The Labour Group has called for an extraordinary Council meeting in order to instruct officers to appeal against the decision to grant the Biomass incineration Plant made by the Conservative Secretary of State Eric Pickles.

Councillor David Acton, Leader of Trafford Labour Group said, ” Eric Pickles has made an appalling decision which flies in the face of thousands of local people who live in Trafford.

The decision also runs absolutely contrary against the principles of ”Localism”. The Council unanimously opposed planning permission, the whole community were against it and campaigned tirelessly in opposition to the Incineration Plant.

We therefore are calling on the Council to condemn the decision made be the Government Minister and to appeal that decision through the Court.

Like thousands of local people I am worried about the potential health effects of this plant, which I believe will emit harmful pollution on top of the already high levels of pollution in the Davyhulme, Flixton, Urmston area. Local people are saying enough is enough and are calling for the decision to be reversed.

COUNCIL MOTION:
Submitted by Trafford Labour Group

The Council condemns the decision made by the Conservative Government Secretary of State in overruling this Council’s unanimous decision to refuse planning permission for the development of a Biomass Incineration Plant in Davyhulme.

This Conservative Government decision flies in the face of the Thousands of local people who have campaigned against and opposed this Incineration plant. The decision runs contrary to the definition of ”Localism” and belies any notion of local democracy and the strong wishes of our community.

In light of the above Trafford Council agrees to appeal the decision of the Secretary of State through the Court.

Notes: The next scheduled Council Meeting is 10 July – too late for appeal. If Legal Officers accede to the request from the Labour Group the meeting would have to be June TBA

Trafford Town Hall by Peter McDermott, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Regarding reported threat of closure – Advertiser 22/5/13

Open Letter from Councillors and MP on behalf of the three wards of Stretford regarding the reported threat of closure of Wilkos in Stretford Mall, Trafford, Manchester UK.

Speaking up for residents and the emerging community vibe. Addressed to the board of Wilkinsons.

Wilkinsons Stretford

“Wilko Uxbridge” by Stephen Cannon, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Please join me and Love Your Bike in opposing new mega-trucks being allowed across Europe. 

Love Your Bike are an organisation attached to Friends of the Earth and supporting a safer, greener, bike friendly city here in Manchester. I recommend their website.

They’ve highlighted the potentially horrific introduction of articulated 80ft mega trucks across europe if proposals go ahead are urging everyone to write to their MEPs to work with them to oppose this move.

Labour MEPs have already forcefully voiced their opposition to this introduction. I hope the MEPs of other parties will similarly respond but the clock is ticking.

I have today written to Arlene McCarthy and Brian Simpson Labour MEPs for the north west to thank them for their support.

Here is my email:

Dear Brian,

I’ve been contacted by the Love Your Bike organisation about the proposal to allow trucks up to 80ft long and supported by the European Commission.

I notice from the Love Your Bike website that you have already stated your strong opposition to this change. I am therefore writing to thank you for that opposition and urge you to continue fight for safer modes of transporting goods.

As Love Your Bike have indicated, while the UK Government says it will not allow mega trucks to come to the UK it will be lobbied by the road haulage industry which has an insatiable appetite for bigger heavier lorries. In fact the UK Government buckled to pressure from the road haulage industry in 2012 by allowing 7 ft longer lorries on our roads which are already congested and not designed for vehicles of these proportions.

Even the European Commission’s own  research showed that mega trucks are more dangerous than existing HGVs

Because of the double articulation needed for manoeuvrability in urban areas there is a serious loss of stability at cruising speeds which increases risk of snaking, for example changing lanes.

So once again thank you for your opposition and I note that so far, only yourself and your colleague Labour MEP, Arlene McCarthy have indicated their opposition to Love Your Bike.

Thank you for your unequivocal responses. It is much appreciated.

Mike Cordingley

Facebook Group: Gorse Hill Labour Party (Trafford) – open to all

Image Src = “Transpoint truck in Jyväskylä, Finland” by Antti Leppänen, CC BY-SA 2.0

A young woman is filmed dressed in wetsuit paddling in the waves under grey skies on a miserable drizzly day taking samples of seawater. She’s interviewed, she works for the Environment Agency and she admits she’s the only person paddling that day, but it’s just another day’s work to keep our environment safe and clean.

Bathing water testing #Blackpool #NorthShore w/ @GordonMarsden @PaulMaynardMP & Cllr Fred Jackson #valuingwater pic.twitter.com/yY5TO2KdG4

— Env Agency NW (@EnvAgencyNW) May 17, 2013

This is the image of the Environment Agency that I want to subscribe to. A public agency working with others to make our environment healthy and safe.

Over recent months though, my view of the Environment Agency has been challenged. No longer do I have such confidence in the Agency’s moral purpose or its accountability; and most importantly, I no longer have confidence in its guardianship of the environment.

I’m sure there are many staff within EA working tirelessly and honourably. It certainly has one of the best marketing departments of any Govt Agency. But our experience suggests the agency has constructed a myth.

On Thursday Eric Pickles announced his decision to give the go-ahead to the Barton Renewable Energy Plant following Peel Energy’s appeal to the planning inspectorate. The Inspectorate’s report to Mr Pickles is riddled with references to the Environment Agency as an authority. The inspector defers time and time again to the Environment Agency.

So Pickles passes the buck to the Inspector; and the Inspector passes the buck to the EA.

Friends of the Earth (South Hams) have highlighted that the Environment Agency has never refused an Environmental Permit to an incinerator application. And campaigners here have voiced so many criticisms of their report on Barton that it casts doubt on the whole process.

So much distrust has been created by the Environmental Agency. They didn’t even take notes when they consulted with the public

Eric Pickles proudly heralded a ground-breaking shift in power to councils and communities overturning decades of central government control. Instead we got a stitch-up and more distrust than ever.

Image: The Environment Agency considered legitimate use

Letter to Secretary of State DCLG re BioMass Incinerator in Davyhulme, Manchester UK

Mike Cordingley

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 been loathed to grant funding to projects that it felt were the responsibility of the landlord. And somewhere along the way 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 targeting 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.