Labour & Co-operative | Serving the communities of Oldham West, Chadderton & Royton
It was a great privilege to join faith and civic leaders this morning to pay our respects and lay a wreath at the Oldham Remembrance Service
Those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, for freedom and for democracy will never be forgotten.
We will remember them.
Wonderful to see Oldham Civic Centre and Royton Town Hall lit up ahead of Remembrance Sunday.
You can find your local service for tomorrow here https://www.oldham.gov.uk/remembrance2024
It was great to bump into the local Scouts group who have been at Morrisons fundraising for the Royal British Legion ahead of Remembrance Sunday.
Keep up the great work!
The local Labour-led council is driving the improvement of our borough’s heritage, and it deserves credit for prioritising these schemes in very difficult circumstances.
Just over the past few weeks, we have seen the reopening of Royton Town Hall – fully restored for community use and back to its former glory.
Work on the Old Gallery on Union Street is well underway and will be home to a new civic centre linking to the Gallery and Lifelong Learning Centre.
The final piece of the Old Town Hall jigsaw was completed when the magnificent Egyptian Room was opened this weekend, with this stunning venue now supporting local food businesses to establish and grow.
The social history of the borough is also being brought into these plans, not just with the Egyptian Rooms becoming a new hub to meet with friends and family, but the opening of the Hive taking a huge space in the Spindles to help small businesses thrive, and to bring people together.
I also had the opportunity to visit the new indoor market hall which will bring Tommyfield from the edge of town right into the heart of it, sitting between the shopping centre, Parliament Square & the beautiful Old Town Hall.
This new venue will also be home to a new events space, with hundreds being able to use the hall as they do the QE Hall but with the significant advantage of having the new bars and restaurants next door, and closer connection to the Metrolink tram stop on Union Street.
Add to this the work on Yorkshire Street as the High Street accelerator, securing the Oldham Coliseum at Fairbottom Street, taking on the Prudential Building to stop it deteriorating into further ruin, and the wider plans for new housing: our plan is becoming far more than the sum of its parts.
Now we have a Labour government, the council has an active partner in realising the potential of Chadderton, Oldham and Royton with lots still to do; Foxdenton Hall, Oldham Lyceum, both Chadderton and Royton Precincts, and more.
The challenges facing our borough have been significant and I know many remain to be convinced that the plan will make an impact. I hope seeing it come together builds confidence, trust and, importantly, pride in the place we call home.
My final pledge at the election was to boost community ownership so that the people of Oldham West, Chadderton & Royton have a real stake in our community. A backbone of this is through the hub of small businesses we have. There are 730 small businesses based in Oldham, making up 9.8% of total businesses, which is 1% higher the national average.
I, therefore, support the steps taken in the budget to protect small businesses from the raise in employer national insurance. Next year no small business will pay national insurance, and 1 million businesses will pay the same or less national insurance going forward.
The Government is also bringing forward a Small Business Strategy Command Paper to provide further support. This will also hopefully include plans on growing the co-operative economy to support inclusive businesses focused on people from the community working together and supporting each other.
The budget has also pledged to make business rates fairer to protect the high street through permanently lower tax rates for retail, hospitality, and leisure (RHL) properties. Alongside this there will be a 40% relief next year for RHL properties up to a cash cap of £110,000 per business. This will help us to rejuvenate our high streets and put properties back in the hands of co-operators from our community.
Community ownership matters. It dictates what our community looks like, and who has a say over what happens here. I welcome the budget’s support to small businesses as it will promote people from Oldham West, Chadderton & Royton being able to grow their ambition and shape the place we live.
Local shops are at the centre of our community. It has been horrific, therefore, to see the increase in retail crime over the past few years. Not only does this put shop-workers at risk, but it also threatens the very heart of our community.
USDAW found that 70% of retail workers have experienced verbal abuse at work, 46% have been threatened by a customer and 18% have been physically assaulted. Shoplifting also hit record highs last year with 50 offences being recorded every hour.
I committed at the general election to make Oldham West, Chadderton & Royton a safe place to live. This can’t happen when our highstreets are polluted with crime, antisocial behaviour, and abuse to workers.
No one should be in fear at work. I have long campaigned, as the Chair of the Cooperative Party, for and alongside retail workers to ensure the strongest potential protections to make our highstreets a safe place to work and to live.
I am proud that we have committed to steps in the budget to end retail crime once and for all. By scrapping the effective immunity for low-value shoplifting and providing additional funding for training to prevent shoplifting, we shall hopefully see a dramatic decrease in retail crime and a return to safe highstreets.
This government is proactive in tackling retail crime, reclaiming our highstreets, and protecting our communities.
Very proud of the work done to transform Oldham’s historic Egyptian Room in our Old Town Hall back to glory.
Saving the building was vital to celebrating our history and in building confidence for the future.
This food hall is a fantastic site for local people and will play a crucial role in the wider vision for our regenerated town centre.
This Labour Government is committed to the biggest increase in affordable housing in a generation, and at this Budget we’ve taken our first steps to achieving that.
We’ve inherited the most acute housing crisis in living memory; 150,000 children living in temporary accommodation and nearly 1.3 million households on social housing waiting lists. Despite this, the previous Government handed nearly £2bn in grant funding for homes back to the Treasury, showing their complete disregard for people in desperate need of a decent home.
This harsh reality is not lost on Oldham. We currently have 7228 households on the social housing register, with 793 children living in temporary accommodation.
Oldham Councils Housing Options Front Door at the Civic centre, providing vital housing support, currently averages 100 residents a day showing how deeply the housing crisis is felt in Oldham.
Housing services can not confront the crisis through underfunding, undersupply, and a lack of support from the government. This government promised change, and our Budget has shown we will deliver on that.
The Chancellor has set out that we will make an immediate injection of £500m of additional capital into the current Affordable Homes Programme for next year. This will support up to 5,000 new social and affordable homes and takes overall investment in housing supply for next year to over £5bn.
This Labour Government is kickstarting the biggest boost to social and affordable housebuilding in a generation – protecting stock, building more homes, and providing certainty and stability for providers.
At the general election I pledged to you that my priority is for everyone in Oldham West, Chadderton & Royton to have access to a decent home. We now have a government also committed to this goal, and as your MP, I will work with the council to turn the page on Oldham’s housing crisis.
