GLA Labour backs Green call for public debate on Proportional Representation

Housing for People NOT Profit: Greens at MIPIM Protest Today

There were plenty of people from Brent at the developers' MIPIM jamboree at Olympia  today, where deals are hatchd between councils and developers resulting in social cleansing on an epic scale.

Some Labour councils boycotted the fair and others, such as Hammermsith and Fulham, where a stall had been booked by the previous adminstration, used it to make the case for council housing.

Andy Donald from Brent usually takes part, and in fact has been feted by MIPIM.

This morning Gaynor Lloyd from Brent was one of those who spotted Boris Johnson slipping into the Exhibitions.  She emailed me to say

I got to shout at Boris! Saw him scuttling in at the back, being interviewed - appropriately - in a back passage and as he retreated with the odd minders I broke the habits of a lifetime. I shouted "Why didn't you go in at the front?" He looked a lot less puffed up than normal...

Protest Against MIPIM: Housing for People Not For Profit

Andy Donald, Brent's Director of Regeneration and Major projects, has been a delegate to MIPIM at its Cannes meetings where he shared his thinking about development and regeneration - we can see the results of that thinking in Brent today. LINK

This year MIPIM  is coming to London.

The description under this videa reads:

The world’s largest property fair, known as MIPIM, is coming to London for the first time in its 25-year history. Hundreds of property developers, financiers and politicians will be welcomed by the Mayor of London when they converge on Olympia to do deals that allow them to profit from our land and our neighbourhoods.

This is creating unaffordable, insecure housing and contributing to the corporate takeover of our community space and public services. It means big profits for the richest 1% whilst destroying our communities and keeping millions in poverty.

We don't need more luxury housing, office blocks and shopping centres. We don't want our neighbourhoods to be gentrified and entire communities evicted. We want quality genuinely affordable housing and public services for all.

Join affected communities, the Radical Housing Network, the European Action Coalition for the
Right to Housing and the City, trade unions, tenants groups and many others to say ‘Our communities are not for sale!’

London Mayor Boris Johnson will be giving an opening address welcoming the property developers and financiers who have come to profit from our communities.

Green Party Assembly Member for London, Darren Johnson, will be attending the demonstration at 9am.

#BlockBoris

Wednesday 15 October, 9am

Meet outside Kensington Olympia tube, Olympia Way, W14 0NE

London Assembly backs Generation Rent manifesto

The world is their Oyster - publicity for  MIPIM

From Generation Rent LINK

London Assembly members voted this afternoon to back Generation Rent's Manifesto. This is a fantastic endorsement of the work we are doing from politicians in the heart of the country's housing crisis.

Two million people - a quarter of the London population - rents from a private landlord, and the unaffordability, poor conditions and insecurity of tenure are all high on the agenda. A poll from the Association of Residential Letting Agents today said that 43% of London's renters have had reservations about their landlord or letting agent on day one of their tenancy.

Darren Johnson AM, Green Party chairman of the housing committee, proposed the motion, which was seconded by Labour's Tom Copley AM, and passed after a debate in City Hall (available on this link).

“This Assembly welcomes the 'Renters manifesto' published by Generation Rent, which would bring considerable improvements to the lives of one in four households in London living in the private rented sector.

“The Assembly reaffirms its support for a number of Generation Rent's recommendations, which the Assembly put forward in its 'Rent reform' report in June 2013, including policies to stabilise rents, introduce longer tenancies and end retaliatory evictions.

“This Assembly supports further measures proposed by Generation Rent, including:

• longer notice periods for tenants who have lived in a home for a number of years
• banning letting agent fees
• closing loopholes on deposit protection schemes
• increasing the Rent a Room tax allowance
• scaling up the Community Land Trust model to create a large, secondary housing market affordable to Londoners

This Assembly also notes with regret the Mayor’s continued involvement with international property fairs such as MIPIM. His support for rich investors to build expensive flats for rich owners and landlords, who in turn let homes on insecure contracts in a dysfunctional rental market, is not providing for the needs of ordinary Londoners.

This Assembly therefore calls on the Mayor to set out his response to the 'Renters manifesto', to consider piloting some of the recommendations in his Housing Zones, and to require its implementation in any deals made at MIPIM.”

We'll be looking forward to Boris Johnson's response. 

Comment from Wembley Matters.  The  next four day MIPIM will be held in Cannes in March and costs 1490 Euros for each delegate plus accommodation. Brent's Director of Regeneration and Major Projects, Andy Donald, has been an attender in the past. LINK

Pickles puts shock 'Stop Notice' on Brent Cross development

The Coalition for a Sustainable Brent Cross Cricklewood development  is celebrating the shock news that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, has issued an Article 25 so-called “stop notice” preventing Barnet council from granting  planning permission, entering into any agreement or passing any resolution that could influence the site’s planning status without ministerial authorisation.

Coalition co-ordinator Lia Colacicco said:

I had to pinch myself when I saw the email.   Since 2010 the presumption has been to pass everything, so this was a welcome surprise. Many of us wrote to Eric Pickles asking him to call in BXC for a public inquiry given its impact for miles around– and our MP Sarah Teather and Muhammed Butt, Leader of Brent Council, also wrote regarding the disbenefits to Brent which have been ignored. We mentioned irregularities in the process, public transport, TfL’s objections, the loss of Cricklewood’s only green space and other green spaces in the wider area, and the selective use of transport assessments.  But above all the impact on the surrounding  areas, particularly the 29,000 extra cars a day.

We deplore the loss of the promised street layout in this new 'town centre', and its last-minute replacement by a bog-standard indoor shopping centre. We also are horrified by the 'secret' new basement voids, that can be quietly turned over to yet another three layers of car parking.  

We have been calling this a dinosaur development because it was conceived in the 1990s - and it shows. There is nothing exciting, visionary or futuristic about it, only basic sustainability measures – just the highest density most profitable option.   North Londoners deserve something exceptional. This is a huge victory for us and our dream of a public inquiry is one step closer.

The group are now hoping that the Secretary of State will reject the recent amendments and call a Public Inquiry. The group is at pains to point out that they are pro regeneration, and pro new homes but against the recent amendments and the missed opportunity to spend some of the £200m planning gain money on better public transport, including possibly light-rail (trams or DLR) for the area.

 The Campaigners

The “Coalition for a Sustainable Brent Cross Cricklewood Plan” comprises twelve residents’ associations plus the Federation of Residents’ Associations in Barnet (representing the 12 largest residents’ associations in Barnet), Brent Cyclists, the North West London Light Railway (NWLLR) group, Brent Friends of the Earth (FoE), Barnet & Enfield FoE, Camden FoE, Sarah Teather (MP for Brent Central), Dawn Butler, (former MP for Brent South), Labour and LibDem Councillors from Brent and Camden, Navin Shah (London Assembly Member for Brent and Harrow), Darren Johnson (London Assembly Member), Jean Lambert (London MEP), Brent Green Party, Barnet Green Party, Alexis Rowell, (former Chair of Camden Sustainability Taskforce), Brent and Barnet Trades Union Councils, and Bestway Group. Plus several councillors.

The Coalition web site is at: http://www.brentcrosscoalition.blogspot.com/

Boris's Housing Horror: The Video

There was consternation when I revealed that the new flats at Willesen Green Library were being marketed in Singapore with the unique selling point implying that they contain no riffraff because there were no affordable homes or key workers on site.

The redevelopment at West Hendon on the Welsh Harp includes tower blocks of luxury flats clearly aimed at the international market rather than Londoners.

Darren Johnsons's report BELOW set out how this is part of the London Mayor's policy. The video puts the message over succinctly.  How many more Brent developments will be aimed at overseas investors or buy-to-let landlords?

Crumbs for Londoners - Darren Johnson on the Mayor's housing policy

The Mayor expects 80% of new housing to be in these 33 regeneration areas

 Darren Johnson, the Green Assembly Member,  has published a thoroughly researched report on the London Mayor's approach to the housing crisis and the construction of  luxury blocks, such as those at Willesden Green Library, which Boris Johnson  supports as part of the solution.  The full report is available HERE

The Willesden Green apartments are being advertised in Singapore with the selling point that they have no affordable housing or key workers on site. Yesterday it was revealed that flats in Stratford are being adverised in a similar way.

Darren Johnson writes:

It is much easier for the big developers behind these projects to get the finance from banks if they can sell lots of housing off-plan (before it is built). Investor landlords are quite happy to buy off-plan and have little difficulty in securing the cash or mortgage.By putting the money in up front they have, in the Mayor’s words,“helped bring forward housing development”. The Mayor estimates that one third of all buyers of new homes are from overseas, and that two thirds of all new homes are sold to investors

.

Whether it is a Londoner looking for a buy-to-let investment,a pension fund investing in new private rented housing,or an overseas investor exploiting the exchange rates, the Mayor is a champion of anything that gets housing built.

After looking at a series of case studies and examination of the evidence Johnson concludes:

National government policy has put local councillors, planning officers and residents in a difficult spot. They are constrained by a free market dogma that says we just need developers to build more homes, and that ignores the potential for other approaches.


The law of supply and demand works with things we consume. If the price of TVs is high, produce more TVs to meet demand and prices will fall. But private developers are very unlikely to meet the demand for housing. If the supply of TVs doesn’t increase and prices stay high then demand should fall off.


But when house prices rise people see an opportunity to make money so demand can keep rising, especially if investors from around the world join the feast.


The Government is encouraging buy-to-let mortgages with tax breaks; helping people take out unaffordable mortgages with Help to Buy; encouraging overseas investors to buy new homes off plan.


The Mayor supports these policies because he says they increase supply, but of course they are also increasing demand.In fact, they are probably more successful at increasing demand than they are at increasing supply, so they are actually making the problem worse.


Councils and residents can’t do very much about this.


But the Mayor of London is in a unique position to advocate bold changes to housing policy. He has recently argued that stamp duty revenue in London should be devolved to City Hall, giving him a large budget for affordable housing.


He could go further and call for a housing policy that:


1. constrains demand by putting controls or extra taxes on overseas investors and second home owners, or by putting a tax on all land values to dampen speculation and stop developers sitting on large, unused land banks
2. gives councils, housing associations and co-operatives the money and powers to build affordable homes that stay affordable forever whatever the market is doing, instead of expecting the private market to build them
3. puts ordinary people in a better position to weather the crisis while it is tackled, for example with continental-style stabilising rent controls and protections for private tenants, ideas backed by the majority of the Assembly in its own reviews of housing and its majority support for the Let Down campaign

Comments can be sent to: darren.johnson@london.gov.uk or the researcher tom.chance@london.gov.uk

Two more secondary free schools in Brent approved by Gove

Michael Gove today approved two secondary free schools to open in Brent in September 2014.  This is in addition to Michaela Academy which was approved in the last wave.

The Gateway Academy will be in the Wembley Central area, possibly in Madison House in London Road, off Wembley High Road. This is a close to Copland High School which is going through a difficult period at the moment and thought likely to be subjected to a forced academy. My previous posting on Gateway can be found HERE

The rather meagre details about the new school can be found HERE

Gladstone School does not yet appear to have found premises in the Gladstone Park/Cricklewood area. Crest Boys and Crest Girls Academies presently serve that community. The sponsors answered my questions about the proposed free school HERE

Details can be found on the school's website HERE 

Both sets of proposers are thought to have been in talks with Brent Council officers. The issue of free schools has been controversial within Brent Labour Party and concern about it is said to have been a factor in Cllr Michael Pavey replacing Mary Arnold as lead member for children and families in the recent Executive elections.

 Meanwhile the Mayor of London has admitted that he supports the funding of free schools even in areas where there is “not necessarily a shortage of places”. London Councils are lobbying the Government for funding to cope with the estimated 118,000 extra school places in London by 2014/15.

Darren Johnson, Green Assembly Member for London said:

We will have new schools funded in areas of London which don’t need them and no new schools built in areas of high demand. The policy is irrational and based upon the principle of the parents who shout loudest getting their own way. With a dire shortage of funds for new schools, the Mayor is effectively saying that a new free school has priority over a child in another part of London who has no school.

The Mayor can’t say that he is simply following Government policy on this, as his deputy Mayor for culture also admitted that properties belonging to the fire or police authorities may be sold to free schools at ‘red book’ prices, rather than through competitive tendering. The looming shortfall of 118,000 school places in the capital would be far better addressed through the Mayor's co-operation with local authorities in a properly planned programme of school building rather than the hit and miss approach of Free Schools.

 

Boris Johnson admits new free schools may not be in areas of school places shortage

Boris Johnson confirmed at Mayor's Question Time today that free schools he is backing in London may not be in areas of school places shortage. At present the DfE requires that any new school should be an academy or free school. This means that where sponsors do not come forward such areas will be left without a new school and the money will go instead to build schools areas where there are sufficient places or even a surplus. Instead LAs will be forced to expand existing schools often on unsuitable sites and cutting back on children's play space and creating 'super-size' primaries.

Yet more evidence of government money being spent on Gove and Johnson's ideological projects while depriving local communities of much needed resources.

Question from Darren Johnson (Green AM)

What steps are you taking to ensure that public funding for new schools is directed towards areas of London where there is the largest anticipated shortfall in school places?

Answer by Boris Johnson (Mayor)

The GLA currently runs a pan London school roll projections service for boroughs. I will explore how we can expand this to cover all boroughs, and how we can work more effectively to develop an improved, strategic picture of school places in the capital. I will also support the creation of new free schools where there is strong parental demand though not necessarily a shortage of places.

Green Assembly Member backs parents battling against forced academy conversion

Darren Johnson, Green Assembly Member for the whole of London has issued a statement supporting  parent groups in London campaigning against their schools being forcibly converted into academies. He said:

Forcing schools to become academies is deeply wrong on every level, particularly when it flies in the face of what the majority of local parents want. That is why I am giving my full support to the Save Gladstone Park,  Save Roke  and Thomas Gamuel Primary school campaigners in their battle to keep their schools as local authority-run schools,  properly accountable to local people.

Darren Johnson renew calls for controls as rents soar

Darren Johnson Green Assembly Member for London, has renewed his call for rent controls and more security as official statistics  show that the median private rent in London rose 5% in the year to September 2012, compared to inflation (RPI) which was at 2.6%. The figures come out as the Mayor launched the consultation on his voluntary London Rental Standard. Rents rose fastest (10%) for family homes with 4 bedrooms or more. The median rent in London, at £1,150pcm, is now double the national median rent, which remains unchanged at £575/month.

Darren Johnson commented,

The Mayor has ruled out any meaningful reform to slow rent rises, preferring voluntary accreditation. That is positive but far from enough. We give our tenants some of the weakest protections in Europe, we should copy the smart rent controls and security enjoyed by tenants in countries like France and Germany where rent can’t rise faster than inflation guaranteeing fairness and predictability for tenants and landlords.

We cannot go on pricing low paid workers out of swathes of London, it’s hurting our economy and the aspirations of a priced out generation.

Boris Johnson fails to answer key questions on his free school policy

Following Boris Johnson's announcement that he wanted to encourage more free schools in London and find GLA surplus property for them, Darren Johnson Green Assembly Member put a number of questions to him in order to delve deeper into his policy which could threaten equality of access for children with disabilities and special educational needs as well as reduce public accountability of schools.

The answers indicate that in fact there is no depth to the policy and that it has not been thought through. Londoners deserve more than 'off the top of the head' thinking when it comes to educating our chidlren. Today's league tables for regions and local authorities show London local authoirty secondary schools are rated higher by Ofsted than the England average.

Here are the questions which Boris Johnson apparently found too hard to answer:

Accountability of Free Schools

Question No: 3469 / 2012

Darren Johnson

How will you ensure that free schools you support, financially, with sites or otherwise, are democratically accountable to the local community as well as to the Secretary of State for Education?

Written response from the Mayor

Policy on free schools is set nationally. Please contact the Department for Education for information about free schools and accountability. More information about free schools is available at http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/leadership/typesofschools/freeschools.

 

*

Free School policies (1)

Question No: 3470 / 2012

Darren Johnson

How will you ensure that there is fair access to free schools for pupils with special education needs, disabilities or on the free school meals register?

Written response from the Mayor

Policy on free schools is set nationally. Please contact the Department for Education for information about free schools and Special Educational Needs, disabilities, and Free School Meals. More information about free schools is available at http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/leadership/typesofschools/freeschools.

 

Free School policies (2)

Question No: 3471 / 2012

Darren Johnson

How will you ensure that all free schools you support, financially, with sites or otherwise, commit to a close working relationship with the local authority in order to maintain an appropriate focus on borough-wide priorities, including local authority nomination of a member of the governing body and a commitment to sharing performance information?

Written response from the Mayor

Policy on free schools is set nationally. Please contact the Department for Education for information about free schools and their relationship with local authorities. More information about free schools is available at http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/leadership/typesofschools/freeschools.

 

Free School policies (3)

Question No: 3472 / 2012

Darren Johnson

How will you ensure that all free schools you support, financially, with sites or otherwise, commit to appropriate staffing arrangements to ensure high quality teaching and learning from qualified staff and good employment practices, including in relation to support and contracted staff?

Written response from the Mayor

Policy on free schools is set nationally. Please contact the Department for Education for information about free schools and staffing. More information about free schools is available at http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/leadership/typesofschools/freeschools.

 

Free School policies (4)

Question No: 3473 / 2012

Darren Johnson

How will you ensure that all free schools you support, financially, with sites or otherwise, commit to community access and use of facilities through agreed extended opening and lettings policies?

Written response from the Mayor

Policy on free schools is set nationally. Please contact the Department for Education for information about free schools and community access. More information about free schools is available at http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/leadership/typesofschools/freeschools.

 

Free School policies (5)

Question No: 3474 / 2012

Darren Johnson

Will you rule out financial support and the provision of GLA group owned sites for free schools that teach creationism as scientific fact?

Written response from the Mayor

The Department for Education has made very clear that it will not grant approval to any free school application that plans to teach creationism as scientific fact.

 

Building new community schools

Question No: 3467 / 2012

Darren Johnson

Will you press the Government to allow London boroughs to build new community schools in areas where there is a shortage of school places?

Written response from the Mayor

London is facing a severe shortfall of school places and I am grateful that the Government has doubled its funding for basic need addressing the shortage left by the previous Government. I will continue to make the case for London to the Treasury as I have previously successfully done when making joint representations with London Councils. Government funding for new schools, including free schools, presumes that they will be academies. I also want to encourage a new generation of free schools in our capital, to help address the shortage of school places and give parents more genuine choice.

 

Building schools where they are most needed

Question No: 3468 / 2012

Darren Johnson

What steps are you taking to ensure that public funding for new schools is directed towards areas of London where there is the largest anticipated shortfall in school places?

Written response from the Mayor

The GLA currently runs a pan London school roll projections service for boroughs. I will explore how we can expand this to cover all boroughs, and how we can work more effectively to develop an improved, strategic picture of school places in the capital. I will also support the creation of new free schools where there is strong parental demand though not necessarily a shortage of places.

 

There's more to solving London's housing crisis than just building houses

Darren Johnson, Green Party Assembly Member for London has produced a thought provoking report on London's housing crisis LINK

This is an extract:

There is no doubt that housing in London is far too expensive, whether you want to buy or rent. The Mayor says this is because we haven’t built enough homes, and that building more is the single-most important thing we can do. But my evidence shows that we are unlikely to make housing affordable through supply in the next decade, meaning continued pressure on house prices and rents. Other solutions therefore have to be looked at. 

Government figures suggest we should have built more than half a million homes in London since the GLA was set-up in 2000 in order to keep up with a growing population and rising demand. In fact we built half as many.

Combined with irresponsible lending, this sent prices rising two to three times as fast as incomes. Prices are now so high that:

·   Half the population is unable to buy three quarters of the homes in London, with housing increasingly bought by investors rather than owner-occupiers.

·   Minimum wage workers can’t afford to rent the average room in a shared flat in any borough in London, and they struggle to get social housing as the stock has shrunk.

If supply were the main answer, the Mayor could push for two options:

·   Flood the market with enough homes to make house prices fall by at least 40% overnight to affordable levels.

·   Build enough to keep prices flat and wait up to 30 years for incomes to catch up with prices so that homes are affordable again.

Given our track record in the last decade, the current scarcity of mortgage finance, constraints on land supply and the shortage of people able to affordable any newly built homes, it is unlikely that private developers will build enough homes in London to achieve either of those options. Even if we kept prices flat, we can’t leave people stuck in overpriced and insecure private rented housing for 30 years while their incomes catch up.

For these reasons, I believe the Mayor needs to consider other solutions in addition to supply. Here are just a few other ideas that think tanks, academics and campaigners have put forward:

·   Constrain demand by putting controls or extra taxes on overseas investors and second home owners, or even by putting a tax on all land values to dampen speculation and stop developers sitting on large, unused land banks;

·   Give councils an incentive to release land for housing with community land auctions;

·   Build more social housing that can stay affordable regardless of supply and demand in the market, which would require either a dramatic increase direct subsidy, redirecting the Bank of England’s quantitative easing programme into housing, or freeing up councils to borrow at prudential levels.

·   Give private tenants continental-style rent controls and protections to slow the rise in rents and give people more stability than the current minimum of 6 month contracts.

Some ideas, such as taxing and auctioning land, are long-term policies to restructure our housing market and improve the level of supply. Others, such as rent controls, could also help tenants struggling with high housing costs today while we wait for supply to catch up.

Darren has published an article on Left Foot Forward elaborating his argument: 

Johnson: Bring London fire engine contract in house after PFI failure

Darren Johnson, Green Party Assembly Member for London has called for the London fire engine contract to be brought back in house as a ‘sensible long term solution’. He was esponding  to news that the private company which owned the contract for London’s fire engines has been put into administration. A temporary arrangement for the contract with a new company is in place for the next 18 months.

Darren Johnson said:

The sensible long term solution is to bring the contract in house and scrap the PFI arrangement. Many other fire authorities have a straight forward leasing arrangement. I hope that both the Mayor and the Government will see sense and recognise that the experiment with PFI has failed. We shouldn’t be taking financial risks with something so essential as our fire engines. Government funding guarantees for PFI credits could be better spent on developing an in house contract.

Butt reaffirms Council commitment to London Living Wage

In his report to Full Council, Brent Council leader Muhammed Butt reiterates the Executive's support for the London Living Wage to be paid to directly employed council workers. The London Living Wage was recently increased to £8.55 an hour.  The Living Wage is distinct from the lower Minimum Wage, which in London is barely a survival wage. The council also aims to extend the living wage to all its contractors.

It is believed that payment of the London Living Wage was one of the issues behind the conflict between Butt and Gareth Daniel which led to the latter leaving his job and it remains a controversial issue within the Labour group on the council. Its implementation in Brent has been accompanied by the intention to impose flexible work patterns on the entire Brent Council workforce.

In his report Muhammed Butt says:

We will become a Living Wage Borough. We believe that it is a fundamental moral principle that people should be paid enough to more than simply exist. We will with other Public and private sector organisations become accredited with the Living Wage Foundation. In doing this we commit to extending the living wage principles which we already adhere to with our own staff to all those contracts outside of Social Care, and also to a dialogue with the Living Wage Foundation and other Councils to find an affordable way to extend our living wage offer to all contracts. Fair pay is essential to address our three key tenets of fairness, supporting community and the local economy.

I welcome the commitment to pay the London Living Wage at a time when families and individuals are faced with so much pressure due to Coalition and council cuts.  What many people don’t know is that the Living Wage Unit was set up under Ken Livingstone’s administration thanks to the Green Party members of the London Assembly, Jenny Jones and Darren Johnson.

They held a casting vote over the Mayor’s budget for four years and used it to get a fair deal for all London government’s employees and create the Living Wage Unit to calculate the amount needed to get by in the capital

Darren Johnson challenges Boris Johnson's free school plans

From EdExec:

In a speech to the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham today, Boris Johnson promised to help boost the number of free schools in London by launching a group, known as ‘Schools for London’.

Johnson described himself as being a “passionate supporter” of free schools in his speech and praised them for their traditional teaching methods.

Rachel Wolf, founder of the New Schools Network, said: “With nearly 200 schools now open or approved to open, the free schools movement has accelerated at a pace that means the centralised processes around finding sites can’t cope. London is particularly problematic, and a number of schools were unable to open or faced delays because of the challenges in finding sites for new schools. 

“We are delighted that the Mayor will be helping free schools across the capital find sites and look forward to working with the GLA to ease this bottleneck and secure more great schools for London’s parents.”

Johnson said that Schools for London would be aimed at promoting free schools and he will be looking at opening up the police and fire service property portfolios to house the new schools.

Darren Johnson, a London assembly Green Party member believes that the Mayor should be working with local authorities to build new LA run schools rather than “throwing money at free schools in a wasteful fashion.” He said: “Transparency and value for money are vital. I will be asking the Mayor to justify his enthusiasm for free schools by removing the veil of secrecy which has been drawn over the financing of the policy."

He added that free schools aren’t enough to tackle the shortage of school places in the capital: “Free schools tend to be quite small and this means they are unlikely to meet the huge demand across London for school places in the coming years. There is no planning with these schools, so they don’t always open in the areas with the biggest demand for school places.”

Whitehall figures estimate a shortage of 78,923 primary school places and 12,227 secondary school places across the capital between now and 2014/15.

The nightmare gets worse. As if it is not enough for London schools to have to cope with Michael Gove we now have  Boris Johnson butting in. Help!

Boris's bus will slowly live and die in London

 

From Left Foot Forward:

The New Bus for London is loved by many and nice to look at, but it is wrong in so many ways that it is hard to know where to start. It is probably bad news for British exports, probably bad on value for money, very bad for fares and awful for the environment.

 The Mayor has created what he describes as a ‘world class piece of technology’, but the problem is that the world doesn’t want it. Despite the Mayor talking up ‘covetous foreigners’ sniffing around the new bus earlier in the year, the reality is that the odd design of the bus makes export sales unlikely.

Rather than being a bonus for British industry, it may well divert one of our main bus companies away from a focus on export sales. In fact, the unique design that the manufacturer is unlikely to find any takers for these Boris buses anywhere else in the UK.

Despite TfL denials, it is the unique design which has led Transport for London (TfL) to take the unprecedented step of buying the buses themselves and to state the buses would spend all their 14-year ‘economic life in London’.

Instead of achieving the economies of scale from a production run of thousands, the Mayor is ordering 600 over a four-year period. Instead of opening up the bidding for building the new bus to a selection of manufacturers in a highly competitive market, we have a monopoly supplier dictating the price of a Mayoral manifesto promise.

Instead of a bus which can be resold in a few years time to operators elsewhere in the country, we have a bus which will live and slowly die in London. Instead of a bus like the old Routmaster - which I’m told you could fix with a spanner and a host of inter-changeable parts - we have a bus full of ‘uniqueness’.
This country has a highly developed bus market in which bus operators compete for contracts and purchase their buses from a large pool of bus manufacturers. Boris has now bucked the market and set up a monopoly in which he tells operators to use the bus he personally favours.

Londoners are shouldering all the costs and risks of this venture. Fares will rise because of the £37 million a year bill for the extra staff who have to be present when the rear door is open. Fares will also rise to cover the cost of a bus that is bought at a premium from a monopoly supplier and which TfL can’t sell on. Any additional insurance costs (due to the open rear door) will also be covered by TfL within the price of the contract.


A big selling point of the new bus has been its environmental credentials. I have raised doubts about the environmental claims made by the Mayor. I have accepted the Mayor’s claim it is more fuel efficient that the average new bus and has lower emissions, but it is only marginally better than other new hybrid buses which are starting to roll off production lines.

The thing is technology is improving all the time and TfL are constantly raising the environmental bar on what they expect from new buses. We are only a short while away from all new buses being cleaner than the Mayor’s New Bus for London and it is even conceivable London will follow the path of other European cities and switch to all electric buses.

London’s bus contracts are on a five-year cycle and this enables TfL to constantly tighten the standards. That is why London bus operators resell their older out of date buses to places like Bournemouth. The problem for the New Bus for London is it is spending the whole of its ‘economic life in London’. I worry that in 14 years time it will be old and outdated compared to every other vehicle in the London bus fleet, but Bournemouth won’t be a retirement option for this bus. Instead it will be heading straight to the scrap yard.
Finally, there is the problem of TfL spending £160m of its capital budget on the new bus, rather than the operators making the purchase as part of the normal contractual arrangement. This figure has appeared in the Standard and on BBC, but it has been my own unofficial estimate based upon the Mayor keeping his promise that the new bus (bought from a monopoly supplier) will cost no more than a standard hybrid bus.

Whatever the price, the real problem is that this money could have been used by the Mayor to stick to his commitment that all new buses would be low-polluting hybrid buses from 2012 onwards. Instead of 600 low-polluting uniquely designed buses by 2016 we could have had thousands of the ordinary low-polluting kind.

The Mayor has wasted another opportunity to improve London’s chronic air pollution problem.

Darren Johnson Green AM

Barclays 'a proud British institution'- Boris Johnson

Brent's unaffordable rents - have your say

Click on image to enlarge

Darren Johnson, Green Party Member of the London Assembly, has published an interactive website LINK which demonstrates the difficulty of finding a home at an affordable rent across the London boroughs.

An affordable  rent is defined as one which takes up no more than 35% of take-home pay after tax. Based on a working week of 48 hours (the maximum allowed under the Working Time Directive) spread over five days of 9.6hr shifts, you should have earned enough to pay the rent at the end of Tuesday.

In the London Borough of Brent you would have to work until the end of Wednesday on the National Minimum wage for 18-20 year olds (£4.98 an hour) to rent a room in a shared home. However, on the London Living Wage (£8.30/hr) supported by the Green Party, you could afford this by the end of Tuesday.

For an adult on the National Minimum wage needing a 2 bedroomed home, it is just not possible even if all the wages went on rent. If they were paid the London Living Wage they would not have earned enough to pay the rent until the end of Friday i.e. 'extremely unaffordable'.

Currently these unaffordable rents are topped up through housing benefit, the Local Housing Allowance, but these are now being capped and cut, making it more difficult to find affordable homes to rent when with a job and benefits.

Go to the website for more details and to feed back your views on the issue to Darren Johnson

Wanted - a Green leader who combines electoral and campaigning politics

Caroline Lucas has announced that she will stand down as leader of the Green Party in September but will of course continue as the only Green MP, and a very effective one at that.

This could be a positive move for the political health of the Green Party, distributing leadership and drawing on the talent of the wider membership. but has the danger of the new leader being overshadowed by our MP. Certainly the demands of being an MP with the normal constituency case work load, the sole representative of the Greens in the Commons and the Leader are great and it is characteristic of Caroline's cool assessment skills that she has recognised that.

The demise of the Liberal Democrats, the knee-jerk resurgence of the Labour Party based on very little in policy terms, and the deepening economic and environmental crisis, demand long-term strategic thinking alongside grassroots activism.  Bringing these together will be a major task for the new leader/s (co-leaders are possible in the Green Party and a positive possibility).

A leader outside the House of Commons will recognise that Greens combine electoral and campaigning politics.

Incidentally, Jenny Jones, on Twitter has said she will not be a candidate for the leadership.

Caroline's statement

In September 2012, Caroline Lucas MP will reach the end of her second term as national Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, and has announced today that she will not be seeking re-election for another two-year term, in order to broaden opportunities for the range of talent in the Party and to raise the profiles of others aspiring to election.

Caroline Lucas said: "I'm hugely honoured to have served as the first Leader of the Green Party and I'm proud that during the four years of my term, we've moved Green politics forward to a higher level, with the Party by far the most influential it has ever been. We've seen significant breakthroughs in winning our first seat at Westminster and gaining our first ever local council in Brighton and Hove. These were followed by further breakthroughs onto new Councils in the recent local elections, which were among the most successful we've ever had, as well as establishing ourselves as the third party, ahead of the LibDems, in the elections for London Mayor.

"I look forward to continuing to do all I can in my very demanding role as the MP for Brighton Pavilion, representing my constituents and defending them against the Coalition Government's disastrous economic policies and its refusal to accept its environmental and social responsibilities. I will also be able to dedicate even more of my work to the political frontline, putting the Green case for change in Parliament and in all circles of national political debate."

Cllr Darren Johnson, London Assembly Member, said: "Caroline has made a huge impact in her time as Green Party Leader and has helped shift Green politics from the margins to the mainstream of British political life. She will be an extremely hard act to follow but this is an ideal time to allow new talent to come forward."

Jenny Jones, London Assembly Member and recent Green Mayoral Candidate said:
"The Green Party has made some massive breakthroughs in the past two years, since having Caroline as our Leader, in Parliament, in Brighton and most recently in London, where we are now the third party behind the Conservatives and Labour. Caroline's decision not to seek re-election at this point is entirely in keeping with Green principles: it's a strong move, allowing other talented people to come through and to take the Green Party even further forward. She has set a superb example of how to lead. Whoever is elected in her place has a tough act to follow."

Nominations for leadership candidates are now open within the Party and will close towards the end of June. The new Leader (or Co-leaders) will take up the two year post in early September. No nominations have yet been received.

Caroline Lucas added: "We're lucky to have a wealth of capability and experience in our Party. Now feels like the right time to step aside, to allow more of that ability to come forward and help the party to grow. I offer my very best wishes to the next Leader, whoever they may be."

Read what Jim Jepps has to say HERE