Many council services have changed their opening hours over Christmas and New Year. For a full list of opening and closing times visit the website here.
People who are worried about their wellbeing, are struggling financially, or need food over Christmas, can call our helpline. The helpline, on 0161 770 7007, is available 9am–12noon on the following days:
Thursday 24 December
Tuesday 29 December
Wednesday 30 December
Thursday 31 December
The council will also be proactively contacting families they usually engage with, to ensure they are receiving support over Christmas.
Oldham Council has launched a new cash grants scheme to support businesses which supply the hospitality and leisure sectors and have been impacted by coronavirus restrictions.
These grants will support direct suppliers to the hospitality and leisure industries. Businesses that have suffered a loss in trade due to local or national restrictions – including tier 2, tier 3 and the most recent national lockdown – can apply.
Businesses that pay business rates and those who do not pay rates are eligible. Priority will be given to businesses that operate out of commercial premises but applications from businesses that have at least two employees will also be considered.
One off grants of at least £2,000 will be available.
There will be changes to Friday bin collections only over the Christmas period.
As usual there will be no bin collections on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
Bins due to be emptied on Friday, 25 December will instead be collected earlier – on Saturday, December 19 (except for food and garden containers).
Bins due for collection on Friday January 1 (including food and garden containers) will be collected a day later on Saturday, January 2.
In December leaflets will be delivered to households in the areas affected and there will be reminders via social media channels.
Collection dates can also be checked via the online post code checker at www.oldham.gov.uk/waste
After the festive period Christmas trees can be chopped up and put in green bins.
Alternatively, they can be dropped at Arkwight Street Recycling Centre or drop off points at Higher Memorial Park, Royton Park, Werneth Park and Churchill Playing Fields.
Crompton Liberal Democrat Councillor Louie Hamblett is heartened by the support shown by 370 religious’ leaders of all faiths and all countries for a ban on Gay Conversion Therapy, a discredited pseudo-scientific attempt to change a person’s sexual identity or gender identity.
The leaders, which include anti-Apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, have called upon the UK Government to do this yesterday (16 December) at a conference sponsored by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
Councillor Hamblett said: “I am glad that some leading religious leaders have moved into the 21st Century in recognising that being gay is not a biological aberration or a moral weakness; it is just natural.
“Prime Minister Boris Johnson MP described Gay Conversion Therapy as ‘abhorrent’. Gay Conversion Therapy causes devastating mental health. or sometimes physical damage, sometimes supposedly in the name of “God or gods”, and this is deeply distressing and painful for those who are forced to undergo it or those, such as parents, who mistakenly place their trust in it.
“This government must urgently ban and outlaw this disgraceful practice. I also believe our police forces and social care and health teams must be trained to identify any signals from those who may have been subjected to this ‘so-called’ therapy.”
Councillor Hamblett hopes that Boris Johnson will soon act to outlaw this. He added: “The Conservative Government first promised to ban this two years ago. The personal accounts and stories that come from such cases sound so barbaric and stories of a medieval nature leaving people dehumanised and empty. Other countries such as Switzerland, Australia, Canada and even the US have outlawed this so we can too. Let’s make this happen soon rather than later.”
Q1) Prioritising relatives of care home residents in mass testing programme
Madame Mayor, considering recent developments over the last few days I would like to ask a slightly revised question.
I very much welcome the news that Oldham will begin a so called COVID-19 mass testing programme from next Monday 21 December.
This is a significant development in our fight against this appalling disease.
I hope that this programme will be placed in the hands of our armed forces as they have done such a sterling job in Merseyside, rather than incompetent private sector companies.
My question relates to the priority that will be given to certain groups of individuals.
Front line health, care and key workers leading the fight to save lives, alleviate suffering and deliver core services should be an absolute priority group in a mass testing programme, both for moral and practical reasons, but I would like to make a plea for a third category of our residents not be overlooked.
In this pandemic, one of the greatest tragedies has been seeing the forced separation of the residents of our care homes from their loved ones. For the residents of the care homes in our borough who have waited many months to finally meet up with family a visit cannot come soon enough.
According to a recent survey carried out by Age UK, seven out of ten people with a close relative in a care home have not seen them since the start of the pandemic in March.
So, can Cabinet Member confirm the long-awaited news that the relatives of the residents of care homes are also given priority so they can arrange to visit, hopefully over the Xmas and New Year period if they wish?
If she can confirm this is the case, I want to place my thanks on record for ALL who made this happen – well done!
My first question concerns the immediate future of the hospitality industry in this Borough.
The hospitality sector has come in for some particularly harsh treatment from this Government since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, despite the fact that it is estimated that only 3 – 5% of new infections originate from contacts in the hospitality industry in its broadest sense.
It has so far endured two national complete lockdowns. Invested countless millions of pounds in retraining and providing PPE to staff, adapting physical structures and changing working practices to be Covid-safe.
Faced counter-productive government requirements, such as closing at 10pm, or only serve alcohol with a ‘substantial meal’, meaning that small, wet-led pubs cannot operate profitably or indeed operate at all. They are now closed in our Tier-3 Borough for an indefinite period with no clear end in sight.
In theory this closure could be for ‘wet’ led pubs until at least March 2021, as we must be in Tier-1 before they can legally reopen.
The reality is brewery, pub and restaurant operators are now at the end of their tether.
They have invested so much emotionally and financially, but the current ongoing uncertainty is taking its toll and frankly current Government financial support packages do not cut the mustard.
The one glimmer of immediate hope in this latest lockdown was a concession granted at the last-minute by the Government after intense pressure from industry bosses and CAMRA.
This was to permit alcohol, as well as food, to be sold by breweries, pubs and restaurants, if pre-ordered. This has been described as a lifeline, saving at least 70 million pints of beer being immediately poured down the drain!
My question relates to how we as a Council might promote this offer to enable our local hospitality industry to survive?
I welcome the recent launch of the Council’s Virtual Market Place where our small independent traders can advertise in these difficult times, but at least these businesses can physically open.
CAMRA has a national website Brew2You on which breweries and pubs can advertise their wares for discerning customers enabling them to make online purchases for collection or delivery.
Would the Leader be willing to work with CAMRA and our local hospitality industry to create a similar website for Oldham which can be promoted alongside, or as part of the, the Virtual Market Place by Oldham Council, and help more of our local breweries, pubs and restaurants survive through these troubled times?
2) Replacing Shaw and Crompton Health Centre
Madame Mayor,
For my second question, I would like to turn to another institution that is in dire straits.
I am referring to the Shaw and Crompton Health Centre which has been in desperate need of replacement for many years.
The latest housing development proposals for Shaw and Crompton will put yet more pressure on this outdated facility.
At present, we have a planning approval for 250 new homes at Cowlishaw, a new proposal for over 50 new homes on open land near Denbigh Drive, and a public consultation has just been concluded prior to an application for 400 new homes at the former Very and Yodel warehouse site.
If in the future a new ‘GMSF for the nine’ is to be brought back to Council, we would also see a further 482 homes in the Beal Valley and the number in the Cowlishaw area would double.
To summarise, this amounts to around 1,500 new properties – all of which are family homes and the residents and children of these new properties would all be looking to Shaw and Crompton Health Centre to provide for their immediate health needs.
Even before COVID-19, it often took days, sometimes weeks, for Shaw and Crompton residents to get a routine appointment – imagine how much harder it will be too do so with many thousands of more people making demands of an over-burdened service.
Therefore, in the recent public consultation for building on the Very and Yodel site the largest number of responses concerned the additional demands that would be placed on our local health service.
In early 2016, £500,000 was made available for a feasibility study into the options to build a new health centre, but almost five years on nothing has changed for the better; there is only now the prospect of greater and greater demands on the service.
My second question to the Leader tonight is then when will we finally see a new purpose-built, modern health centre provided for the people of Shaw and Crompton?
I would like to say a few words in tribute to an outstanding former Mayoress of Oldham and Mayoress of Peace, Di Heffernan, who very sadly passed away recently.
Di was the widow of my dear friend, Derek Heffernan.
Di was born in Bristol, the eldest daughter of a pub landlord and landlady. Sadly, her father was killed in a road accident immediately prior to the outbreak of the Second World War and Di helped her mother with bringing up her younger brother.
In 1949, Di moved to Liverpool when her mother remarried.
She worked for several companies; her last situation being Personal Secretary to the Personnel Director of Lewis Limited, where in 1964 she met her future husband Derek, who was a Department Manager at the Liverpool store.
Di and Derek married in 1968 and lived in Thornton, Crosby. They adopted two children, Sara in 1970 and Andrew in 1972. Whilst Di led on the home front, as a full-time mum, Derek left retail and eventually joined HM Customs & Excise. They moved to Austerlands in 1974.
Di was a staunch supporter of her local Church, whilst Derek ultimately entered local politics. Both Di and Derek had a decades-long history of fundraising, particularly for Saddleworth Fundraising Group of Macmillan Cancer Support, which started in 2000.
Legendary indeed were their bacon butty and coffee mornings, tapas nights and car boot sales.
Di also served on the Saddleworth Parish Council Chairman’s Charity over 30 years, and on the Oldham Mayor’s Appeal Committee for over 20.
Di served as Saddleworth’s Chairman’s Lady twice, in 1992-93 and again during the Millennium 1999-2000, working with her Chairman husband to raise thousands of pounds for local charities, and as Mayoress of Oldham from 2016-2017, raising money for her husband’s Mayoral Charities, the Francis House Children’s Hospice and MacMillan’s.
In recognition of her prestigious fund-raising efforts, Di was nominated for the ‘Pride of Oldham’ award, and was the winner of the very prestigious award, ‘Woman of Oldham in 2008’ and ‘Volunteer of Saddleworth’ in 2012, but she took equal pride in her roles as wife, mother, and grandmother.
When Derek became Mayor in May 2016, he made it clear in his acceptance speech that he wanted to be known as Oldham’s Mayor of Peace.
As Mayor and Mayoress of Peace, Derek and Di shared a passion to promote peace and they went to many schools and functions together especially to promote the Pledge to Peace, as Oldham Council had become the first local authority in the UK to sign this initiative.
I know that Di and Derek were especially delighted to be able to attend a special assembly at Knowsley Junior School in Springhead with the then-Youth Mayor, where the school signed the Pledge to Peace, becoming the first of 17 schools to do so during Di and Derek’s Mayoral Year. See picture above.
The school was of especial significance to them both, as their two children attended as pupils and Derek served as Chair of Governors there for many years.
Di loved being by Derek’s side as the Mayoress, and especially meeting the school children and their teachers, but sadly, not six months into the Mayoralty, Di suffered a serious fall whilst on holiday with Derek and was unable thereafter to join her husband at functions.
Despite this Di remained a constant source of moral and emotional support to Derek in the remaining days of his Mayoralty.
Di and Derek will both be greatly missed, by their family, their many friends and the many people across Oldham’s communities and elsewhere who held them, and still hold them, in high regard.
Their legacy in working for peace will not be forgotten, nor will it be neglected.
The Oldham Pledge to Peace Forum, of which Derek was Chair, continues to function and as we move into 2021, and as the restrictions on public gatherings that have accompanied the Covid-19 pandemic are loosened, there are plans to organise some special events at which Di and Derek will be properly, and fondly, remembered as Oldham’s Mayoral peacemakers.
Thanks, Madame Mayor.
Councillor Howard Sykes MBE, Leader of the Opposition, Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group Oldham Council.
