Up to 13,000 landlords in one east London borough have failed to declare their rental income to the Government, the local council has found.

Local Gov News 14th August 2017

We only know this because Newham has a compulsory landlord registration scheme. In Trafford there is no landlord registration scheme. We don’t know who they are and there is no desire from the Tories to do anything about it.

We already suffer enough blights from the private landlords and their lack of care. The fact that it seems likely there’s as little attention to their tax affairs as there is to the neighbourhoods in which they operate is another reason we need a Labour council to get on top of this.

“Pay Your Taxes – Hold Your Head High” by Andrew Sorensen, CC BY-NC 2.0

Jen Williams is continually showing that great journalism doesn’t have to be London based. It’s worth reading the linked article from the Manchester Evening News.

On the mayor, I haven’t changed my view. Only someone of the stature of Andy Burnham has a chance of making it work. But it’s still going to be difficult.

There are hurdles to surmount. There’s no doubt about that.

The Tory Government has lost its will to do anything much at all collectively and is showing all the signs of being totally dysfunctional – it should be in special measures. And that makes the devolution agenda far harder.

The council leaders across Greater Manchester (with two perhaps 3 exceptions*) are incredibly secure in their positions. I’m sure that fact creates its own dynamic.

* I’m less concerned that a council is predominantly ruled by one party, that’s just electoral geography. It’s reasonable to ask though how the parties select and sustain their leader over the decades. There’s an argument that only Salford has a transparent process with its City Mayor. I just float that mischievous thought…. Discuss

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Just a flavour of some of my current casework. I’ve removed names from an email I’ve sent.

Euroterminal

I’ve been approached separately by a few people regarding increased noise, particularly in evenings and night. There seems to be increased noise from stationery trains close to the football stadium. This will be exclusively at night I guess as the trains will be on the main line there and awaiting siding at the EuroTerminal.

Do we have a liaison with the EuroTerminal Management? I remember it was a big issue before I became a Councillor but has largely been managed well since. It is just this year that it has begun to resurface.

Dog Poo

Raglan/Melville/Sevenways

Always an issue but has increased as a nuisance on the Raglan/Melville/Sevenways triangle. It is not an area of the ward that has ever been prioritised for ‘Be Responsible’ activity, but seems to be a big issue at the moment and has been raised by a few neighbours.

Streetlights

On my same Raglan Road; they’re metal and rusty. Is it programmed to paint these legacy columns here and elsewhere? Alternatively, is the intention to let them degrade until they can be replaced with LED bearing columns?

Mobikes and Manchester United

Steve Pyer (Mobike UK) gave a presentation to TfGMC this morning.  The conversation moved onto Manchester United/Manchester City; and it seemed apparent that Mobike had a rather out of date idea of crowd flow at these events. They were assuming bikes and crowds don’t mix because essentially it was a stationery crush. My experience is that even for the biggest matches there is always flow in crowd movement; and actually for mobikes in particular compared to a racing bike, there is scope for putting these in the mix. At both stadia there’s supporters who do use bikes City have better facilities but United still have some users. Mobike is already in North Trafford whether officially or not and their management recognise that. I’m hoping that we can encourage more.

Speed Calming; The Fiveways junction (Park Road/Davyhulme Road)

Continues to be an issue. For some reason that slight decline towards the railway bridge encourages excessive acceleration. I have been contacted by a young resident on Park Road.

There’s a case for a speed trap/speed indicator device and for improved sequencing.

Davyhulme Road/Moss Road Spar

The issue of the parking place accessible only by reversing directly onto a pelican crossing is still unresolved. There was a dispute between traffic management and planning enforcement. My understanding that there wasn’t a planning condition attached to the original change of use but there was on the installation of an ATM. Either way it is falling between two stools and not being resolved.

Speed calming Rowsley Road

I’ve had two separate calls for speed calming on Rowsley Road between Chatsworth Road and Barton Road. It’s surprised me because it doesn’t look particularly like a rat run, but that does indeed seem to be happening.

Moss Road

There’s a vehicle repair business spilling onto the road. There’s permanently vehicles parked there. I have received complaints that there’s speeding and untidiness. Clearly there’s more residents using this road with the new development on the College site. The speeding might not always be associated with the business but is an issue I’ve seen for myself.

Photo by Ksenia Chernaya: overhead-shot-of-a-person-using-a-tablet-7695250

Scrutiny

Our first scrutiny meeting of the council year was on Wednesday last week.

• 2017/18 Scrutiny Committee Work Programme
• Executive’s Response to the Task & Finish Group Review into the Education, Health & Care Plan (EHCP) Process in Trafford
• Executive’s Response to the Task and Finish Group Review of the Joint Venture Contract between Trafford Council and Amey
• ADP Report (2016/17 Quarter Four)
• Discussion on the 2018/19 Budget Scrutiny Process
• Fire Safety within Trafford
• Crisis Capability Management
• Task and Finish Group Prioritising Tasks

Scrutiny is often about small gains/changes. The hard truth is if you want to make a real difference, you need to win elections and it’s now 15 years since we came out of an election in Trafford with Labour in overall control.

Nevertheless, we had a couple of small such wins last night resulting from work we did in the last municipal year:

1. Trafford’s Conservative Cabinet recognised there’d been deficiencies in their delivery of EHCPs and had given assurances.
2. Scrutiny are not going to surprise anyone with our
   concern over the state of streets and parks, but we’re pleased that there will now be regular reports to the executive on performance.
   
   At least councillors will begin to see the overall
   performance recorded rather than just having to chase specific jobs.

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The issue of responding to customer complaints of fly-tipping, litter bins overflowing, pot holes, grass not being cut etc. will continue to be a focus in the coming year. We have it on our workplan to look at Trafford’s CRM system. We know that it’s a constant frustration if things are reported and the work is either not done or marked as completed without feedback. The interaction with other computer systems is also an issue.

Labour members were keen that Clean Air be a topic for a task and finish group. Conservatives said it was an issue about which nothing could be done.

This is why it’s so important that Trafford becomes a Labour Council. We’ve got to challenge and change the way we live our lives if it’s killing us.

We can’t just shrug our shoulders and say nothing can be done. There’s actually quite a lot that could be done to improve air quality. It’s not just an issue of power stations not yet built.

So anyhow, our topics for this year will be

• Trafford’s CRM system,
• Services provided to Schools by Trafford,
• Loneliness

All are worthwhile, it’s vital that we get the right scope at the beginning for each topic.

Addendum – Property Rush – Easy Money for Councils?

How can you scrutinise when everything is going to be great?
On Thursday, I took the train to Preston for a meeting of the regional scrutiny network.

The main focus was a presentation by Shaer Halewood of Oldham Council on scrutiny of commercialisation activity. Many councils are buying up property for income generation. (Councils bet billions on property purchases)

It’s a real challenge for Scrutiny and for Audit. How do we ensure the council is not exposed to undue risk. How do we assess risk levels of commercial deals when they are shrouded in commercial confidentiality clauses?

Trafford issued a report in December on its approach to this.
Investment Opportunities Report

And it’s intention to set up an an investment company in managing its property portfolio.

Report 2

We’re now moving to a position where Trafford are exploring potential acquisitions as per the decision of the executive 26 June and there’s a real challenge to cut through.

Property development can be lucrative but as the Times article linked to above points out, so can be the 2:30 at Ascot. And if it goes wrong, “services will have to be slashed harder and taxes put up more”.

It was a really worthwhile scrutiny network meeting.