The Conservative group running Bury Council has once again created the type of headlines that make all local Councillors look like idiots. The only mild saving grace is that they look more idiotic than we do, but I’d much prefer it if the brand of arrogant silliness that seems to be running through the leading group at the moment went away entirely.

The Bury Times today told the story of one Conservative Councillor’s allegations of assault against another member of his group. The whole thing makes Councillors a laughing stock, and whilst I don’t know the details of the incident, quite why Conservative Councillors can’t control themselves is a mystery.

This comes hot on the heels of last week’s story outlining the squabbles between Labour and the Tories over some remarks made at a local meeting, and the subsequent lack of apology from the Tory Councillor who made them (the same one involved in the “assault”). The Tory won’t apologise, nor will he recognise the Standards Committee to which he’s been referred by Labour.

Again, it’s a ridiculous story that makes Councillors look like school children in the playground. We’re supposed to be running the town - looked up to and respected. And yet the papers are dominated by a game of “he said, she said” that wouldn’t look out of place in the toilets at a teenage disco. Come on guys, sort it out. Stop making stupid remarks, apologise if you do make them, don’t over-react if they’re made to you, and show respect to the procedures of the Council you’re elected to.

All this looks particularly bad for the Tories, because they look even more squabbly than Labour. It’s no wonder that one Conservative said she was “embarrassed” by the antics of her colleague at the centre of these allegations. I’m embarrassed too, and the quicker the Leader of the Council takes action to bring this type of thing to an end, the less bad it’ll look for him, and the less bad it’ll look for the rest of us.

Rick

Don’t forget that it’s Prestwich Local Area Partnership tonight, from 18:30 at St Monica’s High School. Part of the agenda will be dedicated to the Prestwich Community Plan, which will outline the vision for Prestwich’s improvement over the next three years to 2011.

What is the Community Plan?

The Community Plan is a document which sets out the Local Area Partnership’s (LAP’s) priorities for Prestwich between 2008-11. It is the document which says how Prestwich will become a better place to live in the next three years.

The Community Plan contains ten priorities overall, with the aim to create a Green Prestwich, a Thriving Prestwich, and a Strong Prestwich.

Each of these 10 priorities contains some specific actions which the LAP aims to achieve by 2011.

The first Prestwich Community Plan was created in 2001, with a second Plan in 2005. The first two plans were aspirational documents, but this new plan sets out targets for the LAP to achieve, building on the successes in Prestwich in recent years, and setting the scene for progress in the future.

Who was involved in creating the Community Plan?

The Community Plan has been created after joint working with a wide range of partners, including the Council, Police, Fire Service, NHS Primary Care Trust, the voluntary and faith sectors, and other agencies. There have been a number of events held in the last year in Prestwich and Bury, such as the Bury Community Conference and the Bury Community Planning Event, involving all partners in setting priorities for the area.

Local people have had their say too, via their local Councillors and through the opportunities to comment on drafts presented to previous meetings of the Local Area Partnership. The Developing Communities Working Group of the LAP has met 7 times to discuss the Plan during its development.

In addition, evidence such as government policies, current Council plans, surveys and local intelligence information like the Prestwich Neighbourhood Intelligence Assessment has been used to inform the priorities in the Community Plan.

After extensive consultation and analysis, the Plan was brought together by Carran O’Grady, the Prestwich LAP Manager, with assistance from Councillors and other partners.
What are the Plan’s priorities for Prestwich?

The Community Plan sets out the LAP’s joint priorities for Prestwich. There are 10 in all:

A Green Prestwich
1. Improve Parks and Leisure Facilities for Prestwich
2. Achieve a reduction in car usage in Prestwich
3. Reduce air pollution in Prestwich
4. Improve the Prestwich environment by reducing litter and graffiti

A Thriving Prestwich
5. Create a clear vision for the redevelopment of Prestwich town centre
6. Support for the retention and growth of local Prestwich Village Town Centre businesses
7. Create Better Facilities for the most deprived areas of Prestwich

A Strong Prestwich
8. Make Prestwich healthier
9. Make Prestwich safer, and reduce crime and the fear of crime
10. Create a Prestwich for people of all ages

How will we make sure that we achieve our priorities?

Each of the 10 priority areas detailed in the Community Plan contains agreed actions and target outcomes. There are approximately 70 actions overall that will need to be completed by 2011.

Every action has an identified person and/or agency responsible. All the partner agencies, including the Council, Police and NHS, have agreed to the Community Plan, so everyone knows what they have to do. The identified people and agencies will regularly report back to the LAP and the two LAP working groups on progress, and we can make sure we achieve our aims.

How does the Prestwich Community Plan link to the wider plans for Bury?

Prestwich LAP is one of six LAPs in Bury, each with their own Community Plan. All the Community Plans link to an overall Team Bury plan for the whole Borough.

Each of the 10 priorities in the Prestwich Community Plan links directly to a Bury Borough priority. This means that Prestwich improves in step with Bury as a whole, and everyone in the Borough is supportive of Prestwich’s plans and priorities.

What about things that aren’t on the Plan?

Obviously there are many things that aren’t in the Community Plan. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t important. Although the Community Plan identifies 10 priorities, a huge range of actions and targets are contained in the plan, and the priorities themselves will ensure that if a viable project requires LAP support to make Prestwich better, then it will receive the LAP’s help.

Come along and learn more tonight, as well as the usual LAP goodness including updates on everything that’s going on in Prestwich.

Rick

Don’t forget the Prestwich Local Area Partnership meeting, which takes place tomorrow (Thursday) night at St Monica’s school on Bury Old Road. God knows I can’t…

Amongst other things on the agenda, there’ll be an update on the URBED Prestwich Town Centre regeneration project, and the ceremonial unveiling of the Prestwich Plan 2008-11, on which I’ve been beavering away nicely for quite some time, and of which more tomorrow.

It’s an open meeting, and everyone’s always welcome to come along and hear the updates on what’s been going on in Prestwich recently. There will be representatives from the Council, Police, Fire, NHS and other partners there. So if you have a problem, if noone else can help, and if you can find them, come to the LAP and ask your question.

My mouth is still burning from last night’s pizza with the local Police, that unbeknownst to me had the Devil’s Vegetables on it, and was as hot as the centre of the Sun. Normally close proximity to the long arm of the law brings me out in a sweat, so such heated conditions weren’t entirely unexpected during dinner with the local Sergeant. However it’s not often that my mouth is the epicentre of the warmth.

But as well as downing fire-extinguishing mugs of water all morning, I have been talking to the Council’s parks people about a potential skate park in the ward. Such ideas often bring about gasps of horror amongst local people who suspect that such a skate park will attract trouble. The reality is often different, and I think it’s important to provide a safe local place for young people to skateboard about if they want to. Quite why anyone would want to is a mystery, but if the kids like hurtling through the air on a bit of plastic with rollerskate wheels on it, then that’s fine by me as long as they don’t hurt old ladies in the act. Sticking them out in a corner somewhere, which seems to be the approach favoured by the Council, doesn’t help with engaging them in the wider community.

The Parks department are a bit reluctant to get involved because of bad experiences in the past ,but I think that if we design it right, and involve everyone in the planning, we could come up with an idea that’s acceptable. Then of course we have to find the money to fund and maintain it, and short of turning the sofa upside down I don’t have any ideas about this at the moment. But we’re working with people to see if we can find an answer to this too. I will keep you informed. I am going to bring it up at the LAP meeting tomorrow night, which is yet another reason, if one were needed, to come along and join the fun.

Rick

Last week’s rejection of an elected Mayor for Bury is welcome. The proposals were a waste of money, democratically damaging, and I am glad that local people did not fall for the lies and spin on the issue of congestion charging.

However, the fact is that 10,000 people and 40% of those who voted indicated their desire to change the way Bury is run. I don’t think we should ignore their dissatisfaction with local services, nor their indictment of the way the Council is run. They voted for a Mayor despite the compelling reasons not to. I bet that many of those who voted “no” did so not out of love for the Council but because they took heed of the consequences of a “yes.”

Council services in Bury have been consistently cut over more than two decades of control by Labour, and more recently in the past couple of years by the Conservatives. Over that same period, Council Tax bills (and Community Charge and Rates before them) have gone up as we have been asked time and again to pay more for less. Every year the story is the same, and I bet I can write my budget speech for next year this weekend and barely have to change it on the night. It’s predictable even now that bills will go up and services will go down.

More disturbingly still, the power of local communities to have a fair say on local services continues to diminish. Post Offices have closed in Bury, as have maternity services and libraries, all in the face of significant public protest. The government and Council may pretend to “consult,” but their consultations are in fact information campaigns. I am as insulted by their lack of honesty about this as I am about the fact that they don’t listen to local views at all.

The Labour government, both nationally and locally, started this rot, and the Conservative administration in Bury since 2007 have done nothing to stop it.

Liberal Democrats in Bury have consistently supported local people in their attempts to stop the appalling cuts in local services. We led the successful fight to stop the closure of local secondary schools in 2005, and have also led appeals to save hospital facilities locally. Just last month a Liberal Democrat motion ensured Council support for an end to local Post Office closures, and our petition on the same topic has thousands of signatures. We are also the party who secured Council opposition to congestion charging.

Our respect for true devolution of power to communities can be seen in how we run the Prestwich Local Area Partnership – with real consultation with local people, and a variety of community groups having a legitimate say in how local money is spent. I recently took the chair of the Developing Communities Working Group, which has developed since its inception to be a leading forum for the community to have their say on the future of Prestwich.

The preservation of local services and obtaining value for money as well is no pipe-dream. It can be achieved through fairer local taxation, which is something that Lib Dems have proposed for a long time in the abolition of Council Tax and the reform of business rates.

The Mayoral referendum was not the right way to seek reform of our Council. But what it did achieve was showing those in charge that they are disappointing a great number in our communities. The failings of successive Labour and Conservative policies locally are clear, and there is lots that we need to do to improve. Local Liberal Democrats will continue their hard work for local people across Bury in the hope that we can create better local services that provide real value for the people of Bury.

Rick

Last night’s full Council meeting was used by the ruling Conservative Group to make the most damaging change to democracy in Bury for many years.

Just eight weeks after taking control of the Council for the first time in two decades, and having already removed opposition membership from the Council’s Executive, last night the ruling group voted disgracefully to remove the right of the public to ask verbal questions at Council meetings.

The Tory proposals were part of a raft of measures to “improve the efficiency of Council meetings, “ almost all of which were either damaging to the democratic accountability of the Council, or improvements to process that went nowhere near far enough.

The Conservative Group voted en masse for these proposals, despite one veteran Councillor speaking passionately against them, and several others voting with very heavy hearts indeed. Although the Labour and Liberal Democrat groups spoke and voted against these damaging plans, the Tory majority meant that they passed.

But I was not surprised at the reluctance amongst many in the ruling group to submit to the wishes of the leadership. The plans see the rights of the people we serve seriously curtailed. Where once anyone could come to a Council meeting and ask the Council anything, now questions must be received in writing six days in advance, with no opportunity for a follow-up question.

What kind of message does it send to local people, when we are elected to serve them, and then remove their right to question us with our first act of power? It is a disgrace and the leaders of the Council should be ashamed of themselves. The sun came down on a dark day for democracy in Bury last night, and the Conservative group have done untold damage to the institution of the Council. Where Bury Council was once a leader amongst other Councils in providing access to the people we serve, now it has surrendered its advantage.

At a time when public faith in democracy and elected representatives is so low, this type of action is just beyond understanding. It is also completely unnecessary. In all the Council meetings I have ever been to, there has never been one where public question time has exceeded its allotted time or unduly delayed the meeting. These restrictions can only be politically motivated, to remove the threat of having to deal with tricky issues. Well, to the Leader I say that tricky issues come with the job, and ducking them is simply unacceptable.

Rick

Today has been hugely dull. Great gusts of tedium have blown themselves around me as I trudged from meeting to meeting at work. And because I am left handed and was at one point using a flip-chart marker, an untoward smudging incident occurred and now I have ink on my fingers and I look like an errant schoolboy.

One of the necessary evils of my job as a Councillor is to chase up Council Officers who haven’t responded to my emails. I don’t know if it is a pathological thing with some of them, or whether the world wide web doesn’t function in the small quadrant of land between the Town Hall and my house, but whatever the reason I am frequently ignored. If this is how they treat me, God only knows how they treat people without the luxury of a public mandate.

Today’s chasings-up include a month-old request for a reply to a letter regarding Phillips Park. Some local people want help planting out some flowers there, but the response so far from the Council has been nil. You’d think they’d welcome the help, but I don’t know what they think because they haven’t bothered to reply to me.

There is also the matter of a “Keep Clear” box, desperately needed for residents of The Radius who can’t get in or out of their car park because of jams outside. This was requested in April, promised three weeks ago, and still hasn’t been painted. I don’t know how long it took to paint the roof of the Sistene Chapel, but this appears to be a job on a similar scale.

The third issue relates to the green ooze on Woodward Road, which I have written on here about before and which still shows no signs of being removed. Apparently it may have something to do with a collapsed drain, which is a relief because I thought at one point it marked the start of an alien invasion. But regardless of the exact cause, it isn’t pleasant and it’s still there. So, two months on, and five emails down the line, I have asked again today, in a tone probably most reminiscent of a school master dealing with someone who hasn’t done their homework.

And finally there is a vulnerable old man who asked me to have the kerb outside his flats dropped if possible, to allow him to enter and exit his own home without jolting him out of his wheelchair or requiring a detour to the end of the street. Obviously my pavement-lowering skills aren’t top-notch, but I know a man who can (The Clerk of Works, Bury MBC). Unfortunately he too ignores me, and so I have asked again for his help today. It’s OK though, I am sure this poor old man bouncing along the road in his wheelchair doesn’t mind that the man paid to serve him is too rude to do his job.

The shoddy response times to requests for service from the Council are nothing short of maddening. The Council has a customer service charter which states that emails must be answered within 24 hours, and responded to fully within 10 working days. I have kept an informal record for the past couple of months, and this standard is not met well over half the time. And I am a Councillor, so am probably treated better than most. And there’s not much I can do about it either. I have raised it in Council, I have spoken to people and emailed them time and time again. And nothing changes. We are still having phone calls, emails and even face to face chats ignored. We may be opposition back benchers but we are still elected members with people counting on us to get things answered.

The poor people who come to me for help must wonder why I can’t act quicker, and honestly so do I. I am not asking for the impossible. I don’t want a bypass built past somebody’s back garden in a fortnight. I want simple things, or quite often just any kind of response at all so that the resident doesn’t feel like he’s being ignored. Often a reasoned “no” is quite sufficient. But I am not even getting that.

It’s frustrating. Almost as frustrating, in fact, as trying to scrub permanent marker off my fingers. And let me tell you from bitter experience in the toilet at work today - that is VERY frustrating. 

Rick

I have just been out leafleting and once again had the distinct misfortune to find myself on Knowle Drive, the great forgotten road in my ward, the surface of which is not at all dis-similar to the surface of the Moon.

Numerous residents of this little street have complained to me and to colleagues about the state of the road before. And another one collared me today. I agree with their views entirely. Having been asked to stump up ever-increasing amounts of tax, they are within their rights to expect to drive from one end of their road to the other without feeling like they’re in a giant tumble dryer.

The annoying part for me is that there’s very little I can say beyond “I agree 100% with what you’re saying.” I must have asked the Council half a dozen times or more for their assistance with this road. But as I have mentioned on here before, the entire budget for minor road repairs for Prestwich in 2008-9 is £108,000, and the single neediest road costs one and a half times this amount. Without something radical, the people of Knowle Drive have got about as much chance of seeing their road satisfactorily repaired as I do of winning Wimbeldon.

Which, for local people, is hugely annoying and begs the oft-repeated question “where does all the money go?” I know that the answer to this is fantastically complicated, and that the oft-repeated “answer” that it is all wasted on asylum seekers and managers is entirely false. But for me, the lack of understanding and the huge amount of frustration that the ongoing inaction fosters amongst local people highlights a bigger worry - a complete lack of communication from the Council about why priorities are the way they are.

I try to explain local residents about the increasing cost of social care, say, and the investment in Children’s Services. But I can’t do it half as well as the Council could, by showing people that the reason their road hasn’t been done this year is because we’ve recruited a dozen new care co-ordinators instead, and as a result 100 more elderly people are being cared for at home. They mightn’t be happy about the road, but at least they’d understand why. At the moment there isn’t even that, and there’s resentment growing.

I read Council communications, and they don’t do the job. They tell half a tale, stressing the positives without ever talking about the sacrifices. They treat Council Tax payers as children, with a patronising dis-regard which never comes near to discussion of a real issue. It has to change. When I write St Mary’s Focus I try and put both sides of the story, because it’s rare that there’s an issue simple enough to be dealt with in a line or two. But the Council, and the national government as well, brush argument and difficulty under the carpet with sham “consultations” and phony words which are designed to win people round but in reality do the reverse. Why are they so scared of telling the whole story?

For the time being all I have for Knowle Drive is a shrug of agreement and the will to somehow pester the Council enough to have them pay for the repairs to shut me up. It’s not really all I should have up my sleeve.

Rick

Last night’s Prestwich LAP contained one gigantic disappointment - the list of roads identified as most in need of repair, and the frankly laughable amount of money given over to repair them.

As in previous years, the top dozen roads are identified. These, remember, are the least well-maintained roads, the ones with most pot-holes, cracks, loose paving stones and all the other hazards and unpleasantness that makes driving or walking down them dangerous.

The total estimated cost to repair all twelve is £596,000. The total budget allocated to fix Prestwich roads this year is just £108,000. That’s only 18% of the money needed to fix even the twelve most needy! That figure of £596,000 doesn’t even consider the 13th worst road, let alone the 14th, or the 114th, or the countless other roads with holes and cracks.

We have less than one fifth of the money necessary to repair our dozen neediest roads, and this is a disgrace.

Six of the dozen roads have been held back from previous years because of funding problem. One of them, Fairway in Sedgley, will cost by itself nearly £50,000 more than the entire budget allocated for roads. In St Mary’s, Sunny Drive and Barnhill Drive have been identified as needing work, but if both of these schemes get the go-ahead, this will account for nearly half of the entire available budget.

This is a matter which Liberal Democrats will certainly be taking up at Council level, to try and convince the Council to provide more funding for roads which are verging on the dangerous. The costs of compensation for trips and falls must surely point to the dire need for investment. But at the moment the people of Prestwich are very badly done to when the cost of replacing the pavement alone on Parrenthorn Road in Holyrood is more than the whole budget for roads and pavements for the whole of Prestwich.

The decision on which roads get repaired will be made by the Town Centre Regeneration Group, which is a sub-group of the LAP. I will make representations to this group on behalf of residents, but unfortunately this grossly inappropriate funding means that many local people will be left sorely disappointed by a Conservative council failing to prioritise roads in a budget already cut to shreds by a Labour government.

Rick

Last night’s meeting of the Prestwich Local Area Partnership (LAP) was successful on a number of fronts.

First, there were no recorded fatalities despite the meeting taking place in a room hotter than an angry volcano. If I’d have known what the temperature was going to be, I’d have brought along a couple of eggs to fry on the floor rather than waiting until I got home for tea. I would also have probably removed my tie, although I may not have gone quite as far as one member of the panel who decided to leave any semblance of respect at home as well as his formal attire, and come in a t-shirt.

The substance of the meeting was also pleasing as well. The “business” part of the meeting saw reports back from a number of the groups operating in Prestwich to make the community better, and we learned about their successes in the past couple of months. There were also updates from partners including the police (reporting a fall in most types of crime), the NHS (presenting about new GP facilities in Bury, although not in Prestwich), and the fire service.

Then the “Open Forum” gave the chance for lots of local residents to raise issues about the work of the partnerships. Once again there were frustrations raised about street cleaning, and I have now asked for a formal response from the Director of Environmental Services as to why the pavement-sweeping machines aren’t being used properly around here. Also, there were calls for larger bins on the precinct, and more action to be taken on pigeons. I was pleased to report that work to pigeon-proof the Precinct will take place this Sunday after I asked for it to be done some time ago.

Perhaps the main event though was the initial options report from URBED, the design consultancy we have engaged to consider options for the future of Prestwich Town Centre. The options that they put forward are really just their first thoughts, and do lack certain of the elements which they will have in their final form (such as the west of Bury New Road, links to the Clough and full consideration of traffic and parking), but they do give a flavour of some of the types of things that we could consider for the next 5-10 years in Prestwich. There was a full and frank discussion afterwards from amongst the many dozens of local people who came to the meeting, and the options are available for all to view in Prestwich library.

Rick

Only a brief post today, because I am struggling to breath under the weight of work I keep putting off to do Council things…

Yesterday’s Annual Council was a remarkably dull affair. The whoops, screams, and general childishness I expected from the ruling group on their assumption of overall control for the first time in Bury sine 1986 didn’t emerge. So credit to them for that. It beats their various displays in Council over the last twelve months. Instead, the historic moment passed in a grumbled “aye” when the motion to let the Conservatives form the Executive was put to Council.

The only other marginally exciting part of the agenda (and I use that phrase with a spade-full of salt) concerned democratic arrangements, and was postponed. So we were left with various annual reports, all of which were informative, but none of which were in the least bit fun.

I am prepared for the LAP tonight, which, just to remind anyone who wants to come, is at Prestwich’s Longfield Suite, from 18:30. There will be presentations on the Urbed regeneration and on local health services, as well as the open forum where you can ask us anything (to do with the work of the LAP, obviously).

So maybe I’ll see you there.

Rick