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‘Petty row’ is making things hard for police

Stuart Greer
19/ 7/2006

A 'PETTY row' between a local parish council and Homewatch group is said to be seriously hampering the efforts of the police.

So much so, that an officer told a public meeting that criminal intelligence crucial to the battle against drugs - and even terrorism - may not be reaching the police.

The problem centres around a feud between Shaw and Crompton Parish Council and the area Homewatch group.

Homewatch is not sharing information about crime trends with the parish council because it claims its ideas and initiatives are subsequently being "stolen" by other organisations who look at the records of the parish meetings.

The parish council claims the Homewatch members won't even let its members attend their meetings, and accused the group of being "petty".

The feud has serious implications with crucial information about crime or suspicious activity not feeding through to the police.

Interrupting a parish council meeting last week, PC Russ Magnall warned: "There should be no divisions otherwise we are going to lose bits of information. We are talking about information about terrorism and drugs."

Diane Williamson, chairman of the parish council, said she did not feel welcome at Homewatch meetings any more.

"It's being petty," she said. "How does that make us look when our constituents come to us and ask what's going on and we say we don't know because Homewatch won't tell us any more?"

Homewatch chairman Rita Townsend disagreed that information from her branch meetings should be discussed by the parish council. "We didn't know our minutes were being read out at the council meetings," she said. "Why are no other local groups' meetings read out as well?

"Quite a while ago we were going to issue OAPs with door alarms and chains. Within three weeks of suggesting this Oldham Council decided to do it. We wasted a lot of time and effort. It does get frustrating."

Mrs Townsend said the parish council was welcome to attend meetings.

"We have nothing to hide," she said. "But no one from the council bothers to come or reply to our invitations."

Speaking after the meeting Cllr Williamson said: "I feel it's a shame the situation has arisen. The parish council will be working towards establishing links with Homewatch in the future and Cllr Brain Karran will write a letter to explain our point of view."


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Most recent 1 of 1 user comments

   The Homewatch group are quite within their rights to refuse the Parish Council access to their meetings. Council's exist to serve their constituents, not the other way around. If the Homewatch group want to organise themselves independently of the council, I say good look to them. We aren't quite in a totalitarian state yet!
Paul, Manchester
19/07/2006 at 17:26
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