Hollin Estate Management Board Home Page

Firstly, we must welcome the tenants and residents who do not normally receive our newsletter.

The reason you are included this time is because the Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy boundary for Hollin includes more homes than are recognised as being on Hollin. These include everyone on Gladewood Estate and residents on Hollin Lane and Rochdale Road.

What is the Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy and what has it to do with you?

The NRS is a Government initiative to help disadvantaged neighbourhoods, like Hollin, to improve the levels of services being provided by agencies such as Health, Education, Housing, Environment, etc. It is to encourage these agencies to make their services more local, if that is what is needed, and to listen to what people want and need and respond accordingly.

Why are we telling you this?

Because we need your input, your ideas, your suggestions and we need you to tell us what is right and what is wrong with the services provided to you, your neighbourhood and, if necessary, even your street.

We have included a questionnaire with this newsletter. We must apologise for its length but we really do need to know this information in order to feed it back to the agencies in the form of a Local Action Plan. It should only take 10—15 minutes to complete. Some of it may not be applicable to you, if so, just ignore those questions but please complete as many as possible.

We have enclosed a pre-paid envelope for you to return your questionnaire to us. We have to use Rochdale MBC’s pre-paid system as we can’t run this system through Hollin EMB. But don’t worry, they will be returned to us and no-one at RMBC will be looking at the questionnaires.

We have also included a card asking for your name and address so that you can be entered into a prize draw which is a way of saying thank you for taking time to complete the questionnaire. Again these will be separated from your answers and not compared with them to find out who you are. The whole process will be strictly confidential.

However, if you are passing the EMB office - which is at 48 Nowell Road (between the Chip Shop and the Newsagents) - you can drop off your questionnaire and card and separate them yourself at the same time as choosing a gift from us. Again a way of saying thank you for completing the form.

These gifts are varied and include a free meal at the Chippy, money off your newspapers or money off your weekly shop - all at the local shops. If these don’t appeal we have a selection of beauty items, toys, personal gifts, etc. Unfortunately we cannot give anything to those of you who prefer to post your questionnaire but you can still be included in the prize draw. Also we cannot offer these to young people under the age of 18 but we are arranging a trip out to a paint ball session which will be free to young people aged between 12 and 25 years old. Please see the back page for more details.

What’s the prize draw?

The first prize is £100 and there are many, many more prizes for you to win.

If you need help in completing the questionnaire, or can’t get to the office but would to choose a gift, please let us know and we will do all we can to help you.

Finally, thank you in advance for complete the questionnaire.

At a recent Area Board meeting at the Middleton Civic Centre, the representatives

approve RBH’s suggestion of Tenant Inspectors to assist the local caretakers in

this to you. The proposal is that there are a team of Neighbourhood Environmental Inspectors

Each volunteer would accompany the Senior Caretaker on twice yearly checks. One inspection

would be in Spring and the other in Autumn. The areas to be covered would be at the agreement

of the volunteer and the Caretaker, this could be as small as one or two roads or as large as four or

five, depending on the size of the streets and the time and interest of the volunteer.

Do you have a couple of hours to spare, twice a year? Are you interested in your neighbourhood?

If so, then contact Barbara at Hollin EMB office on 654 6686 or Paul Sinclair, Area Housing Manager on 655 3922 . Thank you.

As a reward for completing the NRS questionnaire, a group of young people were taken to Knutsford for the day and treated to several games of Paintball. They were accompanied by Paul Sinclair the Hollin Housing Manager who was definitely the target of the day.

“We had a wonderful day” said Paul, “but it will be a long time before my bruises disappear”.

Although there were vacancies for 45 young people, only 15 took up our offer of a free trip. Everyone said they had a great time and want to be on the list for the next trip out.

The main outcome of completing the questionnaires regarding young people is that the young people themselves say they have no where to go and nothing to do. Consequently we are looking at getting a youth shelter and multi-activity play areas where young people can call their own. Our main problem is ‘where do we put them?” We will soon be carrying out consultation in the areas we are looking at and hope that the local residents will approve of the chosen sites.