HFConwatch

Lest we forget: how Hammersmith Tories were cocking up the borough last January

2012-01-16T10:07:00.001Z

If a week is a long time in politics, twelve months is an age. We look here at the mess that Hammersmith & Fulham Tory council was already making of our borough in January 2011, as reported by HFConwatch.

The council votes to cut nearly £7 million from children's services, including £3.2 million from early years support, taking funding from nine out of 15 Sure Start early-years centres and making 50 jobs redundant at a cost of £600,000.

The council's Housing Director, Nick Johnson, is named "Retiree of the Year" in Private Eye's Rotten Boroughs Awards 2010 after receiving over half a million pounds of H&F taxpayers' money for his services, following his retirement from Bexley council with a £50,000 pension on grounds of ill health.

As Andrew Lansley launches his NHS shake-up, the Hammersmith Tory Party's £50,000 links to a private healthcare millionaire are revealed.

The Refugee Council describes as "deplorable" the council's plans to eject 22 charities "supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our society" from Palingswick House in Hammersmith to make way for the West London Free School.

HFConwatch exposes the Tories' plans not to give the Bryony Centre to the Cambridge School for children with special needs but to give the centre to the West London Free School instead until Palingswick House is ready (in the end, the Cambridge School did get the Bryony Centre and the WLFS moved into Cambridge's vacated premises).

The Tories go back on an agreement with Hammersmith's Irish Centre to extend its lease to 2017, aiming to sell it off in April 2012 instead. 6,000 people sign a petition against this.

As the economy contracts, a survey by the Federation of Small Businesses reveals that Hammersmith council is failing to engage properly with local business.

And one piece of good news: five years after Labour did the deal, it is announced the Hammersmith Academy will finally open in September.

Tory Hammersmith & Fulham in worst third for child poverty in London

2012-01-10T13:10:00.000Z

A third of children in Tory Hammersmith & Fulham are living in poverty. Up to half of children live below the poverty line in College Park & Old Oak and Wormholt & White City wards, and almost two in five are living in poverty in North End, Shepherd's Bush Green and Sands End wards.

Overall, H&F has the tenth highest share of children living in poverty of the 33 London councils, with 33% of children living in families below the poverty line. In its triborough partner Westminster the figure is 38% and in Kensington & Chelsea it is 26%.

These shocking figures are revealed in a report just issued by End Child Poverty: see here for the London figures and here to get the full report

Figures for each H&F ward are as follows:

Local Authority: Hammersmith and Fulham
Percentage of children in poverty: 33%

College Park and Old Oak	50%
Wormholt and White City	49%
North End	39%
Shepherd's Bush Green	39%
Sands End	38%
Hammersmith Broadway	36%
Fulham Broadway	35%
Askew	34%
Fulham Reach	29%
Ravenscourt Park	28%
Town	27%
Avonmore and Brook Green	27%
Addison	24%
Munster	19%
Parsons Green and Walham	15%
Palace Riverside	9%

Hammersmith flyover latest: when it will re-open is not the only question, says Andy Slaughter MP

2012-01-06T17:13:00.000Z

Update from Andy Slaughter MP on the Hammersmith flyover

This morning’s statement from Transport for London (TfL) that Hammersmith Flyover will remain closed for at least another week is serious and disappointing, as traffic flows increase with the return to school and work after the holidays.

The official line is that tests continue and until TfL is certain every part of the structure is safe they will not consider even a partial re-opening (eg to cars and/or for one lane only).

I had a very frank discussion with TfL managers on Thursday about all aspects of the closure. Of course, the priority is to get it open. I was convinced that TfL are doing everything they can to do this, and that they have a solution to restore it to full operation in reasonable time. I was not persuaded however that we need to be in this situation, or that there is a long-term future for the structure.

The Flyover’s method of construction is relatively rare in the UK, and there are few other similar structures – for which TfL and the Department for Transport (DfT) should be grateful. It was built in 1961 by the family company of the then Minister of Transport, Sir Ernest Marples, who passed his shares on during his time in government – to his wife!

Its strength is provided by bunches of twisted metal rods that link separated sections of the concrete together. The tension in the structure is such, I was told, that a simple demolition job would result in parts of the Flyover being fired into the Thames. But water, aided by salt during gritting, has rusted the cables which have begun to snap. The surface heating that should have negated the need for gritting apparently never worked.

The decay is exponential: as each rod weakens or breaks more stress is put on the remainder and so more break, and so on. TfL inherited the Flyover from DfT, with all its obligations, in 2000. They say they inspected it regularly, but as the rods are encased in concrete used ultrasonic rather than visual observation. Last summer they concluded it had about a year of useful life without repair and started looking for ways to prolong this. On 22 December, uncovering a bunch of rods showed significant damage where the ultrasound had indicated little or none. This begged the question, had this happened throughout the half mile structure and was it in fact so decayed as to be in danger of imminent collapse? Hence the emergency closure.

I accept all this – my initial suspicion was that there had been a convenient closure at one of the least busy times of year. I also accept that TfL are working to check each section of the flyover to ensure the earliest possible safe opening. But I do not think TfL should have been taken by surprise in the way that they were two weeks ago. Knowing the history, significance and particular problems of the structure I think they have been complacent in not diagnosing both the degree of damage and a solution before now. This must be fully and independently investigated.

The cost, not just to motorists and freight transport, but to local businesses, will run into millions, aside from the huge inconvenience to both local and through-commuters. Mistakes like this by TfL are neither victimless nor blameless, and unless the consequences are fully itemised they will happen again.

TfL is a peculiarly unaccountable body. While I have been an MP they have closed Shepherds Bush Central Line for a year, closed Olympia tube station permanently on weekdays, and are in the process of destroying (through their development arm) both Shepherds Bush Market and West Ken.

So where now? The good news is that TfL have, under pressure, come up with a workable solution to restoring the Flyover to full weight-bearing capacity. This involves threading new rods into the concrete, which can be done over a period of weeks and months (concluding before the Olympics) with night time only closures.

There are two caveats. Firstly, we will not know for some days how much renewal will need to be done before the Flyover can be re-opened during the day. I will continue to press TfL for an answer to this.

Secondly, the renewal will only extend the life of the structure by seven to ten years. I realise that those waiting in a half mile queue to get onto the Broadway will not see this as a priority, but given the time and cost it takes to achieve civil engineering solutions in this country, we had better start thinking now what will replace the flyover. In the process I have urged TfL to look at the whole issue of trunk road traffic coming into Hammersmith. There are still too many fatal pedestrian accidents on the A4 and A40. Both roads run through residential areas and give too much priority to road traffic which often exceeds speed limits by 20 or 30 mph.

The Flyover is one of Hammersmith’s most recognisable and iconic structures. It has given good service and we must now replace it with something to serve both local and strategic transport needs for the next 50 years. But first let us support and pressure TfL in getting West London moving again.

Andy Slaughter, MP for Hammersmith

New Year news from Andy Slaughter MP

2012-01-02T12:30:00.000Z

King Street – victory or reprieve?
White City blues
Method in their madness
Developer round up
Imperial not minted
Never Feltham better
Babar Ahmad
Air Passenger Duty
Loretto O’Callaghan
Christmas season

King Street – victory or reprieve?

Hammersmith was handed the Christmas present we most wanted by Save Our Skyline. The group’s four year campaign against the Council’s plan to ruin the historic riverside reached a crescendo in December. At the end of a four-hour planning committee, attended by 500 people, the seven Conservative councillors voted in favour of the universally-loathed scheme. It would mean building on the cinema and Furnivall Gardens, replacing affordable homes with luxury high rise – and of course subsidising new offices for the councillors themselves.
So SOS took the battle to City Halland the Mayor backed residents’ criticisms, forcing the Council to withdraw its request for approval. SOS were celebrating this week, while at the same time wondering if this was a tactical delay until after the Mayoral election in May.
That is certainly some pundits’ view, and many Boriswatchers would agree. For the past four years he has been happy to rubber-stamp the maddest H&F schemes, including this one. He is also no stranger to the site’s developer, Helical Bar. He also seems to have u-turned to back residents rather than the Council-developer on the plans to demolish homes in West Ken.
Can politicians be so cynical? Yes. Could Hammersmith Tories resubmit the same scheme the day after the election? Yes, but at some risk. Although Boris, if re-elected, is unlikely to stand again after 2012 and has little to lose, the next Council elections are only two years away, and Hammersmith voters would not forget such a blatant betrayal.
So I hope we have seen the last of the towers and the footbridge and yet another Tescos. What we get instead is another question – but one I hope will be answered by local residents not arrogant and out of touch councillors.
If, however, I am being festively over-optimistic, there is an easy way to resolve the dilemma. Vote for Ken.

White City blues
If the Council’s high-rise plans for the riverside and West Ken are on hold, in White City they are out of control. I have now met each of the developers for the east side of Wood Lane – Imperial, Helical Bar and Westfield. Each wants to build the maximum number of the most expensive properties on its site, some 5,000 in total in towers going up to 34 floors. And because they are acting independently none is prepared to look at the overall needs of the area. So there is little or no open space, infrastructure planning or affordable housing.
This is a further blow to the Council’s plan to relocate White City Estate residents to the new development so they could redevelop the whole area around the BBC when TV Centre is vacated. They have only themselves to blame, by giving free rein to developers before they had put planning policies in place. Five years ago the White City Opportunity Area was part of a coherent plan with the BBC at its heart. Now there is talk of the BBC leaving the area altogether, leaving only faceless tower blocks of flats unaffordable to even the wealthiest local residents.
The architect of the planning disaster that is Hammersmith & Fulham, is Council Leader Stephen Greenhalgh, who last week bailed out, announcing his retirement just as his schemes were beginning to unravel. But where is he off to? Sadly, for the residents of White City he has promised to go and sort them out. Needless to say none of the eight (Labour) councillors for the area nor I has been consulted on what he has in store, but we can guess. Greenhalgh has form in the area, where the original plan was demolition as at West Ken. He is surely the least suitable person for the job, as he proved on his last high-profile visit during the General Election.

Method in their madness
After 2006, Hammersmith & Fulham Council set out to reduce the amount of social housing in the borough and increase the amount of high-value mainly investment property. Whole districts were to be demolished and rebuilt, major asset sales programme began and a blueprint for legislation was drawn up. This proposed near market in place of social rents, an end to security of tenure, dramatic cuts in capital investment and removal of the duty to permanently re-house homeless families. These have all been adopted by the Coalition Government, and along with cuts and caps to Housing Benefit will rapidly change the social profile of seats like Hammersmith.
LBHF quickly moved onto planning policy. In 2007 they announced they were ‘open for business’ and began to cultivate developers. In some cases, as with CapCo in West Kensington or Helical Bar in King Street, the Council became the developer’s partner. In Shepherds Bush Market they effectively became the developer’s agent. In every case the Council permitted or encouraged the developer to maximise the value of the site. This meant the destruction of established communities, especially low-density or social housing and facilities serving local people, like cinemas and markets. These would be replaced by high-rise luxury flats. The key to achieving what were certain to be unpopular and controversial redevelopments was a pliant planning policy and process which always gave the benefit of the doubt to the developer. This is exactly what the Government now seeks to achieve through the NPPF and the presumption in favour of sustainable development.
The third phase of this social engineering strategy takes on a moral dimension. Communities, like West Ken and White City, that stubbornly refuse to sign up to LBHF’s brave new world are labelled ‘not decent’ and ‘inward looking’ and targeted if not for demolition then for special treatment. In the case of White City that might involve partial demolition and decanting, or the creation of special government vehicles to reward and punish the type of behaviour the council finds acceptable.

Developer round up
Shepherds Bush Market is due at planning committee on 8 February. I have asked the Council to meet a local delegation before this as none of the promises made to shopkeepers, traders and residents has been kept. So far they have refused.
Nomis Studios:100 people turned up to oppose the plans to squeeze 55 flats into a space big enough for five terraced houses in Sinclair Road. As with the Town Hall development, planning officers were left to justify the scheme, while developers and Conservative councillors stayed silent.
Haymarket: A major local employer, Haymarket (prop: Michael Heseltine), have succumbed to the LIP (luxury investment property) temptation, whereby employment sites can now be redeveloped for residential use. I met them this week and they are promising to preserve the existing 600 jobs by rebuilding their HQ on Hammersmith Road, but want to knock down their other site in Bute Gardens to build 50 flats. Sacred Heart School and some Latymer Court residents are concerned that the new buildings are just too big for a very busy and constrained area, and I agree. But at least they are talking.
West Ken: The Mayor’s 44 objections to the Council’s plans and the scuppering of the King St development have given new heart to campaigners in West Ken, who now include groups from Kensington and supporters in the media.

Imperial not minted
I finally got a partial answer to my question, how is our local health trust going to cut £130 million or nearly 20% of its budget? (What was that slogan? ‘I’ll cut the health service not the deficit’). A list has been published outlining where the first £45 million is coming from. It’s still rather opaque I’m afraid, but what caught my eye was the £6 million saved by reducing the number of nurses and midwives. Given an average salary of £25-30,000 this means hundreds fewer front line staff.

Never Feltham better
Having a broken leg was not a good enough excuse (the Whips informed me) to get out of by-election duty. Anyway, I was glad to go along to support Seema Malhotra whom I’ve known for many years and will be an excellent MP. The 8.6% swing to Labour was a useful precursor to the London Mayor campaign that will start in earnest in the New Year.
Ken’s pledge to cut fares has already got the Government passing money to Boris to keep his rises down, but it’s not enough. Since 2008, a single bus fare has increased by 56%, a Zone 1-6 Travelcard by 22% and a weekly bus pass by 47%. Ken has promised a cut in the autumn of 2012 and freezing them in 2013, a saving of £800 over his four-year term.

Babar Ahmad
I recently spoke in the Commons debate on extradition triggered by 140,000 signatures on an e-petition organised to highlight the case of Babar Ahmad. He has been imprisoned in a high security prison for seven years without charge while the US government tries to extradite him. Like Gary McKinnon, Babar Ahmad’s alleged offences were committed in the UK, but British prosecutors have chosen not to bring charges. Under pressure from all sides the Government has agreed to look at the issue afresh.

Air Passenger Duty
The unfairness of APD, that charges almost twice as much tax to fly to Jamaica as to California is something I have campaigned against under both this and the previous Government. Before the election no less a person than the then shadow treasury minister, Greg Hands MP, promised to right this wrong – and start taxing private planes into the bargain. But just before Christmas, the Government reneged on both promises.

Loretto O’Callaghan
I was very saddened to hear that Loretto had died in December after a long battle with cancer. She was one of the great community heroes of H&F, working tirelessly for the residents of Queen’s Club Gardens, where she chaired the residents’ association so formidably, and the whole borough. At the annual Garden Party only a few months ago, she was her usual lively and positive self. She will be missed by everyone who knew her.

Christmas season
As usual in Hammersmith, there was plenty going on up to the wire as Christmas Day approached.

I heard some fantastic speakers from all our local secondary schools at the regional final of Jack Petchey’s “Speak Out” Challenge held at Lady Margaret’s.
The good news when I spoke at the Hammersmith and Fulham Refugee Forum AGM was that they were still in Palingswick House a year after the council said they were going to kick them out in favour of the Free School.
College Park residents rallied in support of their community centre and were not being chucked out this Christmas, though their future is not secure.
I met a delegation of Israeli Muslims visiting the UK to donate £500,000, collected from Palestinians in Israel, to the UK charity Islamic Relief for its work in Somalia
More good news at St Andrew’s Fulham Fields, where I was reading the lesson at the Christmas Carol Service. The new community centre is a few weeks from opening and Father Guy Wilkinson, formerly the Archbishop of Canterbury’s inter-faith advisor, is to stay on permanently as parish priest
For the third year, the Crisis centre for west London was at West London College’s Baron’s Court campus, despite previous attempts by the Council to ban it from the borough for public order reasons. I visited just before Christmas for the opening and, even in the milder weather, there were people waiting to get in. There were nine centres this year with 750 volunteers and double that number of guests.
In a new venture, 200 residents were given a Christmas meal and hamper at the Irish Centre by Barclay Hall Christian Fellowship, and I was asked to present an award to a long-term carer who had inspired others. One more example of how people in Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush are thinking of others, not just this week but all the year.

A Happy New Year to all my readers.

Andy

King Street monster only sleeping, not dead -- loathed Hammersmith Tory scheme may still go ahead if Boris wins next May

2011-12-18T15:08:00.000Z

The more we think about it, the more concerned we are that Boris Johnson and the Hammersmith & Fulham Tories have essentially pulled a fast one on local residents and that the King Street development may be back next spring with only minor tweaks.

For now, with his eye on the mayoral elections next May, a panicking Boris has persuaded the H&F Tory councillors to withdraw their deeply unpopular plan for King Street. There is good coverage and analysis of this in the Cowan Report, the Shepherd's Bush Blog, the Evening Standard and the H&F Chronicle.

The Hammersmith Tories have egg all over their face. The seven Conservative councillors on the planning committee who argued and voted for the scheme have been giving a slapping, although it is hard to feel sympathy for people who rode roughshod over the wishes of local residents. By the way, these are the guilty men and women: hover over the pictures to see their names and wards:

Bizarrely, this happened in the same week that Stephen Greenhalgh announced he would stand down as the Tory council's leader next May.

Yet the King Street monster is only sleeping, not dead. The Tories' own statement makes that crystal clear: "Hammersmith & Fulham Council has withdrawn the stage II referral until further notice. It means that the Mayor is not required to take a decision at this time. The application is still live and therefore it may be referred back to the Mayor at a future date. This will be at the Council's discretion."

If Boris is re-elected, there is still every chance that the Tory plan will be re-presented with minor tweaks and then approved over the heads of ignored and outraged local residents.

King Street development deferred but far from dead. Will Boris approve the Hammersmith Tories' monstrous scheme if he wins next May?

2011-12-16T20:13:00.000Z

Hammersmith Tory council has withdrawn its appalling plans for the King Street area but only for now. It is far from clear that the battle is over for the many hundreds of residents and local and national groups who have fought to prevent the construction of luxury high-rise blocks, the demolition of homes for the blind and of an art deco cinema and the loss of a chunk of the Furnivall Gardens park.

Until today, the council had dismissed all opposition out of hand. Now, however, they have deferred the scheme. The fear has to be that this is only until after the mayoral election next May.

It is worth reading carefully the statement sent by the council to the Save our Skyline campaign today. It says, "Hammersmith & Fulham Council has withdrawn the stage II referral until further notice. It means that the Mayor is not required to take a decision at this time. The application is still live and therefore it may be referred back to the Mayor at a future date. This will be at the Council's discretion." (see Chronicle piece here).

Boris Johnson was required to take a decision today on whether to let the scheme go forward. He knows that the mayoral elections are only five months away. By withdrawing the scheme for now, the Hammersmith Tories are hoping this won't become an election issue for Boris. However, after the election, there is no guarantee that they won't bring the scheme back, slightly tweaked. If re-elected, Boris could pass it then.

It looks as if the way is already being paved for this. As today's statement also said, "Hammersmith & Fulham Council has agreed to work with the Greater London Authority on a further independent rigorous assessment on viability to determine whether there is scope to reduce the height of the buildings again."

By the way, according to the Chronicle, Boris "told council leader Stephen Greenhalgh there was no chance of the project going ahead in its current form". Greenhalgh resigned as leader last Tuesday 12 December. When did he and Boris speak?

Aidan Burley fails to apologise properly, blames "other" guests at "Nazi" party

2011-12-11T22:54:00.003Z

The BBC and many newspapers are reporting an "apology" by ex-Hammersmith Tory councillor Aidan Burley MP, who, as we reported earlier, has been exposed by the Mail on Sunday as taking part in a Nazi-themed stag party.

Under the heading "MP Aiden Burley sorry for 'Nazi' stag party guest photos", the BBC quotes Mr Burley in a statement "released through the Conservative Central Office" as saying, "There was clearly inappropriate behaviour by some of the other guests [sic] and I deeply regret that this happened. I am extremely sorry for any offence that will undoubtedly have been caused."

Sky News and others are also reporting a later tweet by Mr Burley: "Deeply regret inappropriate behaviour by some guests [sic] at stag party I attended and I am extremely sorry for any offence that was caused."

What on earth does Mr Burley mean by "some of the other guests" or "some guests"?

Is he trying to imply that his own behaviour was appropriate? That it was appropriate for him to spend an evening carousing with one friend dressed as an SS officer and another who toasted "the ideology and thought process of the Third Reich"? That it was appropriate for him to stay silent in the face of chants of, according to the Mail, "Mein Fuhrer! Mein Fuhrer! Mein Fuhrer!", "Himmler! Himmler! Himmler!" and "Eichmann! Eichmann! Eichmann!"? As the Mail says, "Mr Burley, who was standing a few feet away, was not seen to object to [being called the member for Berlin East] or any other behaviour that evening."

Aidan Burley's silent complicity in his friends' shameful antics was wholly inappropriate and he has so far failed to apologise for it. He must do so without delay.

And what it does say about the values of Conservative Central Office that they saw nothing wrong with issuing this piece of sophistry on Mr Burley's behalf?

UPDATE: Burley has been sacked as an aide to Transport Secretary and is being investigated further by the Tory party. Let's hope this is a real investigation and not an attempt to push the scandal into the long grass.

London Tories link with BNP to prevent cyclist safety debate - was Kit Malthouse among them?

2011-12-11T15:14:00.000Z

The Shepherd's Bush blog has revealed an "unholy alliance" between the Conservative members of the London Assembly and a BNP-elected member to prevent a debate on cyclist safety last week. Full story here.

Was Kit Malthouse, the Tory who represents Hammersmith and Fulham, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in the West Central constituency, part of this fiasco, we wonder?

He chairs the Metropolitan Police Authority so you might hope that, for him, preventing accidents would take priority over dodgy politics.

The Evening Standard notes, "It is the second time the Tories have prevented a debate being held on cycle safety, having also walked out of a proposed debate on Blackfriars bridge in June."

As the Shepherd's Bush blog notes, Hammersmith has had its share of tragic cycle deaths - see here and here.

This is the motion the Tories refused to discuss:

“This Assembly deeply regrets the deaths of cyclists on London's road network and wishes to express its condolences for the loss felt by their relatives and friends. We are concerned that some cyclist deaths and injuries could have been avoided if the road network designs for the locations where these deaths and injuries occurred had been safer. We therefore call on the Mayor and Transport for London to:
• produce a list of the ten most dangerous locations for cyclists on the Transport for London Road Network (TLRN) and all locations in London where a cyclist has died in the last three years;
• report on any proposals that were put forward by cycling and road safety groups as part of official consultation processes for redesigning roads at those locations; and
• provide the reasons why any such proposals were rejected.”

Ex-Hammersmith Tory councillor Aidan Burley at "Nazi" stag night at French ski resort

2011-12-11T13:50:00.002Z

Until May 2010, Aidan Burley was a leading Hammersmith & Fulham Tory councillor. Now he is a Tory MP. On 3 December, he attended a stag party where the groom dressed as an SS officer, friends chanted "Mein Fuhrer" and "the Third Reich" was toasted.

The Mail on Sunday has the full shocking story. It says, "Mr Burley, 32, a senior aide to Transport Secretary Justine Greening, was filmed in a mountain restaurant during a stag do, sitting next to another party goer dressed in a black SS uniform and cap....

"He raised his glass in a toast before another guest, sitting beside the MP at the restaurant in the ski resort of Val Thorens, was caught on film making a speech in which he said: ‘Let’s raise a toast to Tom for organising the stag do, and if we’re perfectly honest, to the ideology and thought process of the Third Reich.’"

Just before the toast, Mr Burley was filmed apparently paying the bill.

The paper continues, "Later, after moving on to a British-themed pub, some of the group, many of whom adopted thick German accents, chanted: ‘Mein Fuhrer! Mein Fuhrer! Mein Fuhrer!’, ‘Himmler! Himmler! Himmler!’ and ‘Eichmann! Eichmann! Eichmann!’"

Aidan Burley was a Conservative councillor in Hammersmith & Fulham - the council which Eric Pickles calls "the apple of my eye" - from 2006 until his election as MP for Cannock Chase last year.

UPDATE
Aidan Burley fails to apologise properly, blames "other" guests at "Nazi" party - see here.

"Aidan Burley MP, on right in blue jeans and jumper, looks on as his friend adjusts his Nazi cap" (Source: Mail on Sunday)

Greg Smith admits Eric Pickles addressed Young Britons' Foundation but won't say if he met Bell Pottinger speaker

2011-12-10T10:30:00.003Z

UPDATE:
Following the post below and after an initial Picklesite coyness, Greg Smith has tweeted us that Eric Pickles did address YBF and that he spoke on his own. He still won't say, however, whether Pickles met the Bell Pottinger speaker.

ORIGINAL POST:
Eric Pickles, Bell Pottinger, Greg Smith, Greg Hands, Mark Loveday and the Young Britons' Foundation

Local government supremo Eric Pickles may call Tory Hammersmith & Fulham council the apple of his eye but he has been surprisingly coy about admitting whether he will be at an ideological training camp this weekend run by, among others, H&F's own potty-mouthed Councillor Greg Smith.

The Young Britons' Foundation (YBF), styled a Tory "madrasah" (aka fundamentalist school) by right-wing commentators, is currently holding its annual Activist Training Conference. Mr Pickles is listed as speaking but for the past 11 days has been refusing to confirm his attendance to the Guardian Diary.

If he doesn't turn up, the Secretary of State will be sacrificing the opportunity to hobnob with fellow speaker Daniel Hamilton, who works for lobbying firm Bell Pottinger, which has enjoyed such headlines this week as "Bell Pottinger: pressure on David Cameron to curb secret links with lobbyists", "Vicious dictatorship which Bell Pottinger was prepared to do business with","Wikipedia suspends accounts over Bell Pottinger claims" and "Rebekah Brooks? 'We helped choose her police station' says Bell Pottinger".

Hammersmith & Fulham Tories' role in this entertainment should not pass unrecognised. Director of campaigns at the Young Britons' Foundation is the above-mentioned Greg Smith, who is H&F's cabinet member for residents' services. On YBF's advisory board sits Cllr Mark Loveday, H&F's chief whip and cabinet member for strategy, and on its parliamentary council is Greg Hands, Tory MP for Chelsea & Fulham.

Now Harry Phibbs claims residents' support for Hammersmith Tory council's £7,000 jamboree

2011-11-30T14:35:00.003Z

As local outrage grows that Hammersmith council wasted £7,184 on a leaving party for its retiring chief executive (see here), Cllr Harry Phibbs, Cabinet Member for Community Engagement, has told the local Chronicle that the knees-up was good for morale and "most [residents] would understand it's the right thing to do" (see here).

Cllr Phibbs was backed up by Tory leader Stephen Greenhalgh, who told the newspaper he would continue to fund such shindigs. And Tory boy Peter Graham, assistant to Fulham and Chelsea MP Greg Hands, said he didn't have a problem with the party because the council was making savings elsewhere (see here).

Labour leader Steve Cowan has made clear that such shameful waste will stop if Labour takes control of the council in 2014 (see here).

It is a disgrace that, under the shame-free Tories, it won't stop sooner.

Andy Slaughter MP: "Decision time for Hammersmith's future"

2011-11-28T20:56:00.000Z

Decision time for Hammersmith's future
The Masterplan takes shape
Residents vs. developers part 94
Asset disposals
Unhealthy finances
Olympia: end of the line
Good news!
Angela Dixon

Decision time for Hammersmith's future
The most controversial development in a generation comes before Hammersmith & Fulham’s planning committee on Wednesday. At an extraordinary meeting to be held at Latymer Upper School, the committee will be asked to approve the redevelopment of the Town Hall site by the Council in partnership with Helical Bar. And there you have the problem. Thirty pages of the committee report are taken up just listing the objectors to the scheme, which include many national and local civic groups as well as thousands of individual residents.

What the scheme will add is universally decried:

290 investment properties in blocks up to 15 storeys.
A footbridge across the A4 to give the flats ‘river access’.
Luxury officers for councillors and council officers.
Another supermarket.

What the scheme will destroy is universally applauded:

Hammersmith’s only local cinema.
The views and skyline of Hammersmith Mall and riverside.
Pocklington Trust’s affordable homes that house and support the visually impaired.
The quiet enjoyment of local homes.
Around a third of the open space in Furnivall Gardens.

Any sane committee member would tell the developer not to bother. But the developer here is the planner’s boss. The Council is the direct beneficiary of the development of its own land. The co-developer has donated generously to the London Mayor, who has to approve the scheme. H&F have lobbied the Mayor to exempt the scheme from the need to provide any housing for local people.
In theory the committee acts as an independent barrier to unacceptable development, but even when the Council does not have a pecuniary interest, it has a record of rubber stamping the grossest over-developments, like the Fulham Reach scheme approved two months ago.
It only takes two Conservative councillors to vote with the Labour Opposition to scupper the scheme. We will see on Wednesday if they will.

The Masterplan takes shape
To us the Town Hall scheme is a travesty. To the ‘open for business’ Council it is but one more step on the road to redesigning the borough, based around the five ‘opportunity’ areas. If you have trouble keeping up with what’s happening... I think that’s the idea. Here’s my 30 second guide to how to ruin one of London’s most popular places to live.

White City:

The new Westfield development (north of the current mall) will go to committee in the New Year. It combines a new retail centre with around 1,650 flats, meaning the latter will be in blocks up to 25 storeys. The Council asked for a quarter of these to be for families decanted from the White City and surrounding estates, which it also wants to redevelop, but Westfield told me they want no more than 6% of the properties to be for affordable rent
Imperial are expected to submit plans for phase two of their development on the former BBC Woodlands site north of the A40 flyover. Residents already feel they have been conned by phase one, with forbidding 10 storey blocks opposite their two and three storey homes. Worse is to come: a 34 floor tower block, a major hotel and other commercial development, all dressed up as an academic campus.
Helical Bar (again) are to announce their plans for the missing piece of the White City Opportunity Area, between Westfield and Imperial, on Tuesday at White City Community Centre at 7pm. I’m guessing high-rise luxury investment properties (LIPs), but would love to be proved wrong.
Shepherds Bush Market could be at committee as early as December. That’s if the Council breaks its word to the shopkeepers in Goldhawk Road and the Market Traders, that it would not grant consent for the current high-rise scheme until they were happy with it. As all the shops will be demolished and the Traders have received none of the assurances about access, future rent or improvements, they are far from being so.

West Ken:

The Masterplan for 7,500 flats (mainly LIPs, up to 30 storeys, but I’m sure you guessed that) is subject to a revised application, but the developer (the Council is again co-developer and like Shepherds Bush Market this scheme is being challenged by judicial review) wants it rubber stamped by April. Explanation: the Mayoral candidates for Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens have all visited the West Ken and Gibbs Green Estates that would be demolished to make way for the LIPs and looked unimpressed with the plans.

Hammersmith Riverside:

After the Town Hall and the Hammersmith Embankment schemes comes the missing bit in the middle – a proposal by Arab Investments to demolish Riverside Studios and Queen’s Wharf and build...well in the plans I saw a couple of months ago it was mere 200 LIPs in a nine storey soviet era block of concrete. Now, that’s just what you need as a background to Hammersmith Bridge.

Old Oak:

This actually is an opportunity area. A genuinely brown field stretch of land that – provided the HS2/Crossrail interchange comes here – could accommodate substantial development. But then I saw this video the Council has produced. I have shown it to some Old Oak residents, who love their homes on the edge of the Scrubs - built as ‘homes for heroes’ a century ago. The video portrays them as slums, just as it did with West Ken and White City, and suggests they are gearing up once again to push the existing residents out.

Fulham Riverside:

Not my patch but of interest because of the new route for the Thames Tunnel. As I explained in my last Chronicle column, the Council have shot themselves and Fulham residents in the foot by ending up with the main Tunnel entrance in Carnwath Road. But their protests about lost jobs and lorry movements from the site ring hollow when their own plans are to demolish the businesses there and build a few hundred more LIPs – which of course will cause more disruption than the Tunnel.

Each of these schemes is an overdevelopment of already densely populated, poorly-accessed inner urban areas. In combination they are a recipe for chaos both at the development phase (which could last for 20 years) and when occupied. There is no one at present to put a brake on these schemes or insist that development serves the needs of existing residents rather than foreign or City investors, which is why we need a change of Mayor in May and of Council in 2014.

Residents vs. developers part 94

Nomis Studios. The plan to squeeze 55 flats into a space big enough for five terraced houses in Sinclair Road is meeting growing opposition, and there is a public meeting this Thursday 1^stDecember at 7pm at St Matthews church hall. This is typical of the medium-sized developments that are getting permission all over the borough. K&C would not allow something on this scale with the extra traffic and excessive height in a conservation area – why should H&F?
Wormholt Library. The old library has been used as a base for local residents on the Wormholt estate for 20 years. First they were booted out, and then they were told it would be a school, which meant building on the open space directly in front of their homes. Then they were told their road would be closed to give the school (which faces directly onto the Westway) more land. At the planning committee the mainly elderly residents were ignored, now they are asking for a public enquiry to keep the road open.
White City Health Centre. Should have opened in 2008. This week we are told it may get the go ahead in January and be ready in 2014. It will be a shadow of what was planned under Labour – no affordable homes, fewer benefits for local residents, fewer services and a poorer design - but still worth having.

Asset disposals
The last round of public buildings to be put up for sale - including the Irish Centre, Shepherds Bush Village Hall and Palingswick House - remain in public hands, if only just in some cases. But that does not mean the fire sale has stopped.

College Park Community Centre – the only centre in the far north of the borough – is to be sold in the New Year, even though it is busy every day. Users were given less than two months to get out – after a century of community use. A protest photo shoot is being held at 10am next Saturday 3 December.
Baron’s Court Library is not being sold – apparently because the Council does not have the right to do so. But it won’t be a library either, or a Sure Start Centre or any of the other uses we were promised. It will house the CAB, who are being forced off the West Ken development site, and whose volunteers will supervise a self-service book collection.
A ‘reorganisation’ of mental health services is a thinly veiled attempt to move several services into a single building in Ellerslie Road to free up other sites for sale. This has clinical implications for some of the most vulnerable people in our society, but the duty to sell trumps the duty of care every time here.
Hammersmith Community Trust look set to lose their community centre in Beadon Road when the NCP Car Park development goes ahead. Their volunteers also staff the Information Centre in the Broadway Centre, but that is closing too.
The former Fulham Cross and Avonmore Youth Clubs are up for sale. So is Distillery Lane, the former after school centre. But parks themselves are also at risk. Around a third of the area of Hammersmith Park will be leased to a commercial company for the next 35 years.
But the biggest sell off is of council homes. One of the 300 homes – that could be let to some of the 10,000 people waiting for affordable accommodation in the borough – was featured on Under the Hammer recently. It sold for £221,000. This, said the Council, was a good result as it has only asked for £185,000. But the programme showed what happened next: an investment buyer spent £6,000 redecorating and put it back on the market – at £310,000. You can read my article about it here.

Unhealthy finances
Two months after Imperial College told me they would not close Charing Cross in their bid to save £130 million, I am still waiting for details of the first £45 million they say they have identified. But Imperial – or rather its new Chief Executive – have been in the news for other financial reasons. £2,000 a day is apparently the going rate for a health service fixer in these austere times. This came in the same month that H&F retired their Chief Executive from a salary of over £280,000 a year to a pension of over £100,000 a year. They still employ the former Chief Exec of Bexley Council (from where he retired on an immediate pension of £50,000 a year due to permanent ill health) on £750 a day to arrange their more, er, sensitive development opportunities. He is still the partner of the Chief Exec of Notting Hill Housing, who makes do with only £200,000 a year. Am I alone in finding the earnings of our local public sector fat cats obscene – especially at a time when thousands of low paid workers are losing their jobs, having their pay frozen and their pensions cut massively?

Olympia: end of the line
London Underground has a new head of strategy, so Brendan McGrath of MyOlympia and I went to see him to argue for a reprieve for the station that is closing to weekday tube passengers next month. But the new head’s strategy is the same as the old one – let’s close the station. It seems the tube is easier to run without so many trains. No concession, not even a less regular service or one outside peak hours. No alternative provision like shuttle buses from Earl’s Court. And not even a promise to re-open when the new trains and signalling come into operation (and supposedly solve the problems of congestion which justify the closure) in five years time. My suspicious mind still thinks we are the casualties of a sop to Tory MPs in south Fulham, Putney and Wimbledon.

Good news!
Don’t blame me if it’s all bad news so far. Blame the people who are causing it – and don’t forget to vote them out, starting with Boris, who supports closing Olympia, ruining H&F, cutting police numbers and has put up bus fares by more than 50%.
In fact, most of what I do every day brings me into contact with good people, doing brilliant things for their community. Here are a few examples from the last few weeks:

Food Cycle at Hammersmith & West London College. They take surplus food from supermarkets and cook meals for homeless and destitute people.
Phoenix Canberra Presentation Evening. A celebration of the outstanding achievement of pupils at Phoenix High School, and Canberra Primary School.
Rotary. Meeting a delegation of inspirational young professionals from Argentina.
Remembrance. A moving service at the Shepherds Bush War Memorial in brilliant autumn sunshine.
Macmillan Cancer Care’s world’s biggest coffee morning. A massive fundraiser hosted by Barclay’s in King Street – who also talked me through their initiatives for lending to small business.
World Teachers’ Day. Organised by the NUT locally to celebrate the role teachers play in the success of all our lives.
Shakespeare Schools Festival. Excellent performances from local schools at Riverside Studios, including Canberra and Sacred Heart. I remember appearing there as a sixth former in 1977!
Memorial services for two much-loved members of the local community, Jimmy Barzey at Askew Road Church and Clive MacSayton at St Michael and St George, White City.
Opening the new St. Paul’s community centre – a wonderful building completing almost £10 million of improvements to Hammersmith’s parish church.
Guest speaker at the Askew Business Network, which is doing so much to improve the area where I live.
Vision Care for Homeless people. Opening of the new optician’s service at Broadway’s hostel in Shepherds Bush.
Awards for Broadway and first prize for the Upper Room at the Andy Ludlow Homelessness Awards, presented by the Speaker.
Visiting Lamenier to talk to Year 6 for Parliament week.
Hosting meetings in Parliament on conflict resolution for Kurdish and Basque groups.
Speaking at Albanian National Day celebrations at Hammersmith Town Hall.
The Christmas season beginning on Sunday with the Advent service at my local church St Saviour’s.
The wonderful care I received at Charing Cross when I clumsily broke my leg. And the many messages of sympathy and support I received. I hope to be pretty much back to normal activity rates in about a week.

Angela Dixon
There are a few people whose contribution to local life defies commendation. Angela stood down as Chairman of Hammersmith & Fulham Historic Buildings Group last month after 24 years. She has been tireless and fearless in championing the borough and its heritage. In Marie-Lou Jennings she has found a fitting replacement, but – particularly in the current climate – I am sure that we have not heard the last...

Andy

Why is the Tories' Peter Graham avoiding a straight answer about £7,000 Hammersmith council knees-up?

2011-11-27T22:20:00.000Z

Although only elected last year, Tory councillor Peter Graham is increasingly seen as no more than an apologist for whatever the Conservative administration does.

Not only did he go against his constituents' wishes and argue and vote in favour of the atrocious scheme by property developers St George's to throw up a nine-story, riverside tower block of flats in Fulham Reach, where he is a councillor.

Now he is is refusing to condemn the council's appalling decision to spend over £7,000 on an extravagant goodbye party for its former chief executive Geoff Alltimes (see here).

Cllr Graham has spent most of this Sunday trying to avoid giving a straight answer to a straight question posed on Twitter by the Hammersmith and Fulham Chronicle: "Do you support the use of 7ks worth of public money for CEOs leaving do, yes or no?"

First Cllr Graham spun one way, wrongly claiming "about half the current Labour group were at the event". We gather that only four out of Labour's fifteen councillors were and they had no idea it was costing so much, nor that the council was footing the bill. (Mr Alltimes is getting a final £270,000 tax-free lump sum and a £104,000 pension: paying for the party himself would hardly have bankrupted him.)

Then Cllr Graham spun another way, bizarrely arguing that "the move to a shared CEO is saving money". This makes us wonder on what other inappropriate things the Tories will be spending any savings from the merger with K&C.

Here is a flavour of the Chronicle's persistent but ultimately fruitless questioning of Cllr Graham via Twitter (see here for more):

"you haven't answered MY question...It's a yes or no answer, Peter!"
"would you please answer my question? And if not, why not?
"people will think spending that amount of money makes a mockery of the council's socalled savings drive wont they?"
"do u not agree that spending such an amount on a party when the council is ramming home its debt crisis is crass?"
"You can't spin the figure. The amount is 7k. I'm asking you whether you think that's acceptable in this climate."

Andy Slaughter reveals the real impact of the Sure Start cuts in Hammersmith

2011-11-26T16:41:00.000Z

Andy Slaughter, MP for Hammersmith, says:

"Revelations that Hammersmith and Fulham Council were cutting the borough’s Sure Start budget by 45% – the second deepest cuts in the country when compared with other boroughs – were met with boastful claims from the Tory administration that, despite this, they were not only able to prevent any centres from closing but were also able to open a new one.

"However, analysis of the funding arrangements for the sixteen centres in the borough has revealed that ten of the centres will receive less than £25,000 per year as of April 2012. Under the current funding arrangements, the Wendell Park Family Centre received £62,500 in the first quarter of this financial year – the equivalent of £250,000 for the year. The funding earmarked for the 2012-2013 financial year is just 10% of that figure at £25,000.

"There is a similar story at Shepherd’s Bush Families Project and Children’s Centre. Whereas the current funding arrangement allocated £62,500 in the first quarter of this financial year, just £5,000 per quarter is allocated thereafter. The substantial cuts to funding will mean that nine out of the fifteen centres currently open will no longer be able to operate as Sure Start centres as the services they are offering do not fulfil the legal criteria.

"What these figures show is that the Council is quite happy to leave Sure Start centres hanging by a thread as long as they don’t have to face up to the consequences of slashing funding.

"Hammersmith and Fulham Tories need to answer two questions: why are their cuts to Sure Start among the biggest in the country? Furthermore, why are they pretending that centres aren’t closing when their own figures show that nine out of fifteen will cease to operate as Sure Start centres and will only be used for outside events?"

Next Wednesday is last chance to stop Tories' brutal Hammersmith Town Hall scheme

2011-11-26T16:24:00.005Z

Next Wednesday, Hammersmith Tory councillors intend to nod through their brutal plans to build themselves new council offices and let property developers throw up 290 luxury flats.

In the teeth of opposition from local residents, the Tories intend to ram through the construction of four huge tower blocks that will mean the demolition of a home for the blind, an art deco cinema and part of Furnivall Gardens, the undermining of local shops and, of course, the destruction of much-loved view of Hammersmith from the river. There will also be no social housing in the scheme.

Please come to the meeting to show your opposition. While the audience will not be able to speak at the meeting, having a packed hall will leave the the council, the Greater London Authority and the Secretary of State in no doubt about the strength of local feeling.

Hammersmith council's Planning Application Committee is meeting at 7pm on Wednesday 30 November 2011 at Latymer Upper School, 237 King St, London W6 9LR. The meeting will be held in the main hall, located just behind the entrance gates on King Street. This is a last chance to show the council the real strength of feeling in the community.

Why not write to the councillors on the Planning Committee to urge them to listen to local people and do the same? They are:

CONSERVATIVE
Alex Chalk (chair of the committee), Addison ward, alex.chalk@lbhf.gov.uk
Victoria Brocklebank-Fowler (vice-chair of the committee), Fulham Broadway ward, victoria.brocklebank-fowler@lbhf.gov.uk
Oliver Craig, Town ward, oliver.craig@lbhf.gov.uk
Rachel Ford, Fulham Broadway ward, rachel.ford@lbhf.gov.uk
Peter Graham, Fulham Reach ward, p.graham@lbhf.gov.uk
Andrew Johnson, Fulham Reach ward, andrew.johnson@lbhf.gov.uk
Alex Karmel, Munster ward, alex.karmel@lbhf.gov.uk

LABOUR
Colin Aherne, Wormholt and White City ward, colin.aherne@lbhf.gov.uk
Michael Cartwright, Hammersmith Broadway, michael.cartwright@lbhf.gov.uk
Wesley Harcourt, College Park and Old Oak, wesley.harcourt@lbhf.gov.uk

And please show your opposition by printing out and displaying one of these excellent posters produced by Save our Skyline, which is leading the fight to stop the proposals going through.

Outrage as Hammersmith Tories splurge £7,000 on fat-cat party

2011-11-25T17:25:00.000Z

When Hammersmith Tory councillors aren't puffing their efficiency, they are praising their own transparency. So how can the Tories justify having spent £7,184 on a slap-up retirement party for the council's departing Chief Executive Geoff Alltimes? And why was it left to Labour to ferret this out?

Geoff Alltimes was already one of the highest-paid council Chief Executives in the country, earning nearly £300,000 a year. He got a £20,000 pay rise in 2009, has a £104,000 pension and is leaving with a tax-free lump sum of £270,000. See here and here for the full story.

We suppose that £7,000 seems like small change to Geoff and his Tory bosses. But not to the Hammersmith and Fulham businesses who are cancelling Christmas parties to save money. Or to the local voters who are facing daily cuts to their services.

Do we detect a pattern of inefficiency and cover-up here? This the same council that scandalously wasted up to £12 million on sub-standard consultancy contracts and then fought tooth and nail to stop Labour exposing it (see here).

5% cut in rail, tube, tram, DLR and bus fares with Ken Livingstone's 'Fare Deal'

2011-11-08T15:15:00.000Z

Ken Livingstone has today issued this message to Londoners.

Fares are too high in London, and it makes life even harder. That's what people have told me time and time again.

The problem is they are planned to rise every year for years to come.

Today I’m launching my ‘Fare Deal’ for commuters. This January fares are going to rise. But if elected in May I will cut rail, tube, tram, DLR and bus fares by 5% with an emergency fares cut. I will then hold them lower than planned. I will save the average transport user £800 over 4 years. That is my guarantee.

Take a look at this video I’ve prepared. Click here to watch it and learn about the direction I want to take London in

I want you to be involved. I’m not going to sit around and let a Conservative mayor raise transport fares to their highest levels in history whilst slashing the police officers in our communities that are keeping people safe.

I will always believe in fighting for those who need a voice. People need to be able to travel around the greatest city in the world without financially suffering. Click here to watch the video and sign up to learn more from my campaign

If you agree with what we’re saying, join our campaign for a Fare Deal.

Ken

Ken Livingstone

Labour Candidate for Mayor of London

Knife crime against young people in Hammersmith is up yet the Tories are cutting the youth offending team's budget

2011-11-01T19:05:00.000Z

The government has today launched a so-called anti-gangs strategy at the same time that anti-gangs funding is being cut across London.

In Hammersmith & Fulham alone, the Tories have cut the Youth Offending Service's budget by 26%, even though knife crimes against young people soared by 17% last year.

The council's own website states "The main purpose of the service is to reduce offending by children and young people". How will cutting its budget by more than a quarter help achieve this?

Boris Johnson said when he was elected that he would never accept "defeat" in the fight against knife crime but it has risen every year of his term in office.

Meanwhile, Tory H&F council - which promised to reduce crime by 60-80% in three years - is also cutting neighbourhood police sergeants and slashing the police budget by more than £600,000 this year and nearly £2 million over three years.

As always, look at what the Tories do, not what they say.

The London borough-by-borough figures - dug out by Ken Livingstone's team - for Youth Offending Team budget cuts are here and for numbers of knife crime victims aged 13 to 24 are here.

Is potty-mouthed Hammersmith Cllr Greg Smith a coprolalia sufferer?

2011-10-15T13:58:00.003+01:00

We've already noted Tory councillor Greg Smith's inability to control his potty mouth (here and here). Now a sharp-eyed twitterer has drawn our attention to a further example of Cllr Smith's uncontrolled self-expression.

We wonder whether Cllr Smith might be a coprolalia suffer, in which case he has our sympathy. If not, surely the day is coming closer when someone will register a complaint about him bringing Hammersmith & Fulham council into disrepute?

Meet Liam Fox for cash, say Hammersmith Tories

2011-10-14T20:05:00.001+01:00

We confess that the first part of this title isn't ours but that of sharp, right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes, who has been passed an invitation to a Hammersmith Conservative Association dinner with Liam Fox on 29 November for only £65. "I am sure he will be a lively and fascinating speaker" says the invitation.

As Guido says, "It will no longer cost you a £10,000 retainer with a lobbying firm for some face-time with Liam... Cheques made payable to Mr. A. Werritty?" Full details here.

At times like this, disgraced ex-ministers need their friends around them. And given what a sterling apologist for Liam Fox our own Tory MP for Chelsea and Fulham Greg Hands has been (see here), the dinner must surely go ahead.

Greg Hands throws up smokescreen to defend Liam Fox

2011-10-10T10:42:00.001+01:00

Greg Hands, Tory MP for Chelsea and Fulham, has been touring the TV studios this morning defending his old friend Liam Fox. He made this surprising claim: "Nothing illegal has happened. Dr Fox has made no commercial gain from this. There have been no breaches of national security".

But how can Mr Hands say so categorically that nothing illegal happened or that national security wasn't breached? Has he gained some sort of mystical insight into what the Ministry of Defence's report, due later today, will say? Or is he just indulging in the same sort of speculation (albeit in Fox's interest) that he criticises in others?

And by claiming that Dr Fox made no commercial gain, Hands is using the old politician's Aunt Sally of denying something that no-one has suggested. The allegation is that Fox's laxness (for want of a better word) enabled his close friend Adam Werritty to make commercial gain from their relationship. On that, mystic Hands is silent.

Tories cut police as gun crime, burglary and motor vehicle crime rise in Hammersmith & Fulham

2011-10-06T14:20:00.000+01:00

Gun crimes, burglaries and motor vehicle crimes in Hammersmith & Fulham have all risen sharply since last year, far outstripping London as a whole. The latest figures from the Met reveal that in August compared with the same month in 2010:

Crimes in which guns were used rose by 200% in H&F, while in London as a whole they actually fell by 4%.

Burglaries in H&F went up by 28% against an also worrying London-wide increase of 14%.

Thefts of and from motor vehicles in H&F increased by 41%, but by only 0.085% across London.

Source: Metropolitan Police

Meanwhile, Tory H&F council is cutting neighbourhood police sergeants and slashing the police budget by more than £600,000 this year and nearly £2 million over three years.

A toxic combination of local Tory ideologues and Boris Johnson in County Hall is making our community less safe.

Tories railroad through Hammersmith Embankment scheme, try to stop discussion, don't explain £13m "Section 106" payment

2011-09-25T11:55:00.000+01:00

Exceptionally shameful goings-on from H&F Tory councillors on Friday as they railroaded through property speculator St. George's massive Hammersmith Embankment scheme. See Labour opposition leader Steve Cowan's blog here for details.

A few points to note:

The fearful Tories tried to block Steve from speaking (but he spoke anyway).

There are suggestions that the council unlawfully sold the planning approval for a £13 million Section 106 agreement.

Tory councillors and the council officers are not providing information about the many meetings that they have had with St. George.

What a nonsense this makes of the Tories' claim to be "Britain's most transparent council". As Private Eye - which regularly features H&F council in its Rotten Boroughs section (and celebrates its 50th birthday this month: hip, hip, hurray!) - might say, "Pass the sick bag, Alice".

Andy Slaughter's news: sewer politics and riverfront shenanigans

2011-09-25T11:32:00.000+01:00

Sewer Politics
Riverfront ReRun
Palestine
Access to Justice
Phoenix Opens Sixth Form
Weekly Roundup

Sewer politics

I spent last Friday afternoon in a sewer under Chancellor’s Road. Well, why not? Thames Water wanted London politicians and journalists to see for themselves what happens when it rains heavily in Hammersmith, as it does about 50 times a year. The answer is the pumps at Hammersmith Pumping Station turn themselves on and pump 24 tonnes of sewage per second into the Thames. If they didn’t it would all end up in our homes and streets (some already does in Shepherds Bush after particularly heavy storms).
Altogether 39 million tonnes of the brown stuff ends up in the river every year. Hammersmith & Fulham Council think this is OK. Thames Water want to build the Thames Tunnel to capture it so it can be treated before entering the river.

You can read Standard journalist Andrew Neather’s account of our descent. You can also read one resident’s experience of living with the stink and what she thinks of the Council leader’s do nothing policy. Last week I took part in a debate on the issue in the Commons
The Council meanwhile has set up a patsy commission to rubbish the scheme and is promoting an alternative view by a retired Thames water official. Bizarrely, this would still see the Tunnel built through Hammersmith but would rely on existing sewers to take the effluent through central London. So we would still have the building works but once complete – because the existing system is at capacity – when the Tunnel filled up the sewage would have nowhere to go. According to Thames it would sit there for days or weeks with the smell wafting across the borough as the faecal matter decomposed. A fitting leitmotif for our burghers you may think.

Riverfront re-run tonight

Soon after this eNews hits your inbox, another attempt will be made, tonight, to approve the appalling St George scheme for Hammersmith Embankment when the Planning Committee meets unprecedentedly on a Friday evening. Last week 150 residents who had come to object to the scheme, that would see 750 luxury high-rise flats built between Distillery Road and the river, waited an hour and a half before the meeting was abandoned for lack of a PA system. A curious omission in a hall that the Council regularly uses for its own propaganda rallies.

Save Our Riverfront would be pleased to see you at the Town Hall from 6.30pm to oppose the first of several disastrous schemes the Council has promised developers to pass before the London Mayor elections next May.

Other carbuncle news
Save Our Skyline are gearing up for another major public meeting next Tuesday 27 September at Rivercourt Methodist Church to oppose the ruination of Furnivall Gardens, King Street and surrounding conservation areas.

Consultation closes on Friday 30th September on CapCo’s plans for 7,500 slums-of-the-future in West Ken.

Residents of Sinclair and Hofland Road have put together a good case to oppose the Nomis studio scheme that will put five storeys of flats in a conservation area of two-storey early Victorian cottages.

Wormholt residents met me earlier this week to express opposition to the Free School that will be built on green space overlooking their homes. Hemlock Road will be permanently closed to provide a play area directly onto the Westway, one of Britain’s most polluted roads. Phoenix High School kindly gave us somewhere to meet as the residents, mainly pensioners, have already been booted out of their community hall which has been given to the school.

It is now so well known in developer circles that anything goes in Hammersmith & Fulham that both the number and scale of applications grows exponentially. Planning officers, under instructions from their political masters, are prepared to ignore their own policies drawn up in consultation with residents over many years. 38 Degrees, who organised the Save the Forests campaign have just launched a Save our Countryside campaign . We need to persuade them to save our cities too.

Palestine

This week pressure for Palestine to be recognised as a state by the UN, 65 years after they – and Israel – promised just that, gained momentum. Anyone not persuaded that this is both fair and the best way to get peace talks started again should read Jonathan Freedland’s Guardian article . A hundred MPs of all Parties signed a motion of support last week and I raised the issue with the Foreign Office Minister This week Douglas Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, made Labour’s support clear. On Wednesday, I went to Downing Street with representative of many organisations to hand in a letter to Cameron asking the British Government to give its support No reply as yet.

Access to justice

The media finally seem to have discovered there is some merit in the warnings my colleagues and I have been giving for the past year about the Government’s plans to axe Legal Aid and ‘no win-no fee’ litigation.

The Independent warned of the risk of miscarriages of justice if free legal advice on arrest is taken away, and reported how a charity for victims of medical negligence was suing the Government because severely injured children and adults would no longer be able to claim the support they need. The Guardian reported that the Minister in charge of the legislation, which will benefit insurance companies by restricting claims, has himself substantial investments in the insurance industry.

Then today they published a letter from the Dowler family to David Cameron explaining that they only got justice after The News of the World hacked Milly Dowler’s ‘phone by being able to bring a case without risking bankruptcy, which might have meant the whole hacking scandal staying buried.

I spoke to a packed fringe meeting at TUC conference with Mark Lewis, the Dowlers’ solicitor last week. Amnesty International, trades unions, accident victims, even HMRC (who need the current rules to sue dodgy directors of insolvent companies) are united against this Bill. Only the Tories and Lib Dems and their friends in big corporations and insurance companies are supporting it.

Who funds Phoenix?

I was asked to speak at the opening of Phoenix High School's amazing new Sixth form building. I think this was to mark my mad dash round Labour Party conference two years ago to help secure the £10 million needed for the project. The Labour Government did come up with the money – one of the last six schemes approved. At that stage Phoenix was also to benefit from £20 million from the national Building Schools for the Future project to rebuild the main school. When the Tories came in they cancelled this and every other BSF project in the borough, but the sixth form was already underway.

What did our Council think of all this? In 2009 they said ‘the council is looking to spend £9m on developing a brand-new four-storey sixth form centre’ at Phoenix. This was untrue. They also claimed credit for the BSF programme and £70 million of spending on primary schools.

But when their Government cut all uncommitted capital funds to schools they quoted Michael Gove approvingly saying ‘the BSF plans did not represent value for money’. Phoenix head Sir William Atkinson had a different take on it: It is devastating news’ he told the Standard , adding his pupils would now have to learn in ‘antiquated, inadequate buildings...with concrete that is beginning to crumble, iron pipe-work which has been fractured, with lots of leaks and flat roofs which are constantly leaking’.

Have the Tories learned their lessons? Of course not. Three schools have opened in Hammersmith in the past two weeks. The Hammersmith Academy, a newly built £25 million secondary school funded by the Labour Government and the two Free Schools. What they all have in common is ‘freedom’ from council control, something the Tories keenly support. Only one of the schools has had an official opening: ARK Conway’s is next month and the Academy’s next year. So the council staged openings at these schools in a further pathetic attempt to get publicity for its needy leader.

And in other news

The Government is planning a u-turn on its promise not to raise Air Passenger Duty, which could mean a 25% increase in this tax which particularly hits those travelling to the Caribbean. British Airways are already considering ending flights to some islands as a result.

I hosted a reception in Parliament for Broadway, the single homeless charity whose board I sat on for 20 years. They were launching ‘voices of experience’ about how 61 street drinkers have changed their lives mainly through their own efforts. All Broadway’s Shepherds Bush hostels and flats are being demolished as part of the Council’s Shepherds Bush Market scheme (200 luxury flats up to eight storeys, since you ask), but I’m pleased to say they have found alternative accommodation in the borough.

The Mayor has raised tube and bus fares above inflation once again LINK

I dropped in for an interview at Hammersmith’s local radio station OnFM, based in Lyric Square. You can find it at 101.4 or online onfmradio.com.

Andy
To contact Andy, e-mail him at andy@andyslaughter.com or call his office on 020 7610 1950

How you can oppose the destructive and wasteful Hammersmith Town Hall development

2011-09-23T10:37:00.002+01:00

The Cathnor Park Area Action Group has written as below to its members, urging action against Hammersmith council's destructive and wasteful plans - which it calls "degeneration not regeneration" - to redevelop the Town Hall:

"Many of you know that this group - Cathnor Park Area Action Group - has joined forces with 30 local residents' associations and national conservation organisations to object to the original plans.

"Minute changes to the plans (see attached flyer) have been made [see here and below].

"There are two things you can do to assist with the overwhelming opposition to the scheme.

"1. Attend the public meeting about the revised Town Hall scheme - Tuesday, 27 September, 7.00pm at Rivercourt Methodist Church, King St. Come and see exactly what is proposed

"2. Write to the Council by September 30 2011: if you've written before, then write again (referring to a previous letter, if you wish) and itemising the reasons why you are still against the revised scheme. Details and arguments are summarised in the leaflet attached.

"If you haven't written before, please do so now.

"Best wishes, Annabel Clarke, Chairman, Cathnor Park Area Action Group"

News from Andy Slaughter MP

2011-09-13T18:17:00.000+01:00

Save our Riverfront
Hospital pass
'Green' light for developers
Unaffordable Housing
Petitions for Police and Puffins
Out and about
A substantial Bill
Boundary Review

Save our Riverfront
If you care about the future of our borough, join the www.saveourriverfront.co.uk residents at 7pm this Wednesday 14 September at Hammersmith Town Hall to oppose the first of the major schemes to build high-rise luxury flats along the length of Hammersmith’s riverside.

Hospital pass

So is Charing Cross really under threat of closure? Or is St Mary’s? Or both? Or neither? The Independent seemed sure of their facts a week ago. But Imperial’s denial was equally firm. I spoke to the Independent journalist who assured me he had the story from three separate sources. Later in the week, with Karen Buck, MP for North Westminster, I met the Chairman and Chief Executive of Imperial to hear their version.

We have been here before. In the 1990s there was a proposal to close Charing Cross floated by the then Tory government. The overwhelming public campaign to save it succeeded, but somehow the sense of apprehension never evaporated. So despite Labour reviving the NHS, including new services at all hospitals, a false rumour that Charing Cross was again under threat started in 2005 and was cynically exploited and maintained by local Tories, notably their Parliamentary candidates, Hands and Bailey. At least it meant I went back every year to the health minister to get a fresh guarantee that CXH was safe.

So, perhaps the most surprising aspect of last week’s story was that St Mary’s, Paddington, had leapfrogged CXH as the leading candidate for closure, because of its higher land values. Personally, I still believe CXH is more vulnerable than St Mary’s or Hammersmith Hospitals because it has fewer and less influential friends at the top of the medical profession. And because we all know which council is keener on giving planning permission for luxury housing developments.

For the present I accept the assurances from Imperial, hedged as they are with ‘no plans’ and ‘no decision’ and the usual get out clauses. In any event, what they did tell me is at least as depressing as the news that a whole site might be disposed of. The Trust, which has an annual spend of about £800 million has to make 5% cuts for the next five years. In other words a quarter of its spend or £200 million. And that at a time of rising health needs. No health service has ever achieved anything like this.

Some of this may be achieved by better productivity, by pushing more services out into the community or centralising specialisms at one of the three hospitals. These steps are themselves controversial but they will go nowhere near achieving the savings required. That will need a general reduction in service levels, major restructuring and, of course, the closure of some facilities.

So CXH may not close or the entire site be sold but that could be an academic distinction if what we are left with is a glorified clinic on the edge of a new ‘development’ by St George.

Imperial are fighting back. They have an unrivalled record of attracting private and public research funding and of providing the highest quality treatment. But that will not compensate for a 25% loss of public funding. Add the Government’s health reforms, a mixture of private profit and chaotic reorganisation, and the future looks bleak.

Amongst many deceptions that eased the Coalition into power, Cameron’s promise not to cut the NHS looks like the biggest whopper of all.

'Green' light for developers

Over 150 residents packed the Save Our Riverfront meeting last Tuesday to object to the cosy deal St George and the council have done to pack blocks of flats onto Hammersmith Embankment like sardines. In return the council gets £10 million, but none of this will mitigate the effect of 2,000 new residents, their cars, the loss of planned open space or jobs. We hope a larger number will pack the Town Hall on Wednesday when the application comes before the planning committee.

Meanwhile Save Our Skyline has called a public meeting for 27 September, 7pm at Rivercourt Methodist Church to rally opposition to the revised planning application currently under consultation. Responses must be in by 30^th September, the same date as the West Ken scheme (see www.saveourskyline.co.uk for more details).

Are these groups NIMBYS - or selfish nihilists in the Government’s latest damning dismissal. Quite the opposite. They are not just doing a fantastic job in protecting historic and functioning parts of the borough from catastrophic overdevelopment, they are advocating sustainable alternatives. In doing so they have taken on the role the government and the council has abdicated.

Jokingly we call this the Big Society, but things got beyond a joke this week when the Telegraph revealed that some of the biggest developers are also the Tories’ biggest donor. And chief among them is Helical Bar, joint developer of both the Town Hall site and White City.

Unaffordable Housing

Following Notting Hill's infamous landlord Peter Rachman's violent evictions and extortions in the 1960s, there were major changes in housing law, including the growth of the housing association movement. Notting Hill Housing Trust was one immediate result, but 50 years on this once exemplary organisation has completely lost its way. Nothing could illustrate this more than the plans, approved of course by the council this week, to build 41 new houses and flats in King Street without a single affordable home. Four of the properties are five-bedroomed houses facing St Peter’s Square, which will sell for at least £2 million each. But still not one of the homes on the site will benefit their own tenants or people in housing need.

Petitions for Police and Puffins

The announcement that four of the most popular neighbourhood police sergeants were getting the boot and not being replaced has caused outcry in wards from Sands End to Addison. In North End, residents have started a petition to keep Sgt Ian Gordon as head of the Safer Neighbourhood Team. It is the council which has claimed credit for the SNTs over the past five years, yet when the cuts were announced they blamed the police.

Now, two weeks later they have just paid for space in the local paper and on their Soviet-style street banners to say how much they are spending on extra police officers. So why don’t they pay for the four sergeants instead, or even use their propaganda fund for this purpose?

Meanwhile, parents from Addison Primary are also petitioning, for a new crossing in Shepherds Bush Road. The old one has been ripped out and the proposed new child-friendly Puffin crossing is nowhere to be seem. So at present children as young as five are jaywalking on one of the busiest roads in the borough. Sign the petition for the new crossing. In the meantime the SNT sergeant for Addison ward is organising a rota to supervise the kids to and from school. You guessed it, he’s getting the boot too.

Out and about

Wormholt Park was 100 years old this week and celebrated in style. Bob Still and the Friends of Wormholt Park had laid on an incredible range of attractions which attracted the whole community to what had been the borough’s most neglected park. But with the promise that at last funds for its redevelopment will be released by the council everyone was in good form, not least Peggy Aslett, also 100 years old and invited to cut the cake for their joint birthday. Peggy, born in Fulham, now living in Acton, was the guest of Angie Bray MP and myself on the House of Commons terrace last month. Next she’s off to Silverstone for a couple of laps.
Saturday was also Brook Green Day, and the Brook Green Association and Friends of Brook Green put on a great range of entertainments and stalls. Hot topics being discussed included the latest on the proposed closure of Olympia station as well as the quality of Kerbisher and Malt chips.
Speaking of Olympia, it was the topping out ceremony for the new West Hall on Friday. A bit too traditional for my liking as the people who had actually built the Hall didn’t appear to be invited to the party. Meanwhile My Olympia have come up with a solution to the Olympia stalemate that ought to please everyone.
I was again petitioning against the Government’s NHS cuts at the weekend, this time in Uxbridge Road. The news from Imperial gave it an extra urgency, but the overwhelming support from the public for the NHS leaves no doubt that it will survive.
As the newest member of the Hammersmith Rotary club I helped at their stall at West London College on Friday.
In my column for Fulham & Hammersmith Chronicle this week I wrote about Charing Cross Hospital.

A substantial Bill

I am leading for the Opposition on the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill that is going through its line by line consideration in Committee. It is a hefty task but the Government only gave us seven days to do it, so log-jammed is their timetable with controversial Bills, like the Health Bill, also being forced through last week. Given that my Bill proposes the virtual abolition of legal aid for a whole range of subjects from housing to medical negligence, this is hopelessly inadequate. The only way we can even try and scrutinise the Bill properly is to keep going up until Midnight, as we did last Tuesday. No way to make laws, you might think.

Boundary Review

Yesterday, the Boundary Commission published its proposals for redrawing constituency boundaries. The proposed changes announced in west London are bittersweet - while I will be pleased to be re-united with the wards in the London Borough of Ealing that I used to represent before the last general election, I shall be sorry to see Fulham Reach and North End, my old council ward, move out of Hammersmith constituency.

The new constituency will be called Hammersmith and Acton, and a map of it can be found here.

But remember: these proposals - assuming they do come into force - will not take effect for four years. I will continue to represent Hammersmith constituency as I have done since last year's election.

Nothing will change until the next election, which the government assures us is four years away. But if you are in any doubt about how these changes will affect you, please write to me.

Andy

To contact Andy, e-mail him at andy@andyslaughter.com or call his office on 020 7610 1950

Letter from Labour leader Steve Cowan about Hammersmith’s police cuts, property speculation and Rotten Borough status

2011-09-13T15:09:00.001+01:00

.
Cllr Steve Cowan, Hammersmith & Fulham's Labour leader of the Opposition, has sent out this letter to residents.

Dear All

Police cuts
Following last month's riots, a number of residents have contacted me to support our campaign to get the Council to restore police numbers. I am running a survey on my website. Please take a couple of seconds to respond: click here to take part in the survey on the left of my website, The Cowan Report.

Property development
Meanwhile, if you are concerned by the Basingstoke-style tower blocks planned for Hammersmith’s riverfront, you may be interested in coming to the Planning Applications Committee (PAC) this Wednesday evening. Details are here.

You’ll be joined by the impressive Save Our Riverfront residents’ group, who also held a public meeting last Tuesday night. See Save Our Riverfront’s packed public meeting puts council and St. George on the spot.

The Daily Telegraph has done an excellent job of looking at the behind-the-scenes relationship between some of the UK’s leading property speculators and government policy. I was surprised to note a link with Hammersmith and Fulham. See Town hall demolition speculator is key influence on government planning policy.

Rotten Borough
Meanwhile, our council is back in Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs section for needlessly paying out millions of pounds of public money to consultants. See Millions wasted as council flaunts its own rules to pay consultants

Please let me know if I can help you with any local issue.

All the best
Steve

Cllr. Stephen Cowan
Labour Leader of the Opposition
Councillor for Hammersmith Broadway Ward

Phone: 020 8753 2052

Need help? I run a weekly surgery which takes place in Hammersmith Town Hall . Please feel free to call the above phone number to arrange an appointment.

Local News: www.TheCowanReport.com

The tricks used by Hammersmith Tory councillors to avoid public scrutiny

2011-09-12T15:01:00.000+01:00

"Over the last year or so there has been a new approach at H&F Council’s Cabinet meetings. The Opposition have been forbidden by Cllr. Stephen Greenhalgh (Con) the Leader of the Council to ask questions and, at times, even speak."

To see a fascinating, detailed description by Labour leader Steve Cowan of the tricks that Hammersmith & Fulham Conservative councillors use to avoid scrutiny at council meetings, click here.

Why Harry Phibbs should wait for the evidence on the 50p tax band

2011-09-08T17:18:00.001+01:00

In a typically pugnacious and ideological piece in today's Daily Mail, Tory Hammersmith & Fulham councillor Harry Phibbs argues that the 50p tax band should be ditched "to show Britain is open for business". He quotes a letter from 20 economists in yesterday's Financial Times to support his argument that the tax punishes wealth creation and may driver higher earners to live abroad.

It's a superficially attractive argument until you look at the facts, as today's Financial Times does here. The FT points out that:

· There will be no real evidence about the impact of the tax after next January, once tax returns have been filed and analysed

· The 20 economists "were unable to point to an exodus of entrepreneurs and talented workers when they made their case"

· Using historical data to support the case for abolition is questionable.

In short, there is a woeful lack of evidence to support the claim that the 50 rate is damaging the country's competitiveness. It may prove to be or it may prove not to be. But as matters stand today, calls for its abolition are the fruit of conjecture and ideology.

Common mistake

Perhaps Mr Phibbs thinks the 50% rate applies to the whole of your income. That’s a common misconception. It actually only applies to any earnings over £150,000, which used to be taxed at 40% (along with all income over £35,000).

For example, say you are a council chief executive and you earn a basic £270,000. You now pay 50% on the amount you earn over £150,000, ie on £120,000. Before, you would have paid 40% tax on that amount.

Admittedly we're no accountants, but it seems to us that before the 50% rate came in, this means you would have had £169,000 a year to spend after tax. Now, you have £157,000 a year. You are £12,000 down but still have £13,000 a month spending money.

On a pre-tax income of £270,000, tax rates and post-tax income (spending money)

Come and object - Tory H&F council meets at 7pm today to increase sports charges, sell off council flats, raise rents and service charges

2011-09-05T16:21:00.000+01:00

Tonight's Hammersmith & Fulham Cabinet meeting will be a pretty brutal one even by our Tory council's standards. Anyone can come along to try and get their objections heard as the Conservatives slash services for people living on lower incomes, including pensioners, pregnant women, first-jobbers and students. The action kicks off at 7pm in the Courtyard Room in the Town Hall, King Street W6 9JU.

Let's just pick four items out of the agenda here and see what they really mean.

"7. THE FUTURE OF THE LIFESTYLE PLUS CARD"
Farewell to Lifestyle Plus. The discount card introduced by Labour 25 years ago to help people on low incomes afford our swimming pools and leisure centres is to be abolished. Details here.

"9. DISPOSAL OF EDITH SUMMERSKILL HOUSE, CLEM ATTLEE ESTATE"
Goodbye to one of our council blocks. Under the pretext of refurbishment, the council has emptied out Edith Summerskill House and is now selling it to developers, with a loss of 68 flats, including 48 two-bed and 16 three-bed flats, which are like gold dust. Details here.

"10. SERVICE CHARGES FOR TENANTS"
Service charges for council tenants are to be increased by £1m a year for no extra benefit. Details here.

"12. INTRODUCTION OF INTERIM GUIDANCE TO SOCIAL LANDLORDS ON THE AFFORDABLE RENT TENURE IN LB HAMMERSMITH AND FULHAM"
Rents will go up by between three and four times for all new and half of existing council properties, which for four-bed properties means £400 a week, requiring an income of over £74,000. Details here.

Not bad for one evening's work.

Will Tory MP Greg Hands join Labour in opposing the closure of Charing Cross hospital?

2011-09-05T10:27:00.004+01:00

This weekend, hundred of visitors to King Street, Hammersmith signed up to a Labour Party petition to save the NHS. Today, we wake up to the news that, as a result of the NHS cuts, Charing Cross hospital may be closed. Details are in today's Independent here.

Charing Cross hospital is run by the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, as is St Mary's hospital in Paddington. To meet its debts of £100m - and in a climate where the NHS as a whole is making cuts of £20bn - the trust is apparently considering selling off St Mary's to property developers and moving its activities to Hammersmith hospital near Wormwood Scrubs. Another option being considered is the closure of Charing Cross hospital, with routine surgery transferred to the West Middlesex hospital and emergency services going to Hammersmith.

Andy Slaughter, Hammersmith's Labour MP, has issued this statement: "I am talking today to Imperial management and unions and seeking a meeting with Andrew Lansley, the Secretary of State for Health. The campaign to save Charing Cross will be the biggest the borough has seen and I’m sure will attract support from across the political spectrum.
"We are fortunate to have three of the best hospitals in the country serving local people. That is something we should be proud to maintain and improve. Labour invested millions in the local NHS. Now the Tories are proposing to close one or even two local hospitals. Cameron’s promise that the NHS would not be cut is exposed as the most blatant piece of trickery."

Not a squeak has so far been heard from Greg Hands, the Tory MP for Chelsea & Fulham, who back in 2005, dishonestly scaremongered that the then-Labour government intended to sell off Charing Cross hospital. He said then, "That would be a crazy move, and it is one that I have been elected in part to prevent.... I look forward to winning the battle with the Government to leave Charing Cross services on their current site."

He also said, "It is vitally important for patients in Hammersmith & Fulham that the Charing Cross Hospital remains on its current site, with all of its current services. Any transfer of services to Hammersmith Hospital would be a disaster for local people, as it is extremely inaccessible by road and public transport."

Will Mr Hands be prepared to join hands with Labour to win the battle today, or will we finally get clear proof that his earlier statements were no more than cheap politicking?

Andy Slaughter MP reports on local people's issues

2011-09-02T19:55:00.000+01:00

These days, council flats are like gold dust. So why is Hammersmith council reducing their numbers?

2011-09-02T18:25:00.002+01:00

More on the nastiness we can expect from the Tories, led by former mayor Cllr Andrew Johnson, at Monday's council meeting (5 September).

Under the pretext of refurbishing Edith Summerskill House, a block of 68 council flats by North End Road, Hammersmith & Fulham council "decanted" the tenants to other properties. Now the building is vacant, they intend not to do it up but to sell it off to their friends the property developers.

Edith Summerskill House provided affordable homes for nearly 150 people, with 48 two-bed and 16 three-bed flats. However, tucked away in the council's Equality Impact Assessment is the admission that only 40% of the flats that will replace it will be affordable.

"The draft planning assessment envisages that 40% of all the units delivered through a refurbishment or redevelopment option would be affordable predominantly as intermediate housing such as shared ownership or shared equity. " (See EIA, under "Sex", page 7)

Forty per cent of 150 people is only 60 people. So 90 of the people who are currently living in unsuitable accommodation and would have got a flat in a fully-affordable, refurbished Edith Summerskhill House will just have to keep on waiting.

Anyone who has any further doubt that the council doesn't give a monkey's about low-income residents need look only at the Brave New World language they use to describe their machinations in the main report that Cllr Johnson will ask his colleagues to nod through on Monday:

"The disposal of the site will give the opportunity to create high quality 21st-century [hooray, not 19th-century!] living accommodation that will provide a mixed tenure scheme delivering a range of accommodation types that will provide much needed opportunities for residents of the borough to access a range of housing opportunities." (See report, para 3.3)

What does this illiterate garbage mean? It means they just don't care.

Council flat-cutter Andrew Johnson

Andy Slaughter MP warns about unsustainable development in west London

2011-09-02T17:04:00.000+01:00

A guest blog by Andy Slaughter MP about the huge scale of developments in our borough being rushed through by Hammersmith & Fulham Tory council, the developer's best friend.

Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush are about to undergo the most intensive development in their history.

Between now and next March planning officers will be working at four to five times their normal rate to process applications which are among the biggest anywhere in the world, and the planning committee will be asked to oblige some of the world's major developers by giving permission for construction of thousands of luxury high-rise flats over the next ten to twenty years.

My concerns about both the process – the way the supposedly independent committee rubber stamp agreements already reached between the council and developers – and the nature of the proposed developments are well known. Densities are typically two to three times those of existing homes, heights are rarely below nine storeys and in many places are up to 30, the type of accommodation is aimed at City or foreign investors and in many cases it is being built on sites reserved for employment or even existing affordable homes.

But today I would like to focus just on the sheer scale and timing of the developments. There are several reasons for concertina-ing so much into so little time. Developers who can raise funds think they will get a better deal in the recession. This is itself of concern as taxpayers stand to lose out – the West Ken land being offered to CapCo for a rumoured £100 million looks like a steal for the developer. Next April the Mayor introduces a levy on applications to pay for Crossrail which could cost millions in the case of major sites, and naturally the developers want to avoid this, even though they will benefit from the investment.

But the main reason for haste is still the Mayoral elections. Uniquely in modern times there are Tory administrations at national, London and local level, and therefore no one to put a break on unrestrained development. That would change if Ken Livingstone were re-elected Mayor next May. Ken has already visited several of the most contentious sites in the borough to see the effect on existing communities of the proposals. He might not be so compliant to the wishes of speculators, so the developers – and the council – prefer to rush half thought-out plans through without proper consultation.

1.) West Ken/ Earl’s Court. By far the biggest single proposal, seven and a half thousand unaffordable homes built over 20 years on and around seven hundred and fifty demolished council houses and flats. The application is out to consultation until the end of September, but it is difficult to see how it can be determined in the near future. The planning brief for the area does not start formal consultation until December at the earliest. Without this how can the committee determine what height and density of building should be allowed, what extra provision for transport, health, education and open space would be needed to allow such a large scheme to function?

2.) White City. Three separate developers – Westfield, Imperial College and Helical Bar are racing to put in applications for chunks of the land north of the existing Westfield Shopping centre, east of Wood Lane. Again, tall building and dense construction, built up against motorways and railway lines or around and above shops, is the plan to make the most profit from the land. And again the council is months behind the developers in producing its planning frameworks for the area – the tail once more wagging the dog.

3.) Shepherds Bush Market. The plan to demolish Goldhawk Road shops, affordable housing and hostels – and jeopardise the future of the market itself - is expected any day now. 200 luxury flats rising up to nine stories above the Victorian residential streets.

4.) Central Hammersmith and the riverside. Here the council has given up the pretence of putting together a coherent plan as the gold rush of developers has seized on the chance to raze the town centre and build nine to 12 storey apartments along the river from Fulham Reach to Upper Mall.

St George’s application for Hammersmith Embankment will be determined at planning committee on 14 September. Save our Riverfront are making a last ditch attempt to stop the ruination of this site at their public meeting on 6 September.
Arab Investments are negotiating to buy and demolish Riverside Studios and Queen’s Wharf to build a monolithic single block of 200 plus flats up to nine storeys. Riverside may now be found land to relocate to the St George site.
Helical Bar having made minor and cosmetic changes to the Town Hall scheme have submitted their application which still includes the loss of the cinema, Pocklington Trust flats and part of Furnivall Gardens.
King’s Mall has been sold in two parts. The area facing Glenthorne Road, including the Mall car park, is now owned by St George who while being told that 27 storeys in not appropriate in this area are still looking to build up to 12. The Mall itself has been bought by the former owners of Earl’s Court (keep up!) who intend to refurbish it, but also knock down the 230 council homes on top and replace them with new high rise.
Building is also likely over the bus garage at Hammersmith Broadway, on the NCP Car Park site behind the Hammersmith & City line, and possibly in Hammersmith Bridge Road (Landmark House) and the south side of King Street, though this is further off.

Few residents will remain unaffected by these changes, but it is the council’s own tenants who will bear the brunt of the development as the war of attrition to bulldoze or starve them out of their homes steps up a gear.

Andy Slaughter MP

Hammersmith to make council tenants pay £1m more a year for the same services: pensioners, women and disabled among hardest hit

2011-09-01T20:32:00.000+01:00

Continuing their attack on residents living on low incomes, Hammersmith & Fulham Tories intend to make council tenants pay over a million pounds more a year for the same services over the next few years. Among the hardest hit will be pensioners, young people starting their first job, disabled people, pregnant women, new mothers and single women.

A report to be agreed at the H&F council meeting on 5 September spells out in black and white how, by changing the way it calculates service charges, the Conservative council expects tenants to start paying more for the same services within two years and for their charges to increase by over a million pounds a year by 2016.

“The potential impact on the Housing Revenue Account… is additional net income [i.e. extra costs to council tenants] of: 2012/13 £Nil, 2013/14 £116,000, 2014/15 £436,000, 2015/16 £748,000, 2016/17 £1,052,000” (see para 6.2 of the report here).

Every single council tenant will end up paying more:

“The implementation of tenant service charges will impact on all Council tenants. It will in the longer term mean that the total charge to tenants increases to a higher rate than it would without the implementation of service charges” (para 9.1).

And the poorest will be bear the greatest brunt of the charges:

“This may impact disproportionately on groups who have a lower income level, especially those who may be disproportionately represented in Council stock” (para 9.2).

The accompanying equality impact analysis states that those hit "disproportionately" will include people of retirement age, those who have just started work, disabled people, pregnant women and new mothers -- indeed, women as a whole, "particularly single women".

Fresh-faced Cllr Andrew Johnson, Cabinet member for Housing, will be leading the charge against these local residents on Monday. Can this really be what he came into politics for?

Hammersmith Tories plan to make poorer people pay more to keep fit

2011-09-01T19:20:00.000+01:00

At next Monday's council meeting on 5 September, potty-mouthed Tory councillor Greg Smith will be pressing his colleagues to abolish the Lifestyle Plus card which has given cheap entry to leisure centres for local residents on low incomes, including students, ever since Labour introduced it 25 years ago.

Instead, a private company, GLL, will get a contract to operate a new card. The card will initially cost less but the price of each swim or gym visit will sharply increase.

As a result, during any one year, anyone on a low income who swims twice a month or who visits a gym more than once every six weeks will lose out.

It's all in para 2.3 of Cllr Smith's report:
“Under the proposed arrangements, residents currently entitled to a LPS will pay GLL £3 per annum for the card (compared to £20.50 per annum for LPS)… A swim will cost £0.90p more per visit than is currently available to LPS members, but the annual fee is reduced by £17.50. On that basis, residents can swim on 19 occasions before it costs more. A gym visit will cost £1.65 more per visit but with a reduced annual fee residents can access the gym 9 times before it costs more.”

Once again, the Tories are making the poorest in our community pay more for services.

FT: West London Free School's pupils "will come from richer backgrounds than those in surrounding state schools"

2011-08-27T13:00:00.000+01:00

Last summer, all Hammersmith & Fulham schools lost out when Michael Gove abolished the Building Schools for the Future programme. This weekend, the Financial Times has confirmed that the government is giving Toby Young's West London Free School £15 million: see here.

We have nothing against the WLFS per se. We all need to keep striving for better secondary education in the borough. But as the FT also points out in an interview with Toby Young today, "The £15m that will have been spent by the Department for Education on the new school’s buildings would, it could be argued, otherwise have gone into repairing or expanding existing schools." See here.

The WLFS claims it will operate a fair and non-selective admissions policy. We note Toby Young's claim to the FT that its old-fashioned curriculum is “very appealing to working-class parents, immigrants ... The proof will be in the pudding.”

Yet as the FT also point out, "the early portents are that the school’s pupils will come from richer backgrounds than those in surrounding state schools. Initial estimates suggest that about 17 per cent of the entry are eligible for free school meals – an indicator of poverty. Other local state secondary schools have a rate of 31 per cent."

This is worrying.

Andy Slaughter MP's latest news and views

2011-08-27T12:40:00.000+01:00

Cuts begin to bite
Children forced out of school
Voluntary sector loses £1,000,000
William Morris pupils lose £350,000
Boris Johnson to cut Met by 2,000 officers
Hammersmith Park for sale
Minister attacks opponents of unrestrained development
Arab Spring
Coulson
Results!

Cuts begin to bite
Details are beginning to emerge of the effect on local public services of the cuts being pushed through by all levels of government, and they make dramatic reading.

Over 1,000 children will have to leave borough schools as their families are uprooted by Housing Benefit cuts
Local voluntary groups will lose £1,000,000 over the next three years
Cuts to Education Maintenance Allowance will cost one school alone £350,000 a year from next year
Despite the riots of two weeks ago, the Mayor is pressing ahead with 20% cuts in police numbers
The Council is selling one third of a local park – described as a ‘drain on resources’ – to ‘generate a substantial income’

But life remains good for developers in Hammersmith & Fulham, who are pressing ahead with plans to demolish local housing and build blocks up to 30 storeys across the borough. Opponents of such schemes are guilty of ‘nihilistic selfishness’ according to one Government minister this week.

And for senior council officers, who have awarded themselves massive pay rises while cutting jobs and freezing pay for the lower paid. Hammersmith & Fulham have given their Chief Executive an £11,000 a year pay rise, according to the Chronicle, making him the second highest paid person in local government on £280,000 a year. Not bad for running one of the smallest London boroughs

Summer appears to be over in Hammersmith & Fulham

Children forced out of school
For some months I have been requesting information on the effect of the Government’s cuts to Housing Benefit on Hammersmith & Fulham families. I understand why the council wants to conceal this information as it will mean hundreds of families uprooted and forced to leave their homes, moving to parts of the country where rents are lower. Many will be in low paid work where HB makes up the difference between what they can afford and the high rents charged by private landlords in west London. So they will lose jobs as well as homes and be forced to move far away from friends and families.

But I have obtained figures for the number of children who will be forced to change school. 884 primary and 322 secondary age children will be forced out of borough schools, 10% and 5% of the total school population respectively. Leaving aside the human consequences, this will have serious implications for schools, both their budgets and future planning. But the council sounds pleased with the outcome, describing it as reducing ‘the exceptionally high demand we currently have’.
By definition these children will be from poorer families and this may explain the council’s glee. Without the need for the estate demolition and service closures they are proposing elsewhere and which have provoked local opposition and national censure, they can press on with the social changes to the area they wish to engineer.

Voluntary sector loses £1,000,000
The Big Society is supposed to be about voluntary organisations taking on the responsibilities of the state. Not here, where community organisations are under siege. Masbro’s summer party last week attracted over 1,000 people, an eloquent response to the £45,000 cut to its funding the week before.

But this is only one of many long-standing and essential services losing out. Staying Put, the homelessness prevention service, will lose £60,000 from October, and the overall loss will be £1,000,000 from a budget of £4 million by 2014.

William Morris pupils lose £350,000
Education Maintenance Allowance supports poorer pupils post-16. It pays for travel, books and living expenses and at up to £30 a week can make a real difference to family income. Without it many students are likely to drop out of education, which not only increases social inequality but leaves many more teenagers on the streets with no money or useful employment, with potentially explosive results.

So there was an outcry when the Government abolished EMA, and they promised an alternative. What that alternative means to just one local school, William Morris Sixth Form, emerged this week. No more than 25% of pupils will be eligible compared with 70% now and they will on average get half the current rate. When the new scheme is fully implemented next year this will mean £350,000 less going to WMSF pupils.

WMSF is an outstanding school, as its last two Ofsted reports have confirmed. The fact that 70% of pupils receive EMA is evidence of the level of deprivation of its student intake. Those same students have just achieved excellent A Level and GCSE results.

Boris Johnson to cut Met by 2,000 officers
Hardly a popular idea before the London riots, the Mayor of London’s decision, backed by the Home Secretary, to press on with 20% cuts in police numbers, now looks unwise if not dangerous. 1,900 warranted officers and larger numbers of PCSO and support staff will go over the next three years if Boris Johnson is re-elected in May 2012.

Locally, we are facing the disruption of our Safer Neighbourhood Teams as all the team sergeants in the borough compete for fewer jobs. Campaigns to save the popular sergeants in North End and Sands End wards have already started ahead of a formal announcement next month.

With other London MPs I have written to the Mayor to ask him to think again about reducing police numbers.

Also this month came news that crime is rising in the borough after years of reduction, with burglary up a staggering 16% in the last year.

Hammersmith Park for sale
For the third time in as many months the Council is trying to build on or sell off parts of our parks. After defeats at the hands of residents’ groups in South Park and Shepherds Bush Common, 30% of Hammersmith Park is now up for sale.

Earlier this year the Tory councillor responsible for parks promised my colleague Iain Coleman that the well-used but unsafe football pitches in South Africa Road, in Iain’s ward, would be upgraded. Now we see what that promise was worth.
A private company will be leased not just the pitches but adjoining areas of the Park, almost a third of the total area according to the Council. This is described as an ‘issue’ site ‘which is currently a drain on resources’. Curious language to describe a public park, you might think (PDF).

The private company, PlayFootball, whose involvement was rumoured months ago before the ‘tender’ exercise to select them, will build a pavilion on the site and 11 pitches. All but two of these will be rented out commercially. They will make a lot of money from this. So will the Council which expects to generate ‘a substantial income’. The losers will be my constituents in White City and Shepherds Bush who will not be able to afford to play football on their local pitches.

Two important principles are being dispensed with here. Firstly, the sale of public open space for private profit has always been resisted strongly in this borough. Secondly, the Council is refusing to give details of the lease, the service delivery plan or the charging structure. The first two are commercially confidential it says, so we cannot know how long the Park will be in private hands or how much the rental is. The last is because the charging rates are not agreed. In other words the Park has been sold without knowing what local residents will pay to use the pitches.

Minister attacks opponents of unrestrained development
I’ve never thought of the National Trust as an anarchist organisation, but apparently it is, according to planning minister Greg Clark who this week accused it of ‘nihilistic selfishness’ for criticising the Government’s recent decree that there would, for the first time in the UK, be a ‘presumption’ in favour of development.

If the rest of the country wants to know what that means (along with the presumption in favour of asset sales that Communities Secretary Eric Pickles embraced this month) they need only come to H&F.

This autumn we can expect planning applications for the Shepherds Bush Market site, including the demolition of the Goldhawk Road shops, Westfield’s plans for 1,700 flats up to 22 storeys in Wood Lane, and St George’s 750 shoeboxes on the riverside.

Helical Bar’s revised plans for the Town Hall site have been universally condemned. They propose to shave 30 flats off the top of the 15-storey towers, but that still means the loss of the cinema, Pocklington Trust flats and part of Furnivall Gardens. The Planning Inspector’s report on the Council’s overall planning strategy this month specifically called for the retention of Pocklington properties for the visually impaired and 40% affordable housing in such schemes: currently there is 0%. For more go to www.saveourskyline.co.uk.

The West Ken/Earl’s Court application, with buildings up to 30 floors high, is currently out to consultation. This is by far the biggest and least digestible scheme currently out for approval.

The developer intends to take 20 years to complete the scheme. What this means in terms of disruption for the whole of north Fulham is barely imaginable, but for the residents who will lose their homes it is far worse.

This week I received confirmation that the Council will not allow Groundwork to undertake planned improvements on the West Ken estate. Residents have faced three years of blight and uncertainty already. Last month the council sold the option on demolishing their homes for £15 million. If the plans are approved they face years, perhaps decades, living on a building site with a freeze on maintenance and improvement works.

Arab Spring
I share the delight at the downfall of the Gaddafi regime, but I believe we will come to regret the way NATO has abuse the terms of the UN Resolution supporting intervention. I voted, with some reservation, for the imposition of a no-fly zone and the use of air power to protect civilians, when the Commons debated this at the start of the insurrection.

I was not voting – nor was the UN – for British and French forces to become the aerial and, increasingly, special forces arm of one side in a civil war. I hope that a stable and democratic government can be quickly established in Libya and that the EU can play a role in building institutions in the country, but who is going to believe or support any future resolution about humanitarian intervention, however well merited.

The comparison with Syria becomes starker every day. So far the British Government has not thought of derecognising the Assad government, expelling Syrian diplomats or imposing effective sanctions against the regime.
Last week I met a leading Syrian dissident Haitham Al-Maleh. This week he was in Istanbul as part of the Syrian National Council, the first concerted attempt to unite all opposition forces.

With the death toll climbing towards 3,000 it is time the Government focused on Syria and offered all possible support, short of military action which they do not want, to the anti-Assad forces.

Meanwhile, Shepherds Bush did its own bit for Egyptian unity this week. The Egyptian Association in the UK brought together Muslim and Christian Egyptians from across the UK for a traditional Iftar meal. It also marked my second fast in a week, following attendance at Al-Muntada’s Ramadan Community dinner.

Finally, next month will see a push for Palestine to be recognised as a sovereign state and admitted to the UN. 123 countries already recognise Palestine’s right to exist, a handful short of the two thirds needed. The pre-1967 territories of West Bank and Gaza which there is now consensus amongst Palestinians should form the basis of the state represent only half the area the UN demarcated in 1948. And yet Foreign Secretary William Hague has said Britain is ‘not minded’ to support recognition.

This is a spineless and incoherent response in the face of pressure from Israel and the US. A petition has just been started on the Downing Street website calling for UK support for recognition which I urge everyone to sign.

Coulson
The revelation that ex-Cameron press secretary Andy Coulson received hundreds of thousands of pounds from News International while working for the Tory Party is profoundly significant for three separate reasons.

Firstly, it means he appears to have consistently lied about his income both to Select Committees and on official documents. This further questions Cameron’s judgment in employing (twice) someone to work at the top of Government, whom he continued to see as a friend after Coulson resigned earlier this year.

Secondly, it raises the question what did Murdoch get for all this money that he did not contractually have to pay to someone who had resigned in disgrace from the organisation. What he appears to have got is his own man at the heart of the government in waiting at a time that both his war with the BBC and bid to takeover BSkyB were at their height.

Thirdly, what did Cameron get by taking on soiled goods and not asking questions about who was funding Coulson’s lifestyle? Increasingly it looks as though Coulson was employed and retained for so long because of, not in spite of, his conduct at News International.

Results!
With only one exception that I have come across, there has been warm praise for the achievements of local schools and pupils at this year’s excellent A Level and GCSE results. Can I add my congratulations to the hundreds of students and teachers who worked so hard to achieve their best. And to the Chronicle for its comprehensive school by school coverage.

Andy

To contact Andy, e-mail him at andy@andyslaughter.com or call his office on 020 7610 1950

Official: Hammersmith council cuts over £600,000 from police budget with more to come

2011-08-15T19:27:00.000+01:00

Those who follow HFConwatch on Twitter will know that trying to get Hammersmith Tory Cllr Greg Smith to admit how much his council has cut from its crime budget is like pulling teeth. Now the Fulham & Hammersmith Chronicle has confirmed that over £600,000 is being slashed from this year's budget and that "additional council cuts will be made over the next two years" (see here).

Multiply that by the three years of the budget and it comes to nearly £2 million cut, which is about what we've been saying all along.

Mr Smith says borough commander Lucy D'Orsi is happy with the reduced police numbers. Nearly as happy, we'd imagine, as having words put in her mouth when she can't disagree publicly.

Btw, to see Ms D'Orsi's latest update, click here.

Sign petition to stop Boris's police cuts

2011-08-15T18:49:00.001+01:00

Despite criticising David Cameron for reducing police numbers, Tory Mayor Boris Johnson is still going ahead with his own plans to axe 1,800 Met officers. Boris is ultimately responsible for the Met and its budget, so his calls to halt police cuts are highly hypocritical.

Boris should:

abandon his plans to force 600 London police sergeants to reapply for their own jobs. They should be focusing on making the streets safe for Londoners, not worrying about their own jobs.

drop his plan to cut 300 sergeants from London's 630 safer neighbourhood teams.

reverse his decision to cut 1800 police officers in London over the next three years.

If you think the Mayor should be cutting crime, not the police, please sign this petition.

Andy Slaughter MP on the riots and the way forward

2011-08-15T18:35:00.000+01:00

The riots - one week on
Shepherds Bush Festival
Save our Riverfront
Another victory

The riots - one week on

Last week there was political consensus that law and order must be restored before politicians started analysing why the riots happened and what should be done to prevent a recurrence.

Today, that analysis started with speeches from both Cameron and Miliband, and consensus there is none.

There is a danger that all commentators faced by dramatic events like these simply use them to state their own agendas and long-held views, making the facts fit a pet theory. This is as true of Iain Duncan Smith blaming moral collapse as of Polly Toynbee saying after condemnation and punishment, what then if not rehabilitation?

I will try and be aware of my own prejudices in writing this, though obviously I am closer to Miliband’s plea to avoid knee-jerk reactions than to calls for National Service (Daily Express) or boot camps (Boris Johnson).

I have written in my article for this week’s Chronicle why I think Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush escaped serious violence, based on what police officers at PC and Commander level told me and my own 50 years of living and working in this community.

I do not mean this to sound complacent. Riots by definition are volatile. It could have happened here. It might in the future. But a strong community and a dynamic police force – prepared to pre-empt trouble whether by talking it down or arresting those fomenting it – are the best preventative tools.

Let me start by thanking our new Borough Commander, Lucy D’Orsi, and every one of her officers who showed both courage and intelligence in keeping our streets, homes and businesses safe.

Let me also thank the thousands of community workers and volunteers, people like Andy Sharpe at Masbro and Keith Da Silva at Fulham Cross, who I have worked with over decades, and who give their time and energy selflessly to build and support the lives of young people and adults locally.

Causes
The riots were criminal acts. They had no political motivation. There was a catalyst in the shooting of Mark Duggan, but no causal link to what then mushroomed from area to area around first London, then many major English cities. There was no racial theme, no particular local issues. Gangs played a part – and need to be taken seriously by the Mayor and the Met irrespective of the riots – as did electronic communication in coordinating the mob, but are not explanations in themselves.

I have said what I thought averted riots here but beyond opportunity and a growing sense of social dislocation, there is no easy explanation for what happened when and where it did. Which is why we need a full inquiry, not instant ‘solutions’ based on prejudice.

The most worrying consistent factor in the riots is the age of some of those involved. Children in their early teens took part in violence and looting perhaps for the first time in the UK. This above all makes the need to deal with causes as well as symptoms the number one priority for this Government.

The right approach
The streets are quiet today, in part because of the number of officers patrolling. But trouble could flare up again any night. We must keep policing visible and at enhanced levels. Hammersmith has a tradition of engaged policing that goes back to previous Commanders like Kevin Hurley and Anthony Wills. Other areas could learn a lot from that.

It should be beyond argument that cuts in frontline policing are restored, but at national, London and local level they are going ahead. George Osborne and Theresa May confirmed that 16,000 officers nationally will still be axed. Boris Johnson claims he is converted to reversing the cuts but he has already lost 455 officers, announced the loss of 300 safer neighbourhood sergeants and plans to lose 1,900 in total by 2015 if re-elected.

In Hammersmith we are losing at least four sergeants with further cuts across council services from Parks Police, town centre teams and wardens. To this we can add the cuts to youth clubs – most of which have been closed and are now being sold off – and the voluntary sector, like the £45,000 cut from Masbro last week. This was always wrong, now it looks short-sighted as well.

As someone who practised criminal law for many years, I trust the courts to deal fairly but firmly with those convicted of offences arising from the riots. But again I worry that the cuts in Youth Offending Teams (20% this year), probation and the prison service will mean both punishment and rehabilitation, let alone prevention, will be under-resourced for years to come.

Rising youth unemployment, cuts to Education Maintenance Allowance and £9,000 a year tuition fees will all mean more young people on the streets with time on their hands and no stake in society. None of this excuses criminal behaviour, but right-wing politicians are simpleminded if they think it will not lead to increased crime and disorder.

It is time for Osborne’s Plan B (aka Labour’s Plan A) – cuts to the most sensitive public services must be reversed and the economy stimulated not shut down.

The wrong approach
David Cameron is blaming the police and setting them up to fail. Talk of bringing in US policing or police chiefs undermines the police service here. Publicly offering the police water cannon, which they have declined, means that if further disturbance breaks out he can blame them for not taking up his offer. Saying that he ordered the police to be more robust in tackling rioters is simply not true.

This is Government by PR and gimmickry. Poor at any time, positively dangerous at present.

Iain Duncan Smith is on the lookout for evil people who, bereft of moral values, are hiding in dark corners of society. I doubt he will find any but it is an excuse to evict families from secure homes and to deduct benefits from poor families. How punishing a household for the actions of an individual is either equitable or rational, I don’t know, but it has been repeated by politicians seeking soundbites and at a loss for real answers from Nick Clegg to Tory councillors in H&F.

Promising to evict families from council homes if a member of the family is convicted of an offence implies council tenants are more prone to criminal behaviour and that they should have a greater punishment than others committing similar crimes. Of course, the Council has no power to evict in most cases, that is a matter for the courts and this is gesture politics, but if families are evicted and on the streets how is that going to aid social cohesion?

But nothing can beat for crass opportunism Chelsea and South Fulham MP Greg Hands. In over 30 messages to his constituents over the past week only three have mentioned the effect of the disorder on his constituency, where there were serious incidents, and those were from newspaper reports. The majority have been personal attacks on me and other Labour politicians. Many of these are simply untrue – all are irrelevant to his residents and the job he is paid to do. Less time spent on political spite and more serving his constituents would be good for them and in the long run for him as well.

Shepherds Bush Festival

I spent Saturday afternoon at the Shepherds Bush Festival, held on the Green for the second year running. The Festival is organised from scratch by local resident Joanna Berridge who missed the Masbro Carnival that was a feature of the area for many years. It is a fantastic achievement – all the more so this year with no lottery funding. From the live music to tutoring on playwriting by the Bush Theatre to superb jerk chicken and curried goat it was a great day out – even enjoyed by passing QPR and Bolton fans.

Save our Riverfront

Visit www.saveourriverfront.co.uk to read about the latest fightback against greedy developers and their councillor mates intent on ruining Hammersmith’s historic riverside. On 14 September plans for 750 high-rise flats next to Hammersmith Bridge go to H&F planning committee. Local residents opposing the scheme are holding a public meeting at St Augustine’s Church, 55 Fulham Palace Road W6 8AU at 7pm on 6 September.

Curiously at the last committee on 3 August, a much smaller scheme on a neighbouring site, Queen’s Wharf, was turned down for all the reasons that apply to the Hammersmith Embankment site – density, lack of affordable housing, height, effect on the conservation area. The difference is Queen’s Wharf is owned by a housing association the council doesn’t want to do business with.

Another victory

Congratulations to the friends of South Park who have won a planning inquiry against the Council to stop the development of more public open space. Coming so soon after Shepherds Bush Green was saved from tarmac this is a further sign that we are not friendless in the battle with the Luddites at the town hall. It was an ancient covenant which saved Clancarty Lodge in South Park, as was the case with Shepherds Bush Library – saved from sale and now home to the Bush Theatre. Elsewhere Grove Neighbourhood Centre and Masbro have been kept as community resources because the previous Labour council gave the users long leases – I wish we’d done that more often. Of course, this doesn’t stop the Tories cutting grants, as with the Masbro’s sudden loss of £45,000 last week, but it means that unlike the youth clubs and other buildings already sold at auction, they will be there for future generations.

Andy

To contact Andy, e-mail him at andy@andyslaughter.com or call his office on 020 7610 1950

How Hammersmith residents are fighting back against property speculators

2011-08-15T16:32:00.001+01:00

As H&F Tory councillors spare no efforts to prove themselves the property developer's best friend, local residents are fighting back. They are not party political. They simply want to save where they live.

Save Our Riverfront (SOR) is a new, non-party group just set up to get the council to take a more reasonable approach to developing Hammersmith Embankment (which the developers and council have renamed Fulham Reach), rather than impose 750 properties of up to 9 storeys high, which would block light, destroy protected river views, strain transport, increase traffice and parking problems and offer no new social housing. The Hammersmith Society has long been opposed, saying this would "do permanent damage to Hammersmith’s historic riverside" (see here and here).

SOR are holding a public meeting on 6 September: details here. You can also lodge your own objections with planning officers: see here for how.

The Friends of South Park have just helped to fight off the council's plans to sell Clancarty Lodge in the park's north-west corner. After a government planning inspector ruled against this, Julie Lane, vice chairman of the Friends of South Park, said, "This is an issue that really galvanised the community." See here for details.

Save our Skyline and The Hammersmith Society are continuing to battle the council's plans to build two, monstrous, 14-storey luxury blocks of flats and a supermarket on King Street, demolishing an art deco cinema and a home for the blind in the process and destroying a third of Furnival Gardens with a footbridge so the luxury flat dwellers don't have to cross King Street to get to the river. "Mere tinkering of a still wholly unacceptable scheme. It is still a disgrace to Hammersmith" is how SoS's chair John Jones describes the cosmetic changes just proposed by the King Street Deveolopment company (KSD).

Meanwhile, KSD's director Matthew Bonning-Snook has cocked a snook at a more sensitive proposal by a group of local architects by saying, "Our primary objective is to deliver this much needed investment to the area". Translation: "This wouldn't make us so much money". See here.

Well done to all the local people involved and more power to their elbow!

Help the police identify the criminals

2011-08-15T12:54:00.000+01:00

The Met have posted more pictures here of people who committed criminal acts in the violent disturbances.

If you recognise anyone or have any information about the disorder, please contact the Major Investigation Team on 020 8345 4142 or speak anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

The Labour alternative to Tory police cuts in Hammersmith

2011-08-15T12:42:00.001+01:00

At a time like this, Hammersmith & Fulham's Tory council should not be cutting one in four police sergeants (from 16 to 12) says Labour opposition leader Steve Cowan, who adds that restoring the sergeants "should just be the start of having a more comprehensive strategy to tackle crime and disorder in our Borough."

Cllr Cowan proposes making savings to pay for the police we need by reducing the number of council directors and highly-paid consultants, ending the council's controversial propaganda budget and halting the £35 million new Town Hall offices scheme.

He says: "Just for the record, should Labour win control of the Council in 2014, I stand by our promises and confirm we will invest more in crime prevention and policing than the current Conservative run Council. We will restore the sergeants and provide all of the Borough’s sixteen wards with extra 24/7 police task squad protection."

See Cllr Cowan's blog here for details.

Hammersmith's budget shows £2.2m police cuts but Cllr Greg Smith says no. So what's the figure?

2011-08-13T13:52:00.000+01:00

We had a Twitter exchange yesterday with Tory Hammersmith & Fulham councillor Greg Smith, who leads on Residents' Services, about his cuts to the crime and anti-social behaviour budget. We asked Cllr Smith repeatedly to confirm the value of the cuts, which we believe total £2.212m, and he repeatedly evaded the question (see below). Why is he being so uncharacteristically coy?

Below are the relevant extracts from the council's February budget for everyone to see. The page numbers and a link to the full document are here. (Note: "Rationalisation" is just another word for cuts and "FTEs" are full-time equivalent jobs.)

We think this means:

£2.2m cuts over three years.
A resulting reduction in on-street enforcement, out-of-hours services, police working hours and Safer Neighbourhood Police Teams
A loss of 12 full-time policemen and other crime-fighters or a loss of a greater number of part-timers.

If Cllr Smith still disagrees, let him drop the waffle and tell us clearly what figures he is working to.

Tell Cllr Greg Smith to stop the police cuts in Hammersmith & Fulham

2011-08-12T11:36:00.000+01:00

Concerns about cuts to local policing were also raised at the public meeting yesterday evening. Hammersmith and Fulham's Tory council, Boris Johnson (whatever spinning he is doing now) and David Cameron have all signed off on plans to slash funding. This was always dangerously short-sighted. Today, we need a rethink.

The H&F councillor responsible for steering through cuts in the crime budget is Greg Smith, Cabinet Member for Residents Services, known for his short temper and foul mouth (see here). He was the only Tory councillor we could see at the meeting (Labour opposition leader Steve Cowan was there with many colleagues).

If you think Greg has got it wrong and should reverse the local police cuts, you can email him at greg.smith@lbhf.gov.uk.

So where do we go from here?

2011-08-12T11:30:00.000+01:00

One of the most useful points made at last night's public meeting in Hammersmith with the local police, led by Chief Superintendent Lucy D’Orsi, was the need to distinguish between those rioters and looters who were criminal thugs and those who were vulnerable and got caught up in it.

What made this argument telling is that it came not from the public but repeatedly from experienced, battle-scarred police officers themselves. Effective protection, punishment and prevention will clearly require a variety of approaches.

Latest message from Hammersmith & Fulham Borough Commander

2011-08-11T16:18:00.000+01:00

The Shepherd's Bush Blog is doing a good job of giving us updates from the local police.
You can read the latest one here.

Lest we forget - Boris Johnson’s London police cuts

2011-08-11T16:12:00.001+01:00

Please let's not let his current bleating blind us to the fact that, on top of Tory Hammersmith & Fulham's crime budget cuts (see here), Tory Mayor Boris Johnson has been making swingeing reductions of his own.

As Mayor of London, Boris sets the annual budget for the Metropolitan Police.
Before the last election, Boris's 2009 police budget cut 455 police officers in London (see here).
Boris's current plans are to cut 1,800 police officers from London - that's fifty lost from H&F and every London borough. By 2013/4 there will be just 31,360 police officers in London, down from 33,260 in 2009/10 (source: Johnson’s own Metropolitan Police Authority: see here).
Boris is also cutting 300 local beat team sergeants in London (see these MPA minutes here)

All this puts the Metropolitan Police in an impossible position.

Merton’s borough commander, Chief Supt Wolfenden, has said, “The future doesn’t look great. We’ve got to find between 4 and 5 per cent in the next financial year. By 2014 I’ll be operating with 25 to 30 per cent less than I had eight months ago. If that was in the private sector, if someone asked you to run your business with 30 per cent less cash, most people would find that very difficult. My life, right now, is all about spinning plates and trying to keep the shop open. It’s been incredibly difficult and I’m fighting battles on all sorts of different fronts” (see here).

Bromley’s borough commander, Chief Superintendent Charles Griggs, has said, “The budget is being looked at centrally and at the moment the Met is still waiting to see what the government cuts are going to look like. I have no doubt there will be the need to make significant cuts, and 78 per cent of the Met’s budget is people, so the reality is we will have to lose people" (see here).

Barnet’s borough commander Neil Basu has said there would be a “profound” reduction in police and staff numbers across the capital as the Met worked out the impact of cuts (see here).

We agree with Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who said yesterday, “It is shameful that it has taken these appalling events to force Boris Johnson to realise people are concerned about police cuts, as he has already cut 900 police officers from the Met in the last year and the Mayor's own plans mean 1,800 officers are expected to go in total over the next few years. The police, communities and campaigners have been warning that these cuts were unsustainable for many months. It should not take awful criminal violence on the scale we have seen for those warning voices to be heard.”

Will Tory Cllr Joe Carlebach speak out against Hammersmith police cuts?

2011-08-11T13:19:00.005+01:00

Councillor Joe Carlebach is not a head-banging ideologist or a mewling infant like some Hammersmith and Fulham Tory councillors. He has written to the Evening Standard, rightly asking that the bravery of rank and file police officers not be forgotten (see here).

Yet less than six months ago, in the teeth of Labour opposition, Cllr Carlebach and his Conservative colleagues voted to cut spending on preventing crime and anti-social behaviour in H&F by £2.2m.

As a result, on-street enforcement, out-of-hours services, police working hours and Safer Neighbourhood Police Teams are all being reduced (details here).

If even Boris Johnson, until today a leading slasher, can do a U-turn on police cuts in London, surely Hammersmith council can do so, too? Let's hope Joe will see sense and help his colleagues to do the same.

Police public meeting tonight, 6.45pm at St Paul's Church, Hammersmith

2011-08-11T12:50:00.001+01:00

The police are holding a public meeting this evening at 6.45 pm at St Paul's Church, Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith W6 9PJ (click here for map).

Come along to listen and ask questions to Police Borough Commander Lucy D’Orsi and David Page, the Assistant Director for Safer Neighbourhoods in Hammersmith and Fulham.

(Hat tip: The Shepherd's Bush Blog.)

How you can help the police help us all

2011-08-11T11:31:00.001+01:00

The police are asking for help in identifying and bringing to justice those who committed criminal acts in the disturbances in London.

They have posted pictures of people and items stolen here. If you recognise anyone or have any information about the violence and disorder, please contact the Major Investigation Team on 020 8345 4142.

Alternatively, anyone can report crime and provide information anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

There is more information at www.met.police.uk.

This is no time for £2.2m Tory cuts to Hammersmith's crime budget

2011-08-10T13:31:00.003+01:00

Well done to our local police and their borough commander Lucy D'Orsi for keeping Hammersmith and Fulham safe and relatively quiet. Let's hope they can maintain the same level of protection and vigilance over coming days and weeks.

The shame is that they will have to do this in the face of H&F Tory council’s cuts of over £2 million to the local crime and anti-social behaviour budget.

This February, the council cut the budget for crime and anti-social behaviour by £2,212,000 in 2011-2014. The page references below are to the council’s own budget document here.
• On-street enforcement cut by £1,095,000, losing eight officers (p. 783)
• Out-of-hours service cut by £297,000, losing three officers (p. 784)
• Police working hours cut by £360,000 (p. 785)
• Safer Neighbourhood Police Teams cut by £465,000 (p. 785)

This looked bad back in February - it looks even worse now. The trouble is that H&F council is run by peculiarly inefficient, economically illiterate Tory ideologues who simply don't believe enough in community services. Why else would they be cutting £4 for every £3 demanded by the government?

Inefficient
At the last council election, Labour pledged to do more than the Tories to fight crime, including by putting extra 24/7 police task squads in the five wards with the highest crime within two years and ensuring extra 24/7 squads in all 16 wards by the end of four years. The money would have come from tackling Tory inefficiency and unfairness, including cutting the council’s propaganda budget, ending 16% salary increases for council officials and other perks, cutting assistant directors and senior managers and selling high-value, council-owned office space, not community assets such as youth clubs, community centres and housing. (You can get more details from here.)

Economically illiterate
The local Tories are peddling myths about Hammersmith's debt burden - see here for why their economic arguments just don’t stack up.

Ideologues
H&F Tories believe in slashing the state for the sake of it. Council leader Stephen Greenhalgh’s right-hand man, Councillor Harry Phibbs, has openly called for deeper cuts (see here)

Cutting £2.2 million from Hammersmith & Fulham's crime and anti-social behaviour budget was and is wrong. The council should think again.

Tories fall out over Olympia and suck up to developers: Andy Slaughter's latest e-news

2011-08-02T10:47:00.000+01:00

Save Olympia's tube - what we've achieved so far
Object now or lose our Riverfront
Qui bono?
Sure start - false start
Ken Cycles
Blue Cross Hospital
Banooda Aid Foundation anniversary celebrations
Ramadan
Football Latest

Save Olympia's tube - what we've achieved so far

Four months ago Transport for London and Hammersmith & Fulham Council announced the closure of the weekday tube service to Olympia not just as a done deal but as a benefit to travellers! Now, after Tuesday night’s highly-charged public meeting, attended by over 300 residents and backed by almost 2,000, all bets are off and London Underground are looking at alternatives.

From previous dealings with TfL I can say this is already a substantial achievement, as they are not known for putting their customers before their own convenience. Of course, the argument is not won, and I encourage anyone who has not already done so to send their objections in to enquire@tfl.gov.uk. Richard Parry of TfL agreed to consider further representations sent in following the meeting – see mine here- as well as answering questions for 90 minutes and agreeing to send further information on alternatives and current service usage.

Mr Parry was generally praised for the courteous way he dealt with questions, though his insistence that there were convenient alternatives for Olympia even for elderly and disabled people were greeted with incredulity.

He was particularly pressed on the business case for closure – why losing the all-day service at Olympia could be justified by just five extra trains to Wimbledon and why exhibition goers were being excluded when calculating passenger numbers. Several questioners thought TfL was looking to save money by the closure. Others worried that the area would be less safe once the tube station closed, particularly now the local police teams are being cut back. Sinclair Road residents thought more people would drive to the area causing even greater parking stress.

Brendan McGrath, founder of www.myolympia.org.uk put the case for the residents, with Earl’s Court & Olympia, Barclay Homes (who are building 1,200 new flats in the area) and RBK&C giving strong support. Perhaps the most significant development was the declaration by LBH&F that they now also opposed the closure. The meeting ended with a united front against TfL’s plans.

This is the Olympia story so far.

On 29 March TfL announced the closure in the third paragraph of a press release that started As part of work to improve the reliability of the District Line, LU today announced its intention to introduce a new timetable in December 2011

On 5 April H&F weighed in with the ‘under-utilised weekday tube service to Kensington Olympia needs to be phased out adding there are other - sometimes quicker - ways to get from Olympia to Earl’s Court

On 19 April I met Earl’s Court and Olympia management to discuss the effect on their business of closure and on 27th Richard Parry to hear TfL’s case

In May, thanks to the MyOlympia campaign, awareness of the closure began to grow and I started receiving letters and emails and writing about the issue in my eNews and on the web

On 6 June I met Brendan McGrath to review tactics and plan the public meeting

On 15 June RBK&C criticised the plans as short termist and unwise. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, MP for Kensington has since written to TfL to express his opposition.

But on 28 June Chelsea and South Fulham MP Greg Hands – who until last year represented Olympia – and H&F Cabinet Member (for Residents’ Services!) Greg Smith launched a petition demanding LU honour its commitment to discontinue weekday services to Olympia. This is the first time I have ever come across one MP trying to make life more difficult for another MP’s constituents – especially when he used to represent them himself.

Hands has been complaining, by his own admission, about the Wimbledon service for almost ten years without getting anything done. Freed from the responsibility of representing Olympia he clearly saw this as an attractive option.

That doesn’t explain the Council’s contempt for its Hammersmith residents. Even this month Smith was tweeting about the Olympia ghost train and Hands was criticising the public meeting for being too late (it was the first date TfL offered).

Following the announcement by another member of H&F’s Cabinet at the public meeting that their official position is now to oppose closure, I have written to Hands and Smith to ask them to confirm they support this – and will not be asking for other changes to the District Line service if this means the Olympia closure will go ahead.

My constituents use the Wimbledon branch, and I can say from personal experience that it has been a poor service for many, many years. But rather than divide and rule we should all be demanding a decent service on all branches of the Line.

STOP PRESS. I have a response from Greg Hands. He refuses to decouple his Wimbledon campaign from the ending of the Olympia service and adds: As for any online petition, this has not been organised by me. Residents who saw this tweet may find this surprising.

Object now or lose our Riverfront

14 September is the new date for the council’s planning committee to consider St George’s application for 750 hideous high-rise flats just down from Hammersmith Bridge, a site they call Fulham Reach, but is in fact Hammersmith Embankment. You can read my objections to it here. Not least is the precedent it will set for creeping development of the riverside with the Town Hall and Riverside studios already in other developers’ sights. The blocks will tower over neighbouring Victorian streets at two or three times the density, and ruin the views from the Mall or the other side of the river.

A smaller proposal by a housing association for the Queen’s Wharf building opposite the Bridge will be determined on 3 August. Here, council officers are recommending refusal. But the rumour is the council wants to force a sale to a private developer – as they did with part of the Shepherds Bush Market site – who can also knock down Riverside Studios to produce a much larger scheme, also up to nine stories high.

Qui bono?

Almost every decision taken locally now benefits developers and disbenefits residents. The town hall slogan really should be Developers’ First. This week the council announced it was thinking of selling off privately a block of 70 council flats, Edith Summerskill House, in Fulham. This includes many three-bed flats, exactly the type most needed by the thousands of local families in overcrowded or poor standard accommodation. I attended the AGM of Edward Woods tenants and residents’ association this week. Eddie Woods is one of the largest estates in Shepherds Bush and has a strong community spirit. But most of the council officers who are paid to look after repairs, caretaking or housing management didn’t bother to turn up. Those that did said the concierge service would no longer operate, even though it is paid for through rents and service charge. Contrast this with the fawning way St George, Helical Bar and Westfield are treated by councillors and officers.

Also this week came the Government’s decision to make anything goes planning rules the norm. As with the destruction of affordable housing they have looked at H&F and liked what they see. From now on there will be a presumption in favour of development and planning applications being approved. So much for Localism.

Sure Start – false start

Last week I reported that the council had backed down and was allowing Sure Start centres to deregister. This would allow current users – often schools - to make the best use of the buildings now funding has been withdrawn. But fearing more bad publicity, the council wrote to some centres on the last day of term saying they would take possession of the buildings and put in their own operators. This is probably unlawful given the way the centres are set up. Looks like the under 5s will be back in court again.

Ken Cycles

Using the original name for Boris Bikes tells you how long they have been around. So why is H&F not getting them until 2013? The answer is that Barclays, who sponsor them, insisted they went to Canary Wharf and East London first. As a sop there will be a token installation at Westfield next spring . Just in time for the Mayoral election, but then as H&F have rolled over on everything Westfield wanted – from losing crèches and leisure centres to ignoring residents’ wishes for a quiet life and some job opportunities - they deserve a reward.

Blue Cross Hospital

Last week I visited the Blue Cross Hospital in Hammersmith, one of four surgical centres for animals in the U.K. run by the charity. Accompanied by vet Wendy Adams and nurse Sandra Bain, I was given a tour of the premises off King Street. What looks like an unassuming office building from the outside contains a complete operating theatre, examination and treatment rooms and a laboratory.
No sick animals are turned away, though Blue Cross mainly caters for those who cannot afford vet’s bills, offering a free or cost price service to those on means-tested benefits. They also neuter and vaccinate pets, provide classes in how to look after animals and lobby on animal welfare issues from hunting to control of dangerous dogs.
You can find out more about the invaluable work that the charity does here in Hammersmith and around the country by visiting their website.

Banooda Aid Foundation anniversary celebrations

Abdi Haidarow and an enthusiastic group of helpers and teachers set up Banooda Aid Foundation five years ago to help Somali children improve their language and literacy skills. I was invited to speak at their 5th anniversary celebrations and hand out the awards to the best pupils. Supplementary schools are thriving around the borough despite the lack of funding as parents, teachers and community leaders – and of course the young people themselves – strive to achieve better and better results. Of course, having English as a second language at home and often living in overcrowded conditions, having fled persecution or hardship make learning difficult but the children at Banooda more than make up for this by studying every Sunday with an enthusiasm for learning that is truly inspiring.

Ramadan

Today marks the start of Ramadan. May I wish my thousands of Muslim constituents well for this Holy Month. The long days make the challenge of fasting from dawn to dusk even more arduous this year. There are many reasons for fasting, but one which we can all share at present is the empathy it gives with those who do not have enough to eat.

In particular, that means those affected by the famine and drought in East Africa. Events at home have kept their suffering off the front pages, so I am pleased the Independent is running its ‘give a day’s pay for Africa’ campaign. Details of how to donate are here.

Two Teams in Europe!

Congratulations to QPR, who won the Trofeo Bartolotti in Italy on Saturday night. Before anyone thinks I've changed allegiance, let me assure my regular readers that much as I respect the premiership newcomers' achievement, my loudest cheers will be reserved for Fulham on Thursday evening when we host the 2010 Serbian Champions for second leg of our tie in the, er, arguably better-known Europa League.
The new football season promises to be fascinating for West London fans: Fulham are embarking on their second decade in the premiership, QPR are back in the top flight where I hope they will stay, and of course, Chelsea continue to show us what money can - and can't - buy. I know the thought of six premiership matches within walking distance of home won't excite all of my constituents equally, but thought of so much top-flight football in the area, as well as all the other marvellous cultural and sporting attractions on offer, remind us how lucky we are to be living in such a lively, thriving part of the world. So here's hoping - with apologies to headline writers everywhere - that on Thursday evening, Fulham can cause a Split in the RNKs.

Andy

Help save Olympia’s tube service. Come to public meeting tonight with Transport for London

2011-07-26T15:54:00.000+01:00

Transport for London wants to close down Olympia station on weekdays, even though this will mean the "slow death" of the Olympia exhibition centre (see here) and deprive disabled people of one of their few access points to the tube network (see here).

Now Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter has managed to persuade TfL to listen to local residents’ concerns. So come along and put your questions to TfL’s Richard Parry at a meeting tonight (26 July) at 7pm in the Pillar Hall, Olympia.

A warning -- Richard Parry is a wily operator. It took persistent questioning from the audience at a public meeting in January 2008 to get him to stop sliding around and admit that TfL was going back on its plans to install disabled passenger lifts in the new Shepherd's Bush Central line station (see here).

Tory boy a-sitting on his fence

Andy Slaughter has also managed to get local Tory councillors to promise to attend tonight. They originally backed TfL’s plan (see here), as they do any proposals from the large and the powerful. But then they saw local people’s fury. Now they say they want residents to get “the best possible deal” (see here). It is not known if they will bring their own fence.

Andy Slaughter MP says what's really going on in Hammersmith

2011-07-26T14:55:00.000+01:00

Save Olympia's tube service public meeting
Sergeants to go from local police teams
Hacking, graft and who knew what
Imperial lather
Sure Start - the truth at last
Dirty tricks as West Ken residents defend their homes
Ken Eats Pie
Three Hours - Without Remission
Summer Activities Round Up

Save Olympia's tube service public meeting

It is absurd to think you can close a tube line that goes into the heart of London’s most densely-populated district and serves one of its main public attractions. But that’s what London Underground are like. Unaccountable, despite being run by an elected Mayor, and strangely oblivious of their duty to provide public transport.

We’ve been here before with the closure of Shepherds Bush Central Line for a year to please Westfield. It doesn’t help when local politicians collude with them – as H&F council did over Shepherds Bush and leading Tories like Greg Hands – the former MP for Olympia – and Greg Smith have on this occasion .

But Tuesday is the day to call them to account. Richard Parry, LU’s top man, will be at the Pillar Hall, Olympia at 7pm to hear residents’ views on his plan to stop all weekday services from Earl’s Court to Olympia from December. Hope to see you there.

Sergeants to go from local police teams

The effects of 20% national cuts in policing are beginning to be felt on Hammersmith streets.

A statement from the local police last week said:

“As a result of the MPS review of safer neighbourhoods Hammersmith & Fulham will be reducing from 16 to 12 SNT Sergeants. The following wards will share a Sergeant:

Addison & Avonmore and Brook Green
Parsons Green & Walham and Sands End
Munster & Palace Riverside
Fulham Reach & North End”

This level of cuts is a pure matter of choice by the Government and yet the council commented:

“In these difficult economic times everyone has to do more for less and to be only losing four Safer Neighbourhoods Sergeants at a time when other boroughs are losing more is good news for Hammersmith and Fulham.”

But Sergeants are the heart of the Safer Neighbourhood Team – which the borough commander rightly described as the jewel in the crown of local policing. What this actually means is that there will be one team for two wards in many areas of Hammersmith, including those like Fulham Reach, North End and Addison with a worrying level of anti-social behaviour in the past.

It is pathetic for the council now to wash its hands of the cuts in vital front-line policing. Perhaps if they spent some of the millions wasted on magazines and PR to tell us how much they care about fighting crime actually on fighting crime we could keep our sergeants.

Hacking, graft and who knew what

I try to keep to local stories in this bulletin, but the hacking scandal has seeped into almost every area of public life. I had over 300 letters and emails about it last week, easily outstripping the NHS and forests, the year’s previous top issues for Hammersmith constituents. I hope everyone has now had a reply, though it was difficult to keep up with each new revelation.

I gave my opinion on LBC and Radio London and asked Cameron one of the famous 136 questions last Wednesday, but was shut away in the Legal Aid Bill Committee on the day the Murdochs came to town. The reason Cameron was asked the same questions over and over again is that he wouldn’t give straight answers, and that doesn’t bode well for future revelations.

I think there are two separate swamps to drain here. The bigger issue in the long run is the honesty and integrity of the press and the police – and of course politicians. That is what the independent inquiry has to tackle and it is a massive task as the power News International – and other proprietors – have wielded has cowed a generation of political leaders, whether out of fear or hope of advancement for themselves and their parties. For the present the spell is broken, but only because a few backbench MPs and Ed Miliband insisted that Murdoch and Co were brought to book. This is a web that spreads so wide that it is in many powerful people’s interests to return to business as usual.

Which raises the second issue – allegations of criminal behaviour very close to the centre of government. Every day brings fresh revelations and I hope the police team that is now investigating will prove more competent and better motivated to get to the bottom of them than their predecessors.

I don’t buy Cameron employing Coulson to give him a ‘second chance’, but without worrying that he needed security clearance. I think Coulson was attractive because, not in spite, of his risk-taking personality. The other person who comes out badly from this is the favourite to succeed Cameron when he goes – Boris. Onto his third Commissioner, losing half the management team at the Met and now denouncing the same hacking allegations he called ‘codswallop’ last year.

Imperial lather

Karen Buck, Mark Field and I – as the MPs for Imperial Health Care’s five hospitals in West London – met their new Chief Executive, Mark Davies, last week. Three months ago Imperial’s outgoing head Steve Smith told us it was impossible for major hospitals faced with increasing demand to make 4% year on year cuts. It still is, but that doesn’t stop the government making them do it. The result: Imperial – including Charing Cross and Hammersmith – must lose £100million from their budget this year, 13% of the total. Of course this is impossible even with doctors and nurses losing their jobs and whole departments closing down. So at the end of the year they will be in debt with an even bigger problem next year.

Remember ‘I’ll cut the deficit not the NHS’? With growth tanking it’s beginning to look like the other way round.

Sure Start - the truth at last

The cat and mouse game the Council has played with the future of local Children’s Centres came to an end with the admission that nine of the existing 15 Centres would close. Finally faced with a rebellion by the Centres themselves, who knew they would fail their Ofsted inspections if made to carry on with 5% or 10% of their previous funding, the Council has conceded they must ‘de-register’, that is, close. Read the full story here.

Dirty tricks as West Ken residents defend their homes

In a move that even seasoned Hammersmith watchers found shocking, the Council sold several thousand of its residents and their homes to a property developer for £15 million last week. Yes, this really happened: CapCo, the giant property company that wants to build 27 storey blocks of luxury flats on the site of two council estates off North End Road has bought the ‘exclusive’ option to negotiate demolition of 760 newly built or modernised affordable homes.

The story gets better – or worse. When the residents – 80% of whom have signed up to oppose demolition – went to the town hall to protest, they found a handful of ‘counter-demonstrators’ from the ‘steering group’ set up by the council to undermine the legitimate residents’ association. I wrote about it in my Chronicle column, as did Shepherds Bush Blog and the Guardian.

Word of the shenanigans even reached Ken Livingstone who visited the estates last Thursday to meet residents’ representatives.

Sally Taylor and Diana Belshaw, Chairs of West Ken and Gibbs Green TRAs and other local residents opposed to the demolition of their homes showed Ken Livingstone around last week.

Ken Eats Pie

Ken Livingstone also found time to visit A A Cooke’s famous pie and mash shop in Goldhawk Road last week. Not just for the eels and liquor but to hear about the council’s attempt to demolish the historic row of shops to make way for – of course – more luxury flats. Earlier in the week I filed my witness statement in support of the Judicial Review the Goldhawk traders have launched to fight the developer/council’s plans.

Three Hours - Without Remission

We finally got onto the meat of the Legal Aid and Sentencing Bill on Tuesday- the government’s proposal to effectively end Legal advice and representation for poorer people in areas such as housing and family law. It was my job as Shadow Minister to set out our objections in some detail. Which I did in a three hour speech to the committee, encouraged by helpful interventions from all parties present. Should you wish to read what I said you can find it here.

SUMMER ACTIVITIES

I jointly hosted a 100^th birthday party on the terrace at the Commons with my neighbour Angie Bray, MP for my old Acton seat. The birthday girl was Peggy Aslett, still as sprightly as when she toured the Commons two years ago and still planning her next adventure.
I got my first tombola win of the season at Grove Neighbourhood Centre summer fair
I spoke at the 5^th anniversary celebration for Banooda Aid Foundation at Bishop Creighton House.
With the local councillors and council officers I toured estates in Shepherds Bush to hear residents' concerns
With the Mayor I visited one of the best renovation schemes in the borough – the Du Cane Road estate opposite Hammersmith Hospital.
In addition I have a regular programme of surgeries, which will continue after the summer hols. Routine casework is dealt with by my two assiduous caseworkers –email to andy@andyslaughter.com. Complex cases I see at my weekly Monday morning surgery – email or ‘phone for an appointment. And to find out what is happening around the constituency I do a street surgery at weekends. Most recently I have visited Lakeside Road, Willow Vale and Brook Green – if you want me to come to your street or block, let me know.

Andy

To contact Andy, e-mail him at andy@andyslaughter.com or call his office on 020 7610 1950

July's Euro goings-on from Claude Moraes MEP

2011-07-22T11:10:00.000+01:00

Dear Friends
Welcome to my July Newsletter, a chance for me to keep you up to date on what your London Labour MEP is doing on your behalf, as well as to give you a regular analysis of developments in the EU.
In July, there was continued crisis amongst European economies and a host of other legislative and other issues which were understandably over-shadowed by the crisis. I include those issues here.
I've also launched my new website this month, designed to make accessing stories and information on the European Union easier for you, and I also regularly update my Facebook page. I always welcome any feedback you may have and hope that this Report will be informative.
Please feel free to get in touch,
Claude Moraes MEP
Labour MEP for London
Deputy Leader, European Parliamentary Labour Party
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The EU Budget
Labour is opposing any increase in the EU budget for 2012.
Labour MEPs have in fact called on the European Commission to radically overhaul its planned budget for 2012. What we need is a focus on jobs and growth - not to freeze our actions because of austerity.
Labour also wants an end to wasteful budgets, and Labour MEPs are opposed to the Commission's plans for a 4.9% budget increase.
Labour's priorities are jobs, regeneration, transport and energy infrastructure, as well as aiding the development and research that will lay the groundwork for future growth. I personally also want to see no diminution in our development and refugee aid while key Member States are involved in military action in refugee producing areas of the world.
As your London Labour MEP, I will continue to oppose any EU budget increase for 2012, as well as continue to push hard for spending EU funds where such funds can make the most difference for people in London and the UK, and the most sensitive war and development zones.
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Transport
Britain and London have some of the strictest road safety laws in the world. Labour wants to keep it that way.
The Tory-led UK government, however, is laying plans to relax our strict MoT testing standards, with Tory Transport Secretary Phil Hammond developing plans to see the vehicles on our streets undergoing fewer MoT tests.
Under the Tory pla ns, cars and vans will be able to spend another full year on the road in between before their first MoT check-up, plus an extra year between later tests. This doesn't make sense, as 50% of vans and 20% of cars fail their first MoT after three years on the road.
The Tories' transport plans will reduce road safety in the capital, and according to the Retail Motor Industry Federation will also jeopardize up to 25,000 jobs in the road safety industry.
Labour in Europe will continue to work hard from the European Parliament's Transport Committee to scrutinize and expose such reckless plans for London's roads.
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Consumer Protection and Health: Progress from the EU
Protecting the safety of the food you eat, and the products you use to look after yourself and your family, are at the heart of Labour's work in Europe.
Here, July saw developments in two key areas of consumer protection: baby milk, and the transfats added to our food.
Labour MEPs have opposed claims being made by a manufacturer of baby milk that their product can improve a baby's eyesight. A controversial claim, at best, and one centred on a fatty acid known as DHA, this was challenged by Labour due to the lack of scientific consensus on this issue. Sadly, despite a majority of MEPs in the European Parliament voting to challenge the health claim, this resolution fell short of the 368 votes needed to block the claim.
Labour in Europe's leader Glenis Willmott MEP expressed our frustration, when she s aid that parents will now be targeted with health claims that many medical professionals and health organisations do not believe should be allowed.
Labour has won the backing of an all-party committee for a campaign to require manufacturers to tell consumers whether their products include potentially harmful substances known as transfats. Labour's campaign is designed to help prevent diseases such as obesity, heart disease, Alzheimer's and infertility. Transfats have already been banned in their added form in some countries, and for Labour's food safety campaign on transfats to become law, it will now need the backing of EU governments.
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Labour challenges rip-off credit card fees
Labour in Europe has challenged the extortionate practices of credit-card companies, and the European Parliament has approved new consumer rights.
Consumers are paying anything up to ten times the real cost of processing their credit card transaction. This damages businesses and damages consumers too, especially problematic during a difficult recovery.
Because of the recession we face, and the negative impact on recovery-boosting consumption of such unfair charges, Labour is now calling on the UK government to ban the fees now, rather than wait until the EU laws kick in during 2014.
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Your cross-border rights
I and other Labour MEPs have been working hard in July to ensure future European Union regulation will strike the correct balance between commercial and social rights.
We want to see workers' rights in the European Union strengthened, and strengthened in a way that promotes the ability of the Single European Market to deliver stability, jobs and growth.
Now, Labour is waiting to see how the Commission responds to the Parliament's views, particularly as a new European Union regulation, named Monti II, will aim to clarify the balance between commercial and social rights in Europe.
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Libya and Tunisia Delegation
This month, I visited the Libya/Tunisia border to see for myself how people are being forced to live in UN run camps there.
Travelling with a delegation from the European Parliament, I visited several areas, including the biggest refugee camp which currently hosts over 3.700 people, and met with the interim Prime Minister of Tunisia to discuss the desperate situation there.
Sadly, I also saw how limited access to clean water and adequate sanitation and hygiene facilities is also a terrible problem in the camps, which have nevertheless inspired me due to how calm the residents were, and to how much solidarity they felt with each other.
I will be reporting back to the European Parliament about what its delegation saw in North Africa, as well as our clear conclusion that Europe needs to do more for these people, both in promoting their safety and in protecting their fundamental human rights.
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The US credit-rating agencies
I've followed the Eurozone crisis closely from the European Parliament. The issue is complicated, and has become a mixture of the economic, fiscal and political challenges facing Europe in the immediate future. Europeans will have to work together to find a constructive solution to maintaining Europe's fiscal and economic health. One issue is however clear, the destructive role of US based credit-rating agencies in the crisis.
It is unacceptable that the timing and context of a credit-rating downgrade can have a disproportionate and destructive affect on a European economy which has the potential to get back to positive growth. I've written about how such agencies have the power of economic life and death over countries like Greece, why this isn't right, and what we can do to ensure the best efforts of majo r European countries and international institutions are not needlessly damaged by privately owned companies based in the US.
This is especially true when we consider how US credit-rating agencies have themselves been involved in financial crises, in particular handing out dangerously inflated credit-ratings just before the sub prime mortgage crisis which brought the global financial system to its knees.
They were wrong then, and they are wrong now.
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Protecting Free Movement in Europe
In July, I've continued to speak on Schengen and I drafted the Socialist and Democrat resolution on Schengen in the July plenary session of the European Parliament.
You can read my speech here on this issue, and my position was also reported in the Financial Times.
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My new website
This month, I launched my new website www.claudemoraes.com
The website is designed around a clearer way of helping London Labour Party members find information on what their MEP is doing, as well as commentary on wider European issues, a source of information and news.
I hope you like the new, clearer lay out and I always welcome any feedback.

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Opposition Watch
The Tories say one thing on the environment in Britain, and are doing another in the European Parliament.
Right now, by 2020, Europeans are committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent against 1990 levels. Labour wants to see that target raised to 30 per cent. In July, a crucial vote on raising the target to 30 per cent was lost by just nine votes. Sixteen Conservative MEPs failed t o endorse a tougher target, directly contradicting the UK Tory-led government's environment policy.
All Labour MEPs supported the more ambitious target of 30 per cent and Labour will continue to push for critical environment reforms from the European Parliament.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
In Parliament
I regularly speak, table motions as a Socialist spokesperson and ask Parliamentary Questions in the European Parliament and all of this work can be found here.

Reproduced from an electronic communication sent by Claude Moraes MEP.
Promoted by Edward Price on behalf of Claude Moraes MEP, Labour MEP for London, both at 65 Barnsbury Street, London N1 1EJ.

H&F Tories' new propaganda on the rates

2011-07-14T10:05:00.000+01:00

Labour Group leader Cllr Steve Cowan has reported on the three (yes, three) glossy magazines which the shameless Hammersmith & Fulham Tories are now publishing with council taxpayer's money to replace the old H&F News, unofficially known as The Tory Pravda. See here.

The new magazines look like further propaganda on the rates. As Steve says, "If Rupert Murdoch is watching these three phoenixes rise from H&F News’ ashes, he may conclude he could learn a thing or two from the sly goings at Hammersmith and Fulham's Conservative run Council."

Andy Slaughter MP's lively newsletter - Sure Start, Murdoch and more

2011-07-14T09:57:00.000+01:00

Sure Start
Intentionally Homeless
Pravda Mk III
Westfield
Olympia Public Meeting
Passmore Edwards and Shepherds Bush
Putney By-election
Any More Fairs?
Murdoch and Coulson

Sure Start

Extraordinary developments in the past 10 days in the long-running battle to save Sure Start in H&F.

Sure Start Children’s Centres are universally praised not only by the millions of families who use them but by all political parties. This didn’t stop the Coalition Government cutting their budgets by 12% this year, but answering questions from me in the Commons, Ministers still said they wanted all Sure Start centres to survive.

But last Christmas H&F Council put out a report rubbishing Sure Start and proposing to close nine of the 15 in the borough. In the outcry that followed, they backtracked, promised some money to the closing centres (albeit taken from the ones staying open) and called it ‘hub and spoke’.

I said at the time this was cynical PR but I don’t blame the Centres for trying to negotiate the terms for staying open. Last Thursday, after being misled, bullied, blackmailed and treated with contempt by councillors and officers for six months they’d had enough and summoned the head of children’s services to a showdown at Flora Gardens Primary School.

There he admitted for the first time that the so-called spokes would have to de-register as Children’s Centres (ie close) and cease to have any formal relationship with the council. The ‘hubs’ – the six Centres that still have funding – will continue to operate but most have re-written their contracts with the council, which was trying to put extra burdens on them without the necessary funds – including redundancy costs for staff.

This will give the Centres the freedom to manage their own services but it doesn’t solve the money problem. Then the following day Cathnor Park parents won a spectacular victory over the council in the High Court. Facing the prospect of losing a Judicial Review the Council caved in and signed an agreement to restore most of the services at Cathnor. Congratulations to the parents and their solicitors – who may now like to do a similar job for some of the other unfunded Centres.

Intentionally Homeless

A letter leaked to the Observer reveals that the Government’s changes to Housing Benefit will make 40,000 families homeless – and cost the taxpayer money. This is not Shelter’s view it is Secretary of State Eric Pickles (no bleeding-heart he) writing to David Cameron. After Westminster and K&C, H&F is likely to have the largest number of families affected, and I have asked how many that will be.

What is the morality of a Government that will see families uprooted from schools, jobs (most people on HB work in low-paid jobs) and community life? What is its competence if the cost of moving the families elsewhere is more than the money saved? It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the motive here is what Boris Johnson famously called ‘social cleansing’.

Pravda Mk III

The Council’s latest attempt to get round their own Government’s restrictions on propaganda is a 72 page glossy magazine that makes H&F News read like the Independent. All your favourites are here – promos for the council’s preferred developers, lots of photographs of Tory councillors, and the council leader’s own “vision” for the future. He wants to create an ‘economic lung’ by tripling density and blotting out the sun with 30-storey blocks of flats along the Kensington borders.

But a story in the Telegraph last week suggests local Tories may not be popular with the PM if they carry on with their plans:

‘The threat of a major development on your doorstep throws up a debate both ethical and practical, as David and Samantha Cameron are discovering. Plans for three 30-storey towers in White City, London, which will loom over their north Kensington home, have outraged neighbours who claim their sunset views (and their light) will be ruined by the 100m-high buildings. The Camerons, of course, currently reside in Downing Street and their £1.5million house is being rented, but experts say an unfavourable development in the doorstep can have a dramatic effect on property prices. William Marsden-Smedley, a director of the property acquisition firm Prime Purchase, believes the loss of a great view can wipe a third off the value of a property.’

In the meantime I will set about finding the true cost of this latest piece of vanity publishing which is in addition to the propaganda pages in the Chronicle. When they tell you these are good value for money they don’t mention the army of press officers in the town hall churning this out (15 staff are credited in the magazine), or the council advertising that subsidises it.

Westfield

I met Westfield management to hear about their new planning application for the land between their existing Centre and the Hammersmith & City line railway. Currently an industrial estate, they bought it mainly to stop Tesco taking it over, but now want to develop it. It is common gossip that there is going to be a major John Lewis store on the site – but Westfield are playing this down and just say it will be a ‘department store’. A cynic might think that they are dangling John Lewis much as the Council dangled Waitrose as part of the Town Hall development to sweeten the pill.

The pill in this case is 1,700 flats up to 22 storeys (though mostly around 12). A lot of the flats will be built above and around the new shops. It already looks uncomfortably dense and crowded and the architecture is the same depressingly anonymous stuff we have seen planned for Fulham Reach and West Ken.

The flats will be smaller units, tightly-packed together. I reminded them that the Council wants a quarter of them to be for residents moving from the White City Estate.They said they did know, but they didn’t look like they were rolling out the red carpet.

As a postscript to my visit to Fulham Reach last week, St George sent me the revised schedule of properties in their new planning application. In place of 38 two-bed affordable rented flats at 61 square metres and 37 three-bed flats at 86 square metres, there will now be 73 bed-sits for sale at 41 square metres. Remember that next time you hear Boris or local Tories talking about how they want to build affordable larger family homes.

You can see my response to the White City Opportunity Area Consultation by clicking here.

Olympia Line Closure - public meeting

Olympia not only carries visitors to the exhibition centre and serves one of London’s most densely-packed neighbourhoods, it provides stepless access to the tube. LU’s suggestion that there are other stations around a mile away is of little comfort to wheelchair users.

Many, many people have written to me asking for my help in keeping it open; there is a well-organised group which has the support of local residents groups, disability support groups, transport groups and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

London Underground have at least acknowledged the strength of feeling by extending the deadline for the consultation until 15^th July, but they are still intending to press ahead with the closure of all weekday services.

Where is Hammersmith and Fulham Council in all this? I wish I could tell you: if you look at their website you will find that they initially supported the closure, then they opposed it. But prominent local Tories including Greg Smith, Cabinet member for Residents’ Services and Greg Hands, MP for South Fulham are energetically campaigning for the line’s closure:

With great difficulty I have persuaded Richard Parry of London Underground to come to a public meeting to discuss this proposal with local residents. The meeting will be held at 7pm on Tuesday, 26 July in the Pillar Hall of Olympia. This will be an opportunity for you to put your points across directly to LU and to demonstrate the importance of Underground service to Kensington Olympia. I encourage you to join me on the 26^th of July in the hope that we can get LU to re-think this outrageous plan.

Passmore Edwards and Shepherds Bush

On Wednesday I was treated to a Cornish cream tea by the MP for Falmouth and Truro, Sarah Newton - to celebrate the publication of author Dean Evans' book on the life of Passmore Edwards.

John Passmore Edwards was an 19th-Century Cornish MP from very humble beginnings who made a fortune in publishing, most of which he gave away to build school, hospitals and libraries around the UK. One of his projects was the building of Shepherds Bush Library, which opened in in 1896 and operated as a public Library until Hammersmith and Fulham Council intervened in 2009. Their attempts to sell off the building after moving the library to Westfield were frustrated by the covenants protecting its public use.

Now the building has become the new permanent home of the Bush Theatre. I went to their first performance recently, which put the new venue through its paces before the official opening in the Autumn. This promises to be an exciting new chapter in the cultural life of Shepherds Bush, and a testament to Passmore Edwards, who understood the value of public buildings to local communities. What a shame that Victorian wisdom cannot be emulated by our council, who are still trying to sell off many of the venues that local people have been using for decades – Shepherds Bush Village Hall, just across the road from Passmore Edwards’ bequest, to name but one…

Putney By-Election
More out of solidarity than expectation Hammersmith Labour members joined me campaigning in the recent by-election in Putney, and went back to help on Election day. We had an excellent candidate, Christian Klapp, and a superb campaign run by Sean Lawless and ex-Hammersmith agent Adam Gray, but this was an ultra-safe Tory seat. Not any more – the 16% swing to Labour is one of the biggest recorded in any recent election. Hammersmith Tories may want to take note that a major issue was the overdevelopment of the riverside with high-rise luxury flats.

Any more fairs?

I still haven’t won a raffle prize even after attending summer celebrations at Lena Gardens, Greenside, St Stephen's, Wendell Park and Phoenix schools. The Lena Garden BBQ was headteacher Callum Fairley’s 25^th. I’m not going to win the balloon race at St Stephen’s as my balloon went straight up. And I think William Atkinson’s spectacular event at Phoenix, complete with funfair and boy bands, is more Glastonbury than school fete these days.
Flora Gardens did something different – the Flora Oscars. I found myself walking down the red carpet to present the award for best voiceover with Keanu Reeves. Other staff came as Kylie, Cruella and Audrey Hepburn
I spoke at a conference on Palestinian human rights with political leaders from Israel and the occupied territories, and chaired a meeting in the Commons for Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Sha’ath, in Britain to lobby for support in recognising Palestine as an independent state at the UN in September
I was a guest at the Askew Business Network BBQ, celebrating their expansion and success in getting improvements to the Askew Road.
I organised a meeting for Oxfam, Amnesty and other NGOs fighting Government proposals to prevent UK-based multinationals being sued by people they have injured in developing countries.
I attended the Cathnor Park Area residents’ AGM, where the new Hammersmith academy was the main item for discussion.

Murdoch and Coulson

So life goes on – even without the News of the World to tell us who the heroes and villains are. (I think we are working that out for ourselves). But if you are one of the more than 200 people who have written to me about News International, Coulson and the Met, asking me to take these issues up with Cameron, rest assured I will - and will put the correspondence on my website.

Andy

Boris Johnson's codswallop and the Hammersmith Tories

2011-07-07T15:32:00.000+01:00

Earlier this year, our Tory councillors proudly hosted the launch of Boris Johnson's mayoral re-election campaign at Hammersmith Town Hall (even if Boris did sneak in a side entrance to avoid families and other residents protesting against cuts: see here).

Now, as the country reels from the vile behaviour of the News of the World, we should remember how last year Johnson called the phone hacking allegations “a song and dance about nothing” and “politically motivated codswallop”.

This morning, he tried desperately to change his tune and call for an “immediate enquiry”. Yet in April, just three months ago, he was still making light of the whole thing, saying it is “embarrassing for any self-respecting celeb that they haven’t been hacked”.

Ken Livingstone has just issued a short video statement and asked Boris Johnson a series of questions he has to answer: click here.

Ken says, "Over the last few days the horrible truth about the reality of what was going on at the News of the World has been exposed for all to see. There are few words that can describe the hacking of murder and terrorist victims as well as the families of those who died serving our country abroad. Boris Johnson has shown dire judgement. As Mayor, if he had taken a different approach when this story was first published, the whole course of events could have been different."

Their whooping support for Boris looks like yet another blunder by the Hammersmith Tories.

Hammersmith Tories get Sure Start egg on their face

2011-07-06T12:53:00.001+01:00

Hammersmith Tory council has taken a first, grudging step towards admitting that, in its usual callous and inept way, it has got it wrong about slashing local Sure Start services across the borough as part of £3.4m cuts to children's services.

A gutsy local mother asked for a judicial review after the council failed to consult properly about the Sure Start cuts. In typically arrogant fashion, the Tories had first announced the cuts and only then (reluctantly) consulted.

On Friday, a judge apparently ruled the council had a case to answer, at which point the Tories seem to have caved in and restored services to the Cathnor Park Children's Centre rather than risk going to the full judicial review.

The transcript of proceedings is eagerly awaited but this looks like being great news for families who use Cathnor. What it means for families using the other eight children's centres where services are due for the chop has yet to become clear. You can see more details here, here and here.

Labour calls for cross-party campaign against “super sewer” in Sands End but Tories play political games

2011-07-05T13:03:00.003+01:00

Tory Hammersmith & Fulham Council has spurned a Labour plea for a cross-party campaign to stop the construction of a “super sewer” in Carnwath Road in Sands End.

At Wednesday’s council meeting, Labour councillors were unanimous in supporting Sands End residents in their campaign against the super sewer and in calling on Thames Water immediately to withdraw proposals to use the Carnwath Road site as access to the super sewer. In response to a motion put forward by the Tories, they urged a campaign that united all the parties.

Labour councillors also urged Conservative councillors to drop a statement of outright opposition to the super sewer (“This council reaffirms its opposition to the super sewer”) as this would distract from the main issue of saving Sands End.

Labour said that although they opposed siting the super sewer in Carnwath Road, something had to be done to stop sewage pouring into the Thames after heavy rains, the super sewer was still the only game in town and Barn Elms was always available as an alternative site. More research was needed on the options before rejecting the sewer outright. Instead, they proposed this alternative motion:

“The Council calls for the Administration to re-focus its efforts and resourses away from its one-dimensional, ideological obsession against the Thames Tideway Tunnel project and instead lobby the Conservative Mayor and Conservative and Liberal Democrat government Ministers to stop the Carnwath Road site being used for this project.
“The Council agrees to form a united Borough campaign that includes both Administration and Opposition councillors to stop Carnwath Road being used for this scheme and supports residents in South Fulham with a clever strategy likely to meet that objective.”

The Tories, however, decided to try a cheap political stunt. They voted down Labour’s motion and then insisted on keeping in the bit of their own motion that reaffirmed outright opposition to any super sewer. Labour councillors couldn’t support this as they felt it might damage the borough and were forced to abstain on the whole vote.

Amazingly, five days later, Tory council leader Stephen Greenhalgh and leaders of 13 other councils launched a commission of "independent" experts to examine Thames Water's case for the sewer and other options (see here). So on Wednesday, Greenhalgh opposes the sewer outright and jeers at Labour for saying more research is needed. And five days later, he jointly establishes a commission to examine the options.

All parties want to stop Thames Water from building the super sewer by Carnwath Road. But if the Tories weren’t playing their usual silly buggers, we would have a united campaign and more chance of winning the battle.

Please sign the petition by Residents Against Thames Sewer (RATS) to save Carnwath Road and the Sands End area here.

News from Andy Slaughter MP

2011-07-05T12:14:00.001+01:00

The Big Society Bites Back
Sure Start Stops
Two of Our Libraries are Missing
Pravda News
Unwelcome Developments
Fast Track
Olympia
No Justice
The week in Westminster and Hammersmith

The Big Society Bites Back

Last week Shepherds Bush residents celebrated their recent success in stopping harmful redevelopment of the Green. Despite hostile cross-examination from a QC - employed by the Council, using our taxes – they persuaded a Planning Inquiry to stop trees being cut down and part of the Green concreted over.

On Friday, mums from Cathnor Park SureStart are due in court to judicially review the Council’s decision to close their much-valued Children’s Centre, along with eight others.

The Goldhawk Road traders, whose shops are set to be demolished after 150 years to make way for high-rise luxury flats, are also going to court. Meanwhile, West Ken and Gibbs Green Estate residents have set up a community trust. They aim to be the first people to use Labour government legislation to take ownership of their 760 homes, preventing the Council and developer CapCo demolishing them simply to make money.

Save Our Skyline have another Council-sponsored developer on the retreat, with plans to ruin Furnivall Gardens and the Hammersmith Town Hall now under review. Parents from Addison and Lena Gardens primary schools, elderly residents of the Wormholt estate and the 22 charities facing eviction from Palingswick House are all running active campaigns against the ‘free schools’ imposed on local communities by the Government. The Council’s attempt to auction off Shepherds Bush Village Hall, the Irish Centre and Sands End Centre are stalled while the Council is forced to negotiate with the current users.

When London Underground - with the support of the Council – announced last month that the Olympia branch line would not operate Monday to Friday, the My Olympia group was quickly set up and is forcing a rethink.

This is the Big Society Hammersmith & Fulham-style. It is about local people using every means at their disposal to stand up for their neighbourhoods against big government and big business, against greedy developers and an arrogant Council that doesn’t listen. I have been proud to support each one of these campaigns because they show what we can do when citizens act together in the interests of their communities.

Sure Start

The Council has virtually ended Sure Start provision in many parts of the borough with cuts to Children’s Centre funding that will close nine of them. A mum from Cathnor Park Children’s Centre applied for Judicial Review of the Council’s decision, asking the High Court to rule the decision unlawful. At that stage the Centres were due to close on 1 July. Obviously, you would expect a legitimate public authority to await the court’s decision before lockinfg the doors. But H&F decided it would pre-empt the Court’s decision, a matter which I raised in the Commons. The Court then brought the hearing forward to this Friday and the Council...closed Cathnor Park last week! Today I joined parents and children protesting outside the Centre from which they are now barred.

Two of Our Libraries are Missing......

The Map is from the Council's Library merger plan, which they recently approved in Cabinet. As you can see, it shows FOUR libraries In Hammersmith and Fulham after the "improvements" have kicked in.

But there are SIX libraries in Hammersmith and Fulham - the council's own website lists them - Askew Road, Baron's Court, Hammersmith, Fulham, Sands End, and Shepherds Bush. What's going on?

The explanation is that Baron’s Court and Sands End libraries are losing all their funding, but the Council hopes someone else – schools or volunteers – will take them on. The handover should have happened on 1 April but they are still being funded on a month by month basis on reduced hours and staff because alternative providers have not come forward. The new deadline is December 2011.

This is another example of doublespeak: as with the nine Children’s Centres, the Council is closing services while pretending to keep them open. While I am sure that many people will rally round to help, this is not the same as professionally staffed and run libraries.

Read my website for the facts about what the Council is really doing to our library service, and the sneaky way they are trying to cover their tracks.

Pravda News

H&FNews lives on in the propaganda pages of the Chronicle paid for with our Council Tax, in breach of the Government’s Code of Practice on Local Authority Publicity. I wrote to the local government Minister Grant Shapps about this – here is his reply. His strong condemnation of his own Party colleagues is welcome, but he provides no effective remedy. The Government will not act, it is fanciful to suggest residents will fund a court case against the Council knowing they will just use our money to hire another QC. Which leaves the Audit Commission – trouble is at H&F’s urging the Government is abolishing that!

Unwelcome Developments

West Ken/Earl’s Court
CapCo has submitted its plans for the redevelopment of West Ken/Earl’s Court. Their ‘Masterplan’ is a 20-year scheme to build 7,500 high-rise flats, tripling the density of one of the most-densely populated areas on London. The application proposes the demolition of 760 affordable homes to build four ‘villages’, complete with 27-storey tower blocks. Two thirds of existing residents on the threatened West Kensington and Gibbs Green Estates have joined West Ken & Gibbs Green Community Homes Group, which will use recent housing law to force the Council to transfer ownership and save their homes. I have written to both the developer and the Council on residents' behalf. But the plans will affect tens of thousands of existing residents in K&C as well as H&F, as the Standard has reported.

Fulham Reach
This is the new name for Hammersmith Embankment and St George’s proposal to put one of their hideous faux wharf-style shoe-box estates on the riverside – a stalking horse for worse crimes planned at Riverside Studios and Furnivall Gardens. Last weekend they announced amendments – to show they’d ‘listened’. There are minor changes to heights and alignment of blocks and the number of parking spaces has been reduced from 770 to 470, which will annoy existing residents. But the number of units is still 750 and density the same . The major change is that all 300 ‘affordable’ flats will now be ‘Manhattans’. These are single rooms with a glass screen separating the bedroom from the living area! These will sell for £212k upwards. The original proposal included 70 ‘affordable’ flats for rent. No longer. The 450 full-priced flats will have 2 to 4 bedrooms, and sell for prices that will put them far beyond the reach of local people. This does absolutely nothing to help 8,000 local families waiting for decent homes.

An opportunity to build something beautiful and useful is being missed and something which ruins the riverside area and cheapens it is proposed instead – our distinctive riverside will now look like every other overdeveloped bit of the Thames.

Fast Track

Last week ‘Yes to High Speed Rail’ brought its bus (yes, bus) to Westminster. I met enthusiast Pete Waterman, who is now almost as famous for promoting railways as for Rick Astley. This is one issue on which I agree with the Government. There is a need for better transport links between the North and the South, and to relieve the congestion on existing rail services. High Speed Rail – which most developed countries already have - is the way to go. Roads and cars, ‘planes and airports are inefficient and carbon-unfriendly. I debated the merits of HS2 on the Parliament Channel with Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson, a strong opponent
Of course it helps that Shepherds Bush will be one of the areas to benefit most from the project- not only getting a new Crossrail station and the country’s main rail interchange at Old Oak, but thousands of new homes and jobs on a brownfield site.

Olympia: the plot thickens

Almost 2,000 local residents have now signed the petition asking London Underground to think again about the closure of the Olympia branch line. This provoked a u-turn by the council which initially supported the closure but now opposes. Not so local Tory MPs. Three of them are actively campaigning to have the tube service to Olympia shut down.

No Justice

After weeks of delay caused by the confusion over Ken Clarke’s 50% discounts for defendants pleading guilty to rape and other serious crimes, the Legal Aid and Sentencing Bill, which I have to take through the House of Commons for the Opposition, was published last week. The proposals on sentencing are still a mess –condemned by judges, victims of crime and many Tory MPs. But most of the Bill is about cutting the Justice budget by a quarter - something Clarke offered to do without a clue how to achieve it. The answer is the virtual ending of Legal Aid for poor and vulnerable people and restrictions on access to justice for all but the wealthiest. The Commons rose to the occasion when it debated the Bill on Wednesday, with over 30 good speeches from all Parties. You can read the debate HERE and my closing speech HERE
I have also kept up a regular rota of visiting prisons, courts and advice agencies, to see how the justice system is coping with the cuts. This includes local visits in and around Hammersmith. This month I have visited the local Youth Offending Teams, Feltham Young Offenders Institution, Wormwood Scrubs, the Minerva Project for women at risk of custody and West London Magistrates’ Court, home of the first specialist domestic violence. This was something I helped set up ten years ago when leader of the council. There are now 127 of them around the country, though 23 will close as part of the cuts (not ours!)

It’s been a busy week or so

I congratulated QPR on promotion
Met Geri Halliwell, to support her campaigning for Breast Cancer Care HERE
Learnt how to ice a cake at Ealing West London and Hammersmith College for Vocational Qualifications Day
Spoke at the UK Egyptian Association AGM in White City. Mostafa Ragab, who runs the Eqyptian House restaurant in Bloemfontein Road, is stepping down after 14 years as chairman.
Following the Independent article exposing Britain’s failure to apprehend foreign criminals in the UK I gave interviews on the subject to Egyptian and Russian TV.
Was a guest of Queen’s Club Gardens Residents’ Association at the excellent annual Garden Party
Spoke at the Gypsy Roma Traveller Month Reception at the Irish Embassy
With fellow MPs Ben Bradshaw and Peter Hain, spoke at the Labour Friends of Palestine and Middle East fundraising dinner.
Attended summer fairs at Good Shepherd , Addison and Brackenbury Primary Schools
Joined in the Friends of Wormholt Park picnic
Appeared on the Channel Five's The Wright Stuff talking about why there are too many Metro stores in Askew Road
Campaigned in a council by-election in Putney.
Attended the Governor’s Meeting at William Morris Sixth Form – to hear how they must save £1m from a £6m budget, on top of losing £20m capital funding.
Spoke at the Hammersmith Society AGM against the overdevelopment planned around the borough

HFConwatch

Lest we forget: how Hammersmith Tories were cocking up the borough last January

Tory Hammersmith & Fulham in worst third for child poverty in London

Hammersmith flyover latest: when it will re-open is not the only question, says Andy Slaughter MP

New Year news from Andy Slaughter MP

King Street monster only sleeping, not dead -- loathed Hammersmith Tory scheme may still go ahead if Boris wins next May

King Street development deferred but far from dead. Will Boris approve the Hammersmith Tories' monstrous scheme if he wins next May?

Aidan Burley fails to apologise properly, blames "other" guests at "Nazi" party

London Tories link with BNP to prevent cyclist safety debate - was Kit Malthouse among them?

Ex-Hammersmith Tory councillor Aidan Burley at "Nazi" stag night at French ski resort

Greg Smith admits Eric Pickles addressed Young Britons' Foundation but won't say if he met Bell Pottinger speaker

Now Harry Phibbs claims residents' support for Hammersmith Tory council's £7,000 jamboree

Andy Slaughter MP: "Decision time for Hammersmith's future"

Why is the Tories' Peter Graham avoiding a straight answer about £7,000 Hammersmith council knees-up?

Andy Slaughter reveals the real impact of the Sure Start cuts in Hammersmith

Next Wednesday is last chance to stop Tories' brutal Hammersmith Town Hall scheme

Outrage as Hammersmith Tories splurge £7,000 on fat-cat party

5% cut in rail, tube, tram, DLR and bus fares with Ken Livingstone's 'Fare Deal'

Knife crime against young people in Hammersmith is up yet the Tories are cutting the youth offending team's budget

Is potty-mouthed Hammersmith Cllr Greg Smith a coprolalia sufferer?

Meet Liam Fox for cash, say Hammersmith Tories

Greg Hands throws up smokescreen to defend Liam Fox

Tories cut police as gun crime, burglary and motor vehicle crime rise in Hammersmith & Fulham

Tories railroad through Hammersmith Embankment scheme, try to stop discussion, don't explain £13m "Section 106" payment

Andy Slaughter's news: sewer politics and riverfront shenanigans

Sewer PoliticsRiverfront ReRunPalestineAccess to JusticePhoenix Opens Sixth FormWeekly Roundup

Riverfront re-run tonight

Palestine

Access to justice

Who funds Phoenix?

And in other news

How you can oppose the destructive and wasteful Hammersmith Town Hall development

News from Andy Slaughter MP

Hospital pass

'Green' light for developers

Unaffordable Housing

Petitions for Police and Puffins

Out and about

A substantial Bill

Boundary Review

Letter from Labour leader Steve Cowan about Hammersmith’s police cuts, property speculation and Rotten Borough status

The tricks used by Hammersmith Tory councillors to avoid public scrutiny

Why Harry Phibbs should wait for the evidence on the 50p tax band

Come and object - Tory H&F council meets at 7pm today to increase sports charges, sell off council flats, raise rents and service charges

Will Tory MP Greg Hands join Labour in opposing the closure of Charing Cross hospital?

Andy Slaughter MP reports on local people's issues

These days, council flats are like gold dust. So why is Hammersmith council reducing their numbers?

Andy Slaughter MP warns about unsustainable development in west London

A guest blog by Andy Slaughter MP about the huge scale of developments in our borough being rushed through by Hammersmith & Fulham Tory council, the developer's best friend.

Hammersmith to make council tenants pay £1m more a year for the same services: pensioners, women and disabled among hardest hit

Hammersmith Tories plan to make poorer people pay more to keep fit

FT: West London Free School's pupils "will come from richer backgrounds than those in surrounding state schools"

Andy Slaughter MP's latest news and views

Official: Hammersmith council cuts over £600,000 from police budget with more to come

Sign petition to stop Boris's police cuts

Andy Slaughter MP on the riots and the way forward

How Hammersmith residents are fighting back against property speculators

Help the police identify the criminals

The Labour alternative to Tory police cuts in Hammersmith

Hammersmith's budget shows £2.2m police cuts but Cllr Greg Smith says no. So what's the figure?

Tell Cllr Greg Smith to stop the police cuts in Hammersmith & Fulham

So where do we go from here?

Latest message from Hammersmith & Fulham Borough Commander

Lest we forget - Boris Johnson’s London police cuts

Will Tory Cllr Joe Carlebach speak out against Hammersmith police cuts?

Police public meeting tonight, 6.45pm at St Paul's Church, Hammersmith

How you can help the police help us all

This is no time for £2.2m Tory cuts to Hammersmith's crime budget

Tories fall out over Olympia and suck up to developers: Andy Slaughter's latest e-news

Save Olympia's tube - what we've achieved so far Object now or lose our RiverfrontQui bono?Sure start - false startKen CyclesBlue Cross HospitalBanooda Aid Foundation anniversary celebrations RamadanFootball Latest

Save Olympia's tube - what we've achieved so far

Object now or lose our Riverfront

Qui bono?

Sure Start – false start

Ken Cycles

Blue Cross Hospital

Banooda Aid Foundation anniversary celebrations

Ramadan

Two Teams in Europe!

Help save Olympia’s tube service. Come to public meeting tonight with Transport for London

Sewer Politics
Riverfront ReRun
Palestine
Access to Justice
Phoenix Opens Sixth Form
Weekly Roundup

Save Olympia's tube - what we've achieved so far
Object now or lose our Riverfront
Qui bono?
Sure start - false start
Ken Cycles
Blue Cross Hospital
Banooda Aid Foundation anniversary celebrations
Ramadan
Football Latest

Sure Start
Intentionally Homeless
Pravda Mk III
Westfield
Olympia Public Meeting
Passmore Edwards and Shepherds Bush
Putney By-election
Any More Fairs?
Murdoch and Coulson

The Big Society Bites Back
Sure Start Stops
Two of Our Libraries are Missing
Pravda News
Unwelcome Developments
Fast Track
Olympia
No Justice
The week in Westminster and Hammersmith