Cllr. Cooke’s Blog.

I had a long conversation with one of the lead officers at the council who’s coordinating the council’s response to Swine Flu. There have now been six cases of in Seedley Primary School and up to sixty cases across Greater Manchester (see here for more details). I wanted to make sure that the council is properly prepared and doing everything it can for residents; it also has some legal requirements that I wanted make sure it was following.  I’ve been very pleased to hear how much effort Salford Council officers are putting in to staying on top of things and co-ordinating actions between Greater Manchester, the local health organisations, businesses, schools and the voluntary sector (St. Johns Ambulance etc).

Currently Salford seems to be coping well, but it’s important that people follow the advice given. One problem we’ve already had is with the special helplines not being set up by the government early enough and then with the ‘worried well’ residents phoning in such numbers that the system became overloaded. Communications in the small areas where there have been cases identified are now much better and responses have been good.

If you would like to know what precautions to take and find out what’s happening in schools then the council has some web pages here: http://www.salford.gov.uk/living/health/healthservices/illhealth/nid/swineflu.htm

Hopefully and ASB Closure order will shut this place down.

I’m pleased to report more progress in getting the brothel on Worsley Road shut. The place has been making local residents’ lives hell for years and it’s been a real struggle to deal with the problem - partly because the folks running the place have intimidated many of those who might have been willing to speak out. I’ve been working on this issue since before I became a councillor for the ward in 2007 - progress is tortuously slow because the legislation is so weak.

After lots of pressure from many directions was placed upon the police and local council some raids were carried out and computers seized and inspected. A man has now pleaded guilty to running a brothel and will be sentenced this month. This means that we can stop pussy-footing around and finally get some action taken. One of the problems has been that the council would not deal with the place for fear of being sued. Now that someone has been found guilty the council can use and Antisocial Behaviour Closure to try to shut the place down - a process that has begun.

Much of the recent impetus to deal with the brothel in recent times has come from our current Neighbourhood Police Inspector (I had little joy trying to persuade his predecessor to take action) - so I’d like to thank him and his officers for the work they put in.

Given poor state of the legislation for dealing with brothels which cause the level of nuicance that this has I intend to write to our local MP about the issue and will be contacting local residents for their support.

I went round Harrowby Road to inspect it yesterday evening and am pleased to see that the work to repair the potholes has finally been done. Thanks to the Highways team for getting this sorted.

Before

After

Salford has recently been granted approx. £1.1m of Playbuilder funding from the DCSF to develop (build or improve) 22 play spaces across the city over the next two years (2009/10-2010/11). These play spaces are to be targeted to offer challenging, natural play opportunities for young people aged 8-13 in line with the National Playbuilder programme and Play England’s ‘Design for Play: A guide to creating successful play spaces‘ .

A local consultation event is planned for:

Park: Victoria Park
Venue: Park Street, Swinton, M27 4UR
Time: 1.00 to 4.00pm
Date: Sunday 5 July 2009

And all local residents, families, young people and any other groups that regularly use the park or are interested in play are very welcome to attend.

Come along and get your views heard.

Perhaps the most novel and hard hitting protest against the MPs expenses scandal I’ve seen so far appears the on the BBC website today. While thousands and thousands wait for a council home, homelessness rises, the recession plunges more and more people into negative equity and houses are repossessed in increasing numbers two Labour MPs have utterly taken the tax payer for a ride - they’ve lied about their expenses in order to make money. Now these protesters have shown them up for the greedy and corrupt liars they are:

“Squatters occupy MPs’ ‘main home’

Married Labour MPs Ann and Alan Keen have come under fire for claiming thousands of pounds on a second home near Parliament, while their designated main home is only 10 miles away.

Now a group of men have taken direct action by squatting in the main home they say has been left unoccupied…”

Read more…

An interesting story both for the point being made and the way is has been made.

One of the jobs of a back-bench or opposition councillor is to attend scrutiny meetings which examine and comment upon council policies and decisions. I sit upon the Corporate Issues scrutiny committee and have just come out of a two and a half hour meeting of that committee. Today we discussed the council’s job evaluation scheme for its employees which has sprung out of their legal requirement to end unfair gender gaps in pay and conditions. We also looked at draft of the council’s Dignity at Work policy.

A nagging issue for the committee is that, despite there always being an agenda item for it, there have never been any questions from members of the public. Our current workplan for the future is to look at:

• How well the council is managing its programme of planned efficiencies (August);
• How mobile phones and XDAs are used by employees and councillors (August);
• The annual Ombudsman’s letter about complaints against the council (September);
• Corporate Complaints System (September).

The committee is tasked with scrutinising the following areas:

• Customer and Support Services;
• Human Resources;
• Information and Communication Technologies;
• Procurement;
• Complaints;
• Customer Services/Call Centre;
• Equalities;
• Programme Management (whatever that means);
• Marketing and Communications.

If you hae any questions you’d like answered about these areas or issues that fall within them then you can write to the committee via the Corporate Issues Scrutiny Support Officer, Chief Executive’s, Salford Civic Centre, Chorley Road, Swinton M27 5FJ, tel 0161 793 3318. Or you can email me and I will relay your query: steve@stevecooke.org