Lambeth Liberal Democrats

There's a great deal of crowing from Labour about the 85 older person's flats being created in a clutch of uber-trendy residential towers designed by must-have architect Foster & Partners on the Albert Embankment. Each swanky apartment has a generous and sinuous balcony and some of the best riverside views in London. What's not to like?

Liberal Democrats have challenged the Mayor of London's plans to close Fire Stations across the Capital and reduce the number of fire engines available for a major fire.

At the London Assembly Liberal Democrats also offered an alternative budget that would have avoided the need for the cuts in the first place by canceling the Mayor's politically-driven and wholly token council tax reduction.

A major area of Clapham Common 'managed' by Lambeth Council for the benefit of local people was occupied and isolated by a blatant commercial installation from a well known international sports-shoe manufacturer for six months last year.

Residents complained bitterly about this cynical commercialisation of a public asset to no avail as Labour-run Lambeth happily raked-in fat fees.

Labour-run Lambeth is topping the polls again but for all the wrong reasons. This time it is in the Capital's Top Five for emergency admissions for children suffering from asthma - according to leading health charity Asthma UK.

The charity points out that asthma sufferers face the double-whammy of a postcode lottery for specialised care from GP's and often end up in hospital A&E departments due to inadequate or incorrect treatment.

Labour-run Lambeth is allowing developers to reduce onsite affordable housing in major developments which has previously been the policy mainstay of creating genuinely mixed communities in the borough.

Local Lib Dems have hit out at the idea flagged-up in the borough's proposed new Local Plan going out to public consultation as a scheme designed to create posh ghettos.

Once again Labour-run Lambeth is in the UK's top ten - but, sadly, this chart-busting record is for the amount of uncollected Council Tax.

Labour politicians may try to spin how hard-up Lambeth is constantly in the media and blame the Government for anything and everything but they can't dodge the fact that they are so incompetent that they've failed to collect £41.1 million in Council Tax arrears which works out at an astonishing £307 per household.

The death of former Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has certainly generated a lot of column inches and sparked a fairly predictable self-righteous debate over the air waves between the so-called Left and the so-called Right - but we are left wondering whether Lambeth residents can really spot the difference?
Labour nationally likes to make great play about Bullingdon Club privately educated toff millionaires occupying the Tory front benches but they ignore the privately educated millionaires lurking on their own shadow front bench.

We're great fans of Friends' Groups that have been set-up around the Borough as stout defenders of our Libraries and Parks against Labour's periodic cuts, closures and slow strangulation of these so-called 'Cinderella' services.

However, we were dismayed to see that residents have had to set up a new Friends Group called The Friends of Vauxhall Bus Station.

Labour-run Lambeth has excelled itself again in the waste department - but sadly not in the recycling league table where it still languishes well below the London average.

No this is a more traditional Labour waste story that has become all too familiar in Lambeth - and equally hard to fathom given their official insistence that they've been particularly hard-hit by Government cuts and are so short of cash that they hardly know where the money for their next new glitzy Town Hall building is coming from.

Promises by Lambeth Labour of huge gains in affordable housing from the massive Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea development are turning out to be a giant fantasy.

As we reported recently (Labour Puts Regen Gun to Vauxhall Residents' Heads) Labour ward councillors have been telling local residents that if the controversial Northern Line Extension does not go ahead there will be no VNEB, no jobs, nor much-needed social housing.

But now, with the virtual ink barely dry on this story, comes worrying news that one developer of a previously approved tower block scheme wants to renege on its earlier commitment to social housing.

SSky Gardens opposite Sainsbury's at Nine Elms, a sleek glass 35 storey tower featuring signature internal gardens and great views of the new Thames-side American Embassy, had its Section 106 Planning Obligations agreement approved by the Council in 2010 for 31% of affordable housing.