Community Health Services Update (This follows the decision by Pennine Care Trust to surrender its contract here in Trafford). The previous Tory regime left Trafford with a mess and this is just one of those legacy issues we’re having to get to the bottom of.
Tuesday
Budget Scrutiny looking at Children’s and Adult Services.
Wednesday
Pupil Disciplinary Committee at Lostock
Thursday
Budget Scrutiny looking at risk and ability to deliver services to budget. We were meant to receive our final spending settlement from government but the Brexit mess in parliament meant it was cancelled. Government business is increasingly grinding to a halt. I don’t know the answer – there seems to be an inability in parliament to end its game playing and self preening. Parliament needs a refresh from the speaker downwards.
Issues raised included George Carnall, leaf clearing, potholes and road resurfacing. My sense is that voters are willing to give Trafford Labour more time and appreciate that only Labour is willing to listen.
Sunday
Growing ever more frustrated with parliament and the inability of the parties there to deal with Brexit. The nonsense coming out of mouths on the various front-benches is shocking. Those who pronounce proudly and authoritatively that there’s no parliamentary majority for ‘no deal’ miss the point that ‘no deal’ is not a thing to support, it’s the absence of a thing to support. Brexit will not deliver the Transitional Program beloved of 2nd rate university staff-rooms. If mainstream politics is collapsing in on itself, we all suffer.
Monday
Council Executive, plus various briefings; a really worthwhile day. Looking forward to the arrival of Sara Todd as Trafford’s new chief executive. Hearing only good things about Sara. I believe she has a background in planning but respected across the board.
Tuesday
Debate over Trafford’s civic quarter masterplan continues. Some are missing the point that masterplans are roughly 80% about what should not be built in a place and about 20% in communicating a vision about how what can be built might link together. There are some who argue that that the civic quarter masterplan should be scrapped; perversely because they don’t want any development.
Wednesday
Full council meeting: big item is the Breaking Point motion. The £1.6bn cut to next year’s local government funding must be reversed. Whilst it’s a Labour campaign, only Trafford’s Tories failed to support the motion. The cuts to local government are an act of safe harm. No area of public spending is more important for the general welfare of the country. More cuts to street cleansing, social care, support for families, bins and we’re seeing crime rise, filthy streets, grids that no longer drain. The vitality of the country is fundamentally weakened by this ill-conceived policy. Time to reverse the harm they’ve imposed on us.
Thursday
Caught up on the outcomes of the previous evening’s public meeting in Old Trafford regarding the private car park on Seymour Grove. Lots of constituents have received tickets for legitimate parking to shop at Iceland and Superdrug and then followed up with very aggressive fines.
The two people I’ve been supporting through this had attended and it was good to hear it had gone well.
Having been reselected to stand again to be councillor, time to put a calling card together for the three of us. Trying to get all four of us (including Kate) onto an envelope sized card together with a message that will serve us until the start of the election is not as easy as it sounds but I think I’ve cracked it (just waiting for it to be printed now). For techies out there I use a programme called Scribus.
Sunday 18th Nov
Having got the leaflet out of the way, I do a bit of work on the GorseTalk Web site.
I know! It’s a bit over the top for a Councillor to have a website but it’s something I want to do. And it has provided me with new skills. Before I was elected in 2007 I’d had no reason to learn html, never mind all the skills that go into a modern responsive website. I am (and there’s no point in hiding it) quite proud of it. I’ve yet to find a better ward Councillor site.
Also take a trip to Gorse Hill to check on a paving stone.
Monday 19th Nov
Meeting I was due to have was cancelled, but soon busy righting the large plant pots in Lostock Park that have been tipped over yet again. I think this behaviour is going to continue. We discuss possible remedies. I think I favour placing the six pots in two groups of three so it’s more difficult to push and rock them over. The other suggestion is really staking or concreting them down. They’re just so top heavy, and rockable, it’s hard to see anything holding them. Something like this, repeatedly happening, always begs questions on the behaviour of modern youth. I”ve hit 60 but I tend to the view that as a teenager we’d have given it a go in pushing these pots over. So I’m not pronouncing that it’s a deterioration in behaviour. They’re just so inviting and very much a test of strength.
I just want them to test their strength in putting them back up. I’m almost at my limit!
And the pots are back down again and it’s raining so we need a solution. Really positive response on Facebook. I’ve emailed the council office who’s been liaising with the Partnership. One additional solution might be to plant them up in their current position possibly embedded.
To The Gasometer Dismantling Information British Gas were holding in Gorse Hill. Heartening to hear 2nd hand feedback from the staff, that they were struck how everyone seemed to know everyone in Gorse Hill.
Wednesday 21st Nov
Drafted a report of Friday’s meeting at Stretford High School. I’m keen to improve our rates of physical activity especially when one looks at rates of diabetes etc. However, it’s one thing to want to see active travel increase but making the right interventions is not always easy and you’ve got to be wary of just creating a soon forgotten photo op and press release. I’ve been consulting with similar minded people.
Attended the School Governors forum where one of the subjects was clean air and transport.
Casework Update – Doesn’t look likely the United urinals will be back this weekend but Trafford officers are showing a real keenness to get this sorted.
Thursday 22nd November
Library volunteering and heavy casework load. The casework is mainly centring on a car park at Seymour Grove for Iceland and Superdrug. The private parking enforcement company it seems to me are operating in a very questionable manner. Their appeal processes don’t seem to be working and there are allegations of links between the ‘independent’ governing body and the solicitors this parking company are using.
If you do get stung at this car park and you don’t think you’ve breached the parking conditions, do report to Citizens Advice but don’t ignore the ticket.
There is a meeting at St Johns in Old Trafford on Wednesday regarding this at 7pm.
Friday 23rd November 2018
Meeting of the Capital and Policy sub-committee of Transport for Greater Manchester. Really thin gruel in terms of the agenda but there followed a big discussion under any other business on the role of councils in feeding into the wider policy agenda.
It is long overdue that we take back a little control; or at least influence.
Reported back to Executive colleagues on this.
Additionally, caught up with Angeliki Stogia from Manchester on how they’re relaunching their community speed camera activity in Whalley Range. It’s something I want to bring to Gorse Hill Ward.
Invited by my good friend Bernard Sharp to attend the synagogue for their remembrance. Great to see such a large civic turnout for such a poignant event. It’s quite a cycle to Bowdon but thoroughly worthwhile for such a nicely balanced service which started with laments and ended with Happy Birthday.
Sunday 11th November
Civic Remembrance
Really well attended civic remembrance parade at Stretford Cenotaph. I’m always uncomfortable as a councillor on these days; my predecessors were after all, the recruiting sergeants for such a tragic loss of life in the Great War. Young men sent for sacrifice in a war between empires. The Peter Jackson film ‘They shall not grow old” shown in the evening was just so moving and presented real-life footage of the appalling circumstances we placed those boys in. Just awful.
We will remember them.
Monday 12th November
Caught up with emails after a busy few days. We’d had a carpet fitted on the Friday so everything had been squeezed into one room.
Attended the Town Hall in the evening for briefings.
Oh and went to see the gasometers.
Tuesday 13th November
Really informative presentation from the Trafford Assist team. I used to work in Social Security. This would have been called urgent payments, then social fund. What really impressed me today was the extent to which the staff were empowered to look at the cause. We still don’t put enough money into welfare; it’s very much the manifestation of a civilised society but they’re a great team and I was really impressed.
Wednesday 14th November
Distracted by Brexit. What a mess. Seems fitting that this was the week we commemorated the loss of life in the Great War. That was probably the last time we had such a pathetic elite in the centres of Europe. Is there anybody in London or Brussels, Government or Opposition, who realises the enormity of this car crash? Do they not realise that actually people expect their representatives to be working for solutions, not this daytime gameshow disaster piece set on repeat?
Anybody not swearing at the news this week has my absolute respect. I didn’t manage it.
Thursday 15th November
Escape to sanity. Afternoon stint volunteering in Lostock Library and then a really positive meeting of Lostock College Governors.
Friday 16th November
And a delightful meeting at Stretford High meeting Mrs Brindley, the school’s deputy head to tell her about our ambition to have more children walking and cycling to school. It looks like it’s something we can work together on, particularly with the civic quarter being on their doorstep.
Because Stretford High School is so popular, it means the catchment is relatively small. It has a huge proportion of it’s pupils travelling less than a mile. Yet so many of those kids are driven into school. Lindsay pointed out the irony of encouraging a daily mile once they’re in school when the journey into school could be made part of the day. That said, there are reasons why families prefer to drive their kids to school and mostly it’s not the school, so we have to bring other agencies (highways, police, mosques etc) into it. But it seems such an appropriate time to be doing this; and it should be a measure of the success of the civic quarter that more Stretford High School pupils are walking and cycling to school.
Cycled over to Ashton on Mersey for a spot of canvassing in one of our targeted wards. Getting to know Ashton on Mersey a bit better these days. I have a long relationship with the town without regularly visiting it. As a kid I looked out over a playing field at the side of the then ‘new’ motorway. Beyond that was the River Mersey and beyond that, Ashton. There was no bridge, so Ashton was very much out of reach in those days.
Ashton lay on the Cheshire bank of the Mersey. The River Mersey has long been a border river, once the border between Mercia and Northumbria and for a millenium the border of Cheshire. I’ve always been proud to be a Lancastrian and whilst we were cycling on different routes to Cheshire places like Lymm and Manchester Airport as quite young kids, I’ve never lost that attachment to Ashton as the border town that you could see but couldn’t get to.
I’m quite proud to be a ‘Manc’ as well as Lancastrian and the two identities have never been odds with each other. The fact that Lancashire County Cricket Club is head-quartered in our patch of M32, only has meaning in the context of that Lancastrian identity and I think it’s something to keep hold of. Political administrative boundaries come and go, wards are redrawn, combined authorities created and abandoned, even northern powerhouses. But there seems something reassuringly permanent about the old counties even if they have no governance function. It’s probably the solidity of the geographical boundaries that reinforces but it also feels that there’s something important to our identity that is often missed or even dismissed.
I celebrate the fact that people self identify with the historic counties in their addresses whether it be Bolton, Lancs or Sale, Cheshire. I would love to see more more county boundary signs nationally but particularly within Trafford. Some of this is irrational, some might say absurd, but our multiple identities matter and have value, let’s keep those county lines.
You may have seen media praise for Altrincham’s regeneration recently, such as this article in the online local government journal Local Gov. It’s a worthwhile read. In many ways the Partington transformation has been even more impressive despite its much smaller size.
Altrincham has benefited from a focus on the assets within the town centre and recognition as to the extent of its catchment. Similarly Partington town centre now has an impressive 100% occupancy rate. These two Trafford towns may be polar opposites in affluence but there are similarities in how their town centres function.
The article praises Altrincham’s introduction of narrower carriageways and more street crossings to slow traffic. A thing I love about Partington’s centre is that despite generous car parking, it feels that it’s just as accessible on foot or by bike. Given it’s in the middle of a residential area, that makes perfect business sense. Altrincham needs people to come in via public transport and on foot to sustain its thriving evening leisure economy. As a consequence, I never feel that it’s unexpected to travel in on modes other than the car to shop in these centres. There’s street furniture and connecting pathways/bikeways to avoid the traffic. And whilst it may be that most of the custom to these two towns is reliant on the car, my mental image of them is of people in the street talking to each other.
That last point is important. It’s not just about the variety of retail, you’ve got to get the customer into town in the first place. I suspect that we’re psychologically conditioned to expect to see certain things as we enter a town centre and by quite a young age we know when we’re in a town centre, even if we’ve never been there before. The characteristics we’re so clued into probably include shop fronts and people, movement and bustle.
I am convinced we want to see shop-fronts and people on foot even if we come in by car. It’s psychological confirmation that it’s a town centre we’re in.
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