Monday 19 August 2013

Making sure unemployed workers are no 'push over' or 'sanctions fodder'

Spreading the word
Guest blog by Alan Wheatley of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group

One of our statements/slogans is 'Benefiting Brent & Camden & Beyond'. The major focus in our weekly business meetings is casework. It's a great 'crowd gatherer' to the point that our meetings attract as many as 12 on a regular basis, with some coming from as far away as Hackney, Wandsworth and Bromley though our core is predominantly from the boroughs of Brent and Camden. We are also very ethnically diverse, with African-Caribbean, Indian/White British mixed race, Serbian and Greek representation. We are also well-balanced by gender, and while most are disabled we also have people not applying for disability benefits. In more of an andragogy  LINK of the oppressed than a pedagogy LINK, our casework sessions reflect the fact that we've 'all been there' and can pool our knowledge and expertise in response to what is thrown at us by increasingly oppressive jobcentre workers and privatised contractors.

ARE THEY TAKING THE PISS OR TRYING TO DRAW BLOOD?

 The armoury of tactics and strategies that jobcentre and privatised contractor staff throw at JSA, Work Programme and ex-Work Programme clients to make them sanctions fodder include the entrapment of getting them to fill in their personal details and signature on forms before whatever they are supposed to be agreeing to has been written yet, or the staff member obscuring everything but the signature space. Yet another ploy that is becoming more and more the norm for people who have been parked on the Work Programme for a year is to be told to apply for as many as 14 jobs per week and to sign on at the jobcentre not just fortnightly but five days a week!

How many hours per week would a quality processing of one job application per week take? Multiply that by even 7 and add the practicalities of signing on five days per week and would you not be working more than a 48 hour EU Working Time Directive week? And people re-registering at the jobcentre after being 'parked' on the Work Programme for a year are also told to show their last six months bank statements.(1)

Yet this is abuse that follows on from a year of neglect. Consider the bargaining power issues in the fact that the claimant has no real bargaining power and their 'client adviser' at the Work Programme company can have as many as 250 people on their caseload.(2) But a counter-response that the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group is finding increasingly effective is to make sure that a person going for, say, a re-registration interview at the jobcentre does not go alone. We reckon that that kind of 'first aid' makes whatever follow-up tribunal action less taxing or even unnecessary. The oppressor — who has probably been threatened with being sanctioned themselves if they do not meet targets — realises that the person in front of them is not 'a push over'.(3)

Notes:
(1) See reference to 'payment-by-results' at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_Programme_%28United_Kingdom
 (2) http://indusdelta.co.uk/discussion/work_programme_case_loads/6453
(3) Some abusers arguably do not need to be threatened with sanctions to collude in the sanctioning of benefit claimants. Perhaps what Transline are more concerned about in the case of their worker Kelly Stone is that she broke 'commercial confidentiality' rather than that she delighted in a sense of the negative influence she could have on others' lives? http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/recruitment-worker-kelly-stone-suspended-2162766

Brent Town Hall plaques to be replicated for Civic Centre gardens

In an earlier posting LINK I asked about the future of the memorial plaques and trees currently standing in the gardens outside Brent Town Hall. They include memorials to post-war European Peace, Hiroshima and the abolition of the Slave Trade.

The Town Hall has now been fully vacated on the move to the Civic Centre and is closed to the public.

The Brent Parks Department have now told me the welcome news that the plaques will be replicated and placed within the memorial area of the Civic Centre gardens.

'Don't believe you can't make a difference' Lucas tells Balcombe protesters


Sunday 18 August 2013

The true cost of Michaela's failures in South London

The DfE spent £168,000 on the Michaela Free School before its move to Wembley and after it had failed to set up first in Lambeth and then in Wandsworth.  It has taken the DfE 18 months to answer the Anti Academies Alliance's Freedom of Information request.

The following is an extract from the DfE letter:
The Michaela Community School free school trust announced its decision to defer opening of the school on 24 February 2012. Prior to this decision, the school was aiming to open in South London. The Department for Education’s expenditure on the Michaela Community School project up to that point was £168,339.64. Michaela Community School is now on course to open in Brent in September 2014. Expenditure up to February 2012 includes much work that has on-going utility to the project. This includes the development of marketing and consultation materials which could be used as the basis for their current marketing and consultation in Brent as well as educational and staffing plans, governance arrangements, policies and procedures and other material which can be used by the school when it opens in Brent. It would be therefore be unreasonable to say that this money had been wasted.
I think I would take issue with that last sentence. No wonder Michaela has such glossy brochures to distribute as well as that huge poster they were forced to take down because they didn't have planning permission.  It would be interesting to know how much money they have had since  24th February 2012, including of course the cost of purchase of the Wembley Park building and its refurbishment (no sign of that happening by the way).

'You can go to hell!!!' Brent councillor tells correspondent

This is a fuller version of the story first published under this heading.

A seemingly innocuous request to a local councillor last week escalated quickly into an exchange where the councillor told his correspondent to 'Go to hell!!!'

The correspondence begun thus:

 Dear Labour councillors

Are statutory declarations and Assured Shorthold Tenancy agreements no longer considered legal documents? 



This is the final stages of the correspondence:
CC: cllr.roxanne.mashari@brent.gov.uk; cllr.harbhajan.singh@brent.gov.uk
From: dhirajkataria@hotmail.co.uk
Subject: Re: 67 Church Lane, London, NW9 8ED
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 20:39:58 +0100
To: rendallmallakee@hotmail.com


I am not prepared to answer any question from you. You can go to hell!!!
Cllr Dhiraj Kataria

Welsh Harp councillor

On 17 Aug 2013, at 20:35, "Rendall Mallakee" <rendallmallakee@hotmail.com> wrote:
 
Your not in favour of "Illegal" residential structures in gardens? Firstly, If it were "illegal" it would be a criminal offence, and its not. The criminal offence is breaching the enforcement notice if one is issued within 4 years. Imagine if Brent Council charged council tax on such buildings your not in favour of that contributed to your "basic" wage. http://www.kilburntimes.co.uk/news/brent_has_collected_more_than_100_000_in_council_tax_from_illegal_beds_in_sheds_1_1978139 

I'm concerned you don't understand planning legislation, yet you're on the planning committee that pockets you an extra £2,113 on top of your "basic" £7,947 wage. http://www.kilburntimes.co.uk/news/councillors_in_brent_paid_the_lowest_basic_allowance_in_london_1_1501249 

Anyway, back to the question you keep avoiding, that I still require answering. 

Please confirm statutory declarations and Assured Shorthold Tenancy agreements are no longer considered legal documents by Brent Council. If you don't know, just say you don't know. Or maybe, if you're interested in finding out, you could contact the planning department - your time would be better spent by asking the Fiona Ledden in the legal department.
I understand it must be annoying for you when a Brent resident knows a little and can't be bullied into going away. Close more libraries so people like me can't read planning books.  
Rendall Mallakee said:
 I'm not the applicant, I was just questioning the incompetence of Brent planners not knowing what a legal document was. The debate then spilled over when Cllr Dhiraj Kataria (who sits on the planning committee) gave his "personal" view on a planning matter, rather than approach it from a planning point of view. Makes me question how they think when it comes to the Willesden library, the Queensbury etc. Planning merits or personal opinion. 

Brent residents should be able to question Brent councillors without being told to go to hell.
 In response Cllr Kataria said:
I answered several emails  from  Rendall about his problem via email.  I had adequately answered his question that legal documentation submitted to the Council in support of his application should be something which can be verified independently. He was clearly not satisfied with this answer and pursued with more emails. 

When he made his rather rude comment that I did not understand Planning laws, I felt that he was going too far. The fact of the matter is that he has put in a residential unit in his garden. Normally, this is against the Planning law. The fact that his breach of the law was not discovered for four years, he is now seeking to exploit it by seeking a Certificate of Lawfulness, which the Council has already dealt with by rejecting his application.
There is clearly a discrepancy here in that Cllr Kataria thinks Rendall Mallakee is responsible for the building at 67 Church Lane and Mallakee says he is not the applicant. He does not appear on the 2009 electoral register at that address but I cannot find him anywhere else in the borough either.

When I put this to Cllr Kataria he said:
I have not met him and I am not sure of his identity. I dealt with his enquiry by responding to him three times .As a councillor, when people write to me attaching Council reply, I have to take them at face value. Councillors get lots of email and have to take these in good faith.
Responding to a complaint from Mallakee about being told to 'Go to Hell!!!', Cllr Roxanne Mashari, also a Welsh Harp Labour Councillor, wrote:
Unfortunately I do not have control over what Mr Kataria says and does, I can only answer for my own conduct.

I have reported Mr Kataria's comments to our leader and chief whip for investigation.

I will await the response from our officers on your query but please do not hesitate to contact me should you wish to discuss this or any other matter in more detail.
Earlier Brent Council leader Muhammed Butt had also replied to Rendall Mallakee:

Dear Rendell
Thank you for bring this matter to my attention. 

I am on leave at the moment but will be asking the officers to explain the case to myself and will respond to your points about statutory declarations and short hold tenancy agreements. 

I sincerely apologise that you feel that one my Councillors conduct was not up to expectation. 

Please do not hesitate to contact me for anything else. 

Kind regards

Muhammed 

COPLAND’S IMPROVED A LEVEL RESULTS: A LESSON FOR GOVE AND OFSTED?

Guest post by Mistleflower

By my reckoning, the successful Copland  6th form students who  achieved creditable and  ‘significantly improved’  results at A level this year  enjoyed their 7 years of secondary  education presided over by managements made up of :  first,  a bunch of (alleged) crooks led by a man knighted for ‘service to education’; second, a local Head brought on for a few weeks when the alleged malfeasors had suddenly to be substituted; third,  another  local Head on temporary loan for a season; and, finally,  a longer-lasting Leadership team ultimately deemed ‘Inadequate’ by Ofsted and put on a free transfer after failing to restore the school to its former glory after a difficult 3 seasons in the lower leagues. (The current management duo were drafted in too late to have had any influence on the A level results in question).  Despite all this disruption and disturbance, these Copland 6th formers seem to have flourished in their time at the school.
 Could it be that  Michael Gove, ever on the lookout for a new wheeze and a cheap headline,  will see Copland’s  improved A level results  after the school’s  unusual management journey as a potentially winning formula which he will announce at the Tory party conference  is soon to be rolled out in (state) schools across the country?  Could it be that LA  Directors of Education are  at this very moment being urged by DfE clones  to headhunt gangs of  fraudsters to help begin the ‘turning round’ of ‘failing schools’?  Have all Ofsted inspectors been ordered to produce the names of 10 ‘Inadequate’ Leaders  by noon on September 1 or face being declared ‘Inadequate’ themselves to their eternal shame and that of their children, Yea Even Unto the Tenth Generation?  Are teams of these newly-rehabilitated ‘Super-Inadequate ’ Leaders to be parachuted in to ‘failing’ schools across the nation, to begin the process  of driving up their A level results in time for the next election but one? Could it be that South Brent will soon be held up as an example of  educational ‘good practice’ in the same way that Gove has previously cited as relevant exemplars the educational systems of  Singapore, Finland, Guam,  Kyrgistan,  Vanuatu,  North Korea and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in the days of Arthur Grimble (ask your grandad) ?
Or…………. might it just be, in fact, that these successful  Copland A level students worked pretty damn well over a period of 7 years in a school  that had been robbed blind by corruption, that was physically falling to bits, that was badmouthed by their friends and by some parts of the press (though nobly supported by others),  that was betrayed by its local authority, that was woefully mishandled by incoming ‘Leaders’ who seemed to have been briefed that the same staff who, on their own, had lanced the boil, were not really themselves  the victims of historic criminality  but were, in fact, the problem?
And could it be that these staff carried on teaching these students pretty well  over these same 7 years, trying not to be too distracted by having to spend time doing stuff the governors, the local authority or the fraud squad should have been doing   (detection, financial auditing, evidence gathering , taking witness statements,   accusation, publicising, and then union  action endangering their own livelihoods and career futures)  in order to bring to an end the haemorrhaging of millions of pounds of Brent taxpayers’ money?
 Could it be that these teachers continued teaching these students  by  using the same guiding  principles which had brought them into teaching in the first place: a respect for learning,  an affection for their students and a belief in the potential that learning has to change their students’ lives?   Could it be that they gave only weary lip-service to the  ‘Strategies for Delivering a  Good to Outstanding Lesson’  spouted at them on  INSET days by various  Leaders,  most of  whom were themselves demonstrably  incapable of producing anything approaching  the thing which they seemed to imagine  their status in the management hierarchy  gave them the authority to pontificate on?
Might we not ultimately conclude, therefore,  that the most important thing in any school has nothing to do with ‘Leadership’ and everything to do with the organic relationship between teachers and students. That the mantra taught in Leadership School ,  ‘I Am Passionate About Making a Difference ‘,  was never more than  a tired formulation , convenient for contestants on The Apprentice and  those who lack the imagination to invent their own platitudes, but one which barely conceals the barely-hidden fear of all Leaders  that maybe ‘Leadership’, in the sense that it is encountered in many of our schools, ie separate from and ‘above’ the organic teaching relationship which  is the essence of effective education , is no more than a self-serving dead end;  that most ‘Leadership’  ultimately doesn’t make  much difference at all to anything?  And might we not hope that  at least a few of the more talented individuals who have gone down the Leadership road might now see the error of their ways and  find their way back into respectable employment: as teachers?
Well done to those Copland students. You did a great job in exceptionally difficult circumstances.
Well done also to those Copland  teachers.       And, if you’ve still got a job, keep up the good work.

Brent project seeks to reduce fuel poverty and carbon emissions

The Brent Campaign Against Climate Change, of which I am chair, has had preliminary discussions with Cllr Roxanne Mashari, lead member for the Environment, on the possibility of setting up a Low Carbon Zone in the borough after our Secretary, Ken Montague, made a presentation to the Brent Executive.

That is selecting an area where a concerted programme of measures aimed at reducing energy consumption through structural changes (roof and wall insulation, double glazing, micro-generation) and educational initiatives. It would include housing, businesses, schools and public buildings in the area. The LCZ would serve as an exemplar, that after valuation could be rolled out across the borough in due course.

We pointed out that  money was available through the ECO (Energy Company Obligation) which is designed to tackle fuel poverty, affordable warmth and carbon emissions at zero cost to those in highest need.

I therefore welcome a report that goes before Monday's Executive which sets out a tender process to find a project partner to deliver an ECO programme in Brent. LINK

The report sets out the project aims:
The project’s key objectives are to:-
      • Improve the energy efficiency of properties and reduce energy consumption
      • Reduce carbon emissions,
      • Reduce consumer energy costs and alleviate fuel poverty; and,
      • Safeguard and create employment opportunities.
As the project’s primary requirement is to deliver the required improvements to domestic properties, the delivery partner will be required to treat domestic properties as the service priority, i.e. marketing its services, facilitating customers, explaining and securing the sign-up and installation of appropriate energy efficiency improvements across the Borough. 
It is envisaged that a significant portion of the market and therefore a key target for the project will be ‘hard to treat’ domestic properties i.e. those that cannot accommodate cost-effective measures and may therefore have missed out on previous energy improvements. These properties will have the potential to access ECO funding. Given the priority to be attributed to domestic interventions over non-domestic the balance of the finance, scope and value of the opportunity will favour the former. It is likely that any scheme will include the HRA stock as a priority but it should be stressed that fuel poverty and energy efficiency issues affect the growing private sector and there is an expectation that any scheme will seek to address these issues. 
Furthermore, in order to achieve long term investment in the Borough’s supply chain and employment opportunities, some form of confidence in the longevity of this market locally is required. Consequently a 5 year contract (with up to a two year extension if necessary) is sought, with a break clause included at the end of the first phase of ECO to safeguard against any major changes in legislation/obligations.
The report recognises, as with the LCZ, that an area by area approach may be beneficial:

The ECO is measured in terms of meeting carbon reduction targets; different types of energy efficiency works therefore attract different levels of funding. In addition, the situation of the existing tenant or homeowner can influence the level of funding given. A commercial partner may be likely to seek to meet its ECO obligations in the cheapest and most efficient way, for example by carrying out work on an estate or area basis to achieve economies of scale. Any commercial imperative will need to be balanced against the council’s own priorities in terms of the greatest benefit to low income households. 

There will be occasions whereby an area by area approach is the most appropriate and could offer wider regeneration opportunities and it is likely that stock within the HRA will fit this model. The position may be complicated by the presence of leasehold homes within a block - for example, if in a low- rise block of flats, external ECO funding was available to cover all of the social housing properties but within the block, 5% of flats were privately owned and considered ‘able to pay’. The position of leaseholders varies according to the terms of the lease: in some cases, the council is entitled to re-charge for improvements while in others this option may not be available. Since the expenditure in this case is not incurred by the council, it is envisaged that any re-charge would be waived. Additional staff resources may also be required to support the project and contract manage the partner. The specification will include an expectation that any requirement for this will be funded by the partner. Any other costs, which will include officer time, will be met from existing budgets.  

The Council has an existing long-standing SLA arrangement in place with ‘Energy Solutions’ and their role in this project in terms of stock analysis, encouraging take up and identifying our most vulnerable residents who require assistance needs to be formalised. 

Controversial Veolia Public Realm decision to be made at October Executive

Tomorrow the petition against Veolia being given the £250m plus Brent Public Realm contract will be presented to the Executive at the Civic Centre. The Bin Veolia campaign will be given 5 minutes to speak to the petition at the beginning of the meeting and there will be a demonstration of supporters outside the Civic Centre from 6.30pm.

Overnight the Council released  information that the Executive will make their decision at their October 14th meeting:
ITEM
To award the contract for public realm services including waste, recycling, street cleaning, winter gritting and grounds maintenance for Brent Council land and Brent Housing Partnership parks and open spaces and approve any consequential recommendations.
The campaign for Veolia's exclusion is based on the claim that their activities in the Occupied Territories of Palestine provide infrastructural support for the illegal settlements and that this amounts to 'grave misconduct'.

In June an Israeli court fined TMM Integrated Recycling Industries, owned by Veolia, NIS 1.5m for burying waste after finding inconsistencies between the company's reports on the amount of waste it had handled - and for which it had to pay a fee - and the actual amounts disposed of.

Th judge said it was amazing how the company was able to transform large qualities of waste into 'sorting remnants' in a single day without any additional manpower, overtime hours or additional shifts - and amazingly it happened as soon as the landfill fee was  instituted.
Source: Haaretz 13.6.13

The Executive report on the contract will not contain full information: LINK
The report will contain an appendix wih confidential information as specified in Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972, namely: information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (including the authority holding the information); confidential information in respect of which a claim to legal professional privilege could be maintained in legal proceedings.

Brent Council has been playing cat and mouse with Brent and Harrow Palestine Solidarity Campaign over legal issues to do with the procurement process. The withholding of information by the Council has led some experienced legal advisers to suggest that there could be grounds for a Judicial Review in the future.

The exchanges over an FOI request can be found HERE