VPaterson

Published at 00:00, Thursday, 10 January 2008

A NEW boss has been appointed to plan the future of the Maryport and District Partnership.

Nadim Qureshi, 46, recently produced the delivery plan for the South Whitehaven Partnership and has been involved in drawing up a Crime Reduction and Disorder Plan for West Cumbria.

His job in Maryport will be to look at the needs of the community and to find agencies willing and able to fulfil those needs, he said.

Mr Qureshi’s consultancy, Alpha Regeneration Ltd, has been appointed until the end of April.

Funding for the neighbourhood partnership will have finished then.

Mr Qureshi will try to establish whether the partnership needs to carry on, how it will be funded and what it will do.

Various projects have already started as a result of consultation by the partnership in the last two years.

Public meetings were asked to identify areas of concern in the town. These included worries about crime and disorder and anti-social behaviour.

Mr Qureshi will meet the partnership management team later this month.

He said: “The partnership is not a regeneration group. It does not have the money to fund these projects.

“Our role is to identify the needs of the area and then find the people who will meet those needs.

“If, for instance, Dearham people say they desperately need a doctor’s surgery, then part of our job would be to approach the appropriate people to see if they would bring the surgery to Dearham.”

Mr Qureshi, who was born in Pakistan and came to England when he was three years old, is married with five children.

He has been chief executive of regeneration schemes in Bradford and principal regeneration officer for the Bradford City council. He now runs his own consultancy.

Published by http://www.timesandstar.co.uk