From the Canal to Sevenways

Author: Mike Cordingley

  • Weekly Update 30/7/2012 – Tuesday’s Meetings – Confusion at the Community Panel

    Tuesday

    Meeting to discuss Gorse Hill priorities on the Councils ward profile

    Meeting of Urmston’s Community Panel of Trafford Housing Trust. These panels distributed £0.75m across the borough last year and so are probably the biggest and most accessible funders of local community projects.

    The Urmston panel covers as far as Partington to the West and stretches into Lostock at Selby Road in the East, so the area covered includes a major part of Gorse Hill Ward.

    There’s an intention to make the panels more focussed on achieving aims. Not before time. There’s always been a suspicion that there hasn’t been an approach that was as robust, disciplined and objective as might have been expected. Application papers have been given out on the day with no chance to assess the quality of the application.  As a councillor, and particularly one who was until last year a Board member of the Trust, I’ve opted out of the final fund granting. My focus has been on setting the parameters and priorities.

    I had one member of staff saying the grants were funded by the government,

    another saying the council was funding it,

    and a panel member saying it was a loan from the bank.

    I’ve never felt that the panels had sufficient regard for the needs and priorites of the neighbourhoods in which the Trust’s tenants live. It’s been a constant gripe of mine, to such an extent, I have probably bored my fellow panel members to distraction. In my defence, Urmston panel has historically shown itself as loathed to grant funding to projects that it felt were the Trust’s responsibility as landlord. And somewhere along the way, in this disdain, the officers and panel alike have lost sight of where the money comes from.  At Tuesday’s meeting I had one member of staff saying the grants were funded by the government, another saying the council was funding it, and a panel member saying it was a loan from the bank. So we have an unusual situation for any funding organisation whereby there’s no knowledge within it of from where the money comes.

    The simple answer to from where the money comes is that it comes from the Trust’s ‘income’ of which over 80% is rent or service charges. Given that most of the other sources of income are ringfenced, it seems remarkable that tenants are rarely acknowledged in this process, rarely acknowledged in terms of targetting the funding and rarely acknowledged in terms of celebrating the good things that are done with the money. I have come across in the past, the extremely arrogant assumption  that a high proportion of tenants had their rents paid via Housing Benefit so it wasn’t really they who were paying, it was the DWP. That view was reprehensible then, it is even more so now, given the cuts in Housing Benefit.

    they’ve written the tenant out of the script

    I was a board member when we took the difficult decision to increase rents to reach the Government’s Target rent by 2012. So rents have been increasing faster than inflation over the last few years. That should mean that the Trust is morally obliged to have regard to the tenant’s contribution to the Trust’s investment in new housing and the work it does in communities, including the community panel funding. Instead, it seems they’re written out of the script.  I wasn’t impressed.

    The day cannot come quick enough for there to be no panel that operates without a majority of tenants on its funding body and no Housing Trust officer connected to that body who cannot give an exact and consistent explanation of where the money comes from.

  • Weekly Update 30/7/2012 – Executive Meeting – chapter four (Council Tax Benefit)

    Council Tax Support

    The Government is abolishing Council Tax Benefit and delegating responsibility to Councils to support the poorest. Problem is that they’re not funding a replication of the existing scheme. Instead they’re making arbitrary cuts of 12%. They’re protecting pensioners but in some ways that makes it even more difficult to limit the effect on the rest. In effect the overall reduction on non pensioner recipients would be 20%. So whilst we continue to have a cap on the amount of council tax the very wealthiest homes have to pay, they’re pulling the safety net away from residents at the other end of the scale. Remember we have homes on the market at over £11m where the council tax is capped to be the same as homes valued at a fraction of that.

    Left as a simple 20% cut, it will affect 1238 households in Gorse Hill (almost one in four homes) but only 121 homes in Timperley. How is that fair? Even the ruling Conservatives seem embarassed by these changes. In mitigation they have tried to shape the changes to protect the most vulnerable and they’re attempting to levy council tax on empty properties earlier to generate income to go towards supporting their scheme. However until the Tories are prepared to levy a fair council tax on the wealthiest, as far as I am concerned they are cruel, nasty and cowardly. This is one of their most disgusting policies and we should never forget it.

    And as usual the Lib Dems say nowt.

  • Weekly Update 30/7/2012 – Executive Meeting – chapter three (Community Infrastructure Levy)

    Community Infrastruture Levy

    When major housing or retail developments are built, it often places a burden on Council’s to support the development with infrastructure. The classic example is extra classrooms in a school when a development increases the school age population.

    Currently developers have been expected to make a Section 106 contribution to the council which is a national scheme.  The Government is changing this and largely allowing Councils to come up with their own schemes. Some council’s, mindful of the need to encourage growth, have decided not to impose any levy. Trafford feels it should and I do tend to agree with them.

    I’m not hugely impressed with all aspects of the Government’s parameters they are setting for Councils. And whilst local schemes have merit, there is a cost due to the complexity of each individual scheme. The Govt ise being much more prescriptive in preventing the contributions developers make on each scheme to be pooled across the borough. The idaa of a central pot that the council can use to address priorities is gone. The contribution now has to be applied to the specific neighbourhood. So consultants have been brought to make sure the scheme is robust and to ensure it doesn’t deter developers.

    Whilst it may seem attractive to stop contributions going to the other side of the borough, when you consider that affordable housing projects are exempt from the scheme, and as you see below, the contributions levied in places like Hale and Bowden will be much higher per development, it’s inevitably going to see more money going there than here.

    Private market houses in:

    Cold market sub-area £20 (e.g. Old Trafford, Partington)
    Moderate market sub-area £40 (e.g Stretford, Urmston)
    Hot market sub-area £80 (e.g. Hale, Bowdon)

    The rates above are per square metre – so you can see that a large house in Hale will generate a considerable levy to stay in Hale. The argument is that Hale is a very much in demand place to build compared to Partington. Or as they put it – the market is hot rather than cold.  (perhaps they watch a lot of these home makeover shows on TV)

     

     

     

    The consultation will now go ahead.

  • Weekly Update 30/7/2012 – Executive Meeting – chapter two (The Scrutiny Reports)

    Scrutiny Report on Domestic Violence Strategies in Trafford

    A very lengthy report – nevertheless, I do worry that many of the 24 recommendations were based on anecdotal evidence. In principle I would agree with the scrutiny’s view that it should be the perpetrator rather than the victim who should be removed from the home, but in practice, does this not put the victim in risk of further abuse, or am I being alarmist?

    It seems telling that this Conservative Council has cut the budget to Trafford’s Women’s Aid by 42%. Scrutiny acknowledge that this cut with more anticipated for next year will put “enormous pressure to maintain service levels”.  Given that the committee recognises that the cost of this crime could be as high as £5m across Greater Manchester over 5 years, one has question whether these budget cuts to Women’s Aid are actually going to cost us more in the long run.

    The Scrutiny Report on Dentistry in Care Homes was also presented. Not much to say about that except that it shouldn’t take a scrutiny committee to ensure elderly residents are not waiting for weeks to get much needed dental care.

  • Weekly Update 30/7/2012 – Executive Meeting – chapter one (Trafford Community Leisure Trust)

    Thoughts on the Council Executive Meeting of 30th July
    (a long meeting of many parts)

    Annual Report from Trafford Community Leisure Trust

    Jo Cherrett from the trust gave very upbeat feedback speaking to a summary of the annual report. The trust has performed well over the year. Key achievements were:

    • an increase of 10% in attendances,
    • Swimming has increased against a national downward trend,
    • Active Trafford – the leisure trusts concessionary scheme for the over 65s, disabled, unemployed and other groups achieved a 31% increase in attendances

    I suppose what was missing for me was an indication of threats or missed opportunities that the Trust faces over the coming years. In Gorse Hill and the north of Trafford generally, one of the key pressures is the demand on football pitches – indications suggest demand is outstripping supply. Additionally there is often a tension between field users, whether they be dog walkers or those simply enjoying open spaces and the clubs who want to use the space. There could be another flashpoint developing at Lees Field in Davyhulme. We’ve certainly seen our share in Gorse Hill. It’s a challenge to councillors to try to reach a compromise. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we don’t.

    Due to demand we’re seeing the option of investment in all weather pitches being adopted more and more. By definition these pitches are taking away some accessible grassed fieldspace but they do allow for more participation. Frustratingly, I still don’t see sufficient access to school fields or facilities. Stretford High School is to be applauded for pursuing the Stretford Sports Village vision with the leisure trust. I know it’s been controversial, I know there’s still grievance that some of it is on parkland, but I do look forward to seeing it in full swing and being fully utilised by school and community. The challenge now is to get more schools to fully commit to partnering their communities and to get more useage of their sporting facilities.

  • A home on the market

    A home on the market

    A house worth £11,250,000?

    That money could buy 80 decent family homes.

    With architecture owing its inspiration (it seems to me) to a Scooby Doo cartoon episode; and landscaping designed for the Telly Tubbies, it’s pretty hideous to be honest.

    However, the house in Bowdon was shortlisted for Trafford’s design awards, so it’s obviously impressed the Tories.

    But the equivalent of 80 family homes?

    At that sort of price it would obviously fall into the target catchment for the Mansion Tax proposed by Vince Cable but rejected by the Conservatives. I want Labour to pick up that particular baton. Critics may argue that it’s the politics of  jealousy; it’s not. Labour became so paralysed with fear with regard to charges of taxing aspiration that we failed to tackle a tax system loaded in favour of the very wealthy. The house value may be the equivalent of 80 family homes but the Council Tax is the equivalent of just two.

    Read more in Manchester Evening News