Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere December Newsletter (# 44)
November highlights
1. I had a Strategic Planning & Transportation Committee and a Housing Committee on 12th and 14th November, and also the Planning Applications Committee on the 20th. However, to be honest there was not really much to report and no very significant planning permissions this month – except, that is, for the dire likely consequences of the so-called welfare reforms and just some of these were considered by the Housing Committee.
I know, of course, that welfare spending is not currently very popular with the public at large but I hope that here in Latchmere we know some of the real consequences of these cuts. What is clear from reports to Council is that the Town Hall officers expect an increase in the number of families made homeless because of the impact of housing allowance cuts as well as penalties for those, who “under-occupy” their council flats. They expect that some families will have to be re-housed well outside of the London area and indeed I already know of one single mother who has been placed in Loughton in Essex, despite the fact that her sons attend a primary school in Tooting!
2. I went to the opening of 39 new Council-built flats on the Doddington and Rollo estate on the 22nd November. You may have seen them being built alongside the railway track between CJ and Queenstown Road station. Here is a picture of them close up. They are the first purpose built council flats in Wandsworth since the early 80s and although a very small gesture towards the housing crisis, I must say they appeared very well designed and built.
3. I am afraid that I did not get to the Women of Wandsworth AGM or the London Summit but I did attend a couple of important Battersea Park School governor meetings. The school is struggling with its “failure” to achieve Academy status this year and is now faced with a period of uncertainty as it appears as though the only way to be certain of its future is for its results to get worse, in which case it would automatically become an Academy. NO, you didn’t read that incorrectly. Under the perverse incentives that the Government has imposed on schools there is an advantage, if you think it is an advantage of course, for your school to do badly in exam results in order to become an Academy! You couldn’t make it up, could you!
4. Last month, I reported 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. I said that 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.Well, I have been doing some work on the information that I have got and it is clear that there are networks of private landlords operating on Council estates, with some flats “owned” by husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, and City holding companies. Frankly I find this an astonishing racket with hundreds of “landlords” making profit rents from Council-built and subsidised dwellings!
My Programme for December
1. I went to the Doddington Estate Garden Xmas fete on Saturday 1st December and the Policeman’s Ball on the Saturday evening. Here I am photographed joining in the carol singing at the Fete, whilst much to my astonishment I won a painting of B
attersea Power Station at the Policeman’s Ball and so December has started festively!
2. There is a Council Meeting on Wednesday 5th, where the main subject of discussion will be the benefit cuts, the housing crisis and the Chancellor’s autumn statement and its impact on Wandsworth’s budget.
3. On the 10th I intend to go to the opening run of the new rail service from Clapham Junction through south and east London to Highbury and Islington. This will complete London’s orbital rail line, which was first talked about in the late nineteenth century following the success of the Metropolitan and Circle tube lines. Well, here it is well over a century later and the orbital route has arrived! The best description of it, I have found is at http://www.therailengineer.com/2012/11/02/london-orbital-rail-network-complete/.
4. Apart from these events there are as you may imagine lots of festive drinks and fetes that councillors get invited to run by resident organisations, school groups and others. I look forward to seeing some of you at some of these occasions!
Did you know?
About “Movember”, the November prostate cancer awareness campaign, the idea for which came out of an Australian pub about 5 years back and now has millions of men supporting it by growing moustaches and beards in the month of November.
Well I decided to join in despite protests from some quarters and this is how it looked on December 1st and whilst for me it is not an original look – there is quite an amusing picture of me in the archives with long hair, moustache and beard from way back – it was a bit of a shock for some.
It has now gone – to be repeated next year? We will have to wait and see but in any event I raised some small amount of money for the Prostate Cancer Awareness Campaign.
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 