Labour leading as campaign steps up

Labour activists throughout Islington are upbeat as campaigning efforts step up ahead of the local elections. Canvassing teams are busy all round the Borough, and contact on the doorstep is showing strong support for Labour, for our approach to making Islington a fairer place for everyone to live, and in particular for our policy on free school meals for all primary school children.

Voters are pleased to see Labour out in force, and are fed up with the ineffectual and indecisive Lib Dems', who run the borough as if the only thing that matters is statistics. The "fastest improving borough" means nothing to people who are still living on overcrowded estates, who can't get their bins emptied, and can't even get the Council to put a new lightbulb in the streetlamp outside their home.

This picture shows one of our St Peters teams, who were out on the Popham Estate this weekend. From left to right, activists Henry, Jack, Felix and Kate, with myself and Cllr Catherine West, Leader of the Labour Group. Lots of fresh air, and the scent of a wind of change.

Finsbury Health Centre

I am very pleased to have been elected Chair of the Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee this year, which is one of the committees charged with counterbalancing the role of the Executive in the Council. One of my main tasks has been to scrutinise Islington Primary Care Trust’s somewhat undemocratic attempts to force the closure of Finsbury Health Centre.

For those of you not familiar with Finsbury Health Centre, it was designed and constructed as a Health Centre in the 1930s by the architect Lubetkin, intended to be a high quality and dignified building where all the people of Finsbury could go to receive a variety of different health treatments. The building pre-dates both the founding of the NHS, and the more recent coining of the term ‘Polyclinic’, which is what it is.

The building is still much loved by local people, both as a convenient, local venue for receiving health treatments, and also as an uplifting and inspiring building in which to receive those services. Many (although not all) of the health professionals that work there are also very fond of the building, and patients report a good level of stability amongst staff, who know most of their patients.

The building was, and still is, an exceptional piece of design as a Health Centre, and it still works. It is also listed by English Heritage as Grade I, partly because of the design of the building, and partly because the building is an important landmark in social history, and still a functioning health centre.

The problem arises because the PCT (The Primary Care Trust, who run Islington’s health services), seem to have decided for some obscure reason that they don’t like the building, and are determined, as it would appear, to get rid of it. They also haven’t carried out any maintenance to the building for the last 15 years, so it looks in a far more sorry state than it might.

The PCT’s strategy to date has been to take a decision behind closed doors to close Finsbury Health Centre, and then consult the public on where they want their services moved to. The option for patients to state that they want their services to continue to be delivered from Finsbury Health Centre was noticeably absent from the consultation.

At the same time as consulting patients on where they want their services moved to, the PCT have also published a series of rapidly escalating cost estimates to refurbish the Health Centre, along with a similarly improbable cost to leaseback the building once it is refurbished. The suggested cost to refurbish (£(9.1m) is almost twice the going industry rate for restoring listed buildings of this type, and the suggested leaseback charge of £1m per year for 25 years, means that a £9.1m project (if that figure were true) would actually cost the PCT £25m. Informed industry experts all suggest the restoration cost would be nearer £5m, and that there are a number of creative ways of sourcing grants and funding, based on allowing a building restoration charity to take over and restore the building – which would be very little trouble for the PCT. Patients, staff, conservation experts, planners and English heritage would all like to see the building restored and retained in its present use.

The re-location of services proposed by the PCT would involve many patients in an hour-long journey up to Holloway Road, which I’m sure the more frail patients would not make. The remainder of the services would be divided up between various smaller venues nearby, several of which are described as offering a ‘satellite’ service. In all, the proposals would redistribute all the current services in the building to seven different venues.

Up until recently, Labour and the Liberal democrats in Islington have been running parallel, if not entirely synchronised campaigns to save the Health Centre, and I thought that there was quite a strong level of agreement between the two parties that the PCT were not playing fair or listening to local people. That was, until Labour discovered that there might be some EC1 New Deal funds available to put towards the costs of refurbishment. This money is not essential to save the building, but could arguably be an appropriate use of the funds, given that the Health Centre is an important community facility in the New Deal area, which many residents would like to see saved. Labour tabled a motion to last Thursday’s Council meeting, calling on the Council and PCT to work with EC1 New Deal to try and secure these funds to assist in saving and restoring the Centre.

I thought this motion would be pretty uncontentious, and was very surprised to see a late amendment to the motion, tabled by the Lib Dem’s master of weasel words and obfuscation, Cllr Allan. His amendment called for health services to be “kept local”, and for the building to be kept in public ownership for the people of Finsbury to “enjoy”, but was clearly trying to undermine the continued use of the building as a Health Centre, which is exactly what the PCT are trying to do. The Lib Dems voted for this amendment and lost, and the Labour motion was carried, also enjoying the support of Cllr Andrew Cornwell (ind. LD) and Cllr Katie Dawson (Grn).

I feel sorry for those grass-roots Lib Dems who share Labour’s feelings about the injustice of the situation, and I hope they will still find themselves able to support whatever decision the Scrutiny Committee comes to when it has finished considering all the evidence. I expect the scrutiny decision to be a rational and reasoned assessment of the facts, with the passion and emotion about the issue restricted to patients and local residents who have already made it clear they want the Centre retained.

My passion in this instance is not so much for the building, but to expose what appears to be a concerted attempt to deprive the people of Finsbury of a unique, much-loved and well-used facility for no obvious or justifiable reason. My passion is to see honesty and the truth prevail.

What does a Councillor actually do?

I often get asked this question.

The answer is, I do case-work. Lots of people in St Peters Ward have day-to-day problems that need solving, and they go to their Local Councillor for help. I will give you a few examples of the sort of issues I get involved in:

A couple living in a residential street backing on to a playground had been repeatedly burgled, because there was a hole in the wall at the end of next door’s garden, opening onto the playground, with a fence across the garden about four metres from the hole, which provided cover for the burglars and the goods they were stealing. The next-door house was managed by the Council. I visited the victims of the burglaries and saw the hole. I took photos of the hole, sent them to the repairs department, and chased the Council until the hole was bricked up, which eventually it was.

A constituent contacted me because her neighbours had built a staircase from their first floor terrace down to their garden, which meant that anyone using the staircase looked straight into her garden as they went up and down, which was upsetting her a lot. I visited the lady, and established that the staircase was not built in accordance with the planning drawings. Planning enforcement visited the neighbour, and got them to change the staircase.

A constituent on an estate in the ward contacted me because she had some water leaking into her wardrobe. A repairs person came round from the Council to ‘fix’ the problem, and next time it rained, water gushed into the lady’s wardrobe ten times worse than before. I went round to visit the lady, and discovered that whoever had visited the property to ‘repair’ the leak had actually punched a hole in the roof drainage straight into the lady’s flat, causing all the rainwater from the walkway upstairs to empty into the lady’s wardrobe. Eight weeks later and the Council still haven’t actually fixed the problem. They keep sending people round, who seem to be trying to guess how to fix the problem. I am going to meet the Service Director for Housing and read him the riot act if this doesn’t get fixed in the next week.

Residents on the Popham Estate are extremely upset, that the Council has sent in contractors to ‘rewire’ their homes when they don’t need rewiring. This ‘rewiring’ is to the worst possible standards, as it results in perfectly safe wiring being disconnected, and new plastic trunking being fixed all over the walls of flats that tenants have spent a lot of money decorating over the years. Many of them are in tears at the damage done to their homes by these pointless works. I have visited a number of homes on the Popham and agree entirely that the rewiring is pointless and unnecessary. And we have got the IEE (Institute of Electrical Engineers) to confirm this. We are in the process of getting the Council to admit that tenants can refuse to have the work done if they don’t want. In the mean time, caring local residents like Martin Rutherford tell us on a daily basis of more tenants distraught at the vandalism done to their homes. Sometimes, in the face of such lunacy, you just try and console people.

Tree officers emailed me to say that someone had driven their van into a tree on St Peters Street that leans out into the road quite a bit. Its a lovely, and in the words of tree officers “majestic” tree, but because someone had driven their van into it, and made an insurance claim, the Council had decided to chop the tree down. This didn’t sound right to me, and I called an 8am meeting with Council Officers in St Peters Street to discuss the options. They admitted that actually, if they built the pavement out round the tree to prevent further accidents, then they didn’t need to chop it down. Whilst we discussing this, a local resident came out and thanked me for saving the tree.

Residents in Arlington Square were getting very fed up with young people gathering in the square gardens after it was closed, drinking alcopops, and making lots of noise. I contacted the Safer Neighbourhood Police Team, who mounted an operation to identify the young people, which has resulted in much more peaceful Saturday nights for local residents. Following on from this I called an 8am meeting with tree officers and local residents, and agreed a programme of pruning to the trees, which have been somewhat neglected over the last few years, which will make the gardens more visible from outside the square, making it more difficult for miscreants to hide in the square. We have also allocated a small budget to the square for planting, which we will use to plant prickly plants next to the fence, making it more difficult for people to jump the fence when the park is closed.

A constituent contacted me in desperation, because they had got behind with their Council tax payments, and although they were offering to make arrangements to pay off the debt, the Council sent round the bailiffs, who threatened my constituent that they would break down the door. I contacted the Council, got the bailiffs called off, an apology for the threats made by the bailiffs, which were illegal, and agreement to my constituent’s proposals to pay off the debt. I’m still waiting to hear what action the Council will take against the illegal behaviour of the bailiffs. I haven’t forgotten, and I will not give up until I get an answer.

When the planning application for the new school buildings at what used to be Islington Green School, and is now City of London Academy, was made, it was clear to me that children attending the school whilst the construction works were in progress would be severely disadvantaged, since the plans required the new school to be built on the old playground before the old buildings could be knocked down, which means no playground during the building works, and no-where to go at lunchtime. I asked for some of the extra money given to the Council by the developers as part of the planning permission, (section 106 payments, as they are called), to be put towards some additional temporary youth work to help support the pupils at lunchtime, when they are wandering round the streets of St Peters because the school hasn’t got playspace for them. The school wants the extra youth work, we have a plan from the Youth Service to provide the work. Its just that the Council is trying to argue that the wording of the permission doesn’t exactly describe this kind of support. This is bureaucratic obstruction. I will see that the youth work is provided, and I will go to the press if the Council carry on being awkward about it.

Along with my St Peters colleagues Cllr Shelley Coupland and Cllr Gary Doolan we have become aware of a reluctance on the part of Registered Social Landlords to take proper action against their tenants (and their offspring) when they are causing trouble either on, or near their estates. We have now had a meeting with Hyde Housing, at which we persuaded them to accept that they need to serve notices on trouble-making families, and we are still trying to have a similar meeting with Peabody, who have allowed at least one tenant to commit GBH on another tenant, on the premises, without taking any action at all against the perpetrator, preferring instead to offer extremely mediocre support to the victims to move elsewhere. This doesn’t sound right to me, and I want some answers from Peabody.

I go to as many local meetings as I can to make sure I know what’s going on in my Ward: I attend the Safer Neighbourhoods Ward Panel to help set police priorities for the ward, I go to several different residents associations meetings, I am a member of the Angel Town Centre Management Board, I am a governor of Camden and Islington Mental Health Trust, attending all their meetings, I attend the Angel Association meetings and Islington Living Streets. I attend and support Islington Boat Club and The Canal Boat Trust. I am happy to meet residents separately or together at any time when there is a problem.

Tomorrow morning I am meeting a concerned local resident and highways officers at the junction of Baring Street and New North Road at 8am, to discuss how this junction can be made safer for pedestrians, without making it impossible for a refuse truck to turn the corner.

I’m looking forward to it.

Lib Dems sabotage Free School Meals

I can confidently say that I have never known such a universally popular policy as Islington Labour's proposal to give all under-11s free school meals. People from all walks of life, and from many different political backgrounds, all think it's a very good idea, and are quite happy to sign petitions calling for it to be introduced at once.

It was a dramatic and powerful victory for Islington Labour when we succeeded in overturning the Lib Dem administration's budget and passing our policy for Free School Meals. And the Lib Dems show their magnanimity in defeat by cooking up an amendment to the proposal to reduce the scheme to a 'trial' in six schools only, claiming difficulties with 'administration'. They managed to push this through at an overview committee by digging out a couple of non-elected voting members of the committee who hadn't voted on anything for years.

Talk about sour grapes. The LibDems hate our free school Meals policy and they will stop at nothing to try and sabotage it. They hate it because its so popular, it's true socialism, and it shows them that it's Islington Labour that has real, imaginative and progressive ideas about how Islington should be run.

We will be doing everything we can to re-instate our winning policy of free school meals for all children under 11. We will not be using dirty tricks to achieve it.

Labour victory for under-11s free school meals

At a Full Council meeting in the Town Hall on February 26th Labour scored a massive victory. The occasion was the annual debate on the budget.

Labour put forward a budget that included free school meals for all children under 11, a pensioners’ rebate of £100 on the Council Tax, and free leisure and sports facilities for young people, paid for in part by reducing the over-inflated Lib Dem’s executive salaries. The Lib-Dems on the other hand, wanted to freeze the Council tax, and their high salaries. They then switched horses, and said they would put up the Council Taxto pay for some Green ideas, in an attempt to buy off the one Green vote on the Council.

Then, after agreeing to vote with the Lib Dems, the Green abstained on all the votes, leaving the Lib Dem administration doubly embarrassed, having changed their budget to suit the Green, and then losing when she didn’t vote with them.

The debate was a shambles in other ways as well, which you can see for yourself if you can bear to watch the ‘web-cast’ of the meeting. It lasted 4 hours, and for the last 40 minutes, no Lib-Dems were present, after they walked out, claiming they wanted a ‘recess’ to consider their loss of the vote. They didn’t return to the chamber to finish the meeting.

Providing free school meals for all primary and nursery school children is a fantastic thing for many reasons. In a place like Islington many families are living right on the poverty line, and whilst they just miss out on being eligible for free school meals, making ends meet is a constant struggle. For the average family with 2 kids, this measure will save them over £600 a year – all the while knowing that their children are guaranteed a warm and hearty school lunch every day. In families where parents are attempting to find work, or are considering taking up temporary work, the prospect of losing their kids’ entitlement to free school meals can sometimes lead them to question whether they’ll actually end up any better off financially. Thanks to this measure, this will no longer have to be a consideration, meaning free school means can help our local economy by making returning to work easier for parents.

If free school meals are good for parents and families, then they are great for Islington children. Various free school meal trial initiatives have taken place – from the Scottish Highlands to Hull- all of which have demonstrating the significant impact free school meals have on children’s futures. Implementing free, healthy school meals improves take up of school meals over packed lunches and it’s no exaggeration to say it can lead to a culture change. In islington, we have one of London’s highest rates of childhood obesity, with 24% of our ten year olds being classed as obese – that means that 1 in 4 of weighs 20% or more above what they should. But it’s been proven that free school meals can lead to children eating proper breakfasts, less sugary snacks, and whole family eating habits becoming more healthy.

And it’s not just about the future of our children’s health. In the three year trial that took place in Hull, classroom behaviour improved significantly with the introduction of free school meals, with children concentrating for longer and being less disruptive. Only a few months ago, the London wide exam results league table was published, and had Islington in last place, yet again. If we are serious about improving the education our kids get, it’s about time the lib Dem administration stopped merely tlking the talk, and realised that bold but proven effective methods, such as free school meals-can help us achieve this.

Labour still aren’t in power in islington, but even from the opposition benches we’re setting the agenda, with a budget that delivers for Islington families. Achieving that alongside my Islington Labour colleagues made sitting through a 4 hour council meeting full of cynical and irresponsible behaviour, and unsuccessful and immature tactics from the ruling Lib Dems, worthwhile.

Dog Control Orders - Latest!

The Council's new toothless, meaningless and inadequate Dog Control Orders have resulted only in an increase in little signs everwhere. The signs mislead the public into thinking that dogs have to be kept on a lead. Until you read the small writing, which says "if asked by an authorised person". I don't think anyone has seen one of these authorised persons. And there is an increasing number of complaints about dog mess everywhere, as bad as, or worse than before, and of parks being over-run by dogs, where previously dog-owners and non-dog-owners used to inhabit the Borough's parks peacefully side-by-side.

I received a copy of an email from a constituent recently, sent to Cllr Ruth Polling, the Executive Member responsible for the introduction of these orders, asking her for an update on the success of these orders. I can do no better than quote you the email:

"Dear Cllr Polling,

I would be interested to find out from you the following:

(i) The number of fines (under the Dog Control Orders) that have been issued and for what offences.

(ii) How many dog wardens there are and what is the remit.

(iii) Do they also have the remit for 'stray dogs?'

(iv) What hours the wardens work."

Now come on Cllr Polling, lets hear some answers to these questions.

Dogs, parks and free speech

On Tuesday this week, the re-vamped New River Gardens along Duncan Terrace were 're-opened' by the executive member for 'Leisure and Equalities' - who always seems to be struggling to remember her job title. The revamp of the gardens is pleasant enough, and the children of Hanover school did some first class singing of carols, and had lots of fun 'decorating' the park. Particular thanks should also go to Roger Pascoe, the school's music teacher who seems to be able to coax a quite magical level of musicianship out of his pupils. The picture shows my colleagues Cllr Gary Doolan, Cllr Shelley Coupland and myself at the event.

Unfortunately, not everything in the garden is rosy. In fact, at this time of year the gardens are almost completely bare. Why the Council chose to have the ceremony in December is beyond me.

I am also mindful of the petition I presented to full Council the previous week from local residents and park users, who are used to sharing the park with dogs, but on condition that dogs are kept on a lead at all times. Islington's new dog control orders contain no provision for this option of sharing spaces with dogs. The only options are no dogs, or dogs off leads, but put on a lead if specifically asked to by a Council officer. As I've previously stated, the chances of a Council officer being around every time a dog runs up onto the grass are miniscule, and whilst I was only there for about half an hour, I saw at least three dogs use the grass as a toilet. This simply re-confirms my view that the whole 'dog consultation' and subsequent 'orders' were, and are a complete cock-up. I will be pushing hard for the re-introduction of a 'dogs on leads at all times' option.

The works to the gardens have also not had an entirely smooth ride. There were some perceived, if not actual failures in the consultation process prior to the carrying out of the works. I don't want to re-visit this issue, but I would point out that I personally put a considerable amount of effort into making sure all residents locally were broadly in agreement before the works started: I spent a lot of time talking to people, emailing poeple, and holding meetings with Council Officers to iron out the difficulties. I would like to say that Officers did in fact do a very good job of responding to all local residents following this, and I would have liked to say this at the opening event. However, when I indicated that I would like to speak at the event, I was told "No".

What sort of a Council are the Lib Dems running, when they won't allow a Ward Councillor to say a few words of thanks at the re-opening of a park in his own ward?

Lib Dem Housing Hypocrisy

At South Area Planning Commitee on Thursday 2nd October, we were asked to approve an application for 17 residential units at 110-116 Elmore Street.

Islington Council's stated policy is that they will seek 50% affordable housing for all developments over 10 units. This development should have had at least 8 affordable units, yet the developer claimed he couldn't afford to provide any affordable housing.

The developer had an 'independent assessor's' report, which said the development was 'unviable', principally because he'd paid too much at auction for the site. And who did he buy the site off? - Islington Council. And there were the Lib Dems, supporting the developer's argument all the way, twisting the words of Council Policy, and saying that providing affordable housing was more-or-less an option for the developer if he felt like it.

The whole point of an affordable housing policy is to make sure we get affordable housing.

Along with Councillor Gary Doolan we bitterly opposed this application, and I said in the meeting that the argument put forward by the developer was clearly spurious, since the claimed unviability was entirely down to his own folly in paying too much for the site. Why should the less well-off people in Islington get pushed out yet again, just because this developer can't get his sums right? But the Lib Dems on the committee couldn't do enough to explain how policy had to be applied 'flexibly', and that a requirement for affordable housing had to be 'reasonable'. They all voted for the 100% private scheme in spite of the paper-thin arguments.

It is quite clear to me that the Lib Dems DO NOT WANT affordable housing if they can possibly avoid it, and are prepared to be sold almost any kind of a line by developers trying to wriggle out of it. In Westminster under Shirley Porter, this was called Gerrymandering. I'm not sure I can see the difference, except the Lib Dems haven't yet twigged that they are Gerrymandering themselves out of their own seats.

The Mall Antiques Market Trashed

The new owners of 'The Mall' in Camden passage have demonstrated that they not only don't care about the character of the area, they are actually trying to destroy it, just so they can make a bit more money.

London and Associated Properties, who bought the building earlier in the year, thinking they could just kick out the antiques traders, gut the building, and put some fancy national Multiple retailer in there instead got a nasty surprise when over 300 people turned up to the Planning Committee and objected to the idea, and permission was refused. The Developers, vowed to appeal against the decision, but gave an undertaking to the Council to keep the Mall open until the result of the appeal was known. They have gone back on this promise and all the traders were evicted at the end of September. They are determined to try and kill the antiques market.

Readers may also be interested to know that LAP tried the same move at 'Antiquarius' in the Kings Road, where they evicted traders and commenced building work without Planning permission, but were stopped when Kensington and Chelsea statutorily listed the building.

LAP still have to convince a Planning Inspector that they are justified in destroying the most important part of Camden Passage, and if they fail, will have to re-open the Mall as a Market again.

The appeal is being heard at Islington Town Hall on 9th and 10th of December. Please come and object again.

Labour Success at the Angel Canal Festival

St Peters Labour Councillors received tremendous support at the Islington Canal festival this year. (Pictured right are local resident Chris Kenyon, Labour Leader Catherine West, myself, and Emily Thornberry MP). Hundreds of people stopped by to sign our petition to save the tree on Rheidol Green, which the Lib-Dem-run Council has agreed to chop down because they say it is in the way of rebuilding the Packington Estate. (See my separate blog on the Packington and the tree).

Many supporters expressed their thanks to Cllr Shelley Coupland for the fantastic work she is doing helping people with housing problems, and to Cllr Gary Doolan for his work in securing Estate Improvements throughout the Ward. A lot of people also took the trouble to tell us that our Local Labour MP Emily Thornberry is doing a superb job, following in the footsteps of her predecessor, Chris Smith.

The event was an excellent fun day out, with everything from a display of live birds of prey, through a portable kids climbing wall, to traditional hot dogs, a 'ring the bell' strength test, and a hilarious 'angel' on wheels, who was zooming about the festival, accompanied by loud heavenly music, blessing everyone. More's the pity that our friends in the Lib Dems had such a dismal stall, littered with negative slogans about their opponents (us and Boris), and nothing good to say about themselves.

Its good to see the Canal Festival going from strength-to-strength, and also Islington Boat Club and the Canal Boat Trust standing smiling in the middle of it all. Roll on next year, and perhaps we will have our good weather back.