Latest Update On Gibbs Green And West Kensington Estates

I sent this letter (click on each attachment to enlarge) to residents of the Gibbs Green and West Kensington estates yesterday. Unfortunately, there are limits to what can be disclosed at this point and I understand how its contents will initially be disheartening for those that have campaigned against this scheme for such a long time. But I believe residents have a right to understand the reality of the situation that the borough's former Conservative councillors left us with.

Earlier this year, my fellow Labour councillors and I stood on a manifesto (page 23) that was clear in our approach to this scheme. I appreciate how, in this age when people are particularly disbelieving of anything politicians say, that it might be hard for some to believe we are still sincere in wanting to do want we said we'd do. But we are.

We are doing what we promised on many fronts and there's no reason we wouldn't stick to our word and do our best on this one. For example: we have already saved Sulivan Primary School; have cancelled H&F Conservatives' policy of selling council homes to property spectulators; we are abolishing home care charges for the elderly and disabled; have negotiated millions of pounds worth of extra affordable homes to rent and buy; are about to deliver new funding and support for local food banks and are putting the greatest ever number of extra council-funded police on our streets. We are also vigorously campaigning to save Charing Cross Hospital from the Conservative/Lib Dem government's demolition plans and have already delivered on a long list of the carefully considered promises we made in our manifesto.

The former Conservative run council's scheme for the sale and demolition of the Gibbs Green and West Kensington estates was signed off by the Conservative/Lib Dem government on 18th April 2013. This allowed the two estates to then be effectively sold which was actioned on 14th November 2013.

After 22nd May 2014, when my fellow Labour councillors and I were elected to run H&F Council, we began discussions with CapCo about possible better ways forward.

It was my Labour colleagues and I that discovered what H&F Conservatives were up to with peoples' homes in our borough back in 2007. News on their plans for the Gibbs Green and West Kensington estates was exposed in 2008. We have consistently campaigned against all H&F Conservatives' housing sale and demolitions, making what was happening to social housing here in Hammersmith and Fulham into a national issue. We are not about to change our minds now.

The situation we inherited on the Gibbs Green and West Kensington estates isn't easy but we're making some progress and CapCo have consistently given me their word that they want to do the right thing by all the residents on the two estates. I hope we will have some positive news on possible ways forward early on in the new year and that we will be able to properly engage residents on all the possible options and what they want us to do on their behalves.

H&F Conservatives' 14.7% Parking Charges Hike Blocked! But What Does It Tell Us About How They Did Business?

In the wee small hours of election night last May I found myself being led by council officials to a Town Hall room in a small party that included Cllr. Nicholas Botterill (Con), H&F’s former council leader. We were being taken to sign the book accepting each of our positions as elected H&F councillors. We traipsed quietly from the noise of the count and just as we were about to go through a corridor door Botterill turned to me: “You’re going to be a very unpopular administration very soon” he stated. “Er, thanks” I replied. “I’m not being funny...” he added, “It’s just that the things you’re going to have to do will make you a very unpopular administration very quickly”. He was understandably shocked and upset by the huge loss H&F Conservatives suffered that night. I thanked him again for offering his view and made a note of what he said.

The next week a senior H&F Council official shuffled into my office and asked me to enact a policy that H&F Conservatives had planned for immediately after the election: “The former administration may or may not…” He advised while trying to muster what looked like a wink “…have been about to introduce a 14.7% increase in parking charges. If you do it now, it will raise three quarters of a million pounds for the rest of this year and one and a half million more pounds for each year thereafter” he concluded. “Are you trying to turn me into Nick Clegg?” I asked. The official went on to explain that my Labour colleagues and I had promised in our manifesto that we would stick within H&F Conservatives’ planned spending forecasts and that this hike would raise vital sums that would allow us to do that. We did not take the official's advice despite being lobbied to do so by him and others over the following days. Instead, we went and found over £4 million pounds of wasted spend, such as on PR and propaganda, which we cut in a mini-budget we held in June.

My fellow Labour councillors and I also propose to freeze parking charges when we vote to agree the borough's finances at February's budget council meeting. When you take inflation into account that is a real terms cut. My colleagues and I made a commitment to put money back into people’s pockets and, in these tough times, that along with other measures we propose to take, will help to do that.

Having now had six months to examine what we have inherited I think Botterill's election night comments reflect more on how H&F's Conservative administration chose to do business on Charing Cross Hospital, offering council homes for demolition and sale, hospitality from developers, planning, Sulivan Primary School and all of this. It is true that H&F Conservatives bequeathed us a variety of situations that aren't good and we don't like but I believe that if we're straight with people (and open when legally possible) and keep working to do what we said we'd do in our manifesto then reasonable local people will still recognise that we're on their side and are working hard for them.

Meanwhile, back to parking and it's right to reflect on H&F Conservatives' horribly bad record: back in 2007 they successfully argued for a 50% increase in parking fines; in 2009 they introduced new parking rules to catch people out over Christmas and in the same year they introduced a 55% increase in parking charges and made the Daily Telegraph's list of parking shame. We will review how to improve the borough's parking and just like everything else we're working on we will do it with residents.

North End Road Festive Market Inspires Hope That We Can Regenerate This Great Fulham Land Mark

Shoppers packing North End Road yesterday morning

Yesterday’s North End Road Festive Market was a huge success. Over 10,000 shoppers visited. It was encouraging to see lines form at cash points and money being spent supporting local shops, regular stall holders and many, in some cases newly aspiring, local entrepreneurs. It was a wonderful way to celebrate Small Business Saturday but more importantly showed how Fulham’s North End Road could be great once again with just a little imagination and some smartly applied council support.

The plan had originated just weeks ago out of one of the Borough’s new Policy and Accountability Committees (PAC). On 17th September over a hundred local residents, shop keepers and market traders attended the Economic Regeneration, Housing and the Arts PAC to consider how to regenerate North End Road. Under the excellent stewardship of Cllr. Ben Coleman (Lab) they agreed to establish an action group comprising of businesses, stallholders and residents. I am extremely impressed that Ben Coleman and the rest of the action team were able to get yesterday’s event up and running so smoothly and within such a short space of time. They and the H&F Council officers (who went well beyond the extra mile to deliver it) have my thanks and respect for pulling this off.


North End Road yesterday evening

My colleagues and I promised in our manifesto - The Change We Need - that we would try to improve our shopping streets and have long called for support for small independent retailers.

This time last year and before they were elected Fulham Broadway's Councillors Ben Coleman, Alan De'Ath and Sharon Holder were actively encouraging a "buy local" campaign to support more of Hammersmith and Fulham's independent shops.

Here’s the text of what we argued needed to change from our manifesto published prior to last May's local elections:

"Improving our high streets
Our high streets are significant employers, particularly of young people. They should be vibrant places to shop and eat. Sadly, the [Conservative run] council is overseeing the decline of some of our most important high streets and parades. In a 500-metre stretch of North End Road alone, there are 20 empty shops and 17 betting and loan shops."

We now hope to build on yesterday’s success. Ben Coleman has arranged a public meeting to review how it went and what needs to happen next. If you’d like to attend that meeting it will take place at 7.00pm this Wednesday 10th December at St John's Church, North End Road, Fulham, London SW6 1PB. Alternatively you can email Ben Coleman here and let him know what you think.

'Tax On Disability' Scrapped

Possibly the worst email leaked to me during the years our borough was run by the H&F Conservatives was this one which detailed how elderly and disabled residents had been put "at risk" after H&F Conservatives introduced a new hourly charge for vital home care services. I was therefore delighted to announce on Wednesday 3rd December, which was the United Nation’s International Day of Disabled People, that this "tax on disability" will now be abolished in the London Borough of  Hammersmith and Fulham.

This was a H&F Labour manifesto pledge and my colleagues and I found the necessary £324,000 a year to do this by halting a horribly wasteful £400,000 worth of council publications and lamp post vanity banners that H&F's former Conservative administration was so fond of. Since then we have also cut the council's PR department.

This stealth tax was also expensive to administer so we will save even more but worryingly despite that, we've been advised that this had still been seen as worthwhile by H&F's former Conservative administration because it deterred other people from asking for help.

There needs to be a sea change in how we as a society look at the essential services disabled people need just to carry out basic tasks and do everyday things. I hope that by abolishing what has widely become known as a "disability tax" we can contribute to that argument.