2012 and Stoke Council- what progress?

With the New Year just hours around the corner, Bill Cawley looks towards 2012, the year of delivery.

Its two years since John Van Der Laarschot became Chief Executive of the City Council and it will be 12 months from May since the Council was in Labour majority control. This year will need to see both parties delivering on the objectives that they set themselves. Residents of the city will need to see progress on a number of projects and some way out of the encircling gloom that has gripped the area since 2008. Currently over 8,000 citizens of Stoke are unemployed, local economic activity appears sluggish and the outlook nationally seems uncertain. Something needs to happen but what?

However there needs to be seen to be progress and actual completion in a number of key projects and top of the list must be Hanley Bus Station. My understanding was that the station ought to be finished by next autumn. There is work going on site and one hopes that finishing the bus station is very high on the agenda of the City Council. I wonder whether there is any recognition of the need to ensure that local projects like this do generate local jobs. It will be essential for local projects to deliver tangibly local jobs otherwise The City Council will be neglecting their responsibility.

Secondly linked to the Bus station is the need to attract investment and interest in the Sentral development in Hanley. News has reached the local media that Marks and Spenser amongst others are interested in the development but in my opinion that M & S interest only means displacement from an existing site in the centre of Hanley. Again a benchmark will be an increase in take up from leading brand shops and a timetable for completion of the project.

Another area of concern is a resolution of areas like Middleport and the difficulties faced by the reduction in funding for RENEW. The blight that is Middleport needs to be seriously addressed in the coming year.

The bid for the Green Investment Bank locally has been made although I would personally like to see a strong case made for putting this developments with its promise of excellent jobs and potential for the green economy having a more central role in the local economy. A decision is likely in March.

Another conundrum for 2012 will what to do with the Spode site in Stoke. Just before Christmas a press report indicated that Tesco were not interested in developing the site. What to do with the site will be a question that will require some resolution in the coming year.

The desire for more ” localism” will also dominate political discourse. There has been interest in both Penkhull and Fenton for more self-government and patience with the City Council has become stretched especially over such issues as the future of Fenton Library and other civic amenities in the area.

Which brings me to another topic which will again command debate in 2012 and that is turning former civic assets over to community groups to run independently. Perhaps the first acid test will be the future of Wedgwood Memorial College in Barlaston. There is a strong desire to retain the facility for educational use and a group of interested individuals have put together a business case to take over the facility.

On a more certain note 6 of the City’s new schools school be completed and ready for occupation by the autumn term including the new and interestingly designed Brownhills school although the costs of PFI are still a subject worthy of future investigations.

On a more equivocal note the debate and questions over the Dimensions debacle still remain and must cast doubts on the future of the officers and councillors involved in this matter.

Another policy change, which will have serious implications for the City Council in terms of its social and health care services, will be the rapid changes to the NHS Primary Care with GPs taking more control over commissioning decisions. I have serious doubts whether the Health and Wellbeing Board- a function within the City Council- is fully aware of the centrality of their role in ensuring equity in accessing services is maintained.

1 hope of mine in terms of delivery of a service will be the reopening of the railway line between Leek and Stoke which is projected to happen in the autumn of 2012. I went to a public meeting in Leek and the speed in which this project is happening makes me optimistic that this will be a project that does see fruition in the coming year.

2012 will be the year I feel in which reputations at the Civic Centre especially the senior officers in post will be made or broken.

Victoria Rd Fenton 1973- an essay on deindustrialisation

From 1972-3 I worked at Johnson and Slater part of the Royal Doulton group. It was a small pottery that made sanitary ware- shower trays mainly- and was situated just off Victoria Road between Fenton and Berryhill. It was a family run pottery run by the Maynard’s father and son. The older had served in the Army had achieved the rank of Major and was one of the first British Army officers into Vienna. Both Maynards were named John the younger was called Master John to distingush him from his father. Master John walked around the factory usually dressed in a trilby hat and a bow tie with a fresh red carnation. I worked as a Production Control Clerk in a small office with an admirable chap called Terry O’Donnell. In 1972 S Pearson acquired Doulton & Co Ltd & Son Ltd, which had previously made substantial investments in the tableware section of the pottery industry, organised as Allied English Potteries Ltd. Although it had become part of the Pearson Group the pottery had the feel and the language of a hundred years before. It is inconceivable that anyone would call a manager “Master”

Every morning my father would drop me off at Joiners Square and I would walk the mile or so up Victoria Road. To aid my memory I looked at a business directory and maps from the 60s and 70s to help me recall the industrial landscape of the time. Engineers and metal workers dominated the area. A large factory Copestick and Farrell was on the left as I walked towards Fenton. My brother and a friend worked there and I knew that in the early 70s business was good. Products went either to the Coal Industry or for the construction industry. The trade directory of 1972 lists 4 pages of various types of engineer ranging from Civil, Electrical and Mechanical. Two small companies were based in Duke St Fenton- Baddleley Walkers and WH Barker. There was a blacksmith and crate makers as well in the Greater Fenton area.


 Then there was Hewitt`s brickwork’s and refractors in Victoria Rd .The other side of the road was mainly dominated by Byatt`s Garage group.  It stretched from the car parts unit down to Gunn-JCB and went back as far as the River Trent. Part of Byatt`s was Welford Truck Bodies who made trailers. Regina Glass Manufacturers was also based in Victoria Road. There were potbanks on the road to Fenton. Signs of the industrial landscape were very visible on the earlier map and near the Eastwood Football ground was a large marl hole I presume for use by a near by brickmaker. It was filled in by the 1980s. It was an area concerned with making things, which it had done so for some time. Victoria Road had been laid down in the 1840s a railway line and station had followed although the station had closed by 1972.

By 1973 the City Council was getting concerned that the industrial base of the area was still traditional. A meeting was held in September between the City Council and a West Midlands Regional team. The outcome was a positive one it was concluded that the land reclamation projects would make the area again a very popular one to attract new companies. It was a period of mergers with Wedgwood informing the media of the take over of Crown Pottery as well as Mason’s Ironstone being taken over.

That autumn the news of the major Tesco development in Hanley on the site of the former Newhall Pottery was announced. The Council published plans for a major development along a Hanley-Stoke axis, which would lead, to 16,000 jobs being created. The Leader of the Council Jim Westwood believed it to be the opportunity for Stoke to be a great city.

The Council were also successful in getting a government initiative – Quality of Life- the first of many to come to the Potteries.

And on the last day of October 1973 ,as if to state that the old world was certainly coming to an end, the death of William Cartlidge at the advanced age of 87 was declared. Cartlidge from Wolstanton was the last bottle kiln maker who plied his trade from before the First World War to the 1950s.

Going down Victoria Road now and it is a place transformed. It’s a place where you buy and store things that are made in China. There are Cash and Carries, Food storage facilities and a budget supermarket. And close to Johnson and Slater long demolished is the City Council Call Centre. It is an area, which handily serves as a microcosm for what has happened to the local economy in the last 40 years