Rochdale Borough Council has generously decided to invest just over £306,000 into local community projects, improvements and festive distractions, or, as it’s known in local government accounting, “a moderately expensive sticking plaster”.
Divided across the borough’s five township committees like a ceremonial scattering of breadcrumbs, the funding will support everything from bollards and carved benches to Christmas lights and traffic calming measures that may or may not calm anything.
“We’re making a real impact,” claimed Cllr Sue Smith, without specifying whether it was a positive one or simply the sound of public money colliding with bureaucracy. “There’s always more we can do,” she added, perhaps glancing longingly at a larger pot of money currently residing in Westminster.
In Middleton, highlights include a Christmas lights switch-on, a beloved annual tradition in which the town collectively tries to forget about potholes, and new fencing to protect residents from either traffic or vague existential despair. A damaged archer silhouette on a roundabout has been heroically replaced, proving once and for all that in Rochdale, symbolism is prioritised just behind drainage.
Over in Heywood, a mural is being painted on the Queen’s Park Café wall, because nothing says “we’ve solved child poverty” like a tasteful heron in emulsion. There’s also funding for a musical nativity and a feasibility study to possibly, maybe, one day install traffic lights, assuming the council doesn’t get distracted by the next emergency bollard installation.
Pennines Township is going full avant-garde, having funded a binaural sound walk across Blackstone Edge featuring the “voices of past, present and future”. It’s unclear if one of those voices whispered, “this money could’ve gone to youth services…”
Meanwhile, Rochdale North and South are covering all the essentials: foodbanks, toddler swings, scout fences, and enough bollards to construct a small fortress. There’s also a planter for a car park, ensuring that even your parking bay now gets a better Christmas than you.
All five townships are united in their support of functional fitness classes for people with long-term health conditions, because if you can’t fix the NHS, you might as well fund a few squats next to a defibrillator.
In a rare moment of sincerity, the funding does include tangible support for young people, food security and accessibility. But mostly, the council has achieved what it does best: a well-intentioned, slightly chaotic spattering of improvements which prove, if nothing else, that Rochdale’s problems can at least be mildly beautified.
