Cluse Court Roof

The activity captured in this photograph gives me a considerable glow of satisfaction.  What is going on?  It is a picture of workmen carrying slabs of insulation into Cluse Court in readiness to insulate the roof.  So why the glow of satisfaction?

I was approached in February 2010 by a group of residents on Cluse Court, all of whom live in maisonettes on the top two floors of the 118-136 block.  They all said that they were getting quantities of water dripping down off their upstairs ceilings, that they were having to mop the ceilings 2-3 times a week,  and that their attempts get anything done about it had resulted in various fob-offs and excuses, odd bits of sticking-plaster repairs, but no real resolution to the problem. 

Because I work in architectural practice I decided the best thing to do was to get up on the roof and have a look for myself.  I was told I was not allowed. I was convinced that the problem was condensation due to a lack of insulation on the roof.  Repairs were saying it was leaks, and people running their heating too hot.  ‘Lifestyle issues’, as they liked to say, which of course completely absolves them from having to do anything about it.

I asked again to be allowed up onto the roof and was told “no” again.  I asked why, and was told it was due to Health and Safety at Work legislation.  My fellow Councillor Gary Doolan kindly pointed out that I do not work for the Council, I am an elected member.  The legislation does not apply.  It was agreed that I could go up on the roof.  This was in May, after my request was originally made in February.  So it took me three months just to get up on the roof to have a look.

On the day I was due to get up on the roof, a council worker (Theresa Penfold, who was very helpful) arrived to let me up on the roof, but there was no ladder.  She had to make a phone call to a contractor working for the council on another estate, and borrow a ladder. The whole procedure suggested that maintenance access to the roof must be virtually non-existent.  When we got up there, there was huge pile of rubbish on the roof (yes, on the roof) including old crash helmets, empty cable drums, bits of wire, bits of wood, buckets, and builders rubble.  One of the officers said “Oh, we’ll have to get a quote to get that taken away”.  I couldn’t believe the bureaucracy needed to get rid of something that shouldn’t be there in the first place if the roof was being properly maintained.

I stood on the roof, gave the surface a sharp downward kick with my heel, and knew immediately that I was hitting concrete, and that there was no insulation at all on the roof.  The only thing separating residents on the top floor from the frozen outside world was 150mm of concrete.  No wonder their ceilings were dripping.  I was satisfied my instinct about the lack of insulation had been proved correct, and I then set about trying to convince HFI that I was right. 

Suffice to say that between May 2010 and now, it has taken nearly another two years to get to a point where I had not only convinced HFI the work needed doing, but to get it done.

Sometime you need a bit of tenacity to be a Councillor.

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.

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.