Category: Ealing and Northfield

In my speech tonight I highlighted the fact that although Labour had made a total of 12 promises about council housing the glaring omission was any commitment to keep council rent rises under control. If you look at their manifesto you will see this list:

1. Total opposition to Conservative plans to transfer council homes to private companies and privatise housing management.
2. To return council housing to full council control at the earliest opportunity and end the massive waste and duplication that currently exists with Ealing Homes and the Council’s housing department.
3. A guarantee to respect the results of a binding tenant and leaseholder ballot before council homes, or the management of them, is transferred out of council control.
4. Estate based caretakers to tackle jobs around the estate and keep them clean.
5. Action on noisy neighbours and a zero-tolerance policy on anti-social behaviour.
6. Ring fence the money received from sales through ‘right to buy’ for reinvestment in new homes and improving council housing.
7. 3,000 affordable homes and homes for rent available to local families.
8. Action to end the scandal of empty homes in the borough.
9. A fairer transfer scheme for tenants that puts hard working local families who play by the rules and pay their bills priority for housing transfers.
10. A revamp of the repairs service with additional craftsmen to do the repairs and less bureaucracy to reduce delays.
11. Pilot a new policy offering extensions and roof conversions on council owned properties to reduce overcrowding and make better homes for residents.
12. A new partnership with businesses to bring unused flats above shops back into use in town centre areas.

When I have time I might deconstruct this list – in the meantime expect your rent to shoot up if you are a council tenant.

It was good to see the Ealing Today website pick up my story from yesterday about how Ealing’s new Labour administration was seeking to undo the Tory’s housing plans, see here.

It is a shame that they lazily repeated Labour’s use of the “P” word. It seems a strange privatisation where council houses stay in council ownership but their management is passed to specialist, competing not-for-profit organisations who know about housing. Labour’s genius solution is to hire a new army of Town Hall bureaucrats who will have to set up a new organisation from scratch – an expensive solution that will deliver poor results. Ealing Homes is hardly a good precedent.

One of the things I am proudest of doing at Ealing is ensuring that we outsourced the council’s CEO (traffic wardens in old money). This was not out of ideology. It was simply a case of letting a company that is good at the job do the job and reaping the benefits.

In the housing case it was not as if we were even looking at a private sector solution. This is Labour’s first big mistake. One of many I fear. They have only been in power four days. Think how many cock ups they will make in four years.

Labour have moved swiftly today to demonstrate that they will be ideological, they will prefer service deliverers over service users and that the Council’s costs will soar out of control. Only yesterday I made 10 predictions for Ealing under Labour – number 5 has gone a long way to coming true already:

Council house tenants will do worst

Council house tenants will see rents rise sharply and they will see estate regeneration schemes pushed into the future as Labour prevaricate. Maintenance will get worse as Labour again favour the deliverers of service rather than the end users.

Purely in order to grandstand Labour has called an extraordinary council meeting to discuss one motion alone. It reads:

This Council resolves that with immediate effect its support for privatising the Management Contract of Ealing Homes is removed. The Council mandates officers to immediately draw up proposals to return Ealing Homes to direct management by the Council.

Apart from the mangled language this statement is nonsense. If you look back at the papers the Conservative administration aimed to wind up the failed Ealing Homes at the end of March 2011 and to tender out housing management contracts for three large areas to specialist housing organisations. Under the Tory scheme tenants and leaseholders would have been able to swap between providers creating a market which would have kept the suppliers honest.

The Labour solution is to bring the whole thing in house. This one move alone will increase council tax for all residents by 2% or lead to a massive increase in council house rents and service charges. Tenants and leaseholders will have to deal with town hall bureaucrats who have no incentive to give them a good, inexpensive service.

Labour’s use of the language of privatisation featured in their mendacious election leaflets. The Tory plan was no such thing. Ownership of the housing stock would not have changed – it never did under the Ealing Homes (ALMO) arrangement.

The funniest thing is that all the bidders for these contracts have been not-for-profits. There is no end to the amount of your cash that Labour will squander to keep themselves pure. Be afraid.

The full agenda is here.

If you want to research the issue the Tory plans are here, here and here.

Here are ten predictions for Ealing under Labour over the next four years:

1. Ealing’s streets will get visibly dirtier

   Even with a Tory council that prioritised cleaning the biggest source of mess in our borough was the refuse and recycling workforce who are disinclined to clean up after themselves as they go. Labour will find it hard to cut the cleaning budget. They might try to take out the monitoring system introduced by the Tories. Their main failing will be that they fail to drive the contractor and its workforce to keep up to the mark. We will have dirtier streets without any significant savings.

2. Recycling will go backwards

   Under the Tories the borough’s residents doubled the recycling rate from 19% to 38%. Labour will have trouble even maintaining that achievement. Recycling costs money and this is an area where Labour will try to save money. The only way to make progress on recycling is to work on participation rates. This will require very expensive teams of people going from door-to-door. Labour will not be able to afford this additional cost.

3. The vulnerable will suffer

   Labour will speak the language of care whilst prioritising the needs of the “system” above the needs of the end users. Care costs will increase but users will get a worse experience.

4. The capital budget will get spent on too much rubbish

   Labour will probably not be able to change the schools elements even if they wanted to but the £5 million for Gunnersbury Park will be toast and the road spending will disappear again. Somehow they will manage to still spend up on the capital account but it will be for stuff you didn’t know you wanted such as the £50 million Response programme which included the purchase of the freehold interest in Perceval House.

5. Council house tenants will do worst

   Council house tenants will see rents rise sharply and they will see estate regeneration schemes pushed into the future as Labour prevaricate. Maintenance will get worse as Labour again favour the deliverers of service rather than the end users.

6. Council tax will rise by about 30%

   Labour has committed not to raise council tax next year. They will achieve this but will hate making the hard decisions required to deliver it. The next year the council tax will rise by 15% as Labour calculate that this in the only year that can get away with it. In the third year it will rise by a “reasonable” 7% and the same in the fourth year.

7. There will be no progress in Acton

   Acton Town Hall will effectively be mothballed. Acton Baths will continue its genteel decline. The library will get tarted up superficially but actual usage will decline.

8. The north of the borough will be neglected

   Over time the Northolt Leisure Centre and Good for Greenford will come to be seen as a flash in the pan. The council’s focus will return to Acton and Southall.

9. Revenue from parking will double

   The number of parking tickets issued will increase by half again. Under the Tories the number of tickets issued in Ealing was cut by about a third. All parking permits and car park charges will rise steeply. As an experiment all of Ealing’s Tory wards will be turned over to CPZs with the facility for anyone to pay a large charge to park. The Hammersmith & Fulham solution. The “experiment” will not be rolled out in Acton and Southall. Unfortunately costs will more than double so residents will pay more but their council tax will still go up by 30%.

10. The ward forums will be scrapped

    They will be replaced by area committees. The Labour councillors are typically not happy having to deal directly with residents as the ward forums require them to do. They will rush back to the relative safety of area committees. Instead of our senior officers doing their day jobs they will get distracted with writing reports and taking minutes for area committees. Southall’s Labour councillors will push for this from day one and they will get their beloved Southall Area Committee before too long. The Southall councillors have never shone in council meetings and the Southall Area Committee gave them a chance to preen and bicker in front of a home crowd.

I have spent a large part of the last week canvassing in Northfield, Elthorne and Walpole wards. On the whole it has been a fun although my feet are tired. The worst experience you have on the doorstep is people who are off somewhere or on the phone and they wave you away dismissively. It is not the biggest rejection you have to deal with in life so no problems.

Most people are happy to talk and sometimes you get the line about how no-one ever calls here. In many roads we are now calling for the second time. With people leading such busy lives I guess there are some people we will never see. A minority won’t talk to you because you are a Tory but even most non-Tories like to see you.

It is really hard to find anyone who will say that the council is doing a bad job. Most people when asked if there are any problems with local services simply say no. One complaint that comes through though is rubbish and recycling collectors dropping things and chucking containers back at people. It is something that we are all too well aware of and it is the subject of many conversations with the contractor. One thing all residents can do is to call 020 8825 6000 and report such problems so that we have good evidence to nail the contractor with. One or two people near to Elthorne Park are unhappy with our skate park proposals – even some of these can be talked around.

I often ask people who tell me that they are not Tory voters if they won’t even vote for the council. I then usually point out the new road surface, new street lights and/or new street trees on their street and also remind them that council tax has been frozen for two years. I have had an awful lot of people tell me that they might split their vote as a result.

Some people though resist. I had one Labour bloke tell me that running the council was easy so he was unimpressed with the council’s performance. I wonder what other impossible things he has to make himself believe to get through his day. One ex-Labour councillor who lives in Northfield told me that although she couldn’t vote for me as she was a Labour party member “… you are doing a good job”. I met a Labour voter from Tony Blair’s old constituency of Sedgefield who was impressed by the council.

On the whole though very few people who won’t say they are voting Tory are prepared to say who they will vote for. There are very few people who will tell you proudly they are voting Labour or LibDem. I did get one guy who simply said “Nick Clegg” as if that was a political version of “42”, the answer to everything. You might have thought from all of the media induced Clegg hype that I might have heard more of Clegg but I have only been talking to people who are actually on the electoral register and are entitled to vote. Could it be that the LibDem vote will vanish like morning mist next week? (Certainly Janet Daley in the Telegraph thinks so here.) All three of these wards are middle of the road places – 9 Labour councillors in 2006, 8 Tory ones since then. If you can’t sense the LibDem surge here where is it?

Most elections aren’t won by those who turn up to vote, they are lost by those who stay at home. I don’t see this one being very different.

Now the rain has stopped I am off out again. See you later maybe?

The LibDems are well known for being the most appalling liars in election leaflets.

I have not seen any LibDem leaflets in Northfield so I can’t comment on them here but I have been helping in Elthorne where I found this Elthorne Focus No. 10 April 2010.

As is fairly typical in LibDem leaflets they have a little box top right showing that they are in second place.

This picture is a lie pure and simple.

If you take it at face value it seems the picture conveys that the LibDems are closely behind Labour and that the Tories are trailing in their wake. Only the numbers tell different story.

The numbers are right and do reflect the Ealing Southall by-election in 2007. But human brains don’t read numbers and prioritise their understanding above the instant impression given by the picture.

A truthful picture is shown below created by me by putting the actual results into Excel and creating a chart. It shows that the Tories had a bad result but they were not that far behind the LibDems and that both parties have a big job to overhaul Labour.

But, note that this leaflet is more a local election leaflet than it is a parliamentary one. A more honest leaflet would refer to the last local election results where two Tory councillors and one Labour one were elected and the LibDems came third. Not a distant third in what was a three-way marginal ward in 2006 – you could even argue that if the Greens put up three candidates it would have been a four-way marginal ward potentially. An honest picture created from the 2006 results is shown below.

I don’t think it really helps politicians if they call each other liars but the LibDems claim to be something new and their leader is positioning himself as honest but his party really is not. If you don’t think these images demonstrate a clear case of lying what would you call it?

After four years of good Tory government in Ealing I would expect to see Elthorne become even more entrenched as a Tory ward on May 6th.

This issue has been highlighted a number of times by other people, indeed only today in Wales here.