Community Protection Information Bulletin — Issue 23, April 2005
Departmental Matters
First Licence Issued Under the New Licensing Act
Wigan Council has granted its first licence under the new Licensing Act.
The Act has seen the responsibility for alcohol licensing pass from the Magistrates’ Courts to Local Authorities. All current licence holders must apply to transfer their existing liquor licences to the Council.
Richard Best of the Litten Tree in King Street, Wigan, is now the holder of Personal Licence number ‘0001’ . This licence allows him to manage any licensed premises in the country.
The Government has given people who held a licence before 7th February 2005, until 6th August 2005 to submit their applications. So far, only a handful have done so.
To prevent a flood of last minute applications for the transfer of licences, Officers have been busy contacting licensed premises, urging them to submit their applications - this is a national issue, with all other local Councils reporting similar problems.
More information can be obtained by contacting Maurice Dearden, Licensing Manager.
Environmental Health and Trading Standards
Contaminated Land Information for Ince Central Residents
Residents on the Ince Central Estate have now been provided with information from the Council and Wigan and Leigh Housing which indicates the properties, considered by specialist consultants Mouchel Parkman, to be built on contaminated land. Each household on the estate of 327 houses received this information in a personal letter on 4th April 2005.
Overall, 221 of the 327 houses were considered to be on contaminated land, and advice has been given to each household about living in the area and the remediation options being considered. Helplines and additional surgeries have also been provided.
Good news for residents is that legal advice from a top Barrister, strongly indicates that the Council can accept so called ‘Class A’ responsibility for remediation. This means that the Council can apply to the Government’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) for grant to undertake the works necessary to remove contaminated material from the whole estate and reinstate with clean soil.
Pilot projects are already planned to establish how best to undertake the remediation, and ensure residents are protected at the same time. The final works will however not be completed for some time. Residents will continue to be kept involved throughout.
Litter Doesn’t Pay… or Does It?
In March 2005 Wigan Council completed its third year of issuing fixed penalty notices for litter offences. In 2004-05 276 fines were issued, making a three-year total of 986. As in previous years the payment rate has been impressively high. The money generated by these fines is ploughed back into making the Borough a cleaner and better place to live in.
The Litter Wardens team features officers from a wide range of departments aided by the Police Community Support Officers. Fresh from their success at the Council’s Team of The Year awards, the Litter Wardens aim to go from strength to strength in 2005-06. They will continue to offer a Borough-wide network to identify litter louts.
Wigan has been at the forefront of litter enforcement. Our service has been admired by a number of other authorities who have asked for assistance in setting up and managing similar schemes in their own areas.
Sudan 1
On Friday, 18th February 2005, the discovery of illegal Sudan 1 dye in a wide range of foods on sale in the UK hit the headlines.
At 05:00pm on that first day 359 food products were listed as contaminated with Sudan 1 dye which, if consumed in large quantities, increases the risk of cancer.
By 09:00am on Monday, 21st February, 400 products were listed and, responding to a national ‘Food Alert’, The Food Health and Safety Section and Trading Standards colleagues swung into action to inform and protect Wigan consumers.
Within twenty four hours over 1000 businesses had been contacted by telephone or mailshot, 72 premises had been visited, and ‘reality checked’ to ensure listed contaminated product had been withdrawn from sale, 2 press releases had been issued and 2 dedicated help lines had been set up.
In addition, information and assistance was provided to other Council Departments, local care homes, food providers within the Education and Social Service’s Department, the Primary Care and the NHS Trusts.
Our efforts, we believe, raised both public and trade awareness and prevented sales of listed contaminated product across the Borough, and initiated recall and destruction of contaminated product by two local producers.
The Sudan 1 story continues with, at the time of writing, the European Union ordering further checks for Sudan dye and a further national ‘Food Alert’ announcing the presence of Sudan 1 in ‘Sacia Leek and Saffron Sauce’.
'Off-ies' Are On When It Comes To The Young Ones
Trading Standards chiefs in Wigan have praised the borough's army of off-licence workers for passing the test when it comes to underage sales.
The Council’s consumer team has been spearheading the drive to crack down on outlets that sell alcohol to children.
And judging by the latest set of results, all the hard work is beginning to pay off.
Trading Standards has been working with young people under 18 who volunteer to go into off licences and attempt to buy booze. The team targets various hotspots across the borough and the latest sweep of Leigh, Lowton and Golborne reaped some stunning results.
The team tested 37 off licences using the volunteers and only one of these sold alcohol to the young person.
Message: One of the promotional posters used in the borough's off-licences.
Wigan's Chief Trading Standards Officer Alan Blundell said: "This is a very pleasing set of results for both the off-licences and ourselves.
"Off licence staff are very much on the front line when it comes to preventing under age sales and sometimes saying no can be a difficult and stressful thing to do.
We have offered the staff as much support as we possibly can by visiting premises to give them advice and promotional material which will hopefully prevent underage children asking for alcohol."
Selling alcohol to anyone under 18 can result in prosecution and lead to a maximum penalty of £1,000. In some cases it can result in retailers losing their liquor licence.
Mr Blundell added: "We would much rather work with the borough's off-licences than be looking at prosecutions. This is a tremendous effort on behalf of the off-licences in Leigh, Lowton and Golborne, and they must be congratulated. We will be continuing these test exercises in other parts of the borough and are hoping for similar results."
Leigh Pupils Egg-cel!
Pupils from Bedford Hall Methodist School in Leigh have scored an ‘egg-cellent’ rating from Wigan Council’s consumer watchdogs.
The children scooped first place in Trading Standard’s annual Easter competition aimed at encouraging youngsters to think about value for money when they go shopping.
Primary schools across the borough were asked to compare three Easter eggs for weight, packaging, content, price - and of course, taste - and then create a display all about their findings.
The Bedford Methodists’ team won £100 in vouchers for wet weather toys, and school and individual certificates. They received their prizes from the Mayor of Wigan, Councillor John Hilton, on 18th March.
Senior Fair Trading Officer, Janet Nichols says: "We all want value for money and the idea behind this competition is to give youngsters an insight into how to get it. Easter eggs are a good example to use because they can be relatively expensive."
Runners up in the competition, which attracted 16 entries, were Westleigh Methodists, with St Thomas CE Primary School making it a 1-2-3 for Leigh. They win £60 and £40 vouchers respectively. Bedford Hall’s winning entry earned Wigan borough third place in the Greater Manchester finals.
Urban Renewal
Help on the way for Borough’s Homeless
Wigan’s Homelessness Forum has just won a massive £630,000 grant from the Government.
The good news is the result of a successful bid by the Forum, to help groups that up to now have been excluded from mainstream homeless services, such as single people and rough sleepers. The money is for a three year period.
In recent years homelessness has rocketed in the borough. Over 3,000 people sought help from the Council last year - a 65% rise in five years - but only a third of these were legally entitled to housing.
Wigan’s Homelessness Forum was set up in 2003 and has already made real progress towards improving services for homeless people, including:
- Additional "Move-on" accommodation for homeless people;
- A scheme that helps rough sleepers to access mainstream services and manage their own accommodation;
- An independent housing advice project across the borough;
- A 'rent deposit scheme' being launched shortly to make it easier for homeless people to get private rented accommodation.
News of the government grant was welcomed by housing bosses. Wigan Council’s Community Protection Director, Bob Saunders, speaking as chairman of the Homelessness Forum, said he was delighted that its work had been recognised.
He said: "It means we will be able to provide better assistance to those people not currently able to accesshomelessservices, particularly single homeless people and rough sleepers.
"The money will particularly be used to run a direct access accommodation project in the borough, for which £1.25M funding to build has already been awarded. It will allow us to make a real difference and continue to work together to provide effective help for homeless residents."
Renewal Areas Declared: Platt Bridge and Abram
The older housing areas of Abram and Platt Bridge have now been formally declared as Renewal Areas. This means that the Council can concentrate action within these areas and use additional powers needed to bring about community development and area improvement.
It is expected that the Council will invest around £4 million over the next 5 years within the area. Initially, we will concentrate on environmental issues, but ultimately we will be looking to improve both the appearance and condition of housing. Whilst this work mainly involves the 1,500 private homes in the area, links will be made to the improvements already being made to Council estates.
The declaration of these Renewal Areas follows major preparatory work, including house condition surveys, resident consultation and independent research on the state of the local housing market. This information has been compiled in a declaration report which showed that almost 40% of the housing in the area was either unfit or in poor condition, and nearly 30% of households were in receipt of means-tested benefit.
As work begins in the area, further resident involvement will take place to ensure that we repeat our past successes of improving housing markets in other
parts of the Borough, such as Bedford, Firs, Ince and Pagefield.
Community Safety
Security Section
The Security Section was created in 1991, the section monitors intruder alarms, fire alarms and personal attack alarms. The rational for creating the section, stemmed from the increasing financial burden of private sector providers as well as the associated costs of repairs, maintenance and damage to property and increasing insurance premiums.
The Security Section quickly grew to provide additional functions such as out of hours call handling, Careline, lone worker monitoring, keyholding, as well as developing CCTV monitoring.
Previously the section operated within Land & Property Department however changes including a Partnership with Norfolk Property Services meant the creation of a new Legal & Property Services Department. The Security Section and Community Safety Section joined Environmental Health & Consumer Protection department and became part of the new Community Protection Department in April 2004.
Since joining Community Protection Department the security section has undergone a fundamental review of services this has resulted in restructuring the section. Joining CCTV monitoring and CWS functions into one cohesive unit, in addition the management structure has been rationalised.
Partnership Staff Changes
The Community Safety Partnership has entered a period of significant change to key staff. David Bowman, Assistant Director for Community Safety, retires at the end of April. He will be replaced by the current Chief Superintendent at Wigan Police, Ian Harrison.
David brought with him a strong appetite for the delivery of genuinely evidence based work to. He ingrained this into the service over his three year stretch with Community Safety. He will be sorely missed.
Ian Harrison retires from the Police to take over the Assistant Director role, and is very much looking forward to working with the team. Obviously he has already been closely associated with the work of the service and intends to hit the ground running. The chair of the Partnership, Steve Jones, also moves on and we hope will be replaced in that role by the incoming Council Chief Executive, Joyce Redfearn.
Chief Superintendent Lee Bruckmann takes up the reins as Wigan divisional commander. Wigan also has a new assistant commander in the form of Superintendent McIver who replaces Ian Palmer.
All partnership work needs continuity and fortunately there is just that with the remaining players and the servicing community safety team very much intact. It is with every confidence that we enter this period of change and acknowledge the contribution made by those who are to leave us.
In that vein we should also acknowledge the excellent contribution from our long stay graduate trainee Matthew McNulty who has finally departed. His work on the Trees estate project has been a tribute to his conscientious and committed skills.
Results Looking Good for Reduction in Recorded Crime
Although we await the final audited end of year crime figures, our best guess at this stage is that 04-05 will show the best year on year reductions in recorded crime ever collected by the Community Safety Partnership.
In addition it is clear that we compare more than favourably with our national family and maintain our proud boast of "being the safest borough in Greater Manchester".
Alleygating Application Gets Green Light
Our application to DEFRA has finally been approved and we are now able to plan towards the roll out of alleygates in the Leigh township. There are plenty more hurdles to jump, but this was Beeches Brook, and we're over.
Fixit
The Fixit project aims to provide practical skills to young people and it goes from strength to strength. The organisation gets it's own full time director in the next few weeks as Phil Harrison takes up those reins full time. Recently negotiated is a contract with the Youth Offending Team to run programmes for small groups of their clients.