P.E.P.
I wasn't invited to the recent PEP meeting (held at the Crown Hotel, Longton), but have been told by one who was there that the lunches probably won't continue -- the Priority Estates Project it seems won't be recommending an Estates Management Board for Bentilee....
For those who haven't been following the PEP saga, it all started back in the dim mists of January when I, along with every house on the estate, received an invitation to a public meeting to learn all about the Priority Estates Project and the feasibility study they were doing for the City Council. We all had the chance to run our own estate, the spiel went, choosing from a range of options, each requiring a different amount of commitment and hard work, if only enough residents were interested, and the City Council agreed. Hmmmm......
Then came the Training Days (and lunches), and things began to look more interesting. We met people from the other estates being studied (Abbey Hulton, Meir, & Blurton); people from Stoke's existing EMB, Chell Heath (indeed one of the PEP presenters was a member of the Chell board); people from places as far apart as Rochdale, Skelmersdale, & Liverpool; and loads of people from PEP and the council. We were 'trained' in working together, capital works finance, and the various options we had (i.e. residents' associations, housing subcommittees, EMBs, Tenant Management Co-ops, HATs, Tenant Federations, and just plain staying as we are). We were shown massive figures showing just how little control the council had over its housing budget; some were impressed; a cynic suggested it was all just a ploy by the council employee to put us all off. A 'tenant activist' from the Hollin estate, Rochdalelent support to this when he told how one councillor in Rochdale had fought them all the way because he fell that tenants were "too thick" to run their own estates.
We felt all right though. Did not local councillor, Peter Kings, support the Chell Heath EMB all the way. Ah, but, says the cynic, that was old, unpopular Chell Heath which the council no doubt was only too glad to get rid of. And the City Council's ruling labour party hadn't just lost 11 of its seats to the Torys; and, afterall, aren't most of these housing ideas just a Tory plot to get council estates away from Labour local authorities? I don't know. But if they don't think there's enough local interest to form an EMB, what was all the training for? And why do they think we were there?
Copyright John Steele 1992, 1999
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