Thank you to the Deputy Leader, Cath Hynes for her excellent update last week.

I’ve spent much of the last couple of weeks preparing for Trafford Council’s annual budget meeting, which I will come onto later.  However, I’ve enjoyed attending several other events recently too.

Much of last week involved attending sessions with Trafford Council colleagues – two took place at the Town Hall and a third at St Antony’s RC School in Urmston, where I attended the Catering and Cleaning Service Annual Seminar.

At each event, I gave a presentation on 50 years of Trafford Council – where I looked back at the past and ahead to the future.  I also responded to several questions, on housing, parking, and litter problems – issues that I know so many residents care about. I always find it very valuable to have time with our employees – they do an amazing job on behalf of residents.

Earlier this week, I had another opportunity to spend time with our colleagues as we celebrated several people achieving qualifications to support their careers in Trafford.  Investing in employees is very important for any organisation and it is good to see us take this so seriously.

Training was a bit of a theme this week as I had another meeting of our Strategic Partnership on Tuesday morning.  These sessions bring key stakeholders from across Trafford together to discuss how we work to progress important themes.  Trafford College kindly hosted us this time, and the topic of discussion was employment, enterprise, and skills.

We have a wealth of employment opportunities in different sectors across Trafford, and bringing people together like this helps improve opportunities for them starting out on their journey into training and employment. It also increases opportunities for those seeking a change in career.  I look forward seeing how we take ideas from the event forward.

On Wednesday, I caught up with our Public Health and Active Travel teams at the council to receive an update on our School Street schemes and how we’re trying to make walking, wheeling, and cycling more accessible.  It was great to discuss the schemes success, lessons learned along the way and how we can continue promoting safer and accessible streets for everyone in the future. It was agreed we would catch up again early in the summer.

The rest of Wednesday was dominated by the council budget for 2024/25 – and spending time preparing for the meeting and then summing up the debate at the end.  I won’t repeat the challenges I’ve mentioned in the past, but they are ones faced many councils up and down the country.  I am pleased that we agreed Labour’s budget that continues to support our Children’s Services, includes multi-million-pound investment in town centre regeneration and our leisure centres, and has funding available to support our libraries, sports, arts culture, parks and leisure. You can access the reports here and the live stream here.

Trafford Council continues to have the second lowest council tax in Greater Manchester and continues to deliver a balanced budget despite being one of the lowest funded councils in the country.

On Thursday, I had the opportunity to go on a heritage tour of Trafford Park.  As someone who studied Economic History at university, I’ve always been fascinated by Trafford Park – and now live next door to the area.  Our Heritage and Urban Design Manager accompanied me, Cath and our Director of Cultural Transformation around the Village area.  This was once home to hundreds of houses, a couple of churches, schools, shops, a washhouse, and two pubs.  Some of those buildings remain in place, some have new identities, and some are empty and in need of redevelopment.  During our visit we met Kevin Flanagan from the St Antony’s Centre, and we had the pleasure of hearing more from him about Trafford Park.  We all agreed that we must do more to celebrate the area’s heritage, social history, and the contribution it made to the world.

Finally, this week I was in Manchester to attend the second Greater Manchester Combined Authority meeting of the month.  I presented a paper that seeks to progress net zero projects.  As I write, I have a meeting later today in the city to discuss the Barton Swing Bridges – another important heritage asset and one we share with Salford. You can access the report here and the live stream here.

However, I used the window of time I had before then to write this update in the reading room at Manchester Central Library – an example of impressive civic architecture – and a place where I researched much of my dissertation on the Manchester Ship Canal (which flows underneath the Barton Swing Bridges) many years ago.

Best wishes,

Tom.