Prescot Road and Prescot Drive steering group update

A very emotive meeting this afternoon.

After several years of delay since first the issue of these houses were raised - Councillor Warren Bradley called it 2 years, Councillor Steve Radford called it 27 years, we have had a meeting to discuss further progress with the Prescot Road and Prescot Drive Houses in Fairfield.

Local readers will be only too familiar with the terrible situation here but for the benefit of my national and international readers, these houses have been neglected and left to fall down and be burnt down by Liverpool City Council who identified the area as suitable for redevelopment some 7 years ago but have so far failed to come up with a plan. Living in the midst of this wanton dereliction are some 1o home owners who cannot sell their houses on the open market due to the uncertainty and which the council is even now not ready to commit to purchasing from them. Some of the individual cases are truly heartbreaking but I dont want to go into detail about them outside of our meetings.

We met today for a progress report, our first since last November, and I am fairly sure the meeting was only called because I wrote last month to all the great and the good condemning the delays and decay in no uncertain terms.

We learnt that the current plan was to call another meeting in mid October to look at the plans from the consultants for this area. We were as one, for a change, in agreeing that this was too far in the future. For once I was able to agree with Councillor Warren Bradley when he said that this had gone on far too long since his personal promise two years ago to sort this out. He said he could not condemn local people to pushing the boulder back up the hill. And speaking as a fireman he said he knew and understood how desperate the situation was.

Councillor Radford reminded him, and Councillor Doran, local ward councillor and Assistant Executive member for Housing who chairs this steering group that rarely meets, that they are in fact the administration so blaming someone else was hardly an option.

Anyway, we pushed for a timescale that ends in mid September, not mid October and left officers in no doubt that we need progress now.

The interim report (that is probably interim to the power of 5 by now) talks about a mixed response to the area, some demolition, some refurb and has engaged in lots of agencies and partners so I do feel very vaguely hopeful that we might in the end get something near what we want.

I would like to say I am confident however, it has dragged on long past that point.

I dont really know who to point the finger at, officers for not making this the top of their work pile every day until it is sorted, or the administration LibDems for not asking them to. All I know is that I have asked nicely, and then more firmly and then shouted and put my foot down with a firm hand and finally today became emotional and more or less begged for some progress, as my residents are living in the sort of circumstances that would be familiar in Basra.

Hopefully that message has now got through, please God we can finally take some action. If I could only sort one thing out as a councillor this year, this would be it!