Council Update

Lots of casework at the moment:

• Unsuitable housing accommodation. Not an easy issue, we don’t have an adequate supply of social housing. It’s what we should have been doing following the crash instead of bailing out bankers.
• Social Care issues – heartbreaking stuff
• Manchester United – bad behaviour by some of the peripheral activities (match day parking in particular and in all its forms)
• Bins – contaminated left to fester
• Policing – we want to improve liaison. There’s been knife incidents, thankfully not necessarily ones of serious wounding, but the victims don’t always co-operate with the police.
• Speeding – particularly going into Trafford Park. We want a camera on Park Road.
• Bus Services – Hardly a month goes by without some reduction in services. Trouble is that some services are hardly used. We need integrated tickets. The loss of the 276 is being keenly felt in Lostock at the moment. Going to look into making the 85 a hail and ride service on Winchester Road.
• Homes of multiple occupation – trying to improve our regulating operation
• Planning’s been relatively quiet here this month. The only application of note is an application to build two semi-detached properties on Skelton Avenue in a garden.
  Having said that, there’s a really big application on its way for a massive health spa at the Trafford Centre.
• Planning Permission was granted for the addition of a nursery within the planned Orchards school on Barton Clough fields.
• Nandos at White City commenced business today. Likely to be very popular.
• Really impressed with the Stretford Precinct Market. The first time it opened, it gave the mall its best footfall figures in a long time.
• Thomas Street Bridge – needs proper maintenance of the brambles. I think Councillor Walsh took his shears to them. I know he was planning to; and I’ve seen evidence that there’s been a trim of the worst of it. Well done, whoever it was, but it needs to be on a proper maintenance schedule.

There’s been a few issues that have been around for so long I’m almost embarrassed to include them here. I think I’ll have to do a feature on them. As a taster, I really do not understand why it’s so difficult to get a litter bin at the bus stop at Taylors Road. No wonder we can’t negotiate a withdrawal deal if we can’t deliver a litter bin.