All domestic waste collections will return to normal from Monday 14th September with the reintroduction of a weekly collection of food and garden waste ( green bin/food caddy).
Covid 19 rules, social distancing and use of masks apply.
Mon – Fri 10am – 5pm
Sat 10am – 1pm
There are national problems at the moment with lab capacity for testing which is unfortunately affecting the availability of testing slots on the booking portal.
In Oldham the three local testing sites are able to offer testing to people who attend without an appointment.
If you visit any of these sites they should be able to offer you a test.
The three test sites are:
Honeywell Centre (Hadfield Street Hathershaw OL8 3BP)
Peel Street in Chadderton
Southgate Street (Next to Gallery Oldham)
All three sites are open 8am – 8pm, 7 days a week.
Several pool tables (5) and a table tennis table. Also, some tables, chairs and a large screen TV.
If you have already been in touch no need to do so again – you are already on the list 🙂
The list of expressions of interest will close AM Sunday 13 Sept.
If you are a local Shaw and Crompton Group; Organisation; Charity; Faith; Youth; Non for Profit or Social Enterprise or any other Group or Organisation (or Individual) who might be interested, please drop me a quick email.
Do not post on here!
Please email me directly – email below
Please state organisation/group. Your role in in etc and any other useful info but please keep it brief.
Delivery can be provided so no requirement for anyone to find transport.
If no takers from Shaw and Crompton similar ‘applications’ from groups from a wider geographical area would be welcome, please do drop me a short email. Do not post on here!
Please email me direct at:
Please state organisation/group. Your role in in etc and any other useful info but please keep it brief.
The above offer is from the: Very Group – following the closing of their site in Shaw and they asked for my help to ensure the above go to good use locally.
Time is short so please act now if you think you might be interested.
The list of expressions of interest will close AM Sunday 13 Sept.
Madame Mayor, my first question concerns the future of our district centres in the post-Covid world.
This Administration has expended countless officer hours, commissioned many specialist reports, and expended many millions of pounds on its regeneration plans for Oldham town centre over the years.
Whilst some welcome progress has been made, much of the effort and expenditure has frankly come to nothing. Now Covid-19 has slain the latest plans.
The prospects for the ‘Creating a Better Place’ master plan, first adopted by this Administration in July 2019 and involving an investment of £306 million, has just been reviewed by Cabinet and a third or £100 million axed off that budget.
Covid has massively increased our costs, decimated our revenue, and now as a Council we quite simply do not now have the cash.
The original plan envisaged a mixture of housing, retail, leisure and office developments.
We need many thousands of new homes and I would rather they be built in Oldham Town Centre and on brownfield sites than developed at the expense of our Green Belt and green spaces.
Now we will be restructuring existing retail, leisure and office spaces, rather than bringing new space into use.
If you walk through the Town Square and Spindles Shopping Centres you can see the empty spaces. For over a decade now, footfall along Britain’s high streets has been declining. Covid-19 has simply accelerated the trend.
Office workers are not coming back to our Town Centre, including the Council’s. Home-working is here to stay, and for many of us it will continue to be the only way to work or the only way we can work.
For all the talk of investing in Oldham Town Centre to ‘Create a Better Place’, there has been no talk about, and no focus on, the other district centres in our Borough, except for Royton – which is still talk only!
This Administration may have adopted a new mantra ‘We are Oldham’ but Oldham is not just the Town Centre, it is a Borough of Town and District Centres, each with a proud history and its own distinctive character.
For Local is the New Normal.
The Council’s ambition of ‘Creating a Better Place’, there has been no mention of investing in these localities to make the local better.
So, I would like to ask the Leader tonight whether he and his Cabinet colleagues will consider reallocating some of the investment intended for Oldham Town Centre to create ‘Better Places’ to live for those of us who live, shop, socialise or work in Lees, Royton, Chadderton, Failsworth, Shaw and the Saddleworth Villages?
Thank you, Madame Mayor.
I agree with Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham who recently called for the Government to pay anyone forced to self-isolate their full wages, where there is no employer to do so.
The current situation is a nonsense and it discourages people from participating fully and faithfully in Track and Trace and from choosing to self-isolate.
I will use two examples.
Person A:
A low-paid employee working in the ‘gig’ economy, not knowing how many hours or how many days a week or a month they will work and forced to claim Universal Credit to make ends meet and battling between pay days with financial insecurity and the complexities and frustrations of the benefits system.
Person A isn’t entitled to full pay when they do not work; their employer only offers Statutory Sick Pay.
Person B:
A self-employed tradesperson with a start-up business carrying out jobs for private customers in domestic dwellings.
Person B goes out to work, they cannot work from a makeshift office under the stairs, and, as a self-employed person, if they don’t work, they don’t earn; they have no employer-based sick pay scheme.
If our Persons A and B go for a well-earned pint in the pub at the end of the day – separately of course because under Oldham’s rules they cannot meet in the same pub as members of two separate households – they are meant to record their personal details with the establishment in case there is a Covid infection there and they need to be traced.
But why does Person A or Person B have any incentive to diligently fill in their details when, if they were subsequently contacted and forced to self-isolate, they will lose at least 10 days and possibly two weeks work, with little or no sick pay as a result?
That is why you see Track and Trace records in pubs and elsewhere noting the presence of Batman and Bart and Lisa Simpson amongst their recent customers.
Now the Government has now grudgingly agreed to pay the recipients of Universal Credit or Work Credits a paltry sum of £13 a day for any time that they are required to self-isolate.
Oldham is one of the first pilot areas where this will apply.
Would the Leader agree that this derisory sum will in no way recompense Person A and Person B from Oldham for their loss during self-isolation?
And will he agree to join with me to lobby to introduce a meaningful compensation scheme?
Then A and B can faithfully record their Track and Track details and participate in self-isolation, and not have to disguise their movements using the names of fictitious superheroes or cartoon characters.
Then we can fight and tackle the blight Covid – 19 is causing to our Borough and the communities that live and work within it.
Councillor Howard Sykes MBE, Leader of the Opposition, Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group Oldham Council
This Wednesday (9 Sept), Oldham Council will be debating a motion calling for planning to have ‘democratic control at its heart’ in response to a Conservative Governments proposal to abolish Planning Committees, but to Liberal Democrat Group Leader, Councillor Howard Sykes MBE, says Labour would have had more credibility over this issue if they practiced what they preached.
At the June 17 meeting of Oldham Council, despite the vocal objections of Liberal Democrat Councillors, the Labour Group abolished the entitlement of Ward Councillors to address the Planning Committee to speak about local applications on behalf of their constituents.
Labour also agreed changes to allow planning officers to dispose of public open land more easily, and empowered officers to decide on developments of 20 homes or less without bringing them for a decision before a meeting of the Planning Committee.
Abolishing the absolute right of Councillors to speak up for their constituents and the divestment of power from elected Planning Committees to unelected Planning officers are two proposals also contained in the Conservative Government’s new White Paper Planning for the Future, now out to public consultation.
The Liberal Democrats voted against the changes proposed by Labour; instead, in order to preserve planning democracy, they proposed three amendments to the proposals to require the Head of Planning to consult with the senior Opposition Spokesperson on Planning over appeals made by Councillors to speak before the Planning Committee and over plans to dispose of Council land and property. They also wanted the Friends of Parks and Moors groups to be properly recognised and consulted over the land for which they act as stewards.
Labour voted against all three amendments, defeating them.
Councillor Sykes said: “Labour cries foul when the Conservative Government threatens their vested interests and seeks to reduce their power over planning matters, but they are quite happy to ride roughshod over the democratic rights of individual members to speak for their constituents to the Planning Committee or over the rights of local people or the members of the Friends groups, who do such sterling service as the unpaid stewards of public land, to speak up over housing developments that hurt their communities.”
Councillor Sykes added: “The Conservative Group for its part did not seem to know which way was up. Two Conservative Councillors, including its Group Leader, simply chose not to vote and only one Tory Councillor amongst the four was consistent in supporting our position.”
“This just goes to show that only the Liberal Democrats can be trusted to stand up for democratic values in Council; clearly voting Conservative means voting for confusion and indecision. I hope the electorate will remember that when they cast their ballots at the 2021 local elections.”
The Oldham Liberal Democrats have welcomed the creation of a so called new £400-million Brownfield Land fund, from which £81.1 million will be made available to the 10 Greater Manchester Authorities over the next five years, but say the overall investment ‘won’t scratch the surface’ when compared to the cost of remediating former industrial land in our City Region to make it fit for housing.
Alongside publishing a new White Paper ‘Planning for the Future’ last month, the Conservative Government restated its so-called commitment to building new homes on brownfield sites first; an approach the Oldham Liberal Democrats have been campaigning for years.
Councillor Howard Sykes MBE, Liberal Democrat Group Leader, explained: “According to Department of Trade figures, the UK has approximately 1,000,000 acres of contaminated land, much of it in Northern towns, like Oldham Borough. The estimated average cost of cleaning up contaminated land is £250,000 per acre – meaning a staggering £250-billion would be required to clear them all up for development. Seen against these figures, a £400-million National Brownfield Land fund, though welcome, looks woefully inadequate if we are serious.”
“Even if Oldham received the full £81.1 million allocated to Greater Manchester, and we will not, it won’t really scratch the surface. In a Borough with an industrial heritage of textile manufacturing; dye and chemical works; engineering and coal mining; we have an awful lot of sites that are heavily contaminated, and these will need a lot of money to clean up to make ready for any redevelopment especially housing. We will of course accept any money we are given, but the Liberal Democrats see this as a small step forward on a long journey to securing the serious money for remediation that we need.”
The Liberal Democrats are keen to point out that most of the money allocated to Greater Manchester is not new.
Councillor Sykes added: “When the ten Labour Greater Manchester authorities agreed to the Government’s Greater Manchester Spatial Framework to build tens of thousands of new homes across our city region over two decades, the deal came with a sweetener – a promise of £50 million from central government for remediation. The Conservatives then reneged on that promise, something the Oldham Liberal Democrats drew public attention to in our motion to Oldham Council on this issue in July 2019. Now the cash is back, and we have to be mindful to continue to fight to hold onto it this second time.”
The motion to the full meeting of Oldham Council on 10 July 2019 read:
Restoring Government Funding for Brownfield Housing Development
Council notes that:
Council condemns the decision by the Conservative Government to withdraw its offer of the Outline Housing Package, which will make the delivery of new homes on brownfield sites unaffordable and force more development onto the Green Belt, a direct contradiction of the Government’s own stated policy.
Council resolves to ask the Chief Executive to:
Proposed by: Councillor Diane Williamson
Seconded by: Councillor Garth Harkness
