Category: Weekly Updates

Full Council – a little background

Full council meets once every two months or so. At this time of the year it’s a little more often, because it’s the time of setting budgets, but the full council meeting perhaps surprisingly, is not a major part of the councillor’s workload. And for that small mercy I’m thankful, because I find it frustrating and often pointless.

I don’t want to single out Trafford. Most councillors I meet from other towns tell me similar stories. And if you Google ‘Council Chamber’ and click on images, your screen fills with thumbnails of identikit forums facing a throne upon which the mayor presides from Aberystwyth to York. The lack of variety is striking but Trafford is the place I know.

For anyone that’s not witnessed Trafford’s full council (i.e. nearly everyone I’ve ever met), it’s a mixture of mock ceremony and fake heritage going all the way back to the 1974 local government reorganisation. Admittedly the template goes back a lot further than that, as the painting of Cromwell in parliament attests. It’s a bit amateur-dramatics in an endearing sort of way. When we speak we strike heroic or accusing poses. We do have some good speakers on both sides of the chamber but limits of 2 or 3 minutes on speeches make it a difficult discipline to master. It is confrontational and the chamber layout is designed to support that.

I thought it was interesting a few years back just as I was elected in 2006 that the Conservatives had such a reaction to their proposal to move the town hall to a new site apparently/allegedly at no cost. There was a real public outcry. The familiar town hall on Talbot Road became a listed building in answer to the threat and battle lines were drawn. However, there was almost no discussion about what 21^st century democracy would look like. There was very little debate about whether a new building was an opportunity to reframe the relationship with voters? Wherever we had a town hall we were going to get a council chamber on the lines of what had preceded it and that exists in every other town hall in this country. It seems people like the tradition.

I think you could label me an iconoclast.

Anyway, back to last night

Dave Acton spoke very well on the need to maintain a fire service for the whole of Greater Manchester. And Laurence Walsh spoke powerfully on the threat to care standards in contracts to private providers if we didn’t build into those contracts a commitment to good employment practices such as the living wage.

In terms of decisions – Council adopted the Council Tax support scheme it has designed to replace the Council Tax Benefit that the Tory Government has abolished. It’s yet another cut affecting the poorest. I hate the idea of devolving benefit design to local authorities. It is a waste of resources to all be redesigning benefits at the same time plus it creates anomalies. This should have stayed with central government.

It’s striking that in this same week the leader of Trafford Council is having to plead with ministers on behalf of all of Greater Manchester for an extra High Speed Rail station at the airport. The Government is delegating things like benefits to councils but when it comes to stations on a strategic line, we have to go begging. The Government is getting so much wrong it’s causing real hardship and delaying the recovery.

Mike Cordingley

These are my views – feel free to comment

Thoughts on the Council Executive Meeting of 30th July
(a long meeting of many parts)

Annual Report from Trafford Community Leisure Trust

Jo Cherrett from the trust gave very upbeat feedback speaking to a summary of the annual report. The trust has performed well over the year. Key achievements were:

• an increase of 10% in attendances,
• Swimming has increased against a national downward trend,
• Active Trafford – the leisure trusts concessionary scheme for the over 65s, disabled, unemployed and other groups achieved a 31% increase in attendances

I suppose what was missing for me was an indication of threats or missed opportunities that the Trust faces over the coming years. In Gorse Hill and the north of Trafford generally, one of the key pressures is the demand on football pitches – indications suggest demand is outstripping supply. Additionally there is often a tension between field users, whether they be dog walkers or those simply enjoying open spaces and the clubs who want to use the space. There could be another flashpoint developing at Lees Field in Davyhulme. We’ve certainly seen our share in Gorse Hill. It’s a challenge to councillors to try to reach a compromise. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we don’t.

Due to demand we’re seeing the option of investment in all weather pitches being adopted more and more. By definition these pitches are taking away some accessible grassed fieldspace but they do allow for more participation. Frustratingly, I still don’t see sufficient access to school fields or facilities. Stretford High School is to be applauded for pursuing the Stretford Sports Village vision with the leisure trust. I know it’s been controversial, I know there’s still grievance that some of it is on parkland, but I do look forward to seeing it in full swing and being fully utilised by school and community. The challenge now is to get more schools to fully commit to partnering their communities and to get more useage of their sporting facilities.

Monday

Meeting of member development (see previous post on working together)

Stretford Neighbourhood Forum – A dreadful meeting. The Tories dictate the agenda for these forums and this meeting was so obviously a deceitful device to share some of the blame for their harsh budget proposals. Nothing original in that – what I found really brazen was that they’re only putting certain chosen items into the consultation.

Where was the budget for their lauded Transformation Team?
Nowhere to be seen – not up for discussion.

What happens if volunteers don’t come forward to replace paid staff in libraries, youth services and other areas?
Automated response – not programmed to answer. Please ask another question

As usual, councillors and officers outnumbered the public two to 1 but at the end of the process, we’ll be told how supportive of the budget proposals, the public have been. Deeply depressing.

Wednesday

Met with Trafford’s Corporate Director of Transformation and Resources along with Dave Acton and Barry Brotherton.

Thursday

Gorse Hill Action Group – Really good meeting. There seems a renewed energy to move things forward. Gorse Hill Funday was provisionally set for May 20.

Friday

Transport Committee in the morning. Not been a good week for the Trams with points failures and breakdowns. I thought it sensible to go by tram and fortunately the trams were fine or perhaps unfortunately as I didn’t really experience the problems they’d been in the week. Tram problems are nothing new though but I think the issues that have really infuriated is firstly the regularity, and secondly how the breakdowns were handled.

In the afternoon I had a sneak peak at the parliament channel as I’ve been following the Daylight Saving Bill which aims to give us an extra hour of daylight in the evenings and a later dawn. I’m a supporter. But there are arguments against and they should be listen too. However, what happened on Friday brought parliament into disrepute. I don’t recommend anyone watches all of the video below but it demonstrates the complete farce of the filibuster (talking a bill out – at one point they resorted to readings from the bible). Pathetic

Excellent, albeit rushed meeting of Member Development Committee on Monday night. The committee takes on a much wider remit than simply – training courses for councillors. At the moment we’re looking at the role of councillors in their community. With huge cuts to the spending power of councils, we’re looking to maximise the potential of the community in terms of what it can provide from within; and its ability to pull in funding from outside.

All the indicators suggest that over many years we haven’t done this well in Trafford. In the last Comprehensive Area Assessment (2010 – the analysis has since been scrapped by the Govt.), we were in the bottom quartile for most of the indicators relating to community involvement:

• Incidence of voluneering – worst 25%
• Involvement in civic participation – below average
• Percentage of residents who feel they can influence decisions affecting their local area – worst 20%
• Environment for a thriving third sector – worst 5%

These are appalling results and frankly embarrassing for Trafford. If anything, the position has worsened since 2010, with the reduction in grants to groups and our third sector. This has led to VCAT (Voluntary and Community Action Trafford) being drained of funding in its role as the support for Trafford’s voluntary sector. So the training, advice, guidance it provides is by no means guaranteed in future. We know that firstly Trafford Housing Trust and latterly Blue Sci have been touted as partners to VCAT for a joint tender, but it’s impossible to ignore the mood music coming from those watching on.

But suddenly, despite this bleak backdrop, community groups and their volunteers are seen as the shining saviours ready to spring into action to maintain services as staff are made redundant. We Labour councillors are opposed to volunteers being used to do the work of paid professional staff, but that’s an issue to be debated at Council later this week when we put forward our motion. The topic being discussed at member development was how councillors can support volunteering and community involvement; and that has to be a worthwhile aspiration. Simply put, it is something we’re not as good at as we should be. And to make matters worse, the council as a whole is abjectly woeful in its approach to this agenda. It’s an object lesson in how not to do it:

• 100 Days in Trafford – we’ll advertise a few things (in a thrown together web calendar) that were mainly going to happen anyway and the community will rush to take part?
• The implied threat that if you don’t volunteer to do this we’ll be forced to make savings elsewhere
• The general disregard for existing community groups and what they’ve been doing
• A lack of appreciation that communities and volunteer groups are not people that can be told ‘stop what you’re doing, we want you to do this (e.g librarians)
• A lack of interest in the motivations for getting involved
• A failure to provide adequate ways to influence the decisions affecting their area
• Neighbourhood forums provided by the council intermittently and tied rigidly to an agenda controlled by the council

As you can tell, I am really disappointed in the way that the Tories have implemented this. I see genuine risks that it will actually deter people from coming forward. But I’m going to acknowledge that Labour has a record that is mixed when it comes to community empowerment. We have been too managerial, too dismissive and too ready to believe we had all the answers. In recognising that fact, and in common with a growing body of people in Labour, (and Conservatives too, it has to be said) I’ve become really interested in the achievements of  the London Citizens Movement. I don’t agree with everything they’ve done, but they’ve got an energy. They’ve got a can-do attitude that makes any regular at Trafford’s neighbourhood forums, want to weep in the realisation that engagement in Trafford has never amounted to anything approaching this.

So I think there’s real opportunities for energizing our communities. Councillors can’t do it all, but we can do a little bit to help. And I think we can learn to do things better.

Links

You can read more on London Citizens on their website

There is a good video on You Tube about their story here

Monday

Transport for Greater Manchester budget consultation at Manchester Town Hall. A fairly well attended meeting although considerably down on last years. Support for ring and ride and real time passenger info. Less support for interchanges.

Labour Group meeting in the evening. Campaign for 2012 is progressing really well. Great to see so much enthusiasm and desire to work together across all factions, without a hint of posturing or personal agenda.

Tuesday

Met with James Hampson, new development worker for Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) in Lostock. I was very impressed at the project. I think there’s every potential for the development of sustainable community activity here and look forward to working alongside James.

Met with Trafford’s other TfGMC councillors, June Reilly (Cons) and Brian Rigby (Cons) together with officers ahead of Friday’s TfGMC meeting on Friday to discuss the agenda and any implications for Trafford. We’re awaiting finalisation of the budget from the Combined Authority (essentially the leaders of the 10 Greater Manchester boroughs). This won’t be determined until their meeting of the 27th January. There is cross-party support the Local Sustainability Transport Fund bid; the Bridgewater Way cycling improvements along the canal have proved the potential and we want to build upon that.

Met with community groups in Old Trafford to discuss the Council’s plan to replace paid staff with volunteers. The manner in which the council has gone about is bungling in the extreme; it has the potential to undermine volunteering for years to come. The groups are absolutely outraged and I don’t blame them.

Wednesday

Budget Scrutiny of Transformation and Resources, the directorate responsible for the libraries. Clearly the issue of volunteers taking over Old Trafford and Hale libraries dominated. We’re told there’s no Plan B for the possibility of volunteers not coming forward in sufficient numbers. There’s no plan to shut the libraries and there’s no budget for supporting the volunteers via commissioning or other route, although they might be able to find some money to help the group start. There will be training and funding for CRB checks.

Thursday

Cycled over to Hale Library to get a better understanding of the dynamics there.

Friday

Transport for Greater Manchester Committee. (see Tuesday) I suffered a puncture to bike almost upon arrival in Albert Square and returned using the train to Trafford Park Station. I was one of five passengers to alight from a sparsely crowded train – leaving it fairly empty. If I’m to believe the figures no one uses this station, but my experiences seem to suggest otherwise; it doesn’t help that no member of staff at Deansgate seems to want to check ticket or take the fare. Still think Trafford Park Station has huge potential – I was lucky, the next train would have meant a 2 hr wait.

Met with the Scrutiny Team to discuss the report to the executive.

Saturday

Campaigned in Davyhulme. Great response on the doorstep.