Last night was one of the meeting of Prestwich Local Area Partnership. This brings together your councillors, partner agencies like the police, NHS and fire service and a wide range of community representatives. At the meeting was actually agreed to co-opt four new community reps - Churches Together in Prestwich, the Prestwich Clough Centenery Group, the Prestwich Business Group and the Simister Village Community Association.
The two main issues that the Partnership are currently working on dominated the meeting. On developing communities - where we are looking at working to improve some of the areas of our community that perhaps need input most, we heard about some excellent schemes where partner agencies are working together to develop youth and community facilities in both the Rainsough and Polefield areas of Prestwich. I welcomed the plans for Polefield, but insisted that if we are to have new play facilities in the area then we need to work very closely with residents who surround any new facility to ensure that we’re not causing a nuisance.
On the town centre we heard about the final stages of the plan to appoint a professional firm to help us develop a planning strategy for the town (or village!) centre of Prestwich. A company has now been appointed and will start the important work of finding out what local people want over the coming year.
I raised two points - firstly that ALL of Prestwich needs to be involved in the consultation - not just the 4000 or so houses near the village! - and secondly that we should ensure that the brief for the development plan has a sustainable and “green” village centre at its heart.
Highfield Road dominated the public open forum - with some real concerns about employee parking (M&S, Croma etc) disrupting residents parking. Its a major issue that we’ll need to take up as a work out a future design for the town centre - but hopefully something can be done in the meantime to make life easier for the Highfield Road residents.
The next meeting of the Area Partnership is on Tuesday 15 January 2008 at St Monica’s High School. Formal meeting 6.30pm, Open Forum 7.30pm.
Tim
