Libraries, swimming pools and leisure centres will bear the brunt of the savage council cuts. All of Manchester’s 26 libraries will close completely on Fridays and Sundays.
Five will shut altogether, saving nearly £400,000. They are Clayton, East City in Openshaw, Rackhouse in Wythenshawe, Barlow Moor in Chorlton and – later - Miles Platting.
Council chiefs say that they have been chosen because they are all within a mile of better services. Hulme library will shut and its services move to either Moss Side leisure centre or the Zion Arts Centre.
Levenshulme swimming baths – which is in need of urgent repair work - will close. Miles Platting pool will also close, but not until late 2012.
So will leisure centres in Levenshulme, Ardwick and Newton Heath – as well as the Debdale Sailing Centre unless alternative providers can be found. A new provider will be sought to take over management of Abraham Moss leisure centre.
In all, £31.2m will be taken out of so-called ‘neighbourhood services’ – 29 per cent of the total budget.
Black bin collections, for general household waste, will go from weekly to fortnightly – although food waste will still be picked up every week.
Overnight street cleaning - between midnight and 6am - will end across the city. Instead, workers will wait until 6am before clearing the streets of debris left the night before.
Highways work will also be pared back with only essential repairs carried out.
That means no new speed bumps or community road safety schemes.
The number of lollipop patrols at schools is likely to be cut and the amount of money available for new playgrounds halved.
All public toilets will close, with the exception of Mount Street in the city centre – where charges will be introduced.
Sunday parking charges will be introduced for the first time and on-street charging increased and extended to 12 hours - from 7am to 7pm.
That will bring in more than £1m as bosses are forced to find new income streams.
The council is also saving £5m by merging the separate town hall teams that look after street management, highways and repairs.
Bernard Priest, the council’s executive member for finance, said the council had been left with no choice but to make swingeing cuts to balance its books.
He said: "There has been some suggestion that Manchester council has somehow been hoarding reserves while having to lay-off staff.
"That is untrue.
"Our reserves have been set aside to pay for necessary projects, such as new school buildings and the essential refurbishment of Central Library."
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The Tories have targetted Manchester and other cities. We are like a foreign country to them, they'll sideline us and make us suffer. The cut in these services will most badly effect the poor, the old and the disadvantaged; don't expect the Tories to shed tears.
Protest to survive...
29% of the budget!? This is what happens when you vote for a liberal party, be it blue or yellow in colour.
God forbid the government imposes reforms to the bank/ers, or a more progressive taxation system. No, instead they'll hit community libraries and leisure centres. These politicians are the lowest of the low.
Interestingly, the only public toilets being saved, are those closest to the city council. Maybe all the talk of cuts is giving the Lib's a queasy feeling?
The council says they will save £5m a year by merging separate town hall teams why was this not done years ago , now look at other departments, This would ihappen n the private sector.
£170m to refurbish the Central Library? It would have been cheaper to pull it down and start again
This is not surprising as they have been overspending for years, not just since the new Government came in. Most of the closures are old buildings which are in need of repair. There are other facilities that can be used instead.
The Council still employ agency workers paying over the odds for normal administrative jobs.
I would never vote Tory, but the country is paying the price for labour's terrible economic management. The government has no choice other than cutting the defecit.
Remember privatisation in the 80s, Mrs Thatcher's big give away, well Labour used the housing boom in the same way in the noughties and it swept them back to power twice.
Labour could have legislated to restrict mortgage lending to a maximum of three times household earnings at any time but they didn't want to kill the boom. I remember Tony Blair wanging on about "cheap mortgages" about 5 years ago and grinning from ear to ear. We all knew it couldn't go on forever (even if we briefly enjoyed our houses making more money than we were), but the politicians were living in the here and know and damning the future to keep in power.
I feel sorry for those that have lost their homes, but the vast majority have not lost their homes and will keep finding a way to pay back the albatross like debt so many of us now have for very modest houses. Giving a big percentage of your earnings to the bank every month makes you less likely to spend on retraining or to spend money on a new business.
So, as much as I hate to see swimming pools close when we have so many obese kids, labour have wrecked our economy which collectively we have to see put right for ourselves and our children.
surely some mistake - food waste bins will still be collected each week - presumably this is the green bin which has always been collected every 2 weeks
Uwe The Goat....
Labour contributed to the destruction of the economy having adopted Tory policies. These aren't traditional Labour policies (which normally revolve around state-regulation and financial prudence), they were policies designed to woo middle-england at a time when they'd been out of power for a while.
It's as if Labour were happily at the wheel of a car, which turned out to be a cut-n-shut job from some sneaky greedy Tory salesman.
You can criticise Labour for being at the helm, but - with regards the question of who to vote for - I think it unwise to then vote for the party who are the natural cause of these cuts (Tories).
Basically, Labour were idiots, the Tories are evil!
Bin collections every two weeks. You think that's to do with the cuts do you? Not a bit of it. The eco-fascists in the council have been finding an excuse to do that for years.
The closure of public toilets sounds bad but of the council one's you'd have to be pretty desperate to have used any of them.
No new speed bumps? Result!
I wonder if people will walk past the closed library at Barlow Moor on their way to the new Chorlton Metrolink stops that no-one wanted or needed but the council paid for on our behalf.
So now it's official. Manchester like the rest of England has joined the third world! Meanwhile the third world continues to pour into this country.
"Black bin collections, for general household waste, will go from weekly to fortnightly – although food waste will still be picked up every week."
That's OK if we get given bigger bins otherwise the streets will become strewn with rubbish unless of course Manchester City Council use their neighbourhood police to fine people in which case expect a lot of "unexplained bonfires".
Manchester is going to become a very unhealthy place to live and who is responsible the local political establishment who will carry on as normal exploiting the citizens.
Still if you got your Knighthood I don't suppose you care.
It's such a shame that many of these closures will be in the less well-off areas of Manchester, where their services have provided communities with much more than just a swimming pool or a book-lending service.
Have to agree with jack johnsons excellent comment underneath, we had been funded very strongly under the labour government, after decades of neglect (and a bomb) left our city in an awfull state (anyone too young to remember have a look at some pics of the city centre in the 80's/early 90's, deansgate aside it was a dump). We could very quickly return to this with the loss of overnight street cleaning and the appearance of abandoned buildings.
The public funds do exist to maintain our public buildings and services and the solution is a simple one. We stop our involvement in wars on foreign soil and return our armed forces home. The national press has to stop this line of "our wonderfull boys and girls fighting for our protection overseas" which is producing a level of support through guilt among the public. They need to hammer home the message of how we are all suffering the worst cuts in our lifetime, whilst lterally billions of taxpayers money is being spent on a war we dont need to be involved in.
The comment from dave haslam (below) that we should all protest is absolutely correct, but i'm sorry to say i have seen only one protest in my lifetime create a change in major government policy and it wasnt peacefull (poll tax riots). The fee protests of the moment , the huge demo (pre war) against the war in iraq teaches us that they will just brush aside what we feel as insignificant, when it is presented in a peacefull constructed manner (iknow the student demos weren't but the level of violence was a long way off the poll tax riots). The only conclusion is that large scale disorder will scare them and they will have to listen.
I really do believe the powers that be (whatever their party) have lost all touch with the public and are now closer in comparison to actors than the political greats of our past- the notion of being in the publics service is dead and they need a big reminder of this concept. We have, and still produce some of the finest minds in their fields on a global scale . Why we rely on these media trained monkeys of polticians is a question we should all ask, there has to be another form of democracy that can maintain our freedoms and improve our civil rights.
My personal dream is a society where (as teflon tony said) there is internet access in every household and we the public vote on any major policy through a secure system online. We can also vote in our brightest minds to run the country based on their education and experience in their fields. The local mps and party politics can remain to present public ideas for debate in parliament, but policy will be decided regardless of party politcs and only in the interest of public service.
Any one that has come this far thanks for reading the rant of an ideological scally who hopes for a real and fair future in England , one day , maybe , possibly?
It's such a shame that many of these closures will be in the less well-off areas of Manchester, where their services have provided local communities with much more than just a swimming pool or a book-lending service.
Will there be any effect on the Pakistani Cultural Centre in Longsight or the Bangladeshi Cultural Centre in Westwood?
look on the Bright Side we have the Olympic Games coming in 2012, a good opportunity to show the world what we in Britain can do.
The economy was wrecked by the international banking system. Labour bailed the banks so we could still have money coming out of the ATMs. The Tories are using the current situation to dismantle many of our instituions that are essentialy of socialist roots. It is not necessary and should be rejected by all in Manchester. This is a great city and all who respect it, and are proud to live here should be very very angry.
As well as cutting the number of managers, why don't Manchester cut the number of expense drawing councillors from 3 to 2 per ward so that they too lead by example. I can't see some of them, who can be rude, arrogant and obnoxious towards council staff, voting themselves out of a job. MEN please put them under pressure to do this.
Instead of giving subsidies to private companies to run our leisure centres, parking, buses and who knows what else - which they then use to pay their shareholders - why not ride these guys out of town? I for one would love to see the back of NCP, who have already risen tarrifs multiple times (including evenings/weekends) since taking such a stranglehold on the city's car parks.
no toilets - less street cleaning - less rubbish collections - less places for young people to go - less places for homeless people to go - we will be living in a slum before we know it!!!!
No new speed bumps - I can honestly say that this has brought a smile to my face - hateful, car breaking things that do nothing to slow down idiots and boy racers, but penalise the ordinary driver and emergency services. Similarly "community road safety schemes" - as far as I can see these are nothing but eyesores and result in road closures and the ghettoising of neighbourhoods.
One of the reasons its easier for me to commute to Leeds than into Manchester centre - no soul destroying, back breaking humps and needlessly closed off/chicaned roads to contend with!
Every cloud has a silver lining.
In the age of obesity with closures of leisure facilities people are not going to travel further afield especially if the have to go on the bus. Since the Droylsden baths shut on Manchester Road I have not been to the Medlock Centre as it would mean getting 2 buses there and back. At least some libraries are staying open This is going to affect the elderly as I know the library I go to always has people in reading papers and just for the company
Remember Peterloo 1819!
I used to teach at a primary school in Gorton and took my class to swimming lessons at Levensulme baths.Quite a few children couldn't sswim by the end of all the lessons mainly because there was nowhere close enough for them to go with their parents.Now where will they go to learn how to swim????
,aybe some people will now think twice before they throw their rubbish on the floor. I live in the city centre and am disgusted by what is left behind on a Friday/Saturday night. Some people really do have no sense of pride and leave their city in an appalling state. Maybe now it won't get cleaned until it's light we will have to look at the mess much more and it might affect some peoples behaviour. Here's hoping!