Keep up to date with all the big politics stories in the North with the daily Northern Agenda newsletter.
You can receive the Northern Agenda newsletter direct to your inbox every week day by signing up right here.
Here is today's Northern Agenda:
By ROB PARSONS - July 20 2022
With all the houses around them standing empty, Demonique Wilson and his family of seven are the only thing in the way of a £250 million regeneration scheme in Salford .
Nearly a decade ago work started in the Pendleton area to knock down the High Street estate, which has 490 council-owned homes. Salford council wants to replace it with a new leisure centre - the Pendleton Community Activity and Health Club - and 575 family homes and apartments.
In the last ten years all the other homes on Holcombe Close have been sold to the council and are now standing derelict but the Wilson family have refused to budge.
Mr Wilson and wife Thabo bought the house 14 years ago for £70,000 with their five children and say Salford council have offered them £95,000 to move out, writes Local Democracy Reporter Nick Jackson.
But Mr Wilson argues it would be “impossible” for him to buy a three-bed property in Salford for that money and the only alternatives presented to the family have been rented accommodation.
“The problem is, I still have a £23,000 mortgage on this house,” he said. “We want to stay in Salford, where our children go to school and where our lives are, but the compensation we’re being offered is nowhere near what we need. We are being forced out of our home.”
He said he had engaged a law firm and surveyor who he believes will be able to get a “fairer price” for his house through the courts. Salford council is now using a compulsory purchase order (CPO) - something it described as a last resort - to buy the home so it can be knocked down.
Councillors at a Property and Regeneration meeting agreed to push ahead with the CPO and plans for 575 family homes and apartments including 173 affordable homes and an “extra care scheme”.
Extra care schemes encourage independent living with specialist 24-hour care and support for those people who require it and additional provision is much needed to meet demand.
Salford councillor Bill Hinds said: “We’ve bent over backwards with these people, so I don’t think we have any alternative.”
Sunak: I'll bring a Downing Street campus to Darlington
Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak engaged in a bitter war of words over the cost of living crisis that is set to cripple households in the North East as they pleaded their cases to Tory members in the region last night.
The two contenders to become the next Prime Minister were pitted against each other in front of a crowd of Conservative voters at the Darlington Hippodrome, in the fifth of 12 leadership hustings around the country. Local Democracy Reporter Dan Holland has the write-up here .
After Mr Sunak committed to giving people some further cash payments to help ease the financial burden posed by the cost of living crisis, on the day it was predicted that energy bills could top £4,200 next year, Ms Truss accused him of “Gordon Brown economics”.
The MP for Richmond in North Yorkshire told the crowd: “I put the Treasury in Darlington because I wanted to send a loud message to Whitehall that there is more to the North than Manchester. And I tell you this… if this works out, it won’t just be called the Treasury Campus in Darlington, it will be the Downing Street Campus in Darlington.”
The Foreign Secretary, who has promised swift tax cuts if she is chosen to succeed Boris Johnson, said she “fundamentally” disagrees with “putting up taxes and then also giving out benefits”.
Ms Truss pledged to “sort out the broadband and mobile phone signal” in rural areas, having also set her sights on winning Labour seats in Wansbeck and Sunderland at the next General Election.
Both contenders pledged to finally push ahead with the delayed dualling of the A1 in Northumberland if they become Prime Minister.
A decision on whether to proceed with the upgrade of a single-lane section of the A1 between Morpeth and Ellingham had been due in January this year, before being pushed back to June and then again by a further six months . Ms Truss vowed that as Prime Minister she would have the A1 dualled “from top to bottom”.
And Mr Sunak said it "something we put in our manifesto and something as Chancellor that I, in theory, signed off on the funding for". He said: “I am not sure what the issue is, but as Prime Minister I can certainly commit to you that I will go and figure out quickly what the situation is because I would like to see the A1 dualled."
North Yorkshire village now won't host huge base for asylum seekers
It was during Ms Truss's earlier campaign stop to Huddersfield that a major development emerged in a story that's dominated the agenda in North Yorkshire for weeks.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, joining the Foreign Secretary on the visit, revealed that plans to house up to 1,500 asylum seekers at a disused RAF base had been scrapped after the Ministry of Defence withdrew its offer of the site .
The Lancashire MP told reporters he had “obligations to do something else with that site” but that others have been made available to the Home Office if it wishes to press ahead with the proposed reception centre in another location.
The controversial plans for an accommodation and processing centre in the small village of Linton-on-Ouse were announced by the Home Office in April, with around 60 men expected to be housed there by the end of May. The plans faced strong opposition from residents of the village, near York.
Earlier this week, Rishi Sunak said he would scrap the plan if he becomes Prime Minister. And asked about Mr Sunak’s comments during her visit to Huddersfield, Ms Truss told reporters: “My understanding from the Defence Secretary is that site is not going ahead. So it’s a moot point because it won’t be going forward.”
The 'mushrooming' trend of houses becoming children's care homes
In the past Northern leaders have complained of their communities taking an unfair proportion of the country's asylum seekers because local housing is cheaper than down south.
And now a senior councillor in Lancashire has expressed concern over the ‘mushrooming industry’ of family houses being turned into small care homes, seemingly for the same reason.
The deputy chairman of Hyndburn Council’s planning committee Judith Addison has asked for a full report into the issue after her panel deferred considering an application to use a street in Altham as a small children’s care home.
And committee chairman Cllr Dave Smith said: “I would agree this is a mushrooming industry. It is a lucrative business especially in East Lancashire where houses are cheaper than down south."
As Local Democracy Reporter Bill Jacobs writes, one Hyndburn resident contacted the Lancashire Telegraph to express her concern about the issue.
They wrote: “We have real concerns as these homes are not for local children but children from hundreds of miles away. It’s all about the money not the care and anything can happen and does. Children abscond regularly.”
'Unacceptable': Mayors slam decision to slash rail timetable
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham and his London counterpart Sadiq Khan have criticised a rail operator for drastically reducing its timetables, branding the decision “completely unacceptable”.
In a letter to Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, the Labour mayors said the train operator’s recent timetable cuts were a “national outrage”. Avanti West Coast, who run services between Manchester Piccadilly and London Euston, said the limited timetable will be in place “until further notice”.
The firm slashed its timetables and suspended ticket sales on Monday due to “unofficial strike action” by drivers. It said it will run as few as four trains per hour from Sunday in an attempt to halt the short-notice cancellations which have plagued its operations in recent weeks.
“The plan to run just four trains an hour from London Euston, with only one service to Manchester, came with no notice nor any consultation beforehand and no date by which the full timetable will be restored,” a letter signed by both mayors and Manchester City Council leader Bev Craig said.
Meanwhile in South Yorkshire, the leader of Rotherham council Chris Read has accused the government of “kicking into the long grass” plans for a new railway station after it was revealed the project will be delayed until at least 2027.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps confirmed that the long-awaited scheme will not be funded during this transport settlement period, as Local Democracy Reporter Danielle Andrews reports .
Rotherham Council and the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority have drawn up proposals to return mainline train services to the borough for the first time since the 1980s.
Last year the government committed £10m towards the scheme as part of Rotherham’s ‘Towns Fund’ allocation, and previously indicated a further £8m would be forthcoming in the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement – the main source of transport capital funding to South Yorkshire.
Speed awareness courses 'are two hours you'll never get back'
For many, they're worth giving up a few hours to avoid having penalty points added to their driving licence. But according to Leeds councillor Neil Buckley, awareness courses for drivers who break the speed limit are "two hours of your life you’ll never get back".
The Tory councillor made the comments during a debate about stricter rules set to be imposed on Leeds taxi drivers who commit minor motoring offences, writes Local Democracy Reporter David Spereall.
Cabbies who clock up nine points could face potential bans in future, down from the current threshold of 12, despite opposition from the trade. Those with seven or eight points will be told to attend training programmes, run by the council and separate to the Department for Transport's courses.
The new convictions policy is expected to be ratified by senior councillors next month after Leeds council's licensing committee agreed the proposals yesterday.
Cllr Buckley said of driver training sessions: "What generally happens is retired police officers go through the motions of telling you what you already know and what they already know about the Highway Code and regulations.
"Everyone pretends that the training courses do good. In fact my view is it’s two hours of your life you’ll never get back."
Taxi drivers from across Leeds protested outside the city’s Civic Hall yesterday as controversial changes to the way they’re regulated moved closer to being passed.
One trade union said last month that passengers will be waiting “two or three hours” for a taxi next year if the changes are passed, such is the shortage of drivers they predict.
But Andrew White, the council’s taxi and private hire licensing manager, said: "80% of drivers don’t have any points on their licence, possibly they never will have. But the focus of regulation has to be on the small minority that pose the higher risk. We’re trying to make the public feel safe."
Sign up to The Northern Agenda
Has a friend forwarded you this edition of The Northern Agenda? You can sign up to receive the latest email newsletter direct to your inbox every weekday by clicking on this link .
Northern Stories
-
The Lake District National Park Authority (LDNPA) has seen a ‘large increase’ in the number of breaches of planning control related to unauthorised holiday lets. The news comes on the back of statistics that show the LDNPA served more than four times as many enforcement notices as any other national park authority in the year ending March 2022. Notices were served against unlawful holiday lets, glamping units, caravans, a golf course and more.
-
An entire village will be closed to Leeds Festival -goers later this month, after it was previously used as a “rat run” for the event. Aberford, on Leeds’ outer eastern edge will be shut to through traffic trying to get to the festival at Bramham Park again this year, after the closure was first introduced in 2021. The 173 and 174 buses, as well as residents themselves, will still be able to travel through Aberford across the Bank Holiday weekend, however.
-
An application has been made to bring two historic University of Liverpool buildings back to life. After laying dormant for a number of years, the university has submitted plans to Liverpool Council to repurpose two of its earliest surviving purpose-built teaching sites back into use. According to planning documents, the University of Liverpool is seeking to fully refurbish the Derby and Hartley Buildings on Brownlow Street to rehouse its School of Environmental Sciences.
-
A Lancashire MP has set herself a new goal – persuading the BBC to reverse its decision to scrap the reading of the classified football results on Radio Five Live at 5pm on a Saturday. Hyndburn Tory backbencher Sara Britcliffe has written to the corporation’s director Tim Davie objecting to the change which will hit fans of Blackburn Rovers, Burnley FC and Accrington Stanley. On Monday the BBC announced the reading of the results, which dates from 1948, had been dropped so Five Live can cover the 5.30pm Premier League fixture.
-
Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen yesterday welcomed Levelling Up Secretary Greg Clark to Teesworks almost five years to the day after he played a vital role in establishing the site . Mr Clark took a tour to see first-hand the transformation that has taken place at the former Redcar Steelworks site since it was first designated a Mayoral Development Corporation on 23 August 2017. In his previous role as Business Secretary, Mr Clark helped set up the South Tees Development Corporation.
-
Ground stability works at Ripon Leisure Centre in North Yorkshire are set to cost £3.5 million and cause further delays for a refurbishment project which is already over budget and more than a year overdue. The costs are revealed in a Harrogate Borough Council report which said the project now won’t be completed until spring 2024. The centre’s new swimming pool opened earlier this year, but plans for a larger gym and exercise studios have been delayed after underground voids were discovered beneath the older half of the site which was built in 1995.
