More Neighbourhood Policing on the way

The creation of 104 Police Officer posts ring fenced to neighbourhood policing in priority neighbourhoods is the big headline out of the budget for Greater Manchester Police I proposed at last Friday's meeting of AGMA [the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities ]. For the last few years I've had the job, with a couple of colleagues from other local authorities, of scrutinising GMP's budget proposals and making recommendations to AGMA.This year I was delighted to get support for a proposal that will not only get more police officers on the streets of Greater Manchester but will also see additional investment in tackling drug dealing, in witness protection, in tackling sales of alcohol to juveniles, and in gathering the forensic evidence to bring more cases successfully to court. Every year our citizens' survey identifies crime and anti-social behaviour as the biggest issue in the city though in most categories of crimes the numbers have been going down over the last few years. Even so, I'm sure that everyone will welcome this extra investment in making our communities safer .

Crumpsall - on the up ?

Long-standing Crumpsall and Blackley Village residents like myself ( 29 years now ) will have seen many changes over that period of time with a fair few ups and downs for the area. We will all have our own opinions but it is useful to get an objective, external measure of what is happening to where we live. Just before Christmas, the government published its Index of Multiple Deprivation. This divides every Council Ward in England into smaller units called super output areas ( SOAs ) and then compares them all to each other looking at income, employment, health, education, housing, crime and the living environment. The previous time when this was done in 2004, half the SOAs in Crumpsall and Blackley were assessed as being in the 5% most deprived in the country. Now, 3 years later, none of our SOAs are in the worst 5%, all of them have improved, and one has risen 2750 places up the national table. So on the things that really count for quality of life, compared to the rest of England, Crumpsall and Blackley Village really are on the up !

Crumpsall Labour Blog's New Year's Resolutions

Two resolutions from Richard Leese . The first which will be very difficult to deliver on is to get his colleague Con keegan to learn how to do postings and get him to do at least one posting on the blog , although having said that we might also need to send Jon-Leigh Pritchard on a re-training course ! The second and more important resolution is to make sure the blog is used regularly to keep you up to date on your Councillors, the Labour Party and Crumpsall and Blackley Village so log-on to this space and it won't be an empty one !