Author: Mike Cordingley

Becoming Howard Beale

Three things that made me mad at scrutiny last night

One – The Vision 2031 thing

What is this thing called Vision 2031? When did it become a thing? Why is it cited in every council report? Who is the author of 2031? Where is the 2031 documentation?

The council has never actually adopted Vision 2031, it’s a Trafford Partnership statement. The partnership is Trafford’s equivalent of the House of Lords, its Privy Council or its imperial court. It’s very white, and very Altrincham/Hale.

Whatever the partnership’s role, there’s no Vision 2031 document, just a page in its last annual report, yet it seems to have become a ubiquitous royal seal.

Last night’s first mention was in the ‘Leisure Strategy Update’:

An update on progress so far with the Leisure Strategy as a fundamental pillar of the Vision for 2031 and how it enables greater levels of physical activity. It covers progress on:

• Physical Activity Strategy
• Playing Pitch Strategy
• Leisure Centre Investment
• Trafford Leisure’s Physical Activity Referral Scheme

Normally this would not have been a controversial item but given the council’s capacity to mislead and inflame tensions over a whole series of recent sports related issues, it was never going to be an easy ride.

• Flixton Green Belt – William Wroe Municipal Golf
• George Carnall Sports Centre
• Stretford Sports Centre UA92
• Turn Moss

If you really wanted to undermine Trafford’s ability to support the wellbeing of its citizens, you’d look for the common thread in all these controversies and try to bottle it for reuse.

Two – Trafford can’t do the consultation thing

The Council’s leadership has unerring ability to turn its consultations into a dog’s breakfast

It takes a special sort of talent to attend a consultation event and suggest that people ought to be grateful. It takes a special array of talents to refuse a locality meeting to consider business and community opportunities for Old Trafford/Gorse Hill arising out of the UA92 campus on Talbot Road; and then publicise the chief executive’s presence in Cannes promoting a New Old Trafford.

The odd communication failure might be overlooked, but regardless of whether the thing being consulted upon is universally applauded or indescribably contemptible, Trafford always seems to manage to screw up the consultation in one way or another.

The fact that Vision 2031 talks about co-design and co-production is a joke when you look at the original Stretford Masterplan’s delivery of Edge Lane/Chester Road improvements for walking/cycling. We’ve just received plans for improvements to Davyhulme Road East/Chester Road less than a week before work is to commence. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s highways, social services or education, there really has to be an adherence and a commitment to effective consultation.

Three – Problems with the One Trafford Partnership are bringing the Council into disrepute

Twelve months ago, Scrutiny recommended that the quarterly key performance indicators be reported to the executive along with exceptions. We also recommended that problems the reporting system be rectified as a matter of urgency. Twelve months on and we’ve seen no progress.

• Twelve months ago you could report an overflowing litter bin, but the system would set something like a 21 day clearance target rather the 2 hr target specified in the contract. Today you can’t even report an overflowing litter bin via the Trafford online portal.
• In terms of waste collections, there’s no target for emptying your bin on the correct day but there is a target for emptying bins by noon on the next working day. This means that Gorse Hill’s Friday collection often gets missed, the bins left out and by Monday contaminated. There seems to have been no understanding of how the KPIs work in practice despite waste collection having been outsourced for a number of years
• Similarly, the council has constructed a contract that gives no incentive to Traffic Management Engineers to do very much apart from respond to planning applications. At a time when pretty much every agency is encouraging walking and cycling, there’s nothing in the KPIs to incentivise this. The fact that Moss Road Spar was able to install a parking bay utilising a pedestrian crossing with impunity (photo below) and for it still to be there a year later, just brings on my Howard Beale.

The council will have to implement the changes that were agreed with scrutiny at some point. This cannot go on for ever. Most people I speak to seem to think this will show the One Trafford Partnership as underperforming. I suspect that they’re wrong about underperformance, but right to believe the streets and parks have deteriorated beyond an acceptable level. It’s hard to fail a contract designed out of ideological dogma rather than in meeting the needs of the customer (us).

At that point I think we will all be opening our windows, looking down on our litter strewn streets and yelling at the top of our voices “WE’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

My recollections of the discussions on one table about the Stretford Masterplan at Stretford public hall tonight.

Our first topic on the table was active leisure.

Worries over access for dog walking on turn moss. Flooding too and car parking.
Access to pools and facilities at the new sports centre, competing with students.

Overall disappointed that active life was not embedded into the masterplan. We’ve got the new sports centre and Turn Moss is getting new drainage; but there’s potential to build activity into every theme. There’s room for a new cycling & walking route alongside the metrolink where the old siding used to be between Stretford and the university site – where’s the imagination?

Outdoor gyms in our parks? – why not be ambitious and give us back a town centre swimming pool in the student village?

We could be much cleverer over the active offer.

Next issue was the Essoldo.

Some really good suggestions from the residents, for example rebalancing the closure of the Cornerhouse in Manchester with the Essoldo taking on a similar cultural role. Lots of worries and defensiveness against it being a Students Union. The council is not trusted. They are not believed when officers say it’s a genuine consultation and they don’t have a definite operation lined up for it. I do actually believe them over this particular issue, but I find it hard to blame residents for the mistrust.

A56 corridor next

…negative comparisons with Salford’s Chapel Street and Crescent where the city council has created a genuine public realm and brought the traffic speed down to a more civilised 20mph and effective safe crossing points throughout. Salford managed to avoid the Edge Lane public realm disaster by being a genuine attempt to create a living space for people and being less in thrall to the car driver.

Less discussion about the green spaces on the A56 particularly around St Ann’s church because we were so unanimously opposed to losing either the spaces or the mature trees there.

Finally the Lacy Street Students village.

A lot of support for smaller scale and dissipation of student accommodation on other sites – B&Q as well as Itron. I was in a minority on this particular issue. I genuinely believe it has to be of scale in Stretford if it’s to deliver a sufficient boost to Stretford to provide any of the retail or indeed the night time offer we’ve been craving. Personally I don’t think we’re demanding enough in terms of design or facilities – I genuinely believe we should be asking the earth in terms of facilities in the town centre itself and that a swimming pool is not unreasonable. Altrincham will have one and anyway if you don’t ask, you don’t get. We should be asking for a lot more.

I think my table judged the benefits of the large student campus as vague and uncertain and would rather not take the risk at that scale. I also don’t think we were yet convinced that the university would be successful as described when other universities were contracting. If that view is right, and it certainly has to be a possibility, then what is the contingency? None of the plans so far for the student accommodation show any sign of architectural merit and converting them to residential living is not easy. Just because it’s student accommodation should not mean it’s an ugly design. My instinct is that Trafford is not sufficiently demanding when it comes to attractive street design. Gary Neville in my view really commissioned an excellent design for Hotel Football, given the unpromising plot of land that it was built on. I want him to maintain that level of design in everything associated with this project and we need to see an improvement on what we’ve been shown so far.

This are not official minutes but a personal impression of the discussions that went on my table.