Lambeth Liberal Democrats

Tony Robinson's hapless character Baldrick, in TV black comedy Black Adder, was always coming up with a cunning plan - and now it seems that Labour-run Lambeth is using similarly desperate means to achieve their ends.

Back in October we commented upon rising disquiet among residents at the direction that the Labour-run Council was heading with its full-on regeneration gold rush in parts of the Borough. Critics complained that in the stampede for more revenue streams from redevelopment, the Council seemed increasingly remote to legitimate complaints from residents about the local authority's often, literally, towering ambitions.

Since then, Labour Cabinet Members have seamlessly merged Lambeth's Planning function into the Regeneration Department. And Lambeth has issued a number of statements suggesting that Planners will from now on need to take account of the overriding Corporate needs of the Authority.

Not those of local residents, it should be noted. Still isn't there always the good old Planning Committee, with elected local councilors on the panel, as a fallback to try to find a path between these competing interests?

Worrying, then, that work is also in train to make the Planning Committee much more of a rubber-stamping exercise. For the past year a guillotine has been invoked, limiting the time that Planning Committee members have available to scrutinise complex applications.

Now Labour - bored with having to sit through long meetings showcasing public disquiet - is trying to hand over even more power to senior planning officers to decide things in the privacy of their offices and limit local ward councilors from 'Calling-In' items for decision at Committee.

We think that Elected Members have a right to raise the legitimate planning concerns of their residents and that Labour's quiet acquiescence at best or deliberate encouragement at worst to put the brakes on proper debate is not only highly questionable but also likely to lead to poorer local decision-making about our built environment.

How is such a move in any way, shape or form, in the spirit of open government, transparency or democratic accountability? How on earth does it square with Labour's avowed aims for a Co-operative Council? How, indeed, will unelected officers ever be challenged by Members over decisions made in private that can affect the lives of thousands of Lambeth's citizens?

At the last Cabinet Meeting on 13th February, Cllr Nigel Haselden, Cabinet Member for Regeneration & Planning, even made the extraordinary claim that it was perfectly reasonable for them to filch money from the Government's Brand New Homes Bonus to fund Lambeth's Planning Service to 'ensure the creation of a virtuous circle of more homes being built in the future and so more Government New Homes Bonus being created'.

In other words Labour has just created a Frankenstein's monster - a Planning service that is arguably now wholly dependent for its very existence on approving more and more developments, however dubious certain aspects of them may be.

Some may very well also come to the conclusion that this sorry turn is also an abject conflict of interest.

Apparently it is 'passion' that has miraculously saved the Lambeth Country Show, according to Florence Nosegbe, Labour's Cabinet Member for Culture, The Olympics and now, apparently, U-Turns. And, it seems, the grand Council 'April Fool' joke, horribly miscast in mid-February, was just a jolly jape by the Labour elite to spark some lively discussion about just how much loved the Country Show really is.

One of the first real tests of Labour's new Co-Op Council credentials will be revealed on Wednesday 22rd February when the Council hosts the first of a round of consultative public meetings on the future of Lambeth Libraries.

The North of the Borough has been poorly served by a down-at-heel temporary library building in Lower Marsh for some twenty years, with as many promises for new purpose-built premises as there have been glossy Council leaflets promising a brighter tomorrow.

Just to add to the feeling that Lambeth's commitment to a library in the North of the Borough has never quite matched the sky-high rhetoric is the fact that the Waterloo 'temporary' library is open only 31.5 hours each week.

Yet despite all the cosy up-front Co-Op 'consultation' sessions, the hot money is that a deal is being brokered to move the old new library back into the old Old Library Building that is currently part occupied by a leading community body The Waterloo Community Development Group.

While this may seem like a convenient sticking plaster to cover the gaping wound of Council Leader Steve Reed's promise that the library in Waterloo would be "relocated to a better building" it does beg the question of what this relocated Back to The Future library would consist of?

Rumours persist that the proposed budget would be some 40% less than the current budget - and that's an even more dramatic Cut than the one alongside the Old Vic almost opposite.

Labour will blame it all on cuts at national level, naturally, but Labour's shabby record on libraries precedes it. Remember the uproar that was caused in 2000 when five libraries were earmarked for closure as part of a library modernisation plan and a further two actually closed for good?

Let us be clear - in a deprived Borough like Lambeth, libraries form a vital link in the chain for meeting the educational and aspirational needs of its citizens. Labour politicians are keen about publicly promoting new schools in Lambeth, but local libraries offer quiet and secure environments to do homework and provide educational opportunities well beyond school years.

Yet there's a sad paucity of ambition when it comes to libraries. You will find very few newspaper column inches filled by Labour councillors calling for bigger and better libraries. Indeed very little Section 106 money ever seems to go to libraries in return for granting planning permission for new buildings by comparison with contributions towards other community needs.

Given the sheer scale of development being approved and encouraged in the North of the Borough, particularly, it seems odd that Labour hasn't brokered a deal for a state-of-the art library on the ground floor of one of these monolithic concrete accretions.

Wouldn't it be nice to hear for a change that Labour-run Lambeth wants to be known as the Council that builds libraries rather than the one that closes them?

Labour's Country Show cancellation calamity is now set for a massive U-Turn as public anger forces beleaguered Council Chiefs to fix the damage with a new Autumn date. With a public petition close to forcing a Council debate, plus our own Lib Dem formal call-in of their hasty and botched decision, panicked Labour Party Chiefs have now signaled a scaled-down Autumn Harvest Festival in Brockwell Park to replace the popular Summer family hardy perennial favourite.

Streatham Labour MP and Shadow Business, Innovation and Skills, spokesperson has declared that the Lambeth Country Show should not go ahead this year.

Chuka Umunna, MP, cites public safety as the reason that the 38th annual family fun-packed weekend should not be held in July echoing his downbeat Dulwich & West Norwood MP colleague Tessa Jowell.

Both parliamentary prophets of doom cited significant international terrorist threats to the popular local family-based show in Brockwell Park that features real live farm animals, sheep-dog displays, owl watching, flower arranging and funny-shaped vegetable competitions.

Umunna also considers that the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Celebrations (2-5th June) and the Olympics in August will stretch police resources over one weekend in Lambeth in July. Previously Lambeth's Labour Council Leader stated publicly that the event was being cancelled on direct police advice.

This has forced new Borough Commander, Chief Superintendent Matt Bell to issue a statement to deny that the Metropolitan Police Service has issued any warnings to Lambeth to cancel the show. He maintains that it is solely a Council decision.

This rather undercuts the Streatham Labour Member of Parliament's prime argument.

Indeed, there is a thought in some quarters that the Lambeth Country Show which showcases so many small-scale and sound ecologically-based businesses, and which demonstrate a vast array of fascinating traditional crafts and skills to a young and enthusiastic audience, is exactly the sort of springboard for innovation that a local MP should be actively supporting and encouraging.

Once again Labour politicians seem to be showing themselves to be out of step both with the local mood and public opinion.

The ill-fated SS Titanic suffered from rather too much ice one hundred years ago but now comes an equally severe ice warning that could just about sink ambitions for a state-of-the-art skating facility in Streatham.

The latest chilling news comes from NISA (National Ice Skating Association) whose Chief Executive has said that it was "ill-advised" for the Labour-run Council to continue with the proposed ice-rink designs because they involve locking-in an ice making machine called a Zamboni.

This would mean that in the event of a machine breaking down, the heavy specialist equipment would currently have to be removed through a solid wall from its first floor perch using heavy (and expensive) jacks. Not an ideal arrangement you may think.

However, there is worse news to come. As a result of this critical design flaw, NISA may not now award the brand new multi-million pound ice extravaganza Regional Status. The removal of Regional Status - talked about since 2004 - means that Streatham's new facilities would be unable to hold high-value competitive events like the British Championships and NISA has indicated that it would be more likely to award such crowd-drawing events to somewhere like Lee Valley.

It does seem, on the face of it, like crass incompetence that this project - talked about and hyped for more than a decade - should be sunk so early in its life by such an elementary design error. At least the ill-fated Titanic actually got launched.

At the moment Lambeth seems curiously unprepared to talk to NISA or alter its plans. Labour 's Cabinet member for Culture declared the matter dismissively in the Press as " A Storm in a Teacup."

Does it matter if Streatham is no longer regarded as a Regional Ice Rink? It does and it should. Staging such high profile - possibly televised - events would be fabulous draws for Streatham, reigniting the status and esteem Streatham Ice Arena once had around the country.

More than that, it guarantees that the new ice facility would be commercially viable and not just a huge White Elephant for the local taxpayer to fund. Imagine - it would be like a huge supermarket trying to operate half-empty and selling a deliberately limited range of goods. Unthinkable.

Labour needs to get talking soon with NISA to avert disaster.

What is it about Labour and broken promises?

Like love and marriage, peaches and cream, Labour and broken promises just seem to go through life hand in hand - at least in Lambeth they do.

In the wider world, you can usually spot a dodgy deal in the small print and, luckily, consumer legislation usually allows you to extricate yourself without too much damage after a statutory cooling-off period.

Curiously, they've trotted out the Olympics - something they've been hyping merrily for ages even though Lambeth residents will derive no direct benefit - as the excuse for cancelling the traditional annual Country Show in Brockwell Park.

Seems the date of the poor old Country Show is just too close to the much-hyped Olympics. Strange, then, that Labour over the past year or so that it has been so stridently spinning the Olympics - even to the point of having a Cabinet Member post specially allocated to it - didn't think to alter the date?

Some residents have complained that Vauxhall is currently a town without a proper heart. Rather as Los Angeles was once described as being like a sprawling suburb looking for a city. Labour has promised to address this.

What of the Vauxhall of the future? Will it have a unique identity or will it be simply a cluster of random skyscraper residential prisons? Will it have been planned to be a 21st century utopian city or will it turn out to be just an unplanned chaotic urban jungle?

These are the stark choices facing Labour-led Lambeth Council right now - and the omens are not good. The battle with the developers has so far been inconclusive with some skirmishes already lost, some won and a few in abeyance.

Looming over the battlefield like some brooding medieval watchtower is that monument to John Prescott's unique vision for the area, the Vauxhall Tower. At some 50 stories it will soon be the tallest in London - perhaps even dwarfing the adjacent St George's Wharf, which is no mean achievement.

Labour is well on the back foot having only just realised that the starting gun for this developers sprint was fired ages ago. They can only, seemingly, chatter on the sidelines and watch, largely impotent, as the story unfolds before their eyes. Small wonder, perhaps, given that Lambeth's Regeneration HQ is on the site of a former gasworks.

More worrying still is that Labour Lambeth's Regeneration Phoenix is set to fuel an even bigger folly - this time underground. Worryingly, the massive cost of TfL's Northern Line Extension - dubbed a ghost train to nowhere by some - is set to sap huge amounts of S106 planning gain money from any future development given permission in the north of Lambeth just to pay for it.

Lambeth's high-rise development pain will be largely Wandsworth's transport gain.

Quite why residents from Vauxhall to Waterloo should have to pay for this for all time is beyond us. Are there not enough infrastructural requirements in this area of the borough that desperately need funding already? And isn't S106 money meant to mitigate the negative aspects of such dense development in the immediate area? Not in another borough?

Yet Labour has gone on record as supporting this scheme wholeheartedly and its crazy funding arrangements that will disproportionately and negatively affect Lambeth residents for a generation.

We beg to disagree.

Seems that Labour is in a right old muddle locally about - well - your local.

Local Labour politicians bang on about the evils of late night drinking, while conveniently forgetting that Labour championed the disastrous 24-Hour licensing free-for-all in the first place, and have now had to introduce a saturation policy in Clapham simply to reduce the sheer number of bars and pubs.

Meanwhile, Labour's local MP and Opposition Trade Spokesperson, Chuka Umunna, has been busily highlighting the plight of local publicans.

His beef is that the tied pub scheme - where the brewer is the landlord - charges far too much for beer so that many of them face going out of business. This is a system that has operated for hundreds of years and pub tenants have probably always grumbled about the price of ale.

Maybe some of Mr Umunna's constituents in Clapham wouldn't actually be too bothered if a few more local pubs and bars did close. And, conversely, the tenant scheme has always provided a useful entry into the pub trade without all the attendant start-up costs.

Successful entrepreneurial people who have come through this system often go on to bigger and better things themselves - sometimes even setting-up their own small pub chains and micro-breweries. So this system could be said to be a fertile nursery for the successful niche players of the future thus providing much-needed diversity and resilience in the market place.

The world of business is, of course, a tough one - and always has been. Brewing as a large-scale and heavily taxed business is also a world away from the cosy fireside pint. Just look at the legions of famous British brewers - once household names - who have now given up the unequal struggle.

Once upon a time brewers were also as powerful and influential in the land as - well - merchant bankers and operators of hedge funds are today.

Perhaps Labour politicians' oddly disjointed relationship with business would be better served not simply creaming-off the profits of established success in the good times but coming up with ideas for new innovative processes and products, especially in deprived areas, that will make the UK a whole lot less dependent economically on the service and retail sectors?

But then, getting your head around that one is probably a lot more difficult than simply popping into your local pub.