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Spodden Valley

Housing Minister asks about Spodden Valley asbestos site

Campaigners Dave Phillips, Laurie Kazan Allen and Jason Addy have met with Housing and Regeneration Minister John Healey in Westminster.
The Housing & Regeneration minister was informed about recent Rochdale Online reports that current site owners MMC Estates have stated they do not have the funds to continue investigations into contamination.

Date published: 12/03/2010

Government announcment - asbestos pleural plaques

The Government has announced that it will not reverse the Law Lords decision which ended compensation for pleural plaques.
Instead, the Government is willing to pay a £5,000 lump sum under an extra-statutory scheme only to those who already had claims lodged at the time of the Law Lord’s ruling in 2007. ...

Date published: 03/03/2010

Council u-turn on asbestos site

Exposed asbestos in the Spodden Valley

The Council has decided to delete reference to the Turner Brothers Asbestos (TBA) site in its Core Strategy. The government’s Planning Inspectorate has told the Council that the Core...

Date published: 29/01/2010

Abestos site - planning application fifth anniversary

Save Spodden Valley supporters outside Rochdale Planning Department and a cake with 5 candles on it

This week is the FIFTH birthday of the controversial planning application for hundreds of homes and a children's nursery on the former site of Turner Brother Asbestos - the world's first...

Date published: 24/12/2009

TBA asbestos site - more shocking council documents...

Exposed asbestos in the Spodden Valley

Rochdale Online has gained access to public documents that raise the stakes in the Spodden Valley asbestos planning application saga. Campaigners suggest that Rochdale Borough Council has...

Date published: 11/12/2009

Council in asbestos site shock

Exposed asbestos in the Spodden Valley

At a meeting of the TBA Working Party this week, a frank admission was made by MMC Estates that “due to the current economic climate” the company was unable to fund any site investigation...

Date published: 27/11/2009

Asbestos - warning on hidden killer

Exposed asbestos in the Spodden Valley

A £1.2 million campaign is aiming to protect tradesmen from across Greater Manchester from the UK’s biggest industrial killer.
Figures show there were 917 male deaths from the...

Date published: 04/11/2009

'Condemned to an agonising death'

Exposed asbestos in the Spodden Valley

The Daily Mirror has a two page article on the Turner & Newall abestos factory in Spodden Valley with the headline: "How Turner & Newall condemned its workers to an agonising death. For...

Date published: 14/03/2009

Campaigner's letter describes T&N working conditions

Nancy Tait MBE: born 12 February 1920; died 13 February 2009.

A letter from an asbestos campaigner has been released to Rochdale Online describing some of the working conditions at the Turner & Newall factory in Spodden Valley during the 1970s.

The...

Date published: 02/03/2009

'Incredible asbestos campaigner' dies, aged 89

A tenacious campaigner for the victims of asbestos diseases who was a pioneer in revealing the cover-up of asbestos cancer by Turner & Newall, has died aged 89.

As a Churchill research fellow in the 1970s Nancy Tait visited the Rochdale factory together with other sites in the T&N empire in the UK, Canada and Southern Africa, after her husband died of mesothelioma in 1968....

Date published: 24/02/2009

Spodden Valley to feature on BBC television this weekend

Exposed asbestos in the Spodden Valley

Spodden Valley, the site of what was once the world's largest asbestos factory, will feature on the BBC Politics Show this Sunday.

The Turner Brothers site will form the centre of a...

Date published: 20/02/2009

Councils failing to protect local residents from exposure to asbestos

Information released to Paul Rowen MP, Liberal Democrat Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions, under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed a worrying shortage of staff employed by Councils to monitor the safety of asbestos in Public Buildings. ...

Date published: 16/01/2009

Fingers crossed as Westminster meeting proposes asbestos research centre

Exposed asbestos in the Spodden Valley

Spodden Valley campaigners have their fingers crossed as Government bodies discuss the possibility of a National Centre for Asbestos Related Diseases.

A meeting in Westminster is to...

Date published: 04/12/2008

Judgment for status quo in “Trigger Issue” case

Jason Addy

Asbestos Victims Support Groups welcome the judgment announced which confirms that insurers who were “on” risk at the time someone was exposed to asbestos are liable to pay compensation....

Date published: 23/11/2008

Research boosts campaign for green space in Spodden Valley

Overhead view of Spodden Valley in 1999

Campaigners calling for a 'green lung' link along the Spodden valley from Rochdale town centre to the South Pennine hills have welcomed a new study that confirms living close to open green...

Date published: 10/11/2008

Council speaks out on Spodden Valley development

Rochdale Council has spoken out about the current situation surrounding the development of Spodden Valley in response to a series of questions posed by Rochdale Online reporters.

The questions and the responses given by the Council are now published here in full.

Earlier this month the owners of the site, MMC Estates, indicated that the only way to make the site safe is...

Date published: 24/10/2008

Is the council presenting a fait accompli over asbestos site?

Exposed asbestos in the Spodden Valley

Mark Russell, Managing Director of MMC, the Heywood based developer that owns the Turners asbestos site, has told Rochdale Online the only way Spodden Valley can ever be rid of the killer...

Date published: 15/10/2008

Rowen raises continuing use of asbestos in Parliament

Rochdale MP Paul Rowen has tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) on the continuing use of asbestos overseas.

The EDM raises awareness of the continued use of asbestos in the Third World. It also requests that the Government works with the International Labour Organisation to ensure the implementation of the Convention Concerning Safety in the Use of Asbestos 1986 and the United...

Date published: 16/10/2008

Spodden Valley financiers nationalised

The bank which holds a mortgage charge on the Spodden Valley site has been nationalised.

In a move described in the media as one that "fundamentally changes the nature of banking", Gordon Brown decided that the Government has to take a majority shareholding in The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) after he found it was in a more vulnerable state than had been thought....

Date published: 13/10/2008

Labour group express further shock at Sir Cyril revelations

The site of the former T&N factory

Local Labour politicians have expressed shock and disbelief at the latest allegations to emerge about Sir Cyril Smith’s relationship with asbestos giant T&N after correspondence between Sir...

Date published: 23/09/2008

Did T&N write Cyril Smith's 1981 speech on asbestos?

Sir Cyril Smith

Rochdale Online again has first access to original archived documents. These newly revealed documents from asbestos company archives, once believed to be destroyed, shed new light on the...

Date published: 17/09/2008

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