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Scroungers

3 Feb

In a piece in today’s Guardian on the failure of the 2012 Olympics to deliver a legacy of greater participation in sport David Conn observes

The real Olympic legacy winners, of course, are West Ham United, owned by David Sullivan and David Gold, who made their first fortunes in pornography. Next year the Premier League club will take charge of the Olympic stadium, built with £429m of public money, and for which the public is paying a further £160m to convert for West Ham. The club will pay rent, and stands to make a fortune from the 54,000-seat capacity – far more than than its current Upton Park home – and enhanced corporate feasting. Karren Brady, who has worked loyally for Sullivan all her career, negotiated this stadium deal of the century with London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, and has since been made a Conservative peer – Baroness Brady of Knightsbridge.

And a quarter of that £160m conversion cost is being met by the council taxpayers of Newham – local people who are struggling with falling wages and rising prices. Meanwhile, David Cameron promises to drive even more of them into poverty by cutting the benefits cap if his party wins in May.

But of course there’s no cap on handouts to the wealthy. Multimillionaire pornographers and their Tory chief executive can have their business subsidised by the taxpayer: it’s enough to turn your stomach. 

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Affordable housing

21 Jan

ClaptonUltras 2015 Jan 18

Will the council stand up for local people or just let Galliard get away with it? I think we all know the answer to that question.

To rub salt into the wound, the developer is proposing that just 51 of the 838 homes to be built on the Boleyn Ground site will be ‘affordable’ housing. That’s made up of 5 studios, 8 one bedroom flats, 25 two bed units and 13 three bed homes. These will be offered on a shared ownership basis: there will be no affordable homes for rent.

As bad as that seems, things are even worse in Stratford.

CBRE are proposing to redevelop Morgan House – an office block – and part of the shopping centre to provide more than 500 new homes. These will overlook the Olympic Park and provide easy access to both east London’s best connected transport hub and Europe’s largest shopping mall. 

Given the high prices such a prime location will attract, it comes as no surprise that, according to the developer:

There are a number of unique and exceptional site-specific circumstances which result cumulatively in the proposal site being entirely unsuitable for on-site affordable housing provision.

The reasoning is that Newham’s priority is family homes, and a town centre location surrounded by busy roads would not be the right place to house families.

So what about the option of providing affordable homes on another site? That’s not going to happen either.

an initial review of site availability in the area has not identified an appropriate donor site for affordable housing provision. Further, the applicant does not have any suitable sites that could be identified for affordable housing provision.

The only option the developer will consider is bunging the council some cash:

Subject to viability, given the very special circumstances involved with the existing site and emerging proposals, it is considered that a commuted payment towards affordable housing provision would be the most appropriate mechanism for the provision of affordable housing.

Of course once the council has the cash – assuming the viability assessment even requires it to be paid – there’s no obligation to actually spend it on providing affordable housing. It can just vanish into the general pot and pay for whatever the mayor wants.

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Brass neck

12 Dec

The Newham Recorder has finally got round to reporting on the Newham Collegiate 6th Form and East Ham Town Hall debacle.

And entirely predictably it has regurgitated the mayor’s line that this is all the fault of officers.

It even has a quote from Lester ‘3 jobs’ Hudson: 

“There has been a complete and utter failure by senior officers in the governance process in this project.”

That’s some brass neck you’ve got there, Lester!

Are we really expected to believe that governance has nothing to do with elected members? That the executive mayor, his cabinet lead for finance and chair of the audit board have no responsibility for ensuring that major spending projects are running to budget, or that the authority pays heed to leading counsel’s advice on the legal status of a new school?

The supine and pointless Recorder obviously does. 

If our deputy mayor were being honest he’d have said “There has been a complete and utter failure by elected members to do the jobs residents elected them to do and for which they receive extremely generous allowances.”

That would be swiftly followed by the words “I am very sorry and I resign.”

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Equalities

9 Dec

Corbett Crawford

 
What does the mayoral advisor on the left have that the cabinet member on the right doesn’t?
 
The answer is a not ‘a fucking clue’.
 
Thanks to a recent FOI request we know that it’s a special responsibility allowance on top of his basic councillor’s pay.*
 
Richard Crawford advises on ‘Resident Experience’ – whatever that means – and gets a handsome £33,395 a year extra for his trouble.
 
Jo Corbett looks after the Equalities portfolio but “there is no renumeration linked to this post.” She gets nothing.
 
If this were anywhere but Sir Robin Wales’s Newham you’d think that was some kind of joke, but it’s par for the course here.
 
Of the mayor’s nine cabinet members five are men and four are women. Of the men, four get top whack – an extra £33,395 a year. The fifth, the Rev. Quintin Peppiatt, has declined to take an extra allowance this year.** Among the women only Ellie Robinson gets the full allowance. Frances Clarke and Lakmini Shah get £6,679 each; Jo Corbett gets nothing.
 
Outside the cabinet it is no better. Mayoral advisors Andrew Baikie, Clive Furness and Ian Corbett join Councillor Crawford in the top pay bracket. Terry Paul and David Christie each get £13,358. Joy Laguda is paid what Sir Robin clearly thinks a woman’s work is worth – £6,679.
 
It beggars belief that Newham Labour members allow their leader to get away with this year after year, apparently without question.
 
Equalities, my arse.
 
* The current basic allowance for councillors is £10,829
** Cllr Peppiatt hasn’t always been so self-denying. Between 2010 and 2014 he accepted an annual SRA of £18,624 on top of his basic.
 
 
 

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Yet another matter of interest

2 Dec

In my previous post I described Councillor Lester Hudson as double-jobbing, being both Newham’s deputy mayor and its cabinet member for finance.

It appears I did the poor man a disservice: he is triple-jobbing!

He combines his other two roles with being chair of the council’s audit committee.

Yes, that’s right. The cabinet member for finance also chairs the audit committee. Which surely amounts to a major conflict of interest, especially when there are serious questions to be answered – as there are right now with the East Ham Town Hall campus overspend and the unlawful expenditure on the new 6th form college.

Councillors would be remiss if they did not challenge this very peculiar and unhealthy arrangement.

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Monumental incompetence

2 Dec

Lester Hudson: too busy eating cake to notice a £9.8 million overspend

At the cabinet meeting held on Thursday 25th September 2014 the mayor and his advisors received a report on progress with the redevelopment of the East Ham Town Hall campus.

The report stated that additional funding of £9.8 million would be required and that

“there has been a clear breakdown in Governance and reporting procedures for this project, hence these issues have not been properly reported to the Mayor and Cabinet previously.”

Now cabinet has been summoned for an emergency meeting to consider the fall out from the investigation into what went wrong.

That includes the ‘discovery’ that the council opened a new 6th form college without any legal authority and has, therefore, acted unlawfully.

The investigation reveals both systemic incompetence and an extraordinary laxity in project governance:

One problem is that the programme board overseeing the East Ham Campus works appears to have changed into a project board focusing solely on the delivery of the Sixth Form element of the Programme. This shift was not discussed, or approved by any of the Council’s Statutory Officers…

… financial matters across the whole Programme were not discussed at project board meetings. The Board became concerned only with the September 2014 opening of the sixth form centre. Officers assumed its role was to oversee the correct fit out, the appointment of staff, communications etc. and it is clear that cost reports were never submitted to the Board.

… There were no terms of reference or oversight of the whole project.

… Minutes of the project board were taken by a member of the Programme Team, meaning there was a possible conflict of interest and reducing the impartiality of minute taking.

… [Cost and budget management] is the monitoring of actual expenditure, committed expenditure and forecast expenditure to project completion, against the approved budget. On reviewing the documents it is apparent that this has been at best poor or non-existent.

… Not only was there no cost reporting until March 2014, the reports produced do not show all necessary information, in that they do not differentiate between actual and committed expenditure, nor is there a detailed breakdown of works.

… It appears that arrangements for Contract compensation events (these are similar to contract variations) were agreed on an informal basis. An automated system was in place with thresholds for authorisation that did not align with the Council’s authorisation limits and there were inadequate controls or documentation within the Programme for compensation events exceeding authorised limits.

… There were a number of compensation events that were found on the application system which were over £100,000, and above officer delegated authority levels.

… Formal contractual arrangements for the Sixth Form project were never entered into by Officers… the builder was requested to provide a price for the Sixth Form. No report was not submitted to the Mayor, Members or Statutory Officers and, in addition, the Council’s procurement rules were not followed. [see note below – MW]

… There was no sponsorship or Programme Board for the East Ham Campus works since spring 2013. This meant that progress in terms of delivery (time and budget) of the East Ham Campus works as a whole was not challenged or scrutinised by the Programme Board for a period of at least six months.

And on and on (and on) it goes. Page after page of toe-curling detail.

So far three officers have lost their jobs over this, including the executive director for Resources and Commercial Development and the director of Legal Services and Governance. More will follow.

But what about the well remunerated cabinet members who should have been keeping an eye the project: how were these failures not spotted? Why were questions not asked?

Whose portfolios included oversight for the East Ham Town Hall development and the opening of the new 6th form college? Who among our elected representatives is ultimately accountable?

As Sir Robin has thus far declined to publish details of what his army of ‘mayoral advisors’ are supposed to be doing, beyond vague job titles, we can only guess. 

Deputy mayor Lester Hudson double-jobs as the cabinet member for finance and regeneration. He previously also had ‘Property and Assets’ in his portfolio. If his job title actually meant anything you’d expect him to have taken at least a passing interest in what was going on.

That he didn’t either means his job is meaningless or he’s monumentally incompetent. Either way, if he had a shred of decency, he’d be drafting his resignations from both cabinet and council.

Note: As the cabinet report points out, “It should be made explicitly clear that the liability for the failures in establishing adequate or compliant contractual arrangements rests entirely with the Council and there is therefore no evidence of poor practice or impropriety on the part of the Contractors.”

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Without authority

27 Nov

From the cabinet papers for next week’s meeting:

it is apparent from the investigations led by the Chief Executive [into the East Ham Town Hall overspend and reporting failures – MW] that the Newham 6th Form Collegiate was opened without any officer delegated decision notice being prepared as expected under recommendation 5 of the Cabinet decision of 21st February 2013, and that therefore the decision was not properly implemented in accordance with Council procedures.

Further it is also apparent from an investigation into the handling of Legal advice during the development of proposals for the Newham 6th Form Collegiate that the Council has no specific statutory powers to open a Centre without formal public consultation.

Legal advice obtained by the Chief Executive from leading Counsel also indicates that the Council does not have the power to establish a 6th Form under the current statutory framework. 

Coupled with an overspend of £9.8 million on the re-building and the failure of elected members to even notice this, the whole East Ham Town Hall Campus project looks like a cock-up of monumental proportions!

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Ask me no questions

14 Nov

Could the gagging order sent down from chief whip Steve Brayshaw this week be in any way connected to the investigation into Sir Robin’s behaviour at the Newham Show and the report of the standards committee?

The last thing the mayor wants is to be publicly embarrassed by questions about the findings – whatever they turn out to be. Much better for a response to be agreed in private at Labour group, then have the report ’noted’ by council on a whipped vote without further ado.

The standards committee is scheduled to meet on 10th December – 2 days after council. The next full council after that isn’t until late February. If Brayshaw can keep his troops on message it will be all-but-forgotten by then.

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Gagging order

12 Nov

At the last council meeting, in late September, two backbench councillors – John Gray and Rokshana Fiaz – took the opportunity to ask the mayor questions about the Focus E15 mothers’ campaign and the future of the Carpenters Estate. These followed on from his statement and half-hearted apology. They were doing no more than their constituents would expect of them.

In any other local authority, councillors asking questions at a council meeting, in public, would have been unremarkable. It is what should happen. But in Newham it was exceptional.

And Sir Robin has, predictably, taken exception to it.

This email was sent yesterday to all Newham councillors by the Labour chief whip, Cllr Stephen Brayshaw (via the group secretary Cllr Susan Masters): 

From: Susan Masters [mailto:xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.com] 

Sent: 11 November 2014 15:02

Subject: Message from our whip  

A MESSAGE FROM OUR LABOUR GROUP WHIP TO LABOUR GROUP MEMBERS 

Dear Comrades,

Concern has been expressed among group officers relating to the growing appearance of cracks within group and the use of Council meetings rather than Labour Group as a platform for airing disagreements and debate. 

When arguments are played out in public there are only losers: The Labour Party and our constituents. 

The officers agreed that we should draw a line now and move forwards towards a more cohesive group. Disagreements, questions and motions should be put to group and discussed at group. We are one Labour Party and we should show respect for the group and our colleagues. It is polite and proper that this should be the case. 

Moving forwards; where people break the rules or behave in a way that could embarrass the group, executive, party and leadership in a public forum we feel at such a key time that we have no option but to push  for the highest sanctions possible within the rules. 

Let’s move forwards and ensure that we are working for our constituents, our party and our group. 

Best

Steve Brayshaw

It is a clear and unambiguous attempt to muzzle councillors and stop them publicly raising serious questions at Council meetings. Debate can only happen in private, behind closed doors.

The “highest sanctions possible within the rules” means expulsion from Labour Group and – if the councillor were not later reinstated – automatic deselection at the next election.

Ironically, this threat is itself a breach of Labour Party rules: 

Labour recognises that individual members, to fulfill their representative duties, may without consultation speak and ask questions in meetings of the council on behalf of their constituents or other community interests. (chapter 13, clause XI, sub-clause 1)

Any councillor expelled from Newham’s Labour Group on these grounds would be entitled to appeal: they’d have an unanswerable case for immediate reinstatement.

But the more important point for ordinary Newham residents is that Sir Robin and his cronies are using heavy-handed threats to stop councillors doing the one job we elected them to do: publicly scrutinise the executive mayor and hold him to account for the decisions he makes. It is undemocratic and unacceptable.

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Another matter of interest

20 Oct

From the minutes of the standards advisory committee meeting held on October 6th, which considered a complaint that the Dear Leader had breached the code of conduct:

It was questioned whether, as a Mayoral Advisor Councillor Laguda should declare a pecuniary interest in item 6 (Investigation of complaint of breach of code of conduct by an elected member). Following advice from the Monitoring Officer Cllr Laguda decided that she need not declare an interest.

How jolly convenient. The special responsibility allowance she receives – which is entirely within the gift of the mayor and can be withdrawn by him at any time, for any reason – does not constitute a ‘pecuniary interest’!

Like so many politicians before her, Cllr Laguda has wrestled with her conscience and won.

Perhaps she should have thought a little harder about her decision, because the requirement to make a declaration also extends to non-pecuniary interests.

To quote from guidance issued to councillors (my emphasis added):

The Council’s Code of Conduct requires you to make a verbal declaration of the existence and nature of any … “Non-Pecuniary Interest”. Any Member who does not declare these interests in any matter when they apply may be in breach of the Code of Conduct.

You may have a … “Non-Pecuniary Interest” in an item of business where:

2.2.1 A decision in relation to that business might reasonably be regarded as affecting your well-being or financial standing, or a member of your family, or a person with whom you have a close association…

2.3 A person with whom you have a close association is someone who is more than an acquaintance, and is someone you are in contact with over a period of time, whether regularly or not. It is someone that a reasonable member of the public might think you would be prepared to favour or disadvantage when discussing a matter which affects them.

All of the councillors on the hearing sub-committee should also consider section 5 of the guidance, on bias and pre-determination (again, emphasis added):

If in relation to any decision, your outside connections may make it appear to a reasonable person that there is a real danger of bias, or predetermination you should seek advice as to whether it is appropriate for you to participate in any discussion about the matter and in the decision, regardless of whether or not you consider that you should declare an interest as defined above.

Given that councillors Laguda, Scoresby, Collier and Amarjit Singh all campaigned alongside Sir Robin in May and were photographed with him on their leaflets, a reasonable person might very well think there is a danger of bias or pre-determination.

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