From the Canal to Sevenways

Category: Weekly Updates

  • Weekly Update 6th June 2011

    A Conundrum in the Park

    We three Gorse Hill Councillors along with our Longford and Stretford colleagues descended upon Stretford High School on Monday night as a consultation on new sports facilities got underway. This was not an easy meeting.

    The ongoing saga of the giant Tesco casts a mega-shadow over any proposal. As part of the Tesco scheme, the school surrendered a playing field to the council that will ultimately (if it comes to pass) be sold to Tesco to enable it to build the larger store when it’s added to the land they already own. The receipts from the land sale will be handed to Lancashire Cricket.

    So under that shadow, we met to hear a proposal to improve the sports facilities available to the school. In normal circumstances this would be pushing at an open door. Labour, more than any other party puts school investment, particularly in schools serving deprived communities at the core of our ethos. It is why we are here.

    The Proposal

    The expansion of facilities includes putting a floodlit all weather pitch on Gorse Hill park which would be fenced off together with the existing park football pitch. Access would be controlled to prevent vandalism, dog fouling and over-use of the grass pitch. Additionally, the school will be building indoor sports facilities incorporating changing rooms on its own land in front of the school.

    To be fair, the school is envisaging wide community access to the facilities when not being used by the pupils and control would contracted to a third party.

    The problem is the park. We do not like to see parkland lost. Although there’ll be no buildings actually built on what is Gorse Hill park, there will be controlled/restricted access to some of it. One might argue that we already restrict access to bowling greens in some of our parks. Victoria Park Bowling Green in Stretford is a prime example of fencing off and securing part of a public park. So isn’t this same?

    In principle it probably is the same as fencing off a bowling green. However, the two pitches on Gorse Hill park will be significantly bigger than bowling greens. So one issue is therefore, the scale. The second and major issue is that until the school surrendered its field which is now intended to enable the bigger Tesco, the school had an opportunity to develop facilities on that field. Whilst Victoria Park Bowlers will not have had an alternative location other than Victoria Park, Stretford High School did have an another option.

    (leaving aside that I am still critical that such a prime position in Victoria Park is secured like a prison compound – the bowling green should have been moved to a less prominent position if it was going to have such an intimidating fence)

    Strikingly, Stretford High School did not receive anything for the surrender of the Tesco field, so this is not a case of the school only being able to invest in facilities through the sale an asset. The school felt the field was not an appropriate facility for the school. The school told us about safeguarding issues, getting the pupils across a busy road and the time lost from the lesson in terms of getting over there. There were other issues in respect of Ofsted specifications and the cost of using Stretford Sports Centre rather than the indoor facilities to be built.

    Our Criticism of the Process

    Our position as local councillors was that too much of the negotiations had been done behind closed doors; that we’d not been consulted as to the surrender of the field to the council. We supported the school’s ambitions for better facilities, but we felt whilst we could understand the school’s preference for those facilities to be adjacent, rather than on the other side of the road and behind the sports centre, this was at the cost of enclosing a major portion of the park. The Tory Council’s desire to get the land into Tesco’s hands brought the council’s readiness to surrender the park into question. The appraisal of the suitability of the Tesco field for sports development and subsequent surrender of the land to Tesco would have benefited from greater scrutiny and transparency. It was now being presented as a fait accompli which quite frankly angered us. My colleague Dave Acton expressed this very well and powerfully.

    Where do we go from here?

    As I understand the field has not yet been sold to Tesco, or at least neither the council nor the Cricket Club have received the £21m, I believe any consultation should include the suitablity of the Tesco field as a location for some of the facilities. Of course this would in effect bring the £21m LCCC money and Tescos itself into the consultation, but that is what consultation are for, to present all the factors and interdependencies into the open and give people a say.

    If the Council has entered into contractual obligations to Tesco and LCCC that prevent this, then we should be told, as we need to be assured that the council has not made itself liable if the whole thing goes kaput through the legal challenges against the planning permission; or indeed this consultation.

    If the community feels that the facilities envisaged for the park are a welcome addition, we will want assurances as to access and pricing. We will also want the partitioning of the park to be no more than absolutely necessary.

    Lastly

    It is not unthinkable that there will be many who welcome the facilities. Certainly there’s much in the proposals that do have the community in mind. Amongst what’s envisaged is:

    • an all weather pitch with flood-lights behind the present grass-pitch, allowing access to practice and participation of a variety of sports even on dark early evenings
    • access to changing facilities for the footballers and other outside sport participants via the the new indoor facilities – these would be less likely to be feasible if all weather pitch was on the Tesco field and the indoor sports were on school grounds
    • Access to other sports including netball and possibly tennis courts
    • rooms available for community use from within the indoor sports
    • a grass pitch protected from dog fouling
    • encouragement for continued participation in sports for those leaving school and the possibilty of proactively working with the community
    • a greater willingness to listen to the community on access to the park including getting a pelican crossing at the Talbot Road gates

    Ultimately, perhaps the most valuable pledge may be that the school and council will only view the development a success if the community are using it and in their words the place is buzzing. How we entrench this into the project will be one of the biggest challenges if the community approves.

    Really we need to know your views. At this stage we’re in the pre-consultation consultation and the school, together with the council are consulting with councillors, community groups, churches and the local sports groups. Once this preliminary stage is over there’ll be a presentation at Stretford Sports Centre and local homes will receive a leaflet.

    I’ve already been to two of these preliminary meetings and intend to go to more. And we’ll be communciating with residents ourselves.

    It’s vital we take everyone’s views into account.

     

     

     

     

  • Weekly Update 30th May 2011

    Council gets back in its stride

    Monday
    Executive Meeting of Council

    Top item on agenda was the consultation on home to school transport. Essentially we can anticipate that after the consultation there will be much less support for getting children to schools that are further away. This includes children with special needs and those who are attending religious schools. Pupils on free school meals will be protected.

    At present all children receive a travel pass if their school is more than 3 miles away. This is at an annual cost of £425,000. The proposal is to grant the pass only if the family has no choice for example if their nearest Grammar School is more than 3 miles away. There will not be grant of a pass based on preference even if this a preference for single sex or a particular religious denomination. There will also be tightening of the rules governing transport for Special Educational Needs with yearly reviews.

    We on the Labour side rightly vigoursly opposed the proposed cuts. I recognise that an online poll in the messenger suggests that people are prepared to see this provision reduced but we should not make it easy for Conservatives to make cuts to services. They are choosing to throw money at the cricket club and make cuts to families.

    Although receiving less attention, it could be argued that the other significant item on the agenda had greater long term significance.

    The Core Strategy is Trafford’s plan for development in the borough. It designates areas that are a priority for residential, commercial or preserved as greenspace. It works very much in conjunction with the City Region strategy and as such the various borough’s keepa close eye on their partner authority’s aspirations.

    Monday’s council executive was asked firstly to define the Regional Centre as it exists within Trafford. At regional level this had been defined as Pomona Docks and Trafford Wharfside. These areas are therefore seen as primary economic drivers of the Manchester City Region, ensuring that the Regional Centre continues to provide the main focus for business, retail, leisure, cultural and tourism development in the City Region. In other words they are the places for dynamic high quality developments but where exactly are they? (where do they begin and end?).

    Trafford Wharfside in particular required greater definition. We knew that the Imperial War Museum was ‘Wharfside’ but was the Manchester United ground?

    Well Trafford have designated Manchester United as within that Wharfside area and essentially the ‘regional centre’ pretty much includes that part of Trafford Park from Warren Bruce Road up to Pomona see map .

    So it includes a sizeable portion of Gorse Hill Ward.

    More contentious was the definition of the City Region’s Inner Area as it lay within Trafford. I know this sounds like something from a 1980s BT commercial with Maureen Lipman in it, but it matters whether you’re inner or outer.

    The inner areas should be the focus for residential development in order to secure a significant increase in their population, and to secure the improvement of community facilities and the creation of sustainable communities. The emphasis will be on providing a good range of quality housing, The Inner Areas have enormous potential, which, if left untapped, will limit the ability of the Regional Centre to secure investment and generate further growth. Development within the Inner Areas will boost overall economic growth in the City Region, reduce local inequalities (such as worklessness) and deprivation and provide a clear alternative to further decentralisation and the unsustainable commuting patterns associated with it.

    Neither Manchester City Council nor Salford City Council wanted Trafford to include in its Inner Area that part of Trafford Park known as the Trafford Centre Rectangle. That is the area bounded by the M60 however Trafford is keen to include it. So Trafford is submitting that the inner area includes all of what we know as Trafford Park, all of the Gorse Hill and Firswood neighbourhoods together with all of Old Trafford.

    ‘Historically, the Inner Areas have been associated with the allocation of major regeneration funds and have therefore tended to be associated with some of the City Region’s most deprived and under-populated neighbourhoods close to the Regional Centre. In more recent years, however, the role of the City Region’s Inner Areas has been evolving. These areas represent a marriage of need and opportunity – large scale residential development can attract people to locations from which the Regional Centre is easily accessible and can also regenerate local communities’.

    You can see why Salford and Manchester were threatened by the Trafford Centre Rectangle’s inclusion but it’s important that Trafford is included as a generator of economic growth and we can expect to see developers wanting to utilise the areas described as ‘inner’. See map of proposed ‘inner area.

    Tuesday

    Lakes Estate walkabout with officers, Councillor Acton and residents. Main concerns were the state of the road surface on Coniston and Langdale. I’ve raised this repeatedly and as a consequence both are scheduled for this year. I have to say that whilst they may not be the deepest potholes on Coniston it’s clear that it was the thinnest coating of tarmac I’ve ever witnessed on a road or pavement and no wonder that it’s completely disintegrating.

    Annual Council – A largely ceremonial affair with the installation of a new mayor who this year will be Labour’s Jane Baugh. She’ll make an excellent mayor. She chairs the council meeting like she was born to it.

    Wednesday

    Meeting of shadow executive.

    Stretford Community Panel – the panels are changing and we need to prepare for the process by describing the neighbourhood needs.

    Thursday

    Meeting with the doctors at Gorse Hill Medical Centre about their needs for improved facilities

    Evening meeting at St Matthews as a listening event for Kate Green. Good to hear everyone’s views. There was a wide range of differing opinions from those that wanted an end to overseas aid and others who saw as a priority the maintenance of public services. It’s clear that people are being hit hard but and I think there’s a growing competition over priorities. I suspect that the cost of EC membership will be one area that grows in significance to people.

    Friday

    Covered Councillor Walsh’s advice surgery. No visitors.

    Sunday

    Door knocking on the Lakes Estate with Councillor Walsh.

    Tuesday

    Action for Sustainable Living Event at Sevenways Church. We listened to community activists from Moss Side who’d turned their ‘alleys’ into community spaces with neighbourhood planting. The Trafford approach has been that Gating Schemes have been seen seen as a way of keeping crime on the outside but no work has been done to turn the alley into a resource. ‘Here’s your gates and here’s your key’. The trouble is that fly tipping and rubbish have still had to be dealt with. The gates on their own have only made moderate improvements to the space behind gardens. Elsewhere on this website we’ve highlighted the Seedley and Langworthy gating schemes. Now we’re seeing that Moss Side is also getting much better results. It’s time we we made some progress in Trafford. ASL are looking at using the community spirit to enhance the subway area at the Stretford Mall / Chester Road crossroads. It would be great if we could bottle some of that Moss Side imagination and sprinkle a little in this corner of Stretford.

  • Weekly Update 23rd May 2011

    Planning – don’t you just despair? part two

    Last week I was criticising the craven compliance towards officers and the politically blessed that meant our planning system in this country still owed more to medieval petitions from commoners to the Dukes and Duchesses than it did an objective place shaping mechanism. This week we were dealing with the consequences.

    Lostock

    American puritans might not be able to predict the end of the world but residents, local councillors and the police were unerringly accurate in their criticisms of aspects of the new development in Lostock when it went to planning. And of course they were ignored.

    The police made representations that the proximity of the redeveloped play area to the new Over-55s flats with deck access was problematic. Neighbours complained that their lives would be impacted by the car parks at the rear and expressed little faith in the assurances of an electronically secure system.

    Now with the barrier controls on the car park broken beyond repair (did they ever work!) the car parks have turned into an area not for parking cars but a hide-away for innocent pursuits or otherwise. The official play area is so designed that any activities in the evening are impacting on the homes around it. The police are being pulled into it and resources redirected due problems as much to do with design as criminality.

    Things had reached such a pitch that Councillor Acton and myself arranged for senior officers from the different agencies to come and hear and respond to residents’ complaints. The good news was the support for police, pcsos and community safety officers. There was near-universal support for ASBOs and the Conservatives are making a huge error in abolishing these ASBOs. The Conservatives are the party who are weak on law and order and are seen to be so. Ideally we’d have liked Trafford Housing Trust to have provided someone at director level to the meeting and it does feel that staff are sometimes exposed to criticism that is not their’s to shoulder. Nevertheless, progress was made and I do feel some of the difficulties can be alleviated but we’re still left with a play area too near homes. We can design out football from the play area, we can seal the loose stones that get thrown at windows. But really these problems of proximity were identified at planning stage by everyone but planning officers and Conservative Councillors. The press releases of the time were the usual self-congratulatory pieces of tosh about a much needed development. Yes it was much needed but you still need to get the plans right and our planning authorities failed to in their primary duty.

    Trafford’s Conservative Planners will always counter any criticism of themselves by pointing at the low level of successful appeals. Unfortunately you can only appeal against refusal to grant permission. Lostock residents can’t appeal against the flaws in the design that are blighting their lives and residents around the football stadium will not be able to appeal against the imposition of rock concerts when their kids are doing their exams. The lack of successful appeals is therefore a completely useless measure of the effective place shaping that should be happening since there is no appeal against a rubber stamp.

    Monday

    Labour Group AGM – I was confirmed in my position as shadow for Transformation and Resources and reappointed to Transport for Greater Manchester Committee. I will also serve on Accounts and Audit Committee and continue as Press Officer. Laurence is continuing as our planning spokesperson and Dave as leader. We are in excellent shape and if we can maintain the momentum of the last election there’s a batch of seats that would fall to us. That has to be the aim so it’s a year of serious politics.

    Tuesday

    Went to see City play Stoke. Having been unable to get a ticket for Wembley, I wasn’t going to miss the last match of the season. Campaigning for the local elections had meant I wasn’t able to queue when my loyalty points brought me into contention for a cup final ticket. Absolutely nothing to do with politics I know but these are good times for football in Manchester and I have also to congratulate United on the premiership title. I’m looking forward to the installation of Plaques to commemorate the lives of Duncan Edwards and Tommy Taylor; two of the famous Busby Babes who lived in this locality. The ceremonies are to take place on the 8th July details here. It will be a moving tribute to two of our greatest footballers.

    Friday

    School gates at Victoria Park. Parents are rightly worried about the effects of these horrendus cuts that targetting women and families in particular.

    Monday

    Lostock meeting discussed above.

  • Weekly Update 16th May 2011 (more of a gripe this week)

    Planning – don’t you just despair?

    There’s something about planning committee that just grates with me. Maybe it’s the faux inclusivity and bonhommie, maybe it’s the fake veneer of non-political objectivity. Every cell of the body of every councillor on every planning committee is by definition ‘political’. It’s why we have councillors on the committee; to provide that local say. But at the same time, they’re required to deny the local and maintain the illusion of rigorous quasi judicial impartiality.

    Having spent a year on planning myself, I know that the councillors for the vast majority of cases do genuinely apply an objectivity to the decision making. Sometimes though issues arise where it’s impossible to prise out of the political. Voters would not understand the point of a local councillor who spoke against the interests of those voters in favour of the greater good.

    Sometimes you wonder whether the faux objectivity is worth the effort. Trafford’s Conservative members of the planning committee got themselves tied up in so many knots over the Tesco/Cricket Club development that it seems they’ve subjected to Trafford to years of legal challenge. In first declaring one by one that they were against the Tesco development due to its size, but 30 mins later voting for it when asked to do so by the legal officer, it left the doors wide open to challenge. It’s easy to understand the frustration of Lancashire Cricket Fans (Facebook) but the real culprits are Trafford’s Tories. Had they been transparently objective (as they should have been) throughout the decision making, and been a little less pliable to LCCC’s every whim (rejecting the White City alternative early without a thorough appraisal), the ‘verdict’ would have been far more robust and resistant to challenge. As it was, we ended up with a planning meeting that was nothing short of farcical. In short, Trafford’s Tories dropped their planning committee members right in it and left them with the most impossible of tasks.

    Thursday’s planning meeting was another frustrating affair although for an entirely different reason. The planning committee devoted more time to an advertising hoarding in Urmston upon which there was a complete consensus against granting consent than it did to a major 700 bed hotel near to Old Trafford Stadium that officers were recommending should be allowed to operate except on match days! This is a development of huge strategic importance. but officers have been allowed to impose the most bureaucratic strictures on its operation. International fans will have to transfer to a different hotel on the day of the match and come back by tram or taxi for fear of creating congestion in the car parks.  I am one of the two most pro-cycling councillors in Trafford (I bow only to Cllr Chilton) but there is no way that this hotel requires parking for 97 bicycles as officers were insisting. It’s absolute madness. Where was the discussion in ensuring local employment? A colleague suggested the discussion was getting too in-depth and that was that (I wish he’d similarly brought discussion on the advertising hoarding to an end on the basis they were all in agreement). I absolutely want the hotel development to proceed and I want it to be a success. We need growth, we need jobs. We should not be letting officers impose ludicrous and unworkable conditions at the behest of no one but guidance. It is not enough to say the developers can come back and get things changed. With such an important project, it should be about working with them to make it happen rather than imposing unneccessary obstacles.

    With that I am perhaps more amenable to the pilot scheme to allow Trafford Park businesses to set their own planning guidance announced yesterday than I should be. We shall see. Planning can certainly be improved in Trafford.

    Kitchen Slops

    From next week we’ll be able to put kitchen slops in the green bin. More details are here.

    So what is the position if you live in a flat? I’m afraid this has been announced without prior discussion. We don’t know the position on people in flats, we don’t know whether retaillers have been forewarned to stock up on kitchen caddies or compostible bags. We’re racing to catch up with this announcement

    Meanwhile the council is packing its excess and obsolescent belongings into a skip and is clearing out of the town hall to the Quays. Expect massive confusion  With the best will in the world I think it’s safe to assume things will be lost.

    Apology for this week’s update being a succession of gripes but I think that just about sums it up

  • Weekly Update 9th May 2011

    Election over – now back to those issues

    The Lostock neighbourhood is suffering a resurgance of youth nuisance. Partly it’s as a consequence of the hot weather, partly it’s due to design faults in the new development that we were well aware of before it was built, partly it’s due to an inability to fix gates. Whatever the reason, it’s taking extra police resources and causing stress to residents. The issue is being raised at neighbourhood groups and on the street. Most of the time the kids are doing nothing more than play football but the new build has provided places that are just inappropriate.

    Dave Acton and myself are arranging a meeting with the Housing Trust, Police, Council, Residents and Arawak Walton

    Saturday

    Advice Surgery – Lostock Library

    Sunday

    Trip up to United to see car parking problems ahead of Chelsea match

    Monday

    Lostock Residents Association – More on the continuing problems facing the Lostock area. However all is not bad and the Lostock Inter Generational Project, young people have been running from Lostock Youth Club has been nominated for a ‘Kids Count’ award.

  • Weekly update 11th April 2011

    Less than 4 weeks to go until Polling Day and the Lib Dems try to reinvent themselves for third time in 12 months

    Just 12 months ago the Liberal Democrats were coming out of the first TV debate on a high with Nick Clegg proudly proclaiming that he was heralding a new cleaner more honest politics. Looking back now as the Lib Dems have portrayed themselves firstly on the left and then so far to the right economically that the very idea that John Maynard Keynes was in fact a Liberal seems a cruel joke. Even within the last few months we’ve had senior Lib Dem, Chris Huhne stating that the Govt’s NHS reforms ‘ticked all the Lib Dem boxes’. There was no question that the effective privatisation of the NHS was a cruel and bitter pill that the Lib Dems had to compromise over as junior partners in the coalition, these were proposals the Lib Dems were fully signed up to; they ticked all their boxes. In the Commons debate, not a word of dissent from Lib Dems, nor even in the committee stage.

    But now in election mode, the Lib Dems in time honoured tradition make the switch. In the most shamelessly cynical political choreography they send out Nick Clegg’s advisor Norman Lamb to wash their hands of the reforms (or at least until after the election). Why has it taken until now? At least their party members could see that these NHS reforms were a betrayal of everything that the Liberals had ever stood for, but their MPs so taken with their new role as the Govt’s favourite poodles said nowt.

    There is no doubt that a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote for the catestrophic NHS reforms. We’re already seeing waiting times rise, services cut back and in Trafford the status of our healthcare trust is becoming more and more uncertain. Lib Dems will not whisper a sound for fear of offending their new best neocon friends. I can understand why Tory poster boy Daniel Hannan has been quiet on the NHS since Lansley released his plans. Watch the video below to understand what the Tory Party thinks about the NHS and what they want to replace it with for themselves. Of course it’s Medicare for the rest of us. Daniel Hannan’s pleased… and the Lib Dems said nowt. (until they wanted votes!)

    Monday

    Attended the inaugural Transport for Greater Manchester Committe – the big item on the agenda was the justification from First Bus that their weekly fares were increasing as a consequence of changes to concessionary fares. The changes should not be affecting standard commercial fares as their was no subsidy involved either before or after the changes so it seemed to bare no relation to reality to connect the two changes. The one thing that could be said was that there was unanimity that the members of TfGMC were unimpressed with the rationale.

    Elections permitting I’m to be member of the Metrolink and Rail networks sub committee and substitute member of the Capital Projects and Policy sub committee. There will be three permanent sub committees with the remaining committee being Bus and TfGMC services sub committee. A working group on Mobility Scooters on Metrolink will also continue until it finalises its work with the existing members of GMITA. Clearly this is of vital interest to users of Mobility Scooters as the ability to get into town affects employability and social activity. I’ve already been contacted by Mobility Scooter users keen to be allowed back on the trams and I’m keen to support them.

    Disappointed that there isn’t more on encouraging active travel across Greater Manchester within our remits. It is a key objective of Transport for London but not Manchester which in my opinion is remiss. With the increasing cost of fuel and public transport there’s clear benefits to taking a much more focused strategic role in supporting cycling and walking. There’s a statement of intent contained in the Local Travel Plan 3 but it hasn’t crossed into the work of the TfGMC.

    Tuesday

    Chaired the special AGM of the Lostock Residents Association. We’re looking to rotate the chair as we seek a permanent appointment. Ideally it shouldn’t be a councillor as really we want to be answerable to the residents. It would be good to make progress with this.

    Wednesday

    Canvassing and leafletting

    Thursday

    Accounts and Audit Committee – essentially a review of the year and looking forward to the new workplans. I requested that we receive a report on the Carrington Depot Fraud which was tried in court during the year. I’ve been a member of the Accounts and Audit Committee for four years now and that particular episode has never been mentioned. I’d not raised it myself as I suspected it was sub judice but now the case has been tried, I believe we should be concerned with ensuring that the council has acted to avoid a repeat

    Friday – Sunday

    Despite the glorious weather I’m wearing a coat indoors because I can’t stop shivering. Poorly man-cold