Friends of MULE panellist spotlight: Cllr Kevin Peel
Article published: Thursday, November 14th 2013
Ahead of the Whose City? Friends of MULE discussion at Black Lion pub tomorrow evening, our third panellist Q&A is with the Manchester City Centre ward Councillor Kevin Peel.
Kevin was born and raised the eldest of five children on a council estate in Whiston in Merseyside. Having to leave home at 16 and unable to afford university, he did everything from working on a factory production line to stacking shelves at Tesco before a brief but transformational year in London working for a charity campaigning to improve the NHS. Moving to Manchester seven years ago, Kevin got involved in local politics and was elected as the first ever Labour and Co-operative councillor for Manchester city centre in May 2011. He balances his role as a councillor with a full time job working for a sustainable transport charity and his role as a trustee of Greater Manchester Youth Network.
MULE: As a city centre councillor, what do you think Manchester City Council’s priorities should be over the next few years?
Kevin: We’re being forced to make yet more devastating budget cuts by the Government, so our overriding priority has to be to do that in a way which doesn’t cause pain to the most vulnerable people in the city. Alongside that is the need to create jobs to get Manchester people to work, particularly the 5,500 young people currently suffering unemployment as a result of the Government’s economic choices.
MULE: How does the council engage with Mancunians in developing its policies, and if there was one change you could make to the process what would it be?
Kevin: That’s a big question! Perhaps I’ll get the opportunity to answer it more fully on the night. Residents are engaged in decision making in a range of ways – formal and informal consultations, surveys and via councillors who regularly seek the views of their constituents on policy matters.
I’m a big believer in participatory democracy and active citizenship and I would make big changes to improve the way we engage with residents and how they influence the policy process. The big con about the Government’s localism agenda is that it actually takes power away from communities, particularly in the planning process. We need meaningful localism. I’d like residents to have a much stronger voice in licensing and planning decisions and control over how some of the council’s budget is spent in their neighbourhoods.
MULE: Over a quarter of children in the city grew up in severe poverty. Why is this the case, given the investment in Manchester over the years?
Kevin: We’ve seen the number of children growing up in poverty in Manchester come down, but there is still so much to do. With lots of inward migration to the city, the picture is constantly changing. Our role is to ensure that families have access to good quality housing, services, education and jobs to ensure no one ends up in poverty and those in poverty are supported to lift themselves out.
This isn’t just an issue for the city, Government has a huge part to play and recent changes to the welfare system are going to make the situation worse, not better.
MULE: Could anything be done to enable people to share more widely in Manchester’s economic model, and if so what?
Kevin: I’d like to see us introduce the living wage for council employees and stipulate a living wage clause in all council contracts and lead a call for all local employers to follow suit. This is difficult in the current financial situation but we’ve made a start with the Manchester minimum wage.
We also need to better communicate the reasons for investment in the city – it can seem unfair to some that while some local services are impacted by the cuts the council is still spending money on, for example, refurbishing Central Library. But investment like this has a huge benefit to the whole city, not least the jobs it creates. Manchester people need to feel that this investment is for them, not somebody else. And we need to ensure that as many of the jobs as possible created by the investment and regeneration we’re delivering are going to Manchester people.
Questions: Richard Goulding
For more information on the Friends of MULE panel discussion, click here. It’s on Thursday 14 November, free entry, upstairs at Black Lion and doors open at 7.45pm. Kevin Peel will be speaking in a personal capacity as a ward councillor and not as the official voice of Manchester City Council overall.
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Comments
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Kevin is a little behind the times with what his own Council is doing eg the Council has implemented the Living wage for it’s employees, but has not done anything about it’s contractors or leading a campaign for all employers in the City to pay the Living Wage.
Comment by Sam Darby on November 16, 2013 at 10:22 am
I must declare an interest when I say that as a member of the Green Party I note that Brighton the only Green Party led council in the country, has implemented the Living Wage for it’s workers and now has 100 firms in it’s area signed up to pay it.
On the cuts in essential services, it’s a disgrace thatservices for disabled people and elderly are being cut so that the City can fund £425,000 for an Alicia Keys concert, spend £2 million a year on the National Football Museum and a million a year on the so called Manchester International Festival. It’s all very well to spend millions on the Central Library, but at the same time local libraries are being closed or downsized. Labour is failing Manchesters people at a time when they need help. -
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Manchester City’s Labour councillors (and Kevin is one), keep claiming they have had to make cuts to front-line services, because of Government cuts. It was the council who decided to cut front-line services, especially child and youth services. Some councils took a more mature approach, such a Brighton Council, that safeguarded child and youth services. A recent report from Ofsted found Manchester’s Children Services inadequate: http://snipurl.com/29k4s01.
Comment by Patrick Sudlow on December 26, 2014 at 7:09 pm
In the meantime, the council throws money at the likes of Tom Bloxham (Urban Splash), Ian Simpson, Chris Oglesby (Bruntwood) and Askdevelopemtns. To build more offices, retail units and ‘homes-to-buy’. Despite the fact that we have hundreds of empty office and retail units and over 5,000 empty dwellings. In fact, the EU has threaten to ‘claw-back’, EU grants given to Manchester City Council, because the monies could not be properly accounted for! As for inward migration, the office of National Statistics shows net migration has been out of Manchester. What we do have, is 60% of the workforce in Manchester, commute into Manchester from other areas.
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