Canal27ways

Category: Weekly Updates

  • Weekly update 12th July 2011

    Weekly update 12th July 2011

    Back to keyboard warrior mode

    Tories do their best to jeopardise school/park consultation

    Back from my holiday. I’ve tried to keep up with events whilst away. The Derwent Appeal against their application for judicial review has been rejected. As far as I’m aware, that is the end of the line in their attempts to prevent the approval of Tesco’s plans. The store is too big but we’re all agreed upon that, even the planning committee. And if it’s going to go-ahead, I’d rather it progressed quickly to allow the cricket club to get going. The worst case scenario has always been that the fiasco of the way the planning meeting was conducted was sufficient to fatally delay the implementation but not sufficient for the decision to be reversed. Nobody should feel happy with the way the Tories have conducted this. Their behaviour has ranged from being a soft touch to that of blinkered complacency.

    Assuming, that this appeal is the end of the matter, the focus now turns to Stretford High School’s ambition to provide much needed improved sports facilities. Over the last few weeks the school has been working really hard to work with the community and park users to come up with a design that preserves the park area as a park but gives community access to excellent facilities; and protects the the community from being priced out of those facilities. The school has steadfastly refused to be drawn into the controversy over the Tesco and has maintained throughout that the school’s plans are completely separate. Whilst we on the Labour side always felt that there was potential to explore an enhanced Stretford Sports Centre or use of the land earmarked for the enlarged Tesco, the school to be fair, has always maintained its preference for the facilities to be in the park.

    Again to be fair, the meetings with the community have been conducted positively and significant progress has been made. There’s still plenty of work to be done but it’s not out of the question that the school can reach an accommodation. I’m therefore shocked that the Tories have submitted a motion to this coming Council Meeting that seems designed to polarise the whole process. The consultation is not over, plans haven’t been submitted or even drawn up; and the school is doing its utmost to take the politics out the whole issue. Yet Trafford’s Tories are saying, firstly ‘Yes it is part of the Tesco scheme’, then they congratulate the school in the middle of a consultation. Personally, I think it’s very risky making a political football out of the school and I can’t help being reminded of the way Thatcher used to provoke disputes through inflammatory remarks when there was danger of agreement. Thatcher was deliberate, this is is just crass.

    No doubt we’ll have a ritualised bun-fight at Council but it would have been better for the Tories to have kept their peace over this issue.

    Sunday

    Attended Lostock College car boot and fun day. Well attended and testament to the efforts to preserve this much loved school.

    Monday

    Attended Lostock Tenants and Residents meeting. Really pleased with the much reduced levels of anti social behaviour being experienced. Constructive proposal from Trafford Housing Trust to facilitate redesign of play area with planting and design delivered by the community young and old.

     

     

     

  • Weekly Update 27th June 2011

    Weekly Update 27th June 2011

    Truly Deserved Tribute

    Highlight of the week had to be the presentation of the Freedom of Trafford to the 207 Field Hospital (volunteer) which took place at Sale Waterside on Thursday 23rd June. The Field Hospital is based at the Barracks on Kings Road, Old Trafford so it’s a very appropriate award. Trafford doesn’t grant the freedom of the borough lightly. This is the first time in living memory that we’ve done it. I’m proud that we don’t give away such honours to talent show hopefuls or even footballers. We’re right to reserve these awards for the very best and most deserving.

    That this is a special award to a special unit can not be argued. The field hospital is primarily a volunteer unit and manned by health professionals from all over Greater Manchester. It has recently been deployed to Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. The hospital that the 207 ran there was the busiest trauma unit in the world. The contribution that the hospital made to saving so many lives of servicemen and civilians is just awe inspiring.

    Colonel Kerry Trow received the freedom from the Mayor, Jane Baugh and gave a presentation about the unit’s work. It was a privilege to be there to witness the event.

    Monday

    Over to Salford to interview aspiring candidates hoping to be selected to stand. Salford had a fantastic crop of new people. We passed every single one of them to be allowed to go forward

    Tuesday

    Council Employee Disciplinary Hearing.  One of those tasks that the public doesn’t see.

    Council meeting – to confer the award of the freedom of Trafford (see above)

    Lostock College Governors Meeting – A good meeting, the school continues to make good progress. Good Luck to all those taking exams. A lot of good feedback.

    Thursday

    Put together leaflet on Stretford High / Gorse Hill Park for printing and delivery over the weekend

    Freedom of Trafford appreciation- see above

    Trafford Labour Local Government Committee – We got a little bit bogged down at this meeting and perhaps less progress was made than we might have hoped. It happens and thankfully is not typical. A pint in the pub afterwards was the highlight of the evening.

    Friday

    all day meeting of Transport for Greater Manchester Committee which included the AGM. I’ve been appointed to Capital and Projects committee, Metrolink and Rail committee and Trafford Ring and Ride steering group. The big issue is going to be High Speed 2, I’m very much in support of getting a high speed rail connection between Manchester and London. We need to shout much louder in support of this.

    Finally

    I’m going to be denied access to the computer over the next fortnight so updates might be more scarce in that time.

     

  • Weekly Update 20th June 2011

    Weekly Update 20th June 2011

    The Economics of Hope

    Ed Balls’ call for a cut in VAT was timely. The UK economy is flat-lining as was feared by Labour. George Osborne’s reliance on savage cuts to eradicate the deficit without a strategy for growth risks consigning the UK to the slow lane. Unless we can stimulate the economy, clearing the deficit will prove to be dream rather than reality. Retail spending is down and investment is down. As the public sector shrinks, we need the private sector to pick up. The danger of going so fast is that the private sector can’t respond and as demand falls we enter a spiral of stagnation.

    The council workforce is shrinking and services are being reduced. We’ve seen concessionary fares for young people hit and we’re seeing support for pupils travelling longer distances pretty much scrapped. I saw the Messenger was carrying a poll on the proposals. People were generally in favour of the cuts to the support. There wasn’t many comments but I suspect the mood was encapsulated by the words “Why should I pay for….?”. I can well understand the sentiment but the move provides a small snapshot of the dangers of the austerity measures. The families previously entitled to this support are going find the money out of their family budget which will reduce their ability to spend on other things. The council taxpayer is not going to see any reduction in council tax anytime soon so it’s not as though their income will be increased to offset the reduction. Multiply the change a million times in different ways with different cuts and the economy is taking a huge hit. It may be a cut in public spending but the private sector takes the hit as well.

    Fundamentally, there isn’t a successful precedent for the Government’s economic policy and the Govt will have to revise the plans at some point. The trouble is that the Govt is so welded to the idea that it’s all Labour’s fault that any plan B or plan C becomes an admission that Alistair Darling got it right. And he did! So they’re stubbornly resisting any change.

    A cut in VAT will not be a panacea, but it will help. The analysis of the effects of Alistair Darling’s earlier cut showed it did make a marked difference. It didn’t make huge changes to individual spending decisions but it did put more money in household budgets. It worked; as did the car scrappage scheme. It’s vital the Tories listen and take heed. Yes there has to be cuts and Labour would have been cutting too, but there has to be stimulus. Cut too fast and the whole economy grinds down. Cut at the right time with a package of growth stimuli and you end up with the tax intake maintaining its level and the deficit becomes manageable.

    Trafford has been portrayed as a place where the cuts can be made without hitting frontline services. Of course this is a complete fallacy and we are seeing significant reductions in service. Lostock is not going to see the completeion of the road resurfacing programme, schools are being hit and care for the vulnerable is taking a significant cut. We’ve seen the crisis in Southern Cross Nursing Homes; the fact is their business model didn’t anticipate local authorities like Trafford making such swingeing cuts. It was a flawed business model in the first place but Trafford is equally shortsighted in believing that its austerity will not hurt.

    Monday

    Met with the acting heads of Transformation and Resources at the Council. And it is becoming a familiar story of officers having departed. The focus of the directorate was naturally on the decanting of staff to Quay West which in effect will be the temporary town hall for the coming year. Whilst I believe that building schools would be a better target for capital spend, clearly the investment in the local economy is not without merit and it will be good to see Quay West really come alive.

    The shifting of Trafford’s Libraries into an independent trust continues to proceed. I have significant concerns as to how this pan out but as yet I’m not getting much in the way of detail other than than the council is talking to Wigan and Salford councils who’ve already gone down this path.

    In finance, the officers are continuing to look at how the Welfare Reform Programme is developing. At present, Housing Benefit is paid by local councils but it’s proposed that it will become part of the Universal Credit. However Council Tax Benefit does not seem to following the same course. So how is this going to pan out?

    Friday

    Attended opening of Bridgewater Way footpath/cyclepath between Stretford Town Centre and Moss Road/Watersmeet. I love this improvement; apparently the use by cyclists along the stretch between Sale and Stretford has increased from 19,000 to 90,000. It’s a huge success. We need to be doing more of this sort of investment.

    Image by Károly Váltó from Pixabay

  • Weekly Update 6th June 2011

    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 communicating with residents ourselves.

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

    Image: R Greenhalgh / Stretford High School

     

     

     

     

  • Weekly Update 30th May 2011

    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 vigorously 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 another 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.

    Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash

  • Weekly Update 23rd May 2011

    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 theirs 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.

    Image by Károly Váltó from Pixabay