Council 15 December 2021
Leaders Question X – Hospital car parking
Madame Mayor,
For my first question to the Leader tonight I want to look at car parking at the Royal Oldham Hospital.
The complaints that both I and my Liberal Democrat colleagues receive regularly from constituents, who are either outpatients or visitors to the hospital, is the difficulty they encounter in finding a car parking space.
Sometimes residents, myself included, drive around for an age to find a space as the minutes tick away for their appointment. Frankly the stress is just not needed, especially when you are awaiting life- saving treatment for cancer or rushing to visiting a sick relative.
In addition, car parking spaces are sometimes some way from the relevant ward or outpatient’s department, and visitors who are infirm or in ill-health can struggle to make the distance between their car and the building.
Can I ask the Leader, and through her the Cabinet Member for Health, if an appeal could be made to the hospital authorities to look again at visitor parking spaces to create more spaces in future development plans?
Can they also be asked to ensure that patient and visitor spaces, rather than staff spaces, are located closer to the wards and outpatient departments?
We also receive complaints about car parking charges. I have carried out some research about car parking charges at our hospital and there are a surprising number of concessions that would allow many patients to park for free or at a much-reduced rate – if only they knew about them and could find a parking space.
So, in a third part to my question can I ask if the Leader and Cabinet Member will work with the health authority and with relevant agencies, such as Healthwatch and cancer charities, to raise the public’s awareness of these concessions?
Council 15 December 2021
Leaders Question 2 – Exploring Crowdfunding
Madame Mayor,
My second question relates to Crowdfunding.
For councils up and down the country, it is becoming increasingly difficult to afford capital projects or provide for services or events that are outside statutory provision.
One innovation that more and more councils, from Manchester to Lewisham, are using is Crowdfunding.
Crowdfunding provides a new model for local authorities to connect with communities and residents.
It is a means by which local people become empowered to help deliver a capital project, service, or event that they want to see in their community by making an online financial contribution without the bureaucracy of funding bids.
Sometimes this contribution is made altruistically, sometimes in the expectation of personal gain such receiving an interest payment or an invitation to a launch event.
Plymouth Council was the first who launched Crowdfund Plymouth in 2015. Within 12 months, this initiative raised over £430,000 to back more than 100 projects in the city where 4,550 members of the public had themselves raised one-quarter of the money.
Several local authorities have used crowdfunding specifically to finance renewable energy projects. This is the number one area Oldham needs to look at in my opinion.
Swindon Borough Council raised £4.3m from the public to fund two solar parks; Warrington and West Berkshire Councils £1 million each through Community Municipal Bonds; and Islington Council is just currently doing the same.
Back in 2019, a report from the University of Leeds, titled ‘Financing for Society’ concluded that crowdfunding has ‘huge, untapped potential’ for public sector infrastructure finance with finance accessible at a comparable rate to loans from the Public Works Loan Board.
My question to the Leader is therefore that if we are indeed a Co-operative Council intent on engaging our communities in our work and in getting ‘everyone to do their bit’, especially in helping to make our borough carbon-neutral by 2030, shouldn’t we as a Council be at least investigating the merits of crowdfunding?