Exposing the lie of Labour's Council Tax 'freeze'

Labour-run Lambeth Council has made much of freezing council tax “for everyone” since 2008.   This despite the fact that it has simultaneously been slashing public services, hitting the poor and most vulnerable hardest. The authority claims that the freeze is all about helping such people and was a relentless theme in the recent Brixton Hill by-election. The Labour candidate’s mantra was “I’ll always put people first…by voting to FREEZE council tax for the next TWO years.”

BUT Lambeth Council’s refusal to cover a 12 per cent funding shortfall in the new arrangements for paying council tax benefit – despite its discretion to do so (and 25 per cent of other council’s making up the difference) – exposes the lie. The cut in central government funding has been long flagged and the council effectively made its decision not to protect those it claims to at Cabinet on July 9 last year.

As the council helpfully explains on its website “the council is not currently minded to provide top-up funding from its own resources.” Is this the kind of help Cllr. Ed Davie – chair of the health and adult social care scrutiny committee - had in mind when he tried to justify a second-round of taxpayer-funded “don’t blame the council” political advertising in a recent article in The Guardian?

To be clear: Labour councillors are freezing Council Tax for themselves while effectively hiking it for the poor and most vulnerable. Putting people first? Are you having a laugh?

It is plain that the council thinks there are better ways of spending its money than protecting those most in need. Like heating the Town Hall to over 27ºC for instance.

It has in fact received a 'bung' from central government to freeze council tax - a freeze grant of £2.46 million. This is almost exactly the amount which Lambeth need to cover the council tax benefit/ allowance shortfall. The money however, has not been used to protect the vulnerable, despite Labour's insistence that this is why it was freezing council tax.  

The Resolution Foundation in its report “No Clear Benefit” sets out the nationwide impact of the cut for Council Tax benefit funding. Some 3.2 million working households will be affected, with pensioners the only group exempted. The numbers are horrific: some will see an increase in what they pay of 336 per cent; in monetary terms the funding cut will see some pay up to £600 more a year in Council Tax.  The worst hit? Nationwide, according to Resolution, it is that now all too familiar acronym of BME (black minority ethnic).

Approximately 1 in 3 households in this deprived borough are in receipt of the current benefit, according to Lambeth Council. And the council’s own impact assessment makes clear that worst hit by the way it is introducing the cut will be women and ethnic minorities.

If there was one council that really did need to protect its residents from the cut to Council Tax Benefit, it was Lambeth. Instead, the council will meet on Wednesday to outline a programme of cuts which will make those seen so far, look tame.

Ted Knight, a former Labour leader of Lambeth Council in the 1980s has implored current Labour councils to form a coalition of resistance against the cuts. To do otherwise he says is “absolutely indefensible”. To say the current Labour leadership of Lambeth Council is thumbing its nose at the likes of Knight would be an understatement. This Labour council is complicit in these brutal, ideological cuts.

Why Lambeth is the Dirty Man of London councils

A group of activists descended on Lambeth Town Hall yesterday to call on the council to clean up its act and to demand some answers to its appalling record on energy efficiency and the environment. 

We adopted a half-term holiday theme to highlight the fact that you'll find warmer temperatures in the Town Hall than say a winter-break destination like Acapulco. Despite the freezing temperatures outside we soon warmed up in our balmy surroundings and were able to happily recline on our beach towels while eating choc-ices. As usual all the council staff were in their shirtsleeves with the windows wide open. The reason? On a recent visit to a council meeting we recorded a temperature of 27.4ºC (Guidelines commonly suggest temp should be maintained at between 18ºC and 21ºC).  How can such energy inefficiency be justified at a time of such severe service cuts? The council is literally burning taxpayer money.

Despite claims that it is taking the issue of energy efficiency and climate change seriously in its recent Greenhouse Gas Emissions 2012 Report, there is scant evidence. It needs to do a lot more than clad a few old pipes and tell staff to turn off PCs overnight.

The evidence below suggests Lambeth Council has a disregard, if not utter contempt, for taxpayer value for money, energy efficiency and climate change:

• The council appears not to have a current Display Energy Certificate for the Town Hall. The one on display as of  20/2/13 was almost 5 months out of date. It is mandatory to display a current EPC. What could the council have to hide?

• According to its old energy certificate the council’s energy use is getting worse year on year, and is a rather inefficient Category D.

• Although the council currently spends almost £9m a year on energy it appears to have ignored most of the recommendations in its last Advisory Report (retrieve it here using postcode SW2 1RW) which told the council to stop simultaneously heating and cooling the Town Hall, and install a condensing boiler among a range of High Impact, affordable measures. The council were also told about a range of financial assistance. None of this appears to have been acted on.

• Lambeth Council languishes near the bottom of the league tables for the government’s Carbon Reduction Commitment. It has a rank of 1117 and a “score” of 931, almost half that of neighbouring Wandsworth. It’s not just bad for your pocket, it’s bad for the planet as well.

• The council doesn’t just have one of the worst recycling rates for household waste in London – it’s also one of the worst in the country. With a rate of 27.9% it lies 323^rd out of 353 ranked authorities. The top councils have household recycling rates in the 60s.

• Lambeth recently tried to cheat us on its recycling rate by including in the figure all the black bag bin rubbish that it sends for incineration! The move was illegal and the council were censured by London Mayor Boris Johnson of all people.

• The council languishes near the bottom of the London league table for food waste collections with around 10% of the kerbside collections of leading authorities in the capital. 

***

Lambeth's work with young offenders found to be 'poor' in wake of wave of stabbings

There is a worrying piece in the Evening Standard concerning Lambeth Council's failures around monitoring of young offenders.

It concerns a report, published yesterday, by HM Inspectorate of Probation.

The report found that serious young offenders in Lambeth (which the article points out is currently being hit by a wave of stabbings) are not being properly monitored by council staff.

Recent stabbings include the fatal attack on 17-year-old student Kwame Ofosu-Asare who was chased and stabbed while walking through the Moorlands Estate in Brixton to visit a friend on March 2.

Among the problems highlighted by the Inspectorate report:

- a widespread failure to identify the “risk of harm” that violent teenagers, including gang members, pose to other members of the public.

- inadequate work to reduce the likelihood of juvenile criminals re-offending

- poor management supervision to ensure that they are dealt with properly after their release.

The report warns that risk of harm assessments are done inadequately in nearly six out of 10 cases, with many under-rating the danger posed by juvenile offenders. Work on reducing the risk of re-offending is also done well only 52 per cent of the time.

Announcing the findings, Chief Inspector of Probation Liz Calderbank said: “We found a number of areas where practice fell below what was needed. Overall, we consider this a poor set of findings.”

I recently talked with young workers in Lambeth, who are greatly concerned about the violence that they are now routinely seeing, including many incidents of knife crime. It seems that the poor performance by Lambeth in monitoring and working with young offenders mixed with Lambeth's severe cuts to youth services, is contributing to the creation of a lethal cocktail of violence in the borough.

Is Lambeth now the worst council in England for cuts affecting disabled?

The Brixton Blog has reported Monday's decision by Lambeth council that will slash the number of people granted a Discretionary Freedom Pass (DFP). The borough currently has 767 people who use the free pass, each at a cost of about £600.

More than 500 people with mental health issues in Lambeth could lose free travel on public transport under the new criteria. The council itself estimates only about 200 people will now be eligible, leaving more than 550 without free travel, and sparking fears that vulnerable adults will be left isolated.

An analysis by Demos and Scope has already placed Lambeth Council second bottom of the league for cuts affecting disabled people, for all councils in England. The latest move may well take Lambeth to the very bottom.

Lambeth’s chief executive moves up pay league table despite cuts

Analysis by the Green Party has revealed that Lambeth council’s chief executive Derrick Anderson has moved up the league table of London council chief executive’s pay, despite implementing some of the most far reaching cuts of any London borough.

The latest figures show that during 2010-11 Lambeth’s head earned £215,963 (this is excluding pension contributions, which were an additional £30,976, giving a total annual salary of £246,939) moving from fourth to third place among the 32 London boroughs. The Green Party analysis (based on each council’s 2010/11 Statement of Accounts) found that the average pay of council chief executives across London in fact fell by 4% during the same period.

In the previous financial year (2009-10) three chief executives of London councils were paid more than Derrick Anderson. In the face of cuts, many council heads cut their salaries. Lambeth’s did not. Anderson subsequently became the third highest paid council chief executive in London during 2010-2011, only marginally behind those of Tory run Hammersmith and Fulham (£225,785) and Kensington & Chelsea (£220,976).

In April this year, Anderson finally announced that he would take a pay cut for 2011-12 and waive his entitlement to a bonus. This was strange as Lambeth had previously claimed he received “no performance related pay or bonuses”.

The figures came to light through London-wide analysis by the London Green party. The amount earned by Anderson in 2010-11 is over 17 times the minimum wage earned by some of Lambeth council sub contractors and over 13 times the Living Wage which the council pays its direct employees.

Lambeth has still to pay a Living Wage to all those who work on behalf of the council. Green councillor Rebecca Thackeray campaigned in 2009 to get Lambeth to adopt a Living Wage for all who carry out work for the council. This was opposed by Labour councillors who only accepted that Lambeth’s direct employees should received a ‘Living Wage’.

Last month Lambeth came second from bottom in a league table of all councils in England, measuring the severity of cuts to disabled people’s services. This included a 22% cut to adult care and support.

It is a stark contrast that whilst Lambeth has some of the highest executive pay in the whole country, it is imposing some of the most severe of cuts for its most vulnerable residents.

People in Lambeth will wonder why, in one of the most deprived boroughs in the country, where the cuts are so deep, Lambeth’s head took so long to take a cut in his own pay, whilst many of his contemporaries did so across London.

But the priority must be for Lambeth council to increase the pay of all those it employs as other councils have done, so everyone gets a Living Wage. It isn’t just Lambeth’s chief executive and Lambeth residents who are being treated in different ways. The staff who implement vital council services are also subject to double standards.


Key figures for all boroughs in London are as follows:

Borough Staff paid more than £150k* Chief exec remuneration* No. of times higher than living wage

Barking and Dagenham 3 £162,087 10
Barnet 9 £200,976 12
Bexley 3 £199,248 12
Brent 2 £203,853 12
Bromley 3 £177,135 11
Camden 6 £204,961 12
City of London 1 £142,000 9
Croydon 4 £204,520 12
Ealing 1 £183,854 11
Enfield 1 £194,693 12
Greenwich 5 £189,667 11
Hackney 5 £177,956 11
Hammersmith and Fulham 5 £225,785 14
Haringey 2 £189,890 11
Harrow 2 £195,965 12
Havering 1 £180,213 11
Hillingdon 1 £183,250 11
Hounslow 1 £156,901 9
Islington 1 £210,000 13
Kensington & Chelsea 2 £220,976 13
Kingston 1 £179,000 11
Lambeth 5 £215,963 13
Lewisham 1 £192,387 12
Merton 1 £200,390 12
Newham 5 £188,022 11
Redbridge 1 £181,542 11
Richmond 1 £178,744 11
Southwark 5 £182,089 11
Sutton 1 £156,195 9
Tower Hamlets 2 £186,528 11
Waltham Forest 2 £180,000 11
Wandsworth 9 £191,122 12
Westminster 3 £200,543 12
London total / average 95 £188,983 11

* Total remuneration including expenses, excluding pension contributions.

Knights Youth Centre facing cuts to vital programmes

Today the Government's Victim's Panel comes to Lambeth, following the recent riots and looting. This is being welcomed by Labour councillors.

The good work that this might do will be undermined however by the fact that central Government and these same councillors between them are pushing ahead with cutting youth services in Lambeth. This is already having a serious affect on youth centres around the borough, and will do so on young people and communities for years to come.

This includes Knight's Youth Centre in Clapham/ Streatham, which I remember from 40 years ago when I was growing up. As reported in the print edition of Tuesday's South London Press (not online at the moment) the Centre gets 200 children through the doors each week (mainly from the Clapham Park Estate) but is already having to cut staff and services. It is £85,000 short on the funding it needs for this year alone (about half its budget). A vital mentoring and apprenticeship programme looks as if it may have to close, which would be a tragedy, as this trains up children to be youth workers themselves.

The Centre is applying for a small amount of money from the NatWest community fund, and it will get the grant if enough people vote for it. You can do so here (You have until 23rd October to vote).

Lambeth bottom of league over cuts to disabled services

Lambeth Council have come 151 out of 152 local authorities in England in a league table of cuts to services for disabled people.

The findings are contained in a report published last month by Demos, in partnership with disability charity Scope.

As we know there is a 28 per cent cut over a four year period to local authority budgets from central Government. Councils across the country have made decisions about what they are going to axe.

Disabled people are disproportionately reliant on public services, and the new report Coping with the Cuts, throws light on how the government cuts to local authority budgets are affecting disabled people’s services across the country.

Data came from hundreds of FOI requests which revealed the disparities between the level of budgetary cuts local authorities were making to their social care budgets, and the changes being made to the front line of care and support. Some councils had very large care cuts – up to 22 per cent - but were not raising service user charges, or tightening eligibility criteria. They weren’t closing any services either. On the other hand, some councils were increasing care funding by up to 10 per cent, but reported closures, restrictions in eligibility and large increases in charges for things like meals on wheels and respite.


The results are presented graphically, but a crucial finding is how disabled people in Lambeth are being particularly affected. Of particular note is the 22% budget cut in support for disabled adult care and support. Lambeth has also increased the cost of using specialist transport by 67 per cent and reduced the number of annual trips that can be made by a disabled person under the taxicard scheme from 144 to 96.

Southwark to be hit hardest by rail cuts

Southwark could be the hardest hit area in the country if proposed cuts go ahead which would leave many railway stations unstaffed.

The Government is considering proposals in a report by businessman Sir Roy McNulty, which recommends cuts of £1 billion across the national network. This was highlighted last week by the TSSA union and reported in the Evening Standard as well as the South London Press.

The TSSA union drew up a “hit list” of 675 ticket offices to be closed nationwide. As there are no platform staff at these stations, they will be left unmanned.

Two stations in Lambeth could be affected: Brixton and Gipsy Hill. But the situation is even worse in Southwark, where eight out of eleven stations in the borough could be impacted, making Southwark stations ‘no-go’ areas for many travelers.

Southwark stations facing cuts: East Dulwich, Elephant and Castle, North Dulwich, Nunhead, Queen's Road Peckham, South Bermondsey, Sydenham Hill and West Dulwich are all listed as part of the “hit list” of 675 ticket offices to be closed nationwide. Only Denmark Hill, Peckham Rye and London Bridge would escape.

This is a case of rail users being kicked when they are down. Fares are already due to increase by 25% over the next three years, meaning lower safety levels at a much higher price. And it will be some of the most vulnerable members of our community who are most affected. With the huge increase in the cost of living, and cuts to benefits and services, more and more have no option but to rely a public transport system which is accessible and affordable.

At a time when the economy is struggling to maintain any momentum at all, as other countries in the world are recognising, we need more investment in transport infrastructure, not less. Indeed, cuts to station staff would be a false economy. Redundancies and the resulting increase in vandalism and other crimes, not to mention the detrimental impact upon rail use itself, call into question any hypothetical savings.

London's Housing Crisis - a lively evening of discussion

Housing used to be one of the three pillars of the welfare state but is now viewed as a personal issue, not a collective one.

Last Thursday I attended a very interesting meeting on housing policy, hosted by the London Federation of Green Parties as part of the campaign to make Jenny Jones London’s next mayor.

On the panel were speakers from housing charity Shelter, the East London Community Land Trust, and the Camden Federation of Private Tenants whose speeches were followed by an hour of lively questions.

Protest against the cuts – this Saturday!

This Saturday 26th March Green Party members from all over the country will converge on central London to add our voices against the government’s savage cuts.

The demonstration, which is being organised by the TUC, will assemble from 11am at Victoria Embankment before marching through the West End to a rally in Hyde Park. A south London ‘feeder’ march will assemble in Kennington Park by Oval tube at 10.30am for music, food and campaign stalls.

Join us! The TUC has predicted a turnout of 100,000 people, based on coach bookings from other parts of the country. This is a huge opportunity to make sure the government understands how destructive these cuts will be. Yes, we have a deficit, but no, we don’t need to destroy the welfare state in order to finance it.

It will be a great day. Don't miss it!

The Council closes its ears

I blogged last week about the demonstration at Lambeth Town Hall to protest against Labour’s draconian budget. One point I forgot to mention, which is perhaps most important of all, is the way the Council used the protest as an excuse for barring all deputations.

This was completely unreasonable and undemocratic.

Some forty community groups had given prior notice that they wished to make formal deputations to the council to defend threatened services or jobs. The names and addresses of the members of these deputations had been registered by Council officials and they were scheduled to speak at the start of the Council debate. The idea that ordinary electors have a right to put their case to the Council before decisions are made is one of the fundamental principles of local democracy.

However, the Council chose to close their ears. First they vacated the Council Chamber and held their meeting in another room. For half an hour, delegations waited in the Council Antechamber, expecting to be summoned in at any minute to present their case. But eventually a Lambeth officer came out to inform them that the Council had voted to sit in closed session and not to receive them.

This is scandalous. On the most controversial issue for many years, the council opted to do its business without any input or oversight from the public who they claim to represent. This means that major changes to the way things work in this area have been made without either seeking or listening to the views of any of the users or employees of the threatened services.

For example, Lambeth will lose its hard-working park wardens, despite 3000 petitions against the measure and opposition from a local MP. The delegation from the Lambeth Parks and Green Spaces Forum, like the others, was not invited to share their views.

The Council will blame the protestors for making it unsafe to receive the delegations, but this is utterly disingenuous – the delegations weren’t just angry people off the street, they were citizens who had given their personal details and officially registered in order to present their case in standard democratic fashion. They had a right to be heard and the Council had an obligation to respect that right.

One of the thwarted delegates summed up the Council’s actions aptly in their entry to the members’ attendance book: ‘Today, democracy died’.

Hundreds protest council budget

On Wednesday night around 300 protesters lobbied Lambeth councillors to vote against the Labour-led budget. The demonstration was organised by a wide coalition of groups in the borough, including public service and voluntary sector workers facing redundancy, disabled people, youth workers, pensioners and others who rely on the continuation of vital services.

As the scale of the protest became clear, the councillors retreated to an adjoining room to vote through the cuts while demonstrators occupied the council chamber and held our own People’s Assembly.

It was an impressive example of people power. The scale of the demonstration and the enormous support from people passing by will have sent a potent message to the council, and perhaps also to Parliament.

But the draconian budget was passed all the same and now we face a long, hard struggle to protect vital services in the face of massively reduced budgets.

What is getting cut?

• More than 800 of the council's 3,500 jobs
• The entire park ranger service
• The school crossing patrol service, serving 24 schools
• Durning, Waterloo, Carnegie and Minet libraries, plus two mobile libraries
• Youth clubs, adventure playgrounds and the Young and Safe programme, which combats youth crime
• All but one public toilet facility
• Regeneration, management and repair on housing estates
• Adult social care and discretionary freedom passes for adults with mental health problems
• Street cleaning and repairs
• The noise nuisance service
• The Faith Engagement Programme

What is the alternative?

• Bring the failing Lambeth Living ALMO (the external housing management firm) back in house, saving millions
  
• Cut all senior management pay – the chief executive earns £270k a year, enough to staff an entire library!
• Reduce council fuel bills by making our schools, libraries and other buildings more energy efficient
• Reduce the millions spent on expensive private-sector consultants
  
• Use council reserves to reduce the impact of the front-loading of the cuts and allow time to make improvements
• Cut down on glossy PR and council spin
• Work more closely with other public sector bodies to cut admin costs

Protect public services!

These are dark days in Lambeth. The Council is facing an £80 million cut over three years in its funding from central government. On Monday, the cabinet presented next year’s budget for the borough. It’s brutal.

The damage includes

• Scrapping Lambeth’s excellent park ranger service
• Scrapping the school crossing patrols which current serve 24 schools
• Cutting cleaning and maintenance of our streets and estates
• Closing public toilets
• Withdrawing freedom passes for adults with mental health problems
• Reducing all council services, including parks, libraries, waste management and noise nuisance services
• The loss of up to 1,000 jobs

Labour did spectacularly well in this area in May’s local elections, primarily because this is a community that cares about old-fashioned concepts such as social justice and the imperative to care for the least well-off, and – in their ignorance in my view – many voters felt that Labour was the party most likely to meet these demands. Well, now we all need to hold Labour to account and make sure they stand up for these values.

Everyone accepts the administration is in a difficult position, but nevertheless there are choices, and the ones being made are not good ones. First, the Labour group is reverting to its characteristic unilateralism. We need the public to be involved in informed debate, yet Labour’s efforts at ‘consultation’ have been characteristically vacuous, with all key decisions being made in private.

It is a revealing insight into Labour’s attitudes locally that the only service that they’re seeking to protect is the police – sure, crime’s an issue in these parts, but aren’t jobs, schools, care services and a clean environment at least as important?

Rather than cutting vital services and precious jobs the Council could make savings by:

• Cutting senior pay for top council executives
• Reducing the millions spent on expensive private-sector consultants
• Cutting down on glossy PR and council spin
• Reducing council fuel bills by making our schools, libraries and other buildings more energy efficient
• Working more closely with other public sector bodies to cut admin costs

Social care should be prioritised. That’s our red line. The Greens would make no cuts that reduced care for older people, people with mental illnesses, children and other vulnerable people. We would also not dispose of assets such as community centres and libraries, which we will never be able to buy back. It’s better to run on a shoe-string for a while.

A broad campaign against these cuts is well underway. You can sign the petition to protect our park rangers here

, and at 4pm on Friday 11th February there’ll be a sit-in protest in Herne Hill to save our lollipop men and women.

The next big demonstration will be outside the full council meeting in Brixton on the evening of 23rd February – do try to make it. Check out Lambeth Save our Services for up-to-date information.

Protest against the cuts - demo this Saturday!

Join us in Brixton this Saturday 30th October to protest against the coalition government's brutal cuts. These cuts are unprecedented in scale, will wreck local services and will hit the poorest hardest.

The demonstration - in Windrush Square, central Brixton, from 12:30 - has been called by Lambeth Save Our Services, Right to Work, NUT, Unison, UCU, Lambeth Pensioners and Lambeth Green Party.

Greens are strongly opposed to the government's cuts programme. We take the deficit seriously, but rather than getting the economy back on its feet the government's plans risk making things much worse by putting huge numbers of people out of work, reducing vital services and making the poorest and most vulnerable people pay most.

Instead of cutting vital services the Council could make savings in the following areas:

• Reducing salaries for top council executives - A number of senior council employees are paid more than £100,000 per year. Greens say the public sector cannot afford to pay such exorbitant salaries at a time when vital services are under threat
• Saving money by conserving energy - Big cash savings are possible if we make our schools, libraries and other council buildings more energy efficient
• Reducing administrative and management costs by co-operating with other public sector services
• Reducing money spent on expensive consultants, glossy PR and spin

Read more about the Green Party's policies on the cuts here.