Category: Blog

Trafford Council are implementing huge cuts to their budget despite being sheltered from the worst of reductions in Government Funding compared to the most deprived areas like Manchester and Salford. The Conservative draft budget shows savage cuts to all service areas. At the same time, the numbers of directors continues to grow, glossy magazines continue to be distributed and the Town Hall offices are being replaced.

As the following table shows, nearly £5m is being axed from the Children’s and Young Service Budget and over £6m from Communities and Well Being including nearly £4m being cut from services for older people.

Dear All,

It’s February already and it only seems a couple of weeks ago that we were in the middle of the Christmas festivities!!!!

January has been and gone and with it, a little bit of a mixed bag in relation to crime within the area. The vast majority of crimes are showing reductions but rather than give you lots of percentages, I thought that on this occasion, I would let you know just how many key crimes had occurred in January, compared to the same period in the previous year.

Personal Robberies increased from a very low figure of 3 last year, to 6 this January. The majority of these have involved bags/mobile phones being snatched from people as they have been walking along the road. The level of violence used during these offences has been minimal but I will endeavour to ensure that we continue to identify patterns/locations where these are occurring and deploy staff accordingly.

Burglaries have reduced from 29 to 25 offences this January and whilst only a small reduction, when you go back even further to January 2009 when we suffered 34 burglaries – you will clearly see that we are definitely moving in the right direction with the one offence that the public really fear.

Vehicle crime continues to fall, Theft of motor vehicles reduced from 9 to 4 with a big drop in Theft from motor vehicles from 16 to 3 and when you consider the number of vehicles that regularly visit the area for the football matches, these figures are all the more remarkable.

Criminal Damage offences are also showing encouraging reductions from 45 to 39 and again, if you go back to January 2009 when we had 66 offences of Damage recorded, I am sure that you will agree that the trend is encouraging.

Finally and perhaps one of the reasons that we are showing reductions in the majority of crime categories, is the massive reduction in reports of ASB with 217 being recorded last January compared with 126 this January. This is by no means a fluke. I am convinced that all the partnership work that is being undertaken is starting to pay dividends, Operation Stay Safe on selected key dates, the Kickz football project, Y Street at places such as Gorse Hill Studios, enforcement at problem licensed premises and numerous ABC contracts have all contributed to the ASB reduction which in turn impacts on other crimes.

As usual, I will be in touch with any noteworthy incidents/information over the coming month but if you need to speak in the meantime, feel free to give me a call.

regards

Andy

Inspector Andy Sutcliffe
Stretford Neighbourhood Policing Team
M Division – Trafford
Greater Manchester Police

I’ve received the latest quarterly performance from Trafford’s police team. The performance from the Stretford team is particularly striking. Well done to Andy Sutcliffe and all the men and women who’ve made a real difference.

Commentary:
We have reduced crime in all areas compared to last year, resulting in 160 fewer victims.

We have done a lot of work to clamp down on the use and sale of illegal drugs, which I believe is linked to other crimes such as burglary, robbery and anti-social behaviour.  For example, a person was jailed for six years in December after he was found guilty of possession of cocaine with intent to supply and possession of heroin with intent to supply.  The drugs were found in his flat when a search warrant was executed.

Antisocial behaviour has dropped by 40 per cent compared to last year.  We have done a lot of work with housing associations and Trafford Council’s asb team to evict problem tenants from their properties.  Following complaints of asb and alcohol sales to underage drinkers we also successfully opposed a convenience store when they applied to transfer the licence to another holder.  The application was unsuccessful.  This week we also became the first area in GMP to successfully apply for a section 160 order.  This will prevent all alcohol sales in a designated area around of Old Trafford ahead of the weekend’s FA Cup fixture against Liverpool.

Vehicle crime has dropped by 59 per cent and this is, in part, due to our high visibility and plain clothed patrols in hot spot areas, in particular on Manchester United match days when the volume of parked vehicles in the area increases significantly.

Inspector Andrew Sutcliffe Stretford Neighbourhood Police Team

DETECTIONS ACROSS TRAFFORD:

The below table shows the percentage of the total number crimes detected across the Trafford division between October and December 2010 along with a percentage difference when compared the corresponding quarter in 2009.

The Division has the best overall detection rate of all 12 areas of GMP, which is an excellent achievement given that the division had the worst overall detection rate 12 months ago.

I’ve received the following advice from the Stretford Neighbourhood Police Team in response to recent burglaries in the Barton Road area of Stretford.

Dear resident,

I am writing to inform you that your neighbourhood has recently been targeted by burglars.

We are working to tackle this by increasing Police patrols and targeting known criminals.

One in three burglaries happen when doors and windows are left open or unlocked. Help us to help you avoid becoming a victim of burglary by following a few simple steps.

·     Lock all external doors and windows whether you are at home or not

·     Leave a light on or use plug in timers to operate lights and radios

·     If you have an alarm use it everytime you go out or go to bed

We would urge you to report any suspicious activity, as by working together we stand a better chance of catching those responsible.

If you have a policing issue in your area or wish to speak to an officer please contact the Stretford Neighbourhood Policing Team on 0161 856 7655 or email Stretford.Area@gmp.police.uk

For non-emergency calls or to report a crime call 0161 872 5050 or for more information visit gmp.police.uk. Only call 999 in an emergency where there is a threat to life or crime in progress.

You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

Email Sent from Greater Manchester Police

Budget under fire

Monday

Met with Theresa Grant and Ian Duncan to discuss the budget for Transformation and Resources.

I’m particularly concerned about:

• the ending of the mobile library service: according to the Draft Budget the termination of the Mobile Library Service will save just £8000 which seems remarkably low but the van is on a long lease and probably costs more to surrender than to continue. Given the low level of saving I can’t support the end of this service.
• Communications: Although there will be savings brought about by centralising the Council’s PR, Trafford has not put its magazine ‘Your Trafford’ into the mix and it’s being protected. I believe this is an insult to those staff losing their jobs. ‘Your Trafford’ is one of those anodyne and self-congratulatory indulgences beloved of councils. What’s even more infuriating is that the Conservative
  Secretary of State for Local Government denounced, Eric Pickles, denounced these town hall pravdas that end up in the bin. No doubt Trafford’s Conservative Group all nodded with agreement at this sage advice, failing to acknowledge that ‘Your Trafford’ was just another ‘Hurrah for Us, Aren’t we Clever’ piece of rubbish that goes straight to recycling. At a cost of aproximately £100,000, it would more than be enough to save the Mobile Library service.

  Traffords answer to suggestions from the citizen’s debate ‘Some proposed that ‘Your Trafford’ be stopped was that ‘it is important that the Council has a way to inform residents of its services and performance, and other statutory requirements such as informing residents about how to vote in local elections. Loosely translated that’s ‘Hurrah for us’. With such a difficult budget, it’s simply indefensible to ignore the clamour for this to be scrapped.

  Whilst on the subject of publications, I asked about Trafford’s affiliation to the LGA (Local Government Association. I support Trafford’s membership of the umbrella organisation but I’m increasingly fed up with the parafanalia that goes with it. All Trafford’s councillors receive a weekly magazine from the LGA and yes it’s another ‘Hurrah for us’ magazine. Now I don’t know how much the specific costs are but would guess it’s more than a £1.50 a week for each councillor and I haven’t come across a single councillor who feels its essential reading. And there’s all the other stuff that the LGA puts on with London conferences. I believe they can cut down drastically and reduce Trafford’s affiliation fees. I would not be surprised if we could achieve over £20k. Its rather academic as we couldn’t achieve the budget saving in this coming year.

• Finance – This directorate is getting a cut of £0.75m, nearly a quarter of its costs. Yes the public are asking for back office functions to be first in the line for cuts but Finance does perform an important function. Trafford has a good record in the collection of Council Tax. I would not like to be regretting this cut in a year’s time. There’s not a lot of IT enhancements going on in this team and the budget narrative refers only to training costs being reduced. This doesn’t fill me with confidence that the savings can be achieved. It was acknowledged that there were risks.
• Libraries becoming a Trust – This is in its early days of policy development but the Council has earmarked £40,000 to develop the proposals. There are savings that could be realised if the library buildings were to be placed in the ownership of a charitable trust particularly in respect of Business Rates. Both Wigan and Salford have pursued this line. But there are risks as well and I’m not sure what would happen if Libraries were to ‘fail’. Additionally we have Access Trafford – the customer interface of the Council placed in the libraries. How will this be affected? We really need to scrutinise these proposals before £40k is committed.

Tuesday

I wasn’t able to make it to Trafford Healthcare Trust Board. I attended a school governors committee meeting.
I also withdrew my objection to the ‘Bowlers Disco’ license application. I retain doubts about this; it’s a large music venue and will if successful bring three to four thousand young people at weekends to a very deserted part of Trafford Park. The main concern I had was of people being ejected from the premises and hanging around waiting for the coach to depart. There’s really nowhere for them to go unless they walk via Parkway to Lostock Circle. However the police feel that they’ve been able to extract agreement to conditions that evictees are looked after. In actual fact the conditions to the license are quite tight which is why I withdrew my objection; but we’ll have to see whether they’re workable or achievable.

Wednesday

Council Meeting – Chief Superintendent Mark Roberts, Divisional Commander of Trafford.Police.gave a presentation on a brilliant performance in reducing crime and increasing detection. The police are in line for huge Government Cuts and it seems criminal to doing this when we’ve all seen the benefits of effective policing.
Unfortunately we didn’t have a great deal of time to debate the five motions put to council. Having said that full council is really an opportunity just to be rude to each other. There are more important aspects of being a councillor and thankfully Full Council meets less than a dozen times a year.

Thursday

Holocaust Memorial Day – I’m not big on civic ceremonial engagements but I do try to make myself free for the Holocaust memorial at Sale Waterside. We should never forget.

Friday

Met with Kate Green and Labour activists outside Seymour Park Junior School for a school gate surgery session. Huge amounts of support for Labour and lots of worries over the damage the cuts are bringing.

Saturday

Labour Policy Planning Day – Standing only room – signifies the anger at the Conservatives and Liberal Democrat Government. People want to be involved in winning back power from their idealogically driven agenda.

I watched last night’s programme from Andrew Neill with interest and would recommend it. The former editor of Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times newspaper looked at the increasingly narrow social spectrum from which our MPs are drawn. He exposed the similar route to parliament taken by David and Ed Miliband, David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Boris Johnson, Ed Balls, Michael Gove, Yvette Cooper….the list goes on.

It’s a genuine problem. Andrew Neill seemed to be suggesting that we needed a return to Grammar Schools and went back to his old school which was now a comprehensive. Sadly the 6th formers he interviewed, despite being more articulate and worldly-wise than those interviewed from Eton, didn’t believe they had a chance to gate-crash the old school/University ties that had created this stasis. Neill’s right that it worsens Government, but he’s wrong about the remedy. There is nothing inherently essential about an Oxford PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) that is required for high office. Given the visible decline in the public standing of MPs, it could be argued that the opposite is true.

Frankly the onus is on the Labour Party to sort itself out. The Conservative Party has a tendency towards choosing its candidates from a certain privileged section and since it represents that class, I have no problem with them recruiting from it. Labour though does have a problem and it was sad to see Alan Johnson on the programme as the exception that proves the rule. However it seems somehow appropriate that he should have left office just before the programme was screened.

Andrew Neill focused in his programme on Labour’s parliamentary selection in Stoke in which the Constituency Secretary Gary Elsby was not shortlisted by Labour’s NEC to his eternal resentment. It needed to be clarified that the NEC plays no part in the vast majority of Labour Party selections. It’s only in by-elections and vacancies declared as the General Election is due it’s the NEC that decides the shortlist from which the local party chooses the final candidate. Technically (apart from the separate question of All Women Shortlists), the Labour Party allows local members a great deal of autonomy in the selection of candidates except in this small number of by-elections and late selections. However, interestingly (and Neill missed this), this minority of selections made on an NEC shortlist seem to have had a disproportionate impact at the top of the party.

Looking at the top of Labour’s current shadow cabinet it’s interesting to see how many came through the NEC shortlist:

Amongst those that did have normal selections, support from people at the top of the party played a part particularly for Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham. Ed Balls already had established his reputation before his selection.

It’s not that the party establishment overwhelmingly chooses all its MPs. It just seems that there’s a fast track to ministerial office that’s already in motion before the search to find a safe seat even begins. And if you’ve not established yourself onto that conveyor belt before you enter parliament, it’s going to me so much harder in parliament. That conveyor is a bit like the chute used on the Barclaycard adverts, it begins at Oxford PPE, weaves it way by ingratiating the chosen graduate into the world of a ministerial sugar daddy and then via a parachute into a seat ready to fight a quick election. No nursing of the seat wondering when the election is going to be called. No fighting unwinnable seats to cut your teeth and establish a reputation. Andrew Neill was partly right but he really missed the point that most Labour MPs still do it the hard way. And Blessed are the chosen few.

It’s not all bleak though, and I do think that the party is interfering less. Encouragingly both the Oldham-Saddleworth and Barnsley by-elections have been given strong shortlists to choose from. And my own experience in Stretford and Urmston was that once we’d got the decision on whether we were one of the seats designated as an All Women Shortlist, we received absolutely no interference from the national party in our choice. Labour is certainly more representative than it was. Unlike Sky Sports, the party is moving in the right direction. I want to see Ed Miliband look to the new intake for more of our shadow ministers; there’s absolutely enough talent there. Let’s move away from this transfixion with the old college network and make it a meritocracy within the Parliamentary Labour Party.