This morning my colleague Cllr Graham Compton presented the excellent Conservative alternative budget to today’s Council meeting.
As a Conservative Group we recognised the difficult time that many local residents across the City of Salford are having during the current recession. Our priority was to give some relief for those residents, and to that end we put forward that the Council Tax should be frozen this year.
Unfortunately, having already increased the Council Tax by over 80% since 1997, Labour were in no mood for giving the public value-for-money and pushed through yet another increase. The Liberal Democrats supported a tax rise as well.
Local residents are sick and tired of paying through the nose in Council Tax while receiving poor value-for-money in return. We proposed some common-sense steps to save money, such as slashing the spend on expensive outside consultants, reducing the marketing budget and removing the unnecessary Executive Support Councillor posts which do nothing other than give 8 Labour Councillors extra special allowances, but Labour just want to carry on wasting taxpayers’ money.
On February 5th, Salford City Council published the closure notice for St George’s RC High School. As I’ve outlined many times before, this is a scandalous, appalling decision made without good reason – St George’s is an excellent school that serves at the heart of the local community.
Following the publication of the closure notice, there are 6 weeks of statutory consultation – these consultation responses will be considered when the Cabinet make a final decision at the end of the consultation. More importantly, as we already know what the Cabinet thinks of this proposal, they will also be forwarded to the independent adjudicator in the event of an appeal. I know we’ve been through more consultations than we can count but it is really important that local residents respond and show their support for St George’s!
The Labour Council are trying their best to hide the consultation process away and make it difficult for local residents to respond. The information is buried deep on the Council website, but it is there and you can find it by clicking here.
Responses to the statutory consultation must be in writing, you can send them to: Kathryn Mildenstein, Children’s Services Directorate, Minerva House, Pendlebury Road, Swinton, M27 4EQ.
This fight isn’t over yet.
I was very sad to hear of the death of Bill Risby, the Labour Councillor for Moston ward in Manchester. Bill was a colleague of mine on the Fire Authority and my thoughts are with his friends, family and colleagues.
Earlier this week I was delighted to have the opportunity to attend the official handover of the two new fire engines at Salford Fire Station. The new vehicles are state-of-the-art appliances and I know that they will do an excellent job for the firefighters at Salford Fire Station and for the communities that the Fire Station serves.
Even more encouraging was the excellent report that Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue Service received from the Audit Commission this week. The Government watchdog described GMFRS as “performing well” and “improving strongly” and awarded top marks for both service delivery and use of resources. As one of Salford’s representatives on the Fire Authority I am absolutely delighted with this progress and I am very grateful to all the Fire Service staff (at all levels) who have worked exceptionally hard to achieve these ratings.
I was delighted to read today that Phil Harte and his staff at St George’s RC High School have once again been recognised for the excellent work that they do for the children of Walkden and Little Hulton.
This makes even more of a mockery of the dreadful Labour decision to close the school down. St George’s remains an excellent school at the heart of the community and there is no reasonable justification for closure.
Local residents have five more weeks to register their objections to the closure notice, although you’d be hard pressed to find that out from the Council website which doesn’t seem to have anything about it at all. Anyone would think they didn’t want people to respond to the consultation…
This afternoon I spent a very enjoyable hour-and-a-bit talking to the Citizenship students at Eccles College. I’m very grateful to the tutors Louise and Helen for allowing me to come in and talk to the class.
I hope I was able to give the students a bit more of an insight into the role of a local Councillor and Salford City Council in general, and I was really pleased to have the opportunity to listen to some of the concerns and hopes that young people have about and for their communities.
I’m an Eccles College alumnus myself and this is the third time I’ve been back to talk to students; I hope I’ll have the opportunity to do this again in the future.
The Friends of Walkden Station (FOWS) have fixed their AGM date for Wednesday 4th March at 7pm. It will be held in the Concert Room of the Walkden Royal British Legion on Wilfred Road.
Walkden station is the local railway station for residents in Walkden, Little Hulton, Ellenbrook, Boothstown, Worsley, Astley and Mosley Common and it would be great to see a good turnout to support the excellent work that FOWS do on the public’s behalf.
The current state of the old Walkden Library building on Memorial Road stands at the moment as a fitting monument to the failure of the Labour Council to plan ahead and serve local residents effectively.
As a ward Councillor I have been asking for years what plans the Council had for the building when it became vacated – answer came there none. The Youth Service have been looking at that building for years but the Labour Council did not have a plan for the building and did nothing about it.
Belatedly the property team have now allowed the Youth Service to look at the building to see if it was suitable for transforming into a Youth Centre. The Youth Service officers have worked incredibly hard to try to make it work but the building has been left to rot and there is no money in the Youth Service coffers to cover the shortfall.
Young people in Walkden, Boothstown, Ellenbrook and Worsley do not have any dedicated youth facilities to use. This was an ideal opportunity, but the Council have failed miserably to plan ahead and now intend to flog the site off at a knock-down price.
If a proper transition plan for the building had been put into place, the building would not have been left to rot, the huge maintenance backlog would not have built up, and the Youth Service would have had a year or more to put together a funding package to allow the building to remain in community use. As it stands, the Council has dithered, and the young people in Walkden and the surrounding area have missed out. They have been badly let down by the Labour Council.
Salford Claimant Count Up 55%
Following the publication of the latest unemployment figures this week, local figures released by the Conservatives show that the number Salford residents claiming unemployment benefit has risen by 55% over the past 12 months.
We can all see the effect of the recession on the high street, but these figures are a stark reminder of how hard local families in Salford are being hit.
Many local residents are struggling to pay their bills, which is why the Conservatives have announced a series of tax breaks for families, including a national freeze on Council Tax and the removal of stamp duty from 9 out of 10 first time buyers.
Local businesses in Salford would also benefit from a proper National Loan Guarantee Scheme, which will make a huge difference to the flow of credit, helping to protect jobs and prevent further rises in unemployment.