A job description for councillors

28 Jan

While browsing around the web for information on councillor allowances I found the most recent report of the independent remuneration panel of London Councils, The Remuneration of Councillors in London 2014.

At the back there’s an appendix with a model job profile for councillors. It makes for interesting reading:

On behalf of the community – a job profile for councillors

Purposes:

  1. To participate constructively in the good governance of the area.
  2. To contribute actively to the formation and scrutiny of the authority’s policies, budget, strategies and service delivery.
  3. To represent effectively the interests of the ward for which the councillor was elected, and deal with constituents’ enquiries and representations.
  4. To champion the causes which best relate to the interests and sustainability of the community and campaign for the improvement of the quality of life of the community in terms of equity, economy and environment.
  5. To represent the council on an outside body, such as a charitable trust or neighbourhood association.

Key Tasks:

  1. To fulfil the statutory and locally determined requirements of an elected member of a local authority and the authority itself, including compliance with all relevant codes of conduct, and participation in those decisions and activities reserved to the full council (for example, setting budgets, overall priorities, strategy).
  2. To participate effectively as a member of any committee or panel to which the councillor is appointed, including related responsibilities for the services falling within the committee’s (or panel’s) terms of reference, human resource issues, staff appointments, fees and charges, and liaison with other public bodies to promote better understanding and partnership working.
  3. To participate in the activities of an outside body to which the councillor is appointed, providing two-way communication between the organisations. Also, for the same purpose, to develop and maintain a working knowledge of the authority’s policies and practices in relation to that body and of the community’s needs and aspirations in respect of that body’s role and functions.
  4. To participate in the scrutiny or performance review of the services of the authority, including where the authority so decides, the scrutiny of policies and budget, and their effectiveness in achieving the strategic objectives of the authority.
  5. To participate, as appointed, in the area and in service-based consultative processes with the community and with other organisations.
  6. To represent the authority to the community, and the community to the authority, through the various forums available.
  7. To develop and maintain a working knowledge of the authority’s services, management arrangements, powers/duties, and constraints, and to develop good working relationships with relevant officers of the authority.
  8. To develop and maintain a working knowledge of the organisations, services, activities and other factors which impact upon the community’s well-being and identity.
  9. To contribute constructively to open government and democratic renewal through active encouragement of the community to participate generally in the government of the area.
  10. To participate in the activities of any political group of which the councillor is a member.
  11. To undertake necessary training and development programmes as agreed by the authority.
  12. To be accountable for his/her actions and to report regularly on them in accessible and transparent ways.

How many of Newham’s 60 councillors could read that and – hand on heart – say they were doing the job the community expects of them? 

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Co-opting the Co-op

21 Jan

Coop Party nominations

The somewhat delayed annual meeting of the Newham Co-operative Party took place earlier this week.

This almost completely dormant body is significant because it is able to appoint delegates to the General Committee and Executive Committee of both constituency Labour parties in the borough.

It gives Sir Robin Wales and his cronies a clear route to controlling the constituency parties without the need to pay any attention to the party affiliate that nominated them or local members. 

With signs of growing resistance within the previously ultra-loyal East Ham Labour party and West Ham showing an alarming capacity for independent thought – they nominated Jeremy Corbyn for leader, for heaven’s sake! – this is proving to be a safer route for the mayor as he seeks to maintain his grip on power.

Cllr Clive Furness helpfully turned up on the night with a printed slate of candidates – shown above – in case the hard-of-thinking couldn’t remember who they were supposed to be voting for. 

There were 44 “co-operators” present and in the contested elections the Walesite candidates all achieved a remarkably similar 27 votes! 

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Another four more years

20 Jan

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Photo by ghedo on Flickr
 
Having been prevented from socialising in the run up to Christmas by the application of non-existent ‘rules’ Newham Labour members face yet more misery as the campaign to secure Sir Robin’s nomination for a fifth term gears up: a home visit from the man himself and a member of his executive team.
 
The unhappy news was delivered in an email on Tuesday. Beneath a massive picture of Sir Robin and a predictable recitation of the administration’s ‘successes’ (Workplace, Every Child a Future Voter, prosecutions of rogue landlords), the shoe dropped:
However, we are facing a huge financial challenge with massive government cuts. I, along with many members of my executive, have been visiting party members to ask what they think our response should be. These visits will continue…
By a not-very-mysterious coincidence, these home visits started in Boleyn ward the weekend after Cllr Charity Fiberesima’s death, when Sir Robin and his mates were spotted running around the ward interrogating party members. Some were so offended they complained to Stephen Timms.
 
Those members who would rather not wait at home on the off-chance the Dear Leader drops by can go along to a couple of special meetings at East Ham Town Hall and Stratford library. They’ll be able to hear Sir Robin’s ‘current thinking’ before getting the chance – right at the end, no doubt – to have their say. 
 
The meetings are strictly ‘members only’ affairs – no affiliates or registered supporters have been invited, much less the wider public – and those who want to go along must RSVP first to Carl Morris, the full-time local organiser, to let him know which one they’ll be attending. As these are party events and not council business, Labour should be billed for the use of the facilities, though based on past events they probably won’t be.
 
Finally…
one thing which has become clear through our member visits is that we have not explained sufficiently well just how radical and successful we are as a Council. 
 
So, starting this week I will be writing a regular blog – you can find it www.newhamlabour.co.uk/blog. Do please visit and read it.
Read it, but don’t expect to be able to respond. Despite readers being invited to suggest improvements, there’s nowhere to leave comments. As ever in Newham, communication is a one-way process.

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London’s Boroughs at 50

5 Jan

 

From Dave Hill’s review of Tony Travers’ new book, London’s Boroughs At 50:

In the east we find a cluster of very different boroughs all trying to contend with the consequences of London’s lost industrial past in various ways. Newham is perhaps the most conspicuous example. Travers describes the Tate and Lyle plant there as “one of the most important, enduring industrial icons” of London – it was, after all, one of the few major companies based in Newham that didn’t move out as part a calamitous economic decline between the mid-Sixties and the Eighties. Today, Newham is a regeneration crucible, one “increasingly linked into the post-industrial growth of inner and central London.”

The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, of course, has become a huge part of that: “The regeneration undertaken was on a scale that might otherwise have taken decades.” Bringing a successful modern Games to London was the triumph primarily of Ken Livingstone and Tessa Jowell, but they weren’t the first to try. Travers mentions that Conservative GLC leader Sir Horace Cutler had a go back in the late 1970s.

No mayor, no Christmas

21 Dec

Labour party members in Manor Park had to cancel their Christmas social at short notice last week because the mayor couldn’t attend.

The ward party chair sent round an apologetic email, explaining that the social couldn’t go ahead because of Labour party “rules”:

I have to inform you, regretfully, that after an emergency meeting, the Manor Park Social Event for next week (17th), has been cancelled. 

This is due to three rules: firstly, one of our guests cannot attend. (If our Mayor cannot attend then we cannot proceed with the social). Secondly, branches are not allowed to officially socialize as part of the Labour Party, only CLP. Finally, no guests outside of Newham are allowed to be invited to a Labour Party social event and there was some doubt about the music and choir at a Labour Party event.

This is very disappointing, as it was discussed and agreed at our branch meeting three weeks ago. 

However, I have asked the Chair of East Ham CLP if we can have a social event in 2016 for all of East Ham branches and this can go ahead. So we can look forward to this event.

I am very sorry for any inconvenience this cancellation may have caused. 

My sincere apologies.

Anyone searching the Labour party rule book will, of course, come away empty-handed. There are no such rules. It is straightforwardly an attempt to control and stop East Ham members meeting up and working together ahead of the trigger ballot to confirm Sir Robin, yet again, as the mayoral candidate. Divide and rule!

The ward chair was instructed to cancel the event, but maybe she should have seen it coming. She is also East Ham’s social secretary and has previously complained to the CLP secretary, Mariam Dawood, about the impossibility of organising activities without access to the full list of party members.

These shenanigans are an interesting contrast to the West Ham party, which has held many events open to all Labour supporters, mostly without the mayor. Some have included non-Newham guests – and even non-Labour people (disclosure: I’ve been to a couple).

Members in East Ham ought to be asking themselves about the motives of the people running their local party. Whose interests are they looking after?

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At home he’s a tourist

15 Dec

Hanif LibDem

Somehow it escaped my attention until a few days ago that Cllr Hanif Abdulmuhit had once upon a time been secretary of Newham Liberal Democrats.

That was before he joined Respect, for whom he stood successfully for council in 2006, defeating the incumbent Labour members. He also stood in 2008 as the party’s candidate for the London Assembly seat of City & East.

As Respect disintegrated he reinvented himself again, serving out the remainder of his term as a Labour councillor. He had to sit out the 2010 elections before returning as a thoroughly reconstructed representative of Newham Labour in 2014. He is now mayoral advisor for Building Communities (Adult Care Integration) and community lead for Green Street. 

But he obviously never stays in one place too long, so Newham Greens should be on the lookout for his membership application any day now.

(hat-tip to Gary Stevens for the image)

[And in case you were wondering about the title: At home he’s a tourist – Gang of Four]

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#TeamObaidKhan

15 Dec

Team Obaid Khan

A small gesture of solidarity from West Ham Labour at last week’s Christmas quiz night.

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Shuffling the pack

14 Dec

Reshuffle

Sir Robin has written to councillors to announce some changes to his team of ‘mayoral advisors’, including a couple of additions to the already bulging executive payroll.

Cllr Ellie Robinson (Forest Gate North) is taking over responsibility for Commercial Opportunities, leading “work to make the Council more commercial, to ensure we have a strong income stream to mitigate the loss of government funding.” This probably means resurrecting the mayor’s crass MoneyWorks payday loans idea, flagged in the 2014 manifesto but largely forgotten since. The other money-spinning manifesto promise, a kind of BrightHouse competitor to flog white goods to the poor on the never-never, has also vanished from sight. Perhaps Ellie will be tasked with reviving that too. 

Having passed over the commercial brief, Cllr Forhad Hussain (Plaistow North) will be able to spend more time with Ken Clark, working on ‘Community Neighbourhoods.’ Lucky man.

Ellie’s previous role as lead for OneSource, the partnership with Havering council to share back office services, will be taken up by deputy mayor, Cllr Lester Hudson (Wall End). According to Sir Robin, this “will enable us to better harness the synergies between strategic and operational finance work.” Beings as the perennially useless “Three Jobs” is already cabinet lead for finance AND he chairs the audit board AND he chairs the investment and accounts committee, this further consolidation of financial responsibility looks like a governance disaster waiting to happen. 

Cllr David Christie (Beckton) gets responsibility for the “Newham 2020 transformation programme” and the “reconfiguring of our services.” Which will make him the public face of everything that goes wrong in local public services for the next five years. 

Joining the ’special responsibility allowance’ gravy train for the first time are Cllrs Julianne Marriott (East Ham Central) and Tonii Wilson (Beckton).

Cllr Wilson will be taking Ellie Robinson’s seat on the OneSource board. With 14 previous directorships – all at companies which are now dissolved – she brings a wealth of boardroom experience.

Cllr Marriott is a surprise addition to the team. As recently as last June she was one of nine councillors excluded by the mayor from a budget pow-wow at a swanky hotel in Chigwell. But time (and money, no doubt) heals all wounds. Like Forhad Hussain she will be spending a lot of time with Ken Clark in her new role. The mayor assures councillors that her appointment to the Regeneration brief “will give us more capacity to ensure we are delivering regeneration that genuinely transforms people’s lives.” Perhaps by scheduling extra buses to ship them out of town before their homes are bulldozed to make way for yet another ‘luxury development’? 

Residents interested in finding out what any of these ‘jobs’ actually entails or what councillors will be doing to prove they are worth their additional allowances will be out of luck. There won’t be anything resembling a job description on the website for months. And even then nothing by way of performance targets. Luckily for our mayoral advisors, if there are no targets they can’t miss them. Trebles all round!

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Newham Nativity

14 Dec

Newham Nativity Show

The phantom leafleter of Forest Gate struck again on Saturday evening, delivering some seasonal cheer.

Previous examples of the phantom’s work:

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Three and out

10 Dec

Angry Robin

Cllr Khan was once very close to the mayor

Boleyn councillor Obaid Khan has been suspended by the Labour party.

That makes three local councillors currently on the naughty step.

I haven’t seen the email that was sent to councillors about this, but I understand Cllr Khan’s suspension relates to two separate incidents.

One involves the way he allegedly spoke to a councillor from Barking & Dagenham at an event. The other was a bit of argy-bargy at the Boleyn by-election count where he squared up to Cllr Forhad Hussain. Unfortunately for Khan, this was witnessed by ‘the leadership’, who wasted no time in reporting the matter to higher powers.

One might reasonably ask why either of these ‘incidents’ justifies a councillor’s suspension, when similar events involving the mayor (with the Focus E15 mums), Cllr Ian Corbett (to a receptionist at East Ham town hall) and Cllr Ken Clark (to Cllr Noor at this year’s Newham Show) did not. The Mayor and Cllr Corbett were found guilty by the Standards Committee of breaching the code of conduct, but the Labour party did nothing to reprimand them. Calls to discipline Ken Clark have been ignored.

Quite perplexing.

Except that Obaid Khan was instrumental in thwarting the leadership’s plan to have Cllr Hanif Abdulmuhit’s wife, Aisha Siddiqah, selected as the party’s candidate in the Boleyn by-election. He also kicked up a fuss about the shenanigans that resulted in Femi Alese being elected chair of East Ham Labour party. And, to top it all off, he’s joined the pro-Corbyn ‘Momentum’ group. Sir Robin, you will remember, was one of the 4.5% that backed Liz Kendall for the leadership.

Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold.

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