Boundary review 2018

13 Sep

As part of the government’s drive to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 and make parliamentary constituencies more equally sized, the Boundary Commission has published its proposals for London.

At the moment we have two seats in Newham – East Ham and West Ham. Each contains 10 of the 20 wards in the borough. But both seats are very large – in fact West Ham is the largest in London, with more than 80,000 voters. By contrast, the (Tory-held) Kensington seat has only 55,000.

The Boundary Commission’s proposals add about half a seat to Newham, but do so by ripping apart West Ham and dividing it between three new or revised constituencies:

We propose a Forest Gate and Loxford constituency, which includes three wards from the existing East Ham constituency, two wards from the existing Ilford South constituency, and four wards from the existing West Ham constituency. This configuration brings the Newham borough wards of Green Street East and Green Street West together in the same constituency. 

In Newham, we noted that the borough was too large for two constituencies. We propose an East Ham constituency, which retains seven wards from the existing East Ham constituency, and adds two wards from the existing West Ham constituency. We also propose a Bow and Canning Town constituency, which includes four wards from the existing West Ham constituency, two Tower Hamlets borough wards from the existing Poplar and Limehouse constituency, and two wards from the existing Bethnal Green and Bow constituency. 

The exact make-up of the new constituencies, with wards, boroughs and current voters:

Bow and Canning Town

Canning Town North Newham 8,333
     
Canning Town South Newham 8,543
     
Stratford and New Town Newham 12,471
     
West Ham Newham 8,073
     
Bow East Tower Hamlets 10,427
     
Bow West Tower Hamlets 7,850
     
Bromley North Tower Hamlets 5,980
     
Bromley South Tower Hamlets 6,532
     
Lansbury Tower Hamlets 9,623
     
  Total 77,832


East Ham

Beckton Newham 7,335
     
Boleyn Newham 8,696
     
Custom House Newham 6,971
     
East Ham Central Newham 8,867
     
East Ham North Newham 8,682
     
East Ham South Newham 8,347
     
Plaistow South Newham 8,290
     
Royal Docks Newham 6,081
     
Wall End Newham 8,418
     
  Total 71,687


Forest Gate and Loxford

Forest Gate North Newham 8,392
     
Forest Gate South Newham 8,862
     
Green Street East Newham 8,875
     
Green Street West Newham 8,752
     
Little Ilford Newham 8,873
     
Manor Park Newham 8,636
     
Plaistow North Newham 8,215
     
Clementswood Redbridge 8,051
     
Loxford Redbridge 8,841
     
  Total 77,497

You can comment on the proposals at the Commission’s special review website, or at a public hearing. The nearest one to us will be at Romford Town Hall on 31 October and 1 November.

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Latest crime stats

22 Aug

The Metropolitan Police have released the latest crime statistics for Newham and they don’t make for happy reading, with a 4% year-on-year increase.

While robberies and residential burglaries are down, violent crime – murder, assault, rape and other sexual assaults – are all up. As is gun crime – up 27%.

Also worrying are the significant increases in hate crime.

  Yr to June 16 Yr to June 15 Diff. % change
Total Crimes 30,266 29,190 1,076 4%
Homicide 6 5 1 20%
Violence Against the Person 9,853 8,580 1,273 15%
Rape 296 278 18 6%
Other Sexual 522 437 85 19%
Robbery (Total) 1,237 1,507 -270 -18%
   Robbery (Person) 1,164 1,417 -253 -18%
   Robbery (Business) 73 90 -17 -19%
Burglary (Total) 2,245 2,178 67 3%
   Burglary Residential 1,366 1,409 -43 -3%
   Burglary Non-Residential 879 769 110 14%
Gun Crime 116 91 25 27%
Motor Vehicle Crime 3,301 3,280 21 1%
Domestic Crime 3,440 3,097 343 11%
Racist & Religious Hate Crime 508 438 70 16%
Homophobic Crime 52 58 -6 -10%
Anti-Semitic Crime 7 3 4 133%
Islamophobic Crime 68 27 41 152%

Although it’s not obvious from these figures, reducing crime is one of the mayor’s ‘priorities’:

In 2015 we funded 40 police officers to help us tackle rogue landlords, crack down on dodgy traders and catch those who fly-tip.

Those officers cost an extra £425,000 a year. And, as important as rogue traders and fly-tipping are, residents might question how effectively that money is being spent.

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Really free

17 Aug

Screenshot 2016 08 16 16 08 09

With this year’s Under the Stars coming up at the weekend, a timely Freedom of Information response has revealed the true cost of the mayor’s ‘free’ events for residents.

Over the five years covered that’s a total of £4,314,409.

Imagine what else that money could have been spent on.

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Arrogance and stupidity

16 Aug

An excellent article in Tribune arguing that Labour needs to support fair votes.

The penultimate paragraph sums up so much of what frustrates me about the party and its unwillingness to cooperate with other progressive voices (my emphasis added):

In July, a private member’s Bill on PR introduced by Green MP Caroline Lucas was stifled at birth by a just a handful of votes. Labour MPs – under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership – were whipped to abstain, and only eight defied the whip and voted in favour. The arrogance of the Labour Party in denying the right of the electorate a fair vote because it sees itself as the only legitimate voice of ‘the left’ is matched only by it’s stupidity in failing to recognise, or at least acknowledge the changed balance of power in British politics, and the fact that without PR, England and Wales face the prospect, with or without a Labour split, of becoming a Tory one-party state.

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A prayer for Owen Smith

26 Jul

Another day in the Labour leadership contest, another open letter.

This time it’s backing Owen Smith MP in his fight against Jeremy Corbyn. Eight Newham councillors have signed:

  • Cllr Andrew Baikie
  • Cllr David Christie
  • Cllr Ian Corbett
  • Cllr James Beckles
  • Cllr Jo Corbett
  • Cllr Mas Patel
  • Cllr Patricia Holland
  • Cllr Quintin Peppiatt

In addition, both Newham MPs, Lyn Brown and Stephen Timms, are among those who formally nominated Smith.

UPDATE (19 August 2016)

Councillors Salim Patel, Aleen Alarice and Alan Griffiths have now added their names to the list of signatories

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Co-op commotion

21 Jul

West Ham councillor John Gray has blogged about the re-run of the Newham Co-operative Party AGM earlier in the week.

The re-run was “due to ‘irregularities’ at the AGM in January.” I understand that these were far more serious than the ‘voter guidance’ I blogged about at the time and as a consequence the meeting was chaired by officials from party HQ.

Despite the apparent success of the meeting itself, Cllr Gray’s account ends on a sour note:

The evening was marred by the abusive and threatening behavior outside the meeting by one Co-op member towards another, which I will be bringing to the attention of Party officials. Such behaviours are not acceptable in the Co-op Party or any other progressive organisation. 

The perpetrator is not named, but his identity will be easily guessed by anyone who takes an interest in Newham politics. Thin-skinned, short-tempered and given to outbursts of foul-mouthed abuse towards those he thinks are plotting against him? 

Another clue, appropriately enough given the outcome of the meeting: surname rhymes with ‘fails’.

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It’s a mans world

18 Jul

Details of the allowances paid to Newham councillors in the last financial year (to 31 March 2016) have been published in the Newham Mag.

As usual, every effort has been made to prevent residents doing anything useful with the information. The online version of the Mag is published in PDF and Word formats; and the Word version – from which the data could easily be cut-and-pasted into a spreadsheet – completely omits the allowances section!

The standalone version, which is a statutory requirement, has not yet been published on the council website, but when it is it will be a PDF.

Nonetheless, a few minutes work reveals that over the past year our elected representatives took a total of £1,241,206 in basic and ‘special responsibility’ allowances, plus an extra £2,456 in travel and telephone allowances.

Of course, these allowances were not evenly distributed. The mayor and his closest friends took the lion’s share. And ranking councillors by the total they received gives a very clear indication of the kind of people Sir Robin favours politically: men.

The top ten earners for 2015/16:

Name Total
R WALES £81,839
L HUDSON £48,577
I CORBETT £45,612
R CRAWFORD £44,982
F HUSSAIN £44,871
K CLARK £44,677
C FURNESS £44,637
A BAIKIE £44,577
U DESAI £44,577
A McALMONT £38,830

Clearly, you don’t just have be a dick to get on in Newham Labour politics, you have to have one too.

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Forest Gate North results

15 Jul

SeyiAkiwowo 2016 Jul 15

Newly-elected Anamul Islam joins his fellow councillors

The results of yesterday’s by-election in Forest Gate North have been announced:

Candidate Party Votes Percent
Anamul Islam Labour Party 1150 52.5
Elisabeth Whitebread Green Party 681 31.1
John Oxley Conservatives 301 13.8
James Rumsby Liberal Democrats 57 2.6

 Turnout: 21.3%

So congratulations to Anam and commiserations to the other candidates.

To no-one’s great surprise, Labour held the seat comfortably with more than 50% of the vote. But their vote was down about 5% on the 2014 election. Interestingly, another by-election in Islington last night saw a similar decline. Perhaps even at the local level the negative consequences of the current party infighting are being felt.

Although they didn’t win, the Greens will be celebrating too. Second place and 31% of the vote is a terrific performance. They put a lot of energy into the campaign and benefited from having an excellent candidate. 

The Tories fractionally increased their vote, but remain (ha!) a very long way from being contenders in this part of the borough.

The Liberal Democrat candidate withdrew from the contest not long after nominations closed, so it was a surprise to see his name on the ballot paper yesterday. There was no advice at the polling station to let voters know either. In the end it didn’t matter much, but had his vote been greater than the gap between first and second it might have created an interesting challenge for the returning officer.

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Leadership, what leadership?

11 Jul

As reported last week, 11 Newham councillors signed a letter stating they had no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour party. One of the criticisms of Corbyn is that he failed to show leadership during the EU referendum campaign and he is therefore to blame for the disastrous result.

Whatever the merits of that argument might be, if those 11 councillors are really concerned about a lack of leadership in the referendum they should take a look closer to home.

Newham had the lowest turnout of any local authority area in England – and the second worst in the UK. Just 59% of voters bothered to register their preference.

Although Remain ‘won’, it was by an exceptionally narrow margin – a majority of 5,957.

Compare that to other inner London boroughs:

Borough Turnout Remain majority
Lambeth 67.4% 81,244
Wandsworth 71.9% 79,042
Hackney 65.1% 60,530
Southwark 66.2% 59,084
Haringey 70.6% 54,136
Islington 70.4% 51,240
Camden 65.5% 47,457
Tower Hamlets 64.6% 57,787

More people voted Remain in Lambeth than voted at all in Newham!

While local activists door-knocked and leafleted the borough, Sir Robin was almost entirely invisible. Search among the ‘doorstep selfies’ posted on social media and you’ll struggle to find one featuring the mayor’s grinning mug. There were no rallies, no public meetings.

Stephen Timms spoke at debates and used his Recorder column to urge residents to vote Remain. Lyn Brown also wrote about why she was voting to stay. Both MPs went door-to-door in the final few days.

But Sir Robin said not a word.

Brexit will hit the poorest hardest, and that means Newham residents will among those that suffer most. 

Will our supine Labour councillors hold Sir Robin to account? Unlikely. But the trigger ballots for deciding if he should be the nominee for the 2018 election are coming up and maybe – just maybe – the membership might.

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Whose home is it anyway?

8 Jul

Back in 2014 the council announced NewShare – an “exciting new Shared Equity scheme that offers potential home owners, who are currently frozen out of the London housing market, a helping hand onto the property ladder.”

The plan was to offer 1,220 homes for sale, in three categories: “new homes built by the council, street properties acquired by the council and empty council properties.”

According to the marketing guff

All homes available have undergone a comprehensive and high standard refurbishment to ensure that they are ready to move in to. The refurbishment includes refitted kitchens, with brand new appliances, refitted bathrooms, new carpets and redecoration in a neutral colour scheme throughout.

Despite the obvious objection that selling off council houses was a strange way to deal with a shortage of affordable homes in the borough, Labour councillors voted the scheme through.

They believed Sir Robin when he said that helping residents into home ownership would “…encourage them to settle in the borough and really get involved in the life of the community.”

Now that the scheme has launched a number of them are surprised to find that the earnings ceiling has been set at a whopping £90,000 per annum. That’s more than three times the average household income for the borough. Even with house prices at their current ludicrous levels it’s hard to describe anyone earning that much as “frozen out of the market.” 

So, two years on, how’s it going?

According to a recent Freedom of Information request a total of 70 homes have been sold through the scheme so far.

And one of them was sold to a member of the council.

The councillor was not named in the FOI response, but a quick check on the register of interests reveals the lucky man to be Cllr Forhad Hussain, cabinet member for Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour and Deputy Cabinet Member for Building Communities. One of the mayor’s most trusted lieutenants.

He ran for council in 2006 on the Respect ticket and was elected for Labour in 2010. He’s been in the cabinet since 2012. So you’d think he was already pretty well settled in the borough and “involved in the life of the community.” And being the recipient of close to £45,000 a year in allowances should be encouragement enough to stay.

The comprehensively refurbished home Cllr Hussain now owns was previously an empty Council property. 

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