CABINET MEMBER REPORT TO THE COUNCIL

Posted By: Mohammad Sharif
Date Posted: 01/05/2009

ROCHDALE METROPOLITAN BOROUGH COUNCIL

CABINET MEMBER REPORT TO THE COUNCIL


REPORT OF THE CABINET MEMBER FOR REGENERATION TO THE MEETING OF THE COUNCIL ON 29th APRIL 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

• A meeting was held with Paul Rowen MP on 9th March to feedback on the progress of In Focus. In Focus was mentioned by MP in the Houses of Parliament.

• RBH Priority Action Team – Lower Falinge has now been identified as a neighbourhood into which the RBH Priority Action Team should now work. This will mean extra staff, support and capacity in the neighbourhood to further co-ordinate services, improve community development and brings with it a small capital budget for some environmental improvements

• Taking up volunteering opportunities. 5 Lower Falinge residents signed up at the Health event (held on 19th March) to be volunteers with the health service to gain training and valuable work experience.

• LPSB Visit to Lower Falinge – On 10th March, several members of the Pride Partnership Board visited Lower Falinge to meet with residents and discuss their issues, get an idea of what life was like on Lower Falinge and to gain a better understanding of community needs. This was followed by a guided tour of the neighbourhood led by the local housing officer.l

• Patient & Liaison Service (PALS) are to hold fortnightly surgeries from 9th April in the Community Base. This service helps to advise, signpost and support patients and their families and provide information on NHS services.

Housing Market Renewal

As Council rep on the HMR board I am pleased to report that:

• The 2008/09 annual HMR programme for Langley has successfully spent £2.5m. This has included extra money being vired from Rochdale neighbourhoods into Langley.

• Cabinet has approved the 2009/10 financial programme with authority delegated to myself, as lead member for Regeneration and the Chief Executive for finalising the figures. The report will be going to the next cycle of Townships.

• The 2008/09 annual HMR programme of £12896250 has been successfully delivered and all funding has been maximised.

Pride Partnership

• The resource plan for the partnership has now been through initial approval and fine tuning of some of the proposals is taking place.

• A response to the recession has been supported by the LPSB and the Board has requested a borough recovery plan based on the short medium and long term action we need to take through partnership action to deal with the recession and be in a strong position when the economic up turn starts. The LPSB has recently agreed the borough story of place for the CAA. The story of place has revealed areas for improvement and the LPSB is to take part in a workshop on the 22nd April to develop a partnership improvement plan to address some of these areas of improvement.

SPECIAL PROJECTS

Heywood

• Heywood Sports, Leisure and Culture Village is progressing according to plan.

Pennines

• Littleborough Joint Service Centre - The Outline Business Case has been evaluated by PUK and was considered by the PRG for endorsement on the 31st March. We expect to receive the decision in the second week in April

Rochdale

• Work on the Rochdale Town Centre Masterplan continues, a visioning exercise took place in March.

• Construction of Unity House remains on programme.

• Construction of the Wardleworth Health Centre remains on programme

Middleton

• Middleton Joint Service Centre - The Outline Business Case has been evaluated by PUK and was considered by the PRG for endorsement on the 31st March. We expect to receive the decision in the second week in April.

• Middleton Town Centre - Work on the Arena snags and defects continues. Most snags will be rectified by mid April.

• Work on the highway remodelling commenced



ECONOMIC AFFAIRS

Again, the work of the Economic Affairs Unit over the past 3 months has been dominated by the effects of the Credit Crunch.

• We are now able to produce our year end outcomes for 08-09. It has been a very successful year for the J21 Team despite the difficult economic climate. We have brokered Jobs for 174 residents across Rochdale & Oldham (against 121 in 07-08). We have provided funded training for 209 candidates (on 285 courses) and currently have 500 job seekers registered with us. Since inception over 1200 local Job seekers have registered with us and we have brokered 375 job outcomes. 692 varied training courses have been funded to improve the employment prospects of local residents.

• Preparations are underway for the 2009 Skills Fair which will be held at the Town Hall on 19th May. This is a borough wide event with representatives on the steering group from HHC, CVS, Nextstep, LSC and JCP as well as Economic Affairs.

• Greater Manchester is one of only 10 national prototypes for the Adult Advancement Careers Service which ‘goes live’ in 2010, and Rochdale (along with the other 9 LAs) is part of the GM prototype. Economic Affairs has been working with Manchester Solutions to develop the local delivery of the Network and to prepare for the ‘launch’ on 1st April

• On 23rd March, Economic Affairs jointly delivered a labour market information event for employment & skills advisers, which gave them up to date information about the economy and the future needs in terms of skills required.

 Employment Links Partnership continued to provide redundancy support to Boots and also 86 people at DHL across Heywood and Middleton; also continued to provide job support to increased number of people, and new interview space has been created to meet demand for services. Annual target of helping 431 people into jobs has been exceeded (currently 466)
 ELP succeeded in becoming a Next Step provider due to start 20th April.

 Kingsway Recruitment Team continued to support employers considering moving to Kingsway; also continued to run training courses fro target sectors.

COMMUNITY AFFAIRS

• Spotland Community Centre- An action plan has been agreed, monitoring undertaken, intensive support provided. Resident survey designed to gauge local residents views of the centre and what services they would like to see provided.

• The team are working with members in Middleton to develop social centres into community centres

• A new consultation course (Ask and Act) devised by Phil Burton has been successfully delivered.

• Residents survey – Assisting Communications Team deliver a survey to measure satisfaction with Local Matters, Big Clean etc

• The Invitation to Tender has been completed for Infrastructure support commission

• The Community Engagement Strategy has been agreed by LPSB and customer focus board, an action plan now needs to be developed

NEW HEART FOR HEYWOOD - NEW DEAL FOR COMMUNITIES PARTNERSHIP

Phoenix Centre – Heywood
• The official opening has been arranged for 12th November and Baroness Andrews from CLG has agreed to be the guest of honour.
• The community-led Partnership Steering Group for Heywood’s Phoenix Centre has won the National LIFT* award for Community Engagement. The group consists of representatives of the community, and the NHS, Rochdale Council, Heywood NDC and the developers, the Eric Wright Group. Ninety organisations submitted applications in the 11 available categories, 16 of which were for the Community Engagement Award. What made the Heywood entry so different was that it was written by the community themselves.
*LIFT is the Local Improvement Finance Trust initiative, which allows the NHS to use private investment to provide community facilities.

Town Centre Programme
• A second phase of public realm improvements is now being implemented throughout Heywood town centre. The town is benefiting from new street furniture and environmental enhancements which, when seasonal planting is implemented, will transform the town centre and, we expect, encourage private sector investment, as well as improving the town centre as a place to live and work.
• Block Scheme: The scheme to improve the block of shops that front onto Market Street and back onto Dawson Street started in January, with completion expected in June. Local companies are carrying out the work.

Families Project
• The NDC is in the process of commissioning a Families Project from RMBC Children, Schools and Families Service. This is due to start in April 2009.
• The project will work intensively on a one to one basis to coach and support families to build skills, confidence, positive behaviour, communications etc. It will include a core team based with Rochdale Children’s Social Care Service and specialist support as required. It will look in particular at literacy and communication issues and also mental health and drugs/alcohols where relevant. It will recruit community Champions from the community and will work to engage a range of agencies to simplify and co-ordinate approaches to these families. to ensure sustainability post 2011.

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.

Heywood Sports, Leisure and Culture Village
• A host of Rochdale and Heywood’s dignitaries joined media and local football-mad youngsters on 20th March to see Football Foundation President Lord Pendry officially present £1 million towards the sporting aspect of the area’s £10.3 million regeneration project.
• The £1 million grant is the maximum grant that the Football Foundation can award and will go towards the new Heywood Sports, Culture and Leisure Village.
• Sport England also granted £500,000 to the scheme and said that they have awarded their largest ever grant for this project because they are impressed with the scale of the ambitions of the partners to make a real difference to local people.
• Building of the new centre is due to begin in spring 2009 with completion in summer 2010.

Moving Forward from the NDC Programme
• There is a project plan in place for managing the end of the NDC Programme by March 2011. The Heywood Township Manager supported by the NDC Chief Executive is taking forward a clear set of planned actions 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.

A final draft report on this strategy will be discussed at the cabinet meeting in September 2009, with the final plans to be signed of by the Chief Executive RMBC and Chair of the NDC by the 30th September 2009


COMMUNITY COHESION

• The Community Cohesion Advisory Group has held meetings in all four townships, to identify local cohesion issues. We realise that each township has specific issues, and we are addressing these at a local level. A cohesion priority action plan has been finalised, and we are addressing the ‘prioritised’ areas for cohesion. The community cohesion commissioning group has met and agreed to fund cohesion projects, which we feel will help to stronger relations between all communities throughout the Borough.

• The Shamwari project is an example of a project by which minority communities through a language enrichment programme are supported to become more independent and integrated with the borough and its services. Library services are encouraging a six book challenge, to provide opportunities for less confident adult readers to read six books and gain a certificate.

• We are working with the schools service to ensure community cohesion is communicated to key stakeholders and provide advice and support to help promote community cohesion amongst our younger population. One of our schools was able to showcase their work as a best practise model at a national community cohesion conference for schools.
• RBH is running a 4x ½ day citizenship lessons to 9-10 year olds in local primary schools, encouraging children to identify with the communities they live in and play remains a good community.

• Community cohesion is a universal issue, and we are always linking services, to ensure our cohesion message is consistent, and apparent through all our services. An example of this is the ‘communities’ first project’ in which RBH produced a DVD in conjunction with sure start, youth service and Spring hill High school.

• The Preventing Violent Extremism action plan has been finalised and we are committed to engaging with all services and partner organisations to ensure the PVE objectives are met. We are currently considering projects to deliver against actions listed on the action plan.

• We recently held awareness raising sessions on “Faith, community cohesion and radicalisation”. The project involved the development and delivery of a training and awareness-raising programme for key strategic stakeholders. The aim of the session was to increase the knowledge of Muslim communities and the dynamics within them and develop an understanding of the causes of radicalisation and extremism. The sessions allowed attendees to discuss such controversial issues in a safe medium and seek advice and guidance from the speaker and other attendees of any concerns they may have. It provided an understanding to attendees how may people are/can be attracted to the extremist narrative and why this is. We received a lot of positive feedback from attendees and will be holding further sessions due to increased demand

Thank you Mr Mayor, I will be pleased to answer any questions from Members of the Council about these or any other matter relating to the Regeneration Portfolio.

PortReport.Counci