Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere November Newsletter (# 43)
October highlights
1. I received a couple of comments following last month’s newsletter
about my failure to mention the campaign about the Adventure Playgrounds in York Gardens, Battersea Park and Kimber Road – and sadly the demolition pictured here. This was obviously a mistake and I apologise for the omission, but I can only say that I thought the “Pay to Play” campaign had had more publicity than any issue I can recall since the battle to save York Gardens Library. If you want to see some of the comments made by me and my colleagues then take a look at this blog: http://labourinwandsworth.wordpress.com/
However, whilst I am on the issue, I see absolutely no indication of any change of mind from the Tory Party in Council.
2. Congratulations to York Gardens Library, which was last month awarded £5,000 from the Lloyds Banking Group’s Community Fund. I know from Wendy Speck, who is on the steering group that there is still much work to be done to make the Library self-sustaining but this is an excellent step in the right direction.
3. October’s Council Meeting produced a couple of facts worth mentioning. Firstly it turns out that 105 people working for the Council earn less than the London Living Wage (LLW). I have a list of the jobs that they do and although I cannot be certain it looks to me as though almost all are women workers. I don’t want to be sexist and one can’t be certain but as half of them are “Carers” working in Adult Services and many of the rest are cleaners and cooks, I think it is a pretty fair guess.
It would cost the Council less than £60,000 pa to become a LLW employer; that is something like 25% of the Chief Executive’s salary. This is an idea “whose time has come” according to PM David Cameron. And yet I have it on pretty good authority that the Tory councillors have considered the matter and rejected it – so much for us all being in this together!
4. Secondly it turns out that nearly 6,000 of the Council’s 18,000 odd leasehold properties are not lived in by the actual leaseholder, or to be absolutely precise they have their management mail from the Council sent to different addresses. The Council believes that this means they are probably let to private tenants. One leaseholder owns over 90 ex-Council properties, and whilst he is in a “class” of his own, 17 others own more than 10 each.
Surely when the “Right To Buy” policy was introduced and the Council started its aggressive sales policies it was not their intention to create at least 17 multi-millionaires and to jack up rents on the estates from the Council’s rent levels of roughly £200 per week to the private sector’s £500+ per week.
I suspect that this was very much a case of introducing a policy, which has had unintended consequences. And one, which as the lack of affordable housing becomes ever more acute, has become more and more serious.
5. The October Planning Applications Committee had absolutely no application of any major significance to Latchmere (there was one application for a roof extension).
6. On Saturday, 20th October, I went on the TUC march for jobs from Blackfriars to Hyde Park. The picture shows me and my colleagues with the Battersea Labour Party banner in Hyde Park. I thought the lack of media coverage was pretty disgraceful, given that there must have been 200,000 people there – I know the Met estimated 100,000 but I have never seen that many people at a big sports event and I have been to one or two.
7. I went, along with the Battersea Society, to see Benjamin Franklin’s House. For those of you, who do not know the history Ben Franklin was a British patriot living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the eighteenth century. Britain was faced with the problems of ruling the 13 colonies from 3,000 miles away and as the conflicts grew Franklin decided that independence was the only practical conclusion. He had a hand in writing the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.
H
e was, however, also a polymath. He invented the lightening conductor and was an early experimenter in electricity. He invented a musical instrument and was in effect both US ambassador to France and to Britain. He was at the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which established the USA in international circles. And his picture adorns this US $100 bill
His house is an original eighteenth century mansion in Craven Street, right next to Trafalgar Square and if you want an interesting hour and a half visit I thoroughly recommend it. It is brilliantly “enacted”.
My Programme for November
1. I have a Strategic Planning & Transportation Committee (I know it is a pompous title, but it’s not mine!) and a Housing Committee on 12th and 14th November. There is the Planning Applications Committee on the 20th.
2. I hope to get to the Women of Wandsworth AGM on 26th November and I have a couple of important Battersea Park School governor meetings this month. I also intend to go to either the London Summit, which is a large London-wide Conference for all councillors in London about various issues of concern to us all – no doubt mainly discussing the financial cuts being imposed across the city.
Did you know?
Last month I wrote about North and South Lodge in Latchmere Road, but now thanks to one of you I can say a lot more about these two buildings and what a fascinating story it is too!
On 25th March, 1836, the Wandsworth and Clapham Poor Law Union was formed. It’s job was to build and run workhouses for the poor. It was run by an elected Board of Guardians, representing its 6 constituent parishes, Battersea (3 governors), Clapham (6), Putney (2), Streatham (2), Tooting Graveney (2), Wandsworth (4).
By the end of the nineteenth century, Wandsworth and Clapham was London’s largest union, with a population of more than 350,000 — a twelfth of the capital’s total. The Wandsworth and Clapham Union was renamed the Wandsworth Union in 1904.
Like other London unions, Wandsworth & Clapham operated a number of relief offices and dispensaries. And in 1886, a new purpose-built combined relief station and dispensary was erected on Latchmere Road, Battersea. The building was our North and South Lodge and much more – see the picture. It was Battersea’s very own workhouse – a reminder of a grim past!
This is Architect, T.W. Aldwinckle’s design for what was known as the Latchmere Road dispensary and relief station.
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 