Roger Hayes

Bolton Council has agreed with the Lib Dems that during this winter’s hard winter, the current gritting policy did not do enough to help residents living off the main gritting routes. A Policy Develoment Group will try to remedy this before next winter.  

It will consider a number of suggestions we made, such as

• improved use of ’self help’ facilities in residential areas
• ways in which additional help can be given to areas with high concentrations of elderly people or schools
• involving ward Councillors in a review of which ‘feeder’ roads or particularly difficult roads should be tackled when time allows after completion of the main priorities
• whether a number of snow clearing blades should be purchased for fitting to refuse vehicles or other Council vehicles
• greater flexibility within the workforce to move them to snow clearance.

The Conservatives wanted this done by a Scrutiny Panel (which they chair) but most Councillors agreed with us that this would take too long.

Since the new bin collection rounds were introduced in September there have been massive problems. Part of this was due to the snow and ice, and is understandable. However, we are still hearing of collections missed, not just once, but week after week. The problems now seem more related to recycling collections than to the grey bins. 

At recent Council Meetings, Liberal Democrats have pressed the Executive Member responsible about this situation and demanded to know what she is doing about it. We have got few positive answers - at the Council Meeting on 3rd March she even claimed that collections were virtually back to normal! That is not our experience.

Amazingly, Conservative Councillors have said nothing about the problems - don’t they know what has been going on?  

Some of Labour’s proposed cuts to the Budget would have impacted on Moss Bank Park, where they were not even intending to bid for continuation of its hard earned ‘Green Flag’ status, and Doffcocker Lodge, which was to have its small budget cut even more.           

We also managed to stop a cut in the grant to the Lancashire Wildlife Trust and most of the reductions proposed this year in general grass cutting around the Borough (sadly, not all of them). (For full details of our successful amendments to Labour’s budget see ‘Lib Dem Budget 1′ on this site).

Following the tragic death of Baby Peter in Haringey, there is increasing pressure on child protection services in all parts of the country. At the Council’s Budget meeting on 24th February we proposed increasing the number of social workers dealing with child protection issues by 3 - one in each of Bolton’s districts. The cost would have been £108,000 a year.

It would have been paid for by scrapping the Council’s newspaper, ‘Bolton Scene’. We believe that the ‘Bolton Scene’ is an expensive luxury in the present economic climate - costing well over £100,000 a year to produce and distribute (there are already proposals to reduce that cost, but scrapping it would have saved over £90,000.

We would also have reduced the number of Executive Members (Councillors who are in Bolton’s Cabinet) from ten to eight. Each of them is paid a ’special responsibility allowance’ of about £11,600 - the saving would come from scrapping two of those and having fewer meetings as a result. The law allows a Council to have a maximum of ten Executive Members. When the Lib Dems controlled Bolton we managed with eight, but when Labour took over they immediately increased the number to ten.

Labour (including the current Executive Members!) voted against the proposal. A few Conservatives voted with us, but most abstained.

(For full details of the amendment that was defeated see the link to Lib Dem Budget 2 on this site)

Charges for Meals on Wheels and Community Transport will not be increased after Bolton Council accepted a Lib Dem amendment to its Budget. The increases were designed to save £100,000, but we were concerned that they would have hit vulnerable grouops at a time when many people are in financial difficulty. (For full details of our successful amendments at Council see the link to Lib Dem Budget 1 on this site).

Bolton’s Labour Council had proposed removing the remaining £68,000 budget for renewing and upgrading street lighting. Instead, they intended to make all changes to street lighting by borrowing.

Upgrading street lighting is important - it contributes to combating crime, and more efficient systems enable better light to be given using less energy.

We were successful in getting £48,000 added back into the budget and approval for an additional £75,000 spent in residential areas this year. (For full details of our budget amendment which was passed see the link to ‘Lib Dem Budget 1′ on this site).

One of the poorest funded services run by the Council is that providing activities for young people.

In Smithills we have the excellent centre ‘Youthopia’ on Johnson Fold and some activities in the same area run by dedicated volunteers. Until recently the rest of Smithills got nothing at all.

Last year the Smithills Area Forum allocated some money to run a range of youth activities based at St Margaret’s Church in Lonsdale Road. Activities so far include boxing, wrestling, street dance, handball and dodgeball, but the young people themselves will determine what is done.

At this year’s Council Budget meeting our proposal to invest an extra £200,000 in front line activities was accepted. This should mean more for all Bolton and should give further help in Smithills.      

At its Budget meeting on 24th February, Bolton Council gave the go ahead for Liberal Democrat proposals to improve the roads.

As well as formally recognising the importance of Lib Dem inspired extra investment in Bolton’s roads and pavements over the past few years and our reversal of proposed cuts this year (see post on 4th February), Council agreed to our proposal to spend up to an additional £200,000 on roads and pavements in residential areas. (For the full version of our Budget amendment which was approved by Council see the link to ‘Lib Dem Budget 1′ on this site).                

Council also agreed a Conservative request to consider redrafting the Council’s Capital Programme to allow more to be spent on roads this year. This really means putting off other things to concentrate on roads - it may produce nothing extra, because other projects are important too, but it is worth looking at and we supported it. Amazingly, two Labour Councillors voted against, refusing to even consider the idea (one was the Councillor who defected to Labour in Smithills and is due to defend his seat this May).

The Council’s Labour Leadership have accepted the need to take urgent action over the further deterioration of road surfaces caused by the snow and ice (see earlier post on 7th January). They have made £1 million available by postponing non urgent road work (things like laying non slip surfaces near traffic lights) and a further £2 million by borrowing. All this will go into repairing the potholes. We have been promised that this will not further delay the programmed structural work in Smithills (Lightbounds Road, Ina Avenue and Heaton Avenue are all this year’s programme).

We welcome that, although the problem would not have been nearly as bad if the roads had been in a reasonable state of repair before the ‘big freeze’. Bolton already had over £50 million backlog in its highways maintenance.

We also made the point at this week’s Executive Meeting that it would make no sense for cuts to be made in next year’s budget for urgent repairs - £150,000 had been proposed as a possible cut. We were able to get that threat removed, and also the threat of £169,000 cuts to residential road and pavement maintenance. We are very pleased to have achieved that, but will continue to try to get more resources put into improving the terrible state of Bolton’s roads and pavements.  

The Government has said that two regions of the country (Greater Manchester and Leeds) can become City Regions. The declared intention is that some functions currently carried out by Central Government or by unelected quangos would be delegated to the new city regions, and that extra money would come to pay for it. Fine in theory, but as ever, the devil will be in the detail.

The Leaders of the 10 local authorities that would form the Greater Manchester City Region (as well as Bolton, these are Manchester, Salford, Trafford, Thameside, Stockport, Wigan, Bury, Rochdale and Oldham) have said that this will be about powers flowing down from Government, not being dragged up from the 10 districts.

There is quite a lot of distrust about whether the Government (or any future Government) will keep their promises and whether the whole enterprise will be in Bolton’s best interests - we certainly do not want anything resembling the former Greater Manchester Council!  A lot of water has to go under the bridge before anybody can be certain what the end result will be.

Whatever the likely benefits, I would not support anything so uncertain if I could not get out of it if it did not work out for Bolton’s interests. At the moment, Bolton could not leave if it joined. The first thing is to get that changed and get us the right to get out again if we do go in. We can then look at whether or not it is in Bolton’s interest to join.

There will be a lot more on this as things move on.