Air your concerns at Bamford Area Forum

Get talking: Councillors Angela Coric and William Hobhouse invite you to the new Bamford Area Forum

Bamford finally has an Area Forum – and will meet for the first time on Monday (2 March).

Councillors, police officers, local campaigners and members of the public will meet at Bamford Chapel to discuss local issues and suggest ideas to improve the ward.

Rochdale Township has £1 million of devolved money to spend. Each ward already directly receives £6,000 per year and this money can be used to fund small projects like landscaping, traffic surveys and hanging baskets.

The first meeting will be considering the Sure Start proposals for Norden and Bamford. Sure Start is a new centre at Norden Community Primary School providing activities and support for the 0-5 year olds and their parents

The Area Forum will hear details about the proposals and will be given the opportunity to recommend a decision in favour or against.

The agenda starts with an Open Forum when any local people can raise any issue they like. If they cannot be answered fully at the meeting; minutes are taken and reported back to the next meeting.

Angela Coric, Vice-Chairwoman of the Township commented: “We organised a community meeting a couple of years ago with Paul Rowen MP at the Rugby Club, and more recently Councillors Andrew Abbott and William Hobhouse ran a Community Meeting at the Chapel which was well attended.

“Both these events demonstrated that there’s a strong community spirit in Bamford and inspired us to press ahead with the new Area Forum”.

Bamford Ward Councillor William Hobhouse, who is also Chairman of Rochdale Township said: “Our political agenda is devolution, empowering local communities and making local democracy work. Everyone please come and make the Area Forum a long term success”.