Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea May, 2020, Newsletter (# 131)
- One extraordinary month follows another. I said that about
March but again “What a month April 2020 turned out to be!”. Brilliant weather, day after day. The sunniest April on record and probably the warmest and driest, even if the last three days made an effort to catch up on the showers front.
- I have sat in the garden for more hours in April, than in some years in the past, and noted what I am sure we have all noted. The birds seem to be singing more loudly every day, especially my local blackbird, who is glorying in not having to compete with the constant scream of jet engines on their way to Heathrow. Our bluebells are out in profusion and the apple blossom is at record levels. The air is as clear as has been seen in London, since, maybe, coal first started being widely used in the mid-eighteenth century.
- At times, it is difficult to remember that for many, many families April 2020 has also been the terrible month when a family member died before his/her time, leaving grieving sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, husbands and wives.
- In my road, there is a weekly clapathon, or is it a clap-in, in honour of our NHS workers, from physicians and nurses, to cleaners and porters. This last week it was completed by a small concert when 6 and 9-year old neighbours played Judy Garland’s Over the Rainbow on a violin and a cello, accompanied by their mother on the piano. The audience of about 50 neighbours hardly had a dry eye between them.
- On April 4th Sir Keir Starmer was elected Leader of the
Labour Party. He won the vote with 66% support from Party members. He immediately raised the morale of many in the party with his inaugural speech and has since taken immediate action to quash the ant-Semitic issue. His two performances in Prime Minister’s Questions, in neither case against the Prime Minister, have been forensic and “cool”, in exactly the way his critics describe as bloodless and I think of as precise and deadly. Over the months we will discover whether it is effective, though it looks good to me – and to you, I wonder?
- On April 23rd I took part in a virtual Planning Applications Committee. It was “broadcast” online and on the 28th I heard that the committee was viewed by over 550 people, making it probably the most broadly observed committee in Wandsworth history. The Council used Microsoft’s Team software to film the committee. Take a look: https://richmond.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/484556 but remember this, the first broadcast is a little slow to get underway!
- Virtual committees seem to me, on the basis of this experience (and a few other online meetings: Labour Party and Charity), to have both advantages and disadvantages when compared to the “real thing”. The advantages include clearer sound (and picture) as the camera and mike are within a yard of the speaker, whoever he/she may be. But on the other hand, neither participants of the meeting nor the audience can see all the other committee members and so it is more difficult to gauge the mood of the meeting. Some councillors have already predicted the end of formal committee meetings and I suspect that the crisis is inevitably going to result in a re-think of the traditional and now very dated Council Meeting. But I think that Councils, like Parliament, will find it very difficult to operate as in any sense a political forum without some kind of meeting of people, face to face. The political process relies as much on exchanges over a coffee or the bar as it does on formal debate in the chamber.
- As for the Planning Applications Committee’s real, standard business, it was dominated by applications relating to Battersea. As always, there were a number of smallish applications, which were significant, only to the applicants and their immediate neighbours. But one major one raised issues of general interest.
- The major application was for a “collective” living project with rooms for 500 residents, along with a hotel, restaurants and a number of collective facilities such as work space and studios. The developers intend to build this project on two sites, backing on to each other in Mendip and Chatfield Roads. It is undoubtedly an excitingly different style of life from the traditional flat and/or house. However, to my mind, it raised a slew of questions about collective living in a post-Covid times. But I was in a minority of one and the application was passed.
My Programme for May is completely unknown!
- We had all expected to spend much of May fighting in the GLA and Mayoral elections, but as you know they have been postponed for a year. Does that mean that the next Mayoral term will be only three years or will we simply lose a year from the next cycle? I imagine that the legislation was clear on this matter but I don’t know.
- May is usually an important year in the municipal year. It is both the end of the 2019/2020 year and the start of the 2020/2021 year and is, therefore, the month of annual meetings and elections of the Wandsworth Mayor and of the Leaders of the Council and the Opposition. But by general agreement that is all going to be postponed until at least later in the summer. We shall see.
- Most of the committees will also be postponed but having had one virtual Planning Applications Committee (PAC) last month, I am pretty certain that we will have another on 19th May, but apart from PAC, I suspect it will be a pretty quiet month!
Do you know the last time elections were postponed?
Elections were, of course, postponed during the two World Wars, although there were by-elections in the event of the death or resignation of MPs. But an election was postponed on at least one other occasion in my memory. Do you remember when that was and how long the postponement lasted? The fact that it has been almost entirely forgotten is perhaps a good omen for this occasion.
Remember, on this May Day, the International Labour Day all those front-line workers risking their lives to make our lives safer. And finally, look after yourself and your friends and families. Keep safe!
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 