State of the Area Address 2009

On the 24th November 2009 the Executive Leader of the Council, Councillor Roy Oldham, presented the State of the Area Address, focusing on saving energy and money in Tameside.

Please click on the links below to view the video's.

Chapter 1 - View the chapter on Introduction

Chapter 2 - View the chapter on Finances

Chapter 3 - View the chapter on Safer Streets

Chapter 4 - View the chapter on Clean Streets

Chapter 5 - View the chapter on Attractive Streets

Chapter 6 - View the chapter on Prosperous Streets

Chapter 7 - View the chapter on Learning Streets

Chapter 8 - View the chapter on Supportive and Healthy

Chapter 9 - View the chapter on Expenses

Chapter 10 - View the chapter on Kiagware

Chapter 11 - View the chapter on the Caterham Scheme

Chapter 12 - View the chapter on the Coming Year

Chapter 13 - Response from Councillor John Bell, Leader of the Majority Opposition party

Chapter 14 - Response from Councillor Roy Etchells, Leader of the Independent Party

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Chapter 1 - Introduction

“…..our distinguished guests in the Council chamber. I now call upon the Executive Leader of the Council, Councillor Roy Oldham, to present the State of the Area Address.”

Executive Leader of the Council, Councillor Roy Oldham

Mister Chair, I’m going to disappoint Father Mayor. It will be long and hopefully not tedious and perhaps not as long as what his sermons might be. The year that we have been passing through clearly has been fraught with the global financial problems and all Councils and institutions have had to deal with that as best they can, as best they could, but we are quite well placed financially. We have, in the long term, sought to set our stall out so that if something does happen unforetold, what we need to plan for the future we will have the necessary resources to last us for at least some time.

We have a partnership with the community and that’s been successfully followed against the priorities that the community’s set for us. Once a year we meet with the community and we establish our priorities and they are generally the same sort of thing. People want to see the economy of the area maintained, they want it to be environmentally friendly, they want it to be safe, they want it to be clean and they want it to be a learning society so that their children and young people can benefit from that.

We’ve done everything that we could to draw money in alongside what we have in reserve and balances, and that’s come from a various section of the Government’s funding, whether it be for schools or whether it be for sports centres, whether it be to form companies or to look after our small businesses, we’ve done everything that we possibly could and we’ve been successful as you’ve seen the silverware which has been presented tonight and the gains for whether it’s ‘In Bloom’ or other activities such as the principal building out there, the Market Hall, which was refurbished to the quality that it is now and we are in the top flight as a Council. Let nobody think that Tameside, which thirty years ago, more than that seventy-four wasn’t it, thirty-five years ago, was formed from two parts of the ends of the counties Lancashire and Cheshire and the River Tame dividing us with really no county borough and nowhere to go, lots of Town Halls all in desperate trouble because no maintenance had been put into them because of the smallness of each of the nine towns of Tameside.

We started, not at the bottom of a flight of steps, we started in a hole at the bottom of a flight of steps, but we have moved up very well and successfully and the greatest success we’ve had has been in the last ten years or so when we have never seen so much Government Grant and so much aid poured into this Council. One school we built in seventy-four, one high school and nothing until the nineties came along. Now we’re building schools for fun. We’re building children’s centres, we’re building primaries, special schools. We’re spending hundreds of millions of pounds thanks to the Government’s ‘Building Schools for the Future’ in particular.

We’re marked as one of the top Councils – the international people see us as something special. We’re on the fringe of Manchester which always does detract from a borough like we are, but we are seen as something special and we’re seen as something special by the Audit Commission who have marked us this year and although I think this is supposed to be kept under wraps, I don’t see why I shouldn’t share it with you. We are a Council and probably one of the very few and maybe I’d be able to number it on one hand, a Council who has gained the maximum number of marks that you could do. We scored in every part of the examination of this borough at four marks in each one of them. Impossible to gain any more marks – we are the best Council in the north and probably five Councils across the country will have the same marking – probably. Because we were told before this new assessment took place that no Council would ever see that sort of marking, but we’ve achieved that and that’s down to I think it’s been said already, the quality of the staff that we have and the quality of the Councillors who have passion and a desire to improve this borough whilst they’re on the Council and they do that with great determination and skills.

One of the things that’s going to manifest itself whatever Government comes in, in next year’s General Election, is the Carbon Reduction whether it’s Cameron or Brown who leads the country, both men have already made statements about having to deal with this problem, which obviously leads to all kinds of difficulties in environmental terms and costs a great deal of money, if you’re prepared to burn your energy and let it loose into the atmosphere, if you’re prepared to pollute your atmosphere and you’re not prepared to recycle and return the goods of the earth back into new functions and new facilities. So that’s going to be a very important thing that we do and we will in the coming year and from this day we will put through every part of this Council through all its Service Units and put that into the wider area of business and into the domestic scene the understanding that we must stop wasting energy, wasting materials and polluting the planet.

We’ve signed up to what’s called ’10:10’ which means that in 2010 the Council will reduce its carbon footprint by ten percent and there are a number of ways that that can be done. We want everybody to see the green light and go forward to save the environment and to save money at the same time because it’s a dual possibility it isn’t a problem. It’s so easy, we had so much controversy over our managed bin collection, refuse collection, and yet we’ve only the handful of complaints against the millions of collections that have taken place. We have saved tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of pounds in the charges for landfill. We’re hitting forty percent in recycling rates. Most people are able to quite easily cope with the capacity of bins that they’ve got and the different and various waste streams. So let no one start to talk about health problems - it’s a clever rat that can open a wheelie bin to get into it and that we don’t have soft plastic bags and we don’t have open baskets like some Councils do, we have lidded containers and so your material is safe and secure in them and easily then taken away and re-processed or processed through the various facilities that we have.

Chapter 2 - Finances

If we look at the underpinning facility of a Council and unfortunately it has to be finance, then, as I said earlier we are in a strong position. The base budget of this council is 325 millions, that’s no mean sum of money it’s not something that is Toy Town, this is a serious sum of money with a serious Council spending that money. The Capital Programme this year is 68.6 million. The income that we get from Business Rates and the Revenue Support Grant is at 102 million and our Area Based Grants excluding schools 118.6 million. Council Tax requirements, 75.7 million. We have a plan to make everything as efficient as possible and that’s laid out for us over a three year period and we will be looking to save millions of pounds from our activities. It’s always possible in a big company like this to do that, but there are levels at we don’t go. We do not have a redundancy policy and we will not have a redundancy policy while I’m the Leader of the Council. No person deserves to be made redundant when there is another way to manage that problem of finance, we will manage out of it without having to do that.

We do have problems in a potential overspend of 2.18 million which is facing us, it may well be reduced as we approach the next budget in April. But we do have that and one of the reasons is that we’ve got to deal with a high number of people seeking grants and we’ve had to engage more people to deal with that. We’ve also had less income from the planning people because clearly there is a downturn in building as a result, planning applications and building regulations facilities are not required to the same degree and so there is a downturn in that money which was forecast at a different level, but we will meet that problem as the year runs on, in the financial year anyway.

We do also have an expenditure which all Councils appear to be suffering from and that is in increased need in looked after children, something that we can’t discard or discount, has to be done. We will have recovery plans to try and pick that deficit up and hope that we can make the thing work according to what our plans were. If not, we will clearly take it out of our substantial balances and reserves to make that deficit right.

If I look at Capital Funding, well that runs on you’ve seen, you’ve heard this evening from Councillor Quinn, Kieran Quinn about the Market hall. Behind that we built a wooden structure the Phoenix hall. That now has been swept away and will be a car park to help the trading in the town and you don’t do that even laying what would appear to be a simple asphalt surface, you don’t do that without reasonable expenditure and these things have to be met all the time

We’ve had 3.4 million pounds for primary school investments that’s picked up 7 schools and a further 1.2 million identified for primaries. Tameside Works First which is scheme which was brought into being to help the small business and medium sized businesses in Tameside that has been cast at fourteen and a half millions and today 8.8 millions have been taken up and spent on items that this council has required and needed but spent with the small business of Tameside with the understanding that any materials could be supplied equally by Tameside suppliers. Clearly there will always be specialist material and specialist jobs that you can’t do, but in the main that will be attended to and we know that a 138 local companies to date employ 1400 people, have been involved. We have a future jobs fund which is committed at 5 millions and that will seek to engage those who have no employment and we will operate that in partnership with local business as I will explain in more detail, some of these things later.

Chapter 3 - Safer Streets

So, I’ll just generally run through the priorities that we establish in this Council under now what is 10:10, Safe Streets, which is security and policing. I can tell you that crime in Tameside is down by 10.1% this year and that there are nine hundred and fifty-five fewer victims as a result of that, robbery 17.5%, violent crime 1.8%, criminal damage down 15.7%, that’s three hundred and twenty-eight people or victims less, and in terms of anti-social behaviour which is what plagues most people, rather than crime, there is a 20% less reporting activity to the Police and 10% less to the Patroller Service.

Acceptable Behaviour contracts have been signed by young people and parents and they’re at two hundred and seventy-seven and we’ve obtained a hundred and fifty-four ASBOs, so there has been a strict approach to trying to keep anti-social behaviour in check. That’s come about principally because we have this great engagement now with the Police via the Neighbourhood Policing Units. Police, PCSOs and our Patrollers work hand in hand at the very, very local level with our District Assemblies and with the communities to maintain the order that we expect. Clearly sometimes there will be a problem that met with I believe quite properly and well.

Even in the traffic terms, our accidents are at an all time low and that’s only to be welcomed with fewer young people, particularly children, being injured in road accidents. One thing which is always worth considering is the Opposition’s alternatives to what we’ve been doing. One of the alternatives is to get rid of our Patrollers; that’s to get rid of forty people, and to employ a hundred Special Constables in their place. Sounds good – well unfortunately, Special Constables work an average of four hours a week each because they’re usually people in employment so they can do it in their spare time. So if you employ a hundred of them you get four hundred hours a week. That’s against the forty Patrollers we’ve got who work for thirty-six hours who you get nearly fifteen hundred hours out of, and to engage those Special Constables who are not very static in the job they take on because they are in full-time employment elsewhere, it costs you four thousand and two hundred and fifty pounds to train them. They don’t last that long because they’ve got other things to do and so they move on, so it’s not a durable policing force, Special Constables. You get less from them and it costs you more money. You’d have to have four hundred Special Constables to match the hours which our Patrollers put in.

So you can see where you go to, you get to one and a half millions to pay for those Special Constables, by the time you’ve paid their expenses and their uniforms, etcetera, and you can’t give them a salary it’s illegal they can’t be paid they can only get expenses, they get a meal allowance. So we won’t be going down that line because it wouldn’t police our streets. We want policemen and women and we’ve got four hundred and twenty-five of those in Tameside. We’ve got fifty-one PCSOs and we’ve got forty Patrollers. Each group has got a different duty. The Police can’t do what the Patrollers do in dealing with certain facilities which this Council own, they can’t do it; it has to be our Patrollers that pick that role up. The Specials do have the power of arrest but as they won’t be here that long it won’t really matter. The PCSOs do not have the power of arrest but they have the power of detention so they can hold somebody until a Police Constable arrives and can arrest them. Patrollers do not have the power of arrest but they could detain, but would not detain because of he legal problems, but they can deal with items which the Police would not want to deal with, reassuring the public, visiting people, a presence on the street, dealing with dog fouling, litter and things of that nature which are important to people but which really would take a Police Officer off the bigger role he or she should have of dealing with crime or serious anti-social behaviour.

So the three levels we’ve got work extraordinarily well. We do have twenty-nine Special Constables in Tameside and that’s quite a lot because there are not that many across the Greater Manchester area. So I think what we’re doing and I bring this to the attention of everybody, is more positive than what the Opposition’s views on the matter are. I’m not decrying that they’ve got a view. They should have a view on policing because and last time at the budget meeting they actually tabled this; it’s quite unique because normally they don’t vote for the budget, they don’t vote for the Police, they vote for nothing, but they’ve started to do that since I had a word with Councillor Bell. He’s woken up to the fact that that’s what the Opposition is supposed to be doing and I’m glad that he’s taken that on because without an Opposition, things can get quite difficult.

Chapter 4 – Clean Streets

In Clean Streets we have aimed to make sure that that very important first sight which residents have, is well done and you’ve heard earlier from Councillor Fitzpatrick the fact that we have won such an award for our clean streets. Just picking up on the energy side again, we’ve got twenty-eight thousand street lights in Tameside and they’re all fitted with photo-electric cells so when it starts to go dark, at a particular level of darkness, the lights will come on. At a particular level in the morning when the light breaks, they will go off and so they’re controlled simply by that.

The problem we’ve got is that they are a principle source of energy burn and carbon footprint as a result and we need to attend to that. We are looking at all kinds of instrumentation how we can deal with that, we don’t want to go down any road that will make things difficult for people but it does strike me as odd that after two o’clock in the morning when maybe some point something of a percent of people are on the streets and ninety-nine point something else people are not on the streets, we’re burning light. Now it’s a lot of money being expended, we wouldn’t open swimming pools at three in the morning so people could go for a swim, it would be too expensive, so we need to look at how we deal with that source of expenditure because it’s very, very difficult both in cost terms and in the carbon footprint which we’re having to meet. We’re looking at where we can get all schools to have a Green Travel Plan and we have got ten thousand homes so far insulated under a particular scheme that’s cost 2.3 million.

We are running a vehicle round the streets which will have a heat-seeking device on it; it will look at a lot of people’s homes and we’ll see who’s leaking energy and heat into the atmosphere and then they’ll be told about it and told how they can actually prevent that and save themselves money and obviously the loss of energy into the atmosphere.

I think I might have mentioned we’ve got a 40% recycling rate which is fantastic and I am hoping that we will hit 50% but of course as you rise into these percentages it gets more and more difficult to get an extra 1% on top of 40 but I’m sure that we shall be able to find other ways of dealing with that.

You may have seen it in the press but we have put a heat recovery and it might be insensitive a little this, but we have put a heat recovery and a mercury abatement plan into the Dukinfield Crematorium because older people have a lot of mercury in fillings in their teeth and when the crematorium is running, that vapour will leech to the outside, so we’ve put a plant in to take that poisonous heavy metal vapour out of the atmosphere and at the same time we’ve got a heat recovery system which heats up the crematorium building and allied seating areas so it’s a reasonable thing to do without being particularly insensitive about it.

In terms of CO2, well you’ll have seen again in the paper that we’ve since we brought the blue bin collection in, the number of trees we’ve saved is about a million and a quarter and that’ll put a forest 40% the size of Tameside down so that’s been saved by just collecting paper. Nothing else, that’s all you’ve got to do walk out of your back door or wherever you walk from to your blue bin, plonk your paper in and you’re saving trees, and as trees are a good item to absorb some of the materials which are in the atmosphere, it’s better to have them than not, so we’ve saved that many trees and thousands of tonnes of CO2 as a result.

Chapter 5 – Attractive Streets

Attractive Streets, well we do everything we can and we’ve refurbished part of Dukinfield Park and it’s worth a visit to Dukinfield Park, it’s near the Town Hall if anybody doesn’t know it. It’s not a big one but it’s a highly attractive one it was built at about the same time or the same time as the Town Hall. It’s a terraced park with stone balustrades and stone stairways which had fallen into disrepair. The bowling green’s there and the pavilion, and so far we’ve done a major refurbishment on the front of the park and we hope to do the pavilion up next so as to bring it back to its pristine condition and make it work as a park properly. Granada Park, Denton; Mossley Park; Cheethams Park, Stalybridge; Hyde Park; Waterloo Park; Sunnybank Park; the four gardens in Droylsden; and Oxford Park, all being sorted out or have been sorted out and we’ve got four million pounds to spend on Stamford Park so we will be attending to that and bringing that back into the condition it ought to be so that the lots of people who enjoy that park will have better amenities and see a better park.

We’ve gained eleven Green Flags for the parks which is quite outstanding and we’ve got four Green Pennants and that’s for the items which are not parks but are public open spaces, and we’ve got a Green Heritage Award for Denton Park.

In terms of leisure and recreation, we’re building a new centre in Hattersley which will have boxing, dance, keep fit, all the machines that people need to do that etcetera and we’ve created a gymnastics centre in the Longdendale Recreation Centre. We’ve spent seven million refurbishing three swimming pools – Copley Pool, Ashton Pool and Hyde, and we’re providing coaches where eight thousand primary school children have a professional coach in sport to look after them each week. High quality musical events take place. We’ve had the Halle Choir, The Black Dyke Brass Band, Manchester Camerata and with the Proms in the Park. We’re going to build a closed loop cycle track at Richmond Street Park or Sports Grounds which will be allied to the Velodrome and will be run by the British Cycling people who were so successful at the Olympics this time so that’s going to be really a great piece of news for us because I was worried that when the Olympics in 2012 come here they’re building a new Velodrome in London that we would have lost all that interest in this part of the world but that’s not to be. That Velodrome in London will not have offices or anything like that like this one has and the British Cycling people will not relocate they say they’re staying with us so this new cycle track will be an addition for their use.

Chapter 6 – Prosperous Streets

In the prosperous side, Prosperous Streets, well the Working Neighbourhood Fund that’s three million pounds. That will support three thousand one hundred people who have been workless. The Future Jobs Fund I’ve told you about which is five million and Works First I’ve told you about which is fourteen and a half million. We will be creating an apprentice company which will be established and we hope to have five hundred people as apprentices in a pool. They will be put out to firms, companies in Tameside and if a young person doesn’t fit the part in a particular firm instead of them losing their apprenticeship they’ll come back to the pool and be relocated at another company until we find what that young person can do and is good at because I believe that every human being has a skill. It’s a matter of finding out what that skill is and then turning it into a useful work occupation and that’s what the intention of this is and we’re doing that with our partners in business. We formed, as you know, a partnership called The Vision Team where about fifty businesses send a representative to meet up with us and discuss with ourselves and amongst themselves how we can best maintain the businesses of Tameside. That’s working very well.

We’ve delivered ‘Buy With Confidence’, a hundred approved traders now, which means the Trading Standards of Tameside can direct people to businesses where they know that you will get your value for money and not be dealt with in a bad or poor way.

Construction work runs right through the borough wherever you go now we’re building something and that can only be good news for the construction industry, the suppliers of mechanical heating and ventilating or electrical work, plumbing and the like or indeed just the bricks, masonry and tiles, etcetera. All that has to be good news.

Chapter 7 – Street Learning

And that puts me into the learning section where these schools are going to really show a different character for us because I think anybody works better in good surroundings. Our output is increasing all the time, the Key Stages at 1, 2 and 4 now are at average or better, and that’s good news for all of us. We will continue to put as much money as we can into education because that is our insurance policy for all of us. The more skilled our young are the more better jobs they’re likely to be able to hold down, the more remuneration they’re likely to have and the more support then they’ll give ourselves as we grow older and have to rely more upon their energies and abilities to produce the goods that supply pensions and grants and whatever you need to maintain your lifestyle in the future.

300 million pound programme for high schools; well underway. 80 million pounds is being spent a Mossley Hollins, St Damian, New Charter Academy, Samuel Laycock, all progressing, targets dates to open 2011. Planning approval given for 70 million pounds of PFI Project, Hyde Technology School, Dale Grove, Denton Community College and Key Stage 3 and 4 Learning Centres. 28 million pounds for the Droylsden Academy will be the next project submitted to planning. Astley and Cromwell Schools are the last schools in the first phase of the Building Schools for the Future and we’re looking at ways how we can remodel those schools. We have submitted a bid for another 120 million and we are hopeful that we will be successful.

Chapter 8 – Supportive and Healthy

For older people, well we have benefits which are at 5.8 million for older people and that’s been obtained by our Welfare Rights people. A huge difference as to what used to happen. Now we do work for older people in the main it’s much easier for them to be able to access what is theirs by right. We’ve got new facilities – Day Service, Extra Care, Housing Schemes, an Active Ageing Centre and mainstreaming for what’s called POPPS and that’s with an injection of a million pounds into it.

Younger people, well we’ve launched all kinds of facilities for them, one which is always worth saying is the successful Topaz Café where people who have got a problem of perhaps mental health, are able to work and do a fantastic job if you go to the Proms where they serve and prepare food.

That’s the ongoing position and I think that this Council is doing very well for the people; it’s good to be here.

Chapter 9 – Expenses

One of the things which is later in the Agenda is still worth saying, that the administrative costs for travel and accommodation of this borough is at the very, very bottom end of any Council and Councillors should pat themselves on the back for the attention to that detail because it’s so critical in this particular time that we take great care and only make the travel or accommodation that’s necessary to work this Council and that’s been done. I have no problems with what’s happened in this Council at all. I hope that we don’t have a boom bust situation where we’ve had it so good and it gets horrible. I think we don’t need to expect that and don’t deserve it. I think we should be rewarded for our endeavour and enterprise rather than punished and that every Council can match what we’ve done and I think if you are in some competitive league and you are marked by the Audit Commission then you might be given more freedoms and allowed to do a lot more of your own thing and maybe even given larger grants to do that.

Chapter 10 – Kiagware

One thing that’s worth mentioning and it’s not been done inside this Council it’s been at the Kiagware Health Centre in Kenya where we have built a hospital for a group of villages where their children were dying daily of Malaria with no treatment for them with hundreds of miles to get to hospitals and one doctor for 500,000 people. When we whinge and moan about our conditions in health services here, take a look at Malaria Road a BBC or Fever Road sorry, Fever Road, a BBC Publication, and cry and just feel how well off you are, when you have to carry a child dying with Malaria on a home-made stretcher of branches, twenty to thirty miles to get into an old banger of a taxi to take them another few hundred miles to a hospital where you queue up to pay or are booked to register yourself and then pay up to go into a ward, then have a minimum of drugs and then be brought back home and to be only dealt with by people who are skilled who come into the villages with uncertain drugs and uncertain cures to try to help out, but in some cases they kill the patient because of their inadequate training.

We built a medical centre, a hospital for the males, a hospital for the females and a maternity element, all of which have solar powered energy devices, all which have rainwater harvesting facilities and we are now supplying them with wholesome water from the wells which are above them, we are piping the water into the village so we will, and for what, how much does a hospital cost in Kenya? 50,000 pounds, 50,000 pounds to save hundreds of children’s lives. If they weren’t black it would not be happening, that’s the problem. If they were white Europeans it would not be allowed to happen it’s an absolute disgrace on the Western work to allow Africa to bleed like it’s bleeding and so this Council has taken a small step to try to help.

Chapter 11 – Caterham Project

One thing that needs to be mentioned is the Caterham Project where the Hyde Group which is a principle group of companies in Tameside who developed a scheme for their graduates so that the guys coming out of university might know what a nut and bolt looked like as well as having all the theory and what they’re doing they get a Caterham Kit, which is a Lotus 7 and they’ve got to build it and make it run and then it was driven by one of their staff to Lands End and then driven to John O’ Groats and raised money for Willow Wood and the Welsh Air Ambulance.

So when talking to them on the Vision Team it transpired that it would be a good idea if we got some of these young people who sit on walls all night kicking their heels or something else, to come along and build some of these kits. The Caterham Kit developed a Lotus 7 so we’ve got an area marked out now in the Tame Street garages, we will bring these young people in off the streets, they’ll be properly garbed with a racing overall. They’ll be taught by mechanics how to put these kits together. When they’re assembled they will go to a racing circuit, they will be driven round by a racing driver. At the same time we’ll expect them to build a buggy, maybe with a lawnmower engine and they’ll get a litre of fuel and the one who goes the farthest, the most efficient one, will get a prize and who knows how many mechanics we might find, how many young people’s interest we might just kick off and we know that it’s possible and together with the Hyde Group and Tameside College we intend to start that situation running, build the 3 cars, Caterham will take them back and give us 3 more kits or we can sell them for charity. Whatever we want to do we’ll do that, but the intention will be to try and bring some young people off the streets and break this vicious chain of gangs, where young people are entrained into the older people who are at the point of criminality. We’ve got to break that off somehow and so we’re not looking for tearaways we’re looking for just youngsters who are not clearly doing anything except just sitting there bored and wondering what to do next.

Chapter 12 - The Coming Year

So that’s how we are doing at this moment in time. If you perhaps want to know how we are doing, how we’re going to do in the future, it’s a little bit more difficult because the future’s always that much more unpredictable, but I can tell you briefly. I wonder if the Father’s asleep; no he’s awake.

Briefly, our intention is to do this. We intend to complete the Pay and Grading which has been a legal requirement on us to give principally our female staff the same rates of pay as their counterparts, the males. Where males have been given bonuses, etcetera, we can’t pay those bonuses. There’s a formula which equates them all together and to if we’d have done what the Conservative group wanted to do, we were looking at 24 million. That means a marked time for those at the top end until everybody catches up – illegal and expensive, 24 million. We haven’t done that, we’ve had to bring a more level activity into bear and some people are losing salary and that’s unfortunate, but we have put in place a two year delay where everybody will continue to be paid while we sort out the hundreds and it’s hundreds against the thousands, who are in that position.

Now, the way we do it is by re-training, re-skilling the individual’s job, not the individual, the job has to be different because if you don’t, this lot’s all geared together with a set of gear wheels. Turn one gear wheel and give that person more money and they all turn and that’s going to be extraordinarily expensive, Cumbria County Council 60 million to deal with their problems, 60 million and that’s because they didn’t get hold of it properly and the solicitors came in like wolves and they have absolutely gone to town on Councils and it’s been a heyday for them because Councils have backed off or tried to do silly things which has turned out that they couldn’t do them because this is a legal requirement. We’ve managed it and we’re well into the 95% now of people our staff being signed up to accept it, 95%, so we’re in the last few hundreds who we will deal with in this way and we said we’re going to do a number of them fast track and we’ll do that and I’m sure that at the end of the day there’ll be few people who will be worse off than what they are today in two years’ time, but we’ve managed it rather than getting too excited about it and trying to fight something which was wrong. You can’t continue to say that female labour can be paid less than male’s. I was reading a book the other day – in 1888 the Trade Union Congress where a woman stood up called Miss Black and said this is 1888 it is time that women were paid the same as men for the same labour that they do – 1888 – and we’re in 2009 and we’re just achieving it so it’s taken a hell of a time but we have got, excuse the phrase – we have got there – which is important and we will develop a flexible workforce as well on the back of this because we don’t want to when we have a downturn like we’ve got in Planning and an upturn like we’ve got in Grants, it’s senseless to bring in other people from outside, we need to be able to cross-talk with staff so when they’ve got less to do and they’ve got more to do we can move them around, which is difficult in Local Government but we will skill people and intend to do that.

We’ll maintain the Tameside Works First and we’ll maintain the ten day cash payment to businesses because that’s their lifeline to keep the money flowing as fast as possible. We’re going to create a special partnership with St. Peter’s Partnership which has been so successful in maintaining the community in St. Peter’s Ward in the west end of Ashton where there’s a large community of Ethnic people and a large community of white people and it’s divided by a wide road, and it’s a fantastic, fantastic situation that’s been developed. They’ve completed collected together and united and that’s down to the hard work of certain individuals. Now we want to bring that ability out into the other areas of Tameside and make it work there as well and to do that they need more income so we’ve already put jobs out to the private sector such as security, cleaning signs, weed spray, that sort of thing. We can contractually engage local people via this Partnership to actually do those jobs which gives them another income stream so they can then do more work to unite the communities of Tameside and keep them in some sort of friendship which ought to be easy but unfortunately, in the times we are, it’s difficult. We’re hoping that can happen and we’re looking at a spin-off as well, another additional potential, which is we have in the Tameside College one of the best bakery and confectionary businesses in training that there is in the country and they hide their light under a bushel. We want them in the centre of this town, we want them with a retail outlet to sell their produce and we want them with a restaurant, because they train people in that service as well and therefore we’re looking for a partnership whereby they can have a restaurant in the middle of Ashton and an outlet to sell their commerce and thus bring another income stream into this partnership I’ve talked about.

We recognise that the people, the soldiers who have fallen since ’45 have not had a principal war memorial. Clearly, what happened in the 14-18 war was so horrific, there are memorials across the borough and the Second World War although not as devastating still took many, many men and women out and they were killed in combat and their names are remembered. But since ’45 that’s not happened so we have put on the war memorials, Councillor Jim Fitzpatrick’s responsible on the war memorials, we’ve put ‘for those who have fallen since ’45 and remembering them’ but we haven’t named them generally – I think there’s only one with a name on, so I’m in talks with Jim to secure a central war memorial which will be dedicated to the people who have fallen since ’45 so as to give them the remembrance that they deserve.

We have, in the sub region of Greater Manchester to ten Councils, we’re moving into a more governance style of activity. At the moment it’s the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities. That’s going to become a sub regional Government and we will take our part in that. We expect to draw down from the region and from Central Government, quite important amounts of work from them and responsibilities and have them all attended to inside the 2.7 million people that the boundaries of the Greater Manchester Councils have inside them. So that’s a potentially exciting situation and we hope to have got that done by early next year if the Government approves it but we have nearly put all the nuts and bolts together for that one.

I’ve mentioned before we’ve spent all that money on high schools and we do have another bid for 120 million – it looks good.

The Energy Panel that we have and it’s been very successful but I intend to replace that with a Carbon Reduction Forum and its Chair will become the Project Head who will attend Board Meetings. The idea is to bring onto the Forum student and business representation so we have a broader view of how to partnership and deal with that and of course we shall forge ahead with the Metrolink which is running from Manchester to Droylsden and now from Droylsden to Ashton. The Northern Bypass which is outside here will cut up through the car park on the north side of the Town Hall and the Longdendale Bypass and Glossop Spurs and of course what Alan Whitehead mentioned earlier when Paul Dowthwaite had a question asked, the retaining wall’s borough wide principally to reinforce Alan yes Paul there’s three and a half million pounds to be spent in Mossley and you’ve done a great job with the park there pushing that and again you’ve done a great job pushing the wall. So sometimes it works – not always, but sometimes endeavour does get it. Yeah.

So if that’s not enough, The Sun which is now an ally of the Conservative Party, thank goodness (laughter). I always thought that Page 3 girl should be one of you. They’ve just done a Council Tax survey over the last ten years. Sorry to disappoint you lot but they’ve found some interesting facts for us. There’s 355 Councils been surveyed and the highest increases in 10 years has been the City of London – 204% it’s gone up – and the third lowest is Tameside, gone up 58% and if you take Greater Manchester, the lowest of course is Tameside with 58%, Labour controlled John and who’s the highest? Trafford – Tory control, 103% they’ve gone up in 10 years. So if you want your Council Tax to be maintained at a good level, this is the Party to do it for you, not that lot. They don’t care and they’re like the woman who won the Pools Viv, spend, spend, spend that lot. So there you are, the lowest in Greater Manchester and in real terms if you take inflation that’s only 20% and Trafford’s is in real terms 54%, so I’ll finish on that because I thought you ought to know John about the financial world. Okay thank you.

“Thank you for that Leader, I’d like to call on the leader of the opposition (applause)

Chapter 13 – Response from Councillor John Bell, Leader of the Majority Opposition Party

“I’d like to call upon the Leaders of the Opposition group to respond, Councillor Bell.”

Right we’ve heard this evening and a lot of things which Councillor Oldham said which I can concur with as the Opposition. As the responsible Opposition however, it is my job to bring the Executive the old Executive to account.

I welcome his comments about Local Government expenditure because whoever wins the next General Election in six months’ time quite frankly Local Government nationally has saved more money in cashable savings than any other branch of the Civil Service and I hope they will whoever takes the trouble will take a different view in Westminster. We hear a lot about localism, we are the people who are more than qualified than anybody else in Whitehall how we spend our money for our citizens. There’s been far too much central control by this Government in how Local Government is run. We need to see less inspections. In fact in 2008-9 we spent in inspection alone cost us 362,480 pounds. What could that have been spent on for our local residents? It’s time the Government, and it’s too easy and Councillor Oldham’s quite right, I’ve seen it time and time again, Governments in opposition, different colours, say that they’re going to look after Local Government but when the time comes and things get tough they’ll lower a load onto us, we’ll have to deliver, they take that responsibility off themselves and I just find it absolutely diabolical but they all do it so I’ll be looking very, very carefully to whoever wins the next election that for once there’ll be a Government that will truly rely and truly believe in localism and let us make those decisions.

Now, one of the areas that Councillor Oldham has talked about tonight is of course how this Council has done well out of Grants over the years and that we’re in a strong financial position. I note that he mentioned 30 million pounds in balances which is a considerable cushion and it’s a damn good job that we’ve got that 30 million pounds because any public service organisation currently are looking at their books very carefully indeed.

Councillor Oldham has gone on a great deal this evening about what’s been achieved this year and previous years but he did say, it was only a one-liner, but he did say it’s not always going to be like that and he’s dead right because what we have and it’s the second State of the Area Address, where we’ve had a back-drop of recession and it’s the deepest recession since records began and I’m really afraid about the future and a lot of people out there are also afraid about the future and that’s what I’m going to deal with tonight. Because the way things are going the Government’s going to leave us with a nightmare legacy at the end of this parliament which spells real trouble for families and businesses in this borough. I mean figures out this week for instance saw public borrowing, this month, at 88 times worse than this time last year. According to the Bank of England, lending to businesses is falling at the fastest rate since records began. That is really frightening and it’s really frightening for the people there who are relying on jobs and wealth creation. The terrible irony is, and whilst I was in the restaurant tonight and I was watching the Sky TV, that the Treasurer is borrowing much of this money to prop up the banks. The banks, who were responsible for us getting in this situation. And then what they’re doing, they’re hoarding the money, hoarding the money and not helping businesses. And what is really terrifying also for me is that the Government and in fact the Council, although Councillor Oldham did mention about the future briefly, that everyone seems to be in total denial about how extremely serious our economic plight is.

Everybody knows what inevitably must happen – everyone with any sense at all, that public spending must be dramatically cut. After this decade of spending and squander and yes we don’t want boom and bust but here we had a Chancellor who is now Prime Minister that was boom and bust and blamed the Tories for it, and here we have a situation from his own making that is going to be boom and bust and we’re in that situation now. We cannot continue to carry on regardless because the economic impact on Tameside is going to be absolutely intolerable. In the last two years in Tameside, there’s been an ongoing increase in the borough’s unemployed. The number of benefit claimants has increased by 122% from 3,127 in October 2007 to 6,939 in October 2009. It is the third highest increase in Greater Manchester. The numbers of benefit claimants between the ages of 18 and 24 has increased by 25%. I welcome Councillor Oldham’s mention tonight about the apprentices because we don’t want to see, you can go along this Market ground in a lunchtime you can see them the so called ‘Neets’ – Not in Education, Employment or Training, and these you know we’re in danger of just wasting a decade of these youngsters and giving them something worthwhile to do. We really have to concentrate on that area.

Furthermore, in Tameside, we have the lowest number of full-time available vacancies and the second lowest number of part-time available vacancies in Greater Manchester. In total there are less than 800 job vacancies in Tameside as I speak; amounting to just one vacancy for every nine benefit claimants. If we look about wages in Tameside we have the second lowest wages in Greater Manchester. On average, they earn £983 a year less than the average Greater Manchester wage. £988 less than the north-west average wage and £2,101 a year less than the national average wage. Whilst we on this side of the chamber have supported Tameside Council’s Works First initiative, it is clear that the impact of Labour’s recession has hit tens of thousands of homes in this borough.

Let us have a look at the record in inspections. Tick box inspections and huge propaganda while the core service delivery remains questionable. I want to mention something that came up at a recent Committee Meeting here I think it was the Overview and Audit Panel. Where we had a situation via Price Waterhouse Coopers who do the Audit Commission work for us, and we have, and quite rightly, we have an enviable record in scoring well in inspections, but I would like to ask who inspects the inspectors? Because it’s recently been revealed that Tameside Council’s previous auditors, Price Waterhouse Coopers, failed to find mistakes amounting to 5.3 million on the 2008/9 balance sheet. Price Waterhouse Coopers were paid 235,000 pounds for that inspection. Can I ask, can we expect Tameside Council to be demanding a refund from PWC for their inspection incompetence, and how can the inspection process be trusted when failures of this magnitude occur?

I hope the cameras are still running whilst I’m on (laughter) because last year, because last year when I came on the screen went blank. (Cheers) It’s quite interesting though, however, when one talks about propaganda, in 2009/10 this Council will spend the following amounts on propaganda – increasing the Marketing and Communications budget 160,000; Tameside Citizen, The Wire, Tameside Television 121,000; Street Art, Statues, Cultural Developments, Maps 419,000. In total the items alone will amount to almost 700,000 in 2009/10. Furthermore, this money will have come directly from the money raised via Council Tax and may I remind people that it’s not Capital Grant money as suggested recently by a number of Labour Councillors.

So what does it mean for our residents? It means that our residents live in a borough where the Council has failed to get a grip of endemic problems in the neighbourhood. We talked about clean streets, we do have clean streets, the main street. I see these little green vehicles, fantastic they are – your main streets – great. In my Ward in Hyde if you go on what is called the Grid Iron behind the Town Hall – Cross Street, Great Norbury Street – it’s an absolutely sham. We have the staff in the Town Hall in Hyde and ourselves have a constant battle to keep those streets clean. It is an extremely frustrating situation and so I just want to point out that not all the streets in Tameside are clean, but go behind some of the streets and you will see they’re quite a mess.

If you look at the Community Safety of this borough, we have a multi-million pound Community Safety budget but a year on little significant impact is made on crime with of course youth annoyance and anti-social behaviour and this was referred to by Councillor Oldham, still endemic. And what horrified me recently of course was that I felt the Police had been let down in this borough because it came to fruition that we were told that Tameside Council were paying for private security guards to patrol the streets of Tameside and they ordered the patrols in response to uncontrollable annoyance and anti-social behaviour in Dukinfield; a panic measure in response to their failure to combat that anti-social behaviour. The security guards have no legislative right to enforce the law and yet, according to a company representative, they are breaking up groups, moving them on and taking them back to their parents, patrolling with a Rottweiler dog, the security guards and I quote “they’re all ex-military” and their aim is to get things done. Well how do they get things done, that’s my question, with a Rottweiler dog, when they have no legislative right to do the duties they are undertaking. I want to ask the question tonight, who sanctioned these patrols, who has liability for the patrols in the event of a member of the public getting injured, why does Tameside Council prefer to employ the services of private security guards when they could be providing extra funding for the Police? And we were condemned tonight by Councillor Oldham for suggesting Special Constables on our streets. You’ve got to ask the question, why do we have to have Patrollers, our own people patrolling our streets? I’ll tell you why and I’ll tell you why we’ve got Police Community Support Officers and the reason for it is, the Police have not been allowed to do their work. They are; they’ve got one arm up their back all the time. They have so much paperwork to do that they’re moribund with it and spend most of the time in the Police Station instead of out on the beat and arresting people who break the law.

What we want in this country, in this borough, are real Policemen with the powers of arrest, not private security guards, PCSOs, who can only hold somebody for half an hour, or Patrollers, but the reason why you’ve got Patrollers is simply because the Police are doing their job with one hand up their back and I want to see more Police Officers and hopefully the next Government, certainly if it’s a Tory Government, will deliver those extra Police.

I want to talk and I’ve mentioned about young people because one of the things in Tameside that does concern us all I’m sure in this chamber, where youngsters are at risk by binge drinking on a regular basis. There’s some horrific figures come out about Tameside. A report by north-west Trading Standards put us in the top five worst places in the north-west for heavy drinking among 14 to 17 year olds. The report found that the borough’s young people were 40% more likely to use illegal drugs and to have mental health problems, 60% more likely to have been homeless and ran almost double the risk of criminal convictions, 40% more likely to have had accidents and almost four times as likely to have been excluded from school and 30% more likely to have gained no qualifications.

In March 2007, following a report that children as young as nine were drinking in the streets of Dukinfield, it was reported in the press by Labour Councillor David Sweeton “we cannot have this on our streets, it’s tantamount to child abuse”. Absolutely right, absolutely right. Where you hear and we’ve all heard it in our past meetings from the Police where parents, irresponsible parents, are giving booze to their children to take out on the streets. I have never heard anything like it, but it’s going on now and I don’t suppose it’s just happening in Tameside; it must be going on elsewhere. So we’ve got to do more to combat this child abuse as Councillor Sweeton says, with incidents of alcohol related youth annoyance high and we’ve got to tackle that, as in the Youth Offending Team and that’s when I come on about the Youth Offending Team. Is it any wonder that youth offending is out of control when a Government joint inspection of Tameside’s Youth Offending Team found that potential was not being fully realised and that inconsistent performance compounded by recording deficits and the lack of organisational resilience diminished the overall standards achieved. The inspection found insufficient consistency of operational performance or focus on the aim of reducing offending. Furthermore, whilst many staff in prevention services showed considerable energy and enthusiasm, a lack of continuity of funding, relatively unfocussed targeting of children and young people and insufficient assessments, diminished the otherwise positive delivery of services. For all criteria, including management and leadership, Tameside’s Youth Offending Team was found only to meet minimum requirements. I want to pose the question. Having said that about our young people and it’s got to be a cry for help from these young kids, don’t Tameside’s young people deserve better? Shouldn’t residents whose lives are blighted by social anti-social behaviour, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights, expect more for the Council Tax that they pay?

Health and Social Care. The health of Tameside is one of grave concern because it’s worse than the national average according to the borough’s latest health profile. Rates for obesity, drug misuse and alcoholism are some of the worst in the country. As a consequence, rates for heart disease, strokes, cancer and deaths from smoking are significantly worse than the national average, with people nationally living an average more than two years longer than their Tameside counterparts and these findings come in this year’s Tameside health profile published by the Department for Health and the Association of Public Health Observatories. Of 31 relevant indicators, contained in the report, Tameside is rated significantly worse than the national average in 24 areas despite the borough being a spearhead target area to tackle poor health. Worryingly, the poor health rates are not confined to adults. Poor rates of child poverty, educational achievement, physical activity, tooth decay, smoking during pregnancy and teenage pregnancies are all cause for concern. Mercifully, childhood obesity and infant deaths are not significantly different from the national average. For the second year running, Tameside is named among the ten worst areas for alcohol-related problems and disease out of 300 Local Authority areas. It’s above the national average in some cases significantly for almost all of the 23 indicators including the number of alcohol-related admissions to hospital which has increased every year since 2002, and do you know one has to blame the licensing laws 24 hours. The amount of resources that we are putting Council Tax payers through our Police on the streets of Stalybridge, Hyde and Ashton on Friday and Saturday nights is quite alarming.

The evidence against Labour’s health failing and I have to say it’s one of our local MPs that brought it in my goodness me, James Purnell, who brought in 24 hour licensing it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened. It’s cause mayhem in A & E departments throughout the nation.

And finally, whilst we’re in for a tough time ahead, we still have to protect our vulnerable and I, like many of you, last week received a letter from Tameside Blind Association to the Executive Director of Community Services dated the 8th of November which said that there may be a withdrawal of funding for the Royal National Institute of the Blind’s Talking Blind Book Service and that service costs Tameside Council just 7,511 – absolute peanuts against our budget. The letter stated the service provided by Tameside Libraries cannot compare with the range offered by the Talking Book Service. We urge you to think again before making the decision to withdraw this service for this vulnerable group of residents.

In the meantime, an official Tameside Council news release reports that the Mayor, Councillor John Sullivan and Councillor Jim Fitzpatrick are providing the Tameside Talking News for the Blind with a £450 cheque for a laptop. Councillor Sullivan said “I invited the volunteers to the parlour to say thank you for giving up their own time to provide such a valuable service to the local community. However, when I realised they were struggling with such old time consuming and limited equipment I thought we might be able to do something more practical to acknowledge our appreciation for their efforts”. Councillor Fitzpatrick said “this is just the kind of cause that I’m keen to support as so many people will benefit, not just the volunteers but also many local people who use this service and you know one has to agree with those quotes. Whilst Labour, you’re happy to boast a £450 donation, you’re not so eager to boast of the £7,500 funding that you could be withdrawing. So it appears to me, what Labour giveth with one hand they take away more with the other.

In conclusion, according to an inspection regime, Tameside is a four star rated Local Authority. However, the facts I have outlined this evening speak for themselves. No amount of inspections can hide the facts that I’ve given which have an impact on residents every single day. While you congratulate yourselves on another award, and we’ve had them paraded in front of us tonight, you are in self-denial about the reality many of our residents now face. You’ve had thirty years, thirty years to deal with these issues in Tameside and the borough itself is still looking for answers and as you know I always like to have some humour on these sorts of occasions, and I’m sure we’re all avid viewers of X-Factor. How many, be honest, well I just want to unveil this poster you’ll be glad to know that Jedward are gone, but we’re still left with Deadwood that’s the Prime Minister….

“Will you tell us when we start laughing John?”

… and Alistair Darling, that’s what it’s all about folks – Deadwood.

Applause

Chapter 14 – Response from Councillor Roy Etchells, Leader of the Independent Party

Just one or two points. Councillor Oldham has said a lot of things what we do agree with, Councillor Bell has said a lot of things what are important. First and foremost is Policing. I do believe we’re getting short-changed with policing. I do believe that when it’s difficult to police Ashton or Stalybridge they collect our Police and take them away so that Mossley and small towns like that don’t have Police at weekends; that’s not right. We have two PCSOs what are working very hard, we have a Patroller who works as hard and those three keep us safe in Mossley. It’s few and far between. I think I’ve had, well I’ve been in Council and known four Inspectors and three Chief Constables who packed it in. Once we’ve got a good Police force I do believe that people will be. That was one.

The next point is the recycling. Recycling is very important if it means that people will get on better and get more money, get these little grants, they’ll look forward to it and we’re working hard in Mossley to make sure we do this.

The next thing is something what for the last seven years in my Councilling I’ve asked for and Councillor Jim Fitzpatrick I’ve asked that’s my Green Flag for the park

“It’s your Green Flag is it?”
(Laughter)

Anyway, whatever happens if we get the parks straight I don’t care who does it and another thing, the next thing is the retaining walls in Mossley. As you know, 2003 was a bad year for Mossley with subsidence, it hasn’t worked very well. Councillor Whitehead and myself and all the engineers have worked very hard in Mossley to protect our retaining wall. I do hope that this 3 million I heard that will put us safely on the map so that we can last another 400 year without collapsing into the abyss.

“What as a party?”
(Laughter)

Don’t worry, whoever says anything, trying to make it you laugh, ask Roy Oldham who the comedian is here.

(Laughter and chat)

All right, I think the next thing is like I said make sure the law is make sure that this Police force I don’t know whether we’re short-changed I wish somebody would just tell me how much the Police Precept is in Tameside. I don’t know. But you can tell me, I know it’s a percentage. Look in the paper to find out. Perhaps Councillor Oldham would tell me how much we pay the Police.

“Carry on Councillor”

I’m asking a question

“That’s good carry on”

“Yeah well you carry on, no just carry on now”

Right thank you very much.