Richard Baum

As may may know, Heaton Park is threatened by a large “soccer centre” which people want to build near the St Margaret’s entrance off Bury Old Road.

Last night I attended a meeting of the committee of Rainsough Tenants and Residents Association. These meetings are often frustrating, because Rainsough is unfortunately placed right on the border with Salford, thus blurring the lines of responsibility for action between Bury and Salford. Although all the people who live there are officially Bury residents, half the houses are owned by Salford, as is the estate’s biggest eye-sore, a derelict block of shops on Chapel Road. Since Rainsough people don’t vote for Salford Councillors, Rainsough is right at the bottom of the priority list, and it’s not very fair.

Last night’s meeting was particularly annoying because Salford Council and their “arms length management organisation” Salix Homes are refusing to give a decent response to tenants’ and residents’ reasonable requests to tart up the shops as a temporary solution before we finally decide what to do with them. They won’t even provide a few tins of paint, and instead we’re going to have to go begging to B&Q.

The whole idea of Arms Length Management Organisations, or ALMOs as they’re known, has done little to improve things for tenants. As far as most are concerned, they’re still Council tenants, and despite the best efforts of Councils and ALMOs, most people really aren’t sure who to call or what the difference is between the two bodies. And this can lead to a fair bit of official buck-passing too, as Councils and ALMOs blame each other for the increasingly desparate situation a lot of tenants find themselves in in terms of nuisance neighbours and minor maintenance.

It’s not all bad, as the new roofing and kitchens in local Council homes demonstrates. But when it comes to the little environmental things that can cheer up an area, like tins of paint and waste bins, it does seem a lot harder to get the wheels in motion with an ALMO than it does with a Council. I only hope that Salford Council and their ALMO see sense and realise that a few tins of paint can really make a big difference to local people in Rainsough.

Rick

Figures obtained by Bury Lib Dems regarding fixed penalty notices today reveal a fairly shocking neglect of Prestwich by Bury Council.I asked a question at Council last week about how many fines for littering and dog fouling had been issued in Prestwich in the last twelve months. Fixed Penalties are important deterrents and methods of punishment for people intent on spoiling the local area by making it dirty and not cleaning up. And after a complex tallying procedure involving what must’ve been the world’s most powerful super computer, the Council revealed that over the last year a grand total of… zero dog fouling fixed penalty notices and four litter fixed penalty notices had been given out.

Four fixed penalty notices, for the whole year! This compares to 59 in the Town Centre of Bury. Even that figure is barely one per week, but in Prestwich it’s one every three months for litter, and none at all for dogs! This despite constant reports of problems, lack of Council clean up, and campaigns by Councillors for action.

Another sad sign of the neglect that the Tory Council give to Prestwich. It’s pretty much the only thing they give, other than a 300ft high flashing neon green light to any would be litter-lout which says that he’d have to be the unluckiest person in Britain to get fined for dropping litter.

The people of Prestwich deserve better than this Tory neglect.

Rick

Yesterday’s reports of flooding on Spring Vale have seen increased efforts to rectify the situation today. Which is good news because it’s pouring down again.

I have sent a letter to United Utilities asking them what they plan to do to stop people in my ward sploshing around in raw sewage from their drains. The Council have also got involved, and have arranged for someone at UU to go down and speak to the worst affected residents to try and sort this problem out. In the short term though, they’ve had to resort to sand bags to try and keep the water out. This is a welcome development, in that at least something is being done. But really, sandbags are absolutely not an appropriate long term solution to this. We aren’t in Whitechapel at war time, we’re in suburban Prestwich in 2009 and there’s got to be a better way than sandbags.

Hopefully United Utilities will agree. It’s about time they pulled their finger out. Unless of course their finger is plugging a hole in the drain, in which case they should leave their finger where it is whilst thinking about a more sustainable solution.

Thanks once again though must go to the Council’s Environmental Services department, who have worked very hard to get some progress today. I have criticised them in the past in fairly colourful terms, and rightly so because they have re-defined the word “awful” at times. But recently there’s been a marked improvement in the timeliness and effectiveness of their help, and more often than not at the moment they are providing good and quick solutions to the problems of local people that I raise with them. This has been a good example, and hopefully we can see it through to a successful conclusion for residents.

Rick

Great news for the residents of Hilton Lodge in the ward today, who have received the new bottle recycling bin we asked for. The old one was overflowing, and recycling was becoming less like a civic minded good deed and more like a game of Jenga. Residents got in touch and asked me to get them a new one, which has now duly arrived.

Thanks to the Environmental Services Department of the Council who have acted so quickly to get it done.

Rick

It seems odd to be writing about downpours and flooding on the hottest day of the year, but that’s what I’m about to do, because I have spent a lot of today learning about quite how impotent the Council are when it comes to dealing with overflowing drains.

People who don’t believe in climate change need look no further than the end of my road for proof, because that’s where a load of waste water resided yesterday after a biblical downpour on Saturday night. And “waste water” is probably the politest possible term for the stinking sludge that it actually was. Thankfully it was cleaned up, but not before it sat there for a day.

The reason for the flooding is because the drains on Hilton Lane can’t cope with showers like that. They overflow. Unfortunately, the privatised water company United Utilities can’t be forced to do anything about it, and so local residents suffer whilst the drain goes un-fixed. I am told that United Utilities policy is only to act when houses are flooded. SInce it’s only the street and gardens at the moment, they’re happy to sit on their thumbs and do nothing until it reaches people’s front doors.

All of which seems a bit silly to me. They should act now. I have written them a letter to say so, and to ask what they are doing for local people to prevent flooding. I’ve also been speaking to angry people about the effect it’s having on them. It’s happened a couple of times this month, and there are reports of people becoming ill. This is twenty first century Prestwich and I find myself writing stuff out of a Victorian dyssentary epidemic…

Hopefully we’ll see some action before I sail off in a great flood.

Rick

It was my Mum’s birthday this week, and she wanted to do what every middle aged lady / five year old boy in the land wants to do - go to the zoo! So that’s what we did today, getting up close and personal with a number of hairy beasts. Usually weekend encounters like that don’t take place until the early hours of Sunday morning and after I’ve had a bit too much to drink, but today I was safe because they were behind electrified fences and were, on the whole, not intent on inviting me back to their place via the late bus.

What I really should’ve been doing today instead was putting my serious head on and undertaking some leaflet-related chores about Prestwich and Whitefield. But the lure of the lemurs was too much, and so I’ve had to postpone all things political until this evening.

Aside from writing this blog tonight, I’ve been proof-reading a new Focus newsletter for a ward in Bury North which we hope to put out soon. I’ve also been chasing up a bit of casework, particularly around town centre litter. As I explained the other day, there have been some notable improvements recently, but there are still some hot grot spots to deal with, and one local resident has become my photographer-in-chief. She spots ‘em, I report ‘em, and then after some prodding and one of my angry looks, the Council clean ‘em! And she’s spotted some more today which, whilst disappointing evidence that the cleaning still isn’t totally up to scratch, is good news because now it’ll be dealt with.

Also today I’ve been chasing up a fairly desperate situation for one elderly lady in the ward who’s garden has turned into something of a bog, potentially because of a leaking sewage pipe. This is obviously something that needs solving very soon, so I’ve been talking to the Council about water sample testing and the swift fixing of pipes. I know more about sewage leaks than I did this morning, that’s for sure! And I’m not sure I like it!

There are plenty of jokes and puns to be made about a 28 year old spending his weekend evenings like that. Sadly none of them are printable on a respectable blog. Or even on this one. Suffice to say that it’s not really a great way to spend a Saturday night! I hope any people reading this are having more fun!

Rick

There’s a Beatles song called “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” in which Paul McCartney sings chirpily about Maxwell, a serial killer who goes on his merry way bludgeoning everyone from his teacher to a judge. There’s a lot of jangly guitars and happiness, but all the while something very sinister is going on.

Bury Council’s Leader Bob Bibby has got much the same mixture of smiliness and horror down to a tee, although I’ll admit that as far as I know he’s not committed mass murder (yet…). Last night’s Council meeting is a perfect case in point. His statement to the Council about the work of the Executive joyously announced various triumphs, but forgot to mention the unfolding catastrophe that is the state of the borough’s roads.

All is well in the Tory Garden of Fantasy. Sadly in the real world it is not. Because today, the Conservative-run Bury Council has revealed, to the accompaniment of several jangling guitars and with teddy bears and smiley elephants dancing about all over the place, how much Prestwich has been given to repair its roads and pavements for the coming year. And that figure is just £63,000.

That’s £63,000 for the whole of Prestwich. Imagine how much it costs to fill a JCB with diesel, and then think how far £63,000 is going to get you. Not very.

The figure came in a document which also contained a list of the roads most in need of repair, as identified by the engineers at the Council. This list only highlights the 12 neediest roads, ignoring the dozens of others with cracked paving stones and pot-holes. But the list of 12 roads alone would cost over £700,000 to fix!

The Council’s response to our crumbling roads is to reward the taxpayers of Prestwich with a settlement giving less than 10% of what’s needed just to fix the 12 worst roads in town. It’s shameful. Bibby’s Silver Hammer comes down on all our roads and pavements in fine style!

In fact, three of the identified 12 local roads (Fairway, Parrenthorn Road and Mount Road) each cost more to fix individually than the entire allocated budget! And eight of the identified 12 priority roads have been carried over from last year because of the woeful funding given then. They were awful a year ago, we couldn’t afford to do anything, they’re worse now, and we still can’t afford to do anything!

Not only is this settlement a crushing disappointment, but further evidence that this unthinking Tory shower leading the borough have got their strategy all wrong. Just last night at the Council meeting, it was revealed that Bury has paid out nearly THREE MILLION pounds in compensation to victims of trips and falls on local pavements in the past few years. That’s three million pounds of our money given to people who’ve been injured because of the Council’s failure to maintain the roads. People are tumbling about all over the place like a Barnum and Bailey Acrobatics Extravaganza, and the Tory response is to take a further gamble by investing a pitifully small sum in fixing the problem. 

The continual failure to invest, and refusal to learn from mistakes, is a disgrace. It’s a savage waste of public money and a clear and continuing danger to public safety. And it’s a damn site less enjoyable than listening to The Beatles.

The Prestwich Local Area Partnership has the unenviable task of deciding which roads get the crumbs from the table and actually get fixed. To give an idea of the scale of the problem, it is estimated that Scholes Walk and Warwick Street, two of the smaller streets in Prestwich, would both cost in excess of £50,000 to fix. With only £63,000 on offer for the whole area, we’ve got quite a decision on our hands. Choosing a single pot-holed shambles to spruce up will be nigh-on impossible.

Lib Dems have long called for a re-prioritisation in favour of street repairs. The amount spent on compensation, and the continuing decline in the quality of our roads, cannot be allowed to continue. We will carry on fighting to get a better deal for local roads.The Tories have cheerfully brushed aside this problem for long enough. It’s about time they faced it head on. If we’re paying out millions in compensation, we should bite the bullet now and take out a loan to do some serious repairs. It’ll be cheaper in the long run and it’ll give us some acceptable roads.

Rick

Last night’s Council meeting was principally memorable for the moment when my colleague and the Lib Dem Parliamentary Candidate for Bury South, Cllr Vic D’Albert, accidentally tipped a cup of water all over me. Suffice to say the evening wasn’t drowning in highbrow debate. 

However, we did use our oppornutiy to question the leadership to some effect. Notably, we uncovered more interesting tit-bits about the costly deal struck by the Tory Leadership on public transport.