THINGS are stirring in the north and west.
The big city centres in the UK have improved hugely in the last fifteen years. It’s the turn of towns now
Rochdale Chief Executive Jim Taylor is to leave the authority and will take up a role at another Greater Manchester Authority, Salford.
Jim TaylorDuring his tenure at Rochdale Taylor, was responsible for overseeing a number of high-profile initiatives including the implementation of improvement strategies within Children’s Services, signing-off a £100 million deal to secure the Town Centre’s future and the completion of a new Metrolink Line and £12 million Transport Interchange
Rochdale Borough Council Leader Cllr Colin Lambert said he would be extremely sorry to see Jim Taylor leave.
“Jim’s experience and knowledge was a real asset to the authority,” he told Confidential and he was fully committed to delivering the world-class innovation, transformation and vision required to drive Rochdale forward. I feel strongly that his leaving is a huge loss to the town but of course we wish him the very best in his new post at Salford.”
Taylor was at the centre of row about a wage increase in 2013 for his Rochdale role. He earned £130,000 in Rochdale and will earn £150,000 in Salford.
Colin LambertConfidential was in Rochdale recently. The Esplanade in the town centre, as Nikolaus Pevsner, the famed architectural guru stated, is superb.
‘Here all is completely different from Lancashire towns, and indeed all English towns,' Pesvner wrote. 'The town hall lies surrounded by public gardens on three sides and the church lies up a steep bank, and the bank is also a public garden. So the centre is green and pleasant.’
That was written in the late sixties and remains the case now.
But in the inner areas around the lovely Esplanade and in the estates on the fringe of Rochdale, the story is not so rosy, with poverty and health rates challenging at best, dreadful at worst. Then again in Bamford and other areas on the Pennine slopes there is wealth – little of which seems to be patronising the limited retail of the town centre.
Confidential will be doing a profile on Rochdale in the coming weeks, talking to people, seeing how people are working to make the town become fully functioning again, particularly in its centre.
As so many commentators have noted, the big city centres in the UK have improved hugely in the last fifteen years. It’s the turn of towns now. How can we make the centres become again what they were, a place where all levels of income might come to shop and relax? Can making people proud, building a strong sense of identity, help in this?
Rochdale in some ways is providing a test case for these ideas. Good work has been achieved under Lambert and Taylor, how can that be taken forward?
The top picture in this story shows Riverside, the new council offices, by FaulknerBrown Architects, currently shortlisted for a Royal Institute of British Architects award as the best new building in the NW.
Rochdale Town Hall
