Council paying lip service to social regeneration, says Danczuk

Date article online: 30/03/2008

Rochdale’s Labour Parliamentary Candidate Simon Danczuk has called on the chief executive of the council, Roger Ellis, to provide more details of the “ambitious plans for social regeneration” in Rochdale that he recently spoke of in the local media.

Mr Ellis, who was responding to news that Falinge and College Bank have the highest proportion of benefits claimants in Britain when he made the remarks, was accused by Mr Danczuk of exaggerating wildly when the reality is that “the council only pays lip service to social regeneration”.

In a withering attack on the Council, Mr Danczuk said the council’s regeneration plans were dangerously lopsided and that senior figures on the council were “labouring under the false idea that the development of Rochdale Town Centre and Kingsway Business Park would solve all the Borough’s problems.”

He warned that as long as the council underestimated the importance of social issues and was more focussed on physical regeneration, then crime and fear of crime, anti-social behaviour, poor life chances for children and the consequences of poverty would continue to blight our Borough.

“Behind the council’s polished rhetoric I’m afraid there are unavoidable facts showing that there is insufficient effort and resources being directed at social problems in Rochdale,” argued Mr Danczuk.

“Nearly 20 per cent of people in Rochdale do not have any qualifications and with responsibility for post-16 education being transferred from the Learning and Skills Council to local authorities in 2010.”

He added that a failure to recognise the skills gap holding people back from better wages and also a lack of effort on addressing the widening health inequalities in our Borough could have catastrophic consequences for future generations.

“Figures show that there is a lot of poor health in Rochdale and our children are topping the region’s obesity tables,” he said. “Yet while other local authorities are responding with innovative public health campaigns our council is burying its head in the sand. In Bolton, for example, they have a scheme run by the council and Bolton Wanderers Football Club, which rewards children that have a healthy lunchbox with a chance to dine with their football heroes.”

Accusing the council of putting the cart before the horse, he said that detailed plans of how the council aimed to tackle poor mental health, improve cultural services, raise education standards and provide better training opportunities, help reduce the fear of crime and create more youth and leisure facilities as well as green spaces were urgently needed before the area could be seen to be making real progress.

“As long as we are getting national headlines for having the highest proportion of people on out-of-work benefits and reports saying that health inequalities are widening and that we’re going to die early, then the leading figures on our council should be ashamed,” he added. “There can be no back-slapping or triumphalism, we need to see progress.

“Paul Rowen’s agent, Dave Hennigan, promised that we would have an arts centre by April this year. What have we got? A feasibility study. Why have we only got three parks that have achieved Green Flag status in our Borough, when in Bury they have 11? Why are large parts of our Borough making little or no progress? I want to see more soft regeneration approaches to neighbourhood renewal and a focus on people not just bricks and mortar.”