Tonight I am attending a meeting of the Council’s Homeless Strategy working group which, as the name suggests, is working on the Council’s Homelessness Strategy.

It’s a spin-off from the Council’s Scrutiny Committee, which I chair and which was presented with the Homelessness Strategy a couple of weeks ago. At the time we decided it warranted a bit more scrutiny and a bit more cross-party input, so that’s what we’re giving it tonight.

This is an emotive topic, and at the meeting a couple of weeks back we had some very passionate speakers who have first hand experience of the homelessness services that the Council offers. We need to make sure that any efficiencies that the service has to make are handled as sensitively as possible.

Rick

The next meeting of the Prestwich Local Area Partnership (LAP) takes place on Thursday (11th November) at 6.30pm at the Longfield Suite. It’s your chance to meet councillors, Police and other LAP members and discuss the issues of the day.

The agenda this time includes the Sedgley Ball Zone proposal, a debate on the future of partnership working, and an item on pharmaceutical services for Prestwich. There will also be updates from the Police and Fire Service.

Public Question Time will be at 7.30pm where any issue or concern can be raised (provided it’s about local public services. Keep your personal problems for afterwards!).

Everyone’s welcome, so I hope to see you there.

If you can’t wait that long, the first PACT (Partners and Communities Together) meeting for St Mary’s takes place tomorrow (Wednesday) at 6pm at the Church Lane community centre. This is just about our ward as opposed to all of Prestwich, and it’s Police led so may well have a crime focus. But partners including Councillors will be there (although not me sadly, I can’t make this one).

Lots of chances for you to have your say and get any issues off your chest. If you can’t make either event, your Councillors are available to contact all the time.

Rick  

The meeting of the Internal Scrutiny Committee last night was well attended and, I think, sucessful. The two topics debated – home to school transport and the Council’s homelessness strategy – were discussed in quite some depth and with passionate and knowledgeable contributions from members of the public, and we made some good progress I think.

The issue of home to school transport is a controversial one. The Council proposes consulting on whether or not to stop paying the transport costs for all children who go to far-away faith schools, and instead to restrict payments to only poorer children, in line with the policy for non-denominational schools.

I am in favour of the plans. I recongise the impact that this will have on some families who choose to send their children to faith schools, but the Council’s plans maintain support for those who can’t afford it themselves, and will bring faith and non-faith schools into line. For both financial and equalities reasons I think it’s the right move.

However, there were some very strong feelings to the contrary at the meeting last night, and I think their arguments are perfectly valid. There was a good debate, at the end of which a vote was taken which split the committee down the middle. As Chair I had the casting vote. My choice was either to allow the consultation to proceed, or to send the issue to full Council for further debate prior to any wider consultation.

My personal view is that it’s fine and should proceed, but since it’s obviously controversial I voted to send it back to Council for a fuller discussion. I thought it more appropriate for all members to have their say on this issue, rather than just a few of us, given that it obviously generates a lot of feeling on both sides. I don’t think it was my job to restrict debate, so I voted for more debate even though I agree with the policy as proposed. Who knows, when it’s debated at full council I might hear something that will change my mind.

On Homelessness the issue was a lot more clear cut. There was general unease that the homelessness strategy presented to us didn’t answer a number of important questions about the future of temporary housing, or give assurances that future provision will meet need. We agreed to set up an urgent working group to advise on improvements before the strategy is signed off.

Rick

Tonight is a meeting of the Council’s Internal Scrutiny Committee, which everyone is welcome to come to if they want to see us scrutinise the internal workings of Bury Council.

It’s an unusual meeting tonight, with a two-item agenda focusing on two decisions ade by members of the Council’s Cabinet which have been “called in” for further scrutiny by us.

One relates to the Council’s Homelessness Strategy, and the other to the Council’s plans to potentially change the way that home to school transport is funded.

I hope that we have a constructive meeting tonight, asking the challenging questions without lapsing into inter-party bickering. That kind of thing does nobody any favours, the people of Bury in particular, but least of all chairs of meetings who are tired after a day at work and struggling to get over a cold (like me).

It’s a public meeting, with time allocated for questions on any aspect of the Council’s work (not just the two items being discussed), so if Lech Poznan 0-1 Manchester City on ITV4 in the Euro Vase doesn’t float your boat, come to Bury Town Hall and see us in action.

Rick

The Comprehensive Spending Review might well be hurtling towards us like a doom-laden craft from outer space, but that doesn’t mean that the business of Bury Council stops (although, ironically, the CSR may herald quite a bit of just that when it comes to setting a Council budget!). Tomorrow is another meeting of the snigger-inducingly entitled “Internal Scrutiny” committee, which I chair.

The function of the committee is to scrutinise the decisions made by members of the Council’s Cabinet, which is made up of the Conservatives who run the Town Hall. It’s the third meeting of the committee, which is a new body set up this year and replacing various other committees which existed before to scrutinise and do other things for bits of the Council.

Because it’s new, and because the first two meetings were over the Summer which is traditionally the time of year when Cabinet colleagues retreat to their villas in Mustique, until now there’s not been much to scrutinise.  Now though, like buses, having waited for ages all the Cabinet decisions have come at once.

So tomorrow’s meeting looks at various exciting things including the future of Local Area Partnership grants, the Council’s use of the Regulatory and Investigatory Powers Act (a.k.a. RIPA – you may have heard about Councils being naughty and spying on families to check school admission status etc) and the Council’s Homelessness Strategy.

There will also be a discussion on the future of Sheltered Housing, which I know has been of interest locally as it affects some properties in this ward.

As ever, I hope we have constructive discussions and can come up with some recommendations which can usefully feed into the decision-making process. The Conservatives run the show, because that’s who the good people of Bury voted for. But every Councillor and political group has a role in advising them and giving the our thoughts and the pros and cons of their policies and decisions. If they ignore that advice then so be it, but I’m glad we get to give it.

I will report back on the meeting, unless of course you actually want to watch it live, in which case feel free. It’s a public meeting and you’d be more than wselcome at the Town Hall at 7pm. Bring a friend! They may not remain your friend, but there are risks with everything these days… In fact, there’s half an hour set aside for public question time on anything that the Council does, so you can ask whatever you like. Unlike question time at full Council meetings, you’ll actually get answers to, I promise (even if you have to wait for me to find out what they are).

Rick

Tonight is another meeting of the Council’s Internal Scrutiny committee. Its name might induce sniggers in the occasional teenage boy, but its purpose is more serious. It is the only body scrutinising the work of the Council’s Cabinet, which is the group of top Councillors running Bury.

There’s a new system of scrutiny in Bury this year, and I don’t think it’s working very well at the moment. The way it should work is that the Cabinet make decisions which affect Bury, and we get to take a look at them after, or preferably before, they’ve been taken to ensure that everything is being done properly and in the interests if Bury. Obviously we might disagree with the end decision, and it’s not necessarily about changing it, but it is certainly about giving Councillors of all political views a say.

Until last year there were about 5 scrutiny panels. They looked at lots of interesting, but often irrelevant, things. Now there’s just one, which is supposed to look at fewer things, all of them important.

Sadly, the change in arrangements has coincided with the new “Strong Leader” model for the Council, which has changed the way that the Cabinet makes decisions. As a result, in the three months which we are to scrutinise tonight, only a handful of decisions have apparently been made, very few of them important.

Hopefully tonight we will discuss ways to improve the situation, as it’s evidently not right that the Cabinet have made so few decisions when, in reality, the Council is doing lots which affects the borough, like making big financial decisions about cuts.

I am looking forward to our discussion tonight and to ways of improving the situation. If you’ve really nothing better to do and don’t want to watch the last ever episode of The Bill, you can watch the drama unfold, as the meeting is open to the public and free to attend! At the Town Hall, tonight at 7!

Rick

Last night was a meeting of Bury Council which started in the summer sunshine at 7pm and ended in the muggy twilight at 22:20 after more speeches, debates and hyperbolic bunkum than I care to think about.

Sitting there stewing in that muggy Council chamber listening to my colleagues was akin to being slow-roasted by a particularly verbose team of chefs.

There were two main debates. The first was about the recent decision to sack the entire board of Six Town Housing, which is the “arms length management company” charged with managing the Council’s housing stock. The board was made up of Councillors, tenants and others, but it was dismissed en masse and temporarily replaced with appointees after the Chief Exec of STH was suspended. The lead-up to that suspension, and how and why the board were then sacked, is murkier than the Gulf of Mexico, and allegations were flying left, right and centre. Labour members were annoyed at the actions of the Council who suspended the board, and other board members seemed annoyed at the action of the STH Chair (a Labour Councillor) whose actions connected to the suspension of the Chief Exec were also questioned.

It’s all a bit of a dodgy business, and raises important questions about the powers and conduct of Councillors and officers. What the debate shouldn’t have become was a slanging match with serious allegations about individuals lobbed about like confetti. Unfortunately that’s what it descended into before it was brought to a close by the Mayor. The Lib Dems submitted an amendment calling for an enquiry, which was passed despite Labour opposition. So we’ll get to the bottom of it and hopefully top this type of thing happening again. It’s not right that, for whatever reason, STH doesn’t have Councillors and tenants on its Board. Whoever’s to blame for that needs to be held to account.

The second debate was about the government’s programme of cuts. Unfortunately, some have to be made this year, which means less money than we thought even for the current financial year. The Lib Dems put forward a motion calling for full consultation with all parties and the public on how to make these cuts fair. Cllr Vic D’Albert proposed it, and I seconded it. I didn’t make the speech I’d prepared because it was already about fifteen hours after the meeting had started, but it’s below if anyone wants to read it. I did say a few words on a silly amendment Labour put forward which sought to pin the blame for everything on what they hilariously term the “Con/Dem Coalition.”

Whoever coined that piece of linguistic genius is clearly cut out for bigger and better things. Not only is it a HILARIOUS juxtaposition of the abbreviations for Conservative and Liberal Democrats, but it also sounds like the word “condemn.” Honestly, it’s beyond clever. Ho ho ho ho ho.

Anyway it was a pointless amendment which added nothing and which was defeated.

And then it was the end of the meeting and we all staggered from the council chamber-cum-convection oven out into the cool summer air, and went home.

Rick

Unfortunately, this sunny weather has coincided with lots of meetings which take me out of it and plonk me in stuffy rooms.

Last night it was the Annual General Meeting of the Rainsough Tenants and Residents Association. A new committee was elected, and there was input from lots of the local partner agencies like the Police, Six Town Housing and Groundwork.

An interesting stat falling out of the meeting was that there hasn’t been a single burglary in Rainsough in the last three months. This is pretty remarkable, and typical of a substantial fall in local crime which I think is at least partly due to the TRA working well as a place for local people to bring their problems. I was pleased to attend last night along with Cllr Mary D’Albert and share the TRA’s success. The clean-up day last month (which I sadly missed because I was on holiday) was another great success, and there are more events for the whole community of Rainsough coming up.

Tonight I have another meeting, this time of the entire council, who meet once every couple of months to quiz the leadership and debate issues. Tonight’s depressingly lengthy agenda includes debates on budget cuts and Six Town Housing, and questions to the leader from me about scrutiny and from other Lib Dems about various other things.

It’s a public meeting, and since there’s no World Cup games on, there’s simply no excuse not to come down and gawp. 7pm at the Town Hall.

It’s preceded by a ceremony which will grant the Freedom of the Borough to former Cllr Albert Little, who led the Council in the 70s and 80s, was Mayor for a year and was an elected representative of various bodies for more years than I’ve been alive. I doubt I’ll make the ceremony because I’ll still be at work, but it is a fitting tribute to a man who dedicated a massive number of years to trying to make Bury a better place.

Rick

One of the most startling things I have seen this year is the picture in the Prestwich Advertiser accompanying this article about Bury South MP Ivan Lewis. Mr Lewis has called for “independence” for Radcliffe, Unsworth, Whitefield and Prestwich, and the Advertiser have super-imposed his head onto Mount Rushmore as a result.

If anything is likely to jeopardise our “special relationship” with the USA, I contend that it may well be that!

I think Mr Lewis is participating in some fairly flagrant electioneering with his comments. Everyone’s frustrated with the Council, especially me. The Conservatives running it treat outlying bits of Bury as an afterthought, if they think of us at all. Their treatment of Prestwich is disgraceful, and actions like introducing car parking charges in our area only make the situation worse.

But Mr Lewis knows full well that full on independence is impossible without nationwide changes to the way the country is run. His call is impossible to achieve, even if it might actually result in benefits. His call is unworkable, and as excited as I’d be if his government let it happen, I know that they won’t.

Less visually startling than Lewis-on-Rushmore, but certainly as odd, is the response from Council Leader Cllr Bob Bibby. His angry put-downs and refusal to accept that Mr Lewis may have a point about favouritism for the centre of Bury at the expense of Whitefield and Prestwich sadly typify both the man and his party in Bury.

Where Mr Lewis is wrong about independence, there is some truth in what he says about the toothlessness of Local Area Partnerships. When he calls for more power and more money for LAPs at the expense of the Council, I agree with him.

I have to admit that I find LAP meetings very frustrating. The Council claims to support and value them, but their role is unclear and their powers almost nil. They are good in terms of sharing information with local people, but if anyone wants anything done which isn’t already going to happen, then the LAP really can’t help.

This is disappointing for a number of reasons. Firstly, most local people who have heard about LAPs and come down to see them imagine them to have powers, and get very frustrated when all we can do in response to their valid points about litter or dog mess or roads is to say “we agree, but we have no money or power to do anything.” 

Secondly, it is deceitful of the Council to profess to value LAPs when in reality their existence is a smokescreen to let the Council do more or less what it likes. The LAPs provide a convenient forum for “consultations” but give local people very little actual say in how local services are run. The proof of this was amply demonstrated recently when the Prestwich LAP Manager was removed and replaced despite howls of protest from everyone involved.

LAP minutes are reported to the Local Strategic Partnership, a nebulous body with multiple responsibilities and a fractured democratic mandate. They don’t go to the Town Hall, and if the Council want to ignore what we say, they can do. As Councillors, the only elected voice for local people at this level, our influence is nearly zero. The influence of individuals is probably actually zero.

If the point of LAPs is to showcase partnership working, I’m afraid they fail there too. There are pockets of great partnership working happening in Prestwich and across Bury, but too often the Prestwich LAP’s representatives from partner organisations are not present at meetings, unresponsive or have their own agendas different to partners around the table. That isn’t meant as a criticism of them, but of the system they are taking part in. If I were a partner on the LAP, I wouldn’t want to come to the meetings either, nor would I be able to commit to something not already agreed somewhere higher.

If LAPs didn’t exist, how much less partnership working would there be? I fear that the answer is not much less.

Prestwich LAP does some good things very well. The grants panel decides local applications and hands out thousands to local good causes, for instance. On Prestwich regeneration, the consultation involved lots of local people. And the Prestwich Festival too was run through the LAP. But how many of these things would have worked any differently if run under the banner of the Council? None, I suspect, and at the same time they’d have benefitted from direct democratic accountability.  

As a body the LAP is hamstrung by frayed lines of accountability and influence. As members of it, we are hampered by an almost non-existent budget, very few powers, and a justifiably angry public asking for more.

At last night’s LAP, the same few local faces asked the same types of questions. As a body we were forced to give the same lame answers. Without power or money to make a difference, what is the point of us being there?

I think that the time has come to reform LAPs or to be honest about their limitations. If the Council won’t delegate significantly more money and influence to a township level and let us have our say on services, then let’s instead admit what LAPs have become – a place where representatives of public service providers can come and present about crime statistics or health centres or road safety schemes. By that time most decisions have been made, and it’s a shame we have very little say.

It’s a shame that’s all LAPs are, because they could and should be a whole lot better.

Rick

Tonight’s Council meeting was the last before a general election and local elections, and so was devoid of even the half-hearted inter-party pleasantries we can usually muster. It was though, mercifully brief, coming in at an hour and thirty five minutes as opposed to the hair-tearingly awful three hours plus which we get at times.

The reason for the lack of hours was that there were no motions up for debate. What there were though were plenty of questions to the Leader and his Executive. I asked why, despite the Bury Conservatives promising to keep Council Tax rises below inflation when they took full control of the Council, the Council Tax has risen above inflation in both years since! In 2009 it went up a whopping 1.5% above inflation, and this year bills are going up 3.75% despite inflation standing at 3.5% (and pay inflation at or near zero, or less, for most people). The Conservative response was to blame everyone but themselves, and even to claim that this year’s rise is below inflation! That’s patently not true, and as the Lib Dems showed with our own budget proposals, it would have been quite possible to have kept the Council Tax rise well under inflation.

The Conservatives in Bury can’t hide from their high taxes or their broken manifesto promises. It makes me wonder why anyone should believe any other of their manifesto promises, and also what people might make of David Cameron’s call for Council Tax restraint. His party in Bury certainly don’t agree with that approach.

Other topics of interest at the meeting were the revelation that the Conservatives have adopted energy efficiency plans which, whilst a step in the right direction, still don’t make up for them being the only party in any of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs to have voted against the 10:10 climate change campaign. I also asked a question about the help the Council might be able to give Bury Amateurs FC, who are currently in dispute with United Utilities over a repair bill which is threatening their existence. Sadly that question didn’t get heard in time, although I will get a written response soon.

The meeting was preceded by the Council photograph, which takes place every two years. I was wearing a tie which a colleague of mine had compared to “a chopped up and stretched out chef’s hat” earlier in the day. So that is the image which has been forever immortalised to sit staring from the walls of the Town Hall long after we’re all gone. Thankfully, with 60 others in the photo I will be but a spec in the grand scheme of things. But still, this may be the last photo I’m elected to participate in, and that’s not the image I wanted to go out with! For what it’s worth, I thought the tie quite stylish myself…

Rick