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

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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

"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

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

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?

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

More from Andy Slaughter MP this week:

• I received over 200 letters and emails this week asking me to oppose both the Government’s ‘revised’ proposals for the NHS and the plans to limit access to advice on abortion.  Both the Health Bill and the amendments on abortion are disingenuous.  There is no real change to the plans to privatise and dismantle the NHS, and we will be campaigning in Hammersmith on this issue this weekend.  And I think it is outrageous to imply that organisations like Marie Stopes cannot give impartial advice because they ‘profit’ from abortions.  Accusing any medical practitioner of persuading patients to undergo procedures so they can make money is a new low in a dirty campaign.
• I was able to wish many constituents Eid Mubarak! at the party called to mark the end of Ramadan in White City on Wednesday.

• The British Safety Council in Hammersmith was my first proper employer 30 years ago, so it was a pleasure to visit them this week and see what a superb international organisation they have grown into in the intervening years, giving advice and assistance to thousands of companies in Britain and around the world.

• Newham Council could rightfully boast of securing over 2,000 jobs for local unemployed people in the new Westfield development in Stratford this week.  It reminded me of the abject failure of our council to do the same, despite Westfield agreeing to do this when Labour still ran the borough.  At a meeting last year I asked Westfield how many staff they had recruited from White City itself.  The answer: 13.

• Another failure to tackle local areas of deprivation noted this week on the excellent W14 website this week. The legacy of Labour’s New Deal for North Fulham was supposed to be businesses and voluntary groups setting up to continue its work.  Premises have been found – but in south Fulham, outside the New Deal Area, and are being used to relocate organisations the council has evicted from Hammersmith.

• And farewell to Lifestyle plus.  The discount card introduced doing my first term as a councillor 25 years ago to give affordable access to our swimming pools and leisure centres to people on low incomes.  No longer to be offered in our brave new world.

• MyOlympia have put forward a compromise solution to TfL which would see the tube service running every half hour on weekdays but travelling to Edgware Road rather than High St Ken.  This ticks all the  boxes including relieving congestion at Earl’s court and providing some relief on the Wimbledon line.  Let’s hope all parties now support this.  

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

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

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

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

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

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.