Come on Jeremy raise the stakes: get tough, get leading
The Tory Party is seriously on the back foot. The Brexit wing needs no help from us, though it might get plenty from traditional Labour voters, but the Cameron “mainstream” desperately needs Labour help for this crazy referendum campaign.
Here we are the largest party in the country, by a country mile, and we are being shafted by a Government, which assumes that Labour will do the right thing. We are always doing the “right thing”; we are always taking the “one nation”, “all in this together” approach whilst the Tories stuff the pockets of the rich and the rentier class.
I can’t be the only Labour activist who seriously wonders whether the future of this country isn’t more dependent upon defeating the Tories, possibly for a generation, than it is on staying in the, let’s face it, struggling EU. Its pretty much an “on balance” decision for me and many other party sympathisers.
Now what would swing it for me would be a few concessions from Cameron. Take your pick from attacking “welfare”, abolishing Bedroom Tax, scrapping the Trade Union Bill, opening real discussions about boundary redistribution, stopping “right to buy” housing association properties, ending so-called schools reforms and NHS restructuring, ending the continual and vicious attack on immigration and immigrants.
Jeremy: this is a wonderful opportunity to get the Tories talking some sensible politics. You have a great opportunity to earn their respect, grudging though of course it will of necessity be, and to win the support of the country. Your best bet for winning support in the PLP is by winning respect from the Tories and you will never have a better opportunity than when Cameron is down, with his face in the sand.
Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere February Newsletter (# 69)
January highlights
- Last month, I talked a little about the Council’s threat to close Battersea Sports Centre (BSC) in Hope Street, in the autumn of this year. As I said then, this was a complete surprise to users, local residents and we three Latchmere councillors. Imagine our surprise therefore when the Tory councillors became really upset because we did NOT support the closure at the 21st January Housing Committee meeting. One of them, the Deputy Leader, even circulated a rather childish and extremely unhelpful leaflet, accusing us of double-crossing them.
- I had better explain. So far we three Labour councillors, that’s Wendy Speck, Simon Hogg and I, have worked fairly closely with the Council on the consultations and decisions involved in such a massive scheme as the regeneration of the Winstanley/York Road estates. It does after all involve the demolition of some 600 or so properties, most notably but not just Pennethorne, Scholey and Holcroft Houses, and the construction of many more new homes. Tenants and leaseholders (and a small number of freeholders) will have their homes demolished and rebuilt in what will be a major upheaval – or at least that is the plan. Clearly the Council would like to have the whole-hearted support of all.
- You might ask what has that got to do with the closure of BSC – and it would be a good question. Well somehow or another in the minds of the Town Hall bureaucrats and their Tory bosses the closure of BSC had become an essential part of the whole plan for regeneration. The only trouble is that they had not bothered to tell anyone until the day of the January Committee meeting, having announced the closure more than a month previously. Not surprisingly both the community and we, Labour councillors, were already committed to opposing the BSC closure before they made the link. They should not really be surprised. The regeneration plan has been in gestation for three years and its link with the BSC has not been mentioned until this January. What is more the Council was making a completely separate claim in December that the BSC closure would be providing more affordable homes and not JUST replacement homes for the Winstanley!
- The plan apparently is to use the site of the Sports Centre to build some 90 affordable units into which people from the York Road and Winstanley estates could be “decanted”. Our opposition to the BSC closure has already resulted in some back-tracking and some compromises. For example, the Council is now committed to providing a new all-weather, large soccer pitch at the south end of Falcon Park. But the Sports Centre is very busily and much more than a soccer pitch and is used by well over 20 sports clubs and local organisations and it is not as though the area is over-endowed with alternatives. We will continue to oppose closure until more is known about the replacement facilities, and the timing of their arrival.
- After all “What did the Council’s own reports about the 2011 riots say?” That there was not a lot for young people to do in the area. But now the Tory councillors want to close down one of the busiest centres of them all! There is a petition for signature at the following address http://www.willtowin.org.uk/#!save-battersea-sports-centre/c150j if you wish to express your opposition.
- The Planning Applications Committee met on the 20th. There were no significant local applications this month but the trend to convert pubs to housing continues apace. This time the closure of the Prince of Wales on the corner of Surrey Lane and Battersea Bridge Road was confirmed but that was only the last in a long line. I can think of lots in Latchmere alone: the most recent being the Duke of Wellington, the Havelock Arms, the Grove and the Prince’s Head, but I am sure you can add to the list. The disappearance of pubs, one after another, marks the loss of important community assets, which we should safeguard.
- One event that most of you will have missed, I am sure, was the launch of Wandsworth Radio on 12th January. I understand that it had some 3,000 listeners in the first week – we wish it well. To listen just Google Wandsworth Radio.
- I actually missed the launch because as I said last month I went into hospital for an “arthroscopy”. Although I said then that I would say more this month, there isn’t actually that much to say. My knee is not back to normal and it’s not killing me. But, I am afraid the story has not ended yet!
- There was a Council Meeting on 28th January but it was largely inconsequential except for the surprise announcement of the possible merger of Wandsworth and Richmond-upon-Thames Councils. The first thing to say about this is that this cannot be a full merger in every sense of the word as the London Boroughs were set-up by Act of Parliament (London Government Act, 1963) and can only be merged, abolished or changed by Parliament. However the Tory Leaders of the two Councils have decided that there should be economies of scale in merging many of the two Council’s operations. Hence rather than having two refuse collection services they can make do with one. Instead of having two education departments they can make do with one. Instead of having two Chief Executives, two Housing Directors, two Borough planners, etc., they can make do with having just the one.
- There are some obvious ways in which this plan makes sense, although it is interesting to speculate what would happen if one of the authorities went Labour and just how a Tory and a Labour authority would work together as one. But there are also many other implications, not least that the savings being discussed can only be as a result of losing about 500 jobs in the two Boroughs. But one remarkable thing about the whole process is that we are embarking on this whole adventure on the say so of two men, Ravi Govindia of Wandsworth and Lord True of Richmond-upon-Thames. There has as yet been no Council decision in either borough, no referendum amongst the people – nothing! No doubt we shall learn more with time but meanwhile we wait and listen.
My Programme for February
- I went to the Ram Brewery redevelopment launch (Model pictured right but not including the 42 storey Tower block) on 2nd February, had an Education and Children’s Services Committee on 12th and then of course there was Valentine’s Day, although that isn’t yet a Council event!
- On 18th February I have the Planning Applications Committee and then on the 19th a discussion of the two Borough merger at the Finance Committee.
In response to some of your comments.
Thanks, Viv and Shirley, for your best wishes re the operation
– as stated above fairly, or indeed totally, painless but not sure unfortunately that it has done the job! Daniel and Kathleen were of course right in describing this picture as the alleyway between Cabul Road and Latchmere Road and Daniel was right also in thinking that I thought it would be called a snicket. But he tells me that it could be either a ginnel or a snicket, but that it is actually too wide for either. I bow to the expertise of a real Tyke.
Kathleen was also right in saying that the gypsy encampment is right down the bottom of Culvert Road, between all the railway lines. I managed to get into the encampment purely by chance when taking a dozen or so people on a History Walk of Battersea. The only other way to see it is from the train but not just any old train. I think, but would be 
happy to be corrected, that the Overground Line from CJ’s Platform 2 to Wandsworth Road might be the best place to see it. By the way, if anyone is interested in going on the History Walk, which goes from the Latchmere pub to Battersea Arts Centre and takes a couple of hours, I am doing it next as part of the Wandsworth Heritage Festival on 24th May. Just let me know and I will book you in – but I should say that I do it as a Labour Party fund-raiser and charge £10.
However, I have had no reply to the question about the third picture: “what and where is this”? I have to admit that it was difficult to take a very clear picture but it is a boot scraper set in the wall. There are 3 or 4 in consecutive houses on the west side of Latchmere Road immediately opposite Knowsley Road. This is the best preserved of the set and is at 46 Latchmere Road.
High Rise developments in London – and Battersea
Just in case anyone out there still believes that the development of high rise residential blocks, on the Battersea river-front and all round the Nine Elms Lane area, has anything to do with housing need or provision of housing for Londoners then see “The Super-Rich and Us” on iPlayer BBC2 last night, 8th January at 9 pm.
This is an excellent analysis by Jacques Peretti of the tax haven and property speculation hub London has become with Battersea playing one of the major roles in the property area. The one thing it misses out on is, not only are these properties nothing whatsoever to do with supplying demand, but they are actually worsening the position.
I am not sure quite how to prove my point but I have more than sufficient anecdotal “evidence” to suggest that the ludicrous property boom along the Battersea river-front far from reducing prices in the market (which is surely what classic economics would suggest) is actually encouraging house and rental inflation in the rest of Battersea/Vauxhall, etc.
This should be compulsory viewing for all those Tory councillors and their not inconsiderable number of Labour sympathisers who believe that building more and more is anything like a sufficient response to the housing crisis. We desperately need more control of the market – oh and pretty hefty taxation of the rich!
Hope by Jack Thorne at the Royal Court
Compulsory entertainment for Labour councillors struggling with Tory cuts in local government!
Saw this play at the Royal Court just before Xmas and I thoroughly recommend it for all Labour councillors and perhaps for some LDs and Tories too. It reminded me very strongly of my own experiences many years ago when as a raw, young Labour councillor I thought that Ted Heath was setting about destroying local government with his Housing Finance Act. It may seem odd now to think of the contortions that we went through then and all over a 50P enforced rent rise on Council tenants but this play recalled some of the same raw emotions.
The claustrophobic nature of politics comes through strongly. Non-politicians may think that practising politicians get absurdly isolated from the “people” but the voters don’t usually have the experience of the hot-house, or any idea of the pressures and of the criticism. This play gives a taste of what it is like.
How much do you cut? How much of a gesture of opposition do you pose to the overwhelming power of Whitehall? Do you fight to the last and leave the final decisions to the civil servants drafted in to take over? Or do you sell your conscience down the river and win a few small concessions? Do you take the pain of local opposition by trimming? Or the contempt of your electorate for ducking the issue?
One difference from the 1970s, as I recall them, is the absence of the “revolting” masses. Then we had marches on Town Halls and national federations of tenant associations urging on the rebels. Today, with the threat to local government arguably even greater than it was then, just where are the protests against this government’s suicidal austerity policy. I suppose the difference is that we lost that battle against central government dictation and, since then, everyone has known that in the end Whitehall will win.
Ironically, of course, the masses might win with the coming defeat of all the mainstream parties, leaving us with years of resolving the differences between left and right without any party really articulating the left. Is that the irony in the title – Hope? Is Thorne suggesting that the only hope is for the Labour Party to come out of its slumbers and issue a rallying call to the left? I would like to think so, but my word, there is some way to go!
PS Tom Georgeson, Wandsworth LP member, takes the acting plaudits with his portrayal of the ex-Leader of this gritty small, northern town. The dramatic action is limited, even if the politics is raw and real.
PPS The Housing Finance Act, 1971, led to central, nationalised control of council rents, which previously had been entirely in the control of local authorities, who had been free to subsidise rents from other council funds. It began by enforcing a 50P rent increase from 1st April 1972 and was resisted by many Labour authorities. It may have only been 50P but with hindsight it was clearly the first major defeat for local government, which has had more and more powers stripped from it ever since regardless of the bogus claims of increased localism by both the Blair/Brown and Cameron governments.
Bedroom Tax – How Tory councillors fail to support their own constituents
Most of us are now well aware that the poorest in our community face a deluge of damaging benefit cuts on Monday, 1st April, including the vile Bedroom Tax. I will write another blog, another day about the vicious nature of this tax and just what it displays of Tory attitudes to council or social sector tenancies, but today I wanted to focus on the particular impact in Wandsworth.
The Guardian has just produced a very helpful map of where the impact is greatest and in its commentary says that the impact is counter-intuitive. I think that means that the journalist expected the hardest hit areas to be the great northern industrial cities. But in fact the worst hit single area of all is Wandsworth and the whole south east region including many of the most affluent parts are almost as hard hit. So whilst the “tax” for having one bedroom “too many” in Wandsworth is £912 per household per year, just down the road in Esther it is £851 and in Kensington it is £839.
This is because the tax is a function of the rent levels and with much lower rents in, say, Hull the impact on individual tenant households is rather less; actually it is £489 in Hull. But there are more than 2,000 households affected in each of the three Hull constituencies and only about 900 in each of the three Wandsworth ones.
Bizarrely this means that Wandsworth Tories have been aggressively promoting this vicious “tax”, which results in hitting their constituents harder than anywhere else in the country. It also means that they are supporting a policy, which is taking approximately £3.5 million out of the Borough’s economy. Knowing the area, as I do, this will cut living standards in Roehampton and Latchmere (the council flats on north-side of Clapham Junction station), where ironically the Council is now looking to invest £100 million precisely because of the under-privileged nature of the area.
Irony of ironies this is happening in the very same week as millionaires are getting £100,000 p.a. tax cuts and given that there are said to be 6,000 of them in the country, with Wandsworth’s share at least 35, what we see here is a Cameron/Osborne swap of money from the poor to the rich. And what do we know about the relative spending habits of rich and poor? Well for one the rich are more likely to spend some of their money in St. Tropez and Bermuda and much less likely to be spending it in the rundown shopping areas of Falcon Road and Danebury Avenue (the two main shopping streets in Latchmere and Roehampton).
I hate to think what Robin Hood would have made of it all but I can’t see how any Tory can be seriously surprised if we have many more civil disturbances – or at very least massive refusals to pay rent.
Affordable Housing Battersea Style
I want to tell a story about affordable housing Battersea style.
Sister’s Avenue is a road full of rather grand Victorian houses, including one Victorian block of Mansions, running from Lavender Hill through to Clapham Common. At some time during WWII a bomb clearly took out 20 or so houses on each side of the road at the Common end – plenty of evidence in Battersea at just how bad the Luftwaffe was at hitting Clapham Junction station.
In the 50s and 60s Battersea Borough Council built some pleasant and ordinary council houses, all gone right to buy, and a small 2 storey block of 6 flats. When Wandsworth Council (as it had now become) went Tory in 1978 they started an aggressive sales policy – by aggressive I mean that rather than just sell when a tenant expressed interest the Council ran sales fairs, gave prizes for landmark sales – the thousandth, etc. – and generally did their level best to stimulate sales.
79 Sister’s Avenue was the first of the block of flats to be sold in 1983 for £13,500. By January, 1989, all six flats had been sold at an average price of £17,950. Good luck you will say to then residents. Wandsworth had created 6 new affordable units for sale and resale – bully for Right-to-Buy and Tory policies.
By 2007 Robinwood Ltd, a property developer was sniffing around. The developer clearly saw an opportunity to increase the asset value. 2007 was a busy year and by the end of it all six flats were owned by Robinwood having bought them from the owners at an average price of £315,000 (NB for accuracy it should be noted that I do not know the price of one of the flats and so this is an average for 5 but there is no reason to think that the sixth would be substantially different).
Robinwood, or their agents, put in a planning application to build six large town houses. These six have just been completed and are on the market with Savills, the top people’s estate agency and the prices vary from £1.725 million to £1.925 million – checked out with Savills today, 13/3/13.
In 30 years we have gone from having 6 council owned flats, which by any standard would have been affordable at a rent of £20 per week (WBC average rent in 1983 was £20.12), to genuinely affordable private flats and now to luxury housing at nearly £2 million a shot.
The strange irony of this is that this tale works for both Tory and Labour Partys. For people of my persuasion it highlights the terrible divisions between the rich and the rest (the people living there were not the really poor) and what Tories have allowed to happen to the stock of affordable housing. It highlights the brutal callousness of Wandsworth Tories and displays why they are so contemptible in the eyes of many on the left.
For Tories it has helped to improve the Wandsworth environment ensuring that the rest of the housing in Sisters, and Battersea in general, continues on an upward curve; it has improved the housing stock; it has made Wandsworth a better place to live in. It highlights the head in the sand, conservative (small c) nature of Labour members.
Matching up these completely disparate views of life is the stuff of political controversy.
Are Wandsworth’s tenancy agreements legal?
Remember Wandsworth Council’s attempt to evict the mother of an accused rioter on the basis of a “so-called” breach of tenancy conditions? This was in the context of the Council’s secure tenancy terms, introduced in 2009. They included a number of things that tenants, “lodgers, friends, relatives, visitors and any other person living in the property are not allowed to do whilst in the London Borough of Wandsworth”, including causing a nuisance to others, causing damage to property etc.
I maintained at the time that surely it cannot be “reasonable” to include in a tenancy agreement matters that are quite outside the specific requirements of the tenancy and that, therefore, the whole basis of the Council’s tenancy agreements were flawed. I understand that in legal terms this might be referred to as “personal obligations” and not relevant to tenancy agreements. Just imagine a contract to buy a car or a washing machine, which included clauses covering personal behaviour!
I know this will sound fanciful to some but this kind of clause covering personal behaviour and not just the main object of a legal contract was the kind of mechanism used by the aristocracy in Tsarist Russia to keep the peasantry under control and in Hitler’s Germany to keep unionists in check and if allowed to pass unchallenged could, in theory, be used by Tory Wandsworth as a reason for evicting Labour voting tenants – or in Lambeth of evicting Tory voting tenants. I jest, but only a little. Clearly contract law should not be used to impose standards of behaviour on anyone – after all one person’s right to protest is another’s riotous assembly.
Well, I have just heard about a County Court judgment in Wandsworth County Court, where the district judge took exactly my position.
The tenant was a Wandsworth secure tenant for some 30 years. There had been no known problems with his tenancy until 2010/11 when he went to another estate, and, for a period of about 8 months, “painted” unpleasant graffiti on someone else’s front door. He had a “perceived” grudge against the other resident.
The tenant was arrested, pleaded guilty and received a prison sentence. About 3 months after he was released. Wandsworth brought possession proceedings on the grounds specified in the tenancy contract, i.e. of causing a nuisance to anyone living in the borough of Wandsworth and/or the local area, of doing anything which interferes with the peace, comfort or convenience of other people living in the borough of Wandsworth, of causing damage to property belonging to other people or council property in the borough of Wandsworth, etc.
The District Judge held that insofar as it applied to the entire borough, the clause was not an “obligation of the tenant”; that insofar as it related to anything which was “local” to his flat then Wandsworth had failed to prove, as a matter of fact, that his ASB (anti-social behaviour order) was in the area or in any event, it too was not an obligation of the tenancy and hence it wasn’t reasonable to make an order for possession. Stripped of the legal phrasing that means that, in the judge’s opinion, the tenant had done nothing to impact his tenancy. The judge did not attempt to justify the tenant’s behaviour or excuse it but he did say that right or wrong it had nothing to do with his rights to contimue his tenancy.
The possession claim was dismissed. In my view, Wandsworth has little choice but to appeal. If it does not, then it essentially accepts that its tenancy agreement is fatally flawed and any management actions taken on the basis of the agreement is doomed to fail. If it loses the appeal then the Council, and many others will have to re-think.
Indeed if the courts throw out Wandsworth’s position then David Cameron and others will have to re-think their unconsidered recommendations to Councils to evict and/or introduce legislation to change the law. However, this would be so controversial that I imagine the Law Lords would have problems with it – once again the Tory tendency to act on the hoof is getting them into trouble.
My thanks to my fellow Councillor Simon Hogg and website nearlylegal for much of the content of this blog.
State Snooper in the Bedroom. A Question of Distribution – Not supply.
Two ex-Council flats in my Battersea patch have been bought by the same person and converted into one comfortably sized house, occupied by one person. Two other terrace houses in the posh part of the ward, usually up for sale at about £1 million a time, are currently being converted into one mansion.
A close personal friend owns a flat in Prince of Wales Drive and bought the neighbouring flat with the result that he and his wife now have a very large, comfortable flat facing Battersea Park. Think how many spare bedrooms there are in these three properties. (By the way, my partner and I live in a comfortably sized house, which has three spare rooms we use as personal studies and a bedroom – I do not deny that I am in the same boat).
There is no bedroom tax on any of us, nor a mansion tax. Indeed since, in 1980, the Thatcher Government abolished domestic rates, a tax that reflected the size and value of private residencies, there has been ZERO disincentive to “under-occupy” in the private sector. Indeed given the inflation in house prices the incentive is to under-occupy as much as one can afford.
Meanwhile this Conservative-led Government has ruled that Councils must increase Council rents on Council tenants where they are “under-occupied”. Forget the interesting concept of charging on the basis of the customer’s situation, as opposed to the more normal charge on the value of the good being purveyed, this involves all kinds of problems interpreting “under-occupation”. It also demands statesnooping and bureaucracy in every socially rented house – indeed every bedroom.
That is, of course, because the Tories (and I am afraid increasingly the public at large) have a completely different attitude towards the rights of Council tenants as opposed to others. But just what does this mean on the ground?
Well here is a real example sent to me by a Battersea resident:
“i have lived here for 18 years i have 2 children that have now left home [a three bed flat] that’s why i am getting hit with the bedroom tax i have a 5 year old grandson who stays with me when his mum works and he stays with me when she is felling depressed as the grandsons dad was murderd in 2011 i suffer with chronic migraines and get blackouts with them when i am to ill to look after my grandson my mum and my son comes and stays here to help i have been on home swapper for over 1 year but have no luck as no one wants to move here i don’t mind moving to a smaller place but have not had any luck yet the council rang me back in nov 2012 and asked if i wanted to move to tooting i told them that i had asked for battersea or near i would like the council to let me have a 2 bed room because of my grandson staying here and just in case he comes to live with me full time which i think could happen in the near futher i do think that it is wrong that people who are willing to downsize have to pay the bedroom tax when the council have not got any smaller places allso my dad is in a wheelchair so i have to have somewhere that one can fit in i have told the council this as i would still like my dad to visit me thank you for taking the time to try and help”
The Tory position demands enquiring into a family’s personal circumstances and yet not allowing Councils to use their discretion depending upon those very circumstances – I thought they were opposed to the nanny state. In this case, and I suspect in many others, the Tory position potentially undermines both the family and the community – I thought they were supposed to believe in both. The Tory position is that the extra rent per bedroom will be levied regardless of whether the tenant is on the transfer list and whether the Councl has the ability to provide a smaller flat.
The broader Tory view is that they (the state) have the right to dictate how the council tenant uses our common resources. They (tenants) do not have rights of residency, they are allowed occupation on sufferance as long as their circumstances do not change. Talk about the dreaded Tory fear of encouraging women (sorry! the feckless poor) to have babies so as to keep their Council flats or to lie about whether their kids and grandparents are resident or not. At the very least it will discourage tenants from going on the transfer list as they will immediately open themselves up to the bedroom tax! What a perverse result.
At the same time the more affluent are incentivised to grab a larger and larger share of our national resource without taxation – indeed until recently they were given Council Tax relief on under-occupied second homes. The Tory position displays class prejudice of an extreme kind – and they like to claim that it is the left that pursues class politics – the politics of envy – what nerve! What thoughtless arrogance!
Oh, and by the way, just the other day, one mile down the road at Battersea Power Station studio flats were put up for sale for £338,000 and penthouses for £6 million – and they won’t even be built for years. Within days 60% were snapped up by British and foreign owners – I wonder just how many by those on the waiting lists of Wandsworth!
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 