Councillor Mary Di Mauro

Why did you feel that it was necessary to bring the issue up in the Council meeting?

The Leader of the Council had given the following quote to the Manchester Evening News on Wednesday 12^th May 2010: “Asked whether the incident would make it difficult to him leading anti-crime and anti-domestic violence initiatives, Sir Richard said: “I don’t think I’ve ever used the expression ‘zero tolerance’.” This is totally incompatible with Council Policy, which has supported a zero tolerance strategy for 18 years since the policy was launched.

Did you receive support from colleagues, party members, family and friends etc?

I have been supported throughout by my Lib Dem colleagues, local party members, family and friends. People have stopped me in the street to tell me their own story and have thanked me for asking the question that everyone thought should be asked.

Should Richard Leese have permanently resigned as Council Leader?

He is in a position of responsibility as regards implementing and upholding anti-domestic abuse initiatives. His statement to the MEN is incompatible with this role and the Council’s own Domestic Abuse Strategy. He should have withdrawn this statement and taken the decision himself to step down as Leader of the Council.

What were your feelings towards the reaction by Labour councillors?

The Labour Group supported my Motion, so their reaction during the debate and afterwards is odd. A member of the public told me that they thought that I had just been abused and bullied in the Council Chamber and that the Labour Group had tried to intimidate me to make me stop speaking.

How did you respond to accusations (from fellow Councillors and many comments on the MEN website) that you made the comment simply to score political points?

So many people have contacted me to say “at last someone has asked the question”. The Council’s policy on domestic abuse had been left open to interpretation and I felt compelled to deal with it. I didn’t mention the Lib Dems once in my speech.

What are your feelings are on the zero tolerance approach to domestic violence?

People have been stopping me in the street to tell me their stories. One woman told me how, when she was a young woman, she had been physically abused by her husband when she was pregnant. The advice she was given by medical staff was to “Go home and make him something nice for his tea.” Zero tolerance should mean zero.

What could the Council do to reduce the incidence of domestic violence in Manchester?

Domestic abuse is known to increase during major sporting events. As I mentioned in my speech, the Council worked with many agencies during the World Cup in a coordinated campaign called “Blow the Whistle on Domestic Abuse”. I applaud this initiative and would wish this approach to continue. Some Councils have practitioners who visit “at risk” households on the day of a “big match”. I support this proactive approach in addition to a reactive approach as a means of anticipating and hopefully preventing abuse from taking place.

To get help in matters of domestic or sexual abuse or violence, see the End The Fear website which lists help lines and other contact details for support: http://www.endthefear.co.uk/

Mary Di Mauro is the elected Councillor for Northenden ward

Under the terms of the Bills of Rights 1689 the Crown cannot maintain a standing army in peace without the explicit approval of the House of Commons. It does that by voting each year the exact figures of servicemen and women that the three armed forces can maintain. But the armed forces also operate under a separate and distinct legal framework – military discipline. To maintain this separate jurisdiction, the government must obtain the consent of Parliament by re-enacting the Armed Forces Act every five years. This also provides an opportunity to amend and update the law relating to military discipline and other matters concerning the armed forces.

With the exception of Russia, and apprentices in Ireland, the British Army is unique in Europe in recruiting at the age of 16. Of 14,185 recruits into the army last year, 3,630 or over 25%, joined under the age of 18. Those who join the army at this age are required to make a longer commitment than those joining as adults. Sixteen year olds joining the army are required to serve for six years, while 18 year olds commit themselves to four years. After a six month ‘cooling-off’ period there is no right to leave. While ‘unhappy minors’ may leave at the discretion of their commanding officer, the fact that there is no discharge as of right leaves them uniquely open to bullying.

The current regime in the army is unlike any other apprenticeship. A breach of army discipline may lead to a criminal prosecution. Those joining the army at the age of 16 often come from the poorest and least educated backgrounds. Some have reading ages of a child of half that age. They lack the confidence to seek a change in their career in the same way as those training for professions. The nature of their legal status – it is not a contract – makes that worse.

The army is in loco parentis to its under 18 year olds. Its responsibility is that of a parent to a child with the particular abilities and characteristics of the individual recruit. During the period 1995 to 2002 four young soldiers died at the Princess Royal Barracks alone. Two of them were seventeen. During this time there were 59 incidents of self-harm. The situation is made worse by the lack of clarity of the legal commitment of those young people concerned. In enlisting in the army they become liable to military discipline under subsidiary legislation made under the Army Act 1955. But how many semi-literate teenagers read subsidiary legislation?
Bullying in the army should be as unacceptable as any intimidation in civilian life. Being locked into a six year commitment makes the impact of bullying potentially more serious and if it happens harder to escape from. As long as we have recruitment at the age of 16, only a wider discharge as of right would provide an adequate safeguard by ensuring that young people could not be compelled to remain in such a situation against their will.

The forthcoming Army Bill offers the new Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition the opportunity of righting these wrongs. Under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UK is obliged to pay attention to the best interests of a young person. Present practice subordinates the interests of the child to administrative convenience and military effectiveness. By setting the age of enlistment at 18 the UK government would ensure both a consistent attitude to the age of adult responsibility and follow best practice in the European Union. It would enable the UK government to implement the recommendations of Parliament`s Joint Committee on Human Rights.

The bill is traditionally examined by a select committee set up for that particular purpose (see here for example). This is an opportunity for those with concerns to lobby for change.

Michael Bartlet

This article is re-posted from openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Licence. The original can be found here.

Michael Bartlet is Parliamentary secretary for the Quakers and a co-author of Nonsense on Stilts ? A Quaker view of human rights.

From video documenting the last horse-drawn ‘chariot’ driver in Sulaimaniyah, to photographic portraits mocking orientalist paintings of nineteenth-century European artists, many of the works are explorations of the politics of identity, rather than explicit responses to the bloodiness of Iraq’s present and recent past.

The exhibition showcases the work of nineteen artists currently living and working in Iraq – explicitly excluding work from Iraqi artists in diaspora. This decision has its drawbacks, notably the narrow geographical range of the artists represented. Because the majority-Kurdish areas of northern Iraq are less dangerous than the rest of the country, and perhaps because the organisers’ strongest links were in Kurdish areas, fifteen of the artists are from Kirkuk, Sulaimaniyah and Erbil. The remaining four are from Baghdad.

“The majority of the artists do come from Iraqi Kurdistan, and that’s reflective of certain issues across Iraq,” concedes the exhibition’s co-curator, Sarah Perks. “We’re not saying that this is a full representation of all Iraqi art, just that here are nineteen artists living and working in Iraq, this is the art they’re creating at the moment. We’d like people to think a bit more widely and hopefully challenge some of their preconceptions.”

Adalet Garmiany, Perks’ co-curator, is a Kurdish refugee whose organisation, ArtRole, organised the first post-war art festival in Iraq, in Sulaimaniyah in 2009. According to Garmiany, some artists refused to participate in the show because of the mainly British and Kurdish organisers.

Amongst others who have not had their preconceptions challenged are, apparently, the visa applications staff at the British embassies in Amman and Beirut. A number of the featured artists, as well as several Iraqi academics, were invited to attend the recent exhibition opening. All were denied entry to the UK – part of a growing trend attributable to tightened visa regulations which, Perks suggests, could have serious implications for artistic freedom and interaction. “I don’t know why they didn’t give me a visa,” laments Julie Adnan, a photographic artist from Kirkuk.

According to Adnan and colleague Jamal Penjweny, from Sulaimaniyah, Iraqi artists are trying to use the internet to communicate – both abroad and with other artists within the country. But “unfortunately we do not have a good community of artists now in Iraq because most of the good Iraqi artists left Iraq during Saddam’s period and some after Iraq war because of the violence left the country,” says Penjweny.

Contemporary Art Iraq is at Conerhouse until 20 June.

Sarah Irving is a freelance writer based in Manchester.

Home office colleagues say Reid — Labour hard man, former secretary of state for health and defence, and home secretary — is the minister who brought business in from the cold. These days relations are warm and cosy. Marketing their wares as vital to the war on terror, while dreaming up everyday applications for intrusive high security kit, Reid’s friends have quietly advanced deep into the public sector — running schools, GP clinics and police investigations.

Out of government but still a serving MP, Reid has been taking £50,000 a year from G4S — the Group 4 Securicor giant.

He has been hosting ‘business breakfasts’, and talking up the scary threats and looming crises —  cyber attacks, pandemics, global warming, energy shortages, mass migration — that spell opportunity to his friends.

(They’ve made him honorary professor at the shadowy new Institute of Security and Resilience, at University College London; staff aren’t allowed to say whether industry is paying the bills.)

Life is good for G4S whose annual revenues have doubled to £6 billion in the past five years. Last month they picked up contracts for guarding foreign office buildings in the UK and in Afghanistan. They can afford to pay chief executive Nick Buckles (pictured) £3,835 every day.

G4S — slogan ‘Securing Your World’ — runs prisons, secure training centres and immigration centres including Tinsley House, where last year an asylum seeker who had been forcibly arrested and locked up, let go, arrested and locked up again, got predictably distressed — she was only ten years old — and tried to strangle herself.

Former Ghurkas-turned G4S personnel train British soldiers in mine clearance and ambush drills as part of their (increasingly outsourced) training before deployment to Afghanistan. John Whitwam, the former lieutenant colonel managing privatised Ghurkas, explains: “On Monday and Tuesday, they would be wearing Army uniform or dressed as the Taliban, by the end of the week they would be working elsewhere in G4S.”

Taking over core public services, G4S people monitor 12,000 electronically-tagged offenders, run hundreds of police and court cells, tackle anti-social behaviour and transport half a million prisoners every year — as well as doing things like covert surveillance for insurance companies.

They are aggressively expanding the market for intrusive high security kit, touting number plate recognition technology to retailers so they can tell how frequently customers drop by.

They’re installing CCTV in schools — giving parents ‘an added sense of security’ — and more cameras in shopping centres, harvesting information about how we shop.

They’re promoting biometrics to help employers catch workers trying to cheat the clock-in system.

Their newest division screens and vets employees, not just at recruitment, but all through their working lives.

That’s G4S, ‘Securing Your World’.

All sorts of questions spring to mind. Do we want our world secured this way? What on earth was G4S doing locking up that little girl? Is the rise in surveillance evidence-based? Or is it Nick Buckles and his mates chasing five grand a day? Whose interests has John Reid been serving all these years?

And . . . are environmentalists so very dangerous that G4S had to deploy Ghurkas — battle-hardened in Iraq and Afghanistan — to protect ‘sensitive utilities’ ahead of last year’s London Climate Camp? Were they serious? Or was that a sales-boosting stunt?

G4S has even got a ‘police business unit’, whose managing director said late last year:  “We have a team of 30 of our guys in one force on a major investigation right now, practically doing all of the roles except that of the senior investigating officer.”

Does that make us feel secure? Or would we rather have real police officers, trained for public service?

G4S isn’t the only gigantic security company doing surprising things.

There’s Serco, “Bringing Services to Life” and misery to thousands of children who have passed through the company’s Yarl’s Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire.

Business is brilliant. Shortly after celebrating record annual results — profits up 30 per cent to £177 million — chief executive Chris Hyman (£3,233 every day) spent one recent bright spring day down at Silverstone, test-driving his team’s Ferrari F430 ahead of the new racing season.

Besides locking up asylum seekers “with respect and understanding”, Serco brings its ‘deep public service ethos’ and ‘commercial know-how’ to defence, transport, civil government, science, the private sector and, with rising excitement, education and the NHS.

They have got an awful lot under corporate control.

Serco trains RAF helicopter crews, helps run the National Nuclear Laboratory and the Atomic Weapons Establishment.

They sell intelligence systems to law enforcement agencies including the National Crime Squad and the tax-man.

They help police forces connect intelligence with number plate recognition in systems so fast and flexible they can easily adapt to new police powers.

Serco supplies the rising numbers of covert surveillance vehicles that police forces demand, builds and runs prisons and youth offender facilities, monitors electronically tagged offenders, enforces curfews.

They’re running state schools in Bradford, Walsall, Stoke-on-Trent, they’ve got their fingers on 3,500 Sure Start children’s centres.

They provide out-of-hours GP services in Cornwall, employ ‘community matrons’ in Newham, they manage stacks of PFIs and will take more than £250 million from the NHS over the next ten years for pathology services alone.

They’ve got 7000 security-cleared staff working on ‘significant elements’ of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy.

And guess who has won the freshly privatised cabinet office contract to run the Emergency Planning College at Hawkhills in North Yorkshire? Yes. From Friday, Serco controls the training of the people who would take charge during emergencies and disasters when the Civil Contingencies Act — the one with all those alarming arbitrary powers — kicks in.

“The challenges we face are unprecedented,” says Serco. “They call for a seamless, holistic approach to security and civil contingency.”

Yikes.

For someone who gets so much business from the UK government, Chris Hyman seems surprisingly unruffled by the election. “We have very significant business with local authorities,” he told CNBC’s business channel earlier this year. Regionalisation, ‘has gone very well with us.’

And anyway, “It’s pretty much, we work for the civil servants really. There’s not much that we do that has to go through Parliament for decisions.”

If that’s the case, then we must rely on civil servants to fight our corner should conflicts arise between the interests of society and the security industry.

Conflicts like this one, maybe.

For years, doctors working among asylum seekers noted disturbing numbers of injuries to people being moved about by private security companies. Two years ago, doctors and lawyers from Medical Justice published a report about it — called Outsourcing Abuse.

The government asked former Northern Ireland police ombudsman Dame Nuala O’Loan to make independent inquiries. Reporting last month she said there was, ‘inadequate management of the use of force by the private sector companies’, and made 22 recommendations for change.

The civil servant nominally in charge of the companies is Lin Homer, chief executive of the UK Border Agency. Responding to O’Loan’s criticisms, Homer spoke not a word against her commercial partners. She saved her reproach for the doctors and lawyers who had brought these troubling matters to light. Their offence? “Seeking to damage the reputation of our contractors”.

Clare Sambrook

Read on:

Except where links are shown, all the information is drawn from company websites: Serco www.serco.com; G4S www.g4s.com.

This article first appeared on OpenDemocracy, the original is here.

United Utilities CEO Philip Green

Following the privatisation of North West Water in 1989, United Utilities was officially formed in 1995, following the acquisition of Norweb (the region’s electricity distributor and supplier privatised in 1990). A cursory glance at the board and management team gives you an idea of the sort of business you’re looking at. When it comes to political clout and prestige in the corporate world, these are some real big hitters.

The current chairman is Dr John McAdam, who rose to his position within six months of becoming a director at the company. McAdam, “business big shot”, according to the Times, was previously CEO of ICI, the now Dutch-owned chemical giant. He also currently chairs Rentokil Initial, and is a director for three other companies: J Sainsbury, Sara Lee Corporation and Rolls-Royce Group, one of Britain’s largest arms manufacturers.

Connections to the arms industry run throughout UU. McAdam took over the chairmanship in July 2008 from Sir Richard Evans who was chair of BAE Systems, the fourth largest arms company in the world, for fourteen years. Current Managing Director Charlie Cornish, overseeing business development and international interests, also used to work for BAE.

Evans is also highly connected and very close to the New Labour government. He chaired the ‘Aerospace Innovation and Growth Team’ at the Department of Trade and Industry and the ‘National Defence Industries Council’ in the Ministry of Defence. One industry insider described him as “entirely ruthless” and “one of the few businessmen who [could] see Blair on request”. He was embroiled in the scandal over a £60 million BAE slush fund allegedly used to bribe Saudi officials, which was being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office until Blair shut the case down.

Rotherham MP, former Foreign Office minister and Minister of State for Europe Dennis MacShane has also been a paid “consultant” of the company. The arch-Blairite was paid between £10,000 and £15,000 as UU’s ‘European Advisor’ in 2007.

The government ties don’t end there. UU is part of the ‘Whitehall & Industry Group’, a lobbying firm which works for huge corporations. The group describes itself as trying to build “understanding and co-operation between government and business”. It coordinated the 2004 recruitment of Head of Marketing for the UK National Identity card scheme, currently being trialled in Manchester.

The list of high-level connections could go on forever, like non-exec director David Jones, chairman of UK Coal, part-owned by MULE’s favourite multi-billion pound conglomerate Peel Holdings. Be on the lookout for United Utilities connections in our ‘Who runs Manchester?’ feature.

Andy Lockhart

Previous articles appearing on MULE looking at United Utilities reported the recent job cuts, and on the company’s environmental and service record.

In July last year United Utilities won the Business in the Community (BITC) Company of the Year Award, recognising its high levels of “corporate responsibility”. Philip Green – who happens to be on the Board of Trustees of BITC – said at the time: “I am honoured that the breadth of our company’s environmental and social commitment has been given such significant recognition.”

While people in the UK are relatively far better off than those elsewhere in the world, the company still rinses every possible penny out of the public, which is pretty easy to do when you have a monopoly in the region. For a firm that won a ‘Company of the Year Award’ for its work in the community, UU certainly gets in its fair share of trouble.

In 2007 Ofwat fined the company £8.5 million for breaching industry rules by awarding work to its own subsidiary companies without market testing to ensure value for money.

The regulator’s chairman Philip Fletcher said at the time: “We have warned United Utilities Water over several years and reduced their price limits at successive reviews to protect customers. Despite this the company has continued to trade with associates in a way that, if left unchecked, has the potential to harm customers’ interests.”

Andrea Cook, Chair of the Consumer Council of Water North West, responded by saying Ofwat hadn’t gone nearly far enough: “The North West is a region of high economic and social deprivation. Water debt and affordability are significant and growing issues. We are disappointed that Ofwat did not make more of the opportunity to help consumers.”

Information collated by Ethical Consumer shows how, over the last few years, the company has been subject to dozens of fines worth tens of thousands of pounds for pollution and release of raw sewage; providing unfit water for customers and failing to cut leaks sufficiently.

UU is currently facing a potentially huge legal claim following the November floods in Cumbria. A group of people, represented by law firm KJ Commons & Co, claim that the company released water from its Thirlmere Reservoir during the heavy rain, knowing it would significantly worsen the flooding.

CEO Green is vigorously protecting his company, which is prepared to defend itself against any legal action. He stated, “We do not believe that UU deliberately exacerbated the flooding.”

Meanwhile, the North West Regional Development Agency (NWDA) recently awarded UU £200,000 from its Carbon Challenge Fund, which it says will improve efficiency, reduce costs and safeguard jobs. It must be hoped this will happen. It’s hard to imagine how fewer staff will help UU’s services and its fairly poor environmental record to date.

Andy Lockhart

See MULE’s previous article on the job cuts at United Utilities, also from the print edition, published at the beginning of March.

The long-term unemployed

Unemployed workers will be forced to enter into Work for your Benefit schemes, which are being trialled in Manchester from October 2010. Claimants will be forced to enter up to six month long work placements – which they have not chosen – in order to claim benefits.

Low-waged workers

The position of low-waged workers, who in the current economic climate are already struggling to stay in work, will also be affected by the schemes. As benefit claimants are put in placements where they are not paid, unemployed people could basically be used as cheap labour, undermining those in paid jobs and their working conditions. It could also lead to a loss of long-term contracted jobs. In New York, where the similar Workfare scheme was introduced, 30,000 union jobs were lost within the first few years.

Jobcentre workers

The Public and Commercial Services Union have been active in fighting the Welfare Reform Bill from the outset. Included in the Bill are suggestions for Jobcentres to move towards privatisation, and follow a model used by call centres.

This change has already resulted in less face to face interaction between Jobcentre workers and jobseekers. In Manchester, the local Disability Benefit Centre was closed in November 2009. Users must now call or go to Blackpool or Preston. Jobcentre workers have complained that they will no longer provide specialist support, and there have already been many job cuts. Outreach support for carers and pensioners has been taken away, though single parent advisors still exist.

Many people working for the Department of Work and Pensions already claim Income Support and the basic wage for a clerical assistant is only 24p above minimum wage. The Government has pledged to invest £15 million into private schemes, but only £3.5 million into Jobcentre run schemes.

Single parents

Single parents with a child aged 10 or above will be expected to attend workbased interviews, with benefits cut if they do not attend. Single parents are being moved from Income Support to Jobseekers Allowance – meaning if someone turns down a job offer or is deemed not to be making enough effort to seek work, their benefits will be cut under ‘sanctions’. The move is supposedly aimed at eradicating poverty. However, it does not address root problems such as insufficient affordable childcare and inflexible working hours.

At present, single parents are often better able to cope on benefits than if they were working and having to pay childcare costs. The English Collective of Prostitutes has warned they are expecting an increase in women entering sex work with the change in legislation. The age a child should be before a parent returns to work keeps falling; first from 16 to 12 and, since October 2009, to 10. From October 2010 it will be 7. On top of this, single mothers will be forced to register both parents’ names on the birth certificate, meaning that if a woman has been coerced or abused, she must still use the father’s name on official documentation.

Alcohol and drug dependents

Those with an alcohol or drug dependency, some of the most vulnerable in society, can be forced to comply with a treatment programme. Drug and alcohol abuse is already dealt with by the penal and health systems, and many have questioned whether extra pressure from the welfare system will actually help those in need.

There is also a suggestion that Jobcentre workers may be given access to police records, or be encouraged to probe into people’s personal lives. These ideas have been heavily criticised by Liberty, the civil rights campaign group. They worry that people who are in need of benefits may not claim them for fear of having to disclose a dependent.

Incapacity Benefit claimants

Incapacity Benefit is, in effect, being removed and replaced by Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). Many concessions have been won on ESA by disabled rights campaigners but problems persist. A person’s ability to work is judged on physical capacity to perform daily tasks, but ESA does not fully take into account how this translates to a working environment.

Currently more than half of claimants claimin for ill health have mental health problems. It has been reported that the drive to get people off Incapacity Benefit and into work is making claimants more ill with stress. Conditions and sanctions can be put in place to try to force them into potentially unsuitable work. If they refuse their benefits could be cut. The system is so confusing that independent support groups have already appeared online.

At present it is still unclear who will be judging capacity to work, and it is possible that Jobcentre workers, who are untrained in mental health, will have to take on this responsibility.

For more coverage of the trial, see Patrick Smith’s article on how Jobseekers may be forced to work for as little as £1.27 per hour just to claim their benefits.

MULE: When were you released?

LB: I left Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre in London on Friday 8 January. I was told by my solicitor I would be released on the Monday but I kept waiting – they said that there was too much snow: for Health and Safety reasons I couldn’t travel. Then they just gave me a train ticket to take me to Manchester. I arrived after 11pm. I stayed with friends because we have not had a house since December.

MULE: What has happened since then?

LB: At first I rested – I was so exhausted. Then I went to Refugee Action because I am entitled to housing support now my fresh claim is being processed. But NASS (National Asylum Support Service), kept turning me down. When I went to sign at Dallas Court in Salford I was told that the papers confirming my housing entitlement had been sent to Liverpool! Finally NASS gave us temporary accommodation, but in Liverpool. We eventually moved back to Manchester on Monday 8 February.

MULE: Were you aware of the campaign to support you while you were in detention?

LB: I was very aware. So many people were calling me and a woman from Yarl’s Wood Befrienders Group – which supports asylum seekers there – printed off news reports and showed me. Before that the BBC had covered the vigil held for me in Manchester. People who didn’t know I was detained started calling me. I need to thank everyone who supported me and gave me courage.

MULE: What was detention like?

LB: I was hoping to come out before Christmas because the first days were terrible. The place is not bad – they give you food. You follow a programme, always showing your IDs and under control. I realised there that you have nothing if you don’t have your freedom. I made friends in there and I communicate with other detainees still inside: some others have been released; some taken away. It is a strange place; it is so rare to find a smiling face. I saw intensive religion in there – too much. You cope because you keep hoping, but the stress has caused discolouration of my skin; made me sick.

MULE: What’s next for you?

LB: I started writing another play inside – about detention. I think that there is a lot unknown about it. I have been through it all: claimed; rejected and on vouchers; detained and now back at the start with a fresh claim. Maybe I will have to go to court; to give a witness statement again, but it will be assessed on two models: new claim and claim resolution.

MULE: How do you feel now?

LB: I feel tired but relieved. I know that I have a big battle ahead of me and that I must always consider what may happen next because I don’t want to go to that place again; I fear it. Today I was at the reporting centre and they said, you don’t need to sign – but I insisted! I do not want them to say, “she is not complying”. I do not trust what they say. But I will keep fighting until I get the good news.

MULE reported on Lydia’s and husband Bernard’s deportation order, her arrest at Dallas Court and her release from Yarl’s Wood where she was held in detention.

Hundreds of millions of pounds of public money has been pouring into regeneration sites around the country, many of which had stalled as investors and developers had sat on their hands waiting for the economy to pick up again. That the industry’s showed a “tremendous response” to government plans to give over £1 billion is hardly shocking.

Compared to bankers’ bonuses there’s been little scrutiny of the vast sums going into these projects. A little surprising, considering how bound up the financial crisis was with the property market.

The other bailout

In December, the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) published the list of schemes awarded funds from the first round of the Government’s Kickstart programme. It totalled £360 million for 136 projects, 22 of these were in the Northwest, receiving over £48 million between them.

Despite repeated requests for clarification, the HCA failed to explain to MULE why a grant of £9.4 million to The Maine Place, the City Council’s high profile regeneration project on the site of the old Maine Road stadium, was not mentioned in their December announcement. The allocation, given in October, is the largest to date in the Northwest.

MULE reported on this stalled project early last year, which the Council awarded to Lowry Homes in 2004. Back in March neither the Council nor the developer were willing to comment on the situation. Only one local councillor replied to our questions, to say she was “not up to scratch” on the matter. Moss Care Housing Association, who run the HomeBuy (shared-equity) scheme for The Maine Place, were also unable to enlighten us.

Shared-equity housing allows low-income buyers the chance to buy part of a property and pay rent on the rest, which is owned by the developer or local housing association, who are in turn funded by the Government. Housing associations are bracing themselves for deep cuts after the General Election, regardless of who gets in. This presumably means leaving more affordable housing in the hands of the developers.

60 of the 477 new homes in the Maine Place are supposed to be part this HomeBuy initiative. Locals worried from the start that this was too few. At the time of writing, of the nine properties currently advertised on Lowry’s website, the cheapest are three-bedroom homes at £162,950.

Residents were unsurprisingly annoyed by the lack of progress and information. “There has been no contact at all from either the Council or Lowry,” said one, before continuing, “we wanted local people to be involved in the construction of the new homes, but this doesn’t appear to be the case.”

Others are equally frustrated. Jenny Weeks put a £3,750 deposit on a house in February 2008 and was told she could move in the following August, when the first phase would be completed. Still waiting to move in, she told the MEN in November: “I am close to tears every time I speak to Lowry. I feel let down, angry and stressed. We never got anything from Lowry telling us what was going on, they just kept putting it back and back.”

With building work ongoing, Lowry now claims the phase will be finished in March. Meanwhile, the developer is on the shortlist for Kickstart Round Two funding for four more projects in the Northwest and Yorkshire.

Looking East

The high profile schemes of east Manchester have fared no better in the recession. Out of a number of applications for Kickstart, four developments received funds. Gleeson Regeneration earned itself £1.09 million for 52 properties on its City East Phase 1 development in Beswick, and is on the Round Two shortlist for its other Manchester project, Grove Village on Stockport Road, where it is building one and two bedroom homes.

Countryside Properties was awarded £1.29 million to build 62 houses at Spinning Vale in Gorton. Countryside was given nearly £28 million in the first round for schemes around the country. Hopefully CEO Graham Cherry’s statement that his company’s homes “represent excellent value for money” holds true. It has two more on the shortlist for Round Two.

Northern Group, the Manchester-based (but Zurich-registered) company, won £1.76 million for its Ice Plant development, part of the flagship Ancoats Urban Village regeneration. Of the 82 homes to be built on Blossom Street, which were supposed to be ready by spring, none are to be HomeBuy or social housing.

Artisan accounting

Also part of Ancoats Urban Village is the Artisan Ship Canal Development. Artisan Ship Canal is a partnership between Manchester City Council, Artisan Holdings and Peel Land and Property. The scheme gained £4.93 million from Round One for ‘Advent Phase 5’, which involves the building of 108 houses and flats. Again, there are no HomeBuy or social rent properties planned.

Peel have had a rough time during the recession – according to Crain’s Manchester Business, £740 million have been wiped off their assets. Peel Airports are losing money (like most airports at the moment), and the group have over a million square feet of empty properties, yet the £4.5 billion giant seems to be struggling on.

Artisan has also faced financial difficulties. Chair and Chief Exec Carol Ainscow put ACG North, a subsidiary of Artisan Construction Group, into voluntary liquidation at the end of 2008, after three directors (including Ainscow) had resigned in less than six months. The move stalled several developments.

In January Crain’s reported that ACG North owed £9 million to 200 creditors, who called in insolvency practitioner Gerald Krasner to investigate whether the group had been trading for over a year and a half while insolvent. At a creditors’ meeting in Stockport, Krasner highlighted accounts from June 2007 apparently showing £10.2 million debt owed to ACG by a “subsidiary undertaking”, which the ACG Managing Director explained to be “inter-company invoicing”. Krasner went on to question how all of ACG North’s assets were owned by other parts of Artisan Holdings.

CEO Ainscow was dismissive of Crain’s report, however, telling MULE: “Artisan were perplexed with the content, particularly the slant and inaccuracies.

“Artisan is faring well in the present market conditions. The Advent development is progressing since the award of Kickstart funding. Contractors are currently being interviewed for a prompt start on site.”

This raised more questions than answers, but no further responses have been forthcoming. Repeated attempts to contact other parties have also failed. Through a number of dead email addresses for press officers at the Council dealing with Artisan Ship, eventually someone from New East Manchester “asked around the team” for us, but concluded “we can’t help unfortunately.”

Clearly it is very difficult to find out what’s going on in regeneration projects around the city, for journalists as well as local residents. Perhaps there’s nothing to hide. But public money is endlessly streaming into these private developers – companies which are not required to build extra affordable housing, despite taxpayers bailing them out. Instead, these companies, many based in offshore tax havens, continue building more yuppie flats and enjoying the profits.

Residents, who may have seen their homes demolished following a compulsory purchase order, are often unable to return after being priced out of the market. Still, they should still be thankful the area is being ‘regenerated’.

Andy Lockhart

Management is currently in a 90-day consultation with workers and the four unions involved: UNISON, Unite, GMB and Prospect. This period should have been completed by early February at the latest. However, negotiations are still ongoing, and expected to continue into March.

When pressed for details by MULE, a UU spokesperson said: “We are consulting with the unions to explore how we can maintain the strength of our business given the current economic challenges.

“Our aim is to continue to deliver high quality water and wastewater services to our seven million customers and keep their water bills low.”

Prices rise

Apparently this wasn’t the case in August 2008, when the company proposed an 11 per cent rise in prices from 2010 to 2015, which the Consumer Council for Water warned would be unaffordable for many customers. Ofwat’s final determination of November 26, ruling that real prices should fall by 0.4 per cent for UU during that period, might well have been behind the company’s sudden urge to ‘streamline’.

The new prices, which all national water companies have now accepted, come into force in April. UU is now required to reduce prices by 4.3 per cent over the next year. It was only after accepting the review that UU officials announced the increased job cuts.

The day before Ofwat published the price review, UU posted its half yearly financial report. It showed that in the six months ending 30 September 2009 the company made an underlying operating profit of £370 million, an annual increase of £4 million, despite the “difficult economic environment”. In the year up to 31 March 2009, revenue grew to a massive £2.44 billion, with underlying operating profit at £742 million.

It doesn’t exactly look like a company in trouble, having managed to increase dividends payout to shareholders by five per cent in the last six months. In 2008/9 Philip Green took home £1.27 million, including £471,400 in bonuses. Since November however, the company has been selling off assets which are not regulated by Ofwat, or as Green puts it, “crystallising value”. The most significant of these are holdings in Northern Gas Networks and Manila Water in the Philippines, which were sold for around £130 million. Private equity firm Charterhouse is apparently the frontrunner to buy out United Utilities Contract Solutions for another £500 million.

Despite the sell-offs it’s difficult to argue that redundancies and a freeze on new graduate recruitment are necessary. Employees were clearly shocked by the news and union insiders claim they first heard of the figures through the press.

Negotiations

A spokesperson from UNISON told MULE: “UNISON, along with three other trade unions, is in dispute with United Utilities over potential job cuts.

“We are currently trying to resolve the dispute through negotiations, and are working hard with the company to avoid job cuts and compulsory redundancies.

“Our negotiations are, however, at a difficult stage, and we cannot rule out any possibilities, including strike action.”

Shareholders, however, want more dividends. Before Christmas, Merrill Lynch analyst Fraser McLaren launched a stinging attack on Green and the company, claiming payouts will likely be cut 40 per cent this year, ringing alarm bells for investors worldwide. UU then opted for a smaller decrease in payouts, another possible explanation for the rising job losses.

This seems to be the cost paid when essential public services are operated by profit-driven corporations. There’s not much Ofwat can do, as companies like UU will wring the money out of whatever situation they’re put in. It’s workers and customers who pay the real price.

Andy Lockhart