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.

Last week Councillor Steve Wright attended the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee:

Council Finances
Current estimates are that the Council is heading for an overspend of £3.491 million in the 2017-18 financial year.

The reasons for for the overspend are largely:
– demand for services being higher than the budget were either demand pressures (mostly adult and children’s social care)
– the Council failing to make savings that it has promised to do (the largest being leisure and waste management)
– shortfall in income – mostly car parking and commercial rents – I asked about a £80000 shortfall in the bus lane enforcement I wondered if Bury people were driving better but unfortunately it is a case of an officer over estimating the income.

The minimum safe level of balances for Bury Council is £4.250m (the smallest amount of money the Council should have to meet its commitments and deal with any unexpected urgent expenditure). At present the Council is heading to being just £0.652 over that minimum balance at the end of the year, down nearly £3.5 million in a year. Not much room for things to go wrong…..

Highways Mainenance
The report outlined plans to spend the £10 million the Council is borrowing for road repairs over three years. £1.5 million over 3 years is being spent on potholes the rest on arterial roads (no information yet where that means). Bad news for Prestwich as Virgin Media are planning a lot of fibre works so road improvements are going to happen until Virgin have completed their work.

Worryingly the report said:
“The recently announced Highway Maintenance Investment of £10million, whilst welcome, will not be sufficient to achieve significant improvements in the condition of the highway network. The rate of formation of defects will therefore continue to accelerate and with that the demands on Highway Operations will increase. Despite the proven efficiency of Highway Operations an increase in the current level of highway maintenance revenue budget is required to meet the current and future level of demand. Without this investment Bury Council will in increasingly exposed to insurance claim payouts and potential reputational damage”.

Any questions please get in touch. The full papers for the meeting are here.