For the last two days I’ve been attending the Bury Council and “Team Bury” strategic planning event. This is an annual event that brings together the Council’s Executive Committee, senior officers and the two opposition leaders. On the second day we were joined by the Council’s partners in “Team Bury” - the Police, Primary Care Trust (NHS), Fire service, Bury College and a representative of Bury’s voluntary sector.

It is really useful to spend time with these partner organisations, and there was a great sense of how things are moving forward in Bury though different organisations working together.

The conclusions of the event will be reported through the Council’s committee structure after the summer, so I’ll wait to see how that comes out. There were a few issues that dominated the discussion:

Rising Inequalities
Whilst many people are relatively “OK” in Bury (or at least we were until the recent cost of living increases….), there is a growing divide between the people who are doing OK, and people who are increasingly struggling. This can often be a number of things that are linked together - not working, poor health, poor education results, poor housing. We spent a lot of time looking at how the different agencies in Bury can work together to tackle this situation.

Local Areas
We also spent a time discussing how different organisations work together at a local level (e.g. in Prestwich). There has been a great deal of improvement in recent years, but we looked at how we could make sure that local priorities get the attention they need, and how this will be reflected in the bigger decisions that need to be taken at a Bury level.

Bury’s Image and “place in the world”
We looked at the image that Bury has. There is a lot happening in the Borough at the moment - new developments in town centres, new housing and new cultural facilities. We wanted to see how we encouraged the very best employers to Bury.

I’ll let you know more when the full conclusions of the event are published.

Tim