act in accordance with the trust that the public is entitled to
place in them.

Stewardship - members should do whatever they are able to do to
ensure that their authorities use their resources prudently, and in
accordance with the law.

Leadership - members should promote and support these principles by
leadership, and by example, and should act in a way that secures or
preserves public confidence.

I hope to run a story on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Cornwall tomorrow morning about the local Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE) and its plan to train school teachers how to spot potential suicide bombers in the playground.

It's not every day that the SACRE sits through a presentation from police, complete with slides from MI5 and contact details for Special Branch. The official "threat level" from some unspecified violent religious extremist is currently assessed as "severe."

So the SACRE has agreed to sponsor a special summer conference for 31 schools. Teachers will be helped to identify those traits which might turn some children into terrorists. The £3,500 cost, of course, is peanuts and this is one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios - imagine the outcry if the SACRE failed to follow up on government advice and that some years down the road, a Cornish lad (or lass) eventually does something outrageous.

But am I alone in wondering if another civil liberty (that of school children not to be spied upon by the State) hasn't just been lost; or if the tiny handful of Muslim children in Cornish schools might not be just a little bit concerned about what all this might lead to?

Thanks to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ iPlayer I have found exactly what Falmouth & Camborne's Lib Dem MP Julia Goldsworthy told the audience on ´óÏó´«Ã½ 3's "First Time Voters' Question Time" last week. The question was about the future of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio's Asian Network and 6 Music channels. If Julia thinks she has been misquoted, she might like to look at what the record shows:

"I mean they're a public sector broadcaster, so they have to think of the public good, and there's a really fine line to be trod there, between going for the mainstream and making sure that you cater for niche interests. But I just think I would go to other areas where there's already, you know, competition in the market, like Radio One. Where, you know, there's a really vibrant commercial sector. (Question: Do you listen to Radio One?) Well I think those kind of big questions need to be looked at. Not, kind of picking off things around the edges. For example, the impact that a lot of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s websites have on local internet sites. So I think it's those kind of issues that need to be looked at. Where there are already markets there, where they're having a disproportionate influence. While not losing sight of the kind of niche areas that I think they need to represent. They need to be there. It's part of being a public sector broadcaster."

Cornwall Council announced a recruitment freeze in October 2009. Three months later, council leader Alec Robertson told us that natural wastage alone could save nearly 1,000 jobs a year - that's 83 posts per month, or nearly three jobs per day. So far the recruitment freeze should have saved 250 jobs. I have been asking for the council's quarterly headcount stats since February and will post them here as soon as they become available.

...and 93% say "let's not pay the money back." So it's back with the lawyers, until further notice.

Falmouth & Camborne's Lib Dem MP Julia Goldsworthy has some explaining to do. Speaking on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ 3 she appeared to suggest she thought it would be a good idea if the ´óÏó´«Ã½ was forced to sell Radio One, and to close some of its websites. This is contrary to national Liberal Democrat policy.

Her remarks have provoked some fury and indignation on the website - together with some comments suggesting that Ms Goldsworthy was mis-reported. I'm trying to get hold of a transcript of exactly what it is she did say and will post her exact words on this blog as soon as possible.

But whatever it was she was trying to say, she must now spend time on the back foot - time I'm sure she would rather spend campaigning in the new Camborne & Redruth constituency.

Cornwall Council has no formal policy on whether to privatise Newquay Airport, making it (as far as I can tell) the only local authority in England with 100% of the shares in its main regional air terminal. So this morning's comment by the cabinet member responsible, Carolyn Rule, was quite interesting:

Several Cornwall Councillors and prospective Parliamentary candidates have asked me how the ´óÏó´«Ã½ selected the audience for Radio Cornwall's "Any Questions"-style programme recorded at County Hall last night.

The answer is that the audience was supplied largely by the political parties - Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour, UK Independence Party, Green Party and Mebyn Kernow - in proportion to their demonstrable electoral support, as measured over the most recent council, European and general elections. This approach meant we were able to annoy just about all of the parties in equal measure, by pointing to an election in which they performed worse than their rivals.

My huge thanks to all who turned up and provided us with well-informed and entertaining questions - judging by the reaction on today's "Any Answers" the debate was very well received.

Iceland holds a referendum tomorrow on whether to repay savings lost when the Icelandic banks collapsed in 2008.

Cornwall Council tells me this vote is about "retail" investors and not the UK local authorities whose cash is also missing. But somewhere in Iceland is about £9m which properly belongs to Cornwall. It had been invested in the Landsbanki bank.

A highly critical Audit Commission report, published in March 2009, claimed some of the investments had been "negligently deposited" by the former Restormel borough council just 90 minutes before Landsbanki collapsed. Landsbanki's collapse took with it £5m from the former Cornwall county council and £4m from Restormel.

Lawyers for the new Cornwall Council are studying their options. But polls indicate that 74% of Icelanders plan to vote against repayment.

The Cornwall Council cabinet member responsible for children's services, Sally Bain, tells me she plans to stand down at the end of the month for personal reasons.

There is no doubt that being one of the 10 councillors who effectively run Cornwall Council is a very full-time job, demanding several hours a day. Sally plans to remain a "back-bench" member of the council. But her departure from the cabinet clearly poses some questions for the council's Conservative leadership - not least, who will replace her?

The government-appointed "trouble-shooter" sent in to sort out Cornwall's children's services, Lucy de Groot, is due to report to children's minister Dawn Primarolo within the next few weeks.