Bury Councillors made a commitment for Bury to play its full part in reducing plastic waste, thanks to a move from the team of Lib Dem Councillors .

The Council agreed to look at its own use of us ‘single use plastics’, work with local retailers and crucially to play its part on helping residents reduce plastic waste where they can.

The Liberal Democrat team of Councillors brought a motion on Reducing Plastic Waste to the last Full Council meeting at the Town Hall. Thankfully the motion was supported by other parties and is now the policy of the Council.

Lib Dem Councillor Tim Pickstone said:
“We are using plastic and producing plastic waste at an completely unsustainable level. Not only are we using up a finite resource, but we’re polluting our environment and filing our sees with plastic waste which will be there for 100s of years.

300 million tons of new plastic is made each year, half of which is for single use plastic such as packaging and convenience foods. In many cases, such as plastic straws, takeaway food containers and coffee cups, there are practical alternatives available that are either reusable or sustainable. Estimates have shown that by 2050 there would be more plastic in the seas than fish if we don’t change soon.

“Retailer and government need to do play their part. We’re shown what can be done with a simple change through the ‘plastic bag levy’ which has meant an 85% reduction in single use plastic bags since it was introduced. Now we need to go further. It is almost impossible to go to one of our local supermarkets and not come out with unwanted and unrecyclable plastic packaging.

“Bury Council has a proud record of helping local residents recycle, now we need to go one step further and help residents reduce the amount we use and waste. The Government’s own target of removing non-essential single-use plastic in 25 years is woefully unambitious. Bury can and should do much better”

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.