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Beckton by-election

23 Jul

Following the death of Councillor Alec Kellaway in June there will have to be a by-election in Beckton to replace him.

No date has yet been set, but the Notice of Vacancy has very quietly been published on the council website. 

The notice is dated 21st July and the election will have to be held within 35 working days of 2 local electors writing to the returning office to request it. Assuming this has been carefully choreographed and they do that this week, Thursday 4th September is the most likely date.

Labour’s candidate selection process is already well advanced. The final meeting will be tomorrow.

Local members are not being trusted to make their choice unaided, so two of Sir Robin’s close lieutenants, councillors Unmesh Desai and Ken Clark, have been placed on the panel. We can therefore be confident that whoever wins will have the mayoral seal of approval.

In May the leading Tory candidate, Syed Ahmed, finished 700 votes adrift of Alec Kellaway, but Labour can’t be too complacent.

At the last council by-election in Royal Docks in 2009, Steve Brayshaw only narrowly beat off the Tory challenger. His 15 vote majority was uncomfortably narrow. And those with longer memories will recall by-elections in Bemersyde in 1991 and Greatfield in 1992 that Labour actually lost. 

Sitting Beckton councillors Chowdhury and Christie would be advised to cancel any holiday plans and buy some comfortable shoes. They’ll be pounding the streets for the rest of the summer.

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A place to live, work and stay

15 Jul

 

The Focus E15 mums decided to confront Sir Robin Wales at the Newham Show this weekend about his housing policies and what they see as the long-term social cleansing of the borough. It’s clear from the video that he’s not at all happy about it.

The mayor obviously doesn’t appreciate ordinary people using his expensively staged propaganda events to challenge his priorities.

A number of Labour councillors can be seen providing a human shield for the mayor. This must have been an uncomfortable experience for some of them. They stood for election in the genuine and sincere hope of improving the lives of Newham residents; now they find themselves confronted by people protesting against homelessness, high cost private rents and the prospect of being rehoused hundreds of miles away from their families and friends – causes that ought to be close to their hearts.

The confrontation was even reported in the Morning Star, which described it as

a testosterone-fuelled east London mayor squaring up to a young homeless mum campaigning for decent housing.

The Star reports that the protesters were subsequently forcibly ejected from the Newham Show:

A spokeswoman for the council argued that “officers took the decision to evict the group of protesters and political activists from the park as they staged an aggressive protest.”

It’s ironic that Sir Robin’s angry response to the protest is that it’s “a family day” when all that the Focus E15 mums want is to keep their families together in Newham. ‘A place to live, work and stay’, as the council’s own slogan has it.

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Money works

2 Jul

Newham Labour M 012

In his 2014 local government manifesto Sir Robin Wales promised to address the problem residents face from the high cost of credit and rip-off pay-day loans by setting up a council-run alternative: 

Labour will set up a one stop shop – Money Works – which will provide a range of support to responsible residents including:

  • Pay day loans – at fair rates
  • Access to loans for white goods – at fair rates
  • A life changing fund which provides loans when people have a realistic and sensible idea which could change their lives – at fair rates
  • Access to low cost home furnishings
  • Crisis loans
  • Access to credit to clear loans in certain instances
  • Support, guidance and loans to help you with your energy bills.

The basis of this one-stop shop will be that residents will only be able to access loans if they are responsible. Any failure to repay the money owed will mean they can never get any support again for Money Works.

On the face of it, that sounds like a good idea – though, given that Sir Robin thinks 80% of London market rents are ‘affordable’, quite what his idea of ‘fair rates’ might be is anyone’s guess.

But it’s actually completely redundant – an alternative source of low cost affordable finance for residents already exists – Newham Credit Union:

NewCred is a community based credit union. It is a not-for-profit organisation owned and run by its members. As part of a worldwide credit union movement it provides financial services to the people of Newham. NewCred strengthens social networks and contributes to the local economy.


NewCred aims to be the primary provider of low cost affordable financial services in Newham. [emphasis added]

Why would the mayor want to go to the trouble and expense of setting up and then managing an in-house operation rather than simply point residents to NewCred? Given that credit unions are cooperatives, owned and run by their members, this would be a good way for Sir Robin to help build the more self-reliant, resilient community he talks about.

And supporting NewCred would fit in with Labour policy nationally. Ed Miliband has promised his government will impose a levy on the profits of payday lenders that would be used directly to fund the expansion of credit unions.

So why not do it? I asked some of the candidates – now councillors – before the election and the answer that came back was a “concern about scale.”

But the council could help NewCred overcome that and make it a genuine local alternative to the likes of Wonga. It would take a bit of investment. NewCred’s office’s on Romford Road are not exactly prominent, so retail store fronts in, say, Stratford shopping centre and East Ham high street would be a huge boost. Newham has ready access to exactly that kind of commercial property, which it could lease at favourable rates.

And the council could become a depositor – if Newham can put £7 million into risky Icelandic banks, why not the rock-solid local credit union?

Then there’s advertising and promotion. Perhaps Sir Robin could be persuaded to have his photo taken at NewCred’s offices opening his own savings account and published in the Newham Mag. Stories could be placed in the Recorder. I know he’s normally a bit reticent about that sort of thing, but he could be persuaded for a good cause!

I suspect though that the real objection to building up NewCred is one of control. For all his talk of fostering independence and building resilience, Sir Robin wants everything to come from Building 1000. Even your white goods and home furnishings.

Making plans for Robin

26 Jun

Scene: the mayor’s office in Building 1000. Sir Robin Wales is meeting representatives from ‘executive recruitment consultants’ Moneyfore Olderope & Co.

Date: sometime in the distant future

Sir Robin: Thanks for coming in, guys. We need some help finding someone to chair the board of our private housing rental business Red Door Ventures. People who can give us the independent advice we need so that we make the right choice for our residents. 

Moneyfore:  At Moneyfore Olderope we know that’s what really matters. You can rely on us.

Sir Robin: It’s an important job. Red Door Ventures is owned by the council, but operates as a private business. We’ve used the borrowing power of the council – backed by public money – to build 3,000 new homes and buy 500 others. But we’ve done it in a way that means we aren’t obliged to let any of them to people on the housing waiting list. Most of the homes are let at full market rates which, as you can imagine, puts them out of reach of those kinds of people. But for appearance’s sake – after all, we are supposed to be a Labour council – some of them are rented at what we call ‘affordable’ rates.

Olderope: ‘Affordable’?

Sir Robin: 80% of the market rate. 

Olderope: So they’re still quite expensive then?

Sir Robin: Oh yes, way too much for people who need social housing.

Moneyfore: 3,500 homes at London rents. Even with a few of those [makes air quotes gesture] ‘affordable’ units you have quite a business there. £5 – £6 million a month in revenues?

Sir Robin: In that ballpark.

Olderope: Which is why you need a big name to chair the board. Give it the profile it deserves.

Sir Robin: But not just any big name. We need someone with knowledge of the local area. Someone who knows how to keep the press onside. Someone the councillors on the board can look up to and respect, who can provide the leadership and vision they are used to.

Moneyfore: So they’d need political as well as business experience.

Sir Robin: Absolutely. And it would be good if you could find a candidate with previous experience as a director on a big public sector delivery project. Like the Olympics, say.

Olderope: [scribbles the word LOCOG on notepad] Go on…

Sir Robin: You know, I always think a title adds a bit of gravitas. A lord, or a Sir. Always looks good on the letterhead.

Moneyfore: Those people are quite hard to find. And they don’t come cheap.

Olderope: Are you thinking this is a full time role, or a day or two a week?

Sir Robin: Part-time. Something that might suit someone who’s recently retired but wants to keep their hand in, so to speak. And earn a little to top up their pension.

Moneyfore: A little?

Sir Robin: We were thinking in the region of £40 – 50,000 a year for a 2 day week.

Olderope: Very reasonable.

Moneyfore: Well, leave it with us Sir Robin. We’ll have a think about possible candidates. Come back to you in a week or so with a list.

They stand up and shake hands.

Sir Robin: Oh, before you go… this isn’t public yet but I’ve decided not to stand for re-election next year. It’s time to wind down a little. But it would be nice to still have a little something…

Moneyfore: … to keep your hand in, so to speak.

Olderope: And top up the pension.

Sir Robin: Exactly. So if you hear of anything suitable…

Moneyfore: Funny you should mention it, but we’ve just received this interesting new brief…

Fade to black

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Disappearing act

17 Jun

Photo by Karls Kamera

According to Wikipedia, the oozlum bird is a legendary creature found in folk tales that, when startled, will take off and fly around in ever-decreasing circles until it manages to fly up itself, disappearing completely.

After reading this account of goings-on within Left Unity and this piece on relations between them and TUSC I am pretty sure the definition applies equally to the hard Left.

30 years ago, when I was briefly a student member of the now utterly discredited and irrelevant SWP, it was much the same. Then it was ‘us’ versus the WRP, Militant, RCP, IMG and a whole alphabet soup of teeny-tiny groups, all arguing over paper-thin differences of interpretation of what Trotsky said at some conference in 1937. Like anyone cared. 

Now it’s LU versus TUSC. And even worse, within LU itself, the ‘Socialist Platform’ versus the ‘Communist Platform’. The party is less than a year old and already it has a disputes committee. Does anyone think this sort of thing is remotely appealing to the rest of the world?

In the recent mayoral election TUSC got less than 2% of the vote, despite standing against a Labour incumbent with a depressingly right-wing record. 

Unless and until the non-Labour Left gets its collective head out of its arse and focuses its energies on engaging real people in the real world about the real problems they face it’s doomed to decades more of irrelevance. 

 

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Money (that’s what I want)

13 Jun

 

The best things in life are free, but you can keep them for the birds and bees

Details of the allowances paid to the mayor and councillors in the last financial year (2013/14) have been published in the ‘Summer Edition’ of the Newham Mag.

The Mag’s version of the table lists councillors in alphabetic order (except the mayor, obviously, who is always on top) and doesn’t include any totals. So it’s hard to see exactly how much is being paid and to whom.

I’ve taken the data, added up totals for each councillor and sorted them into rank order:

Name Basic* SRA Total
RA WALES 0 81,029 81,029
AR BAIKIE 10,734 31,042 41,776
IK CORBETT 10,734 31,042 41,776
RJ CRAWFORD 10,734 31,042 41,776
U DESAI 10,734 31,042 41,776
CW FURNESS 10,734 31,042 41,776
LT HUDSON 10,734 31,042 41,776
C MCAULEY 10,734 31,042 41,776
A KELLAWAY 10,734 26,901 37,635
EH SPARROWHAWK 10,734 22,765 33,499
E ROBINSON 10,734 22,720 33,454
Q PEPPIATT 10,734 18,624 29,358
F HUSSAIN 10,734 18,039 28,773
RA MIRZA 10,734 17,877 28,611
RN MANLEY 10,734 14,488 25,222
AB MCALMONT 10,734 14,488 25,222
T PAUL 10,734 14,488 25,222
WT VAUGHAN 10,734 14,488 25,222
NJ WILSON 10,734 14,488 25,222
A SINGH 10,734 10,347 21,081
K SCORESBY 10,734 9,362 20,096
J ALEXANDER 10,734 5,176 15,910
F BOURNE 10,734 5,176 15,910
S BRAYSHAW 10,734 5,176 15,910
A CHOWDHURY 10,734 5,176 15,910
D CHRISTIE 10,734 5,176 15,910
R RAHMAN 10,734 5,176 15,910
L SHAH 10,734 5,176 15,910
J GRAY 10,734 3,621 14,355
PW SCHAFER 10,734 3,449 14,183
S AHMAD 10,734 0 10,734
PM BRICKELL 10,734 0 10,734
L CAMERON 10,734 0 10,734
NK CHADHA 10,734 0 10,734
AA CHAUDHARY 10,734 0 10,734
B COLLIER 10,734 0 10,734
MS COLLIER 10,734 0 10,734
JH CORBETT 10,734 0 10,734
C FIBERESIMA 10,734 0 10,734
O GANGADHARAN 10,734 0 10,734
A GRIFFITHS 10,734 0 10,734
PM HOLLAND 10,734 0 10,734
KJ JENKINS 10,734 0 10,734
KR KAZI 10,734 0 10,734
JH LAGUDA 10,734 0 10,734
S MAHMOOD 10,734 0 10,734
C MCLEAN 10,734 0 10,734
P MURPHY 10,734 0 10,734
F NAZEER 10,734 0 10,734
FA NEKIWALA 10,734 0 10,734
M NICHOLAS 10,734 0 10,734
M PATEL 10,734 0 10,734
S PATEL 10,734 0 10,734
G PEARSON 10,734 0 10,734
P SATHIANESAN 10,734 0 10,734
PJ SHILLINGFORD 10,734 0 10,734
MM SKYERS 10,734 0 10,734
R TALATI 10,734 0 10,734
A TAYLOR 10,734 0 10,734
S THOMAS 10,734 0 10,734
H VIRDEE 10,734 0 10,734
Totals: 644,040 560,700 1,204,740

*net of £95 deducted at source for home use of a council-supplied computer and data registration fee

A few things worth noting:

  • 29 out of 60 councillors received some kind of ‘special responsibility allowance’ on top of their basic
  • The top 10 recipients of council cash, including the mayor, were all men
  • Only one woman, Forest Gate’s Ellie Robinson, is in the top 20 earners from councillor allowances
  • Of the 29 councillors with ‘special responsibilities’, just 6 were women
  • Including the mayor, 14 elected members got more in allowances than the average Newham household income
  • Prior to the change to the mayoral system in 2002 councillors received a basic allowance of just £533 a year

There has as yet been no public announcement about the allowances to be paid to the cabinet members and mayoral advisors Sir Robin has appointed following his re-election, but you can bet that they won’t be stinting themselves.

Public service can be so rewarding.

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Oh, Ed

12 Jun

Facepalm sandwich

Words fail me.

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No social housing please, we’re Newham

10 Jun

600full charles hawtrey Sir Robin meets a developer who’d rather pay cash than provide social housing

Back at the end of March I submitted a Freedom of Information request to Newham council about the amount of new housing built in the borough since the award of the 2012 Olympics:

Since 6th July 2005 to today’s date:

1. How many dwellings have been built in Newham by private developers?

2. How many of these have been added to the borough’s social housing stock through section 106 agreements?

For both questions, please provide total figures for the borough and a breakdown by ward.

For the purposes of this question, a dwelling means a self-contained unit of accommodation. Self-containment is where all the rooms (including kitchen, bathroom and toilet) in a household’s accommodation are behind a single door which only that household can use.

The due date for a response was 30 April, three weeks before the local elections.

I finally got an answer on Friday, two weeks after the election (make of that what you will). It makes for some pretty dismal reading:

Ward Housing completions from all sources Of which built for social rent (of which delivered through a S106 agreement) Of which built as Council social rented stock
Beckton 467 33 (23) –
Boleyn 83 2 –
Canning Town North 538 113 (93) –
Canning Town South 1882 158 (153) –
Custom House 196 78 (33) 6
East Ham Central 175 34 –
East Ham North 132 16 (9) 7
East Ham South 66 12 –
Forest Gate North 299 76 (61) –
Forest Gate South 378 49 (2) –
Little Ilford 131 11 (10) –
Green Street East 105 0 –
Green Street West 249 40 (26) –
Manor Park 124 6 2
Plaistow North 426 220 (38) –
Plaistow South 184 9 1
Royal Docks 552 95 (16) 6
Stratford and New Town 2292 475 (363) –
Wall End 47 0 –
West Ham 361 156 (85) –
Total 8687 1583 (912) 22

 (all figures are no. of units)

The council’s Core Strategy document says, on the subject of affordable housing:

The Council will ensure that our communities are places where residents can afford to live, and are adaptable to their changing economic circumstances.
To achieve this we will:

1. Aim to ensure 50% of the number all new homes built over the plan period [2004 – 2013] are affordable;

2. Seek all new developments or redevelopments on individual sites with capacity for 10 units or more to provide between 35-50% of the number of proposed units affordable housing, comprising 60% social housing

On the basis of the figures provided to me, that’s a big fat fail. Why haven’t developers been required to stick to the plan? Why are blocks of apartments being built that can be advertised to overseas ‘investors’ as ‘100% private; no social housing’?

In recent years Newham has received millions of pounds from central government in new homes bonus and next to none of this has been spent on housing, despite the acknowledged need for more affordable housing in the borough. 

Newham has also been handed millions in payments from developers in lieu of social housing provision where “exceptionally” it has been judged impractical to provide it.

Hopefully (I’m not holding my breath) our newly elected local councillors will ask the questions residents want answered: where are the affordable homes we desperately need and where has the new homes bonus and S106 money been spent?

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It was 20 years ago today

9 Jun

On the eve of the Newham North East by-election – 20 years ago today – Alec Kellaway, the sole opposition councillor and Liberal Democrat candidate, defected to Labour.

His friends and supporters who had campaigned tirelessly for him for weeks were devastated. It was, they said, a bitter blow.

So congratulations to Councillor Alec Kellaway on 20 years as a member of Newham Labour party. I’m sure the champagne is on ice at Building 1000.

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Turns out

9 Jun

Turnout

Newham’s electorate and turnout at borough-wide elections since 1964 (source: LBN)

Year Electorate Turnout
1964 179,870 29.4%
1968 177,134 25.1%
1971 183,134 29.4%
1974 176,445 22.5%
1978 176,760 31.1%
1982 163,758 31.4%
1986 160,536 34.9%
1990 157,951 36.5%
1994 151,895 37.6%
1998 139,273 28.4%
2002 157,505 25.5%
2006 187,702 34.5%
2010 195,058 52.74%
2014 195,419 40.6%

A few random observations:

Firstly, citizen engagement with local politics remains appalling low. Only once in the history of the borough has turnout exceeded 50% and that was driven by the general election being held on the same day. Even the lure (ahem) of the European elections wasn’t sufficient to get 60% of voters to bother.

Why don’t more people make the effort? This isn’t just a Newham problem. Across London turnout for local elections hovered around the 40% mark. Despite having come a long way from the low point of 22.5% turnout in 1974 there’s a looming crisis of democratic legitimacy.

The lazy answer is that we just need to make voting easier. But it’s already ridiculously easy: polling stations are within walking distance and open for 15 hours; postal votes are available on demand. It has to be about making local politics relevant and engaging people in conversations about things that are important to them and their communities; it has to be about making people feel their vote will count; and it has to be about making local politics more than just getting the vote out once every four years.

Secondly, take a look at the size of the electorate in 2010 and 2014. Thousands of new homes are being built in the borough and there’s been a significant increase in over-crowding. We know the local population is rising rapidly, yet the number of registered voters has grown by less than 400.

Does that strike you as odd?

Then there’s the difference between the size of electorate for local elections and for the European election.

According the results published by Newham, turnout for the Euros was 43.6% based on an electorate of 173,606. That’s almost 22,000 less than for the local election.

People entitled to vote in local government elections are all also entitled to vote in European elections – British citizens, Irish citizens, Commonwealth citizens and EU citizens living in the UK. So where did all those voters go? Were people who wanted to vote in the European election turned away?

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