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Five Year Report 1989 - 1994Year 2 Report by Simon Loveitt
THE SECOND YEAR JULY 1990 – JULY 1991 My second year in post began as we moved into our house in Old Trafford, within walking distance of work, after almost a year in temporary accommodation in a huge house, where we basically camped. We had an electric cooker but the house was fitted with gas, so we used camping gas to cook on. The house had no carpets, so we survived with what bits of carpets we had.
Since the last year, I had taken over responsibility for the playscheme. The playscheme organiser for the past few years had needed a break. The organising of the scheme and recruiting of staff seemed to be going well, but three weeks before the playscheme was due to begin three of the four volunteers pulled out, leaving just two of us. As I was due to go on holiday, I couldn't recruit anyone else. So we changed the programme to minibus trips. There were still a total of 52 children with whom we worked during this time. We had very good feedback from the children who attended the playscheme.
CLEANING This had been an area of concern since I began work in 1989. The problem was that the premises were never cleaned, although the building was used quite often by the local community for meetings and of course by the Church for worship on Sundays. I was really ashamed about the state of the building, particularly during Tenants' meetings when children would come with parents, crawl around on the floor and go away from the meetings with filthy clothes. As a result, I suggested that the CRCW project and the Church ought to pay half each of the costs of cleaning and that this should be done at least once a week. This was agreed and the premises are in a much better condition now for the relatively small cost of eight pounds per week.
ESTATE ACTION BID/PROJECT
An important
area of my work centres on the issue of housing. St. George's in Hulme,
where the Church is situated, managed to win an Estate Action Project
jointly funded by the Department of Environment and Manchester City Council.
This provided £11.5M over three years to improve some of the housing stock
in the area, including improving the multi-story flats by installing Closed
Circuit Television, new windows, electrics and employing 24 hour security
guards. This has made the premises more secure. Some of the maisonettes in
the area were being decapped (the top houses demolished creating terraced
houses), while others were modernised, which meant moving everyone out of
their houses for what was going to be nine months, while the work was
carried out. It turned out in fact that it was double that time. The
Tenants' Association, the City Council and myself were in negotiations for
many months to put together a package acceptable to all sides. All of us are
members of the Steering Group responsible for overseeing the project. This
group includes city architects, housing chief executives and direct works
departments of the City Council. There have been many problems with this
project. It was difficult to achieve a balance between ensuring the project
runs smoothly, ensuring that people were moved out of their homes on time to
allow the work to begin and dealing with people's lives, but it was good to
have this experience of small scale regeneration.
HOUSING OFFICE
Through the
Estate Action Project, which stipulated that services were kept as local as
possible, a Housing Office opened in St. George's to try to run the estate
more efficiently and to be more accessible to local people. Before Estate
Action, this estate was run from a Housing Office in Moss Side. Although
there were problems in the first year of its operation, such as a large
turnover of staff and the office being closed more often than it should be,
it was good to see a decentralisation of large Council departments. The
Park Office (as it is now called) holds monthly management meetings between
housing officers; local tenants, myself and Hulme's Tenant Liaison Officer
to try to keep on top of some of the difficulties which are encountered on
the estate. YOUTH CLUB
club for both
age groups and some residential work with the older group. The club has
tended to be increasingly detached, rather than building based, as there are
not enough volunteers to supervise the children adequately and the building
tends to suffer whenever they are in it. The building had not been designed
with youth groups in mind and hasn't many of the facilities one would expect
of a youth club. We therefore run a club mainly from minibuses and this
works much better. We were successful in applications to Children In Need
and the Home Office for money for projects with the young people - mostly
residential work.
PLAY FORUM This forum is made up of representatives from any group in Hulme that works with young people, giving support to each other and campaigning on issues concerning young people, youth work, or play provision. Although it has no regular meeting, it tends to meet in the months leading up to playschemes.
This was an
area I tried to avoid after previous experiences with distribution of
butter, but I had the opportunity to have butter weekly for a four month
run. Members of the local community and church went door to door to collate
names and addresses and pension numbers. The butter was then collected by me
and distributed to the group of volunteers who then went door to door with
it. This was very successful, trouble free and produced a great deal of good
will within the community.
SHAWGREEN COMMUNITY AND
YOUTH CENTRE
In the centre
of this sub-area of St. George's exists a block of three shops, two of which
were empty. For many years, tenants had requested that there be something on
the estate for young people, such as a youth club. With this in mind, a
local tenant of Shawgreen and I were in negotiations with the City Council
to convert these shops into a community and youth resource. We held a public
meeting on the estate to discuss the proposals and how the centre could be
funded and run. Only one person turned up. I then wrote a letter to the
tenants on Shawgreen outlining the proposals and asking them to reply to me,
a local tenant, or one of the housing officers. We heard nothing, so another
letter went out with a tear off slip. We received no slips back. A petition
was then handed into the Park Office from tenants who lived around the
proposed site. Although they wanted somewhere for the young people to go,
they didn't want it next to their house. The tenants got their wishes and
the empty shops have been left.
THE CORNBROOK COMMUNITY
ENTERPRISE CENTRE The Cornbrook site, which includes the local housing office in its new buildings, has other extensive buildings and grounds which should have become vacant in 18 months time (after Princess School, Moss Side leave to go back to their rebuilt school which was burnt down over 4 years ago). There was extensive work done by local tenants, myself and the Local Action Team of the City Council to see what could be done for the benefit of the community with this resource. The outcome was a package consisting of small business premises, childcare facilities including after school activities, a playscheme, a nursery and a cafe, which would serve lunches to pensioners. Although a feasibility study had been commissioned and completed, nothing concrete can be done until the school moves out, which is likely to be January 1995 at the earliest. In reality, this project has been left until the school moves out.
CHURCH DISCUSSIONS REGARDING COMMUNITY ISSUES
It was through
these meetings and the personal contact with members of the congregation,
that some of these areas were addressed, such as work with the elderly and
housing issues - to the fear and trepidation of the housing office!
HULME SPORTS PROGRAMME
MANAGEMENT
This project
employs three full-time workers who organise activities with and for the
community with the help of local volunteers. Areas of work include work with
the unemployed, women's work (such as self-defence courses, a health drop-in
and women's swimming), work with young people, with the elderly and
residential activities. I had a lot of contact with the Hulme Sports
Programme during my first two years, particularly with young people and as a
consequence, I was asked to join their management committee. The work of
this group is both interesting and varied. CITY CHALLENGE
What replaced the old housing were new prefabricated buildings, the shells of which were installed in a day in some instances. Deck access housing and the world famous tCrescents' were built. These buildings were quickly seen as a disaster.
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