Leaders Statement to the Council - 13 May '09

BURY METROPOLITAN BOROUGH COUNCIL

LEADER’S STATEMENT TO COUNCIL 13 MAY 2009

ACHIEVEMENTS MADE BY DEPARTMENTS IN 2008-2009

Statement from Bob Bibby, Leader of the Council

Mr Mayor, fellow Members I am pleased and proud to present this annual statement on the performance of The Council.

This last 12 months has been a year of outstanding achievement especially when set against some very difficult issues; the recession and with further unrelenting financial pressure on Council finances by ever increasing demands for services for Children and Adults, and decreasing income.

We have of course had a lot of positive experiences with exceptional accolades being heaped on some of our Bury citizens from across the globe from the Olympics in Beijing, the Oscars in Hollywood and Brit Awards in London and it was a great honour to welcome Zoe Robinson; Danny Boyle and Elbow to become Freemen of the Borough.

So, not your typical year in Bury I would admit, but one in which Bury’s reputation and status has been widely acknowledged from within and externally. Notably the long sort after achievement of gaining 4 Stars. This has been a year of real achievement and one in which the ruling administration has endeavoured to manage sensitively and proactively dealing with some very challenging historical issues. The dedication and commitment from our staff to get the job done no matter what is thrown at them is a credit to the Council and the public they serve.

I also continue to be amazed when I see the extent of achievements being made across all our services, so it is my pleasure to briefly highlight a number of outstanding achievements made by each department over the past 12 months.

First of all I want to begin with some notable corporate achievements.

A series of stunning retail, leisure and business park developments will see over £500 million pounds being spent on a brighter, bolder and more ambitious Bury where major developments such as those currently under construction at The Rock; Townside Fields and Chamberhall Business Park. These major developments will not only transform landscape of Bury but raise Bury by 97 places to be 62nd in retail footprint ranking and in the process making Bury the second biggest retail centre outside the City of Manchester. This is an extraordinary achievement given the current economic climate and the fact that many neighbouring similar schemes have been mothballed. The future is bright the future is Bury.

Secondly, after many years in the planning the new Royal Regiment of Fusiliers national museum was completed and will provide further attractions for visitors to Bury to take in the military heritage of the borough and then relax in the soon to be renamed Sparrow Park to Gallipoli Gardens.

I was pleased to announce late last year that after a long and difficult set of negotiations with the developer we finally acquired the site in Radcliffe for a new state of the art school to be built as part of a £150m bid for a major Building Schools for the Future programme and a further grant £80 million pounds which will see a renaissance in our primary and secondary schools over the next few years.

I want to also congratulate our staff and Members for their contribution to the recent good news from the Audit Commission.

The performance figures for Bury were published in January 2009, finally acknowledged the many years of hard work and continuous service improvements by awarding the Council a 4 Star Excellent rating under the Corporate Performance Assessment regime. Bury was only one of two authorities nationally who jumped two stars in two years.

Another notable achievement was made by the staff and Board Members of Six Town Housing who earlier this year were 2* - a good service with excellent prospects for improvement. My congratulations also go to them.

Awards

Mr Mayor,

In the past 12 months Bury has been showered with awards and accolades, whilst they are not Oscars, or Brit awards or an Olympic gold, they are do reflect well on our staff and enhance Bury’s growing reputation.

Our Markets once again won Market of the Year 2009, winner of Best Food Market at Radio 4 Food and Farming Award; described by Jamie Oliver as the “Oscars of the food world” – The Market was also runner up in the UK Coach Awards “most friendly shopping attraction” and they are currently shortlisted for the ‘Coach Tourism Award 2009’.

Team Bury were big winners at the North West Street Games Festival which took place at Sportcity Manchester on 29 August 2008. Bury scored two silver awards for the Street Cheer and Athletics teams. The Athletics Team were presented with their silver award by Helen Clitheroe, a Steeplechase competitor in the British Olympics team.

The Age of Opportunities Team was successful in achieving the North West Employers’ Award for Recognising Diversity. They were also nominated for the national Local Government Chronicle Awards for the subject of Health & Well-Being.

The Bury Employment Support & Training service was awarded an 'outstanding' Grade 1 in the UK for delivery of a supported employment programme. This was the first time Ofsted awarded the top grade anywhere in the country.

The Bury Employment Support & Training (BEST) nominated 3 Employers and one service-user for the GMEC Awards 2009. One Employer has been put through to the final for the ‘Big Break’ Award and the service-user for the ‘Individual of the Year’.

Bury Council's 'Learning at Work Week' events won first prize in a national Campaign for Learning competition.

And last but not least Bury again won the North West in Bloom ‘best large town’ in the 2008 for the fifth year in a row yes 5 consecutive years, marvellous. In addition, Bury Council's Parks and Countryside Service won a silver medal at the RHS Tatton Flower Show.

I want to now turn to some notable achievements in our departments

CHIEF EXECUTIVE’S DEPARTMENT

I spoke early about the massive amounts of money being spent by developers in Bury over the next few years. This hasn’t happened by chance. The Marketing and Communications team together with our partners in Team Bury have developed a unique relationship with regional and national private sector partners to promote the innovative ‘Bury the Place’ campaign which is aimed at promoting Bury as a great place to live; work; study and we are on course to become the second largest premier retail facility outside the City of Manchester.

Bury’s Volunteering Service has now been launched with over 350 people coming forward in its first year. Volunteers freely give up their time to help other people in local communities and this new service has provided over 30 organisations more capacity to do good right across Bury. Well done them and many thanks for their contribution.

I was pleased that the Executive adopted a new Local Economic Benefit Policy which will maximise local job opportunities for local Bury people when new major capital projects go ahead and hope will also see the creation of more apprenticeships.

Community Safety & Burysafe

I know all of our partners are working hard to make Bury safe and secure place for our residents; visitors and local businesses. It is gratifying to know that Bury remains the lowest crime area in Greater Manchester with over 500 fewer victims of crime in 2008 than in 2007. Recent figures from Greater Manchester Police show that crime in the town centre has dropped by 33% in the past year. It's also good news for night owls as the crime has dropped by 24% during the same period. It will be a challenge to maintain this in the current year.

Overall all crime has dropped by over 30% over the last 4 years.

LEGAL & DEMOCRATIC SERVICES DIVISION

Register Office

I want to pay tribute to the staff in Registrars as the team have received an excellent rating by H.M. Inspectors of Registration. In addition customers expressed a 100% satisfaction with Ceremonies provided (Marriage, Civil Partnership, Naming, Renewal of Vows, Citizenship).

Overall the service performs to very high standards with 98% of Births and Deaths registered within statutory timescale; 97% of customers seen within 10 minutes of appointment time; 100% of customers satisfied with Ceremonies provided (Marriage, Civil Partnership, Naming, Renewal of Vows, Citizenship)

In a more controversial area we also got the most positive report on our inspection of our use of powers under the Investegatory Powers Act (RIPA).

ADULT CARE SERVICES DEPARTMENT

For Adult Care Services it’s been a challenging year for all concerned in dealing with ever increasing demands for services at a time of a difficult financial climate and budget overspends. Despite all of that the department turned around performance to increase its star rating and win praise from inspectors in the process.

The quality of services is borne out with 95% of people interviewed were satisfied with the service they received and 97% felt their needs were met.

One of the key emerging government initiatives is to promote the take up of Direct Payments. Good progress is being made where the number of people awarded direct payments has risen by 20%. Over 750 people attended the 2nd anniversary of the Age of Opportunities, proving that this is an important Council initiative welcomed by our more mature residents.

We hear a lot about safeguarding children, but not much about vulnerable adults. I am pleased to advise Members that Bury operates a proactive ‘Safeguarding’ register where there has been a 37% increase in the number of referrals. The Council’s policy to promote independence is being strengthened all the time and for those adults over 65 we have increased the take up of Telecare equipment by over 40%. To complete the picture there has been a 24% increase in the number of adult carers registered with the council.

CHILDREN’S SERVICES DEPARTMENT

The council’s strategic plan for improving children’s facilities across the borough is making very good progress. The council has secured over £1m of funding for a Playbuilder programme which will result in 14 new or improved play facilities. Phase 2 of the £3.5m Childrens Centres programme at Butterstile Primary, Sedgley Park Primary, Broad Oak High, St, Stephens Primary Radcliffe Primary, Radcliffe Hall Primary, and Woodbank Primary has been completed.

Children’s Services secured an overall ‘good’ rating in its annual performance assessment including Be Healthy, Making a Positive Contribution and Achieving Economic Well Being.

The council continues to be a regional high performer on the NEETs programme which stands for ‘Not in Education, Employment, Training’ successfully achieving over 180% against target – the highest in Greater Manchester

Children and our young people are our future and it was pleasing to see over 8,000 young people vote to elect Bury’s first representative for the UK’s Youth Parliament.

Other notable achievements include:

At Foundation Stage (age 5), the percentage of children reaching a good level of attainment overall has increased by 3.2% in 2008 to neary 50%. Bury is ranked 21st in English and 25th in Maths out of 150 local authorities in England for achievement at Key Stage 2 (Age 11). In Bury, achievement at age 14 (Key Stage 3) has improved by 7% since 2006 whilst nationally performance has fallen by 1%. At GCSE level, Bury is 6th in the country for the percentage of pupils achieving at least one qualification and 24th for the percentage of pupils achieving 5 or more A*.

In conjunction with our partners in NHS Bury there has been a cumulative reduction in teenage pregnancies over 20% since 1998.

The team wrote, published and distributed 8,500 copies of a book called' Why don't you?' to young people in the borough which was full of helpful information on teenage concerns, places to go and things to do.

ENVIRONMENT & DEVELOPMENT SERVICES DEPARTMENT

The team had many notable achievements including in

ARTS, LIBRARIES AND ADULT LEARNING

Further capital investment of £360k was secured from the Learning Skills Council to extend Ramsbottom Library and Adult Learning Centre.

The development of Council Information Points, located in our libraries, is proving very popular with a 13% increase in transactions and payments being received.

Bury's Tourist Information Centre, based at the Met Arts Centre was the only TIC across Greater Manchester to score 100% in both areas of the assessment which scores on the appearance of the centre and staff interaction with customers.

Catering

Our catering services are playing a key role in delivering the Council’s strategy to tackle child obesity. Over the past few years we have endeavoured to provide healthy and attractive meals for both primary and secondary pupils.

Its pleasing to note that all primary schools are compliant with government nutrient based standards compliant in all primary schools (September 2008). There has been a 70% uptake of school meals promotion for reception children. Overall we are seeing a 50% take up exceeding national average of 42.5%.

In addition to healthy eating, we are also promoting healthy lifestyle and it is now possible to swim for free in Bury if you are under 16 or over 60. To support this initiative I am delighted to see the Radcliffe Pool and Fitness Centre refurbished.

Environment

On the environment, we have sought to pilot different types of environmentally friendly transport using green technology. To promote this we have introduced an electrically powered refuse collection vehicle to operate around Bury town centre.

To help with reducing car usage Bury’s Community Transport Service “the Busy Bee” is now used by more than 80 organisations and groups. This increases accessibility and opportunities for residents of areas not well served by public transport.

We have also introduced a scheme to help motorists by giving 15 minutes free parking in Bury town centre.

More resident’s only parking schemes have also been introduced in Fletcher Street, Parkhills area, Bury, and Hamilton Road, Whitefield.

I want to say well done to our engineers who managed the complex works in Croft Lane which was completed a month early despite uncovering a shallow gas main which had to be diverted.

On Asset Management, we have all no doubt seen the amount of work going on in Bury Town centre, what you may not have seen is the steel framework going up on the new Police Station at Chamber Hall which will be the centrepiece of this new multi-million business park, and shortly we hope to announce the new site for the Bury Fire Headquarters.

The statistics on Bury Market are staggering with over 1000 coach visits confirming the Market as a major visitor attraction; independent research found that 99.3% of shoppers felt that Bury Market was ‘definitely’ a success; annual income over £2.6 million to support front-line services. More than 12 million people visited the market last year.

Conclusion

 

Monday's Freedom of the Borough ceremony showed all that was good about Bury. It was a joy to have such stars as Danny, Zoe and Elbow in this council chamber to honour them for their successes. As we said then, they have brought great credit on themselves, and in turn, have brought great credit on the borough.

 

In the words of Elbow's biggest hit: "One day like this a year would see me right". I think we can all look forward to many more days like that.

 

It shows that Bury is going places: that even in this difficult economic climate, we are facing the future with confidence. Next year promises to be even better, with the opening of The Rock development and other projects which should really put Bury on the map. We've always said that Bury is the place to live, to work and to visit. I'm sure that over the next few months that everyone else will come to realise that too.