Greater Manchester ‘Combined Authority’ has announced the ‘next steps’ in the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework announced. This has been agreed by the Mayor of Greater Manchester, and the ten council leaders, including Bury’s.

Residents will recall that the first proposals set out plans build significant numbers of houses across Greater Manchester – this was for 227,000 new homes in Greater Manchester over the next 20 years. It also included a significant amount of building on protected ‘Green Belt’ land – Bury fared worst, set to lost 20% of its Green Belt, and in Prestwich, Whitefield and Unsworth the loss was nearly 50% of green belt.

According to the announcement from GMCA: “The second draft will take into account concerns raised by some members of the public during the first consultation period, and will aim to make the most of Greater Manchester’s brownfield sites and reduce the impact on greenbelt”. Importantly this doesn’t say ‘no greenbelt’ ….  Residents may remember that before his election, Andy Burnham made clear promises on the GMSF, and said “I would go further and propose that we consider the aim of no net loss of green belt.”

This process will continue in September with the publication of the responses to the initial consultation. This will be followed later in the year by the publication of data and associated sources of information such as population estimates which will help GMCA calculate the requirements for housing and employment.

The second draft of the plan will be developed in the new year, with a view to publish it in June 2018. Following publication of the draft plan, there will be a 12-week consultation with the public. Conveniently this publication date is just AFTER the next set of elections in Greater Manchester, which take place in May 2018…..

Green belt land proposed to be lost across Greater Manchester in the first proposals.

At Bury’s last Full Council meeting, Lib Dem councillors asked questions on how Bury was performing on reducing the rate of smoking in the borough. Local Councils have responsibility for public health, of which reducing smoking rates is an important part.

We asked following the Public Health England report on smoking rates for 2016, which showed the biggest drop in a decade with the rate falling to 15.5% of the population, a 1.4 percentage point drop from 16.9% the previous year.

For the first time, the figures show that the biggest drop is among younger adults, aged 18-29 years, with smoking rates having fallen by an impressive quarter since 2010. This reverses a long trend, which has seen rates among this younger group stubbornly fall at a lower rate than the overall population.

We wanted to ask how Bury was doing compared to this national picture:

Question: Nationally smoking amongst young people has fallen faster than other groups in the last five years. Could the Leader inform members how Bury compare to the national statistics, and what is the authority doing to achieve an above average smoking reduction in Bury.

Answer: The latest research conducted by Trading Standards North West (2017) indicates that there is a downward shift in levels and perceptions of smoking among young people, reporting that fewer than 5% of children aged eight to 15 in England have smoked – representing the lowest level on record.
According to the report, between 2009 and 2017, the smoking rate in the North West among14-17 year olds has fallen from 22% to 9%. Whilst at present, the Bury cut of data has not been made available, it is interesting to note that Bury had the largest volume of responders to the survey within the NW, so the data is likely to be representative of the trend locally (although this cannot be guaranteed).
The biggest impact on reducing the uptake of smoking by young people has come from measures taken at a national level including:
– Increasing the price of tobacco products
– Plain packaging legislation
– Banning the sale of packs of 10’s cigarettes
– Raising the legal age of tobacco sales from 16 to 18yrs
– The ban on smoking tobacco in cars when accompanied by children The ban on tobacco advertising

There are a number of measures being undertaken locally here in Bury to support the further reduction of smoking rates among young people including:
– E-cigarette guidance and support to refresh smoking policies in schools Pilot program to de-normalise smoking around children in sporting spaces
– Development of an information pack for Primary schools’ use to raise awareness of how children and young people may be targeted with illegal and illicit tobacco.

We asked a follow on question about funding for Smoking Reduction Services, and whether Bury had reduced their spending on this. This followed a report by the charity Action on Smoking and Health that 40% of Councils had reduced their spend.

Answer: Since the council took responsibility for commissioning of Smoking Cessation there has been no overall reduction in funding. We are however working to modernise the service and create an integrated healthy lifestyle service to support people with various aspects of healthy living. So whilst we continue to invest in smoking cessation support there is no longer a separate service identity. In addition to the Healthy Lifestyle service, some pharmacies offer smoking cessation support and our school health service is working with Early Break to deliver smoking education to children and young people.

Part of our locality plan transformation proposals include a proposition to significantly increase the capacity of the Healthy Lifestyle Service and there are GM proposals to invest in a GM wide digital self help offer.

More information on the Public Health England Report here.

Health organisations and the Liberal Democrats have criticised the Government’s announcement on mental health NHS staffing shortages as inadequate.

The Government announced plans yesterday to recruit an extra 5,000 staff into mental health services by 2020-21, but many have critised the existing crisis in filling jobs, and the lack of any new funding to pay for these posts.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary Norman Lamb said: “This is a government that is all bark and no bite. We need to be serious about mental health but all this government has done is pluck a number out of thin air. This government has built a reputation for big announcements which then fail to materialise, this has all the markings of another one. Time and again we see bold announcements while services continue to struggle to cope.

Jeremy Hunt called for thousands of extra GPs to be in place by 2020, yet so far he has overseen a shrinking of the workforce. They then quietly dropped the commitment in their manifesto. And now he has already been forced to admit that he hasn’t got the money for his latest plans.”

Prof Wendy Burn, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said 570 extra consultants had been promised in the plans.
“You would expect to see a consultant if you had cancer and the same applies for mental health. The biggest challenge to creating robust mental health services is the workforce. I am very supportive of this strategy which starts to tackle that problem.

Janet Davies, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “There is already a dangerous lack of workforce planning and accountability and this report is unable to provide detail on how the ambitions will be met. It is clear the government will need to work hard just to get back to the number of specialist staff working in mental health services in 2010. Under this government, there are 5,000 fewer mental health nurses and that goes some way to explaining why patients are being failed.”