Ashton Forward- Action not words

Together with Ian McCartney we launched our campaign last Wednesday in Ashton town centre which aims to revive the town centre.

Part of the campaign is a petition calling on residents to support a new vision for the town centre. Ian has already obtained support from various groups including Wigan Metro, Wigan and Leigh Primary Care Trust the Greater Manchester Ambulance Service and police and Wigan and Leigh college. He intends to engage them in a comprehensive investment and regeneration strategy to provide modern public services in 21st century state of the art facilities.

The campaign has just received a major boost from a commitment by Steven Broomhead, chief executive of the North West Development Agency to pledge £50,00 to fund a comprehensive study to identify options for the future of the town centre hub. Ian hopes that this sum can be used to secure millions of pounds of investment in the future

Please contact me if you want to support the Ashton Forward campaign.

Getting out into the community

As Chair of the Ashton Bryn township Forum I have always been concerned that this important group meets in the Members Room of the town hall but does not reach out to the community of Ashton or Bryn

With this in mind we held a completely different meeting on Monday night . Our theme was Youth and we invited speakers from various organisations to attend the meeting to tell us what their role was in relationship to young people and more importantly how the Township Forum could help these groups and organisations. We invited representatives from the Youth Service, the Rock FM media bus, Connexions, staff and pupils from Byrchall High School where the event was held school and give presentations to members of the Township Forum and other guests.

The aim of the evening was for members of our group to understand what the various agencies and young people were doing in the community and then to ask them what we could do for them.

The event was a success - so much so that we have been asked to repeat it later in the year with additional speakers form the police and Leisure and Culture Trust. We aim to do this event for pupils and parents of local schools. We will also be inviting young people's representatives to our next forum meeting.

The pictures ( sorry they are not better quality)are of the speakers from the various organisations giving their presentations.

Thanks are due to the young people who made the buffet for us and Malcolm Coe and Lynn Hankey who did much of the organisation to make the event a success

And now for something completely different

I took this picture of a field of rape seed near Haydock Park - which I thought was nice.

Affordable homes

One of the things that I am keen to promote is affordable housing within the Wigan area and the following press release from Wigan Counci made interesting reading on this issue



Wigan is set to benefit from a £10m cash boost to build new affordable homes.

The Housing Corporation, the national body that funds social housing, has made £3.3m available to build new homes for people in need in the borough.

Cash will also be made available from other funding sources to bring the total investment in new affordable homes in Wigan up to more than £10m.

The money will be used to build 74 new homes. The largest scheme will be a development of 50 new rented homes at Durham Street, Whelley, subject to consultation and planning permission.

It will include a range of family houses and bungalows for rent, and will be developed by Adactus Housing and managed by Wigan and Leigh Housing as part of a new partnership arrangement to increase affordable rented accommodation. Work is expected to begin later this year and completed by 2010.

Council director of environmental services, Martin Kimber, says the new cash will bring even more opportunities to find homes for local people.

“This is the largest allocation received by housing providers in Wigan in the last five years and supports both Wigan and Leigh Housing and the council’s aims to increase the number of affordable homes in the borough,” says Mr Kimber.

“The proposals are part of a range of measures to ease increasing housing pressures and will see us working with both private landlords and house builders to ensure that a range of options are available.”

Welcoming the announcement, Paul Lees, Chief Executive of Adactus Housing says: “These homes will be built to high design and environmental standards and will offer quality rented accommodation at affordable prices”.

In addition, specialist housing for people with long-term disabilities, people with dementia and teenage parents will be built.

Wigan Council and Wigan and Leigh Housing have already pioneered an affordable homes scheme in the borough called Opening Doors. Working with developer Gladedale the scheme has been able to provide a number of quality affordable homes at the new Tyldesley Gin Pit Village site.

The shared equity scheme has been able to typically offer a two-bedroom apartment for just £70,174 or a modern four bedroom townhouse for as little at £87,500.

Crewe and Nantwich by-election

Went to Crewe on Saturday to help in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. Met a Governnment Minister, party members and MPs from all over the country who had come to lend their support. Nice to see Dennis Skinner again - he was holding court on the Nantwich Road chatting to passers by and anyone else who would listen.

After the battering the Labour Party has taken recently it was reassuring to see so many people from different parts of the country giving up their Saturday morning to help the candidate in this important election.

Political Composition of the Council

The state of the parties in the Council today is as follows:

1. Labour - 41 seats

2. Conservative - 10

3. Independents - 8

4. CAP - 7

5. Liberals - 4

6. Independent Conservatives - 4

One vacant seat.

So at the moment the Democratic Alliance of the CAP and Liberals are the official opposition. The leader of this group will be opposition leader - which means that the official leader of the opposition will represent a party that has 7 or 4 members out of 75.

But this will no doubt change. If there are any more defections from CAP the Tories will be the official opposition.

Watch this space.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

Imagine you are a local Tory - it is May 1st and after years of hurt and pain you see that the party nationally is on the up and locally it has won seats and is going to be the official opposition in Wigan with 14 seats.The leader of the party is articulate and is an effective opposition leader - unlike the last one whose only memorable phrase was ' it's a disgrace' And what a coup for David Cameron - he will be able to boast that the Conservative Party is the official opposition in of all places Wigan

and then - four members of the Party defect to form the Independent Conservative group which means that you are not going to be the official opposition any more.

Bummer