It was with sadness that I learned of the death of the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, Michael Todd, yesterday.

Michael Todd was a distinguished Chief Constable with a lifetime of achievement in British policing behind him, who would have continued to make a great contribution to the fight against crime.

Although I never met Chief Constable Todd, I do have regular contact with local Police officers who I know admired him greatly, and will be very saddened by this tragic news.

My thoughts and sympathies go out to our hard working local police officers here in Prestwich today, as well as to the entire Greater Manchester Police service, and all of Chief Constable Todd’s colleagues, family and friends.

Rick

I often write on here about how the government is changing this country for the worse - ID cards, mass surveillance and an over-reliance on computer databases to access all types of services. It’s done in the name of security, or data-protection, or ID-fraud prevention, or whatever excuse the government thinks of at the time, but it is depressing that I can’t do anything these days without jumping through hoops to prove who I am.

And last night it came back to bite me.

I changed my car in November, after the old one threw a strop in the middle of the M1 and refused to ever work again. That’s the last time I buy French…

So I did everything I was supposed to do, including filling out the form to let the DVLA know that I wasn’t the owner, and that the garage I’d bought my new car from was instead. I heard nothing. Not the promised acknowledgement letter or anything. And a few weeks later I got a tax disc reminder letter, which was concerning since I had told them I didn’t own the car.

So I rang them up, and put the matter to bed over the phone, making it clear that they had made a mistake, and being told that, yes, they had made a mistake. Job done. I didn’t really mind the cost of the phone call or the wasting of my time, because mistakes can happen, and this one got fixed.

Only last night I returned home to discover an £80 fine waiting for me, for failure to tax a vehicle that I have now told them TWICE I don’t own any more. I can’t ring up to appeal, I can only ring an automated line to pay the fine. My right of appeal can be made by letter, but if I say I’ve let them know and have no documentation to prove it, I am still lumbered with the fine.

I have let them know (twice), and because of their incompetence, I of course do indeed have no documentation to prove it. But I am not going to pay this fine. I have appealed in writing, and await a response.

This is annoying (and potentially expensive). But it’s also worrying. Everything we do is now on one government computer or other. They want all of our health records on computer, our fingerprints, our iris patterns, maybe our DNA… And of course mistakes can happen. Computers are run by people who make mistakes. Whichever DVLA staff member dealt with me has inputted something wrong, and now I have an £80 fine to pay which is difficult to challenge, and for which the burden of proof lies with me. How many people, I wonder, are in my position, mistakenly fined? And how many of them are too frightened of the letter shouting about a “criminal offence,” or too unsure what to do, to challenge the fine? £80 is not a small amount of money, and it should be rightly levied against real criminals. But not everyone fined is a real criminal, because computers at the DVLA make mistakes.

Imagine if they make a mistake inputting my ID card data. Someone else’s fingerprints down as mine. The wrong code put somewhere by some faceless bureaucrat somewhere, and me denied access to the NHS. Or you denied a job because of a mistake with a CRB check. Or your children stopped from getting onto a plane because of a mistake in their passports.

Government reliance on computers to be 100% right all the time means that it is now extremely difficult to challenge the mistakes that are sometimes made. Government needs to be less arrogant in its assumption that it is always right. Government isn’t always right, and in my case now it is wrong. The fact that I’ve told the DVLA of a change of address in the intervening weeks between my supposed offence and now is hardly the act of a criminal trying to hide. And yet, despite them writing to me at the new address, they don’t take that into account, because the computers that run Britain can’t be wrong…

But they can, and they are. And how often do they have to be before someone puts the brakes on and we return to a place where we can talk to people face to face, and relate to the government that is supposedly there to help us. Nick Clegg, the leader of the Lib Dems, has had something to say about this this week, paying particular attention to the mobile phone costs of ringing government helplines. He too is concerned about the faceless bureaucracy which we all have to deal with these days, and which I now have to tackle for the sake of £80.

Rick

The Government’s £100 million scheme to help first-time buyers has sold only 451 homes since it started in 2006, according to figures obtained from the Liberal Democrats.

In a housing policy paper to be debated at the Party’s Spring Conference this weekend, the Liberal Democrats will argue for the multi-million pound scheme to be replaced with Government-backed equity mortgages.

The paper Homes for All: Action to Tackle the Housing Crisis will set out how the Party would build an additional 1.3 million affordable homes to buy and rent over the next decade, whilst equity mortgages would ensure the homes remained affordable after their first resale.

Liberal Democrat research on Government schemes to help first-time buyers shows that between April 2006 and Oct 2007 there were just 451 completions through the First Time Buyers Initiative despite over £100m investment in the scheme.

This is really depressing news for many young people who find themselves nowhere near the first rung of the housing ladder.

The Government’s flagship home ownership schemes are woefully inadequate compared to the real affordability gap faced by first time buyers.

Building a handful of houses to gain headlines has not helped the thousands of people for whom a home of their own is further away than ever. The HomeBuy scheme has failed. We should be building far more homes for first-time buyers and ensuring they remain affordable for future generations.

In Prestwich the problem is as acute as elsewhere in the country. Houses in St Mary’s are too expensive for first time buyers, and planning laws and government planning policy are doing nothing to make it easier for young people to get onto the housing ladder locally.

Rick

The National Audit Office today released a report into the supervision of community orders, and it is clear that the government needs to do more to make sure that they work properly.

Community orders have the potential to work very well. If they function properly, they provide an effective alternative to prison, which brings all sorts of benefits in itself, not least in helping the government out of the overcrowding mess it has got itself into. They can benefit the community and the offender as well though, by reducing re-offending.

But at the moment they are not working very well. They aren’t being used as effectively as possible, and the Probation Service itself doesn’t know how many orders it can effectively oversee. The government needs to urgently improve the data it collects, both in terms of the cost of the orders and the numbers of offenders failing to complete them.

Community orders can do wonders for our justice system if used properly. But the public need faith in them, and this faith won’t come without proper management of the system. Here in St Mary’s ward, people have lost faith in them because the offenders subject to them seem improperly managed and likely to re-offend. The government needs to get more of a grip on community orders urgently, to improve community safety, reduce re-offending, and make the most of what are potentially effective ways of reducing crime.

Rick

Did anyone see the Louis Theroux programme from San Quentin Prison last night? I am not normally one for much TV, but this was intriguing so I thought I’d watch it. And I don’t think I’ve seen a more upsetting piece of TV in quite some time.

I thought he spent a bit too much time on the prisoners’ love interests – whether or not transsexuals who find straight partners on the inside will carry on with them on the outside. I don’t care about that. Good luck to ‘em, but I really don’t care.

I found the interviews with lifers very distressing though. I almost wanted to cry when I saw Anthony, barely more than a boy at 21, a huge, limbering, orange-suited prisoner at the beginning of a sentence of 50 years-to-life. A twenty-one year old starting a fifty year stretch. I can’t even imagine what those numbers mean in reality.

He was advised by the guard not to show any weakness, to get his head down and do his time quietly. But how can a kid of that age even contemplate fifty years? If he lives to the end of his sentence he’ll be 71 years old. A whole life gone in the blink of an eye. I know he’s a murderer, and someone’s family has lost a son and a brother to a brutal crime, but where’s the hope in a system where simple kids are lost forever in a metal cage and an orange boiler suit? And where’s the justice in a world where the prisoner himself seems unable to comprehend his predicament, talking as if he’ll be out in a fortnight, and hailing from a community where it seems almost expected to either die in a hail of bullets, or fire them in the first place?

Anthony was hard as nails at the start of his interview. I think by the time Louis Theroux had finished with him, and put in straightforward words the fact that he was going to be incarcerated for the rest of his life with angry and dangerous men, he was virtually in tears. Tears which showed weakness, and probably made his life even less bearable.

I know these are bad people. Dangerous people whom society needs protection from. But do we not have a duty to rehabilitate as well as to punish? Do we not have a duty to give these prisoners a structure to their day, a job of work and a reason for living? Twenty three hours a day in an empty cell with screaming maniacs round every corner. It seemed like hell. Another prisoner, David Silver, sentenced to 500 plus years (with 11 life sentences on top) and calmly safe in the knowledge that he’s never going to be released. Having to exercise in a cage for his own protection, and telling us all how he rationalises his situation by taking comfort in not having to deal with life’s problems like losing your job or finding food or shelter. He’ll be looked after til he dies, he says. True, but surely prison should be about more than that, even if the prisoners themselves need to be in it forever. Crimes may render people unfit to walk free in society, but it doesn’t render them unfit to be humans.

A distressing programme all round, I thought.

Rick

I received a very disturbing email today from a resident, who told me that he had been subject to a serious assault in Prestwich recently, and that despite reporting the incident, the perpetrator is still roaming the Village.

I have to confess that the email upset me. First of all I was upset the anyone could do that to another person, and live in the kind of moral vacuum that apparently exists there. What type of skewed moral plain do some people live on, how have they come to get there, and how can we get them back?

But I was also upset at how powerless I feel to sort it out. I would love to be able to ring a contact at the police, report the issue again, and get this man off the streets and away from the public he is harming. But I can’t. Of course there is due process and the collection of witness statements, the difficulties with positive identification, and stretched police resources. But when I get correspondence from residents clearly very upset at the lack of a positive response, it almost makes me shout out in frustration that I can’t do more and stop these types of things.

I have rung and left a message with Sgt Campbell at Prestwich police station to arrange an urgent meeting to discuss this and other anti-social behaviour issues that I have raised here of late. And I will try to attend the next Area Tasking Team meeting next week if I can get the time off work. But again I seem to go to lots of meetings whilst the crime continues and the perpetrators walk around like they own the town. And it is very frustrating. Hopefully we can get some kid of positive outcome soon. I share local people’s concerns (this attack happened on my own street) and I am trying my best. But these are difficult issues and sometimes I don’t know where to turn for a happy ending. I wish I did, and I’ll keep trying.

On the plus side - I did today get a positive response to an issue I raised. Some recycling bins had been filled with household waste by some residents moving out of their home. The bin collections weren’t emptying them because the wrong type of bin was used, so I asked the Council to treat this as a special case and actually act to empty them. I have now been promised that this will happen by the end of the week. So that’s good news at least.

Rick

I have been busy in the last couple of days. As well as delivering the last of the current batch of Focus leaflets to homes in the Hilton Lane area, I attended a residents’ meeting in Carr Clough, where there were discussions about litter, anti-social behaviour, and dangerous dogs. 

What has become apparent over recent days is the frustration that local residents have about the way the Council, the Police and others are responding to their concerns. Time and time again I hear of local people being ignored or fobbed off – reporting crimes and no Police turning up, or asking for a Council service and being told that there’s no money. Or worse, being ignored entirely.

I don’t know whether all of these stories are 100% true, but I do believe that there is a growing dissatisfaction and a growing disconnection between local people and the Police / Council. And I share this frustration. 

This week I received a report about an inspection of the Carr Clough estate in my ward. A number of issues were highlighted, including repairs necessary to fencing, paving and signs. Some of them will be attended to by the Six Town Housing caretakers themselves, but others will require Council Departments to work together to get things done. I have spoken to and emailed a number of Council officers trying to find out when, how and if these repairs might be carried out, but I’m passed from pillar to post. The answers seem to be that nobody is really sure who is responsible for carrying them out, and that there’s probably not any money to do it anyway. The Council Departments have their planned cycle of repairs, and these new ones that have arisen from the inspection are more of an inconvenience than anything else. 

Not only is this utterly unacceptable, but it begs a couple of questions. 

First, why the Council Departments aren’t working much closer together. If repairs need to be done, there should be named contacts in each Council Department who can ensure that the repair is carried out. Six Town Housing should refer an Environmental Services matter to a named contact in that Department. And we should all know who that person is. 

And second, why is it that small amounts of money are not made available to ensure that these repairs are carried out quickly? We need to be much more responsive to community need, not sit back and casually blame budgetary pressures. These repairs are the little things that people really notice – the repairs to pavements, the new “no dog fouling” sign, the re-erected fence. These are the things that give people pride in their area and faith in the Council. And they are the things that local Councillors should be able to insist on. I am not asking for a new road to be built, or a massively expensive programme of repairs. Just a few pounds here and there on the small but important things.

It simply isn’t good enough to be fobbed off time and time again. Local people have elected me to act on their behalf, and I am thwarted by unelected officers. I am a Council officer myself, for a living. I know that there are budgetary pressures. But inflexibility and a lack of response to community need is even worse, and it needs to end. 

Crucially, local people need to know what’s going on (or not going on) and why. At the moment the frustration is building because they feel that they’re grasping in the dark. 

With that in mind, I have suggested a couple of things this week to be discussed amongst my fellow Councillors and the Local Area Partnership. 

We must investigate some “Pride in Prestwich” events where local people are encouraged to join us and clean up their local area. The Council will be there to help, and other local service providers like the police and fire service will be there too to give advice. There is one such event happening in Sherbourne Court in a couple of weeks, and I’d like there to be more. 

I am also firmly of the view that the Council and Police be held more accountable for the services that they provide locally. I have drawn up a list of service standards and performance indicators that I would like to see reported on at Local Area Partnerships, so that service performance in things like crime reduction, street cleaning and road repairs are public knowledge. I have shared this with colleagues and will discuss how we can take this forward. Local people should be told how services are being delivered in their very local area – in Prestwich not just in Bury – and they should be able to direct service provision so that if things aren’t going well, they’re improved. And if some things need more improvement, local people should prioritise them at the expense of other services. Let the local people decide. The Council have said that streets are cleaned every six weeks, and grass verges are cut every so often too. If the streets in Prestwich are too dirty, but the grass verges absolutely fine, then let’s have more streets cleaned and less grass verges cut. Let the people decide. 

And I have asked that in future, all estate inspections like the one for Carr Clough are followed up, with named officers responsible for ensuring that repairs are carried out, or reasons given where they are not.

It should be simple, and I will be angry if this simple thing can’t happen. I am sick of local people having no say on service delivery. I am tired of being fobbed off by the people who’s job it is to serve us. I am angry, and I am going to keep trying to make real performance information in Prestwich public, get services improved, and get done the things promised to you by the Council.  

Rick