Liam O'Rourke
Labour and Co-operative Party
North Heywood Ward
2020/2021 has been a difficult time for us all in Heywood with the Covid virus. I sincerely hope that you, your family, and friends have not suffered any bereavements or ill health, if you have, then you have my most sincere thoughts and deepest condolences.
Obviously, because of Covid restrictions I am not able to visit as many people as I normally would, so apologies if I’ve not been to speak to you personally during the past year.
Your local Labour Team of myself, Peter Rush and Ray Dutton have still been working for Heywood despite the limitations of Covid.
- We have secured an extra £25 million to resurface and repair roads and footpaths in the borough over the past 5 years. We know there are more to do, and we will keep pushing on month by month with this repair programme.
- We have supported the massive improvements to Queen’s Park led by the excellent volunteers in the Friends group.
- We made sure funding was secured to replace the foot bridge over the railway line on Schofield Street.
- We have supported the improvements to Heywood Railway Station as part of the East Lancs Railway.
- After many years of trying hard, we have at last been able to do something about the eyesore at the site of the former Mossfield School on West Starkey Street. It will be used for small, clean, micro business units which will also bring 10 new full-time jobs to Heywood.
- We have now got the money to improve the dangerous junction of Bamford Rd, Starkey St and West Starkey St without it compromising local residents.
- Whilst SureStart Children’s Centres have been closing all over Britain, we have made sure our SureStart centre on Derby Street has stayed open for local families.
- Likewise, when community centres have been closed in other parts of the country, in Heywood we have made sure our community centres at Crimble Croft and Back o’th Moss get proper funding to stay open to serve local people.
- We are supporting residents with issues at Peel Lane tip and Hartley’s tip.
- We backed residents of Park Terrace and Heywood Hall Road who were suffering anti-social behaviour due to the park gates being open at night at the side entrance to Queen’s Park. We made sure the gates are shut from dusk until dawn.
- We fully support Andy Burnham in his drive to re-regulate bus services which will bring back bus services to some of our communities which lost their bus services under deregulation.
Fly tipping is a blight on our society and locally Labour is cracking down on fly tippers:
- We fine fly tippers with a fixed penalty of £400 for dumping rubbish.
- We impound and crush any vehicle we can prove was used in the act of fly tipping.
- If any resident can provide photographic evidence of someone fly tipping, we will give that resident a discount on their council tax.
I hope you will give me the honour of your vote this year so I may continue to work for North Heywood Ward.
Thank you for reading my pitch on Rochdale Online.
Regards
Liam O’Rourke
