There has been a resurgence of anti-social behaviour on parts of the Woodlands Estate associated with Rough Wood reports Liberal Democrat councillor Ian Shires.

Residents have approached the Short Heath Liberal Democrat Focus Team and the Police for help in resolving the problem.

“The problem we have here is the 24 hour access to Rough Wood through three access points” said Ian.

A long term solution to this problem could involve the forming of a “Friends of Rough Wood” group. Anyone interested in joining should get in touch with the Short Heath Focus Team via this blog. 

The recent spell of severe weather has left a legacy of a multitude of pot holes on roads across the borough. This is going to drain hundreds of thousands of pounds from an already stretched Highways Maintenance budget.

“The fear is that much needed resurfacing work on roads already in poor condition before this winter’s frost and snow could find themselves being pushed even further back in the maintenance programme as a result” said Liberal Democrat councillor Ian Shires.

As a result Ian has written to Highways bosses asking what action is being taken to ensure that those roads already in the maintenance programme will still be resurfaced at the time specified.

It is difficult to single out one specific road in Willenhall but Spring Lane surely has to be one of the worst if not the worst roads in the Borough. Even then the council is saying that it won’t get resurfaced till next year. “To see it put back even further because of Tory cutbacks and severe weather, would be a disaster” said Ian. 

Willenhall Local Neighbourhood Partnership (LNP) has called on the multi agency Community Action Tasking Group (CAT) to investigate anti social behaviour associated with the Linear Walkway which follows the route of the disused railway line near to Stroud Avenue, Willenhall reports Liberal Democrat councillor Ian Shires.

The move came after a group of residents from the area approached the LNP for help at its meeting last week. The residents told members of the LNP how they had approached the council and the Police for help but to date the problem remains unresolved.

“It appears that the Police and the council have each approached this problem in isolation” said LNP chair Ian Shires. ” As a result only the symptoms of the problem have been tackled.

“ By suggesting the multi agency approach, it is hoped to bring the combined efforts of the Police, The Youth Service, The Fire service and the Anti Social Behaviour Unit to bear on the problem in order to find a long lasting solution” said Ian.

The LNP will monitor the progress of the investigation in order to keep residents informed.

 This article was written by Vince Cable and appeared in today’s Mail on Sunday   The bubble of hope that the economic crisis may be over, and recovery soon established, burst last week.

  The recession is officially over but growth is almost invisible. The next set of results will be produced in April.

There is now a realistic possibility that Gordon Brown will go into the Election in May with the economy, at best, bumping along the bottom.

The Government’s rallying cry will have to be: ‘It’s awful but it could have been a lot worse’.

I am not surprised. I have often said in this column that this isn’t a recession like those of the early Eighties and early Nineties.

The British economy had a massive heart attack when the arteries of the banking system seized up.

The banks dangerously overextended themselves through reckless lending in the artificial property boom and by building a bizarre pyramid of complex, paper products which they didn’t understand and which eventually collapsed in a heap.

As a result we are now, as a country, considerably poorer than we were a year ago.

More positively, the patient is still alive thanks to a powerful cocktail of economic medicines: interest rates cut to near zero; the artificial creation of money (so-called ‘quantitative easing’); massive budget deficits; rescue and semi-nationalisation of the banking system; and a big devaluation.

But the country is still on a dripfeed and any honest economic doctor will warn that the danger of a relapse into ‘double-dip recession’ is high. We need a tough stay in the debt addiction clinic and a different lifestyle.

And we have to recognise that much damage has been done. People have been hurt.

Millions have either lost their jobs, been forced into part-time working, unpaid internships and premature retirement or, in the private sector, have taken pay cuts to keep their jobs.

A lot of older people have no income from their savings and have seen their pension funds slashed in value.

Thousands of business people have seen good companies, the product of a lifetime’s work, forced to the wall by banks tightening their credit conditions.

The question now is: how best to support recovery?

The most immediate issue is what to do about the vast government borrowing that has arisen from a collapse in tax revenue - currently at its lowest share of the economy for 50 years - and rising public spending.

The Government has taken a lot of the cost of the banking collapse and recession on to its own books but we, the taxpayer, have to pay the bill.

I believe government borrowing has to be reduced; but the timing has to reflect the health of the economy.

Two hundred press-ups in the gym, as ordered by Dr Osborne, could kill the patient. I spent some time in the City of London last week talking to some of the bond dealers who are said to hold the country’s future in their hands.

They are obsessed with the country’s credit rating and warn that we are in danger of losing our triple-A status which enables the Government to borrow cheaply.

They have to be taken seriously.

It would be reckless to plunge the economy back into recession through the immediate large-scale slashing of public services and jobs because the Government’s deficit would widen instead of contract.

We have to be sure that the private sector can grow again, creating new jobs, if government contracts.

Some very difficult decisions on public spending do need to be made and it is important that they are the right decisions - not damaging cuts in investment that undermine the country’s long-term future.

But there will have to be discipline over public sector pay, especially at the top, and some cutbacks in numbers as there have been in the private sector.

It’s time to wean the public sector off its all-pervasive bonus culture. It is possible to run the public sector more efficiently, though no one should pretend that this is easy.

Nor is it honest to say that some government budgets, such as that of the NHS, should be ‘ring-fenced’ from cuts.

By doing so, the Government and the Tories are condemning other valued services to deeply damaging cuts.

The process of rehabilitation will take years not months. Mervyn King, at the Bank of England, has warned of a decade of hard slog.

This can happen only if the public understands and supports what their government is trying to do. What people tell me is they need a sense of where the country is going.

If there is to be a decade of hard slog and slow rehabilitation what is essential is a plan for recovery and it’s down to government to provide that sense of direction.

In the next few months there will be much drama and excitement over every statistic emerging about the health of the economy.

A set of quarterly figures does not, in itself, mean a great deal (especially as the figures are usually revised). But the way forward does.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable

“A lasting and sustainable recovery can only be achieved if we correct these fundamental imbalances,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor.

Responding to David Cameron’s comments on public spending at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Vince Cable said:

“The Tories’ confused statements about cuts show that they don’t really know what to do about the economy.

“In their desperation to sound tough on public spending, the Tories didn’t take economic reality into account.

“It is of course necessary to cut public spending but this must be done calmly and rationally when the economy is strong enough to cope with it.

“The economy remains dependent on artificial money creation and a Government running a massive deficit, but with growth of just 0.1%, immediately slashing government spending would be disastrous.
 
“Our economy is too reliant on consumer spending and debt and a failing financial services industry. 

“A lasting and sustainable recovery can only be achieved if we correct these fundamental imbalances.”

“This is an utterly extraordinary decision and represents an abject failure of the system to protect patients,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.

Commenting on the decision by the GMC Fitness to Practice Panel not to strike Dr Jane Barton off the medical register, Norman Lamb said:
 
“This is an utterly extraordinary decision and represents an abject failure of the system to protect patients and to give justice to the families who have campaigned for 11 years.
 
“Given that the GMC itself was pressing for Dr Barton to be struck from the register it raises serious questions about how the rules operate and the decision of this panel.

“Surely it cannot be right given the deaths of many elderly people at Gosport War Memorial Hospital and the findings of failures on the part of Dr Barton that she should be permitted to continue to practice.
 
“This decision makes it clear that the only way forward is to hold a full public inquiry. At the very least, we owe it to the families of those who died in unexplained circumstances at Gosport Hospital.”

“If Gordon Brown has nothing to hide then he should have no qualms making it crystal clear to Sir Gus that the Iraq Inquiry must have what it needs,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Commenting on the Iraq Inquiry, Edward Davey said:

“Sir John Chilcot is absolutely right to demand detailed reasoning from the Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell as to why he has rejected requests to make documents public.
 
“There is clearly growing pressure on the Cabinet Secretary to justify his actions in withholding publication of documents.
 
“If Gordon Brown has nothing to hide then he should have no qualms making it crystal clear to Sir Gus that the Iraq Inquiry must have what it needs.
 
“It is welcome news that Sir John may recall Tony Blair to the inquiry. The fact that Tony Blair cannot currently be questioned directly against these vital documents is totally unsatisfactory.”

The Government is spending £10m renting office space and then leaving it unoccupied, research by the Liberal Democrats has uncovered.

The figures, released in answer to Parliamentary Questions, shows that:

• The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spent £4,717,000 on renting empty office space
• Department of Health spent £2,922,500 on renting empty office space
• The Department of Transport spent £1,095,000 on renting empty office space
• The Government in total rented 53,495 square meters of empty office space

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Housing Minister, Sarah Teather said:

“Either this Government is incompetent if it thinks £10m is small change.  It is completely unacceptable to spend taxpayers’ cash on renting nothing more than thin air. 
 
“We are in the middle of a housing crisis, yet Gordon Brown chooses to pour millions into a big black hole.  This is an astonishing betrayal of the thousands of families across the UK without a home.
 
“This kind of shameful waste simply cannot be allowed to go on.  Government departments need to wake up and stop leaking taxpayers’ money like a sieve.”

Talks are to take place early next week between senior officers of Walsall Council and the Highways Agency in Birmingham to thrash out emerging issues around the hard shoulder running project between J8 and J10a of the M6.

The talks have been arranged amid concerns from residents affected by the works being carried out by Carillion on behalf of The Highways Agency along the whole stretch of the project as it passes through Walsall.

Issues started to emerge when it was revealed that more protective fencing and trees would have to be removed between the Lichfield Road and Vernon Way in the New Invention area of Willenhall. This was quickly followed by an outcry from residents of Murdoch Way in the Beechdale area of Walsall as a gantry was erected near their homes inspite of earlier assurances that it would be sited closer to J10.

Residents of Broadmeadows Road in Short Heath, Willenhall where one of the highly emotive Emergency Refuge Areas (ERA) has been constructed, are concerned about a large pool which has appeared at the bottom of the motorway embankment. This pool did not exist before the ERA was constructed.

A resident to the south of the Lichfield Road on the Bloxwich side of the M6 is also concerned about water draining down the embankment causing water-logging of the back garden.

It now appears that sections of protective fencing may have to come out between J9 and J10 to facilitate the construction of the ERA at that location.

My concern is that it appears that lessons have not been learned from the mistakes of the past year and comments from the Highways Agency along the lines of we’ve installed many gantries without any problems don’t help. When is the Highways Agency going to realise that the works between J8 and J10a are like no others they have encountered till now. there is nowhere else on the M6 Links where large numbers of residents live as close to the Motorway.

It’s about time that the Highways Agency realised this and stopped adopting such a cavalier attitude and put the interests of residents first!

Willenhall Neighbourhood Partnership (LNP) has asked the all partner action group, ”Community Action Tasking” (CAT) to look in depth at the anti social behaviour associated with a children’s play area in Brereton Road, Forest Gate, New Invention.

The LNP took this action in response to a deputation of local residents who came to Wednesday’s meeting asking for help to resolve what has become a long standing problem caused by groups of teenagers who use the equipement into the early hours for late night drinking sessions.

Members of the LNP heard how loud mouthed, foul mouthed behaviour from youths deteriorated further into abuse and attacks on property.

Walsall Council has spent a great deal of money to give local children of primary school age a place to play in safety. The reality is that in the evenings gangs of young people take over and make local residents lives a living hell.

Up to now the problem has been tackled in isolation by the police, the council and the fire service. By referring the issue to the CAT all agencies can pool their resources and act more effectively together with residents and the young people themselves to resolve this long standing problem.

Willenhall LNP will monitor progress.