The ten Greater Manchester authorities, including Stockport, are being urged to introduce a minimum per-unit price for alcohol across the area.

The move, planned for October, would see a standard bottle of wine costing at least £4.50, a 700ml bottle of whisky £14 and a six pack of lager at least £6.

Stockport Council has come out against the plans, for the simple reason that the council doesn’t think it makes sense to do it on a Greater Manchester basis rather than nationwide.

I have to say I agree.  There’s a case for minimum alcohol pricing, but if implemented, this would see alcoholic drinks sold at one price in Cheadle, Gatley and Heald Green and a totally different  price in Handforth, Poynton, Wilmslow or Macclesfield.

The cost of alcohol in Sainsburys and Cheadle Royal or Tesco at Baguley would be a lot higher than the same products at Tesco in Handforth Dean.

I wonder what people will do.  Pay more - or just pop down to Handforth Dean.

My feeling is that implementing a minimum price in this way won’t reduce alcohol consumption - it will just change shopping habits.  And it will be shops in Stockport that lost out as people go elsewhere to save money.

New leisure centre for Reddish

From the Council:

Work has now started on site in preparation for Stockport’s newest leisure centre. The £2 million investment in the new, state of the art leisure facility is a joint venture of Stockport Council and Stockport Sports Trust.

Target Fitness+ Houldsworth Village, adjacent to Broadstone Mill in Reddish, is to be managed by Stockport Sports Trust and will provide a range of facilities for all abilities. These include three indoor football pitches, 70 piece fitness suite, aerobics studio, spinning studio and multi-use pitch, as well as high specification changing rooms, café/bar and parking.

The new facility is planned to open in autumn this year. Huge savings on membership are now available and bookings are already being taken for pitches. For more information visit www.sportinstockport.com or call 0161 443 4070.

A four page leaflet has come through my door - Stockport health profile 2010.

There’s a lot in there - so I’ve scanned it in and you can click on the four links below for more detail.

Some points I took from it:

• Stockport, as we know, is a borough of great contrasts, from the wealthier areas like Bramhall to the more deprived such as Brinnington (these most deprived areas are ones you’ll sometimes hear referred to as “priority 1″).   Men in the least deprived areas can expect to live almost 10 years longer than those in the most deprived areas, women over 7 years longer.
• Like the country as a whole, fewer of us are dying early from heart disease, stroke or cancer and we’re all living longer than before.
• The report compares how well children of different ethnic backgrounds do at school.   The figures look like Stockport students of white, mixed, asian and chinese/other ethnic groups all do better than the English average, whilst black children do a bit worse.  However, be careful with these figures.  The numbers for non-white children are very low: indeed only 27 black children took GCSEs last year here (compared to nearly 3,000 white children) and when you’ve a small sample size, the figures become less trustworthy.
• Our children, overall, are a little less physically active than the average and have more tooth decay.  Our adults smoke less, binge drink more, exercise a lot less but are actually a good deal slimmer than the average across the country.  I’d be interested to see whether, across England as a whole, there’s a correlation between healthy eating, exercising, moderate drinking and being slim, because these figures aren’t showing one here.
• Almost the whole of Gatley is in the second least deprived quintile: we’re not the most well off 20% but we’re in the next 20% (on average, across the area).  The only exception to that is the area around Lorna Grove, Dingle Grove, Winsor, Clifton and Wilcott which come out in the third quintile (i.e. average for the country).
• Cheadle’s more mixed.  The west and south parts (around High Grove Road, Broadway, Schools Hill) are in the second quintile like most of Gatley.  The area north of the High Street, around Lime Grove and Hall Street are third quintile - average for the country.  The Oak Road estate (around Oak Road and Brookfield Road) show up as being in the bottom quintile - the most deprived 20%.  The figures show that people in that area will, on average, live several years less than those living elsewhere.

Stockport health 2010 page 1

Stockport health 2010 page 2

Stockport health 2010 page 3

Stockport health 2010 page 4

It was agreed by councillors of all parties that great progress has been made over the last decade in helping children and adolescents with mental health problems.

From hyperactivity to attention deficit disorder and depression, mental health covers a wide range of areas.  Of the 68,000 young people in Stockport borough, it’s estimated that 6,360 - nearly one in ten - have a mental health disorder.

A decade ago, help for these young people was woefully inadequate - no help was the norm.

As we saw at yesterday’s Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Committee,  the Primary Care Trust has worked in partnership with Stockport and other local authorities in the area and has made big improvements.

A tiered approach has been developed to enable children to get the most appropriate treatment.

Mental health is too often the poor relation.  Despite affecting a huge proportion of the population at one time or another, it never gets the focus, or the funding, of  higher profile health problems like cancer.

Councillors from all parties were united in our belief that mental health services are critically important and, whilst a great deal has been achieved, there’s clearly a long way still to go.

You can read the full report in the Children and Young People’s agenda available here.

The next step in a radical shake-up of the way disabled people use state funding took place, as Jonathan Shaw, Minister for Disabled People, named the Trailblazer areas which will test the Right to Control. Right to Control gives disabled adults more choice and control over the state funding they receive – allowing them to shape the support they receive, or use the money to buy their own services or equipment.

Disabled people in the Trailblazer areas can expect a more personalised service joining up housing, support into work and community care. There will also be extra support and advice to help people choose services and decide how to spend their money.

The eight Trailblazing local authorities have been named as:

Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council and Sheffield City Council (joint)

Essex County Council

Greater Manchester – incorporating Manchester City Council, Oldham Council, Bury Council, Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council and Trafford Council

Leicester City Council

London Borough of Barnet

London Borough of Newham

Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, and

Surrey County Council (two Districts Epsom and Ewell Borough Council, and Reigate and Banstead Borough Council)

Each of these local authorities will have to work with disabled people to develop individual support plans and each plan will make effective use of all the funding available to an individual, to meet their goals. £7 million will be available for Trailblazer local authorities and Jobcentre Plus to make the changes necessary to deliver the Right to Control.

For the first time, Manchester Harriers are holding parent’s cross-country races on Saturday 6th February, and there’ll be prizes!

Harriers run the Primary Schools Cross Country League at William Scholes Field, Gatley on Saturday mornings from 10am.

The remaining dates of the season are Saturday 6th February and Saturday 6th March.  The league has been in existence for over 30 years and there are about 300 runners at each race meeting.

There will be two parents’ races - one for ladies, one for men, running from 10.30am on Saturday 6th February.

There’s also a primary schools relay event after school on Thursday 25th March, starting at 4pm, with trophy presentations at 5pm.

Contact Ian Burnett for more information at i.b.burnett@googlemail.com or by calling 0161 485 2155.

Let’s get active! That’s the message to all Stockport residents from some of the borough’s biggest sporting stars.

With 2010 here, local people are being encouraged to make a fresh start for the New Year by getting fitter, healthier and more active. To help everyone keep their New Year’s resolutions, the Council and Stockport Sports Trust have re-launched the Active Stockport campaign to help people fit more physical activity into their daily lives.

As part of the Stockport Boost programme, Active Stockport aims to help people of all ages improve their fitness levels and do the five, 30 minute sessions of physical activity per week that Government guidelines recommend. And to encourage all Stockport residents to fit more exercise into their daily routine, the borough’s sporting stars, including Stockport Metro swimmers Kerri-Anne Payne and Cassie Patten and Stockport County footballer Paul Gerrard, have given the Active Stockport campaign the big thumbs up.

To find out more about how the Active Stockport campaign can help you get fitter, healthier and more active, visit: www.stockport.gov.uk/active or call Stockport Sports Trust on 0161 433 4070.

The ViaMichelin route planner site has an interesting feature: it allows you to plan your route, anywhere in Europe, by bike or on foot in addition to driving.

I’ve been giving it a test drive, and it’s not bad - but far from perfect.

In my testing, the cycle route planner directs you down smaller roads when the route’s the more direct, as you’d expect.  It also picks up on at least some places where a bike can go and a car can’t, such as where two roads connect but bollards prevent cars passing through.

Essentially, it seems to pick the shortest route, avoiding motorways, and using these cut-throughs where it can.

What it doesn’t do, yet, is have any way to avoid routes unsuitable for less experienced cyclists.  For example, in planning a route from Gatley to Manchester, it has no hesitation in sending me up Kingsway and sending me round the junction by East Didsbury station in Parrs Wood (a particularly challenging junction when you’re cycling south out of Manchester).

It’s a good start, but I’d love to see an option that actively tried to avoid dual carriageways and complex junctions, and was aware of signed cycle routes and paths.

I was really surprised to see the University Hospital of South Manchester Foundation Trust listed in an Observer article as the sixth worst in the country.

University Hospital South Manchester is the new name for Wythenshawe Hospital, somewhere I’ve had several occasions to visit over the last few years.  In addition to a few visits for the kids’ cuts and breaks, I had an operation there a few years ago and my daughter was in for a week with suspected meningitis.

On none of those visits did I feel the standard of care and cleanliness was below par - generally I found it excellent.

And yet the Dr Foster Hospital Guide rates the hospital poorly on patient safety.

Just taking the personal experiences of my family is a poor way to judge a hospital - perhaps there are problems we didn’t happen encounter.  Statistics that look at the experiences of the thousands of people who use the hospital every year are much better.

If there are real problems, they need to be tackled - whether or not my personal experiences found them.  But we need to be careful about taking a bunch of measures, weighted and scored in a particular way, and assuming that tells the whole story.  Often small changes in the way the counting is done can make big differences to the outcome.

(And by the way - this is a particularly poor use of the phrase “postcode lottery” in the Observer - meaning nothing more than different hospitals score differently.  How could it have been otherwise?  Apart from anything else, the Dr Foster Guide would surely not have bothered with any scoring system where all the hospitals came out the same).

EDUCATE - Early Dementia User’s Co-operative Aiming To Educate - looks to give people with dementia a voice through involvement in training, or speaking to others about their experiences of having dementia. EDUCATE is part of a two year multi agency project funded by the Department of Health to set up peer support for people with dementia.

Organisations involved in the project include NHS Stockport, Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, Stockport Council’s Adult Social Care, Age Concern and the Alzheimer’s Society. People wanting to get involved in EDUCATE are invited to an introductory session to be held at the Cheshire Conference Centre, Edgeley, Stockport on the afternoon of Wednesday 2nd December.

For more information about the event or EDUCATE, please contact Sally Mendham or Ruth Mills at Stockport Dementia Care Training on 0161 419 6016 or Ruth Chaplin, Occupational Therapist based at the Meadows in Offerton on 0161 419 6064 or email sally.mendham@nhs.net or ruth.chaplin@nhs.net.

The swine flu vaccination programme will be extended to offer children over six months and under five protection against the virus. Extending the vaccination programme to young children is supported by the panel of experts that provide advice on vaccination issues - the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).

Vaccination of people in clinical risk groups is well under way, with more than seven million doses of vaccine already distributed. Vaccinating these groups remains a priority to protect those at greatest risk from swine flu. For more information on this article click here.

Just a quick plug for Manchester Harriers and Athletics Club, providing opportunities for young and old from across the south Manchester area and based at Scholes Field in Gatley with the shiny new pavillion.

Yesterday was one of the regular cross-country days, giving opportunities to hundreds of young people to catch the athletics bug.

Recognising the parking issues that these once-a-month occasions cause, the Harriers were yesterday handing out advice to parents on where to park: suggesting Gatley Hill and Foxland Road in addition to Beech Avenue and the new enlarged car park by the pavillion.

I’m running a series of posts to summarise over 400 pages of documents in way that helps those who live and work in Stockport Borough understand the issues we’re facing, the options we have and the Council proposals in how the Borough develops over the next 17 years.

This is the third post.  You can read my overview plus my piece on  the Accessibility Appraisal paper.  This one covers the Core Strategy DPD Preferred Options Consultation, which you can read in full, and comment on, here.

This time I’m trying to condense 140 pages into a few hundred words - wish me luck.

What issues is the strategy trying to tackle?

Although both the population of Stockport Borough and the amount of traffic has fallen slightly in the last few years, we don’t expect that to continue.   The Government is asking Stockport to provide 450 new dwellings (houses or flats) every year - that’s over 7,000 by 2026.

At the same time Stockport, like everywhere, has issues to tackle with how things are now.   We’re the third most polarised borough in the country with pockets of deprivation and much more affluent areas.  Our main roads are congested. Stockport Town Centre isn’t all it could be.  Lots of people live in the Borough and travel out for work, with lots more living outside and travelling in.  And, in common with most other areas, we have an aging population and a lack of affordable housing.

The general approach

So we expect to have thousands of new flats and houses, which means (over time), more shops, offices, schools, sport, leisure, culture and health facilities and cemetaries.  Where should they all go?

This was the subject of a previous consultation.  Different options were looked at and the conclusion was, in the main, to strengthen existing centres.  By far the most development is planned for Stockport Town Centre.  Another big chunk goes into the District Centres and the Large Local Centres, with a smaller amount elsewhere.

Stockport has 8 District Centres: Cheadle, Cheadle Hulme, Bramhall, Edgeley, Hazel Grove, Marple, Reddish and Romiley.  It has 10 Large Local Centres: Gatley, Heald Green, Moor Top, Heaton Moor, Shaw Road/Heaton Moor Road, Heaton Chapel, Davenport, Great Moor, North Reddish and Marple Bridge.

Housing

There’s more to this than just building lots of houses and flats.  How big should they be?  How expensive?  Where should they go?

The proposal in this strategy paper is

• a 50/50 split between houses and flats overall, with most flats going in the Town Centre (which will end up with a much higher population) and most houses going around the District and Large Local Centres.
• The majority of the flats to have two bedrooms.
• 40% of new housing to be affordable for those on lower incomes.
• 80% of new housing to be in existing buildings and previously developed land.
• More social rented housing for Bramhall, Cheadle Hulme, Cheadle, Edgeley, Davenport, Marple, Romiley and the Heatons.
• If Woodford Aerodrome becomes vacant, using it wholly or partially for housing is one of several options.
• Stockport currently has no formal Gypsy and Traveller pitches.  Following Government guidance, we are expected to create 35, plus another ten travelling showpeople pitches.  This should increase to 57 pitches in total by 2026 and they should be be in urban areas with good access to services.
• 50% of the new dwellings to be in the Central Housing Area, with up to 2,000 in the Town Centre (the Central Housing Area is the Town Centre plus some areas around it).
• A further 35% of new dwellings to be within walking distance of District and Large Local centres.
• 15% of dwellings to be built elsewhere.

Reducing the size of some struggling centres

Even in the recession, most of our District and Local Centres are doing OK, including Cheadle, Gatley, Bramhall and Heald Green.  Walk around them and you won’t see many empty units.

Some are suffering more, including Hazel Grove and Edgeley.  For these, one option is to reduce the size of the centres - for example, by turning retail units at the edges of the centres into residential properties.

For all centres, the paper also offers the option of limiting the number of hot food and fast food outlets either within a centre altogether or near to schools and play areas.

Cemetaries

It may not be something most of us give much thought to, but Stockport’s cemetaries will be full in 10-15 years.  Should we create new cemetaries (if so, where?) or re-use existing ones.

Strengthen District and Local Centres

The overall strategy is to maintain and enhance the Town Centre along with existing District and Local Centres.

Here, I confess, I don’t think the document is very clear (and, in one case, makes a fairly blatant mistake).  The section in question is 7.135 on page 70.  It refers to changes in planning policies.

The paper proposes  controlling the scale, clustering and mix of uses in Centres to meet local needs and enhance the viability of the Centres.  Great in principle, and fine if there are lots of retailers and developers with different schemes.  The problem comes when the commercial environment isn’t quite so strong.

You might want to have a retail outlet in a particular place, but if no retailers want to open there, your real choice might be something else (a take-away, for example) or nothing. It could well be that nothing - an empty unit - is the best choice in some cases, but we should be aware of the issue.

With that in mind, I’m not clear exactly what the paper’s proposing.

Outside Local and District Centres, the paper proposes that we permit a change of use from service to non-service (e.g. offices or residential) unless there’s a good reason not to, as part of the strategy to strengthen the Centres.

In Large Local Centres, the paper says we should restrict the size of new shops and leisure units (where not re-using an existing building) to a maximum of  500 square metres (and 250 square metres in other Local Centres).  For District Centres, the much higher limit of 25,000 square metres is proposed.  (I think incorrect wording results in this paragraph actually saying the opposite of this).

There’s also a sentence which, I think, suggests that a new small convenience store would not be permitted if other local retailers already provide the same services.

Requiring that new convenience shops meeting local needs (up to max 250 square metres) will only be allowed where there are no alternative sustainably accessible facilities.

Again, it not necessarily a problem; but I don’t understand why we’d want to single out convenience shops.  If we’re going to protect that one type of shop from competition, why not protect newsagents, cafes or hairdressers?

Building business

The plan identifies the need to build strong business centres around Stockport, and argues that this should be primarily achieved by enhancing and promoting the Town Centre for new office development.  That fits in with the principle of enhancing the Town Centre overall, and concentrates more traffic flows into the centre (which is the location best served by public transport and car parking).

In particular, the strategy is to attract ICT, digital, creative and new media companies into offices around the A6 south of the M60 - especially in the civic quarter.

There’s also strong office provision in some our District and Local Centres: Bramhall, Cheadle, Cheadle Hulme, Hazel Grove, Stepping Hill and Gatley.  These should be supported.

Heavier industry should have direct access to main access routes (e.g. motorways) without having to go through residential areas.  The Bredbury Industrial Area is given as an example of a location that fits the bill.

The report says that there’s no specific need to find new areas of employment close to deprived areas: either they are there already, or there are good public transport links from those areas to the Town Centre.

Sport, green spaces and leisure

Stockport has an oversupply of senior sports pitches (compared to the Government recommendation for how many we should have) but slightly too few mini soccer facilities.

The report also identifies a shortfall of leisure facilities in the Town Centre, Hazel Grove, Reddish, Romiley and Edgeley, with too few sports halls (relative to the population) in the north and north east of the Borough.

There’s a discussion about our green spaces, both “formal open space” - parks and similar - and other green spaces.

Should we continue the current strategy of retaining a semi-rural character for our river valleys; or should we use that space to meet more formal needs, for example by building sports pitches there?

Overall, though the Cheadle area (Cheadle, Gatley, Heald Green and the northern part of Cheadle Hulme) was identified as having more than enough formal open space (again, compared to Government recommendations), the Borough as a whole falls 105 hectares short.  The Heatons also do well for green space, with Victoria, Tame Valley and Werneth needing improvement.

The plan rejects giving absolute protection to current green space.  It gives the example of the Cheadle Committee area, where there’s lots of formal green space and a shortage of affordable housing.  It suggests the option to swap some should be left open.

Transport

The strategy paper advocates more people living, working and playing in Stockport Town Centre along with our District and Local Centres.  If that’s going to be successful, we need to be able to get to and from those places.

Issues identified include:

• a lack of orbital train links from Stockport to Manchester Airport and Tameside
• a lack of train links between Stockport and some District Centres (Marple, Cheadle) and a general weakness in public transport between Marple and Stockport
• congestion across many of the Borough’s main roads

It notes that there are plans currently in place to improve transport provision, including SEMMMS, aiming to deliver the extended A555 Relief Road by 2016 and rail improvements scheduled to start from 2014.

Other reports and plans are noted including the 2009-2015 Stockport Cycling Strategy,  the Greater Manchester Integration Transport Strategy (GMITS) and the South Pennines Integrated Transport Strategy (SPITS).

Beyond those (which I won’t cover here, but will do at some stage if I have the time), the paper comes up with a selection of ideas that fall some way short of firm proposals:

• we need to shift from single-occupancy car use to more car sharing, cycling,  walking and public transport.
• promote flexible working and home working
• introduce more 20mph zones in residential areas
• improve the network of walking and cycling routes, both direct (normally on-road) and off-road for recreational and less confident cyclists.

Disclaimer

In this post I’ve attempted to summarise Stockport Council’s Core Strategy Development Plan Document (DPD) consultation paper.  This is my own work; it is not an official Council or Liberal Democrat summary and I’d be frankly amazed if there weren’t significant omissions and mistakes.   Nothing in this summary should be taken as indicating either my or the Liberal Democrats’ support for, or agreement with, the strategy paper.

Most of the things I get involved with are pretty immediate.  Problems that need fixing as soon as possible, or at most issues like the Kingsway filter that might take a couple of years to sort out.

So thinking about how I see Stockport developing up to 2026 requires a bit of a shift in focus.

That’s the idea behind Stockport Council’s Core Strategy.  Some progress has been made on this and the latest stage is now open for consultation until 25th November.

The issues aren’t simple.

Like everywhere else in the country, Stockport needs to provide new housing (at least 450 dwellings a year - nearly 8,000 by 2026.  That’s a whole Cheadle & Gatley and a bit more besides (we have about 6,500 dwellings in the ward).

What should the mix of housing be?  Where should it be located?  How many flats?  How much social housing?

How do we build the economic future of the borough, providing jobs, education and training for current and future residents?

What needs to be done to attract more people into the Town Centre along with our local and district centres (Cheadle is a district centre, Gatley is a local centre).  How do we ensure not only vibrant retail centres but also the best access for all to leisure, culture, education, health, open space and other community facilities.

How do we protect our open spaces, greenbelt land and heritage?

Stockport is already congested, so how can we get everyone moving even with thousands of extra homes?  What mix of buses, trains, facilities for cyclists and pedestrians and, of course, private car travel is right?

For the next month, you can visit the Council’s consultation portal, read the documents, register online and submit comments.  You can also submit your comments by email to planning.policy@stockport.gov.uk.

The actual consultation documents are fairly involved - together there’s several hundred pages.

So, to get more people involved, I’m currently reading and summarising the different documents - hopefully in a way that draws out the key questions and issues.

First there’s the Accessibility Appraisal.  That document sets the scene - it’s more about defining the issues than coming up with solutions.  It looks at how easy or difficult it is for people to get to where they want to go - to access schools, shops, jobs, leisure and healthcare, for example.

Next is the Core Strategy Consulation, which looks forward over the next 17 years with proposals covering housing, jobs, green spaces, sport and leisure, transport and more.

The other three papers, which I haven’t summarised yet are:

• Core Strategy DPD: Preferred Options - Habitats Regulations Assessment Screening Report
• Core Strategy DPD: Preferred Options - Sustainability Appraisal Screening Report
• Core Strategy DPD: Preferred Options - Sustainability Appraisal Screening Report Annexes

Yesterday evening, I attended my first Scrutiny Committee meeting at Stockport Council (and my third Council meeting of the day, but that’s another story).

This was the Health Scrutiny Committee and I was there as a substitute for a regular member who couldn’t make it.

We were there to specifically look at how the different agencies in Stockport (e.g. the Council, the Primary Care Trust and third sector organisations like Age Concern and the Stockport and District Alzheimer’s Society) can better work together.

As our population ages, dementia (principally, though not exclusively, a disease of the elderly) becomes more and more common, with one in five people over 80 getting it.  It’s scary, misunderstood and can be very difficult not only for the sufferer but also their friends and relatives (who are often elderly themselves).

It’s estimated that 3,800 people in Stockport have dementia, including around 300 under the age of 65.

Since yesterday’s meeting was only one in a series, it wouldn’t make sense for me to start talking about the details of what might or might not be done locally.

What I will do is to pass on some useful phone numbers, and encourage anyone who is concerned about themselves or someone else having dementia to use them.  Don’t wait until you can’t cope - get help early.

• Stockport and District Alzheimer’s Society  0161 483 4446
• National Alzheimer’s Society 0845 300 0336
• Stockport Dementia Care Training  0161 419 6016
• Age Concern Stockport 0161 480 1211
• Signpost (information & support for carers) 0161 456 4276
• Stockport Welfare Rights 0161 474 3093
• Attendance Allowance 0800 882 200
• Social Services Customer Contact Centre  0845 644 4314
• Driving and Dementia DVLA (contact your GP in first instance) 0870 240 0009
• NHS Direct  0845 4647