Richard Baum

This morning your three St Mary’s Councillors (Donal O’Hanlon and me from the Lib Dems, and Cllr Gibb from Labour) met with officers of the Council to discuss the Butterstile Children’s Centre.

A site visit from the Planning Committee is to be made in mid-December so that they can exercise their legitimate right to make a decision on the merits of the planning application. I have presented the views of concerned residents to the Committee, as is my job as their Councillor. I am glad that the Committee are taking the concerns seriously. Obviously though they need to weigh these against the fact that now, because of government deadlines and the mistakes of Bury Council in the formative stages of this project, failure to grant planning permission soon will mean that the ward loses out on a Children’s Centre. This is something I absolutely do not want. Families in this ward deserve a Children’s Centre, and if they don’t get one because mistakes have been made by Children’s Services and Planning at the Council which meant that proper consultation has led to fatal delays, this is a disgrace.

We also discussed the proposed outreach centre in Rainsough. After a decade and more of inaction over the neglected shops on Chapel Road, I am glad that my intervention with Cllr Connor of Salford may now lead to movement on this issue. It’s far from certain yet, but the ball is rolling after I met him, and it’s up to Labour-run Salford to keep it rolling now and come up with some money as well.

Politicians on all sides are united, I’m sure, in the desire to see a Children’s Centre in the ward. But sometimes I feel that politics is put before people by some, and that decisions are made without proper consultation simply with newspaper headlines in mind. We can’t go on acting like this or else local people will get even more sick of local politicians than they are now. Nobody votes, and the types of crazy headline-grabbing rubbish in the press recently is why. It’s easy to get in the papers with a big news story of your own concoction, but it’s a lot harder to serve every interest group in your ward fairly and try to get a positive outcome.

That’s what we’re trying to do, and I hope that this time next year the Children’s Centre and outreach facilities in St Mary’s will be about to celebrate their first successful Christmas. Our local people deserve nothing less.

Rick