Time up for bad landlords

Private landlords are not all bad. There are excellent landlords in Crumpsall providing a first-rate service to their tenants and contributing to making Crumpsall a good place to live.But when landlords are bad the impact they have can be nothing short of disastrous not only for their tenants but also for residents in adjacent properties, and unfortunately Crumpsall also has its share of appalling private landlords. The City Council has campaigned for years for more powers to tackle this problem and has had a small success in gaining powers to introduce selective licensing of private landlords in certain parts of the city. Crumpsall was originally intended to be in phase 3 of selective licensing but today, the City Council's Executive agreed to merge phase 2 with phase 3, put more resources into it, and with a bit of luck have selective licensing in place in Crumpsall by the end of the year. This should cause no problem for the many good landlords but hopefully spell the end for the rogues !

Don't tar us all with the same brush

Once again the reputations of politicians are being dragged through the mud because of the actions of a small number of MPs abusing the system to favour members of their families. I am sure this is infuriating for the vast majority of MPs who's conduct is entirely proper, but it is even more infuriating for Councillors because our reputations are damaged too for something that just couldn't happen in local government. For one thing, any support staff for Councillors [ and we don't have a lot ] are employed by the Council itself, not by individual Councillors. For a second, Councillors have to publicly declare any close relative employed anywhere in the Council, and would have to exclude themself from any appointment for which a relative or close friend was a candidate. The problem is not with politicians in general, but with parliament which still runs itself like a Victorian gentlemens' club rather than as a modern legislature . No wonder that not only do we get scandal after scandal but whichever party is in power we get poor scrutiny of the Executive and poor scrutiny of legislation. What this country needs is fundamental reform of parliament to give us transparent and democratic government fit for the 21st century.

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 !

Sure Start comes to Crumpsall

Work is well underway on building a £1.3 million Sure Start centre for Crumpsall.
When completed, early in 2008, the Centre will provide places for more than 50 pre-school children as well as providing space for activities such as parenting classes and community meetings. the centre, located on Moss Bank, across the road from St.Anne's RC primary school, will be open from 7.00am to allow early starters to drop their children off ( hopefully on foot ! ) before going to work .
Sure Start has been a great success elsewhere in Manchester. We want children in Crumpsall to have the best possible start in life and this new centre will help to provide this in a safe, attractive and stimulating environment.

Slowest in Europe!

I don't want to turn this into a transport site but thought it was worth adding something to my last post on the basis of a survey published by road analysis website Keepmoving.co.uk which shows that Greater Manchester has the 4th most slow moving roads in Europe !

And some people , presumably with ostrich like tendencies , still argue that we should do nothing to tackle congestion !