Richard Baum

Last night was another meeting of the Resource and Performance Overview and Scrutiny Commission. The agenda was fairly short last night, and made even shorter when the main item was postponed.

It was supposed to be a report on a strategy for the Borough’s Civic Halls (including the Longfield Suite in St Mary’s). Instead of a paper outlining where the Council wants to go in the future, it was simply a statement of where we are now, lacking in foresight and vision, and really a very disappointing piece of work, not least for the members of the public there to hear it.

The role of scrutiny is to discuss Council policy is detail. Civic Halls are important to people, as community facilities, and much loved buildings (in some cases, not necessarily Prestwich!). But they are also expensive, so we need to know what the Council wants to do - do we want community facilities that might lose money, and if so, how will we fund them? Or do we want commercially run venues, and if so, what will that mean for the community?

I don’t know the answer, but we need to have the debate. We need the Executive of the Council to come up with a strategy for Halls that we can debate and discuss with local people. At the moment they are content to muddle along in a halfway house scenario where the halls are attempting to do both things but are doing neither of the two options well.

So we sent the report back, and will hopefully have our strategy at a future meeting.

Also on the agenda last night was a report on Housing management costs. Six Town Housing, who manage the Council’s housing stock, are still expensive, and still costing more than before. This is worrying because their service isn’t very good either in a lot of areas. However, the report painted some positive pictures, including rent arrears falling. The Six Town picture may be getting slightly rosier, which is good news.

Rick