Most people spend Halloween making or eating pumpkins, or dodging “trick or treaters”, but not so for the 51 councillors of Bury! Wednesday night was one of our five-times-a year “full council” meetings which normally go on right up to the close of business at 10.00pm.
Members of the Liberal Democrat Group of Councillors try to make full use of the meeting - its one of our only opportunity to question the Leadership of the Council and raise important issues.
Between us the Lib Dem councillors asked no less than eight written questions to the Executive Committee. These ranged from recycling, to road safety education, homelessness and the SCOOT traffic management system. On the latter my colleague Donal O’Hanlon asked how the expensive SCOOT management system had completely failed to work when a single lorry had broken down in Whitefield on Wednesday night in October - the whole of northern Greater Manchester was a gridlock for hours!
I asked two questions:
- one on the delays to Radcliffe Riverside High School. I asked what the scope of the involvement of the District Auditor in the proposed purchase of the land that the school is proposd to be built on. I asked the Executive Member for Children’s services if she could assure me that the Council will move on as soon as practical with a permanent solution for Radliffe schoolchildren. I know from our experiences in Prestwich how damaging protracted uncertainty can be to children’s educition.
- one on the absence of an “alleygating” policy for the Council. I was assured that a policy is on its way this municipal year (ie before next May) and that pilot areas are going to be identified for intial work. I asked if the Council would take up a proactive policy of supporting groups of local residents who wanted to pay for alleygating themselves - Michelle Wiseman, the Conservative Executive member responsible, said she would.
There was also two policy debates at full Council.
One, proposed by the Labour Group, congratulated the Government on the free bus travel for elderly people. We supported this, but added our own amendment to call for free bus travel to be rolled out to all school chidlren and young people. My Lib Dem colleague Cllr Richard Baum spoke exellently on the subject (you can even read his speech here!) and in the end both the other parties supported us.
Next it was the turn of the Lib Dem group motion - Vic D’Albert proposed our motion which called for a halt to the Government’s Post Office closure programme. At present around one fifth of all post offices are scheduled for closure next year - that’s around another six in Bury on top of the 19 that have closed in recent years. Our proposal was supported by both other parties, but in reality the fight begins now to save our local post offices.
