My report to the Council.

Posted By: Zulfiqar Ali
Date Posted: 13/02/2008

Thank you Mr Mayor for the opportunity to report to the Council the latest developments on various matters relating to the Community Cohesion and Housing Portfolio.

Rochdale’s Home Improvement Agency – the best – official

At the end of January I attended the Foundations National Award Ceremony for Home Improvement Agencies.   I was proud to receive the award for Home Improvement Agency of the Year on behalf of Rochdale.   This award was made against some very stiff competition from the likes of Manchester City Council which makes the award even more meaningful.   It confirmed what I already believe that we have the best Home Improvement Agency Service in the country and our citizens are well served by it’s activities.   I would like to congratulate and thank the staff in the Agency for their commitment to customer service and their enthusiasm for the job.

Housing Minister’s visit to Rochdale

In December I met the Housing Minister, Ian Wright, who was visiting Rochdale to look at the progress we are making with Housing Market Renewal.   The minister visited Wardleworth Community Centre and met myself and residents who are involved in many different aspects of the Market Renewal initiative.   He chatted to an elderly resident who has lived in Wardleworth all her life and whom we are helping by designing and building a new home to meet her and her husband’s needs.

We met a couple of local residents who are buying the new houses which are being built on Trafalgar Street and will eventually be moving out of old homes which will be demolished.  They were both very pleased with the opportunity to buy modern larger houses in the heart of the community where they want to live.

Finally we talked to a group of trainees who have gained apprenticeships and training positions with the builder through the innovative J21 Construction Training Programme.    The minister was then shown the development site on Trafalgar Street and was very impressed with both the design and the progress being made in replacing older terraced housing. 

I was keen to press home the need for continued HMR funding in Rochdale in order to deliver the quality homes needed.

More money for disabled adaptations

During the course of this year I have taken a keen interest in how we support disabled people through adaptations to their homes.  Through this interest I am acutely aware that the demand in this borough far exceeds the resources that we have available and we therefore have to prioritise.   I was therefore extremely pleased to receive the news that through our lobbying and reputation for delivery we have been successful in obtaining over £300,000 of additional funding this year both from the region and from the Government.   This means that this year we will see the most disabled adaptations delivered ever by this council.

Homelessness

After what seems like years of reporting increasing numbers of homeless presentations I am really pleased to be able to say that this year after a lot of work and some investment in prevention services we now appear to have turned the corner and homeless presentations have significantly reduced.   We have also reduced the number of people and families that we have had to place in emergency in bed and breakfast accommodation.   Whilst I am very pleased with the progress made I am determined that the ultimate target is that no families will be placed in bed and breakfast accommodation and that the downward trend in homeless presentations continues.

Crescent Radio

Last month I spent a very interesting hour on local Crescent Radio, talking about housing and community cohesion issues.  There were many callers interested in the things I had to say.  There were lots of questions about housing associations and I am now arranging for a follow up session with one of the housing associations.

Heywood Sustainable Urban Neighbourhoods (SUN)

Our plans for regenerating Heywood went out for consultation before Christmas and are being well received by communities.  Housing have played a key role in developing the plans and there are major proposals to build new housing and to redevelop some of our older poorer quality stock.  All the Council’s services and our partners are involved in these plans and I look forward to a truly joined up ‘sustainable’ regeneration of Heywood in the near future.

Community Cohesion

Since my last report to Council I am pleased to report the following:

Briefing sessions for partners and partnerships. 

We have held two township briefing sessions in Pennines and Rochdale.  Township briefings in Middleton and Heywood are to follow. The briefing sessions are designed to give partners an opportunity to share good practice on cohesion and to determine what they need to do to deliver the strategy.  We held the Pennines event on 31 Oct 2007 at Smallbridge Methodist Church Hall and 15 partners attended.  We held the Rochdale event at Rochdale Centre for Diversity and 31 partners attended.  The format for both events was similar.  The research and intelligence team from Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council (RMBC) gave a presentation around demographic change. This highlighted the projections for future demographic change, within all four Township areas and included information about newer migrant groups from Eastern Europe. Partners gave some national and local policy context to equality and diversity and all partners had the opportunity both to share their own work and to make suggestions for future and further collaboration.  We received several ideas for townships' contributions to the diversity agenda and we will use these in our continuing work with the townships. Our Middleton event is planned for 11 February and is to be held at Middleton Civic Hall invitations are to be sent out week commencing 28 Jan.  We will also be planning our event in Heywood shortly.

Launch and Communication of the Community Cohesion Strategy

We will formally launch the strategy in February/March.  Work is in hand to ensure that we publicise the event widely and produce the strategy in a useful format.  We will print the full strategy document and a summary document for community venues.  We will print LSP branded cards outlining the themes and vision of the strategy along with the partner pledge statement. We are planning to publicise the strategy both before and after the launch using advertising and copy in Local Matters.

Tea Project

Work is continuing on the event planned for 1 April 2008.  In this quarter the steering group received confirmation form the Co-op for 110,000 teabags to be donated for the tea day.  The group has a quote for the distribution of the teabags. They are also drawing up plans for advertising and printing and have agreed on the content of the information pack.  A volunteer has designed the tea day logo and the venue is booked.  The group have worked with schools to involve them in the event (currently interest from 5 schools and more work planned on this in the next quarter).

Commissioning

The commissioning group met on 6 December 2007 to consider bids.  Two projects are still to be commissioned.  Keeping Rochdale Borough Safe- currently being developed.  Awareness Courses For Stakeholders- we are currently researching potential providers for the development of this work.  It is recommended the provider, develops a course which can be delivered to a wide range of audiences over the next 2 years as part of the Borough’s ongoing commitment to community cohesion.
 
Councillor Zulfiqar Ali