GLA Labour backs Green call for public debate on Proportional Representation

Brent Central Labour nominate 'safe' candidates for London Mayor

Brent Central Constituency Labour Party has nominated Sadiq Khan and Diane Abbott as Labour candidates for the London Mayoral elections. There has to be both a male and female nomination.

The nomination of Sadiq Khan is no surprise as senior Labour councillors have been tweeting in his support for some time and he was active in Brent during the General Election campaign.

However his nomination has not been universally welcome. Cllr Sam Stopp, who was recently elected to Brent Scrutiny Committee, supported  David Lammy denouncing the current front runners as 'safe choices' and 'establishment' candidates.

He argues that Lammy has a wider reach outside the Labour camp.

Stopp said on Twitter that he suspects that there has been an element of 'machine politics' in Labour's Mayoral selection process and refers to a recent Comment is Free article by Rafael Behr LINK

Behr wrote about the leadership election where MPs have publicly endorsed candidates but it could be equally true of the Mayoral campaign where senior Labour councillors endorse candidates:

  Meanwhile the system by which Labour MPs publicly nominate candidates for the leadership and deputy leadership militates in favour of the status quo. Endorsements are traded for preferment in future shadow cabinet appointments or favour in elections to select committees. Hope of ascent up the parliamentary pecking order – or fear of a punitive pecking by a rival faction – often comes before appraisal of the arguments.

Of course this isn't limited to Labour and although the Greens have few preferments to offer it is something to be aware of in our selection process for London Mayor and GLA.

Meanwhile David Lammy appears to have got into a bit of a spat with Rev Paul Nicholson, a leading poverty campaigner. LINK

It will be interesting to see who is nominated by Hampstead & Kilburn and Brent North CLPs.

Greens condemn Government's contempt for democracy and accountability in education

Samantha Pancheri, Green Party Schools spokesperson has challenged the thinking behind the Government's Education and Adoption Bill whioch was published today.

She said:

It should not come as a surprise that the Conservatives have stepped up their backdoor privatisation of schools by announcing a new Bill that would see schools deemed as ‘failing’ forced into converting to academies.

Once again, the wishes of school staff, pupils, and parents are being robustly ignored by Nicky Morgan, in spite of multiple high profile campaigns against forced academisation, and a profound lack of evidence that conversion to academy status actually improves educational outcomes.

Alarmingly, the bill also includes a measure to scrap the requirement for academy sponsors to consult with school communities, demonstrating nothing short of contempt for democracy and local accountability, while the government dismisses anti-academy campaigns as hindrances.

There is simply no place for business interests in our schools. Education must be protected from being encroached upon by profit motives, and to have schools sponsored by the likes of BAE Systems is a disgrace.

If the Conservatives truly wish to improve educational outcomes for children and young people, they must move away from the rigid and impractical categorisation of schools by Ofsted, and instead look holistically at the environment and opportunities provided in schools. Teachers and unions have highlighted the impact of high workload and stress on their ability to meet pupils’ needs, and also that excessive testing of pupils is damaging their learning experience.

There are many positive improvements that could be made to the school system by reducing teachers’ workload, scaling back overregulation, scrapping unnecessary standardised testing and, above all, investing in schools to enable them to provide the staff and resources that pupils need and deserve in order to realise their potential.

This proposed bill will achieve nothing in that respect, and is nothing more than another step in introducing marketisation, and removing local democratic accountability from our schools.

Brent's Muhammed Butt to be London Councils Equalities Lead despite racial discrimination finding

Despite the Employment Tribunal finding that Brent Council racially discriminated against an employee, victimised her and construcitvely dismissed her, Cllr Muhammed Butt, leader of Brent Council was appointed Equalities Lead by London Councils at their AGM yesterday.

No action has been taken against the CMT members named in the Employment Tribunal case.

Wembley's Lycee International de Londres Winston Churchill on target for September opening

Lycee International de Londres Winston Churchill today

This week the hoardings around the Lycee International de Londres Winston Churchill have been taken down and locals are able to see the result of the work that has been going on.  Workmen tell me that the internal work is largely completed and work on the grounds is taking place as well as installation of iron railings on the existing perimeter wall.

The building includes the refurbished Brent Town Hall (before the merger of Wembley and Willesden, Wembley Town Hall) and a new block for primary pupils. The school's website shows the completed site, complete with running track where the Council car park used to be.

One can't but notice that the building looks far more substantial than many recent new school builds in the borough.

The school is due to open on September 3rd 2015 for Years 1 to 11 with Years 12 and 13 starting in subsequent academic years.

The school will offer a bilingual education with 'an Anglo Saxon' ethos and will be fee paying:

2015- 2016 school fees will be as follows:

• Maternelle: £10,470 / year
• Elementaire: £9,770 / year
• Collège: £9,770 / year
• Lycée: £10,470 / year 

These fees include lunch, insurance and, from Primary onwards, an appropriate tablet device.

Please note that:
There is a non-refundable £90 pre-registration fee per pupil.

If you are offered a place, you will receive an email explaining in detail the acceptance procedure and the Terms and Conditions. A first registration fee of £1,200 per pupil, as well as an advance payment of £1,000 on the first term fees, must be paid to secure the place. These fees are non-refundable.

The school has published a welcoming letter to parents on its website:

Dear families,

It is my pleasure and privilege to welcome you to the Lycée International de Londres. Our school aims to create a nurturing and vibrant environment where students and adults thrive sharing the joys of teaching and learning alike. The Lycée provides an international education based on the French National Curriculum leading to the French Baccalaureate.

Rooted in the tradition of French educational excellence, and aiming to offer the most modern pedagogical approaches, our ethos reflects our commitment to foster the development of the whole child along with collective achievement through mutual respect and dedication.

Our campus encompasses newly refurbished and purpose ­built buildings surrounded by large outdoor leisure and sports facilities on five acres of land. These beautiful surroundings and brand new teaching spaces will offer the school’s 1,100 pupils a wonderful campus ­style environment. The Lycée also houses a large gymnasium, a bright and spacious library, state­-of-­the­-art science labs, a music room and a drama studio: we want to offer the best a modern school can offer today.

We hope you and your children will join our community, share our values and adhere to our ethos. We look forward to welcoming our first classes Autumn 2015.

It is a great honour for me to be entrusted with the mission to build and lead, with your support, such a vibrant community of learners. Rest assured that I will do everything in my power to gain your trust, act with your support and provide the energy and inspiration to succeed in our endeavour.

Best wishes,
Mireille Rabaté
Head of school

The website includes a video extolling the virtues of blingualism/multilingualism:



 The school's website is available in both French and English HERE

Preston Community Library's reservations over Council's asset strategy

This is what Philip Bromberg of the Preston Community Library Campaign presented to Cabinet yesterday evening:

I am speaking on behalf of Preston Community Library, a charity which, as I hope you all know, is currently running a library on a temporary licence in the Preston Library building on Carlton Avenue East.

As you know, Brent Labour Party made a very clear pledge before last year's election to offer the Preston Library building "at a peppercorn rent to any local group who can provide a sustainable community library....that is our pledge....We will not open to competitive tender in order to give preference to local groups."

Since last year we have done everything that you asked us to do. We've submitted a business plan for a permanent library which has been praised by Brent CVS. From a standing start barely a month ago,  we are now offering the full range of traditional library services - we have several thousand books available for borrowing, including a wide range of large print books which cater to the needs of elderly people, we have a children's library which is lending books to a local primary school, we have a range of newspapers and magazines, we offer study space and, from today, we have four public access computers and WiFi which are free to library users.

We're also already offering much more than a traditional library. We have (free) ESOL classes on Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays, and we're talking to a local school who want to fund us to offer these classes to their parents. We've trained two new ESOL teachers. We're running yoga classes for adults and for families. We run movement, exercise and dance classes. We host a weekly creative writing group and a Scrabble group. We've worked very closely with vulnerable adults from a local residential home who've played an important part in getting the library open. And very soon - with funding from you - we will be running a community cinema. In short, we are already doing very precisely the things which Brent says it wants community groups to be doing. Needless to say, all of this has taken a huge amount - thousands of hours - of very hard work by an extraordinarily dedicated group of people.

Bearing all of this in mind, I have a couple of observations to make about the proposed Property and Asset Strategy:

The third objective of the new strategy (p.3) is to increase ongoing revenue generation, but you do note that "clearly there will be times when these objectives will be at odds with each other". So I remind you again that your election promise was to offer the Preston Library building at a peppercorn rent.

And on pp. 7 & 11 the strategy says that "all opportunities for Community Asset Transfer should be advertised" and recommends a competitive process. Competitive tendering was, of course, explicitly ruled out in the Labour Party's election pledge last year. We're not, though, worried about an open and transparent process, provided that process takes place in the context of your very clear election pledge to support a community library in Carlton Avenue East.

Preston Community Library is the area's only secular community space; it is fully accessible and open to everyone regardless of race, religion, age or gender. In barely a month, and on a very restrictive temporary licence, PCL is already doing hugely impressive work. When we have a proper lease, we will be able to do much, much more.

Complacency at Cabinet as controversy swept under the carpet

Preston Community Library representatives spoke at Cabinet tonight on the issue of Brent Council's new Property and Asset Strategy.   They were concerned that the community library they now have up and running in the building, which provides many services to the local community apart from lending books,  should not be affected by the strategy which states:

Fundamentally the strategy moves away from a presumption to dispose outright of property towards one of retaining and acquiring assets with a view to maximising revenue potential.

Muhammed Butt, leader of the council said that the  council also recognised the importance of social value of property, rather than just monetary value.

Several Cabinet members praised the campaign which had been promised the Preston library building at a peppercorn rent.  However Cllr Moher indicated that discussions were taking place on the use of part of the building to provide additional school places.

Clearly there will be some difficult decisions when weighing up any conflict between monetary and social values in a period of budgetary cuts.

Ex councillor James Powney wrote on his blog:

The new strategy has two apparently contradictory aims.  One is to maximise value through renting property.  The second is maximise "social value" through renting below market rates to worthy causes.  Of course this all takes place in an environment where the Council's income from fees & charges, Council Tax and government grant will all be in decline.  Inevitably, this locks Brent Council into cutting public services to the maximum extent possible, which I suspect is not a policy that the majority of those who voted in May 2014 would support (although it is very much what the newly elected Tory government supports).

There are likely to be a number of Community Asset Transfers with voluntary organisations running services from former Brent buildings. 

Cabinet approved the Strategy Report's recommendations which Cllr Pavey claimed marked a 'massive' change in Council policy - but he does tend to suffer from superlative inflation.

They went on to approve authority to tender for a Direct Payments Service contract for adult and children's social care. Cllr Hirani argued that this would enable better working conditions and wages as it would do away with the profit requirement of agency providers.

The Council is expecting an increase of 400 people on Direct Payments over the next three years, a total of 1,127.

Cabinet approved the award of the Local HealthWatch Service contract to CommUNITY Barnet, Cllr Pavey remarked that the current HealthWatch has been well-intentioned but ineffective. It had not been successful in getting community engagement and representing patients.

There were similar remarks about the youth service when the Cabinet discussed the £1m cut it is making which will result in further demands on the voluntary and faith sectors.  In answer to Cllr Mashari who asked if this represented a move away from a universal youth service, Cllr Ruth Moher said she doubted if Brent had such a service at present and that the present service was not coherent, it had developed rather than was planned.  She remarked that that there was no point in providing a service if what it provided was not what young people wanted, so they would be consulted. She went on to say that the Coucil had never done a proper mapping of the services that were already offered acxross the borough by the council, voluntary organisations and faith groups.

Cllr Moher referred to the paragraph about the dangers for the Roundwood Centre if the strategy was not successful. Cllr Mashari said that there were many groups just waiting to get into the centre and she looked forward to it being better used and more dynamic.

There seemed little recognition of what could be read between the lines of the report and was pixcked up by the Kilburn Times - this could mark the end of youth provision in Brent.

I was shocked that there was no delegation at the council from the youth service or its users,  or the Youth Parliament which is, after all, supposed to represent young people.  Cabinet were told that their had been a question from the former chair of Brent Youth Parliament asking what a youth worker attached to the BYP would actually do - the answer was value to say the least.  However, the BYP, kept on at a cost of £60,000 may have to watch out as Cllr Moher said that they would be looking at 'different ways' of delivering that service.

Ruth Moher also presented the report on the Expansion of Stonebridge School and was equally complacent saying that most of the respondents to the consultation had been concerned about the future of Stonebridge Adventure Playground, swallowed up by the school expansion and accompanying regeneration. Referring to the 700 letters  received against the proposal she said that these had all been the same so didn't mean much and went on to say, about a 1,000 plus petition calling for the saving of the adventure playground, 'as we know you can get anyone to sign a petition.

Dear reader, I was moved to protest at this disparagement from a councillor who had never once visited the playground!

Cllr Pavey then jumped in to tell us all how big schools were great (he is chair of governors at the BIG Wembley Primary), the bigger the better ('massive' 'bigger the better' - is there a theme emerging here?) and suggested that Quintain with its BIG profits could be persuaded to add another form of entry or two at its proposed primary school.

Cllr Butt followed this with his usual statement. The provision of school places was a statutory responsibility and the Council owes it to residents and children to provide places: 'We will not shy away from making difficult decisions'.

So, we have to admire Brent Council for making the 'difficult' decision to close a children's playground, even though it, as well as the school,  served families and children in one of the poorest parts of London. Campaigners were never persuaded that the Council had considered the possibility of an alternative design for the  expansion of the school that kept the playground or had even tried to find it an alternative site.

And wasn't Stonebridge Adventure Playground a community asset?

The meeting concluded with a refreshingly eloquent presentation by Cllr Eleanor Southwood, the new lead member for the environment. It was not about her portfolio but a report from a Scrutiny Committee task group that she led on the pupil premium and how it is used in Brent schools.

Cllr Southwood  said that the group had looked at case studies and talked to pupils not just about the impact on attainment but on enjoyment of school and the broadening of horizons.

The good practice described in the report will be shared with the Brent Schools Partnership.

Brent among the London leaders in social cleansing

This article by Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth on Novaramedia is reproduced under the Creative Commons Licensing Scheme. The article is unchanged from the original LINK except for the headline.

The 2011 Localism Act introduced new powers allowing councils to discharge their duty to homeless households into the private rented sector. Before this legal change, homeless households had been able to reject offers of private accommodation offered by the council and wait in temporary accommodation (often for extremely long periods) until an offer of social housing, nearly always in their home borough, was made. Now councils have powers to force people out of their communities permanently and into insecure private accommodation – which itself is one of the biggest causes of homelessness – and they are using them.

The households that councils have a legal duty towards are families with children and those with severe disabilities, meaning that it is often people with vulnerabilities who are being forcibly removed from their communities or threatened with homelessness. Whereas previous investigations (in The Independent and Vice) into social cleansing in London have looked at out-of-borough placements for homeless households, these out-of-borough placements have been for ‘temporary housing’, whereas the research in this article looks at the ‘settled’ accommodation that councils offer in order to completely discharge their duty to the homeless household.

Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL) has sent freedom of information (FOI) requests to every council in London asking a number of questions about how they are housing people in private accommodation and outside of their home borough. All the information below is for a 16-month period from October 2013 (when most councils had finalised their Localism Act policies) to January 2015 (when the requests were sent).

1. 2000 homeless households were forced by local authorities into private sector.

Since October 2013 a total of 2128 families have been forced into the private sector by the Localism Act, who previously should have been given social housing. The map below shows that many of the boroughs which use these powers are out of central London, in tube zones 3-6. The powers are new and HASL has heard that some Labour boroughs are holding off until others have ‘led the way’, hence few councils have forced more than 100 families into the private sector. However Brent and Newham have no such shame and have already forced nearly 400 and 1000 families into the private sector respectively (see point 5).

Image 1: Total Localism Act offers per borough from October 2013 to January 2015. Boroughs coloured white did not respond.

2. Over 1000 households were forced permanently out of their borough and nearly 500 out of London.

Of the households forced into the private sector 1000 were given places out of their home borough and 500 were out of London entirely. The most common destinations were edge-of-London boroughs such as Barking & Dagenham and Enfield, with Luton and Birmingham being used the most outside of London.

3. 670 households pushed into further homelessness by the Localism Act.

670 households, which is a third of the households given final offers in the private sector under the Localism Act, refused them. This is a huge proportion, especially considering the consequences.

These households will now be deemed ‘intentionally homeless’ for daring to stand up to the councils and will no longer get any help off the council’s housing department. They will then have to ask social services for help, where HASL has regularly seen families threatened with having their children taken off them for the crime of being homeless; in a recent high profile case the family were separated. Even if you keep your children, social services housing is normally poor quality, can be removed at a day’s notice and you can be put under punitive Job Centre-style programs for finding your own flat, normally out of London.

4. People are refusing social cleansing.

Our research has shown that the likely reason the 670 households refused their final offers under the Localism Act was because the offer was out-of-borough or out-of-London. The six boroughs which recorded people refusing offers (Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Haringey, Newham, Wandsworth) were either the worst for out-of-borough or out-of-London offers. This is shown clearly by comparing Sutton and Barnet, both of whom tried to send 64 households into the private rented sector since October 2013.

All 64 households in Sutton were offered tenancies in Sutton and they all accepted the offer. In contrast, Barnet gave 38 of the offers out of the borough, with 19 of those being out of London entirely. As a result of offering housing so far away only 35 households accepted (just over half).

5. Newham and Brent are the worst.

These two Labour-run councils accounted for two thirds of the total mandatory private sector offers across London. Newham and Brent have made 463 and 106 people homeless due to their private sector offers respectively. Together they account for 490 of the 563 out-of-London offers that have been made since October 2013 using the Localism Act. Where others have held back, these two councils are blazing a violent trail of social cleansing. Where Brent has made final offers to 48 households to move their whole lives to Luton, Newham has tried to forcefully move 142 families to Birmingham (of which over 100 refused, and are now presumably in further homelessness).

6. Many councils have not used the new powers but use more subtle force.

Even before the Localism Act, councils had many coercive tactics to get households to which they owed a homeless duty to accept private accommodation when they could have waited for social housing. This involved councils lying to people about their rights, and some councils are still using this method of forcing people into private housing over the explicit force of the Localism Act. The Localism Act also introduced powers to let local councils change their allocations policy for social housing. Some councils, such as Lambeth and Lewisham, are using this to give people no choice but to ‘choose’ private housing, regularly out of their borough.

When all the methods councils use of getting homeless households into the private rented sector are considered together, a total of over 7000 households have been placed in private accommodation by councils from October 2013 to January 2015. We found that in contrast to the forced placements discussed above, private sector placements – mainly through less explicitly forceful methods – are used most by central London boroughs. The second map shows the movements of households into private accommodation out of borough, and the worst are found in central London such as Camden, Lambeth and Westminster.

Image 2: The total movements into the private rented sector out of their home borough that has been administered by councils.

7. Councils are administering social cleansing.

The effect of all these out-of-borough placements is to move people out of central London into the outskirts and beyond. The final map shows that most central London boroughs had more households moved out by the council than moved in by others (red) and the boroughs on the outskirts of London found more households moved in by other councils than were being moved out (blue). This shows that London councils are administering mass social cleansing as thousands of people are being moved out of central London by their local council or threatened with destitution.

Image 3 – The net movements into and out of each council area by councils finding private rented sector tenancies. Negative (red) means more households have been moved out of an area than into it, and positive (blue) means more have been moved into an area than out of it.

8. This social cleansing is being challenged.

Both collective action and legal challenges are being made to stop the social cleansing of our communities. The highly publicized Westminster court case – although in relation to temporary accommodation rather than permanent/settled housing offers – could have ramifications for how local authorities find mandatory placements. The Focus E15 mums campaign started as a fight to get housing in their borough when they had been made offers in the private sector in Manchester, Hastings and Birmingham. Their campaign won them private housing in their home borough of Newham. Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth has made a leaflet with useful information for homeless households threatened with offers in the private sector. Local housing action groups can help people challenge an out-of-borough offer both through the appeals process and through collective action.

Novara Wire / CC BY-SA 4.0