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. 

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Lambeth's dismal food waste collection statistics

We already know that Lambeth has one of the worst recycling rates in London, falling further and further behind the London average.

We also caught Lambeth trying to fiddle it's recycling stats, by classing incineration as recycling. I popped down to the town hall recently with Jenny Jones to highlight it. It also made news on the BBC.

We have now got hold of the food collection data for Local authorities across London from WRAP.



It shows that Lambeth lies a couple of places from bottom, collecting food waste from just under 11,000 kerbside properties and just under 8,000 flats. Boroughs like Croydon and Bromley collect from around 110,000 kerbside properties. Even in neighbouring Southwark they collect from 47,000. Lambeth is ahead of only the Corporation of London and Sutton.

Alternative London budget proposed to lower fares, save fire stations and reduce pollution

Green London Assembly member Darren Johnson has published an amendment to be tabled at the London Assembly meeting on Friday 8th February, which is discussing the Mayor’s draft budget.

The amendment has three principal objectives:

- to help low income Londoners by holding down fares and supporting them to find decent homes let by accredited landlords

- to protect Londoners from damaging and unnecessary cuts to fire stations, fire engines and firefighters whilst raising council tax below the rate of inflation

- to improve Londoners’ quality of life, for example by investing in measures to make London’s streets safer, healthier and less congested

The Green amendment puts public safety and lower fares before gimmicks like council tax cuts and the New Bus for London. Households would pay an extra £10 a year due to a 2% council tax rise to save fire stations threatened by cuts, and households would save £60 a year from cheaper transport fares. This would also tackle longstanding problems ignored by the Mayor, such as central London’s serious air pollution problem.

Highlights include:

- On cost of living – freeze bus fares and hold train and tube fares down to inflation, more than offsetting a below-inflation rise in council tax

- On housing – set-up an ethical lettings agency to help tenants find decent landlords with decent homes, avoiding rip-off agents

- On the fire brigade – stop plans to close 12 fire stations, sell of 18 fire engines and lose 520 firefighters

- On the police service – get more frontline policing for our money by using more civilian staff and PCSOs and dropping the obsession with police officer numbers

- On our streets – spend 2% of TfL’s budget to make the 2% of journeys by bike safer and more pleasant with Dutch-style infrastructure

- On health – clean up central London’s polluted roads with a very low emission zone, a fund to help taxi drivers upgrade, and practical help for suffering schools

- On the environment – a revolving fund to help small and medium sized businesses make their premises more energy and water efficient

You can read the full Green amendment on the GLA web site to find out how these proposals are funded here

Residents told ‘If you’re no friend of Labour – you’re no friend of Lambeth’

Ever wanted to become a ‘Friend Of’ something, like a park, library or building? Fancied doing your bit for the local community? Yes? Well don’t bother here.  

In an email sent by Lambeth Labour Councillor Sally Prentice, Cabinet Member for Culture and Leisure, people were told that if they wanted to learn more about how to get involved in a Friends-Of group, they have to be “broadly sympathetic” to the beliefs of the Labour Party.

Titled Getting involved in Lambeth’s Parks and Libraries, the email was sent out in a recruitment drive to get more Labour members to infiltrate community groups. This way, packed with Labour members and no longer independent, annoying local community groups stop being so bothersome by not doing exactly what the Council says they should.

Encouraging people to attend the training session at the Town Hall, Sally says “We need to ensure that the Groups are as representative of different sections of the community. “Non Labour Party members are welcome to come along but they should be broadly sympathetic. This is because, she goes on to explain “In the past” (pause for deep, tearful sigh) “many of the Friends groups have been run by people who are our political opponents!” Exclamation marks and all!

What turns this fairly horrendous piece of communication into a joke is that Lambeth are doing this in the spirit of being a Co-operative Council. Clearly Labour hasn’t grasped the spirit of a co-operative which is that you actually work with the people in your community, and not against them.

Now they’ve excluded us from helping to fix the leaky roof in Streatham Library, what, we ask at Lambeth Green Party HQ, has the council got in store for those of us who don’t support Labour?  Will they pretend to re-cycle our rubbish and leave potholes on the street to tunnel down to Australia (oh hang on, they do that anyway).

Don’t say you haven’t been warned. “Broadly unsympathetic” to Labour and live in Lambeth… your talents and time aren’t wanted by the Council here. 

EU citizens begin petition for 20mph urban speed limit

Lambeth council has resisted calls for a 20mph speed limit across the borough which would help traffic flow, reduce pollution and of course reduce collisions and fatalities. This is particularly important as road deaths in Lambeth have trebled.

However there is now an initiative at EU level. Gathering 1 million petition signatures will require serious consideration of this by the EU Commission. 55,000 UK names are needed.

The EU Parliament has already endorsed its Road Safety Strategy that "strongly recommends 20mph limits for urban roads where no separate facilities exist for cyclists"

The safety campaign 20's Plenty for Us, are using the new European Citizen's Initiative (ECI) "30kmh - making streets liveable!" to ask that 20mph/30kmh speed limits become the norm for all urban and residential roads. The EU Commission must
consider this initiative seriously when 1 million signatures are submitted.

20's Plenty for Us are on a pan-European "citizen's committee" who have one year to gain a minimum of 1m signatures (on paper or on-line) across at least 7 EU countries, including a minimum of 54,750 in the UK.

8.3m people in some of the UK's most iconic cities already live in communities adopting this policy. 30mph limits are deemed inappropriate for most of their roads. With 170 local campaign branches around the UK, 20's Plenty for Us works with many community, health, transport and safety organisations across the private, public and voluntary sectors.

This comes in time for Road Safety Week 2012 - 19-26 November with its Go20 campaign in support of 20mph limits. Our aim is for 1m signatures by Road Safety Week 2013.

You can find out more by visiting the www.30kmh.eu website.

Lambeth Labour's deception in Brixton Hill

The Labour party in Lambeth appear to be concerned about the rise in the Green vote in the borough.

Their latest leaflet distributed to Brixton Hill ward - championing Labour's freeze on council tax which is hurting the most vulnerable in Lambeth - contains a graph of the results from the London Mayoral elections in 2012. Although the Greens came second in the ward on both the party list and with the individual assembly candidate (you can see the full results here), the graph produced by Labour mysteriously fails to show the Green vote at all.

Not only were the Greens in second place in Brixton Hill in the London Assembly election, but the Greens in Brixton Hill have been in second place in council elections there for years (see the results for 2002 and for 2006 on the Lambeth Council website).

This does beg the question why Lambeth Labour are suddenly trying to deceive local people.

Labour has a habit of running dirty tricks campaigns against the Greens when it is feeling threatened - as it did against a Green councillor in Herne Hill. They have recently been embarrassed and forced into a u-turn on the Living Wage after their initial opposition to the proposal by a Green councillor that it be extended to subcontractors. (It was a Green Lambeth councillor who originally tabled the motion to get Lambeth to become a Living Wage employer). The Greens have also recently been active in the ward itself. It is not surprising therefore that Labour is scared.

Brixton Hill is of course leader of Lambeth council Steve Reed’s Ward. Council tax payers are still paying him £50,000 a year, while he campaigns full time in Croydon to win a Parliamentary seat, with the support of Lambeth Labour. If Reed does get elected to Parliament, there will be a by-election in Brixton Hill, and voters will get a chance to express how they feel about all this.