From the Canal to Sevenways

Category: Blog

  • Amey and Trafford’s relationship is up for Review

    Amey and Trafford’s relationship is up for Review

    The Amey One Trafford Partnership has been a feature of life in Trafford for the last six and a half years and we’re coming up to the 7 year review.

    So whether you’re itching to get Amey out of your life, or happy to move forward together, councillor scrutiny of the contract has commenced.

    7 year Review

    The agreement was signed 7th May 2015 and the partnership is due to end on the 30th June 2030 for everything but the street lighting contract, which gets an extra 5 years until 2035.

    There is a provision for the council to ask for an 8 year extension to 2038 if it so chooses, but to all intents and purposes the bulk of the contract is a 15 year agreement and we’re coming up to that half way point.

    What gets to be reviewed?

    The terms of the review are specified under clause 12 of the agreement. The terms have their roots in the original aims of the ‘Reshaping Trafford’ project set out at the onset of the tender in March 2015:

    • To deliver a minimum of 20% savings against the net budget from contract commencement.
    • To deliver further, future efficiency savings through continuous improvement and innovation in service provision through the contract life.
    • To have flexibility, recognising the challenging financial climate facing local authorities at the moment.
    • Protect jobs and maintain service standards in so far as practicable.

    So this time last year under clause 12, the council must have begun the process to assess Amey’s performance against:

    • Achieving value for money in its services on behalf of the council
    • Preparing Service Plans
    • Satisfying the users of services
    • Satisfying the council
    • Providing a competitive service

    And the council will have engaged in a dialogue in order to determine whether it wished to exercise rights to request a Seven year options proposal very much focused within the agreement on cost reduction, so that those options will consider in order of precedence:

    • Efficiency improvement
    • Income generation
    • Reconfiguration of service delivery
    • Adjustment of targets and performance
    • Adjustment to scope

    At the end of the review

    As you can see the Tory contract always envisaged service degradation at this point in the agreement. It has to be said that the Tories also envisaged that Amey might not wish to comply, or they may wish to make counter proposals that the council the council would find unacceptable. Both these outcomes are provided for in the agreement along with a protocol designed to bring both parties together but with the possibility of agreement termination as the ultimate recourse.

    Conclusion

    This process must be coming to its latter stages now and the call has been made for a cross party group to come together to look at the review. I don’t have any insight into where we’re at but probably wouldn’t be able to tell you if I did have.

    Politically, whatever changes are made will be Labour changes.

    It’s worth pointing out then that I’m convinced the ‘Reshaping Trafford’ project, more than anything, led to the demise of the Conservatives in Trafford. A 20% reduction in funding for the only services that we all use was the most comprehensive suicide note that any council has written ever. Whatever happens at this seven year review, it’ll still be a Conservative project but increasingly we in Labour will be held to be responsible for its day to day running. It’s in our interest to make the partnership more accountable to its users and that’s something actually enshrined in the agreement.

    Clause 12:13 talks about whether or not “the Service Provider has to a material extent failed to satisfy the users of the Services in relation to the Service Provider‘s performance under this Agreement.”

    Facebook photo of OT revolting Protest 2017 (Year 2 of Contract)

    I think it’s fairly clear that ‘Love Old Trafford’ had their patience stretched by Amey and the council. Once the 7 year review is over, I don’t believe the distinction between Amey and the council will wash. It’ll be council services and we’ll to a much greater extent have to satisfy the users of the services.

    That said, there’s real chance for Amey and senior councillors be more joined up and responsive to the public and their representatives. The prospect of another seven years of staying together just because they have to is too depressing to contemplate. This isn’t a marriage. The seven year review provides a chance to bring partnership back to the fore. I hope it goes well.

  • Our genuine Budget Dilemma shouldn’t mean we target residents who already have to put up with too much on a match day

    Our genuine Budget Dilemma shouldn’t mean we target residents who already have to put up with too much on a match day

    Stop Press

    Good News: The proposal to charge for visitors has been withdrawn

    As it stands today the council is having to save or draw in income amounting to over £11 million. This is after increased council tax and use of reserves is factored in. So we’re under pressure and there’s some difficult decisions to make. So far the council has identified £5.5m savings and income proposals.

    We won’t know the full position until the government announces the draft local government finance settlement in December but it’s a difficult situation. We’re currently scrutinising proposals for the budget based on what we know now.

    As can be seen below nearly half the proposed savings are coming from the ‘Place Directorate’ and these are being looked at tonight.

    Looking at the ‘Place’ savings, the majority is coming from savings in waste. It shows how important recycling is to the council. Contaminated waste really costs us and it’s vital to keep improving recycling rates to get that waste levy down.

    An area I’m having problems with and I’m keen to focus in on is the £100,000 review of resident parking permits.

    I’ve learned that it contains the introduction of charges for visitors permits. Currently Gorse Hill gets a small pack of free visitor permits. This works well but it’s now proposed to charge £25 for 12 visitor permits at the start of the season.

    This proposal has now been withdrawn.

    The Council has got this wrong I think. The whole point of the permit scheme is to allow residents close to the ground to have normal lives as far as possible. The council shouldn’t be trying to make money out of it. I’m convinced some will pay and others won’t. It’s common under the current scheme for visiting passes to get shared when it comes to weddings, funerals or building work. That sharing ethos is put at risk and I’m not sure they’ll get as big a take-up as they’re anticipating. So I’m very much trying to get them to rethink.

    We do need to raise money though and I’ve included suggestions.

    • We could be bringing Sundays into line with other days and start charging on the car parks etc. Currently it’s free to park on a Sunday. Given we want to charge people to have visitors on a Sunday in Gorse Hill, I don’t think it stacks up.
    • I also think we’re massively undercharging for match day street vending. Our top rate is just over £3000 for a prime spot. When you compare that to how much operators have to pay for a weekend’s pitch at festivals there’s a huge discrepancy. You might pay £18,000 for a few days.

    I’ll report back how I get on but I’m determined to get rid of the charges for visitors.

  • Good Strategy, Implementation when? Ever?

    Good Strategy, Implementation when? Ever?

    We’ve had two very different reports this week in Trafford. Both the “Streets for All Strategy” from Andy Burnham’s team and the replacement of pop-up cycle lanes consultation got approval. Whilst the overall strategy seems clear, and there ought to be a greater focus on helping us use healthier travel options when appropriate, implementation appears elusive and the possibility of turning the clock back looks to be on the cards for Trafford.

    Streets For All Strategy

    Link to Decision

    Link to Strategy

    The 10 Greater Manchester Authorities are adopting this strategy. It’s been adopted by Trafford this week. The vision is:

    We will ensure that our streets are welcoming, green, and safe spaces for all people, enabling more travel by walking, cycling and using public transport while creating thriving places that support local communities and businesses.

    Streets for All Vision

    Valuing our streets as community assets

    Streets for All recognises the value of our local places, something which Covid-19 has shone a light on. We want streets that feel part of the community, not just a route for cars to travel along. In my view it’s belatedly recognising that towns so focused and dependent on car use are neither going to be attractive nor prosper. My goodness, it’s taken Stretford a long time to appreciate that.

    Green Places

    The strategy acknowledges that since road transport generates nearly a third of all carbon emissions, we are going to need to see significant changes in the ways people travel. This will require radical change in how people, goods and
    services move into and around our city-region.

    Expected Standards

    Vitally, expected standards on the different road types are set out. The key is delivering these and it’s not all about huge infrastructure projects. So for instance, on our strategic and connector roads network such as the A56 and Park/Barton Roads, crossings should be provided where people need them that allow them to cross quickly and safely.

    We aren’t delivering to the standard now. There’s work to be done: the Park Road/Derbyshire Lane junction is a nightmare for pedestrians and should be a priority, and equally, there still isn’t a crossing on the A56 to Gorse Hill Park main entrance where it is very much needed. Nevertheless, the strategy does at least set out priorities and expectations. And it’s down to us hold the decision makers to account as to whether they’re adhering to it.

    Consultation for Temporary Pop-up Cycle Lanes

    Link to Decision

    Link to Report

    In an entirely different report Trafford’s Executive Member for Environmental and Regulatory Services (Cllr Stephen Adshead) approved a proposal to consult with the public on the three options for the future of the popup cycle lanes along the A56:

    • to replace it with a shared bus/cycle lane;
    • to replace it with a protected cycle only lane; or
    • to remove it entirely and revert to pre-COVID-19 status.

    Shared Bus/Cycle Lane

    There’s no getting away from it that this is something of a confused and contradictory report. Whilst a bus/cycle lane is presented as an option (perhaps even a preferred option), there seems to have been very little evaluation, no mention of working with the bus companies or identification of services. There are in fact no bus services on the A56 Bridgewater Way, so either they are prepared to mix and match (something the report explicitly rules out) or they could end up with a bus lane with no buses on a significant portion of the route.

    I’m not entirely comfortable with the premise that cycle lanes and bus lanes are interchangeable and have similar characteristics. How a bus lane deals with left turns is usually to simply end and allow all vehicles into the lane. That’s really hazardous for people riding bicycles. Nevertheless there are good reasons to have bus lanes and they could make a difference in places where installing a continuous cycle lane proved difficult, for instance in Gorse Hill and Sale. However, these places seem outside the scope of the report. It’s a missed opportunity.

    Bus Lanes need enforcement as there’s no physical separation. Fines are the normal enforcement means. This doesn’t get a mention but will be a controversial element of any bus lane implementation.

    It would have been sensible to have included consultation drafts with the report. So far bus lanes have not been mentioned in the council’s press releases with regard to the consultation. Nevertheless they form a major option in the report so, I guess we will have to wait to see the consultation material to be able to judge whether this is serious or just cover for getting rid of the pop-up lanes.

    Replace with a protected cycle only lane

    Again we’ll have to see. The bike lanes have not been a problem everywhere and in Stretford town centre perhaps the greatest benefit has been moving the traffic back a lane allowing bars to flourish and pedestrians to breathe.

    The Bridgewater Way section has no pavement and whilst a shared-use path seems the obvious solution, the options available seem to rule it out. This would be a huge missed opportunity, the cones have made it so much safer for fans travelling to the stadium.

    Remove A56 pop-up cycle lanes entirely and revert to pre-COVID-19 status

    Cycle lanes have proved problematic in places particularly on Edge Lane and at Stretford Tip. In other places I would argue that they’ve regulated traffic flow; the A56 varies along its length, in places three lanes and sometimes one lane. Sometimes the lanes are generous widths other times (at Stretford Sports Centre for instance) very narrow. I’m sure some drivers would welcome the entire removal whether or not it improved their travel times but I think most accept that the main thing is to keep the traffic flowing.

    I suspect overall total removal will be the popular option. Whilst the report goes out of its way to say the consultation is not a referendum, the current hostility to the cones suggests we’re unlikely to get a nuanced response.

    I don’t know where it leaves the A56/Talbot Road junction improvement project as initial plans put protected cycling at the core of the new junction. There’s an argument that Trafford will be excluded from further funding as a consequence of abandoning improvements that had previously been granted so the project might be dead in the water if we take out the cycle lanes now.

    Edge Lane

    Treated differently, in fact the decision now taken allows modifications to take place prior to a road safety audit.

    We’ll have to see the extent to which it is included in the consultation. I would hope that they can make modifications almost straightaway as it’s causing misery to so many people and it’s regrettable it’s not been addressed more quickly. Personally, I think it’s sensible and urgent to do it in any event.

    Conclusion

    We’ll have to see where this leaves us. If we are going down the bus lanes option, it seems clear to me that we’re going to have to bring in the right skills. It’s not just a continuous white line, we ought to be thinking about bus-stops and junctions. I still don’t see sufficient adherence to the Streets for All Strategy, in fact we’re setting one set of road users against others when we don’t need to and it still delivers nothing to pedestrians who supposedly are at the top of the hierarchy.

  • Can Covid be in the past whilst rates soar?

    Can Covid be in the past whilst rates soar?

    Answer: Possibly not, but it’s not our biggest problem right now

    For a long time I have been keeping a close watch of hospital admissions in the north west and also deaths. Those figures have been gently coming down for a few months. So, I must admit I hadn’t for quite a while been following the number of cases in Trafford until a week or so ago, and it was quite a shock that they’d deteriorated so quickly.

    I was participating in the Covid-19 public engagement board this morning. It’s a forum for getting out key messages to support controlling the pandemic in Trafford. The Chair had some strong words in his opening that Trafford was currently suffering its highest incidence of Covid cases and was sat at the top of Greater Manchester rankings with the situation worsening. He felt that the Government were treating the pandemic as over when clearly the figures said the opposite. That’s a dilemma for me as I would argue the emphasis now should switch to repairing the damage.

    Covid rates Trafford to October 2021

    Clearly the figures are striking and I can understand the consternation caused when generally we’ve never been worse than mid-table in our performance in combatting covid. That said, whilst the overall Trafford figure is high, what we appear to be seeing is a suburban surge throughout Greater Manchester particularly in the south of the conurbation. And we’re almost getting a doughnut effect. So what’s going on?

    The current surge is very much focused on the age cohorts between 5 and 19 and secondly, the typical age cohort of those children’s parents. It’s those schools in the middle that have the greatest travelling around, which perhaps explains the doughnut ring effect. So lot’s of mixing, travelling and socialising.

    This is not to diminish the impact of covid on these young people but we have good vaccination rates. At the same time I’m seeing so many indications of far more detrimental aspects of the 18 months of lockdown than the endemic nature of covid. This is why I’d switch the emphasis.

    You might disagree with me but right now I’m more concerned with the levels of absenteeism in secondary schools across the country. That’s just one indicator but there’s many more and it’ll take years to understand the true costs of the decisions we’ve taken to combat covid but school attendance has certainly been affected.

    Samuel Freedman is a educational analyst

    I worry too about future levels of loneliness. That short period of adolescence into (wom)manhood between 14-18 is incredibly formative and vital and we’ve locked those young people up for long periods of lockdown, forbidden them from mixing.

    People complain about the levels of anti-social behaviour but it’s remarkable to me that we’ve not seen more and worse. I worry that we’re storing up problems for years particularly when combined with damaged education delivery.

    So it’s a difficult position we’re in. I do not want the Government to do more in respect of direct Covid support than they are doing. I think our job is to make the vaccine easily available. We never quite managed that in the north of the borough and there’s no longer going to be a huge return on giving easy access, but there’s booster delivery to focus on. We need to continue to provide support to care homes and those isolating. The Government should focus on providing financial more support to those who are ill or isolating but no more talk of lockdowns unless a future variant really turns this badly around.

    The real thrust of our response should now be on supporting young people. We owe them restitution to enable them to build rewarding lives.

    I just want to make this point. Covid has given rise to lots of wartime comparisons. My parents would have been adolescents at the start of the war. They went through a lot and lost friends and family but they came out of it proud and feeling enhanced by what they went through. This is not the same for the kids who have been through Covid. There is no wartime comparison.

    My worry is that actually we’ve diminished the generations under 40, at times we’ve even blamed them, which I find incredible. I don’t expect them to ever look on lockdowns fondly or with any pride.

    Lastly, I say this. Given the damage that Covid and the measures we’ve been forced into, if you’ve not been vaxxed and there’s no medical or age reason stopping you, then shame on you. I don’t particularly have a view on vaccine passports but be assured of this, any scepticism is purely practical and should in no way be interpreted as sympathy for those who choose not to be vaxxed. Jurgen Klopp is right that it should be viewed with the same contempt as drink driving.

  • A slight change to the Labour rulebook

    A slight change to the Labour rulebook

    Warning: this is really an issue internal to the Labour Party. I try to keep my comments on these things to a minimum but this has been such an irritation for so long I’m sure you’ll forgive my indulgence.

    I know rule changes can be boring but this one from conference is big. It’s the only change coming from the membership that was passed and it’s something that has long been infuriating to members. It’s come from Momentum, so praise where praise is due; and I’m not normally a supporter of them.

    Perhaps the Hartlepool by-election finally got us over the line on this one. Our candidate in the by-election, Paul Williams an arch remainer and only recently defeated in Stockton South, was chosen by the local party in Hartlepool from a shortlist of one. In a seat like Hartlepool it really couldn’t have been a worse choice. It was unfair to constituency and it was actually unfair to the candidate. The shortlist was drawn up by the NEC with no ‘official’ input from the local party and it was a disaster.

    It was quite extreme for the party to only give the members one choice but manipulation by the national party and leadership is nothing new. They’ve always tried to control by-elections. Sitting MPs have also sometimes contrived to leave their departure before a General Election to the last minute, in order to ease in the successor of their choice. It’s been going on for years, not always with bad outcomes but invariably leaving resentment on the ground from good local candidates that were denied access to the shortlist.

    In one fell swoop the party conference has killed this procedure. From now on where time constraints mean the normal selection can’t take place emergency panel will be set up, with an inbuilt-majority of CLP members to draw up the shortlist.

    While you can’t rule out those CLP members being led by the national party to choose a contrived shortlist favouring a particular candidate, I think the chances are better of being presented with a proper choice and reflecting the locality.

    I’m surprised how little attention this rule change has attracted and I’m sure the leadership will come back trying to change it but in many ways it’s seismic.

    I don’t know how Stretford and Urmston delegates voted. I hope they voted for the change. I can see from the votes it was by no means unanimous (62% to 38%) with the NEC recommending it be voted down.

    • Addressing the broken housing market

      Addressing the broken housing market

      I chaired a good meeting last night looking at social housing within Trafford. It was a meeting I was quite keen to have. I think a lot of us had picked up on a perfect storm affecting people hoping to set up home in Trafford. Inflated house prices, a dysfunctional private rented sector and a social housing sector growing ever more distant from their tenants and the greater community of Trafford are creating real hardships. We’re all too aware of how difficult it is to get good quality accommodation with a landlord committed to ensuring their properties remain decent places to live. High rents mean it’s very difficult to save sufficient deposits. No-fault evictions mean tenants are forced to leave properties at the whim of their landlord in order to put up rents or to sell at inflated prices. The cost of moving at such short notice further erodes any chances to save. It is a broken housing market.

      I wanted the meeting to look at the extent the Council can intervene. Frustratingly, the obvious solution of delivering old-fashioned council houses seems bedevilled with insurmountable obstacles. In order to provide council houses, the Council would have to borrow with the expectation of generating income from rent or sale. Right-to-buy automatic discounts of up to £85,000 make it impossible to recoup the investment. Trafford currently is such a high demand area, we’d never be able to build up sufficient stock to make it viable.

      We know Thatcher aspired to a home-owning democracy. However, inflated house prices partly generated by the private rented sector those over-generous discounts have crushed that aspiration and we have got huge disparities between the ages. We have a problem with few tools at our disposal to alleviate the impact.

      I think there’s a sense in Trafford that nationally, Labour can’t ignore this problem any longer. Labour is the only party that can hope to reset the housing market and it’s blindingly obvious that council housing has to be part of the mix. We need to shout about it more than we are doing. Economically it has a hugely detrimental effect on our cities.

      Meanwhile, we need to call out Housing Associations. They need to deliver on those core values that provide their charitable status. Clearly, the Mayor’s focus to now has been on planning where development can take place. It’s now time to shift the focus onto tenure and tackling exploitative rents.

      A good little meeting (40 mins) but with a real focus on tackling the inequities of housing. We haven’t got all the tools we need but at least we’ve brought it back to the fore of thinking.