Just to report back from the last two meetings of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority Corporate Issues and Reform Scrutiny Committee. This is one of three Scrutiny Committees that have been set up to have oversight of the work of the GM Elected Mayor and other issues that happen at a Greater Manchester level. Bury has one or sometimes two councillors on each Committee – the Lib Dem place for Bury is on the Corporate Issues and Reform Scrutiny.

Three main issues over the last two meetings:

Apprentice Levy
The Apprenticeship Levy was introduced in April 2017, payable at a rate of 0.5% of pay bill by all organisations with an annual pay bill of more than £3 million. This includes the majority of Greater Manchester’s major public sector organisations (Local Authorities, Health Trusts, Police, Fire and TfGM), with an anticipated £20 million being paid per year.

Public sector bodies, for example Bury Council, still have to pay wages for apprentices (on top of the levy they are paying to the Government), but they can claim back money for training. Bury currently has 40 apprentices, which is great, but no doubt dwarfed by the amount it has to pay in the levy.

The work of the GM Combined Authority on this will focus on:
– Theme One: Workforce Planning.
– Theme Two: Consistent & Co-ordinated Approach.
– Theme Three: Creating High Quality Apprenticeships.
– Theme Four: Integration in wider public service reform.

School Readiness
One of the biggest priorities for the Combined Authority at present is school readiness. Essentially Greater Manchester lags behind the national average the proportion of children who are deemed ‘school ready’ at the start of primary school. Previous major studies have shown that addressing this gap would have a massive impact on the future prosperity and wellbeing in the county.

Greater Manchester (GM) remains an outlier in Early Years (EY) outcomes compared to the national average, with only 68% of of all eligible children achieving a good level of development at the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) (reception) in 2016/17, compared with 71% nationally. This equates to approximately 12,000 children starting school this September who have not reached a good level of development.

The priorities in Greater Manchester are going to be:
– All parents will have access to the support they need
– High quality early years services
– Excellent places to play, develop and learn
– Strong leadership and systems infrastructure

Fire Service
One of the bigger areas that comes under this Scrutiny Committee is the Fire Service and at the last meeting we received a number of presentations from senior fire officers. This included an update on the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service Annual Report which updates on GMFRS aims:
– Prevention – Protection – Response – Public Value – Financial Information – People

A summer of achievements last year including:
– GMFRS has provided almost 28,000 homes with face to face safety advice including fire risk, crime prevention and health.
– The number of non-domestic fires has fallen by 6% this year and 34% since 2009/10.
– Despite falling budgets and a small rise in the number of fires GMFRS is around a minute quicker than the national average response times for fire and rescue services.
– Community rooms on Fire Stations have been used almost 6,700 times by charities and community groups. • GMFRS volunteers have provided almost 36,000 hours of service.
– GMFRS carbon footprint has reduced by a massive 40% since the 2008/09 baseline.

Full papers are here. Any questions please get in touch!

Greater Manchester’s Labour Mayor, Andy Burnham, is running a consultation on his plan for policing and the Lib Dem team are urging people take the survey.

The proposed policing priorities are:

Keeping people safe
Protecting and caring for people who live, work, socialise and travel in Greater Manchester. Protecting those who are vulnerable and those who are victims of crime or at risk of being victimised. Building resilience, feelings of safety and confidence in policing and community safety.

Reducing harm and offending
Preventing anti-social and criminal behaviour including the most serious offending and terrorism by solving problems, intervening early and rehabilitating offenders to build confidence in criminal justice.

Strengthening communities and places
Helping to build resilient and resourceful communities including online communities and protecting the places where people live, work, socialise or travel. Supporting the delivery of the IT systems, buildings, roads, street lighting and other public assets needed to solve problems in a 21^st century society.

It is probably difficult to disagree with any of these, but worrying that, in the 33 pages of this document, the policing plan does not once mention burglary, theft from motor vehicles or enforcement of traffic offences, despite these being issues that are raised most often as with us.  There is also no mention of Police visible present “on the beat” in our communities.”

You can read the draft plan and take the survey here. The survey closes at midnight on Sunday 14th January 2018.

Over 11,000 homes across the country have been sitting empty for ten years or more, research by the Liberal Democrats has revealed.

Vince Cable has said it is a “national scandal” that so many homes are being left empty when the country is in the midst of a worsening homelessness crisis.

The figures, uncovered through Freedom of Information responses from 276 local councils, show that there are over 216,000 homes across the country that have been empty for six months or more. Of these, 60,000 had been empty for two years or more, 23,000 for five years or more, and over 11,000 have stood empty for at least ten years.

Across Greater Manchester almost 11,000 homes are empty – and that does’t include Manchester City itself who presumably didn’t respond to the FOI request. Bury has the highest level of those that responded with 1655 empty homes.

Full figures by local council can be found here

The research also shows that just one in thirteen councils are making use of Empty Dwelling Management Orders (EDMO), powers used by local authorities to take over properties that have been empty for at least six months. Only 19 of the 247 councils in England and Wales that responded (the powers do not apply in Scotland) had used an EDMO in the past five years. Of these only six had used one in the past year.

In total, councils returned around 23,000 empty homes back into use, including through direct action and the work of empty home teams. The Liberal Democrats are calling for reform of EDMOs and stronger powers for local councils to bring long-term empty homes back into use.

Liberal Democrat Leader Vince Cable commented:
“At a time when the homelessness crisis is worsening and more and more people are sleeping out in the cold on our streets, it is a national scandal that thousands of homes across the country are sitting empty. These homes could be turned into affordable places to live for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

“The Government needs to urgently review the current system which is clearly not working. Councils need to be given the powers and resources to bring empty homes back into use . This must form part of a wider package to tackle the housing crisis, including building more homes on unused publicly owned land land and clamping down on land-banking.”

114,000 tonnes of plastic packaging will end up in the bin, and not recycled, over the festive period estimate a group of environment charities including Friends of the Earth, the RSPCA, the National Trust and the Wildlife Trusts.

Their recently launched beach litter report revealed the tide of plastic has risen to a whopping 70% on UK beaches. The damage being done to the world’s oceans by plastic has been highlighted in the BBC’s flagship nature series Blue Planet II.

The charities say: “Government has the power to change the habits of our throwaway society. They can put a stop to the ongoing environmental disaster of ocean plastic pollution. We’d urge everyone to join our call to get charges introduced across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on single-use plastic items such as plastic cups and lids, straws, plates and cutlery”.

The Charities are currently calling on UK governments to put a charge on single-use plastic throwaway items and demanding that big fast food chains stop giving out millions of plastic cups, stirrers, straws and cutlery but instead replace them with reusable or fully compostable alternatives.

Sadly in Greater Manchester we cannot put many types of plastic in our ‘blue’ bins such as much of the packaging used by supermarkets or shops. To make a real difference we’re going to need to see action from Government (national and local), industry and from individuals taking action ourselves.

Bury’s Councillors have backed calls from the Liberal Democrats group for the 1% pay cap for public sector pay rises to be ended, and to be properly funded by Government.

Liberal Democrat councillors proposed a motion on Public Sector Pay to the last full meeting of Bury Council. This was agreed by Councillors and is now Council policy.

Liberal Democrat Group Leader Councillor Tim Pickstone said:
“Since 2010 most public sector staff have seen their pay rise by just 4.4%. At the same time prices have risen by 22% – a massive pay cut in real terms.

Prices continue to go up and we cannot keep making public sector staff suffer what is effectively a pay cut every year. Staff in the NHS, the Police, Fire, local councils and civil service undertake important jobs and need to be paid fairly.

The Government says it is allowing flexibility for more pay rises, but without funding the rise this is an empty promise. Without the Government taking action pay rises would just mean schools, hospitals or councils would have to make further cuts and lose further staff if a higher pay rise was agreed”.

Local Government employers (which Bury Council is a part of) seem likely to be offering a 2% rise each year for the next two years. However this increase is currently NOT funded by Government, so such a rise would mean that more cuts would be needed to be made in both local councils and local schools.

Metrolink Fares are to rise by around 6% a year until 2020, Greater Manchester Council Leaders have agreed.

The decision was to raise fares by ‘inflation + 2.33%’ a year for three years. That’s an increase of 5.93% on 1st
January 2018 and over the three years a fare rise of 19%.

Railway companies announced yesterday that rail fares would be rising by 3.4% from January – described by Passenger Groups as a ‘Kick in the Teeth’. Rail fares rises are determined by a Government formula, but rises on Metrolink are decided by our own local councils.

In Greater Manchester the decision was taken by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, made up of Bury Council’s Labour Leader, eight other Labour council leaders, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester and the Conservative Leader of Trafford Council.

This decision made by the Labour Leaders shows how out of touch they are with the financial situation of many tram passengers.

Labour complains constantly about the Conservatives’ austerity and wage freezes in the public sector and then hits passengers who are feeling the pinch with unremitting fare increases. It promises in its own Manifesto to limit rail fare increases to below inflation, yet when it has the chance to make the decision increases them by double inflation.

This is simply not fair – Metrolink is in profit. We should be encouraging more passengers to use the service and cracking down on fare evasion not hammering the fare-paying passengers.