My Report to Council

Posted By: Mohammad Sharif
Date Posted: 10/02/2009

The Report of the Cabinet Member for Regeneration to the Meeting of the Council on 4th February 2009

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

Lower Falinge In Focus

Successful launch event held for the In Focus draft Delivery Plan – attended by 120 people at the Town Hall. A number of commitments were made to make progress in relation to the actions identified. A newsletter was produced to coincide with the launch. Filming took place also for the launch. The launch also was highlighted on Channel M and Manchester Evening news giving a positive message from Lower Falinge.

Housing Market Renewal

• I am on the HMR board as Council rep and am pleased to say that in East Central Rochdale we made progress on the occupation of the Nelson Place properties with positive articles from local residents.

• There is an Environmental group working on projects to clean up Wardleworth and Hamer neighbourhoods.

• Official opening of the Giant’s Foot Children’s Centre – 20th Jan supported by ward Councillors and Head of Regeneration.

• Concerns raised regarding progress on Dale Mill site by local residents. Information to be circulated.

• In Langley we have successfully negotiated acquisition of 23 homes on Rothay Drive with completion of all sales due by March. We have also completed acquisition of 10 derelict cottage flats, required for implementation of the Masterplan. Consultants have been engaged to put together a legal agreement between Rochdale MBC and Bowlee Park Housing Association regarding land ownership treatment in the future. A new block of 48 social rented apartments were occupied in December funded with support from HMR and the Housing Corporation.

Pride Partnership

• Successful residential held in December with board members to team build and develop the LSPB work programme. The residential helped determine the purpose of the Board, role of members, identify skill gaps and risks to the LPSB.

• The Board approved the Six Month LAA report at its meeting in December, approved the further development of the JSNA and focus undertaken and proposed in relation to Lower Falinge.

• Changes taking place to the Health and Well being priority partnership to streamline and make it more effective. Quality of place strategy to be in place and meeting as from February 2009.

• Negotiations re elected member representation on the Partnership have been challenging but are continuing with the aim of confirmation at next cabinet.

SRB5

• The SRB 5 programme was brought to an end with a Thank you event at the Town Hall on 13/10/08. Over 100 project managers and volunteers attended to celebrate the achievements.
• This success has made good coverage within the media at local (Observer, Asian Leader and Rochdale-On-line), and regional (GMR).

SPECIAL PROJECTS

Boroughwide

• A comprehensive study looking at people’s perceptions of the Borough was completed in December. Consultation on the study will take place in January and February. The outcome will underpin a Borough Marketing and Branding Strategy.
Heywood
• £5.5m in external funding has been secured for the Heywood Sports Leisure and Culture Village and a contractor has been appointed to complete the design and manage construction.
Pennines
• An outline business case has been submitted the Government for PFI funding for a Joint Service Centre in Pennines.
Rochdale
• Special Projects worked closely with the Kashmir Youth Project to secure funding for a new day care centre for the local elders (Unity House). Construction commenced in November and is due for completion April.
Middleton
• The Middleton Arena has completed and opened for business on the 4th January.
ECONOMIC AFFAIRS

• Work of the Economic Affairs Unit over the past 3 months has been dominated by the effects of the Credit Crunch.

• In particular, I would like to express my thanks to the Employment Links Team and Susan Ayres who worked over Christmas to support 200 Woolworths’ staff. The team have supported many other residents facing redundancy and additional staff have been recruited to provide this service across the borough.

• The Employment Links Team have been offering on going support to Woolworth’s employees in light of the recent redundancies. Workshops have been run at the Employment Links Centre offering advice around job search, interview skills, training opportunities etc.
• The team has worked closely with Agilisys, who had a number of vacancies for Customer Service Advisors, and forwarded a number of Woolworth’s employees cv’s for interviews. To date, 14 people have been offered and accepted employment.

• In addition, 2 events have been held for local businesses to provide support to firms to manage effects of the economic downturn. 63 local businesses have been involved and events have been exceedingly well received. These events will continue in February and March. Seminars are also underway to support people being made redundant into self employment and business start up.

• We have also held 2 Buy Local events to help businesses to tender for council contracts and we have recruited a new officer to take this work forward. The Economic Affairs Team has also funded the council’s online procurement website which makes it easier for local businesses to find out about local authority contracts.

• In my previous report to Council, I was happy to announce that the first 2 businesses had moved onto Kingsway, Vinden Scientific and Takeuchi. I can now confirm that, with the help of the Kingsway Recruitment Team, the first vacancies in these businesses have been filled with borough residents.

• In addition, over 1000 local residents have now undertaken Kingsway related training to enable them to take up future jobs.

• Training courses have also been organised by the Economic Affairs Team in Falinge, Sure Start centres and in community venues across the borough to meet the needs of employers including the Council and Agylisis.

• This will enable more local people to gain jobs with the council and our partners and, as a result, a number of ex-Woolworths’ employees already have interviews with Agylisis.

• In order to ensure that all providers of services to the public are able to refer people into training and employment, we have now trained over 180 frontline workers (supporting people staff, housing officers etc). This means that Supporting People clients are now taking advantage of training courses and employment advice.

• In construction, despite negative consequences of the economic downturn, the J21 project has assisted more people in the last quarter to find jobs than ever before. More than 350 people have now gained jobs in the industry since the project began and many hundreds more have received industry training. The project has had its success reported nationally and has been mentioned as a model of good practice in a Commons debate on employment.

• The first ORESA Annual Conference was held in December, bringing together 80 strategic managers from across the North West to propel the opportunities Rochdale Borough and Oldham present to the wider regional economies.

• Rochdale Borough is set to receive greater promotion of its countryside as part of Manchester’s Countryside campaign which is developing a new tourist website to promote short breaks.

• Finally, congratulations go to a number of local businesses which won prestigious awards in the Greater Manchester Food & Drink Awards 2008 including Nutters and the high quality retailer, Heroes.


COMMUNITY AFFAIRS

Community Centres

• Wardleworth – agreement secured to work with youth service to provide more youth activities from the community centre

• Heywood township has identified 3 councillors to work on closer scrutiny of community centres to maximise public benefit.

Township Regeneration

• Polish advice centreTeam has advised on set up including funding, constitution, development of management committee etc. Will continue to support as the group becomes stronger.

• Installation of teenage play area in memorial park Pennines township. Team helped to secure the funding.

Voluntary sector workshops

• Over seventy organisations attended 2 workshops to consider how the sector wishes to engage with the LSP following the review and changes to its structures. Further work on implementation will be included in the expected outcomes of Infrastructure support commission.

HEYWOOD NEW DEAL

Phoenix Centre – Heywood

• The construction work remains on track for the centre to open in the Autumn. The Phoenix Centre will house new and existing health, council and community services in one central location in the town.

Town Centre Programme

• A revised programme of environmental and improvement schemes to the main shopping area was endorsed by Heywood Township and NDC and work on the block scheme has begun in the New Year.

At Work – Community Employment

The revised project has now been running for 6 months and has continued to focus on
• Increasing the range of people that they can help into jobs
• Making good use of outreach staff in the project team and focusing on the harder to reach groups in the community
• Identifying areas of service change as a key part of the projects activity.
• adopting a holistic and inclusive approach as a way to tackle worklessness.
• Working with a seamless approach to Skills and Work with the Skills 4 U Project.

Business Support

• The Heywood Business Support is proving its worth during the current economic climate and offers to Heywood local and tailor made solutions in order to provide a staged approach to business support in the NDC area.

Moving Forward from the NDC Programme

• The NDC Executive Programme Committee agreed at its January meeting the planned actions and process to develop a strategy (which can be supported by all partners) to sustain the improvements and benefits in the New Heart for Heywood NDC area in a way that is consistent with local / Heywood priorities, strategies and delivery mechanisms.

COMMUNITY COHESION
Following the launch of the Borough’s Community Cohesion Strategy, an action plan has now been finalised, and priority areas of action identified. A community cohesion commissioning group has been set up and will consider funding proposals.
All four Townships have been allocated £5,000 each, from the cohesion funding to tackle cohesion issues specific to the needs of local residents. Our community cohesion approach is inclusive, but understands that each Township has different, but equally as important cohesion issues. This has been well received by Townships and some interesting ideas put forward.

Our Borough –wide approach to community cohesion is also reflected through our service-wide delivery. The Community Cohesion Officers Group has been set up and is supporting the Community Cohesion strategy in ensuring it is embedded within service delivery and plans.
The Community Cohesion strategy has been delivered to all schools within the Borough, and schools are supported in developing their approach to cohesion and development of audits and policies. The Schools Service is working with schools, communities and young people taking up and accessing activities in schools.
The Fusion Project; a joint initiative between Secondary Schools and the Youth Service took 95 young people away for a week long residential where they took part in a range of awareness raising activities. A borough wide project involving young people from diverse backgrounds produced a DVD which looked at some very poignant issues around culture, religion and politics, hoping to promote equality and provide insight and understanding of ‘other’ communities.
In April 2008 RoFTRA and Arts Development Link4Life initiated a participatory photography project “Faces of Falinge” for a youth group at the community base in Lower Falinge. The project brought together people from different cultural backgrounds on the estate to express their experience, ideas and possibly dreams through photography. The renowned photographer team Liz Lock and Mishka Henner (Common Eye photography) were working on this project. They worked with the young people to produce a ‘scrapbook’ of their lives, visions and dreams. At the end of the project there were around 40 professionally photographed family portraits which were presented to the families on 20 December at Touchstones.

The cabinet approved the go ahead for a new cemetery for Rochdale township. This has particularly significance for the Muslim community due to the need for burial and not cremation. This will enable a continuation of new burial provision for all religious denominations for the next 25 years. The costs are in the region of 2.5 million so it is a major commitment.

The economic impact of community cohesion is also taken in to consideration. Benefit take-up campaigns and other work are being carried out by Revenues and Benefit. They are working closely with local community groups to reduce poverty and health & wellbeing throughout the Borough.

Housing is an integral part of community cohesion, and we are working closely with them to ensure community relations are at their best. RBH has delivered1/2 day citizenship lessons in 10 local primary schools encouraging children to identify with the communities they live in and their role in ensuring that it is and remains a good community. This has been held as good practise. Multi cultural celebrations have been held in Heywood (in conjunction with other local organisations) as well as estate wide- trips and borough wide activities for residents of all ethnicities and ages. RBH encourages a ‘Good Neighbour Scheme’, and this year nine people were awarded RBH’s good Neighbour Awards for being caring and considerate towards their neighbours.
New and Emerging Communities
A New and Emerging Communities Forum has been set up and met for their first meeting in October. A Welcome pack task group is meeting, which will provide a range of information and advice for settled, and New and Emerging Communities. Needs assessment is expected to be completed to help understand the needs of New and Emerging Communities. Services are working together to map NEC communities and a strategy and action plan is also being developed.

Preventing Violent Extremism Fund
In September 2008 the Cabinet agreed to use this fund to tackle all forms of extremism, by all groups that lead to criminalities and work with all communities across the Borough to address wider safety and security issues. The Community Cohesion Officers Group has been assisting the Executive Director and me in commissioning activities to deliver the Government objectives locally to meet local needs. The group has commented on the PVE action plan (in consultation with the emergency services) and is currently outlining the delivery of the actions.
PVE funding will be used for the following
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;
Inter community mentoring: Develop mentoring resources for young people at risk and assist them to access into full-time education, training or employment;
Identity, Division, Inclusion: Education and training packages through schools and youth groups;
Faith awareness raising sessions: series of workshops and events at local venues to promote awareness and understanding of various faiths and identify common grounds;
One extreme to the other: This play focuses on the issue of far right extremism as well as terrorism. There will be five targeted performances throughout the borough.

Councillor Mohammad Sharif