Tuesday 20 December 2011

The Green Deal and private landlords - issues raised by Barry Gardiner MP

The issue of the Green Deal on energy and its implementation in private rented accommodation is one that has come up locally. Barry Gardiner MP for Brent North has now received written answers to his questions on the matter as set out below from Hansard:


Barry Gardiner (Brent North, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change what process his Department plans to follow to determine whether a landlord has carried out the maximum package of measures funded under the Green Deal or Energy Company Obligation for improving energy efficiency in housing under the provisions of the Energy Act 2011.

Gregory Barker (Minister of State (Climate Change), Energy and Climate Change; Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
We expect the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) will be a key inspection mechanism as it will outline which measures have been installed in the property using the Green Deal and if there are remaining measures which could benefit from Green Deal finance. Local authorities, as the enforcing body for the private rented sector regulations, will have access to this information through the EPC database.

The regulations, including details of the enforcement mechanism, will be subject to a public consultation.

Hansard source (Citation: HC Deb, 19 December 2011, c991W)
 
Barry Gardiner (Brent North, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change what measures he plans to put in place to protect tenants from eviction in cases where they request energy efficiency improvements.

Gregory Barker (Minister of State (Climate Change), Energy and Climate Change; Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
The issue of retaliatory eviction in the context of the Green Deal was raised during the passage of the Energy Act. In response I established a working group to consider stakeholder concerns, and report to DECC and Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) Ministers with recommendations. The report is due to be submitted to myself and the Minister for Housing and Local Government, my right hon. Friend Grant Shapps before Christmas.

 Hansard source (Citation: HC Deb, 19 December 2011, c991W)

Car Diet: Is There Life After Car?

My recent comments on cars as an issue in the Wembley Central by-election has elicited this Guest Blog from Molly  Fletcher:


We gave up the family car two years ago, or rather, our car gave us up. It blew up in Chiswick, West London shortly after we’d set off to go camping. The cost of repairing it was more than the car was worth, so for the first time in thirty five years, we became car less. Surprisingly, it has not been a nightmare, and looking back over the last year, being car free has brought numerous benefits. I can trace a definite improvement in our lives that started on that day.

This is an astounding statement. All my adult life I had owned a car. In the beginning it represented independence from my parents, then later it was for carrying my own children around. Having a car gave me choices, rather than relying on lifts or public transport, which was slow, expensive and unreliable. Our culture is now totally geared to car ownership, it is what we aspire to. The car we own shows our status and marks our position in the hierarchy. But something has flipped in the equation. In the real world, cars are now the slow, expensive, stressful ones. They no longer mean freedom, in many ways they imprison us.

Cars have hijacked the idea of ‘the journey’ as a pleasant experience. We sit in endless traffic jams, crammed in our disconnected worlds, pumping out a carbon cocktail. In three minutes, a car burns as much oxygen as a human being uses in a whole day. We are pushed to our limits by the rudeness of other drivers. We are left abandoned at road works, screaming and cursing at the invisible workers on the signs. If we dare to stop and catch our breath, packs of hungry traffic wardens appear from nowhere. And all is overseen by those sinister invisible cameras, watching our every move in case we step out of line.

I thought going on a car diet would be hell, but car cold turkey wasn’t that bad. We are a family of five, with three grown up sons and, living in the middle of a city we are lucky to have plenty of other transport options. We realised that actually we were hardly using the car before it died. It used to sit outside in the street and without moving, silently drain away money in tax, insurance, parking permits and rust. When we did use the car, that little voice was always at the back of our minds, coming up with vital reasons why we just had to drive: it’s raining, I haven’t got time to walk, it’s dangerous not to, I have to carry a feather round the corner, the Big Shop, I’m paying for it anyway, so why not? Our excuses were infinite. Having a car to hop into was the dietary equivalent of having a fresh doughnut stall outside our front door.

After giving up the car, we travelled much more. We started to cycle and walk, we took trains, Tubes, buses and car-shared. Occasionally we used Streetcar when we needed to carry heavy or bulky loads or we had them delivered. Of course there are people who really do need to have a car: old and disabled people, babies, or if it’s late at night or in rural areas where there are no alternatives, the car is king. But we are able-bodied, fully-grown and most of our original car journeys were under two miles, so without a car option, we had to find alternatives.

With all the extra cycling and walking, we became fitter. At first, I thought of two miles as a long cycle but over the year, my fitness and horizons have stretched. Now I think nothing of cycling ten miles – five miles there and five miles back and I really enjoy the cycle. And bikes are fantastically fast. I once cycled 3 miles from our home in NW London to teach in a school behind Buckingham Palace in 22 minutes, yet it took me 50 minutes and £5 on public transport. We also find that Tubes and buses aren’t that reliable, but when we set off on a bike, we know we’re going to get there – punctures are rare, if you’re careful. I reckon making yourself highly visible on a bike means car drivers see you and it considerably reduces the risks. Looking up your route beforehand, you can plan a way that’s back street and cycle-lane rich with light traffic. 

When you’re on a car diet, you have to get your act together with different clothing and equipment for different weather. Weather - you remember that stuff? It used to be there when we were children, weather and the Great Outdoors. Do you remember how exiting it was to step outside your front door and feel the wind blowing, the sun shining, the frost in the air? Well, it’s still all out there. The saying ‘there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing’ is true. With bikes, you have to get your gear ready to grab and go by the front door. The list is quite extensive: hi viz, wind/rain proof clothing, bike helmet, lock, lights, and keys. Another plus for bikes, is they are like sturdy little pit ponies that can carry huge loads. I regularly carry a £100 pounds worth of shopping on my bike with the help of panniers, a back pack and basket it’s no problem.

Some times, there is no way round it and we need a car for work or to transport elderly relatives. This is where sharing a car with a friend comes in. We live close to each other and she still needs a car for her work and taxiing children around. So paying part of her annual insurance and having us use the car sometimes, helps her to not use it so often. It’s encouraged her back into cycling, something she was very nervous about initially, but she has really taken to it now. Sharing a car with her has also strengthened our friendship, in the same way sharing child care does with other parents from the same school. Car sharing means you have to be on your best behaviour. You can’t slob out and leave your apple cores and old sweet wrappers on the floor, as you would in your own car. You must leave the same amount of fuel in the tank as when you picked it up. It seems a small price to pay for what seems to us now, the luxurious privilege of driving a car.

Walking is also fast, it’s easy to walk 3 or 4 miles an hour which is the average speed of a car in London, so you might as well be walking and getting free exercise at the same time. You also see more, you start to notice the seasons changing, the buds exploding, the leaves turning and the birds singing. Walking rather than driving, has made us connect more with our local area. We have joined our residents association and our Transition Town group (transition from high carbon to low carbon). Our residents association have achieved a lot. We have got rubbish cleared, more police on the beat so the crime rate has dropped, graffiti cleaned up and trees planted, and we had a very jolly street party. 

We have become born again train lovers. It feels so relaxing to be driven safely, in comfort by someone else with total responsibility. People say trains are too expensive and slow compared to the car but we have found it to be the opposite. We booked ahead last year for a friend’s New Years Eve party and got to Cumbria by train in 3 1/2 hours, half the time our car would’ve taken and for a fraction of the petrol costs. We went to Berlin by train, leaving our house at 7am and arrived in the centre of Berlin by 7pm. If you take into account travel time out to and from the airport, check in time, security checks and waiting for baggage the other end, there’s not a lot in it. Speeding smoothly along, you can see wonderful scenery out of picture windows, rather than the dreary motorway hard shoulders in a car or tiny cramped aircraft windows. We have also been to Spain, Switzerland and France by train, none of which we would have attempted by car. On a train, you can read, walk about, stretch your legs, go to the loo when you want, or go get a cup of tea. Instead of dreading long journeys as an ordeal, now I really look forward to blissful hours of reading.

Train travel means having to get much more disciplined about time keeping. Cars appear to give you more choice, but not having to decide where you’re going until the last minute, is actually more stressful. It’s false choice in the same way supermarkets appear to give you a huge range of fruit and veg from all over the planet, but they’re often unripe, tasteless and disappointing. The way cars allow you to plan multi stop offs in a day, is also an illusion of freedom. What it actually means, is that you only dip in to each, keeping an eye on the clock, rather than fully experiencing just one. Before giving up the car, we found it difficult to leave the house and so were frequently late. Now we have to decide, book the tickets and commit to an arrangement in advance. Coming by train we are able to let people know when we will be arriving and when we will be leaving. Then we don’t have to think about it again until the moment we grab a few things and leave the house to go to the station.

Luggage is much simpler without a car. When you have to carry what you take, you soon learn to whittle it down to a few bare essentials. These only take a few minutes to pack/unpack into a small bag that fits easily onto the rack above in the carriage. Trains are supposed to be unreliable but over one year, we’ve only had one journey where the train was delayed for an hour because a suicide on the tracks in a far off part of the system, ground the whole of the West country to a halt. Otherwise the trains have been on time to the minute and connections, seamless.

Another benefit of leaving car world, is we have rejoined the human race. We used to go from our house box, to our car box without a nod to the neighbours but sharing transport with strangers has made us less anti-social. People are so diverse, they have different faces and hairstyles, they dress differently, they’re all ages, shapes and sizes and different cultures. Other people are not as scary as they appear when looking out from inside a small metal box. They are often surprisingly kind and polite. When occasionally they’re not, I carry earplugs with me at all times. We always used to argue in the car, it seemed to be a flash point. We’d argue about whose route would have been better and whose music at what volume to have, we’d argue about arguing. In public, you can’t argue, so we have learnt to behave.

So being car free has made us fitter, more sociable, better behaved, less stressed and we enjoy travelling now. Our present culture revolves around the car and the burden of its escalating demands on our space, air and fuel. It’s time we shook ourselves free and taking Basil Fawlty’s lead, we need to show the car who’s boss. Step away from your car, there’s an all singing, all dancing Technicolor show going on out here and it’s really very lovely.

Monday 19 December 2011

At last some passion from a Labour councillor

It's good to see a bit of passion at last from a Labour councillor admitting the damaging impact of Council cuts rather than repeating the usual bland assurances we get from Cllr Ann John  that we won't notice the difference.

This is what Cllr Krupesh Hirani blogged after today's Libraries Appeal judgment: LINK
No left-wing Councillor relishes making the decisions that Brent is having to make to comply with the Tory-Liberal deficit reduction plan.

Even if you believe that the cuts are necessary and that the debt should be tackled within one Parliament (The Coalition Government’s original plan A on the economy), is it fair that Brent Council has to make cuts in the region of 27-28% of our controllable budget whilst other Councils are getting more money? Brent is making a staggering £104 million cuts over the next few years. This is from a controllable budget of around £280 million. Therefore the public will expect Brent to run £280 million worth of services with around £170 million. Every cut has a cost.

Core services include streetcare, waste collection, care for the elderly and disabled, libraries, administering and facilitating a school place for every child in Brent. It is impossible for all of these to not be affected when making a £104 million worth of cuts from a £280 million budget. All of this when at the same time, demand for services is higher. As the country is struggling to overcome the economic troubles due to the banking crisis, more people are out of jobs, more people are living longer leading to an increase in demand for care services. As unemployment rises, so does crime, therefore putting more pressure on anti-social behaviour teams at Local Authorities.

How can the Brent Tory Liberals defend Brent losing out on resources while other areas are having Budget increases? I have blogged about this before LINK.

Why should Brent have to cut more than others? If Brent Tory Liberal Councillors do blame Labour for creating the deficit as they have done at and the Coalition Government are holier than thou, are they still defending the level of cuts to Brent compared to others and supporting the damage made to Brent while other Councils are being given more money?
This contrasts with the Labour leaflets for the Wembley Central by-election which, so far, have not mentioned the cuts the Council has had to make.

Recognition that they are damaging, if not devastating, for the local community is the first step to mounting a campaign alongside residents and activists against the reductions in local authority budgets and the Coalition's aim to reduce local government.

Communites need, want and will support public libraries


 Margaret Bailey of SOS Brent Libraries and one of the appellants said after the Court of Appeal dismissed the campaigners' case:
Our legal team presented compelling evidence of damage to communities from Brent Council's library closures, so we are disappointed that the appeal judges have not found in our favour.
Closing half of our libraries has had a devastating effect in the most vulnerable members of our community, among them children and families, the elderly, the disabled and those unemployed or on low incomes.
Brent has always had the means to keep these libraries open, it just lacks the will. The overwhelming strength of public feeling over the last year shows that communities need, want and will support local libraries.

Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt has so far held back pending the outcome of this test case.

The thousands of letters and petitions he has received demonstrate that Brent  is neglecting its duties under the Libraries and Museums Act, and he must now hold a public inquiry into the actions of this council.

Brent SOS Libraries campaign will also present evidence to the select committee that clearly demonstrates Brent's failures.

We are grateful to the excellent and committed work on behalf of the community of our legal team, John Halford, Dinah Rose and Gerry Facenna and are taking their advice on our options in the light of this judgment.

There are now three balls in play:

1.  An appeal to the Supreme Court if they give permission. The Appeal Court refused permission for such an appeal today but the Supreme Court can be petitioned on grounds of the public importance of the case.
2. Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State, agreeing to a public inquiry following letters from more than 2,000 residents. So far he has not acted pending the outcome of the appeal.
3. Submissions to the media and culture parliamentary select committee investigating library closures. The committee, however, has no power to reverse the closures.





Appeal Court rejects library campaigners' case - Supreme Court next?

The Court of Appeal  today dismissed the appeal by Brent Library Campaigners over the closure of six Brent Brent libraries.  However the indefatigable campaigners are now looking to petition the Supreme Court over the decision.  They would seek a hearing on the grounds that the case raises issues of public importance in terms of library closures and wider public service cuts. It would be the first opportunity for the highest UK court to consider both the equality duties at the heart of the case and the legality of large-scale library closures.

The campaigner's solicitor, John Halford, of Bindmans LLP said:
Today's Court of Appeal ruling is very difficult to reconcile with what Parliament intended when it enacted the equality duty that obliges Brent, and all other local authorities, to properly grapple with the impact withdrawal of local services of this kind has on communities. The Court of Appeal appears to accept that there is a risk of indirect discrimination against significant numbers of people in Brent resulting from its plans to impose devastating cuts on local library services, but it has excused the Council from properly taking that risk into account before deciding to make those cuts. Our position is that this is simply wrong in principle. If the Supreme Court is willing to hear  this case, we anticipate the outcome being very different.
The full text of the judgment can be found HERE


Judgment on libraries this afternoon

I will be going along to the Royal Court of Justice in the Strand  with other library campaigners this afternoon to hear the outcome of the Brent SOS Libraries appeal on Brent Council's closure of six libraries.

The judgment will be handed down at 2pm by Lord Justices Pill, Richards and Davis.


Sunday 18 December 2011

Hindu Council intervene in Wembley Central by-election

Leaflet distributed in Wembley Central today
In what is likely to be controversial  move the influential Hindu Council of Brent has intervened in the Wembley Central by-election. I have blogged here LINK on the Council's removal of grants for the celebration of Navratri and other festivals and this is the main subject of the Hindu Council's leaflet which has been distributed to households in the Ealing Road area.

After accusing Brent Council of trying to appease the 5,000 'Save Our Navratri' petitioners with the 'token gesture' of a fireworks display this year, that was combined with bonfire night, they go on to say:
However from 2012 onwards Labour Councillors in Brent decided to SCRAP the support for Navratri and a number of other community Festivals.

Whilst stopping the Grant, the money would only go towards Brent Council's budget and not for our festivals and hence deprive Hindu Communities in Brent.
The leaflet goes on to state:
We really need to look at the Political Parties that supported us and will support us for the future.
And finishes:
 Ask the candidates for their views on Navratri Grant for 2012 and use your democratic vote accordingly.
The Ealing Road area of the Wembley Central ward has a very high Hindu population and the intervention, particularly given the 5,000 signatures and the number of Hindu Council affiliated organisations in the area, could make a significant impact.

On this blog and in the Green Party's magazine Green World I have questioned the Council's narrow definition of the Equalities Act which they used justify cutting the festival grants and also their intention to organise a hodgepodge 'Festivals Of Brent' event that would combine different festivals:
The bundling together of different religious and cultural festivals all on one day, at a time when they weren't actually being celebrated, seemed crude and insulting. The Hindu Council told the council that the Navratri Festival aimed to improve community relations, as it was open to all. (Community spirit, Green World Autumn 2011)
I went on:
 ...despite my own lack of belief, I see the positive role played by local faith/cultural communities. Rather than the extreme individualism of post-Thatcher neo-liberalism they provide a form of social solidarity that provides strong support in adversity. This has been evident in fund-raising for victims of earthquakes, tsunami and famine and was most evident recently when the community came together after the death of a Palestinian mother and her five children in a house fire.
It is worth noting that much of the Navratri grant came back to Brent Council in a roundabout way as it was used to pay local schools for the hire of halls over the festival period  and thus augmented the schools' budgets.









Saturday 17 December 2011

Facing some challenges in Wembley Central today

A challenge to Green canvassers
A sense of humour, if not a sense of the absurd comes in handy when canvassing, and certainly was essential today when I started out in the early morning rain in Wembley Central. I was particularly taken by a woman who wanted the nuisance street trees chopped down in a road that already had 90% of its gardens paved over. "Not natural green territory," my co-canvasser surmised. I  liked the 'garden gas-guzzler' above which, parked up tight to the garden gate,  challenged me to clamber over it to deliver my precious leaflet.

I was a little concerned at one house when, having rung the doorbell and trapped myself between the inner and outer door, I saw a notice proclaiming, "I am a soldier of the LORD and I will smite HIS enemies DEAD!" - turned out to be a potential supporter but I didn't stay to talk...

Otherwise the welcome was warm and the idea of an independent voice on the Council was well received. Some people complained that issues the victors had promised to raise at the Council elections had not been dealt with and these often related to basic matters such as fixing dangerous broken pavements and roads that required re-surfacing. There was anger about the amount of fly-tipping in roads such as Station Grove. The deterioration of properties let out on a series of short-term contracts was also raised. When tenants change, mattresses and other household effects are often dumped in front gardens or on the street with a detrimental impact on the local environment.

A troubling aspect was the number of  people blaming recent arrivals from Eastern Europe for various misdeeds  including street corner drinking and street robberies. The comments came from people who were themselves longer-established immigrants to this country.  As the economy deteriorates there may be a parallel deterioration in community relations.

The new waste collection system and reduced street sweeping was also an issue with some residents and it was clear from the blue bins full of residual  rubbish that the recycling message has still not been fully understood, perhaps because of language difficulties.

We will be out and about again tomorrow and if you would like to help e-mail me on mafran@globalnet.co.uk - bring your sense of humour with you! We are meeting outside Wembley Central station at 11am.