Tim Pickstone

The special meeting of Prestwich Local Area Partnership meeting organised for 4 September has been cancelled and will be rescheduled in the near future. As soon as this meeting is arranged it will be posted on the notice board outside Prestwich Library as well a notice sent out to every resident in Prestwich. The meeting was to discuss the plans for the development of Prestwich Town Centre, but it felt best to do this during the consultation period which will be starting shortly.

The next scheduled meeting of the LAP will take place on Thursday 2 October at 6.30pm at Sedgley Park Primary School, Kings Road, Prestwich.
For further information about Prestwich Local Area Partnership meetings please contact Carran O’ Grady on 0161 253 7245.

Our campaign to tackle the graffiti that is blighting our local area has made media in the Prestwich and Whitefield Guide.

The guide has picked up our campaign to get the Council to tackle graffiti, and in response to the letters that were shamefully sent out to local residents threatening them with fines if they didn’t remove graffiti from their property.

One of the things I do outside being a Councillor is to serve as a Trustee of Manchester Pride. As part of this role I had the honour on Sunday of meeting Prossy Kakooza, and introducing her on stage in Manchester.

Prossy is a 26-year-old woman seeking asylum in the UK. She fled Uganda after suffering vicious sexual, physical and verbal attacks due to her sexual orientation. Manchester’s Metropolitan Community Church is currently working with Prossy in her campaign to stay in this country.

This video story tells more about the campaign and what we can do to help.

From 1 September Bury Library Service are launching a three month pilot scheme to reduce the cost of borrowing DVDs. The scheme will allow library members to borrow DVD’s, which have been in stock before the 1 April 2008, for just £1 a week and DVDs added to stock after 1 April at £2.20 for a week’s loan.

Additionally, library members who also have an Active Lifestyle Discount Card get the added benefit in being able to borrow any DVD and benefit from a further 50% discount. To see if you may be eligible for a discount card check the leisure services web page.

To check any items that are available for you to borrow search our website using the online facility.

Well done to all the local students who will have got their GCSE results yesterday. I know our local schools are going to be proud of their achievements again this year - I’ll let you know more analysis when this becomes available.

In the meantime, the individual results for our local high schools are below:

Parenthorn High School
Prestwich Arts College
St Monicas RC High School

Across Bury, provisional figures indicate that 68% of students have achieved five or more A* to C grades, an increase of 5% on last year. Bury students have also excelled in the new benchmark of gaining five or more A*-C grades, including a C or above in both English and Mathematics. This year’s result of 56% is 3% above last year.

Well done.

The Post Office has confirmed that five post offices in Bury will closed. This is after its period of “consultation” with local people on which post offices to close in Greater Manchester. The Lib Dem team in Bury have campaigned against the post office closure programme consistently for a number of years, and were successful in getting Bury Council to agree a “no closure” policy at a recent council meeting.

The five post offices to close are:
Elton, 73 Crostons Road, Bury, BL8 1LB
Greenmount, 337 Holcombe Road, Greenmount, Bury, BL8 4BB
Limefield, 293 Walmersley Road, Bury, BL9 6NX
Rochdale Road, 98 Rochdale Road, Bury, BL9 7AY
Water Lane, 21 Ainsworth Road, Radcliffe, Manchester, M26 4DJ

Read the full story from the Post Office here.

Prestwich today is making national press (or at leas the Daily Telegraph online!), with the story of Bury Council threatening to fine local residents who don’t clean up graffiti on their property.

Click here to read the story.

BAAS Construction Ltd are commencing work soon on re-roofing many of the houses on the Polefield Estate. Re-roofing works to include new soffits, fascias, rainwater pipes, guttering, renewal of slate tiles and roof insulation.

Here are the details:
Commencement Date/Site Set-up - 25th August 2008
Completion date - 13 week contract
Site Foreman - Andy Jordan
Tenant Liaison Officer - BAAS - Helen Cooper
Capital Project Officer - Joanne McCabe
Emergency telephone number - Bradley Fold 0161 253 6606
BAAS Emergency Out Of Hours 0800 294 4770
Site Compound - corner of Polefield Hall Road/Polefield Circle
Site Office - 12 Polefield Grange