Q1). Managing expenditure at Spindles and Town Square

For my first question to the Leader tonight, I would like to return to the redevelopment of the Spindles and Town Square shopping centres.

At the November 2020 Council meeting, just after the purchase had been completed, I asked the Leader whether this represented a ‘risky purchase’ and pointed up the ‘significant sums of money’ that will be involved in repurposing and refurbishing these two shopping centres.

I am sure that many people will have been shocked to recently hear that the ‘significant sum of money’ this Administration has earmarked to repurpose and refurbish these shopping centres amounts to £68 million over five years.

Not for nothing did the Liberal Democrats brand it ‘Spendles’.

This truly is a whopping sum of money.

We all want to see a vibrant, viable town centre in the heart of our borough – and for our part Liberal Democrat Councillors also want to see vibrant and well-used district centres in Failsworth, Chadderton, Royton, Shaw, Uppermill, and Lees as well – but at what eventual cost?

My real fear is that we shall see the same cost and time overruns and abortive costs on this project that have dogged this Administration’s previous so-called ambitious town centre projects:

• the abandoned Hotel Futures plan;
• the abandoned Coliseum plans – plural;
• the bankrupted My House;
• the much delayed and costly ‘game changer’ at Princes Gate;
• the over-budget town centre digital hub;
• and lastly the town centre flagship, the Old Town Hall project, delivered at four times the original cost.

So can the Leader please tell me tonight how he will ensure that this project will be rigorously managed from start-to-finish, to ensure that it is delivered on time and to the current assigned budget or, for the sake of our hard-pressed tax payers, preferably much less?

Q2). A memorial to COVID-19 victims and heroes

My second question to the Leader tonight references the sad anniversary yesterday of the first COVID-19 Lockdown in the United Kingdom.

This past year we have seen so much sacrifice and so much suffering.

Many of us have had COVID-19 or have seen loved ones, friends and family, die from this relentless, ruthless disease.

But we have also seen a great deal of courage and selflessness. 

We are all too aware of the incredible professionalism, fortitude, and, yes, bravery displayed by our wonderful NHS staff in their care for those afflicted by COVID-19.

But we should also remember the many others who have helped save lives and keep our society functioning during this unprecedented crisis.

Members of our emergency services, including the volunteers of our local Mountain Rescue Service; our care workers; our schools, education and nursery staff; our postal workers; our power, water and telecoms workers; bus, tram and train drivers; delivery drivers and warehouse staff; supermarket and shop workers; the many volunteers who support our communities, and of course our hardworking council staff, who like their colleagues in the NHS have found this time especially testing.

My question to the Leader concerns how we will mark this sacrifice, suffering, courage and selflessness in our borough in the future.

Oldham has been hit especially hard by COVID-19 and it will take a significant effort and a lot of time to recover. 

A large part of this recovery will revolve around the collective need for the people of this borough to grieve, to reflect and to remember.

I would suggest to the Leader that we need to commit as a borough to creating a bespoke collective space where that might happen – a memorial to our COVID-19 victims and its heroes. 

I am not seeking to prescribe what this memorial might be or where it might be, nor would now be the right time to establish it as we are not yet at the end of this tragedy. 

But I am confident that Oldham’s great people would get behind such a proposal, so could the Leader join me in making a commitment in principle tonight to make such a memorial a reality?

Councillor Howard Sykes MBE, Leader of the Opposition, Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group Oldham Council.

24 March 2021

The Oldham Liberal Democrats want to see the Conservative Government honour the promise it made after the British people voted to Brexit to replace the funding received from the European Union with a new UK Shared Prosperity Fund. 

In the last round of European funding (2014-2020), the ten authorities of Greater Manchester received £322.75m, from the European Regional Development Funding (ERDF) (£176.78m) and the European Social Funding (ESF) (£145.97m).  Over each of the six years this represented £53.8m per year.

In the Conservative Party Manifesto for the 2017 General Election campaign, the party pledged to create this new fund to ‘reduce inequalities between communities across our four nations’.  To help shape the fund the incoming Conservative government committed to ‘consult widely on the design of the fund, including with the devolved administrations, local authorities, businesses and public bodies.’

Four years on, Liberal Democrats now want to see the promised consultation carried out as a priority and the fund introduced later this year in the immediate post-Lockdown period to help boroughs, like Oldham, which will continue to struggle economically.  They are bringing a motion to the next meeting of Oldham Council on Wednesday (24 March).

Liberal Democrat Councillor Sam Al-Hamdani is proposing the motion, backed by the Deputy Group Leader, Councillor Chris Gloster.  Councillor Al-Hamdani explained: “The Prime Minister may boast about ‘getting Brexit done’, but we say that this remains unfinished business.  The Conservatives promised that no region of the UK would be worse off financially as a result of Brexit.  The UK Shared Prosperity Fund would potentially represent a significant sum of money to our city-region and to Oldham. The Liberal Democrats now want to see this consultation ‘done’, as a deprived borough like Oldham really needs this cash.”

Motion – Consultation on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund

Council notes that:

• The Conservative Party Manifesto for the 2017 General Election contained the following commitment:

‘We will use the structural fund money that comes back to the UK following Brexit to create a United Kingdom Shared Prosperity Fund, specifically designed to reduce inequalities between communities across our four nations. The money that is spent will help deliver sustainable, inclusive growth based on our modern industrial strategy. We will consult widely on the design of the fund, including with the devolved administrations, local authorities, businesses and public bodies.’

• The Conservative Government promised to publish a UK Shared Prosperity Fund Consultation Paper in 2018.

• Successive Secretaries of State in the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government when responding to several questions in Parliament in both 2018 and 2019 confirmed that a consultation would take place.

• The promised consultation is now three years late.

• In the last round of European funding (2014-2020), Greater Manchester received £322.75m, split across European Regional Development Funding (ERDF) (£176.78m) and European Social Funding (ESF) (£145.97m), equivalent to an annual allocation of £53.8m.

• The Conservative Party website claims that ‘We will introduce the UK Shared Prosperity Fund when EU Structural Funds start to taper off from 2020-21…from April 2021’.

Council resolves to ask the Chief Executive to:

• Write to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government requesting the promised public consultation commence as soon as possible.

• Copy in our local Members of Parliament and the Mayor of Greater Manchester on this correspondence and ask for their assistance by making similar representations to the Government.

Proposed by: Councillor Sam Al-Hamdani 

Seconded by: Councillor Chris Gloster

At Wednesday’s full meeting of Oldham Council (24 March), the Oldham Liberal Democrats will be proposing all Councillors give a big vote of thanks to Oldham’s school and education staff after a year in which they have been hard at work delivering tuition in the most trying post-war circumstances.

Saddleworth North Liberal Democrat Councillor Garth Harkness is proposing the motion.  He works in an academy in Manchester with pupils with special needs and knows from first-hand experience how hard his Oldham colleagues will have been working through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking of the motion, Councillor Harkness said:  “Everyone will be aware that all students have now returned to their classrooms and workshops from March 8 of this year, but some people will be unaware that teachers and education staff have in fact been working hard throughout the year-long pandemic, delivering learning in new and innovative ways.  Often this has been online learning with pupils in a virtual classroom and sometimes it has been in-class tuition with the children of key workers or children unable to study at home.”

“Despite the difficulties, educators and those many staff who support them in their work, from caretakers to school meals staff to administrators, have continued to work with the utmost professionalism and dedication, and the Oldham Liberal Democrats now think it’s time for Oldham Council to say a big thanks!”

Shaw Liberal Democrat Councillor Hazel Gloster will be seconding the motion.

Motion – Thanking our Schools and Education Staff

Council shares the delight of children, parents and guardians that pupils and students have finally been able to return to their schools and colleges during the week commencing 8 March. Children and young people will be glad to be back with their teachers and their friends after a year of home schooling and distance learning that has been very difficult for everyone involved.

Council recognises that teachers and other school and college staff across the whole of the United Kingdom, whether employed at primary, secondary or tertiary level, have demonstrated extraordinary professional commitment and dedication in continuing to deliver an excellent education, whether at the chalk-face or online, to our children and young people in the face of great uncertainty and despite the most adverse conditions faced by such professionals since 1945.

Council further recognises that in schooling the children of other ‘key workers’ teachers and other school staff have enabled their parents to carry on doing their essential duties that have saved our lives, supplied us with our daily bread and kept our nation functioning, all the while knowing that their children are safe and being nurtured and cared for.

Council recognises that Oldham has sadly been very hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and operational difficulties in education have been especially challenging.

Consequently, Council wishes particularly to praise those school and college staff who have been working at schools, academies and colleges across the Borough of Oldham.  Such staff include teachers, teaching assistants, catering, cleaning, and caretaking staff, midday supervisors, office support staff, head teachers, child care club staff, volunteers, and anybody else who has helped to keep our educational establishments open for key workers or who has supported distance learning.

Council believes that parents, guardians and siblings involved in supporting their children and young people in their distance learning will have developed a deeper appreciation of the work that our professional educators do on a day-to-day basis, particularly in these challenging times.

Council therefore resolves to ask the Chief Executive to write to the local representatives of the professional bodies and trades unions for the teaching and ancillary professions to pass on these sentiments and our thanks for a job well done after one year of Lockdown.

Proposed by: Councillor Garth Harkness                                  

Seconded by: Councillor Hazel Gloster

Oldham’s Liberal Democrat Councillors are proposing a motion to the next full meeting of Oldham Council (Wednesday 24 March) calling on the Government to introduce a new tax on the excess profits generated by online traders during the COVID-19 Lockdown.

The Leader of the Opposition and the Liberal Democrat Group, Councillor Howard Sykes MBE, is proposing the motion, backed by his colleague, Councillor Diane Williamson.  Commenting Councillor Sykes said:  “It seems singularly unfair that whilst high street businesses have spent the last year suffering under Lockdown, either being entirely closed or under significant restrictions, larger national and international businesses who have benefited from online shopping and home deliveries, and made bumper profits, are not paying their way in terms of taxation.”

“The Liberal Democrats believe that the government should introduce an excess profits tax on these bumper profits to raise more revenue to pay for our NHS and other hollowed-out public services.   In the past, during both world wars, the government introduced such a tax on war profiteers.  For the British people and government, the COVID-19 pandemic has represented the greatest immediate threat we have faced in over seventy years.  It has represented a situation akin to a war and those retailers who have most profited from it can afford to pay.”

The motion submitted to the next Council meeting (Wednesday 24 March) reads:

A Tax on Excess Online Profits

Council notes that whilst smaller High Street non-food retail outlets have been forcibly closed, and are facing business failure, because of the COVID-19 Lockdown, larger national businesses and multi-national businesses offering on-line products have thrived, reporting bumper profits.

Council notes that recent proposals from the UN and the EU are working to establish an international consensus on business taxation, to minimise profit-shifting for the purpose of avoiding corporation tax, but that these proposals are not likely to be introduced in time to have any impact on the excess online profits that some companies have made off the back of the coronavirus epidemic.

Raising a bespoke tax on excess online profits has precedent in the UK, and Council expresses its disappointment that the Chancellor has not yet introduced such a tax and believes that if we are, as the Prime Minister claims, ‘all in this together’, then the excessive profits of such on-line businesses should be subjected to a greater level of tax, and that the revenue raised employed to support our hollowed out public services (local government, schools and health) and the financial recovery of our High Street retailers.

Council resolves to ask the Chief Executive to write to:

• The Chancellor of the Exchequer, The Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP, urging him to introduce such a tax as soon as possible as one means to ensure that we are ‘all in this together’.
• Our three local MPs, the Greater Manchester Mayor and the Leaders of the other nine AGMA authorities to seek their support for such a tax.

Proposed by: Councillor Howard Sykes                                   

Seconded by: Councillor Diane Williamson

Liberal Democrats endorsed Shaw Councillor Howard Sykes’s plea for more government and council support for the hard-pressed pub and hospitality trade at a special online fringe meeting hosted by Councillor Sykes at the party’s spring conference (Saturday 20 March).

In addition to being Leader of the Opposition and the Liberal Democrat Group on Oldham Council, Councillor Howard Sykes MBE also serves as Leader of the Local Government Association’s Liberal Democrat Group, which has 2,400 elected members in England and Wales.

Attendees from councils across the UK were able to listen to speakers who included campaigner Ellie Hudspeth from Britain’s biggest consumer organisation, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA); Daisy Cooper, Liberal Democrat MP, spokesperson for Justice, and for Digital Culture Media and Sports; and councillor Chris White, Leader of St Alban’s Council, the town which is the location of CAMRA’s Head Office.

Councillor Sykes said:  “I was delighted to be able to chair this important event for Liberal Democrat councillors and activists concerned by the threat posed to pubs and restaurants by Lockdown.  Like tea and cricket, pubs and a proper pint are seen worldwide as uniquely British.  Pubs and clubs are a force for social good in our communities bringing people together from all walks of life for fun and friendship.

“Yet for much of the last year they have been closed and unable to trade and the Prime Minister’s Roadmap will not permit them to fully reopen without restrictions until June.  Despite some positive news in the recent budget, many continue to face financial ruin.  Liberal Democrat councillors are determined to help save/protect the locals in wards and councils they represent.”

Recent data revealed by CAMRA in its March magazine What’s Brewing indicated that around 6,000 licensed premises closed permanently in 2020, and that thousands more remain under financial threat until normal trading can fully resume.

Councillor Sykes added:  “This event enabled councillors and activists to exchange some excellent ideas for positive action that can help to save more of our hospitality industry until the time when we all finally be able to go into our local to buy a pint of real ale and toast our dear old British pub.”

When is the Census?

• Census Day is Sunday 21st March 2021.
• However, it can be completed in advance, and there is a period of 4 weeks after the 21st when there will be reminders sent but no enforcement.

What is the census?

• The census is a survey that happens every 10 years and gives us a picture of all people and households.
• It will be used by organisations including charities and the council to obtain the funding required to support those in need of help.

How do I complete it?

• Before Census Day, all households will receive a pack in the post, asking them to take part in Census 2021. It contains a code that allows you to complete it online at https://census.gov.uk/
• Paper copies can also be requested by calling 0800 876 627 (you will be asked for the reference number from the top of your letter).
• It takes around 10 minutes per person to complete.

Why should I complete it?

• Providing an accurate reflection of Oldham’s population is vital for us to understand who our residents are and what support they might need from us.
• By taking part you’ll be playing your part and helping to build the future of where you live.
• Don’t forget there is a £1,000 fine if you don’t take part as it’s a legal requirement.

Getting help by telephone (please note these key numbers to pass on in case of queries)

• Census Contact Centre: 0800 141 2021.
• Language Helpline: 0800 587 2021.
• To request a paper form: 0800 876 627 (you will be asked for the reference number from the top of your letter).

Getting help in person

• Oldham Central and Crompton libraries have trained support staff to help with census completion, and other libraries will help as far as possible.
• Due to Covid, they are currently only offering a telephone service (0161 770 8000). However, they will shortly be able to offer in-person support.
• There is a third Census Support Centre, run by a private company Adore at Saddleworth Business Centre in Delph. They are offering face-to-face help by appointment (including on Census day 21^st March),
  Telephone 07727 044 580 to make an appointment.

Shaw Liberal Democrat Councillors will be demanding action from Oldham Borough Council to tackle flooding at Dunwood, after the continued failure by the Council and the Environment Agency to address the threat posed to local properties.

Councillor Howard Sykes MBE said:  “For many years we have had the problem of run-off rainwater from Whitfield threatening properties along Woodend and on Smallbrook Road, the owners of which are regularly obliged to deploy sandbags to prevent water entering their homes.  After heavy rain it is also common to see the bowling green on Dunwood Park look like a lake, the footpaths unpassable on either side and Pencil Brook becomes a raging torrent.”

After years of asking again and again for effective solutions to the problems at Dunwood, Shaw Councillors are once more questioning the Borough Council’s approach to tackling flooding at Dunwood.

“Climate change is predicted to make our country’s weather warmer and wetter overall, which means that rainfall is likely to increase and consequently this problem will not go away,” added Councillor Sykes.  “It is clear then that we need to revisit what has been done by the Environment Agency so far; their engineering solutions have proven ineffective and they have proven toothless in forcing local landowners to take effective measures to prevent excess rainwater running from their land and threatening local properties and our Green Flag Park with flooding.”

The Council have received a permit application to supply electricity and gas to a new development at Mosshey Street, Shaw

S&R Construction Ltd have obtained permission to undertake essential Multi Utility Works (Gas, Water & Electric) which will impact the roads referenced above.

Please refer to the below work phases, detailing start dates and durations, along with Traffic Management implementations.

Phase 1 – Mosshey Street– 15.02.2021-26.02.2021 / (duration 10 days)

• Their works will involve excavation in the Footway from No. 27 Mosshey Street, towards the junction of Asda’s entrance. There will be no parking cones in place throughout the duration of our works to avoid vehicles blocking access to our working area.

Phase 2 – Greenfield Lane –01.03.2021-12.03.2021 (duration 10 days)

• The works will involve excavation in the carriageway between the junction of Asda’s entrance, to the junction of Eastway. The works will be carried out under temporary two-way traffic signals.

Phase 3 –  Greenfield Lane – 15.03.2021-26.03.2021 (duration 10 days)

• The works will involve excavation in the carriageway between the junction of Eastway, towards Refuge Street. The works will be carried out under temporary three-way signals.

Phase 4 –Refuge Street/Greenfield Lane- 29.03.2021- 02.04.2021 (duration 10 days)

• The works will involve excavation in the footway and carriageway on Refuge Street where we will need to cross the width of the carriageway. These works will be carried out under four-way temporary traffic signals.

Phase 5 – Mosshey Street – 05.04.2021 – 09.04.2021 (duration 5 days)

• The works will involve excavation in the footway of Mosshey Street. There will be no parking cones in place throughout the duration of our works to avoid vehicles blocking access to our working area.

They apologise for any inconvenience our works may cause you.

It is their intention to complete the works as quickly as possible to keep any disruption to a minimum. 

If you have any questions regarding the above, please do not hesitate to contact them:

Alysia Totney, Multi Utility Project Coordinator, S&R Construction Ltd, 01384 598103