New chair for Ramsbottom LAP

Reporter: Ask Bury
Date online: 16 May 2008

Ramsbottom Tottington and North Manor Local Area Partnership will have a full agenda for its first meeting the new Municipal year, with Councillor Yvonne Wright as the newly appointed Chair. The meeting is to be held at Peel Brow Primary School on Thursday 22nd May, starting at 6.30pm.

There will be a presentation from Paula Cockcroft, the Children's Centre Co-ordinator for Ramsbottom. Paula will explain the workings of the Children's Centre and how services for pre school children and their families are being delivered in the Ramsbottom area. Ramsbottom does not have a Children's centre building as such, and this makes it an interesting challenge for the area.

There will again be a chance to join in round table discussions, to agree the priorities and tasks to be fed into the Local Community Plan. The discussions follow on from the March meeting, where members of the community and LAP members drew up lists of priorities that they felt should be dealt with in the area over the next three years. Areas such as health, crime, village centres and environmental issues were highlighted as areas to be fed into the plan. This is now in draft form, and needs to be finalised and agreed.

There will also be the usual agenda items including funding applications, policing updates and other Local Area Partnership matters, as well as the open forum during which members of the public can bring up any issues of local concern. A traffic engineer will be in attendance at this meeting.

The newly selected Chair of the local area partnership, Councillor Yvonne Wright will be taking over from Councillor Sheila Magnall. Councillor Wright said, "I am delighted to be back in the Chair and look forward to the challenges that the role brings. We hope that people are encouraged to come along and have their say on what is proposed for the Local Community Plan. The round table discussions were very successful in March, and we managed to get a wide variety of views from members of the public. Everyone is as always welcome to attend."