Comment By Bill Cawley
I read a while ago of the good people of Bagnall leastways their elected representatives successfully blocking wind turbines being erected in the vicinity of the village. I would think that given the location of the place that this was an idea location for the turbines and given the feed in tariff for alternative energy production an ideal opportunity for the people of Bagnall to make some money.
But this is not the main purpose of this post.
The success of Bagnall in blocking the application, and I guess that we have used the blight that the siting of a turbine as well as the visual impact on the landscape would have on the community as the basis of their objection, made me recall a similar successful campaign that people of Bagnall carried out over 40 years ago to stop electricity pylons encroaching into the parish. On that occasion a successful alliance which also included the Ramblers’Assocation blocked the proposal and the MEB built the pylons which then were redirected through the Abbey Hulton Council estate where I was bought up.
I can remember the pylons being built in the late 60s and the first casualty- a friend’s pigeon that blundered into the cables. The cables of the pylon also over hung over Carmountside High School where I was a pupil. There was no counter demonstration from the people of Abbey Hulton or their representatives who were not organised unlike the people on the hill.
There have certainly been other victims in the intervening 40 years as electric pylons became a feature of the local. In 2007 a report published by SAGE, a collective of academics, medical charities and representatives of the electricity industry, points to compelling evidence of serious health dangers.
It said that childhood leukaemia is the biggest threat for families living near power lines. A quarter of the 400 children who contract the disease each year die.
The report cites a list of other linked illnesses and conditions including breast and brain cancer, miscarriage and Alzheimer’s disease.
The example of the redirected pylons is perhaps the earliest example I know of the way in which disadvantaged communities are often used as places where social or environmental problems can be discarded. The closure of long stay hospitals in the 80s and 90s often saw hostels and homes located in the poorer areas because attempts to locate social care facilities in more middle class areas inevitably lead to objections and protest.
As a County Councillor I recall the violent objections and absurd comment made by protestors in Tean in 2000 at a proposed 16 bed unit for elderly residents of St Edwards Hospital in Cheddleton, many of the patients’ had dementia. There was much talk of the danger faced by local children by having the facility although as I pointed out the greatest danger faced by the children of Tean was by local speeding motorists.
The way in which authority can ignore disadvantaged communities however continues. Take the issue of Bail Hostels of which there has been no local debate. In 2007 Channel 4 Channel 4 News revealed the location of all 150 bail hostels run by the private company Clearsprings that won the government contract to house low risk offenders on early release from prison or on bail.
Opponents say the hostels – mainly regular houses in ordinary streets – are being opened without consultation with local residents and, unlike probation service hostels, don’t provide 24-hour supervision of their residents. All the hostels were placed in areas where housing costs were low making it cheaper for Clearsprings.
Channel 4 named hostels located in Stoke and Newcastle amongst the 150 hostels.
Now two years on it seems critics have proved right it was revealed that the company’s contract may be terminated.
It comes after failings were identified at a hostel on Teesside where a young man was murdered by another resident.
National Association of Probation Officers official Harry Fletcher told the BBC: “It’s just not on, putting four or five volatile individuals in the same place with no supervision.
“The government has got to go back to the days when people on bail were supervised properly, by experienced and trained staff. It’s as simple as that.
“This has been a nightmare, it’s been a mistake, it needs to be unravelled.”
ClearSprings Bail Hostels
Hello Bill
I live next door to a ClearSprings hostel and I am campaigning for its closure. Unfortunately the MoJ is lying when it says that ClearSprings is only for harmless, low risk offenders/defendants. There really is no way in which you can make the scheme work like that. People who are so needy that they have nowhere to go often have all kinds of problems and placing them in unsupervised houses is a disaster for all concerned. I’ve spoken to quite a few ClearSprings neighbours and most have told me that they would have little objection to properly sited, supervised accommodation being provided for offenders/defendants. They do feel, however, that shoving them into little terraced houses and then waving goodbye is scandalous.
I’m copying below some comments made by a ClearSprings Support Officer to a local newspaper in Nottingham. They make disturbing reading.
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http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/news/warning-neighbours-bail-hostels/article-596571-detail/article.html
I am a Clearsprings support officer. The public must be made aware of the risks and the type of people being housed in ClearSprings accommodation. I have dealt with people who have a string of offences, including threats to kill, GBH, robbery, burglary, ABH etc. Many of the referrals we receive are poor, ie they have drug or alcohol issues or mental health issues. As support officers we are given no protection at all by management, other than a solo protect device, which would arrange for police to attend if activated during an attack. I have been told off by my manager on a number of occassions for getting the police involved with various things and support officers are frequently bullied by managers. We all work well over 60 hours a week completing meaningless paperwork and often we only get to visit the residents in the house once or twice a week for a couple of hours. Houses have been used as brothels, one house was blown up last year, this case in the north of england…..it is disastrous from that perspective. I could think of many simple solutions to improve the standard and safety of the scheme, but support officers are frequently undermined by management. without the support officers, the scheme would be dead in the water and yet we carry the can when things go wrong!!!
On a side issue, the scheme has worked fantastically well for many others and even neighbours would have to agree to how some service users have been a genuine pleasure to live next door to. Unfortunately too many poor referrals are being accepted into the scheme. There is no longer a “low” risk policy of acceptence, it is frequently medium to high risk referrals being taken on.
I often feel a part of the deception that is being perpetrated on the police and public, by having to lie or be economical with the truth to residents who are genuinely concerned. Pressure from management is such that the moment a staff member speaks out, they are sacked. I am my colleagues have wanted to “blow the whistle” on what is going on for a long time, but we all need jobs and unfortunately, there is never the protection you deserve for being a whistleblower.
The scheme has been good and has been bad. With the right things in place, a change of management attitude and more transparency and a definate change back to “low” risk offenders, ie soft crimes, such as fraud, shoplifting, criminal damage, motoring offences, will ensure that the scheme can succeed and more importantly that the support officers and the public get the protection they need.
Anonymous
Good Afternoon Clare
I was speaking to a friend of mine earlier today about the protests around the establishment of the bail hostel in Shelton. My friend used to work for the City Council and told me that the response of the Labour Councillors of the time was pitiful- we are back on the Good/ Bad Councillor theme now.
What do your elected representatives say especially now that the contract with Clear Springs is up for review?
Hello Bill
I think we have had good support at local level, particularly from our (Labour) ward councillor. Unfortunately she, in common with all the other ward councillors who have ClearSprings in their locality, was not involved in the decision to site the hostel next door to me in even the smallest way. She could only campaign belatedly after the hostel was installed and we started to complain.
The MoJ and ClearSprings have come up with a pretty watertight scam. As long as ClearSprings houses five people or fewer, they can be shoved into an ordinary little ‘Coronation Street’ house like the one next door to me with no reference to planning controls whatsoever. Council housing officials are given a very short time in which to lodge any objections when a hostel is proposed and can only do so on absurdly narrow grounds. The only people who have an absolute veto are the local police, who are always consulted. Whether local people get properly treated therefore depends largely on the quality of the local police force. In some areas (usually prosperous, middle class ones – no surprise there) police have worked very closely with local councils to turn down repeated applications from ClearSprings. They have also knocked on doors and warned local people of impending doom so that they can protest before the deed is done, not afterwards.
One big plank of the MoJ’s argument for ClearSprings is that it is ‘rehabilitating’ local offenders/ defendants. The implication is that we are being completely heartless by not giving them a chance to return to society. In reality, what all the ClearSprings neighbours have found is that local offenders are very thin on the ground. Instead, working class areas with cheap rents are absorbing problem people from far and wide so that more prosperous localities don’t have to. The MoJ has denied this for a very long time but a group of residents I’m in touch with has now been told by NOMS that the hostel in their street is specifically NOT for local people – the first bit of honesty we have heard from NOMS in some time.
It seems to me that where ClearSprings encounters ‘soft’ council officials who just roll over without any kind of fight, it returns again and again to add more hostels. It’s much easier than trying to sneak them into savvier areas. This has nothing to do with local need and everything to do with ClearSprings struggling to fulfill on its contract. Having managed to install no less than three hostels in my town, ClearSprings then tried to get permission to extend one of them from three bedspaces to five.
Whenever I talk to officials etc about our problems, there is always a faint whiff in the air of something akin to ‘well, they deserve it living in that street. If they were worth considering they’d live somewhere posher.’ Yet most of my neighbours are very nice people – some would argue rather nicer than some of the inhabitants of well-heeled estates. We already put up with problems which Acacia Avenue has never dreamt of. We don’t need ClearSprings as well.
Hello Bill
I think we have had good support at local level, particularly from our (Labour) ward councillor. Unfortunately she, in common with all the other ward councillors who have ClearSprings in their locality, was not involved in the decision to site the hostel next door to me in even the smallest way. She could only campaign belatedly after the hostel was installed and we started to complain.
The MoJ and ClearSprings have come up with a pretty watertight scam. As long as ClearSprings houses five people or fewer, they can be shoved into an ordinary little ‘Coronation Street’ house like the one next door to me with no reference to planning controls whatsoever. Council housing officials are given a very short time in which to lodge any objections when a hostel is proposed and can only do so on absurdly narrow grounds. The only people who have an absolute veto are the local police, who are always consulted. Whether local people get properly treated therefore depends largely on the quality of the local police force. In some areas (usually prosperous, middle class ones – no surprise there) police have worked very closely with local councils to turn down repeated applications from ClearSprings. They have also knocked on doors and warned local people of impending doom so that they can protest before the deed is done, not afterwards.
One big plank of the MoJ’s argument for ClearSprings is that it is ‘rehabilitating’ local offenders/ defendants. The implication is that we are being completely heartless by not giving them a chance to return to society. In reality, what all the ClearSprings neighbours have found is that local offenders are very thin on the ground. Instead, working class areas with cheap rents are absorbing problem people from far and wide so that more prosperous localities don’t have to. The MoJ has denied this for a very long time but a group of residents I’m in touch with has now been told by NOMS that the hostel in their street is specifically NOT for local people – the first bit of honesty we have heard from NOMS in some time.
It seems to me that where ClearSprings encounters ‘soft’ council officials who just roll over without any kind of fight, it returns again and again to add more hostels. It’s much easier than trying to sneak them into savvier areas. This has nothing to do with local need and everything to do with ClearSprings struggling to fulfill on its contract. Having managed to install no less than three hostels in my town, ClearSprings then tried to get permission to extend one of them from three bedspaces to five.
Whenever I talk to officials etc about our problems, there is always a faint whiff in the air of something akin to ‘well, they deserve it living in that street. If they were worth considering they’d live somewhere posher.’ Yet most of my neighbours are very nice people – some would argue rather nicer than some of the inhabitants of well-heeled estates. We already put up with problems which Acacia Avenue has never dreamt of. We don’t need ClearSprings as well.