10 Most Recent News Stories

Lambeth Living is Tops for Temps

4.11.40pm BST (GMT +0100) Fri 23rd Jul 2010

If you are a Lambeth Council tenant waiting for a minor, or even essential repair, you might just stand a better chance of getting disaster relief from the United Nations because little will have come your way this twelve months past.

Perhaps the news that Lambeth's Council Leader was finally going to act tough with the disastrous ALMO Lambeth Living that was largely his own creation offered you just a crumb of hope that things might improve?

But no. Labour indeed talked tough and threatened to take away £1 million from Lambeth Living until they realised that the whole shaky edifice would crash rather sooner rather than later. So the £1 million sticking plaster was quickly reapplied to stem the life-blood from ebbing away from the corpse.

Meanwhile we were told that a brand new Lambeth Living model was to be hurriedly announced in July and a whole series of glossy events was even programmed to show that there was real life left in Lambeth Living. Then the plug got pulled at the last moment and the events were reined back to September.

Meanwhile a report to Lambeth Leaseholders' Council has just revealed that during this period of severe national restraint, Lambeth Living has splurged out on 46 temporary staff, 21 of which cover posts that may not actually exist after the September restructuring exercise.

A spokeswoman opined, " Our restructure will be geared towards ensuring that tenants and leaseholders benefit from an improved and more efficient service. Until these changes are in place, it would not be cost effective to hire permanent staff for roles that may not exist in the new structure."

So that's all right then. At least all those expensive temporary staff may be able to afford to buy their own new kitchens and bathrooms that were once promised to tenants by Labour as part of the great ALMO con……

Read "Lambeth Living is Tops for Temps ".

Ice Age Retreat

3.17.36pm BST (GMT +0100) Fri 23rd Jul 2010

Geologists tell us that the last great Ice Age was 20,000 years ago but for many Streatham residents the wrangling over when a new Ice Arena will be built there seems to be taking just about as long.

Now a new and worrying factor has emerged - just where will the new Ice Sheet finally emerge?

Just before the May Elections, the Lambeth Labour Leader announced with a flourish that a new deal had been made with Tesco that would guarantee that a new Leisure Centre would finally be built and built sooner.

When the fine print was finally digested, not only had Cllr Reed agreed to let Tesco flatten the whole site and build a store that was 50% bigger but to keep the promise of continuity of ice he'd also agreed to let them build a temporary ice rink on - er -Streatham Common.

The outcry that followed has led to an equally rapid rethink - and the Ice has now retreated north to Brixton. The case for a supposed temporary ice rink in Brixton is to be put to Cabinet on Monday 26th July and has not stopped many Streatham folk from smelling several brown furry rodents.

One concern is that Brixton is - well - not Streatham. Another is that once secured in Labour's heartland the ice may never return to sunny Streatham. And of Labour's commitment to residents swimming again in unfrozen waters south of the South Circular, there is currently no word at all.

Thankfully Streatham's new Labour MP was on the case and convened a Public Question Time meeting on this very subject on 22nd July - only a rat's whisker away from the Cabinet Meeting set to decide the issue.

On the panel was the officer in charge of regeneration in Lambeth who had a somewhat tenuous grasp on the history of the Streatham Ice Age (Rink) and seemed to think there had been no previous agreement to open a new leisure centre before the supermarket opened its freezers, and a Labour Cabinet member for Culture & Sport - and seemingly Brixton - who had little to add after being only two months into the job.

At the other end of the table was an amiable Tesco Corporate Affairs Manager who claimed that the well-known grocer really did not know much about running Ice Rinks but clearly, some observers opined afterwards, knew exactly how to run rings around Lambeth Council.

Residents were pretty clear that they did not want the temporary Ice Rink on Streatham Common and that they didn't want it in Brixton either.

Most wondered quite why the Lambeth Labour Leader had agreed to Tesco demands to clear the site that had led to this awkward conundrum in the first place. But of him there was no sign.

The first MP's Question Time provided no real answers, either. So it is left for another night and another venue to see where Streatham's fast retreating ice might eventually end up next.

Read "Ice Age Retreat".

New Co-op Wallpaper Design Revealed

2.12.26pm BST (GMT +0100) Fri 23rd Jul 2010

Lambeth Labour's Leader, Cllr Steve Reed, has clearly been devoting as much of his time to the absurd notion of Lambeth operating as a Cooperative Council as he has to boosting the over-inflated employment opportunities for his Group's back room political staff.

Having basked in the relative success of the column inches devoted to his Co-Op idea before the election - we note that John Lewis is hardly mentioned these days as it is much too middle-class sounding - the official Labour riposte to David Cameron's Big Society idea needed something solid to show that this was much more than froth and nonsense.

Step forward the Citizen's Commission a grand sounding name for a grass-roots body that was going to look at how the brave new Lambeth Council was going to operate into the future. And what could be better than the Cooperative Council asking its citizens to say how they'd like this to happen?

Unfortunately the Citizen's Commission, as announced, consisted of the Council Leader, his Deputy and the Cabinet Member for Finance. So not much room for dissent or original thought, there.

When a few rumblings were then heard about the pointed lack of real Lambeth residents on this Citizen's Commission, the Labour Leadership hurriedly cobbled together a Mark Two version called the Lambeth Co-Op Commission.

Comprising eight members of the supposed 'great and the good', only half actually live in Lambeth, and the cynical might also point out the Labour-leaning attributes of many of them. Given that all of this Co-Op twaddle emanated from Labour Party HQ, perhaps this is really not that surprising.

Quite what this unelected quango of the chattering classes will actually achieve given that their own direct experiences of social deprivation are probably only when their dishwasher breaks down or the Polish nanny goes AWOL we will just have to wait and see.

Book a place on Thursday 29th July for their first outing at the Brixton Palace of Varieties (Town Hall, Committee Room 8) to find out whether there's any real substance there to challenge the current regime or whether this is just a new line of expensive Cooperative Wallpaper.

Read "New Co-op Wallpaper Design Revealed".

Schools Snub Labour's Academy Ban

10.55.08am BST (GMT +0100) Fri 23rd Jul 2010

No sooner had Labour's new Education supremo Cllr Pete Robbins issued a blood-curdling threat to Lambeth Schools not to apply for the Government's recently announced Academy Plans than an orderly queue quickly developed of those wishing to opt out of local authority control.

All of which must be a bit embarrassing for Labour for whom centralised control over all matters is the principal life-force that drives them.

In truth, though, Academies were originally dreamt up by Labour PM Tony Blair and taken forward with alacrity and fervour by Ed Balls and Lord Adonis, precisely to free-up the stultifying atmosphere that surrounded much of the state-education system.

Lambeth has undoubtedly benefited from some fine new school buildings and steadily improving exam results over the last decade but funding hitherto has only been available through highly bureaucratic centralised Government processes that have weighed the whole thing down, caused massive delays and run-up huge overspends.

That's why so many Lambeth school rebuilding projects are currently caught up in the new Government's spending review.

Labour has now found itself in a bit of a political muddle of its own making. It condemns the current Government's Academy Plans but had been actively promoting its own. Pots and Kettles come to mind.

In a desperate attempt to find a fig-leaf big enough to hide their embarrassment Labour has quickly come up with the idea that their Academies were created solely to boost the life-chances of children in deprived areas - which will come as a bit of shock to many Clapham and West Dulwich residents.

We suspect that educationalists and parents will be largely unimpressed by Lambeth Labour 's awkward political posturing and will be solely interested in whether children's futures will be enhanced by the proposed measures.

Judging by the number of Lambeth schools that have already broken ranks from Labour's regime of strict discipline and lined-up to find out more about the plans suggests that they have largely voted with their feet.

Read "Schools Snub Labour's Academy Ban".

COMMENT: Labour's Curious Hiring and Firing Mentality

9.53.00am BST (GMT +0100) Fri 23rd Jul 2010

One thing's certain - there's something very peculiar about the thinking processes down at Planet Lambeth.

Just at a time when Labour politicians think it is okay to issue redundancy notices to 60 staff in the borough's 15 one o'clock clubs, they also decide to increase their own political advisers by two and raise the annual salary bill from £312,000 to £430,000.

Lambeth's Labour Group already has more political advisers than Lewisham and Southwark put together and now wants to boost their shameful total to nine.

Of course Labour Lambeth politicians have form in being generous to themselves in hard times. No sooner had they been elected in 2006 than they doubled their own 'responsibility' allowances while hiking home care charges for the elderly from £7.50 and hour to £17.50 an hour.

Many people must be wondering why local politicians need political advisers in the first place - and down in Lambeth Town Hall Labour's political advisers might also be thought to offer pretty poor value for money to the public purse given the crass decisions that have emerged and the shoddy services provided.

At a time when the same Labour politicians are wailing about hard times and the need for restraint many people will be rightly outraged that they are apparently so isolated from reality that they think that shelling out salaries for advisers on an average £46,000 a year is in any way justified.

So while hard-pressed mums may soon be unable to find somewhere to leave the kiddies to play in safety, Lambeth Labour's spoilt kiddie councillors will have right royal political minders in charge of the municipal play pit.

Read "COMMENT: Labour's Curious Hiring and Firing Mentality".

Labour Lambeth Sucks Life-Blood from Lambeth Living

11.52.38am BST (GMT +0100) Thu 24th Jun 2010

As a creature Lambeth Living was always slightly more grotesque than Dr Frankenstein's Monster. It was the hurried invention of some half-crazed individual that has since consumed vast sums of public money on itself that could have been much better spent restoring people's derelict homes and now seems totally out of the control of its Labour masters.

So much so that huge piles of unanswered Council Member Enquiries on behalf of frustrated tenants have been allowed to build up - nearly 1400 separate pieces of correspondence we hear at the time of the May elections.

Such scandalous neglect exposes the poorly thought out relationship of the Arm's Length Management Organisation, the Council and its elected representatives, and, indeed, of the tenants who have always seemed like a bit of an afterthought.

With this poor fatally injured creature flailing around causing even more mayhem, Labour's Doctor Frankenreed seems powerless to kill it off and has instead told it to "shape up" within a year or be wound up. Which is a bit like wagging a finger at a rabid dog. So that's a whole year, at least, for tenants to endure a steadily worsening situation that many of them didn't want to go through in the first place.

Many would have hoped that Dr Frankenreed would have pulled the plug from the life support machine by now to save everyone from further misery. But that would be to admit to a monumental political failure or to have a Plan B in place.

As if to underline his current impotence, Dr Frankenreed has cut the £1 million July payment to Lambeth Living citing LL's pile of unopened member's enquiries. Which gives him something of a dilemma come August when the world will wait to see whether this death by a thousand cuts is repeated or whether LL will get another dose of expensive serum to keep it alive a bit longer.

Meanwhile in true New Labour fashion a whole series of forums is now being set-up around the borough to look at Labour's exciting plans for the reorganisation of Lambeth Living - for reorganisation read (or reed) CUTS.

That's cuts in frontline staff, cuts in income, cuts in service levels but not we imagine any cuts in senior officer or consultant's pay or even that of the Labour politicians responsible for this scandalous shambles.

Read "Labour Lambeth Sucks Life-Blood from Lambeth Living".

Ice Land

10.59.33am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 15th Jun 2010

Will Labour move Streatham's Ice Rink to Brixton?

Given the huge PR puff put out before the May elections from Labour saying that they'd saved the doomed Streatham Ice Rink at the last minute, things have gone remarkably quiet down at the Brixton Kremlin about this seemingly amazing eleventh hour deal.

Of course, being Labour, you had to read the fine print before discovering that the 'fantastic' deal in fact meant giving the green light to Tesco for an even bigger superstore, demolishing all the existing buildings in one go and building a temporary ice rink on Streatham Common. What?

Yes it took a while for everyone to consider the sheer stupidity of this proposal and for the combined forces of local mums, environmentalists and others to get together to oppose it. But oppose it they have. And so did we.

Then somebody noticed that there's a brilliant plot in the middle of Brixton owned by the Council that's been on ice, so to speak, for at least a year while somebody ponders what to do with it. In case you don't know, we're referring to the crumbling Pope's Road multi-storey car park.

Eureka moments don't come often - not in Lambeth anyway. But the hints that this might provide an ideal location for the temporary Ice rink have certainly caught the mood of the time. So this looks like a winning move by Labour to square an awkward political circle with only the market traders' noses put out of joint.

There are those, however, whispering darkly that all this might all be a sinister ploy by Labour to keep the Ice Rink in Brixton for good. After all why go to all the trouble and expense of building and running a temporary Ice Rink when you could build a permanent one? They only committed to continuity of ice provision, didn't they? Not continuity of ice provision in Streatham.

You can see the logic - nice new Ice Rink gets built right next to Brixton Recreation Centre. Everything vaguely sporty that anyone could wish for all in one place - and right in the centre of the cultural and Labour political universe, too.

Brixton gains: Streatham loses.

With no Ice Rink in Streatham and possibly no swimming pool either they save themselves a big headache and heaps of running costs too. The three Labour councillors stranded down in Streatham South are hardly going to rock the boat are they?

Maybe this particular scenario is a little lurid even for a rumour mill running at full chat. But with the current lack of any hard evidence about anything, the rumours will fly.

Perhaps the Council Leader, Steve Reed, needs to make a clear and unambiguous statement on what exactly is happening and when - and now possibly also where.

You showed us plenty of sauce before the election Steve - now show us the beef.

Read "Ice Land".

Garden Grabbers Outlawed

4.17.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 14th Jun 2010

A number of Lambeth residents will be delighted to learn that the new Coalition Government has announced a curb on property developers and the practice known as garden grabbing.

One of the least popular outcomes of the previous Labour Government's wholesale relaxation of planning legislation, the designation of ordinary homes with gardens as previously developed land and therefore in the same so-called 'brownfield' category that was originally meant to restore derelict industrial plots, meant that developers were able to exploit this loophole to build high-density blocks of flats on plots with modest homes that featured large gardens.

Many critics felt that the resultant alien forms of high-density dwellings had destroyed the character of many streets outside of conservation areas as canny developers cherry-picked prime residential sites. In some areas this had a disastrous domino effect, as developers were able to buy-up blighted neighbouring properties to assemble even larger plots.

Developers were quickly attracted to garden grabbing rather than regenerating redundant old industrial sites because the land was often cheaper and they did not have extra costs of renovating Victorian factory structures or clearing contaminated sub-soils.

In a densely populated inner London area like Lambeth, green space is at a premium - and large swathes of North Lambeth actually have a deficit of green space even by the Council's own definition - so private gardens give some welcome relief to the built environment, provide small green pockets where a hugely diverse variety of flora and fauna flourish, counter and improve high pollution levels, and provide natural run-off areas for surface water.

If nothing else, the changes will allow a welcome respite in the current rush to build on almost any plot however unsuitable it may be and where proper facilities for rapid localised increases of population do not accompany such speculative development.

With greater powers now being given to local authorities to decide on local need and circumstances comes the hope that the natural environment also now figures in the housing equation.

If Labour Lambeth can also manage to let the disgraceful number of empty properties it has allowed to moulder or become squatted over the past four years to those on its shockingly high housing waiting list then, maybe, some of the pressure will be relieved to build ever higher density and largely unplanned homes in some of our leafier enclaves.

Read "Garden Grabbers Outlawed".

Will the Last Labour Councillor Kindly Put Out The Light?

4.04.08pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 8th Jun 2010

A character in Shakespeare's great tragedy Hamlet laments that "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" and, curiously, there seems to be something equally amiss about Lambeth's New Labour regime at the present time.

Even before the May elections there was considerable disquiet bubbling away under the highly polished surface that led one Labour councillor to defect to the Tories claiming that her party's equal opportunities agenda was just so much wallpaper covering some nasty cracks of prejudice.

Then, immediately after the election, a senior councillor in Tulse Hill ward resigns his seat at the request of the Labour Party itself in the wake of a police investigation while another in Vassall ward, on a completely unconnected matter, is summarily suspended for four months from the Labour Party.

What on earth is going on? We can only really speak here for legal reasons about the situation of the Vassall ward councillor who appears to have been a victim of an elaborate sting set up by his own party.

So far as we can tell, they suspected him of leaking politically sensitive information to those who are not exactly on Lambeth Labour's Christmas card list. So his email account was apparently secretly trawled looking for a specially planted story which might expose the dastardly mole.

Quite apart from Labour politicians asking for council officials to trawl private emails for their own purposes - and a possible breach of the Data Protection Act as a result - the Labour councillor himself denied any wrongdoing and, so far as we know, no incriminating evidence has actually been published to show whether he had indeed passed on false information to the newspapers.

Yet such is the level of mistrust in Labour ranks that he was suspended anyway. So within weeks of electing him - and presumably with the Labour party officially singing his praises to the electorate - said councillor has just been sent to 'Coventry' and now serves his four month sentence as an independent.

The people of Tulse Hill and Vassall ward must now be wondering how well served they have been for trusting Labour to represent their interests at an election of barely a month ago.

However, there are other ominous dark clouds scudding across Lambeth Labour's clear blue post-election sky that hark back to the aftermath of the pre-election defection of that Brixton Hill Labour member to the Tories.

In the wake of her defection, certain things were said (or written) by her ward colleague and one-time friend, who just also happens to be the Council Leader, and also by his Deputy, that would, frankly, have been much better left unsaid.

The unholy row that followed even caused an early day motion to be laid down in Parliament by Anne Widdecombe MP, a strong rebuke from Operation Black Vote and an open letter of condemnation of Labour by the Chair of Acre Lane South London Black Business Association.

Potentially far worse for the people of Lambeth, though, a referral was then made by the injured party about the incident and the language used to The Standards Board for England and Wales. This watchdog has the power to investigate whether a councillor's words or actions may have brought themselves or the Council into disrepute. Among the sanctions it can take if the allegations are upheld includes suspension and even disqualification from office.

The Standards Board Enquiry was originally meant to report by March 2010 but was then delayed until after the May elections. We understand that a draft report has already been circulated but the clock is now ticking and we all await the outcome with interest.

Were a highly adverse report to recommend suspension any time soon, there could well be Labour councillor vacancies in Brixton Hill ward and Knights Hill ward as well as those in Vassall and Tulse Hill.

In which case, would the last Labour councillor out kindly turn off the light?

Read "Will the Last Labour Councillor Kindly Put Out The Light?".

COMMENT: No Academy Awards for Lambeth?

6.09.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Sat 5th Jun 2010

Lambeth Labour's new man in charge of Education, Cllr Pete Robbins, has barely got behind his desk and already he's firing-off missives that Lambeth Schools should not co-operate with the new Government if they offer any Lambeth schools Academy status.

Indeed he's so quick to rush off a condemnation of these nasty new Tory confections that his outburst ends mid-sentence on the Labour Party website. Maybe he got hot news that one of 'his' schools was about to break ranks and dashed off to put them on the naughty step?

This instant reaction is interesting from a number of viewpoints. Firstly it shows that Lambeth Labour has not wasted a single second getting into opposition mode so far as the new Government is concerned. No longer are they able to put up their hands fervently like the class swot eager to show their credentials as teacher's pet to every New Labour Government edict.

Instead everything they don't like in future will be greeted with " it's not my fault Miss, the bad boys made me." Indeed the swingeing cuts being made to the current year's Council budget, which we fully predicted before the election, are already being blamed on a national financial review that hasn't happened yet.

Meanwhile, Lambeth Labour's new Head Boy has turned his back on creating any Academies here in Sarf London. Which is odd, not least because several of them are up and running already in Vauxhall, Norwood and Clapham and have more Labour cheer leaders than you could throw a well-aimed chalk-board duster at.

Currently rising rapidly up out of the ashes of the Council's former dust-cart depot in Brixton's Shakespeare Road is the new state-of-the-art Evelyn Grace - wait for it - Academy. Which is going to make life really interesting for Young Robbins when he's asked to cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony. " What Me, Sir? I'm dead against those ghastly places, Sir."

Nobody should forget, either, the infamously divisive Sardine Academy? This fast-forwarded Labour project of only just a few months ago sought to transform a small Primary School (Fenstanton) on the busy South Circular into a brave new Primary School and Academy on the same site. There was even talk of having it sponsored by that symbol of hated Tory privilege - a Public School.

Curiouser and curiouser.

According to Cllr Pete, "if schools break away from LEA control there will be a real danger of a two tier education system and academies could cherry pick pupils by implementing through the back-door selective admissions policies. As Labour led council that's not what we want - we believe in equal opportunities for all."

Or, maybe, Pete's virulent opposition is simply because he could just find himself out of a well-paid new cabinet job?

The really interesting bit will be to see if any go-ahead Lambeth schools, with their independently-minded Boards of Governors, actually decide to embark on a new course away from Local Authority control.

Such a defiant action could really set the cat amongst the Robbins.

Read "COMMENT: No Academy Awards for Lambeth?".

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