Anyone heard of “Northern Roots”? No neither have we, it appears to be another of those secretive Oldham Council public funded schemes which should be filed in a utopia wishful thinking portfolio. Although the council are renewing contracts for phase 2 of the scheme we cannot find any documentation on the scheme whatsoever. What we found was a small snippet of text from a trainee on a contractors website who worked on the scheme they stated it was “a large-scale demonstrator of how the natural environment can be harnessed and enhanced to be productive, whilst helping to improve local economic and social outcomes” So it appears to be another expansion of the councils vegetable growing obsession, we would love to know how this vegetable pipe dream will deliver any benefits for Oldham other than gathering more meaningless awards for the council. Oldham has almost quarter of a million residents, unemployment here grew at the fastest rate in the UK in the last year, Oldham has the lowest number of children living in fully working households outside London and there are over 20,000 on the social housing waiting list more than three times the demand seen in neighbouring authorities.
