This morning I was at Eccles College for a visit arranged by the Children’s Services scrutiny team. We are looking at the transition from Children’s Services to Adult Services and it was great to see the excellent work that the Entry Level staff do with the students.
I studied at Eccles College from 1999 until 2001 and it is always a pleasure to go back, and especially good to catch up with some familiar faces from when I was a student!
On Wednesday at Council we debated the Salford Local Area Agreement – a list of targets for Salford agreed between the City Council, partners and Government Office North West. We didn’t actually get to approve the document as a Full Council because it had already been submitted to the Government – a poor show really by the ruling Labour Cabinet who should know full well when the deadlines are!
The Advertiser have picked up on the document and have highlighted one piece of information within it – the number of obese children of reception age in Salford. They say:
MORE than one in 10 four year olds in Salford are overweight, according to a new report published this week.
Figures in the Salford Local Area Agreement show that more than 11 per cent of children in reception classes at the city’s primary schools were obese in the financial year 2007/08. The report – which also reveals that one in five children are obese by the time they hit 11 – was published ahead of a full council meeting at Swinton Civic Centre yesterday (Wednesday).
The authority has unveiled targets aimed at reducing the number of children who are overweight.
All well and good – but the last sentence isn’t actually true! The Labour Council has indeed approved a target for the number of obese children at the start of their reception year. You can read the document for yourself here. Unfortunately that target does not aim for a reduction in the number of 4-year-olds who are overweight.
According to the document, the current rate of obesity in Salford’s reception children is 11.74%. The Council’s agreed targets for 2009, 2010 and 2011 are 11.79%, 11.82% and 11.83% respectively.
So if there is a small increase in the number of obese 4-year-olds in Salford over the next 3 years then the Council will be deemed to have achieved the approved target! That’s almost as shocking as the obesity figures themselves…
The other day I received an e-mail from Manchester Confidential entitled “Exclusive: Sir Howard Bernstein wants your questions on Congestion Charging“. The article in question can be found here.
I’m intrigued and also very concerned by this. Sir Howard is one of only a handful of Local Government officers to have a media profile of his own, but at the end of the day he is still an officer – albeit a very senior one – and he will find it almost impossible to take questions from allcomers about what is probably the number one political hot potato in Greater Manchester without himself stepping into the political sphere.
This makes for a very uncomfortable precedent. It is the politicians who make the decisions and they ought to be the ones up on the platform defending and explaining those decisions.
I had an excellent weekend in Chester and I’m very grateful to my friends and colleagues in Cheshire and the Wirral CF for organising an excellent dinner on Saturday night. Despite being one of the most in-demand politicians around just at the moment, Edward Timpson MP had agreed to be the guest speaker and gave an excellent speech.
This week there is a Council meeting on Wednesday where we are discussing whether to agree with the new AGMA Constitution. AGMA is the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities and exists to partially fill the void left by the abolition of the old Greater Manchester County Council many years ago.
I’m sceptical of the benefits of the new constitution – which will effectively concentrate power in fewer hands (and appointed hands at that) – but we’re having a presentation and full morning’s discussion on the issues so I will be listening attentively before making up my mind.
If (as I fear) the proposed arrangements remove power up from Councils rather than down from regional quangos, and take the decision-making process a further step away from the electorate, then I will find the new constitution impossible to support.
I’m interested to hear what debate has taken place in other Greater Manchester boroughs on this issue – please do leave your comments!
I’m off to Chester for the weekend - back Sunday afternoon.
Have a good weekend!
Congratulations John!
Congratulations to John Howell, the new Conservative MP for Henley-on-Thames and South Oxfordshire. I’m delighted that John won the by-election so handsomely and that local residents in Henley have rejected the filthy, negative campaign tactics of the Liberal Democrats. Well done to John and all the campaign team who have worked so hard over the last month!