From the Canal to Sevenways

Author: Mike Cordingley

  • Trafford’s Council is weaker without Adele

    Trafford’s Council is weaker without Adele

    The Messenger is reporting that Adele New, Councillor for Bucklow St Martins (essentially Partington, Carrington and a neighbourhood of Sale) is to stand down with immediate effect.

    Messenger Article

    I want to pay tribute to the achievements that Adele strived for in her ward and Partington in particular.

    I’m tremendously sad to see Adele go. Partington is a unique place within Trafford, and Adele is the perfect representative, living and working there and being at the heart of everything. It is down to Adele that Partington’s profile within Greater Manchester has risen to the extent that it’s cited in almost every Transport for Greater Manchester communication as a place that needs the better transport connections that only a public commissioned service can provide.

    Adele has carried the flag for her ward wherever she goes. I never use the word ‘tirelessly’. Adele has not worked tirelessly. She has worked when she’s beyond tired and visibly exhausted.

    Adele is someone you measure yourself against, and know that if you’re half as good as her, you’re doing a grand job.

  • Trust me, I’m a politician. How can we regain the trust we’ve lost?

    Trust me, I’m a politician. How can we regain the trust we’ve lost?

    I picked up Anthony Seldon’s book at Stretford library. It was published just as the MPs’ expenses scandal was peaking so perhaps a little out of date, but it got me interested in the latest figures which are summarised below:

    • 35% of the UK population stated that they trusted the national government, which is lower than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average (41%).
    • 42% of the population reported that they trusted local government and 55% trusted the Civil Service.
    • Trust in public services was higher than trust in the national or local governments, with the NHS the most trusted public service (80%), followed by the courts and legal system (68%).
    • 75% of the population believed that the UK government should place a higher priority on creating conditions for businesses to thrive, 64% said they should place higher priority on reducing climate change and 54% believe they should place higher priority on reducing the national debt.

    Office of National Statistics – Trust in Government 2022

    So, only 35% trust the national government and 42% trust their local council. I’ve seen some commentators conclude this is a plus for local government. I’m not so sure. By definition, councils are in your neighbourhood. A high proportion of a council’s services are universal; and even if we’re not receiving a particular service, it’s likely we know someone who is. Yet, 58% don’t trust their local council. I think that’s pretty bad.

    It would be interesting to see how much councils trust their residents. Trust is generally seen to be a two-way process. If councils don’t trust their residents, it would perhaps give us a clue as to why trust has broken down.

    It seems pretty obvious that neither the leadership of the Conservative Party nor of the Labour Party trusts their own members. As a constitutionally defined democratic socialist party that’s a bit of a problem for the Labour Party and one that we’ll have to tackle.

    I think this breakdown in trust is dangerous. Other countries have not deteriorated to the extent that the UK has. We saw what happened with Brexit and more than anything, that had to be about trust.

    Clearly, I have my own ideas, but firstly, I think we should be asking you. What needs to happen to restore trust in our democratic institutions?

    I look forward to hearing from you

  • Committees may not be a good way to design a car, but they’re the way to make sure the city ticks

    Committees may not be a good way to design a car, but they’re the way to make sure the city ticks

    There have still been a few meetings happening as we enter the summer break. Whilst I haven’t attended all in person, the importance of the subject matter has made it imperative to read the reports and catch the video streams. Committees are hard work and you still get the occasional member who can never reach a full stop, but there’s been so much else to take on board.

    Executive
    Greater Manchester Scrutiny
    Trafford’s Health Scrutiny
    Datalab update
    National Policy Forum

    Executive

    Although I’m not a member of the Council’s Executive, primarily it’s their decisions upon which I’ll be judged when it comes to being re-elected. I like to follow what they’re up to.

    Items on the agenda included:

    A new Culture Strategy for Trafford.

    The culture strategy document is available here. I like that the emphasis is as much on bringing on new talent as putting on shows. My own feeling is that Greater Manchester has improved its arts output hugely since Salford fought off the City of Manchester in winning the BBC to Media City, but Manchester still dwarfs everyone else combined. The fact that Oldham Colosseum closed shows how tough it is. I think I’d like to see a Greater Manchester approach and Trafford feeding into that with its strategy but not competing.

    Tennis Investment Project

    This involves a charging policy and the procurement of a specialist operator for the tennis courts the council owns such as at Davyhulme Park and Victoria Park. Initially, it will be trialled and I don’t think they’ve announced yet where the trials will be.

    Active Travel Reprioritisation

    The battle of the A56 cones has almost become a defining cultural phenomenon. However, it looks as though Trafford has received the go-ahead to move forward with a designed scheme that would make permanent arrangements. From the funding point of view, this means including it within the Mayor of Greater Manchester’s Challenge Fund Budget. (The Dept of Transport originally funded the cones as an emergency measure during Covid)

    Sadly, we do not get junction improvements to the Barton Road gyratory and active cyclists heading towards Altrincham will still be deposited into the fast lane of the A56. The approach to design has been to leave the junction in place, but weave a cycle and walking route on and through the central island. It’s a problem because it involves so many crossings which will delay the active traveller.

    Trafford is bidding for £1.6m for the whole scheme to provide permanent segregation from Talbot Road to the M60 including the gyratory weave and crossings. A lot of active travellers have already pointed out that the M60 is not where they usually choose to end their journey and that is a problem, at a minimum their heading to Dane Road.

    My conclusion on the A56: So the A56 scheme is not perfect; far from it. Despite this, I am still supportive of the bid. The cones have been so divisive and have brought out the worst in people. We need to move on.

    Additional Schemes

    The two Talbot Road junctions with Chester Road and with Greatstone Road have already received full business case approval and they’re particularly anticipated with a degree of eagerness. I’ve been pursuing Greatstone Road junction improvements for pedestrians for a number of years so there’s a degree of fulfilment attached to that.

    Pipeline Scheme – Davyhulme Active neighbourhood (technically route D). I really need to publicise this more. I am yet to be convinced it’s a worthwhile scheme. They’re hoping to have the business case submitted by January 2024. Essentially, it’s five low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTN)s. We know Rishi Sunak does not like LTNs, but they can be worthwhile – most of Stretford around Victoria Park is essentially a low-traffic neighbourhood, they’ve cut off exits onto Chester Road or Kingsway. My initial reaction to the Davyhulme scheme is that it condenses the traffic onto residential streets rather than main roads and that’s a problem.

    Greater Manchester Scrutiny Committee

    Again, I’m not a member, but in this case, I am a substitute member. Items discussed included.

    Topics included:

    • National Waste Strategy – essentially balancing the need to recycle more with the practicalities of fine-sorting the waste. The government are shifting their position
      Trafford’s Leader, Cllr Tom Ross gave a really top-notch presentation that’s worth watching on the GMCA site
    • Bus Fare Initiatives including capped fares. Funding is in place for 24/25. The introduction has led to an increase of 12% in patronage so GMCA is keen on continuation. To review it again next summer. Franchising will have a positive behavioural effect. In fact, franchising is so exciting in that it opens up so many possibilities. The tragedy would be if funding was pulled from 2025.

    Trafford Health Scrutiny

    Another packed meeting. Items included:

    Adaptations Team and Occupational Therapy Update – This is a major contributor to quality of life and hospital discharges. The team has a serious backlog that can be traced back to Covid. Scrutiny was looking at the action plan to alleviate the delays.

    Hospital Discharge – A broader look at resilient discharge – making sure that patients leaving hospital have the support needed to sustain themselves.

    Integrated Care System Update – This is yet another reorganisation; in this case to replace the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). Although it sounds dry, this is a vital element of health provision. The Greater Manchester model is proving itself in terms of life expectancy. The journey to transform health care though is only just beginning and building a system that integrates both care and health provision requires organisational change. There’s a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes. It’s vital that scrutiny monitors this change but it’s quite a significant task.

    Trafford Datalab Presentation

    This was presented last week as part of my induction on returning to the council, but I don’t need any persuasion. I love the work they do and their output is generally open data. I just want to highlight one particular page – the census data. It’s a cornucopia of intelligence but vital in targeting and championing resources.

    Labour’s National Policy Forum

    Gender recognition law has been a divisive subject in the Labour Party and elsewhere, but particularly in the Labour Party.

    I wanted to briefly state that I believe the position taken at the National Policy Forum at the weekend seems to me to be just about right. I know that others will disagree but I back Anneliese Dodds:

    We need to recognise that sex and gender are different – as the Equality Act does. We will make sure that nothing in our modernised gender recognition process would override the single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act. Put simply, this means that there will always be places where it is reasonable for biological women only to have access. Labour will defend those spaces, providing legal clarity for the providers of single-sex services.

    Anneliese Dodds – Labour Shadow Secretary of State, Women and Equalities – Guardian 24 July 2023
  • I don’t like Full Council and I’ve never been that fond of cricket either

    I don’t like Full Council and I’ve never been that fond of cricket either

    I’ve not been looking forward to full-council. There’s something very League of Gentlemen about the exaggerated amateur dramatics that you can get sucked into. It was quite funny that it clashed with Old Trafford emptying at the same time. It was fancy dress outside and (maybe) inside.

    We have two hours and thirty minutes for a council meeting. This was my first council since coming back and if anything, it’s got worse. I’m not going to go into all the issues but I think we can do better.

    These would be my proposals for improvement

    • We should remove prayers from the main body of the meeting.
    • Questions to the Executive are not working.
      We’ve made questions totally incomprehensible to the general public because it’s only a supplementary question that gets verbally spoken.
      Questions are important, but this is farcical if all the public hears is something like “So when are you going to do it?”.
      My view is that questions are so important we need to take them out of the Council Meeting and give them their own regular space. The next council meeting is in October – questions will arise before then and we need a facility to ask them that’s subject to public oversight.
    • Reports to the council are usually important. They don’t always get the time they deserve. Scrutiny might have a formal role.
    • Political motions are the main course of the meeting. They’re what gets us there. In reality most of the time, they’re of the moment and you’d struggle to find many that had a lasting impact. Nevertheless, it’s crucial that we have them. We need a facility for democratically coming together as an area to pronounce on what is deemed important. They’re a vital cog, even if a lot of the time it’s just political jousting.
      It’s just the Parties are losing the ability to draft a motion to maximum effect.

    The anatomy of a motion

    There’s actually not that much variation in motions. The Greens use a ‘preamble’ but essentially they should follow the pattern….

    This Council notes that…

    This Council believes that…

    This Council resolves to…

    There’s a reason for the pattern. The first part should just be facts. This council notes that the house was flooded. This council also notes that drainage has been reduced.

    The beliefs section can be more contentious but better to keep as much straightforward as possible eg. This council believes that flooding is avoidable and that regular maintenance is essential…

    It’s the ‘resolves to’ section where you’re trying to make your point and highlight differences.

    Keep the motion succinct. You also want to decide what is a ‘win’ – winning the vote or forcing the majority party to vote it down. I sat there amazed on Wednesday – most of the time I couldn’t work out what the opposition parties wanted to get out of their own motions.
    The Tories came with one motion against changes in firefighting provision that they ended up voting against. Maybe they just wanted to make a petty point on Andy Burnham, but they ended up voting against a motion that requested further investigation into the proposals to downgrade Sale fire-station. They completely wasted their advantage.
    The Greens had a motion on recreating a Greater Manchester Assembly. A lot of Labour people actually regret like I do, the original Greater Manchester Council being closed down by Thatcher. But the Greens got carried away and entered a whole shopping list within the motion of other things they wanted scrapping or introducing. I spoke in favour of a Greater Manchester Assembly, but was quite comfortable voting down the motion. They should have kept it simple.

    Back to those questions to the Executive

    A lot of people are raising this same question with me:

    When we can expect weed spraying to begin?

    Below is the written answer from the Executive Member

    The programme of weed spraying commenced on the 10th July 2023. The spraying is expected to take 4 – 6 weeks based on the current forecasts for July and August. An email detailing this information was sent to all members on Friday 30 June. The teams progress through the borough on a ward-by-ward basis. With some wards being larger than others it is difficult to say when the teams will be in a particular ward in advance with any accuracy at this time however, weekly communications to ward members will be issued to keep members up to date on progress.

    By Elections

    I don’t mind admitting I stayed up late for the 3 by-elections. Uxbridge was a disappointment, my suspicion is that had we given time to explain how few vehicles would be impacted by ULEZ, we’d have sailed through. You don’t change your policy in the middle of an election. So I went to bed very cross.

    Co-op Party AGM Gtr Manchester

    I really like the Co-op Party and I’m proud to be a member. We seem to get so much more business decided.

    We passed a motion supporting the mutalisation of United Utilities on Saturday. It reflected our values – the motion will progress to regional conference. We didn’t need to spend hours debating the point and sometimes unanaminity is more powerful than having the last word.

    Last few meetings at my Old Trafford school

    Had to ride to Old Trafford four times over the week, despite the last governor’s meeting being held the previous week. The school has broken up for summer now but we needed to mark the occasion.
    Good luck and Best wishes to all the children moving on to their secondary school. You will all make your mark on the world. I’m expecting great things from your your young lives!
    I’ve been chair of governors twice now – a short time at Barton Clough when it was in crisis and we brought in Tony Rae and lately at Old Trafford Community Academy with co-heads Judith Stott and Nicola Davenport. It was great to meet up with those Headteachers again at Old Trafford last week.

    Anthony Rae, Judith Stott and Nicola Davenport
    Anthony Rae, Judith Stott, Mike Cordingley and Nicola Davenport – Ms Stott’s Last Day as head
  • What a week!

    What a week!

    The induction’s over. It’s been quite a heavy week as the routine starts to kick in.

    Labour Away Day – Saturday

    Political parties are strange things. People have different motivations. Whether to rule or to represent, how to shape our local places, climbing up the ladder to get a better job.

    So, we’re a disparate group when we come together and even if an ‘Away Day’ feels a bit incongruous, it’s not without its merit.

    We have 41 Labour Councillors out of 63. Ten of these councillors are on ‘the Executive’. That means a lot of Councillors aren’t. This is not a problem if the Executive value and use their fellow councillors. Hopefully, there’s churn in responsibilities too. We can remain cohesive. It just mustn’t be taken for granted.

    It’s an interesting time to be Labour. It was remarked upon that we were all to the ‘left’ of Keir Starmer. He’s picked his team and they’re sticking to a script. I rather like that he’s holding back on commitments, but wish he’d learn some economics, beyond Milton Friedman, Thatcher’s mentor.

    Prepping for Planning – Monday

    I quite enjoy my monthly tour of Trafford in preparation for planning on Thursday. This time I took in Davyhulme, Timperley, Sale, Old Trafford and Hale. Then it’s putting some notes together and sending off some queries to planning officers.

    All Day School Governor Commitment – Tuesday

    I’m school governor at two schools but withdrawing from both. With Planning Committee and a new role with Manchester Foundation Trust, I’m just finding it impossible to juggle the time. It’s primarily evenings but today included a meeting with the Academy Trust. I love both my schools but you’ve got to manage your time. The evening was in a sense a normal governors’ meeting but it was the last governors’ meeting to be attended by Judith Stott. Judith has been Headteacher there for 28 years. That’s a big wrench. I’ve valued working with her. She always puts the children first.

    Judith Stott

    Hospital Trust Meeting – Wednesday

    I was warned this was a demanding role but took it anyway. I’ve joined the governing body attached to Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT)as the council’s nominee. Just to put this in context – MFT is the largest employer in Greater Manchester with 28,000 staff.

    The Chief Executive updated us on strike action and presented the annual account which will be made public once it’s been formally listed in Parliament.

    Much of it was similar to a council committee meeting. We had a presentation from the auditors who happened to be the same as Trafford Council’s auditors, and there were quite a few familiar faces in the room.

    Greater Manchester’s health organisation is undergoing quite an upheaval with the new integrated care partnership (ICP). Priorities are tackling inequalities. We’ve got to make it real. I wasn’t happy with inequalities of provision within Trafford during Covid. Actually, I was incredibly angry about it at the time and that will be a test for me.

    Evening Meeting of Scrutiny – I only watched this online but it was important viewing. Scrutiny was looking at the seven-year review of the Amey contract. I am of the view that there’s still enormous room for improvement, essentially in bringing Trafford back to a borough that looks and feels loved. We’ll know more when the review is actually tabled for approval rather than just a PowerPoint.

    Planning Committee – Thursday

    Quite a heavy meeting but we got through it. I’m happy we made the correct decisions. They won’t necessarily be the popular decisions but we have to apply the guidance unless there’s a compelling reason not to.

    Focus on the Allotment – Friday/Sat/Sunday

    Screenshot of Facebook Post announcing Moss Park Allotments open 16th July to display a stunning, award winning allotment site in Stretford with a large variety of well-tended plots bursting with ideas.

    That’s quite a build-up for our allotment site and with all the council induction and then having covid – our plot wasn’t at its best. So quite a bit of graft was required to make it presentable. I love our plot anyway. Some nice feedback on Sunday morning too from visitors.

  • We hear good words but we’re not delivering the change needed

    We hear good words but we’re not delivering the change needed

    I’m indebted to my colleague Councillor Jill Axford for sharing this video. Jill herself has been ahead of the curve with regard to climate change for a long time. She’s absolutely spot on. We’re nowhere near where we need to be. We must stop deceiving ourselves that technological solutions will make it all disappear. Please watch this video. It’s only 16 minutes but there’s clarity here.

    We’re seeing the significant weather events. We’re seeing the damage to our community. We really do need to take this seriously.

    Raglan Road