My report to council

Posted By: Mohammad Sharif
Date Posted: 17/10/2008

THANK YOU MR MAYOR FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO REPORT TO THE COUNCIL THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS ON VARIOUS MATTERS RELATING TO THE REGENERATION PORTFOLIO.
Since my last report to Council there has been good progress on regenerating the Borough and my report gives some detail of what has been achieved and what is underway.

REGENERATION & RENEWAL

§ Pride of Place (Community Strategy) and Local Area Agreement 2008-2011
Following the LSP’s strategic review a shadow Local Public Service Board (LPSB) has been established and two effective meetings have already taken place. A ‘period of reflection’ that allowed all partners including the Council to consider how it can work with these new arrangements has also been completed.
Work has also continued to support the establishment of the new ‘Quality of Place’ partnership that will bring together the existing Environment and Housing partnerships. Thus ensuring that we have a strategic fit with the Pride of Place priorities.
Our Local Area Agreement (LAA) 2008-2011 – Working Together to Achieve has been approved by the Secretary of State. We have made a good start in translating this into delivery. Our approach has been highlighted as good practice and as a result we have had a visit from colleagues in Bury Council to learn from our approach.
Colleagues within the Council and Partners are now producing delivery plans for each of the indicators and this enable effective planning of action and performance management.
§ Neighbourhood Renewal
Excellent multiagency work has taken place in Lower Falinge as part of the ‘In-Focus’ approach (modelled on the Spot-Light approach in Salford). We now have detailed intelligence for the neighbourhood based upon in-depth resident research, front-line staff questionnaire and enhance data analysis that enables us to better understand the needs of the area and how we can improve service access and delivery.
NAP implementation funding has continued to be used to support community based activity within the previous 22 NRS areas including Hollin, Darnhill, Clover & Bellshill and Freehold
§ Revitalising Inner Rochdale (SR5) Programme
An independent Evaluation and Forward Strategy for the SRB programme has been completed. These pieces of work have highlighted:-
· the excellent work undertaken as part of the SRB programme including the achievement of significant outputs,
· the strong foundations laid for future regeneration in the town,
· the numerous areas of good practice
· string contribution to regeneration and cohesion.
Housing Market Renewal.
Good progress has been made on the implementation of HMR activity for 2008/09. The activity is now gathering pace in Kirkholt as well as East Central Rochdale and Langley. A few examples are: -
· The progress on building new homes in Wardleworth (ECR)
· The gateway improvement on Manchester Road (Inner Rochdale)
· Acquisition of homes in Kirkholt
· Reaching an understanding with Bowlee Park with the Langley Strategy

SPECIAL PROJECTS

Boroughwide

· A comprehensive study is underway looking at people’s perceptions of the Borough. The outcome will underpin a Borough Marketing and Branding Strategy.
Heywood
· The tender process for a contractor to design and build the Heywood Sports Leisure and Culture Village is completed and the NDC Board has approved £4m funding for the project.
Pennines
· A reference group for the Littleborough Joint Service Centre consisting of local people, Members and groups has been established.
· The Canal Festival was a success again this year with over 1,800 people taking part in the week long activity programme.
Rochdale
· The Team has completed the Yorkshire Street regeneration project and was highly commended in the Dave Davison Award.
· Construction of the new Primary Care Centre in Wardleworth has commenced.
Middleton
· The Middleton Arena is on track to complete in November this year.
· Work has started on a joint service centre for Middleton and a reference group has been established.

ECONOMIC AFFAIRS

The first 2 businesses to take up occupancy on Kingsway are now located on site. The first company, Vindon Scientific, moved on site at the end of August and Takeuchi took up occupancy in September. The Kingsway Recruitment Team is working with both companies on recruitment and training campaigns.

Over 900 borough residents have now benefited from Kingsway sector training which is organised by the Kingsway Recruitment Team and is delivered in community venues across the borough. The training will equip residents with skills needed for businesses moving onto Kingsway this year and in the future.

As Chair of the Kingsway Transport Group, I am pleased to announce that the Kingsway Business Park Link Service (Demand Responsive Transport Service) commenced in September and will provide access from home to the site for local employees between the hours of 7.30 – 9.30, 12 – 14.00 and 16.30 – 18:30. The service will also pick up from the railway and bus station and can be booked through the GMPTE contact centre up to an hour before travel.

The Economic Affairs Team has been providing on-going redundancy support to Boots at their Rochdale & Heywood sites for the last 6 months. We recently invited MIDAS to give an overview of the Greater Manchester opportunities for Boots employees, and as a result are now in contact with other Greater Manchester employers. Boots are to present at the next MIDAS Logistics forum being held in Manchester in October. Senior executives of the largest logistics companies within Greater Manchester attend this event.

The team are also working with other employers across the borough to help people facing redundancy to retrain and gain new employment or to set up in business. Companies include A-Nova, Tacklea Works and Robert McBride.

Work has started with Woolworths in their recruitment drive for 70 staff for their local contact centre. We are working with partners including Jobcentre Plus and Hopwood Hall College to provide free training for local residents who will all have a guaranteed interview once completing the course.

In order to match Rochdale Borough graduates with local businesses, the Rochdale Graduate Employer Network has recently launched its website, www.rge.org. 150 graduates are now signed up with the network’s database and more than 800 companies have been involved in the project.

In July we held the first of our ‘Work Matters in Rochdale’ training events for frontline staff from agencies and services whose main agenda is something other than employment and training e.g. Housing officers, Sure Start staff, health workers and Supporting People staff. The aim of the events is to ensure that all borough wide advisers who engage with local residents are trained to be able to give advice on the range of employment and skills support available. Over 80 people attended and the feedback was very positive. We are currently enrolling for 2 further events in October and November.

On 11th September we held the Jobsfair 2008 at the Town Hall. Exhibitors included 23 local employers plus a wide range of support and training organisations including the council’s Women’s Enterprise, J21 and Employment Links. Over 2000 people attended, which is more than double the number from previous years. Feedback from all parties has been very positive and residents have already found work as a result.

COMMUNITY AFFAIRS

Local Involvement Network for Health and Social Care (LINk)
Governance procedures for the LINk have now been agreed and a launch date set for November 2008. Invitees will include local voluntary and community sector organisations, local councillors.,statutory agencies and individuals with an interest in Health and Social Care.

LAA Target Survey
Results from the LAA survey now available and have been presented to the LAA Co-ordinators group on 30.9.08. Place survey being distributed during September 2008.

Consultation training course
A new training course for front line staff has been devised by Phil Burton, Community Affairs Team and Michael Shelmerdine, Performance and development team. The first course will take place at the end of October 2008 and will then be delivered across the authority including to local councillors. This will be complementary to the Community Engagement strategy and the toolkit which is under development.

Monitoring of grant aided voluntary and community sector organisations
During August and September, all organisations in receipt of a grant from the Council have been monitored. Community centre reports and recommendations will be presented to townships during October/November and boroughwide organisations will be reported to Cabinet in November.

Delivery Plans for National indicator 4
Work has commenced on the delivery plans for the priority and placeholder indicators in the Local Area Agreement. Community Affairs is responsible for N I 4 and will be collaborating with partners on N I 1, 6, 7.

Community Asset Transfer
Draft process for transfer of assets to the voluntary and community sector and the Pre qualification questionnaire are ready for consultation.

Borough of Rochdale Fund
Refreshed steering group established including Executive Director Resources and portfolio holder resources. Aim to ensure full benefit from government’s grass roots fund by identifying match funding from private sector/individuals.


HEYWOOD NEW DEAL

Phoenix Centre – Heywood
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities, Baroness Kay Andrews paid a visit to Heywood NDC at the end of July to cut the first official sod of the new £7.3 million Phoenix Centre which will house new and existing health, council and community services in one central location in the town.

The Baroness started off her visit by meeting the Resident Directors of New Heart for Heywood and some of the partners. She remarked that the residents of Heywood working so closely with organisations such as Heywood Township, the Primary Care Trust and the Council can achieve so much more by working together

Skills Ladder
The NDC Executive Programme Committee agreed at its meeting in July 2008 to put into place a programme of skills related activities to take place over the summer in Heywood with a view to looking at the wider programme from January 2009 onwards. For Step One of the Heywood Skills For You Programme, Groundwork are working with Hopwood Hall College and RMBC Family Learning to deliver tasters and courses over the summer for a 6 month period. In addition to the courses themselves this also includes support through community engagement staff, a skills brokerage and Information and Guidance (IAG) service and a co-ordinator. This is so that we can comply with the strapline “never let them go” which we asked the Skills Ladder project to adopt. Courses started running on July 15th and there has been reasonable take up with new training opportunities being developed where gaps are identified. In the short term, the programme has been based in the NDC Office and plans are in place to secure a skills base in a town centre location,

Town Centre Programme
The delivery plan for this project was presented to the NDC Executive in April 2008 and Heywood Township at a meeting with the Township Councillors May 2008.

Market Street / Bridge Street/Market Place/York Street Property Improvement is well advanced and all approved schemes are now almost complete. The display sign ‘ A Great View of the Future’ has been re-sited on the land next to the NDC Office. A revised programme of environmental and improvement schemes to the main shopping area were endorsed by Heywood Township and NDC and work on the block scheme will begin in the Autumn.

Environmental / Public realm improvements have progressed – to Market Street and Civic Centre areas, including the memorial gardens, to improve the local environment / public realm for users of the town centre. The scheme was extended to involve areas around the market and other key gateway sites. All the signs and street furniture are now in place.
Consideration is being given to how this project can be aligned with the SUN developments.

At Work – Community Employment
The NDC Executive Programme Committee approved a revised project at a cost of £1.141million at its meeting in May. The project is also required to continue to search for match that complements the projects activity.

A re-design process has been completed with key partners and has been designed from the basis of problems as seen by partners trying to support people into work. The key finding from this work was that the list of people who mainstream and many projects (and therefore At Work which has adopted NDC and mainstream targets) could not help was extremely long. While 3 key groups of JSA, IS and IB could be helped, the numbers who couldn’t be helped by current provision prevented any sustainable culture change taking place.

For example – The original At Work project could help some people in some families in some homes on some streets, but crucially on the same street could not help all people in immediate or extended families who have aspirations to get back to work. It became clear that the problem was entrenched non working culture; in many cases, for generations, on the same street. Not working is the norm – regardless of how mainstream, NDC or other services decide to classify you. Therefore the revised project aim tries to turn this problem around by developing a working culture – within families, the individual and the wider community, and being inclusive to all to seek work within the NDC area.

The main changes therefore are to:
· Increase the range of people that At Work can help into jobs
· Add out reach staff to the project team to allow them to work with the harder to reach
· To add service change as a key part of the projects activity.
· To adopt a holistic and inclusive approach as a way to tackle worklessness.
· Extend the project until December 2010

At Work is a change programme that will identify and embed good practice in working with the NDC target group within practitioners and funders’ policies and programmes. This project will support people into work based on the individual needs of the client. It will provide a tailored service that map out an appropriate journey for that individual ensuring that the support required is given. Out reach staff will provide supportive advice at the point of need gradually moving people towards their employment goal. It will work with employers to find quality, sustainable jobs appropriate for the individual and enabling progression and the raising aspirations.

Building Affordable Houses on Land at Heady Hill
In July 2007 the NDC Programme Executive approved the proposal to build low-cost affordable homes for sale on the site of the former Heady Hill shops. In September 2007 Heywood Township and the Cabinet also approved the scheme. Planning permission was granted on 10th December 2007 to build four bungalows using new methods of construction. The planning requirements included the need to test the site for the emission of harmful gases, especially methane which was not found to be present.

Work began on site at the end of August. Discussions are still taking place regarding how we ensure future affordability is maintained within the properties and in relation to purchaser selection. A report is being prepared for the NDC Executive Programme Committee in September making recommendations on the above issues.

Business Support
The NDC Executive Programme Committee approved NDC funding of £262,500 from July 2008 to December 2010 for the Business Support Phase 2 project at its meeting in June 2008..
This project represents the second part of a staged approach to business support in the NDC area. It builds on the evaluation of stage 1 and seeks to implement the findings of that work. The New Heart for Heywood NDC Partnership and BBV have learnt from Phase 1 operations and evaluation, namely:
· Strengthen strategic linkages with key local partners
· Improve marketing and branding of the project
· Improve engagement of businesses
· Refocus the project’s aim
· Clarify the project staff’s roles
All these points have been taken on board and addressed in the Phase 2 project design. This project will follow on from the Phase 1 pilot project, which is providing field-based research on the support needs of Heywood’s businesses and those residents who are thinking of starting a business. It will continue to be open to all Heywood’s businesses and residents not just NDC residents, as the strengthening of the town’s economy cannot be addressed on a smaller scale.

It will fill the gaps in the mainstream services provided by NWDA contracts and Business Link and provide more intensive support locally. It will be closely linked to ‘Rochdale Enterprise’, the new start up support project / trust to be set up for the Borough by RMBC with the aim of filling the gaps in mainstream services and targeting deprived areas (but whose funding is likely to preclude working in most of Heywood).

Contingency Funding
We are currently working with partners to develop plans to ensure that we achieve our delivery and spend targets over the year. A number of areas have been identified for potentially additional investment and these will be discussed at the NDC Executive Programme Committee meeting in September 2008.




COMMUNITY COHESION
Community Cohesion Strategy & Action Plan
The Pride Partnership Community Cohesion Advisory Group has developed the Borough’s first Community Cohesion Strategy and was endorsed by the Pride Partnership and the Council Cabinet. The Strategy was launched on 7 July 2008. Chief Officers of key partner organisations and also chairs of the thematic Partnerships attended the launch event to confirm their commitment for the strategy. An action plan outlining broad actions has been developed and would be consulted with partners in November 2008 prior to commissioning activities with cohesion funding.
The Strategy has a vision and five broad outcomes which are consistent with the Government definition for Community Cohesion. These five outcomes are:
· people feel a sense of pride and belonging;
· better life opportunities for all;
· diversity is valued;
· positive relationships within and between communities;
· we all take responsibility.
The community cohesion strategy would run co-terminously with Pride of Place i.e. 2007 – 2010 and be reviewed annually. The cohesion strategy has taken account of other legislative requirements e.g. the General Duty placed on Public bodies under the Race Relations Amendment Act. 2000 and national guidance such as the eight guiding principles outlined in the LG White Paper.

Community Cohesion Advisory Group
Following the Local Strategic Partnership Review we have reviewed the remit and membership of the Advisory Group to reflect the new LSPB structure. Currently we have five elected members sitting on the Advisory Group which indicates a high level cross party and Townships support for community cohesion.
The Purpose of the Advisory Group is to provide advice and direction to the Pride Partnership on community cohesion in the Borough, and the development of policy and practice in support of this. The Advisory Group would rotate its meeting in different Townships to ensure that it has an overview of the Borough and its actions reflect the diversity of the Borough’s people and places.

Preventing Violent Extremism Fund
In May 2008 the Government has confirmed Rochdale Borough’s allocation of £165,000 for 2008/2009 PVE Fund, which aimed to improve the capacity of local authorities, partnerships, the Police, communities and other organisations to work together and prevent, tackle and respond to violent extremism.
The strategic objectives for this programme are to develop a community in which Muslims:
· identify themselves as a welcome part of a wider British society and are accepted as such by the wider community;
· reject violent extremist ideology and actively condemn violent extremism;
· isolate violent extremist activity, and support and co-operate with the police and security services; and,
· develop their own capacity to deal with problems where they arise and support diversionary activity for those at risk.
In September 2008 the Cabinet agreed to use this fund to tackle all forms of extremism that lead to criminalities and work with all communities across the Borough to address wider safety and security issues.
We will use PVE funding to support our work in the following three areas underpinned by a wide range of activities:
· Engagement and leadership: targeted work to develop leadership skills amongst young people. Forums and events for people across the community, Muslim and non-Muslim, to talk to each other about issues that concern them and to identify solutions. Opportunities for those that are vulnerable to extremist ideologies and activities to discuss their frustrations and provide positive avenues to influence decision-making and service provision (National objective 1, 2 and 4).
· Building good relations: identify issues that create divisions and hatred and provide structured conflict resolution support. Promote cultural and sport activities / events to build bridges within and between communities (National objective 3).
· Preparing for the future: This work would have several strands - increasing the involvement of children and young people in local decision making structures and processes; supporting intergenerational and interfaith events to develop positive relationships and to ‘bust myths’ about beliefs, customs, cultures; create opportunities and forums where people can talk about difficult issues (National objective 1,2 and 4).
The Executive Director will commission projects from the action plan developed locally based on local needs, existing provisions and intelligence received from the Regional Intelligence Cell to achieve the Government PVE objectives. This action plan will be subject to consultation with the emergency services and the RMBC Corporate Officers Group for community cohesion.

Councillor M. Sharif