Last night was the last meeting of the Council’s Executive Committee for the year. The Executive brings together the eight “portfolio holders” on the Council, together with the two leaders of opposition parties, including me from the Lib Dems. The meeting had an increadably long agenda - 31 items! - so I’ll only report on the most interesting here. The full agenda, together with all the papers can be found here.

Annual Audit and Inspection Letter
We received our annual report from the Audit Commission on well Bury is performing. The headline is that Bury has moved from being a 3* authority, to only 2*. Obviously this is regrettable, the tipping point apparently was a move down in ratings for adult care services.

Phase III Children’s Centres
We received a report on the implementation of Phase III of the Children’s Centre programme. The good news here is that it looks likely that Holyrood Ward (where we live) is going to see a Centre in this final phase (though this hasn’t been confirmed yet). Holyrood Ward was identified as one of two areas where a new centre might be appropriate (the other being Stand/Outwood), though this will be confirmed in a later report.

Learning Review in Primary and Secondary Schools
We received a fairly vague report about the reviews of learning in both primary and secondary schools. I made the point that it was a concern that the report on the review was lacking in susbstance. Reviewing schools can be a hugely contraversial issue (as we learned a few years ago in Prestwich), and its important that the review gets off on the right footing.

Millgate Shopping Centre Design Framework
We received an excellent presentation on the future planning and design framework for the Millage Centre in Bury Town Centre. With the development of the new “rock triange” area (with its new Debenhams and M&S) there is a concern that we need to improve the Millage Centre, and there are a number of excellent ideas to imporve the facilities and public spaces in the area. Hopefully the owners of the centre will bring forward definite plans to make this happen.

Local Area Partnerships Review
We received the conclusions of the review of Local Area Partnerships. The recommendations are “interim”, which is good as they don’t really say anything much! Hopefully the final stages of the review, in Autumn 2008 will come up with better ways of how LAPs can be used to make sure that local people have a real say in local services. I confirmed that the (in my view) ridiculous idea of renaming the Local Area Partnerships as “Team Prestwich” (etc) has been dropped - which it has (for now).

Compulsory Purchase of the Radcliffe Riverside School site
The Executive Committee took the decision, which I fully support, to proceed with the compulsory purchase of the Radcliffe Riverside School site. The delays of proceeding with this much needed new high school for Radcliffe seem to have been endless this year, and anything that gets building work on the school going is to be welcomed. Hopefully the Order will get the owners of the land talking and wont need to be used in the end.

Obviously there was lots more discussed at the meeting, but these were the hightlights. If you have any questions on these or the other items don’t hesitate to ask!

thanks
Tim