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Monday, 08 March 2010 |
 SUCCESS: Southport's town centre Library will have to shut from spring 2010 while much-needed refurbishment work is undertaken on the Arts Centre and Library complex (the £15 million "Southport Cultural Centre" project). Sefton Council's ruling Cabinet considered this matter at a meeting held in Bootle on Thursday 12th November, 2009. By a narrow 6 - 4 margin it turned down a proposal put forward by the Lib Dems to relocate Southport Library to the currently vacant space at the rear of Southport Market Hall during the 3 years of building work. Three Labour councillors and three Conservative councillors voted against having a temporary Library, while the four Liberal Democrats voted in favour. As a result Southport would have had no town centre Library for the next 3 years. Along with the Southport Lib Dems, back in November 2009, I started an action group to save Southport Library from closure during refurbishment. Watch a video taken at the launch of the petition . Fast forward to March, 2010, following a campaign that collected OVER 7000 signatures from Southport residents supporting a temporary library facility, we managed to get Sefton Council to finally agree on a location for it - which will be the Tulketh St office of the Southport Visiter. Click here for the Southport Library Success press release. Many thanks to all those who supported the campaign.
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Monday, 14 December 2009 |
 "The local NHS is a huge taxpayer-funded service, affects everyone, is important to everyone, but is sadly totally remote from democratic decision making." These remarks were made by me in the House of Commons recently when I introduced the The Local Health Services and Democratic Involvement Bill to Parliament under the ten-minute rule . Please take a couple of minutes to see what this Bill is trying to achieve and offer your support.
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Friday, 05 June 2009 |
 ONGOING: HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is intending to close Dukes House on Houghton St and relocate staff to Liverpool in an effort to cut costs. Since first being alerted to the closure by staff, I have being trying to extract from HMRC precise details of the savings. To date, no precise details have been provided. It's a classic case of obfuscation by the Government.
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Friday, 05 June 2009 |
 ONGOING: Shops open, shops close, but the credit crunch has meant more of the latter. I’m in the process of identifying landlords of empty shops (often big property companies based in London) in an attempt to persuade them to be more proactive in the current economic downtown. Empty shops are making no-one a profit when property values are falling. If you have five minutes spare take a look at a video I posted following a walk around the town centre in early February.
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Friday, 05 June 2009 |
 SUCCESS: The police carried out a review of the hours and staffing of Ainsdale Police Station early in 2009. Following concerns expressed by local residents, I initiated a petition calling upon the Chief Constable to dismiss any suggestion of reducing the operating hours or police staff at the station. Fast-forward to the end of April and I received the good news from Chief Superintendent Ian Pilling that the operating hours of Ainsdale Police Station are to be extended and will now be open (for a trial period) on Wednesday & Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. The counter will be staffed by uniformed officers who will be ready to deal with residents' enquiries.
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Friday, 29 May 2009 |
 ONGOING: If you know about the “Burscough Curves”, then you may already appreciate that re-opening just one of them would transform Southport’s rail links with Lancashire. (If you don’t know about the Burscough Curves, click here.) It would permit easy, quick rail travel between Southport and Ormskirk and Preston. The reopening of the Burscough Curves is quite simply the fastest, cheapest, and most effective way to give the town's economy a boost – and for a relatively tiny financial outlay. In 2004 I commissioned a study by Roger Bell and Shaun Finucane to see if the idea was financially feasible. They examined the issues from rigourus financial and engineering viewpoints and showed that re-opening the south curve was, indeed, very feasible. That was the starting point for my campaign.
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Friday, 29 May 2009 |
 ONGOING: United Utilities has been temporarily thwarted in its efforts to charge local churches and sports clubs massively higher water bills. Several months back (in 2008) the water company (which made a profit last year of over £600m) introduced a new method for calculating water charges based on the square footage of hard surfaces so churches with car parks and big roofs, and sports clubs with grounds, were shocked by the increases in their bills. Campaigning on behalf of local organisations I set up a petition and wrote to the water regulator Ofwat highlighting the financial harships being endured. United Utilities have put the new system on hold - for the moment. This campaign has more to run and continued local support will be important.
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Friday, 29 May 2009 |
 ONGOING: Local Pubs are facing uncertain times. Many are closing down. Who/what is to blame? Aside from the burden of increasing business rates and utility bills and the impact of supermarket sales of cheap alcohol, landords are having to cope with the demands of the large pub companies (so-called PubCos) who own many of our local pubs. These PubCos charge rents to individual landlords, and operate a “beer tie” whereby landlords must buy all their beer from one PubCo, at a price which is dictated by that PubCo. The feedback I have been getting from landlords has prompted me to raise the issue of PubCos with the Government.
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Campaigns - local 