Category: Ealing and Northfield

There was a slightly strange exchange at last night’s council meeting about councillors’ allowances, more details of the scheme here. Cllr Costello asked the Labour leader why he wasn’t cutting councillors’ allowances as part of the council’s spending reductions. It hardly sets a good example to the council’s staff if the councillors don’t take their share of the pain.

In their manifesto Labour promised: “A freeze on councillors’ allowances”. This always seemed to us to be a inadequate offer and back in October when allowances came up both the Tory and LibDem groups voted together to actually cut allowances by 10%. From Cllr Bell’s tweet you can see he knows he has to move on this but he has a problem – his rank and file councillors, of which there are many unfortunately, will not give up any of their allowances. Cllr Bell’s choice of words is evidence that he has a problem.

Labour’s solution is to have a go at what are called special responsibility allowances and in particular to do away with a large number of scrutiny panels and their chairmen. These panels are the basic training ground for new councillors and the place where councillors get to understand issues in detail and hold the officers and executive to account. They are often a lot of work. The Labour solution is to ditch these panels so that the administration gets less hassle and their back benchers don’t have to turn up to so many meetings, we know how they hate that! As Cllr Costello pointed out last night the Labour back benchers want to do less work for the same allowance whilst everywhere else the council is demanding more for less.

The current structure of allowances was agreed in 2006. Labour have often accused the old leader, Jason Stacey, of taking a big rise at that time. Cllr Stacey is too polite to point out loudly that he gave up a full-time job to be a full-time leader of the council and gained great acclaim in doing so. What Labour don’t point out is that they negotiated good rises for their own front bench at the time. If Labour wants to have a go a special responsibility allowances then either Cllr Bell should give up his two days a week working for Ealing Southall MP Virendra Sharma or he should give up 40% of his allowances. That’s £16,560 in the pot straight away. Cllr Bell is taking a full-time allowance and doing a part-time job.

The Labour group does have a problem with actually turning up for things, as we know from Cllr Mahfouz’s cock up last week. One day it will lose them a vote.

At full council last night all of the 24 strong Tory group turned up. All of the 5 strong LibDem group turned up. 5 of the 40 strong Labour group no-showed. This may be bad luck, perhaps a cluster of illnesses or bereavements struck the Labour group, but it does look to be part of a pattern I am afraid.

Tonight council leader Julian Bell was pleased to use the opportunity of a question from a member of the council to announce that the new Labour administration wants to spend £5.5 million on a car park in Southall. No doubt this will be popular in Southall. The rest of the borough, the rest of London indeed, will look askance. Town centre regeneration 1970s style.

I had the chance to ask a question of my own and I asked Cllr Bell how many parking places he would get for his £5.5 million (well yours actually). He didn’t know. I shouted across the chamber to ask if he knew how many parking places the council provided in Southall already. He didn’t know that either. The answer is 451.

So, Cllr Bell is pleased to spend £5.5 million buying an indeterminate number of parking places to solve a problem he hasn’t quantified already. I don’t know who thinks that the answer to congestion is to provide more parking places in a town centre.

Local councils have very little flexibility right now to set their own priorities. Ealing Labour’s are dead weird I have to say and it is absolutely shocking that Cllr Bell has no conception of the problem he is trying to solve. I can’t wait to see the business case for this car park. It is going to be pure fantasy.

Yesterday Ealing Council left it to the last possible moment to publish details of its expenditure on items costing over £500 as required by the new government. They were required to do it by 31st January and just managed it after close of business yesterday, see here.

The presentation of the information is slightly confusing. The spreadsheets relate to quarter 1 and quarter 2 of the 2010-11 financial year which started in April. So this data covers mainly April to September 2010 but there are a large number of transactions pre-dating the period and a few from after!

I am surprised that they think that they can get away with a four month lag in the publication of data. I am sorry but this shows a sod you attitude on the part of the Labour administration and the Council’s officers. I might accept a one month lag but they really should be able to put up the last quarter’s data within a month of the end of the quarter.

You are entitled to be a bit confused as to why the Ealing Labour group have come forward with motions for tomorrow’s full council on the VAT rise and London’s public transport fare rises. Both of these measures came into force at the start of January and it seems a little late to be discussing these in February.

To have any impact these measures should have been raised by Labour at the December council meeting at the very latest. Back then they were keener to raise their sectarian Armenian motion so VAT and public transport fares took a back seat.

The VAT campaign has been going around since Harriet Harman raised it in the summer as a stick to beat the LibDems with. It is indicative of Ealing Labour group’s work rate and competence that it has taken them seven months to jump on board a national campaign.

I have still not heard any Labour figure explain why the 2.5% rise in VAT was wrong in 2011 but Labour’s 2010 VAT rise of 2.5% was perfectly OK. Still less has anyone from the Labour party explained how they would replace the £13 billion of lost revenue.

Conservative councillor Colm Costello, representing Hobbayne ward, part of Stephen Pound’s Ealing North constituency, has started a blog this month and has made a strong start with a number of good posts. He focuses on ward issues, keeps local MP Pound in check and as the shadow housing spokesman covers this issue too.

Colm is a sound antidote to the on-message sloganeering of Islington council housing official, Ealing councillor and Labour housing spokesman, Hitesh Tailor.

Another Tory councillor has also been keeping up his blog, Cllr Benjamin Dennehy from Hanger Hill ward.

Links to both added to the list on the right panel here.

We know that new councillor Mik Sabiers is a Morning Star reader. The Ealing_Politics Twitter feed reports that Ealing Southall MP Virendra Sharma is too. He has just signed this Early Day Motion.

That this House notes the Morning Star is a national daily newspaper available in shops across the UK; further notes that it is the only socialist daily newspaper in the English language worldwide; further notes that the Morning Star and its management have strong links with the trade union movement; welcomes the different light it shines on news and current affairs from that of other daily newspapers; expresses concern that the Morning Star is rarely ever shown on or reported by the BBC on television and radio; and calls on the Director General of the BBC to ensure that the Morning Star is featured regularly and as a matter of course in broadcast newspaper reviews in the interests of fair and balanced reporting.

Eight out of the 14 far left MPs on the Socialist Campaign Group have signed too. Sharma has a record of going with these people, see here.

When council tenants get their rent bills in April and see that their rents have gone up by five percent Cllr Bell’s spin won’t sweeten the pill overmuch.

RPI in November was 4.7% so the council is using that as a hook to hang its rent rise on. CPI, which includes rents by the way, was only 3.3%. As it happens the council only needed to raise rents by 3% to meet its commitments. The extra 2% is a sandbag that tenants will have to pay unnecessarily.

Tonight, as a result of the call-in by both Tory and LibDem political groups supported by a number of residents’ groups, the cabinet has inched back on its cut to the ranger team from 23 to 9. They have put 2 posts back in. So the cut will be 52% rather than 61% in head count terms.

The Tories believe that this a key service in terms of delivering what residents, rather than what officers, want, and therefore have tabled the following motion for the next council meeting on 1st February:

This Council recognises the central role that parks and open spaces play in urban life and the crucial and enabling role of the dedicated team of Park Rangers in making our parks safe, clean, enjoyable and welcoming. Our Envirocrime Officers have an equally valuable role in keeping our streets clear of the effects of fly-tipping and taking action against the perpetrators. This Council therefore deplores the proposed cuts to both the Ranger and Envirocrime Teams, which will see the number of Rangers reduced from 20 to 4 and the Envirocrime Team reduced by 50%.

This Council welcomes and backs the strong public opposition to these proposed cuts as evidenced by the number of community organisations who spoke against the proposal at the 23rd December 2010 Overview and Scrutiny meeting, including the Friends of Blondin Park, Hanwell Community Forum, Brent River and Canal Society, Ealing Friends of the Earth and West Ealing Neighbours.

This Council therefore urges the Cabinet to rethink their decision to savagely cut these essential front line services.

If you want to make your voice heard then you may want to sign up to this petition. It was only put up on 19th January and by 22:52 tonight it had garnered 442 signatures. If it gains 1,500 signatures the matter will be discussed again at a future council meeting.

Labour’s transport and environment spokesman, Cllr Bassam Mahfouz, has been caught out lying about the Taxicard scheme today. On the Ealing Today website he says:

The decision was made by officers on guidance given to them from London Councils but having been made aware of these changes we have taken the following steps …

This is just nonsense.

Anyone who went to the Boris event last week will have been puzzled by the questions to the Mayor on this scheme and indeed by the thread on Ealing Today. The scheme is not widely known about – unless you are disabled that is.

The Taxicard scheme has been hugely successful, growing by 18% during 2010 and allowing more and more disabled people to get around in London. The system does have growing pains though and the London Mayor signalled a couple of years ago that he would cap his contribution at £12 million.

The London Councils’ Transport and Environment Committee (TEC) runs this scheme and have been unable or unwilling to modify the scheme to cope with this explosive growth. Since May 2010 the TEC has been chaired by the Labour leader of Islington Council, Catherine West. Since then the committee has been Labour controlled and Ealing’s representative on the committee is none other than our very own Cllr Mahfouz. How on earth can Mahfouz claim no knowledge of the working of this committee when he himself sits on it? The answer, as you can see from the minutes here, is that Mahfouz failed to turn up on 14th October when the matter was discussed. He would have been briefed before and after this meeting so the idea that this all went on behind his back is just risible. If he could not attend the meeting he could have read the papers before the meeting and read the minutes after.

Unless something has gone very wrong Cllr Mahfouz needs to apologise to his officers.