Every Child Matters

It is not right to let a one-sided attack on the Council go without comment, especially where it is about services to the most vulnerable children in our communities. In the article “MP: Council is failing our children” (30th. May), there is no admission of the role that Government has played in denuding local authorities of resources and status over many years, nor, surprisingly – but, maybe not – are there any proposals for solutions, other than to use the issue as a political football. As a former Director of Social Services myself, and, latterly in my career, as a Safeguarding Conference Chair, I am only too aware of the immense challenges in getting things right for children in care, and those leaving care. I’m sure that, as with many local authorities, not everything has gone well with Cheshire East’s services for these children; clearly it hasn’t, even though the report refers to some important improvements. However, not to reflect, at all, on the fact that this Conservative Government has given such low political priority to the needs of vulnerable children, is being disingenuous, at best. The Minister for Children is at the lowest rank of ministerial appointments. The major, national Inquiry into Safeguarding has been largely ignored. The children’s services sector has been allowed to be dominated by owners driven my money, not care; it has become an attractive ‘cash-cow’ for the already-wealthy. Under this Government, the budget plans they have announced would reduce, even further, the financial allocations to local authorities, when many of them are facing, or have faced, effective bankruptcy. Let’s have a mature, cross-Party debate about how to put all this right, not head-line grabbing sound-bites.

Health project needs energy

IN support of the campaign to finally get a new, integrated, health and social care centre for Knutsford - through the development of the site of the Community Hospital, Stanley Centre and Bexton Court - I attended a meeting of the Cheshire East Health and Care Partnership Board. I submitted four questions to the Board about why progress is

so slow on seizing the opportunity to create something truly innovative and modern for Knutsford. The experience confirmed for me that all is not well in so many aspects of health and social care policy and services. In my view, there is no individual blame to be had, just the need for stronger, more decisive direction and leadership across the whole system.

It seemed that it was very rare for the Board to attract any interest from the public, let alone questions, and yet its role is to oversee, and improve, some of the most essential, local services. The dominant item on the Board’s Agenda was to do with the re-building of Leighton Hospital, required due to the discovery of lots of RAAC; the priority given to this project is perfectly understandable, but, once again, secondary - not preventive or primary/community care - is sucking up all available money, attention, and time.

With regards the Knutsford primary care project, not only did it appear that limited progress has actually been made, but, as I feared, the social care aspects of the plan are, in my estimation, on the margins.

So, at least these three key things need to be put right:

1. Genuine public participation and accountability

2. Sustained investment in prevention and the ‘front door’

3. The ending of decades of seeing social care as the poor relation.

The Knutsford project’s Stakeholder Group is to hold a public meeting about the project sometime

in June. I urge your readers to: look out for the announcement; come along; and voice their concerns directly to those in charge.

Published today in Knutsford Guardian

Not delivering

THERE are so many areas of public service under attack, or seriously neglected, that, when another one comes along, many people may well just shrug their shoulders and turn away.

The recent announcement, however, that the Royal Mail is planning to do away with all Saturday collections, and reduce second class deliveries across the week, should, in my view, be strongly challenged and rejected. Yes, of course, the numbers of letters we all send and receive has gone down a lot; and, yes, the world of post and parcel delivery has changed beyond all recognition.

So, why the concern? As a private company, it is clear that Royal Mail is putting profit before service, with their biggest shareholder a billionaire. When the move towards greater private provision in our public services was accelerated by the Blair, Labour governments, at the time I had no objection in principle, as long as the state controlled the commissioning, the regulation and the price.

Now, it seems, Royal Mail thinks it can simply tear up its legally bound service level agreement, and keep their shareholders happy. This cannot be right. Please write to your MP to insist that Royal Mail’s public service role should be protected from the domination of shareholder profit. 

Published today in Knutsford Guardian

Who, exactly, is “winning”?

If, as the Prime Minister often says, the virus is the enemy, and we are beating it, who are the victors: the tens of thousands, who have made the ultimate sacrifice and died; the 100 + health and care workers, whom we call “heroes” so that their deaths seem less unnecessary; the millions now dependent on the state for the first time in their lives; or the whole country, whose international reputation for effective and principled government has been shredded? Should any of these be the cause for national celebration? Rather, we should surely pause to reflect on the repeated failures of leadership, which have brought us to this point of national shame.

A hole lot of cash to find

I have a lot of sympathy with Tony Bostock’s letter in last week’s edition (“Got the hump over pot holes” – April 11).

This is the issue that people most often talk to me about. The state of our roads is beyond scandalous. The recent announcement by the Government of a Pot Hole Fund, to be distributed to local authorities, seemed to promise something better, at last: desperately late in the day, but welcome, nonetheless. In fact, Cheshire East had been allocated almost £5.8 million for repairing pot holes in the 23/24 financial year; it sounds like a lot of money – and it is. Except, through a Freedom of Information Request, I have learnt from the Council that it represented just 2.6% of their estimated repairs backlog of £220 million for that 12 months.

Surely, we’ve got to get serious about the massive gap between promise and reality, otherwise, public trust and car suspensions will continue to get decimated.

Published today in the Knutsford Guardian

Far too slow

THERE was something that didn’t seem quite right about the background to your recent story on the 25-year investment planned by United Utilities to stop the shocking levels of sewage spewing into our rivers and streams (“United Utilities sets out plan to reduce sewer pollution in Cheshire” - 13th. March). 

The length of time it was going to take - a whole quarter of a century - doesn’t suggest urgency. The fact that most of the projects will only be completed at the very end of this period gives little comfort. Moreover, the timing, in an election year, and after years of growing concern about the state of our waterways, seems cynical at best. However, what worried me most was a nagging suspicion that United Utilities’ priorities may not have been as heroic as the report suggests. In fact, I have learnt that the company, as a whole, distributed approximately £1.7 billion to shareholders over the 6 years to March 2023: Over 25 years, this would amount to £7.1 billion, or over a third of the total the company intends to spend on repairs across the North West. Put it another way, the £420 million required to stop the pollution of our Cheshire rivers could have been found a long time ago, if only the company had switched a fraction of the money they used for dividend payments to doing the job they are supposed to do: keeping our waterways clean and safe. It leaves a nasty taste.

Published today in the Knutsford Guardian

National events impact us too

I agree with one of your recent contributors to the Letters Page that the published letters should mainly focus on local issues. Where perhaps I differ is when there are national events that clearly have significant impact on families, neighbourhoods and towns across Cheshire. Now, there is a wide variety of view about how important the Chancellor’s Budget Statement last week will actually turn out to be; time will tell. However, what we can, certainly, look at is how the most pressing day-to-day problems, which might well affect local people, are impacted. So, for example, given the demography of this area, it is of some concern that pensioners appear, according to many analysts, to be a key group that is going to be worse off. Given the appalling state of many of our public services and facilities in Cheshire, one can only speculate as to why there are going to be, once again, real-term cuts to local authority budgets. Furthermore, there seems to have been no serious, new investment in everyone’s top priority: the NHS. Indeed, in real-terms, it looks as if the NHS will, once again, be losing money, with the emphasis being entirely on IT and “efficiency” – two ideas that are not wrong in themselves, but have been shown not to make much of a dent in the historically-high waiting lists, or the dire staffing problems. I meet a lot of people who seem at a level of despair about how things are: we need to give them hope!

Published today in the Knutsford Guardian

Brexit damage

It was 4 years ago this week, when 37% of those eligible to vote decided that we should leave the EU. They yearned for a “global Britain”, yet rejected “globalisation”. They wanted to “take back control”, yet were prepared to abandon trade with equal partners in favour of one with Trump’s USA. They feared the impact of immigration, yet have clapped BAME carers on Thursday evenings. They felt that Britain was “exceptional” in its services and competence, but have discovered quite the opposite is true when faced with a pandemic. They hoped that the Brexit vote would heal a divided country, but have realised that our racial, economic and political divisions are greater than ever. Now, our Government is risking a double whammy: a No Deal Brexit on top of the economic earthquake that is the Coronavirus pandemic, hoping that the impact of the first will be swallowed up by the second. To top it all, when our Brexit Government wants to gain more influence across the globe, it closes down the one Department which focusses on international development and well-being. This is beyond shameful.

Published today in the Knutsford Guardian

So inspirational

How inspiring and reassuring it was to be at the launch of the Friends of Lindow Moss on Saturday. At a time when too many of our political leaders are on the retreat from earlier promises to take the climate emergency seriously - with a new oil bonanza in the North Sea, abandonment of plans to make major investments in green energy, and a refusal to accept that current policies will simply not achieve net zero any time soon - this was a rare moment of real optimism. No one in the audience could have failed to be impressed with the collective determination to maximise the potential of the Moss to help reduce carbon emissions, inform and educate the public about the unique value of this ancient bog on our doorsteps, and promote a vital part of our local history. The many ideas for ‘next steps’, put forward by the audience at the end, will, I am sure, have encouraged the organisers. Since I was first introduced to this important project, four years ago, huge progress has been made. Congratulations to Professor John Handley and his brilliant group! Let’s give them all the support they need to continue their work, especially in the year when we will be celebrating the 40th. anniversary of the discovery of Lindow Man.

Published today in the Knutsford Guardian

Hub concerns

I would very much like to hear from anyone in and around the Knutsford area, who believes, like me, that it is completely unacceptable that the town no longer has a bank branch in this busy, popular town centre. There is, of course, both a Post Office and a Nationwide branch, but neither are “banks” in the full sense of the word. After some research and tracking-down, I have identified the organisation, and the key people within it, where the decisions are made about establishing what are becoming known as “banking hubs”. As I understand it, these hubs take a number of forms, but, crucially, when brought in to a town, they restore what has been lost in so many places: local access to a ‘human’ representative of our main banks. It is clear to me that many of us, whilst having made many of the adjustments to the vast changes to modern banking, still, on occasions, would be greatly reassured and helped, if we knew that it was still possible to go to speak, face-to-face, with a banker. That, I suspect, is even more so, where people are less confident with IT, maybe a bit vulnerable, or if they are quite elderly. Please contact me through the good offices of the Knutsford Guardian, if you share my concern, and wish to join this emerging campaign.

Published today in the Knutsford Guardian

Get registered

I was delighted to read Bev Webiry’s letter “Register Now” in the Letters page last week, and grateful that the Editor chose to publish it. Bev’s strong encouragement to everyone of voting age to get registered, in good time before the next General Election, is both timely and important. Not only is maximum registration essential, generally, for a healthy democracy, but critical in the context of the next national poll, which will determine whether, and how far, we really do want a very different set of political leaders from those we’ve had in the last few years. However, registration is only the start. All of us, who are passionate democrats, should also demand: a voting system that makes every vote count; a reform of the funding of political parties; and MPs not allowed to take tax-payers money and have other jobs ‘on the side’. A Member of Parliament is a public servant, and should never take the job for personal enhancement and gain.

Published today in the Knutsford Guardian.