Category Archives: Ormskirk

Ormskirk, Police

Police in West Lancashire are urging residents to remain vigilant to the threat of burglary

From the Lancashire constabulary website:

POLICE in West Lancashire are urging residents to remain vigilant to the threat of burglary.

The warning follows an increase in offences over this month as a direct consequence of homeowners leaving front doors insecure or garden tools in their gardens which are then used to force windows and doors.

There have been nine burglaries so far this year in the Ormskirk policing area where police have seen spades and hoes used to force entry, or where a window or door has been left unlocked.

There is more information on their site including advice for householders to reduce the risk of burglary.

Local Politics, Ormskirk

Ormskirk roads – a review, but any public involvement?

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a Lancashire County press release regarding another road study for Ormskirk. I’ve been completely remiss in not posting this earlier.

Anyhow the press release states:

Lancashire County Council has drawn up a brief for transport consultants who are being asked to assess options and prioritise a range of schemes to tackle congestion and enhance people’s ability to travel more easily.

So, the Tories win control of the Council and the first thing they do is get in a bunch of consultants – at goodness knows what cost – to find out what the people in Ormskirk could probably tell them already!

Perhaps that’s what happens when we have a County Councillor from Parbold.

But, some of this should be welcomed. They say that some of the schemes to be evaluated are:

– Bus improvements
– Park and ride
– Rail service improvements
– Personalised travel planning
– Cycling improvements
– Pedestrian enhancements
– Improvements to the carriageway, junctions and pedestrian facilities on the A570
– Park Road to A59 County Road Link
Ormskirk traffic management improvements including, through traffic rerouting, HGV control, gyratory options and traffic speed controls

It is estimated that the study will take 3-4 months to complete.

During the campaign I argued for such a review and so I can’t help but welcome the fact that one is taking place, but I am critical of the fact that there seems to be no local input at all. We don’t know if this is going to be a relatively minor tweak of the road system or a proper re-engineering of the way the town’s roads work.

The people who live and work in the town have the best knowledge of the road problems, and as I’ve always argued, it’s not just about the Ormskirk bypass – there are problems scattered across the town. There ought to be some significant public input to the process.

Instead, we’re left in the dark and we’ll be told to just take what the Tories and their consultants insist in a couple of months time.

I will be pushing for a some public consultation and review once the consultant’s report has been produced.

Local Politics, Ormskirk

Ormskirk student housing issues raised in Parliament

Our MP, Rosie Cooper, raised the problems of multiple occupancy housing in parliament yesterday. You can see her asking John Denham about a consultation regarding multiple occupancy housing in this video (scroll forward to 8 minutes 45 seconds)

As I’ve written before here, in leaflets and letters to the paper – this is a problem that has been largely ignored by the authorities until recently and the residents of all the affected roads are to be congratulated for keeping the pressure on the politicians.

The consultation is a valuable opportunity for getting feedback to the department about student housing and the detrimental effect on residents’ quality of life that it can have in some areas. I will be working with local residents on feedback and I have also been in touch with the Borough Labour Group about the Council submission.

However, this is currentlonly a consultation and while it is good that John Denham says that he will take into account submissions made, it doesn’t change the fact that there is more that the Borough Council could be doing today to control the spread of student housing and control the anti-social behaviour of some of the students.

Local Politics, Ormskirk

Scarisbrick Parish Council – prison update

I attended the Scarisbrick Parish Council meeting last night, where they were due to discuss the recent reports of a prison to be sited at Hurslton Hall Golf Club.

The discussion was at the beginning of the meeting and was done so that members of the public could also contribute.

I then stayed for most of the rest of the meeting, leaving when it looked like there would be a non-public session near the end. Having said that, I doubt that

Why was I there? Because I think that a prison at Scarisbrick would have a massive effect on Ormskirk as well as Scarisbrick. There is no doubt that the infrastucture in Scarisbrick wouldn’t support the services and staff that are needed by such an institution and that Ormskirk would be the obvious source of resources. So I wanted to know what the current situation is.

The Chair should be congratulated for trying to keep the meeting as non-political as possible. However, the main debate seemed to be around the nature of reassurances that have come from our MP.

A leaflet from Rosie Cooper had been distributed in the village earlier that day which included a letter from Jack Straw saying that yes, Scarisbrick had been considered for a prison but that it wasn’t suitable for the Titan prisons; and that there are now no plans for a prison in the village.

Cllr Andrew Fowler had a series of questions against this: basically that the letter referred to the Titan scheme of prisons which had been abandoned, that there was no guarantee that a future prison wouldn’t be built on the site and then regrettably some nit-picking about the golf club being on Hurlston Lane not Southport Road. I say regrettably, because he started to veer towards party politics which was completely unnecessary.

Between these two points there was an impasse. Rosie Cooper’s office manager attended the meeting to present the situation and to reassure those present that Rosie was doing all that she could to prevent it from happening. He used the analogy that we go to bed assuming that we’ll wake up in the morning, but that we can’t be 100% certain. However, Cllr Fowler wanted a copper-bottomed guarantee that it wouldn’t happen.

The difficulty is that there is now a fresh round to find sites for the smaller mini-Titans. No-one can honestly say that a site is or isn’t included. There is a process that will have to take place. The assurance that we got about the new process was that there would be a “massive breach of trust” between the Justice Department and Rosie should the prison go ahead. One member of the public agreed that Rosie would certainly have “egg on her face” if a prison did go ahead given the leaflet that had been distributed.

If I’m honest, I didn’t come away knowing anything more than when I went in. Indeed, I think that most of the interested members of the public will have felt the same way. The problem being that these arguments are usually carried out in terms of absolutes, which in these circumstances, they can’t.

The assurances about the prison not being built shifted from a near-absolute guarantee that it wouldn’t be built to one with questions regarding the correspondence presented and concerns about the forthcoming mini-Titan search.

Similarly, the position presented by Cllr Fowler was weak because he undermined some of the points he was trying to make by appearing to stray into party politics (and was stopped by the Chair).

In the end the Parish Council took a vote that it would continue to object to a prison being built in Scarisbrick and maintain a level of vigilance in the future.

For me there was a missed opportunity. The argument was around whether Jack Straw and Rosie Cooper were effectively mis-informing people, when really it should have been about what to do if it comes on the radar again.

The correspondence says that Scarisbrick was considered, but wasn’t suitable for the large Titan prisons. A notice regarding prospective prison sites will again be published in the Estates Gazette and I doubt it will say “no sites from Scarisbrick, please”. There remains the possibility that Scarisbrick will appear on a list somewhere.

The question has to be: if Scarisbrick was unsuitable for a full-on Titan, is it still unsuitable for a mini-Titan – because that will be the first test from the Justice department. Specifically, we need to know: by what criteria was Scarisbrick deemed to be unsuitable for a Titan? and then it follows that we should ask what criteria will used to judge the prospective mini-Titan sites?

At least that would give us all a better understanding of where we are, what might happen in the future and how to resist it.

County 2009, Local Politics, Ormskirk

Election results stats, first cut

To try and gauge where we are following the elections, I did some comparisons of votes cast in the county elections compared to the district elections last year. Pointless doing a straight comparison with 2005 since there was a general election and things have changed so much since then.

The spreadsheet below is calculated by taking the share of the vote in 2009 and subtracting the share of the vote in 2008. Where there wasn’t an election in 2008 I went back to 2007 or 2006 (in the case of Hesketh with Becconsall, I took the last election that was contested).

The obvious highlights are:

  • Labour increased the share of the vote in West Lancs North and Ormskirk West – I think that bucks the national trend.
  • UKIP did incredibly well. Although they didn’t win any seats, they increased their share of the vote across the borough.
  • The Conservative vote dropped significantly across the borough, but they still won seats because they were so far ahead in all areas last year.

I’ll take a look at the stats over the past five years and will post something later, to put things into perspective.

County 2009, Local Politics, Ormskirk

Conservative Ormskirk leaflet

I received the Conservative leaflet today – well, to be precise I found it on the pavement while out delivering my own! Unfortunately it’s the only place I get to see their leaflets because they don’t deliver to our house (booo!)

Am I alone in thinking that they don’t seem to be interested in local issues? The leaflet covers some vague generalities – but very little about West Lancs or Ormskirk in particular. Having seen leaflets from Up Holland and Burscough it looks like they have the same front and middle across Lancashire and the only thing that differentiates them is the back page.

I scoured the pen portrait on the back page for some mention of the fact that their candidate lives in Parbold, but couldn’t find anything. I suppose they don’t want to print that.

However, it was good to see that they acknowledge that he has, in fact, been an Ormskirk Councillor for nine years – certainly not the “new voice for Ormskirk” which they claimed last month!

And yet, for someone who has been a councillor representing Ormskirk for nine years, the leaflet doesn’t contain a single practical thing he’s done. Instead it lists the various “portfolios” that he held at the Council, and doesn’t even say what he did when holding those portfolios. It also doesn’t say that he was shifted “sideways” (that’s me being generous!) out of the ruling cabinet and into overview and scrutiny last year.

While he’s been holding all these important council jobs the Conservatives have (amongst other things):

  • refused to give pensioners free rail passes – despite the Government giving the Council money that could implement this;
  • turned down government money which would have paid for free swimming for under 18’s (in Wigan, for example, they’ve brought in free swimming for all);
  • let parks and playgrounds (like the one in Halsall Lane) become derelict;
  • failed to collect so-called “section 106” money from developers including one sum of over £125,000 from developments in Skelmersdale;
  • closed cash offices in Ormskirk and Skelmersdale, and as a result rent arrears have soared;

One thing the Tories have done is demolish four houses at a cost of over £600,000 so that a new town hall could be built – which I understand might not even be built!

Their leaflet is scattered with the usual tosh about Conservative councils costing less – which frankly doesn’t mean anything. For every survey or bit of research that shows one side, there’s another bit of research that shows the exact opposite. We usually use the “Labour councils cost on average £160 per year less”. These claims are unimportant – actions, as they say, speak louder than words, and in West Lancs we’ve seen money wasted and some actually lost while on the other hand they’ve claimed that there isn’t enough available to implement basic services that our neighbouring Councils are able to provide.

Their candidate has been at the centre of these discussions – making the decisions when he was on the cabinet and refusing to question them when he was chair of scrutiny.

Obviously I don’t expect them to print this in their leaflets, but I’m astonished that they don’t print _anything_ about what he’s done. I’ve lived in Ormskirk for three years and I don’t know what he’s done for the town. Could it be that in the nine years as a councillor he’s done nothing at all???

County 2009, Ormskirk

Fighting for Lancashire’s Future – Labour’s County website now online

Lancashire Labour’s campaign website http://www.fightingforlancashiresfuture.org.uk is now online.

It sets out what Labour has done over the past four years and how Labour will preserve and improve the services if given the opportunity over the next four.

At the heart of County services is support for people of all ages, their communities and local businesses. I believe that only Lancashire Labour has the record and the policies to help people in the coming years – compared to the cuts that local Conservatives have promised.

County 2009, Local Politics, Ormskirk

May “Ormskirk News” leaflet

maynew

We’re currently delivering a new leaflet for May. It covers the following:

  • A few words about Edge Hill’s expansion and student accommodation in town
  • Free train travel for pensioners
  • Parking permit issues in Moorgate

These have all been covered in this blog in the past, but if you’re interested, you can download a copy here.

County 2009, Ormskirk

Mushroom Farm – Pt II

Following yesterdays post about the mushroom farm off Cottage Lane, I changed our canvassing schedule to visit the residents along Cottage Lane to listen to what they had to say.

To start with I think I missed a crucial section of houses near Brighouse Close which might have fallen into a different polling district – there were probably about 20 houses or so that we didn’t get a chance to speak to. Also I wouldn’t treat what is reported here as anything more than hearsay – but they are the opinions that we heard tonight.

To summarise, we only came across one person out of the fifty or so that we spoke to who mentioned the smell of the farm (without being prompted). Most people didn’t mention it as something that as something that was an issue – and those that did were mainly concerned about the increased traffic and possible further development (in what is a pleasant part of the town).

I hope that someone corrects me if I’m wrong here, but it strikes me that the odour problem is slightly out of proportion compared to the traffic issues. Indeed I heard reports of cars being damaged by lorries and of noisy, heavy vehicles travelling in the middle of the night.

In terms of the expansion of places like the farm, I think that one of the roles of a local councillor is to let people know if anything major is coming up in planning. It’s hard because you can’t always know the full impact of a development which looks fine on paper, and similarly one can’t send out every planning application to all those nearby. A balance has to be struck, but the councillor is there to be on the side of the residents and to help on a case by case basis to stop inappropriate over-development.