Bedroom Tax – and as for the Lib/Dems?
I left out the Lib/Dems from my last blog re marginal constituencies – perhaps it’s because I come from Lib/Dem free Wandsworth but a reader pointed out that it has a potential impact on them too, so here is my analysis of top Lib/Dem marginals.
Of the top five marginal Lib/Dem:Labour seats three have majorities less than the number of households affected by the Bedroom Tax!
They are:
Norwich South; 310; 1973
Bradford East: 365: 1023:
Brent Central: 1345: 1057: majority greater
Burnley: 1818: 957: majority greater
Manchester, Withington: 1894: 2678
Bedroom Tax – the political impact on the Tories
What I did not say yesterday was that in 17 of the 20 tightest Tory:Labour marginals the number of households affected, and I mean households and not voters, is greater than the Tory majority in 2010.
The data is by constituency:
Constituency: Majority: Households affected
1. North Warwickshire: 54: 766
2. Cambourne and Redruth: 66: 454
3. Thurrock: 92: 1140
4. Hendon: 106: 680
5. Oxford and West Abingdon: 176: 572
6. Cardiff North: 194: 1067
7. Sherwood: 214: 804
8. Stockton South: 332: 1431
9. Lancaster and Fleetwood: 333: 555:
10. Broxtowe: 389: 581
11. Truro and Redruth: 435: 500
12. Newton Abbot: 523: 326: majority greater
13. Amber Valley: 536: 559
14. Wolverhampton South West: 691: 1396
15. Waveney: 769: 788
16. Carlisle: 853: 1181
17. Morecombe and Lunesdale: 866: 700: majority greater
18. Weaver Vale: 991: 1397
19. Harrogate and Knaresborough: 1039: 684: majority greater
20. Lincoln: 1058: 1155
One has to ask: Did they know what they were doing when they introduced this abomination and of course the resounding answer is NO.
The Briefcase – a play by Timothy Turner
I am a “prop star”; well at least I own a prop star. All because fellow
Labour councillor Billi Randall emailed her friends asking if anyone had a briefcase and I, being of an older generation, confessed that I had, which is why some weeks later I was seated in the front row of community arts theatre, Theatro Technis, watching this new play starring my briefcase.
Timothy, the author, is the 26 year old son of my Council colleague Billi and she was also there proud to see the launch of Tim’s play-writing career – and a very promising one it is too, at least judging by this opener.
A one hour duopoly, beautifully acted by Harry Lobek and Joel Samuels, the Briefcase is a philosophical discussion on the nature of decision making and indeed of discussion itself. Was the glass half full or half empty? Should the briefcase be opened or left shut; if opened it could reveal something that would make life better or worse? Was it worth the possible joy of one or the risk of the other?
As Turner explored one could see clear references to Stoppard, Beckett and Pinter not least the lack of action in this style of theatre and the difficulty of beginning and ending. Indeed in my view the ending was the weakest element of the play – it just stopped. But the format avoids the dramatist’s perpetual problem of how to get the actors on and off the stage – we all know that even the greatest once descended to “Exit followed by a bear” – since both actors were on at both beginning and end.
However, Turner very ingeniously reversed the roles of the two characters halfway through the play when the action man suddenly became the prevaricator and vice versa. This gave him all kind of licence to play with the arguments and characters. The conclusion? I think Turner believes the means is more important than the ends; or perhaps that self-discovery is more important than action. It would, though, also be perfectly possible to conclude that Turner is very critical of over-rationalisation and much in favour of getting on with life.
The play was witty, complex and sophisticated. It was also clever and polished and hugely enjoyable. Turner also directed the play and no small feat that. Billi tells me that he is planning other plays. I hope he manages it. This was a very, very promising opening.
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.
Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere March Newsletter (# 47)
February highlights
1. On Friday 1st February I flew from Luton to Tel Aviv with a group of 30 people
organised by Labour Friends of Palestine (LFP). We were on a fact-finding tour. LFP is organised by ex-Battersea MP, Martin Linton, and this trip had a very Battersea feel about it with other trippers being my colleagues Councillors Wendy Speck and Simon Hogg. (Here we are with a banner given to us by the Mayor of Hebron.) This was no ordinary trip however but a pretty tough, hard-working one. (Oh and before any cynics say otherwise, it was all paid for by us!)
We met the Palestinian Foreign Secretary and his number two, the Governor of Hebron Province and the Mayor of Hebron City. We met Meir Margalit, a Jewish, left-wing Jerusalem city councillor with the difficult portfolio of looking after Palestinian affairs in East Jerusalem. We had a discussion with the British Consul in Jerusalem and were given a talk by a senior UN representative with responsibility for Palestine. We had discussions with the relatives, mainly mothers of course, of Palestinian prisoners, mainly young men of course, in Israeli prisons.
- We visited a Palestinian refugee camp in Ramallah, a Bedouin encampment
in the Judean desert, a Jewish settlement and several Palestinian villages surrounded by Jewish settlements – and all in four days! Oh and we also managed to fit in one or two of the major tourist sites such as the Church of the Sepulcre, the Wailing Wall and the Dome on the Mount (Christian, Jewish and Moslem sites) in Jerusalem, as well as the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the tomb of Abraham and his family in Hebron. The picture is of a sunset scene in the Judean desert.
It was a busy trip, which of course I could write about for pages and pages but I will try and make just a few brief observations. First, and whilst I hadn’t expected Palestine to be at all hot in February I was not prepared for it being even colder than London was last month. Jerusalem is 3,800 feet or 1,000 metres up in the Judean Mountains and with clear nights the temperature really plummeted.
Secondly whatever the politics I was struck by the overwhelming physical
ugliness of man’s inhumanity to man – the thirty foot high, 700 mile long wall that the Israeli Government is building round and in Palestine is as ugly as the picture suggests. Anyone who saw the Berlin Wall or the wall in West Belfast will know exactly what I mean.
But there are also a lot of half-demolished homes, where the Israeli authorities have decided to move Palestinians out, or half complete homes where the Palestinians in return have half built homes without planning permission (I longed for Britain’s planning systems). There are brand-new sparkling highways for Israelis built alongside litter-strewn, wreck-spattered, pot-holed roads for Palestinians (puts our pot holes into context!). Not even South Africa under Apartheid had segregated roads, did they?
On another note the religious sites, the churches, mosques and synagogues
don’t really work for me partly because as they are shared between faiths they had neither the over-the-top garishness of say the Greek Orthodox Church nor the puritanical simplicity of a British church. But I also did not warm to kissing the very spot where Jesus was born – partly because the person, who decided where that spot should be lived 300 years after Christ and couldn’t have possibly known. And the old Xmas carol “Oh, little town of Bethlehem” will never feel quite the same now that I have seen the traffic, the mess and the commercialisation of religious tourism in modern Bethlehem. Though occasionally, as here, it has its amusing sides. But the real point of the trip was to look at Palestinian/Israeli relationships and what lies in the future for them.
The first thing to say is that life for the under-dog is always going to be rough and at the moment the Palestinians are the under-dogs all right. One doesn’t have to be anti-Israeli or pro-Palestinian to see that being bossed around by gun-toting 20 year old Israeli soldiers can be a demeaning experience for a middle aged Palestinian and an absolutely infuriating one for a 20 year old, unemployed, one. But more importantly experience on the ground tends to suggest that the much talked about two state solution just does not look a credible possibility. Palestine is just too small, and too broken up by ever-expanding Jewish settlements to be viable.
It may be pie-in-the-sky but a united non-sectarian, democratic state seems to me to the only possible future for the two peoples. But that can only happen if one, two or three other things take place. They are that the USA decides it can no longer afford, or no longer wants, to fund the Israeli state; that the rich Arab states decide between them that they are going to fund Palestine as generously as the USA does Israel; or finally that the people of the area get fed up with beating themselves up just as pretty much the whole of western Europe decided in the years after 1945 that two millennia of war was just about enough. Funnily enough, I think it may happen sooner than you think!
2. The day after we got back, 6th February, was the Council Meeting. One thing that certainly could be said for our trip was that it put the normal Labour:Tory badinage into context! There really was not a big debate but there was some discussion about paying all Council staff at least the London Living Wage of £8.55 per hour. Despite paying our top officers over £100,000 apparently we cannot afford to pay a minimum of £8.55!
3. The Planning Applications Committee on 11th February had few interesting applications but there were five for Boris bike docking stations. I have mentioned before that £2 million is being spent on this scheme in the Borough. None of these were in Latchmere, because none of those designed for Latchmere have been objected to, but I have a feeling people are not going to be pleased when they see the number of such docking stations planned. I also have my own suspicion that the scheme will not be quite so successful here as in the City and the West End, not least because out here it starts getting hilly and Latchmere Road Hill is pretty steep however young and fit you are.
4. The Strategic Planning and Transportation Committee had a paper about lobbying for a Heathrow/Clapham Junction link, which will be of interest to many in the ward. But perhaps more will be interested that the Council is looking into making parking enforcement the same on Council estates as it is everywhere else. You may know that car clamping, which the Council used to do on estate roads is no longer legal so the Council had to do something. It also obviously wants to save money by having the same traffic warden system everywhere in the Borough. I am not sure exactly how it is going to work but clearly the intention is to have one system that applies on both estate roads and public roads – and about time to, some would say.
5. On the 26th we had the Housing Committee and I really am struggling to think of anything interesting to say about that – so I won’t report anything.
6. On the 19th Jane Ellison organised a meeting at Providence House to discuss the plans for the extension of the Falcon Road Mosque. Representatives of the mosque presented their plans and Jane had asked me, as a member of the Planning Applications Committee, to outline the planning position and just some of the planning issues.
There were about 50 people present and local concerns were expressed. The major concern was clearly parking though there was mention of the proposed change in the building line and of the installation of a dome. At one point, the meeting threatened to get a little lively but I have to admit Jane handled it very well – ‘tis pity she is the wrong party!
7. I have an apology to make to everyone. On 8th February I had 10 solar panels fitted on my roof and became a member of the “oh so green brigade”. It is obviously the reason that we haven’t seen the sun since.
My Programme for March
1. There is a Council meeting on Wednesday, 6th March (OK, I know that’s passed but that will have to wait until next month!), with Planning Applications on the 12th.
2. The Falcon Road Estates Resident Association is on the 7th but there is also a Big Local meeting at Providence House on the same day. I will go to the Big Local meeting.
3. The Big Local is having a couple of consultation meetings. One is at the Sports Centre in Hope Street and will be an opportunity for locals to give their views on what the area needs. The second, much larger event will be a fun day for all on Saturday 16th. In the morning this will be centred on the Chapel in Pennethorne Square and in the afternoon it will be centred on York Gardens and the Library and will include football coaching, bouncy castles, face painting, etc. You name it and it will be there.
Do you know?
Maureen Larkin? I can’t remember when I first met Maureen but it was at an 
election, when I was standing for the Labour Party. I guess it might have been 1982. I called on some chap and got talking to him and it turned out that he had lived in the same house since the fifties and as I expressed surprise he told me about Maureen who was a far more senior citizen. So I called on Maureen and she told me she was born in her house in 1932 and as you see she is still there in the same house 81 years later. Can anyone beat that? Let me know if you can.
Many of you will know Maureen, who is still today very active as the Membership Secretary and Events Organiser of the Battersea Society. She has in her time been the Secretary or organiser of the Triangle (Poyntz Road, Shellwood and Knowsley Roads) Neighbourhood Watch and the Residents Association. She organises the Triangle Annual street party (she says she doesn’t organise it nowadays but I bet she has her say), which by the way I can say from experience is by far the best in the Borough.
In 2010 Maureen was presented with a Civic Award by Wandsworth Council in recognition of her services to the community. I remember it as a splendid occasion where she was accompanied by her daughter, Terry Barber. When I went round and took the photograph we chatted about Battersea when each little terraced house like hers had a family living upstairs and another downstairs and when the shared loo was a brick out-house in the yard, when the bath was a tub under the sink and Battersea, then the major industrial centre in west London, was filthy with coal soot and industrial grime.
Maureen clearly loves her community but she is not such an old sentimentalist to believe that everything was so good in the good old days, indeed she very much looks forward to tomorrow’s event to be organised and insisted that I had the Triangle party date firmly in my diary.
Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere February Newsletter (# 46)
January highlights
1. I went to the Passenger Transport Liaison Group on 7th January. Sounds dull, I know, but actually it deals with quite a bit of important detail. I asked why the Grant Road exit from CJ station is closed before the other exits. This means that many of you, catching the late trains from Waterloo and Victoria, have to walk out of the main exit and all the way round under the Falcon Road bridge – not the pleasantest of walks! The Network Rail representative said that he would look into the issue and just maybe get it extended to 1 am.
I also asked the TfL representative about “forcing” passengers to get off the C3 and 295 in
St. John’s Hill, when it would be more convenient and safer for them (you) to stay on the bus to the terminus at Grant Road. I am afraid that the TfL man was a right “jobsworth” and was more concerned about the safety issue of getting off the bus at such a free-stand as the terminus and less about walking under the bridge. Of course if anything did happen at the terminus then TfL would be liable, whilst if you simply get mugged under the bridge then one thing’s for certain: TfL won’t get it in the neck! A frankly pathetic response! However, perhaps the Council can include some re-structuring of that bus stand as part of its big investment in regenerating Latchmere!
2. At the Planning Applications Committee on 14th January we approved the demolition of the gas holders that stand behind Battersea Park Station. Though not exactly in Latchmere, they are almost as well known a landmark of Battersea as the Power Station. I guess it will be a couple of years at least before they disappear but here is a reminder of them as they look now. There was no significant application relating directly to Latchmere.
3. I was at the Strategic Planning and Transportation Committee (I hate that name) on the 21st.
There was an awful lot about speed humps and parking controls but largely in streets in Tooting. The only matters which, I thought, were of wider interest and especially here in Latchmere were a paper about building a pedestrian and bicycle bridge across the Thames between Vicarage Crescent and Imperial Wharf, and the plan to expand the Mayor’s bike scheme.
The bridge would be on the upstream side of the Cremorne or Battersea Railway Bridge and would obviously be a great addition to life since as you know there is a big gap in bridges between Battersea and Wandsworth Bridges. However, the expected cost is £20 million and there is no known source of funding and so I am afraid it is merely a “bridge dream”.
The Mayor’s bike scheme is, however, going ahead and the cost in Battersea will be the best part of £2 million with cycle stands (docking stations) installed all over the place. A few of the 17 Latchmere sites are Grant Road, Sheepcote Lane and Plough Road. A full list can be seen at this link http://ww3.wandsworth.gov.uk/moderngov/documents/s26267/13-61%20Appendix%201%20to%20Cycle%20Hire%20Report.pdf. I can see some arguments coming up when they go the Planning Applications Committee! But at £2 million for Battersea alone I really, and rather unfashionably, wonder whether just some of this money could be spent reversing other cuts, such as welfare benefits, adventure playgrounds and one o’clock clubs. What do you reckon?
4. On the 23rd we had the Housing Committee. There were a few technical matters but two main changes: one about the annual rent increase, which is more or less in line with inflation at a weekly average of £3.44, and secondly the impending change to housing and Council Tax benefits. The first thing to be said here is that the Government are cutting these drastically and that many people at the poorer end of the spectrum are going to find life really tough. There is already anecdotal evidence of quite a few children with free school meals “disappearing” from our primary schools. It seems that schools are picking up signs, before the housing department, that quite large numbers of people are being forced out of London. I think it is too early to say quite what level of disaster this is for some in the community, but we do know quite a bit about the impact of the so-called “bedroom” tax. I have a local and worrying case that you can read about on my blog site at https://tonybelton.wordpress.com/ under the title “State Snooper in the bedroom”
Highlights of 2012
1. My colleague, Simon Hogg, has produced his own blog of a few of our (Latchmere Labour councillor) achievements in 2012. You can see his account at http://simonhoggblogs.com/2012/12/31/9-things-your-local-labour-party-did-for-you-this-year/
2. I haven’t really kept a diary of my own “achievements” but am now making a resolution to do so in 2013, but my own personal highlight is fighting the Council’s policy to evict the families of those involved in the riots of August, 2011. As I have often said, it is not that I have much sympathy for the rioters but making them homeless, and more particularly their innocent mothers and younger siblings, seems like pointless revenge. The international interest was staggering and I was interviewed by press and TV from Russia, France, Spain and Canada. In the end the Council backed down!
My Programme for February
1. There is a Council meeting on Wednesday, 6th February, with Planning Applications on the 11th and Strategic Planning and Transportation on the 20th with the Housing Committee following on 27th.
2. The Finance Committee will decide on the 27th February next year’s Council Tax but essentially since that has been nationalised for some years now, we know that will be frozen or more or less so.
3. There is the Greater London Labour Conference on the week-end of 16th and 17th February, though by then some of us will be deep into the Six-Nations Rugby Championships!
4. There is the police Special Neighbourhood Team (SNT) on the 7th and numerous other smaller meetings.
Did you know?
Everything about the Latchmere Estate? I thought I knew quite a bit but this month my attention was drawn to a blog-site called Municipal Dreams. This is obviously the pride and joy of a real municipal historian and there is masses in there about the reconstruction of bomb blitzed Plymouth and about Poplar but if you scroll down to the 1st January entry there is a really interesting bit on the Latchmere Estate – a must for history buffs, the Battersea Society, etc.
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!
My January Newsletter (# 45)
December highlights
- I went to the Doddington Estate Garden Xmas fete on Saturday 1st Dece
mber 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 Battersea Power Station at the Policeman’s Ball and so December had started festively! - There was a Council Meeting on Wednesday 5th, where the main subjects of discussion were the benefit cuts, the housing crisis and the Chancellor’s autumn statement and its impact on Wandsworth’s budget. I don’t think that we learnt anything much other than that the Conservative councillors, and the Conservative Party, have no Plan B. Apart from blaming Labour for the economic crisis (strange that given the crisis is affecting the whole of Europe), and cutting welfare benefits, they seem to have nothing to say.
- At the Planning Applications Committee on 13th December we approved yet another planning application for Battersea Power Station. I have been on the Committee a long time and seen many, many planning applications for the Power Station approved. None of them have ever amounted to much but this time there appears to be a real chance that work on the site will start late next year. I hesitate to say that because I have said it before but just maybe this time it will happen.
- A local application that went through was for the demolition and re-construction
of the Castle pub in Battersea High Street. The public gallery was full and the application was clearly not popular but in reality the committee had very little choice. There is little that the Committee can do to stop demolition of a building, unless it is listed for protection, and its replacement by another pub plus flats is totally consistent with the Council’s planning policies. - On the 10th I went on opening run of the new rail service from Clapham Junction through south and east London to Highbury and Islington. This line completes London’s orbital rail line. I went on it from CJ to Wapping and back to Wandsworth Road station. The best description of it, I have found is at http://www.therailengineer.com/2012/11/02/london-orbital-rail-network-complete/. Here is a picture of the new rolling stock pulling into Wandsworth Road station. The line offers new ways of getting to the O2 stadium, Canary Wharf and Stratford. It is a good line opening up lots of new destinations from CJ but was it me or was it rather slow. I felt that in crossing so many other lines it had to be very carefully timetabled and perhaps came off second best at some junction points.
- On New Year’s Eve, I went to a Jazz Club in Streatham. Here is a picture of the
band, Soul Street, who gave us an entertaining evening. I hope that you had a good time!
Highlights of 2012
- My colleague, Simon Hogg, has produced his own blog of a few of our achievements in 2012. You can see his account at http://simonhoggblogs.com/2012/12/31/9-things-your-local-labour-party-did-for-you-this-year/
- I haven’t really kept a diary of my own highlights but am now making a resolution to do so in 2013, but my own personal highlight is fighting the Council’s policy to evict the families of those involved in the riots of August, 2011. As I have often said, it is not that I have much sympathy for the rioters but making them homeless, and more particularly their innocent mothers and younger siblings, seems like pointless revenge. The international interest was staggering and I was interviewed by press and TV from Russia, France, Spain and Canada. In the end the Council backed down!
My Programme for January
- I am back into the Council swing on Monday, 7th January, with a meeting of the Transport Liaison Group, where councillors exchange views with Transport for London and the rail companies about the state of public transport in London. That might sound like just a talking shop but in the last few years I think that we have been just a little responsible for getting the lifts installed at CJ and seats at most of our bus-stops – just two examples of many items discussed over the years.
- There is a Big Local meetingon Wednesday 9th, and a Planning Applications Committee on the 14th. I intend to go to the Cancer Support AGM on the 16th in the Mission on the north side of York Road.
- I have the Strategic Planning and Transportation Committee on the 21st and the Housing Committee on the 23rd and a Battersea Park School Governors meeting on the 28th. And on the 30th I am attending a teach-in on the new Housing Benefit rules. Anyone, who has followed my comments very carefully will know that I think that these cuts are going to be an absolute disaster for many people on our housing estates. By the end of the month, I hope to be proved wrong but expect to be proved right!
Did you know?
Why the Katherine Low Settlement (or KLS) in Battersea High Street and pictured here has that name and who Katherine Low was? I attended my first Battersea political meetings there many years back and never knew, or if I did I have forgotten, why that name.
Well it turns out (thanks to Wikipedia) that KLS was named after Katherine Mackay Low, who was born in Georgia, USA, on July 9th 1855. Her parents were British, and when her mother died in 1863, her father, a prosperous merchant and banker, brought his family back to England and settled in Leamington. When he died, the family came to London, and Katherine devoted herself to the care of the less fortunate. When she died, on January 2nd, 1923, her many friends decided to create a memorial to her which would also further the kind of service to which she had devoted herself.
The small committee formed to achieve this purpose discovered that the area around Orville Road, Battersea was described as “irreclaimable”. They visited Battersea and found, right on Orville Road, a large empty house. Then called “The Cedars”, the house was owned by Christ’s College, Cambridge. The College agreed to lease the house at a nominal rent if money could be found to repair and redecorate it. Katherine Low’s friends raised the funds and on May 17th, 1924, HRH the Duchess of York (later Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother) came to Battersea and declared open the Katherine Low Settlement.
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 