Strong Arm Tactics over Arms Length Management
Posted: November 21, 2003 Filed under: Media, Privatisation / Sell Offs Comments Off on Strong Arm Tactics over Arms Length ManagementWith Hackney Council’s Jamie Carswell already a firm believer, ALMO is a distinct possibility for Hackney’s council housing stock. As highlighted by the IWCA in a recent letter to the Hackney Gazette, ALMO is another means of privatisation. But recent developments in neighbouring Islington and nearby Camden, should be an eye-opener for those people who think Hackney council will listen to tenants’ views when the decision is made. Reprinted below is an article from Islington IWCA’s website outlining major concerns over how the council is handling the issue. This is followed by a story from Inside Housing website on Camden’s rush towards ALMO.
Ballot on Almo is agreed – but can it be fair?
(Highbury & Islington Express – Article – 14.11.03)
Angry campaigners say the vote on the future of their homes is being steamrollered by council propaganda.
Until last week Islington Council had steadfastly refused a ballot on proposals to set up an Arms Length Management Association (Almo) to take over running their housing estates.
But the Islington Independent Working Class Association (IWCA) says the last minute decision to ask tenants if they favour an Almo was a deliberate attempt to stifle debate prior to the vote.
Gary O’Shea, of the IWCA, said: “Most tenants received their ballot papers just two days after the announcement was made. The council is obviously trying to push this through quickly.
“I think it had started to panic that plans were beginning to unravel. Early last week a tenant representative on the Almo Shadow Board was frogmarched from the building because he refused to sign a confidentiality agreement preventing him from telling tenants the real facts.
“Councillors have refused to turn up to any meetings organised by tenants who were not hand-picked by them. And the ballot papers have been sent out in the same envelope as pro-Almo propaganda leaflets that have “vote yes” in them 21 times. The council has mounted a propaganda offensive so one-sided it would put any tinpot dictatorship to shame.”
There is also concern about the way the decision to hold a ballot was taken. Labour leader Mary Creagh said: “Councillor Hitchins leaked the news of the ballot on Tuesday when the decision was supposed to have been made openly and democratically at Thursday’s executive meeting.”
But Cllr Hitchins said it had always been his intention to hold a ballot and that it was necessary to get on with it to stop the spread of inaccurate information.
“Once people know there will be a ballot they want to see it quickly,” he said. “Camden had a six month gap between the announcement and the ballot and I couldn’t believe the amount of misleading and untrue facts people were told in that time.
“I told the press the executive was likely to agree a ballot on Thursday because the truth is we’re not going to vote against our colleagues on decisions as big as this.”
Tenants and leaseholders can vote on the proposal by phone on 0800 081 0202, on the internet at www.election.com/islingtonalmo or by post. The ballot closes at noon next Friday.
‘Totalitarian’ ALMO campaign under fire – Inside Housing website
The row over Camden Council’s bid to set up an arm’s-length management organisation has escalated with campaigners threatening to lodge a judicial review accusing the council of circulating misleading information and proposing a biased ballot question.
With the ballot due to start next week, lawyers acting on behalf of two tenant campaigners have written to council chief executive Moira Gibb alleging that most of the information circulated is ‘entirely one-sided’.
They also say the proposed ballot question will ‘lead many voters to conclude that a no vote is tantamount to voting against improvements in their dwellings’.
Campaign group Defend Council Housing has said the council could be acting unlawfully and has demanded it changes the ballot question and distributes a leaflet setting out some of the arguments against the ALMO.
But the council has rejected the allegations and roundly refused to change the ballot question. A spokesperson said: ‘The overview and scrutiny commission considered the matter and felt the proposed ballot wording to be neutral, factual and fair.’
Campaigners have also levelled charges of ‘totalitarianism’ at the council after it emerged that that senior managers at the authority ordered the removal of anti-ALMO posters from council properties by lunchtime tomorrow.
Unison assistant branch secretary Anton Moctonian said: ‘We are asking our members not to carry out this task until we have sought advice on this. These tactics have more in common with those practiced in totalitarian regimes as opposed to democratic and free societies.’
DCH national committee member Alan Walter added that his organisation would fight back by replacing any poster taken down by the council with ‘at least 10 additional posters’.
A spokesperson for the council said that posters would only be removed if they were an eyesore.
She said: ‘Patch managers have only been told to remove them from areas where they are not creating a welcoming atmosphere’.
Abbott's Tale
Posted: November 9, 2003 Filed under: Labour Party, Schools Comments Off on Abbott's Tale(from IWCA national website)
When Diane Abbott criticised Harriet Harman over her choice of schools for her kids, she was applauded for her principles and good sense. How times change. Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney and Stoke Newington, elected to represent one of the capital’s and the country’s poorest areas, has decided that the local state schools aren’t good enough for her son. So instead, master James Abbott is off to the £10,000 a year City of London School.
Trying to justify ditching her principles, she attempted to deny that she had ever had a go at Harman. Unfortunately Abbott’s criticism that Harman had ‘made the Labour Party look as if we do one thing and say another’, is on record. She also tried to shift responsibility for the dramatic U-turn onto her twelve year old son, although later she relented and at least had the courage to own up to it being her decision.
And what about the good sense she showed in trying to do the job she was elected to do; that is represent the residents of Hackney and Stoke Newington? Well she might be able to claim that she is still representing some of them; the ones who have a spare £10,000 a year to spend on school fees. But its pretty clear she’s walked away from the vast majority of those who live in the area, for whom the prospect of having a spare ten grand is about as remote as that of having their own spot on a BBC TV discussion show.
All of this is hypocritical and patronising ‘do as I say, not as I do’ politics of the worst sort. The hypocrisy of a member of the supposedly redder than red Socialist Campaign Group of MPs sending her son to a public school is there for all too see. She even admitted as much herself when she said: ‘It’s absolutely true that it’s inconsistent, to put it mildly, for someone who believes in a fairer society to send their child to a private school. I’ve always believed that private schools prop up the class structure of society. ‘
But the patronising attitude, which says to all those parents in Hackney who don’t have a spare £10,000 knocking about, ‘well the local secondary schools aren’t good enough for my James but they’ll do for your sons and daughters’, is if anything, even more gut wrenching.
Her lack of interest in the day-to-day lives of her constituents was only compounded when, on Radio 4’s Today programme, she claimed that part of the reason, for what she now admitted was her decision, was down to gun crime in Hackney’s secondary schools. What this apparent admission of government failure tells the people of Hackney and Stoke Newington, and in particular the area’s working class residents who don’t have the option of opting out, is that not only does their MP think the schools aren’t educationally good enough but also that they’re physically dangerous as well.
Former Labour minister Gerald Kaufman, seems to have hit on something with his comments that: ‘Diane Abbott, left-wing socialist and wonderful moraliser, says one thing and does another. I hope the people of Hackney take notice of that.’
Maybe they will when they have the opportunity to vote for one of their peers. In the meantime, if an MP of whatever party publicly removed her child from a school on the grounds of race we all know what it would be called. But publicly endorsing social apartheid, which after all is essentially what private education is intended to secure, is a different matter it seems, And if this is acceptable in the field of education then the same principle must apply in other spheres too—housing, health and crime being three that spring to mind.
A government report to be published shortly will show that Middle England receives better treatment from the NHS than that offered to working class people. And this is happening at a time when crime rates in middle class areas is going down, while violent crime in working class communities continues to escalate. Why is this? Because, whether it’s education, law and order or medical treatment, Middle England insists that when it comes down to it their interests are given priority.
It has taken a long time to get here, but all of the above is now politically acceptable largely because all of the three mainstream parties instinctively and unapologetically identify with what is a privileged minority. This is not too surprising when the influential members are, to a man or woman, all members of this same privileged minority.
So, while not denying Gerald Kaufman may have a point, the core contradiction here is not that Diane Abbot is going to send her own child to private school. No, the essential political inconsistency is how she ever came to represent the working class majority in Hackney in the first place.
Defend Council Housing Meeting in Hackney
Posted: November 7, 2003 Filed under: Events Comments Off on Defend Council Housing Meeting in HackneyThe campaigning group Defend Council Housing is holding a meeting in Hackney tomorrow at Marcon Community Hall from 3pm. On the agenda are ALMO – two-tier privatisation? Experience of council house privatisation in Hackney so far. Campaigning for tenants’ choice and direct investment in council housing. Getting ourselves organised.
For full details download the flyer.
Haggerston Tenants Reject Imposition of Private Company
Posted: November 7, 2003 Filed under: Gentrification / Regeneration, Haggerston, Privatisation / Sell Offs Comments Off on Haggerston Tenants Reject Imposition of Private CompanyOn 1 November 2003, Pinnacle took over the housing management of St Mary’s Estate in Haggertson. Despite calls for a tenant ballot on the issue, the council undertook a limited consultation exercise, the results of which have not been made public. However, at a meeting in early August, 30 out of 35 people asked for a choice to remain with the council.
Ignoring the results of this consultation meeting, the council’s cabinet decided to press ahead with the transfer of estate management to Pinnacle. It should be noted that the choice tenants were given by the council was between privatisation this year, or possible privatisation next year, ie no real choice at all.
Hackney Independent Working Class Association has spoken to nearly half the tenants on St Mary’s, 160 of whom have signed a petition calling for a tenant ballot on the issue and to be given the choice of remaining with the council. The petition has been sent to Cllr Jamie Carswell, head of Housing at Hackney Council.
As a tenant from St Mary’s states, “The majority of tenants and residents were unhappy that there were only two options on the voting paper and most added a third option stating that they wanted things to remain as they were. These feelings were ignored as was a direct question to Jamie Carswell asking for a ballot”.
IWCA spokesperson Carl Taylor said : “This is not about the rights and wrongs of privatisation – although the IWCA is opposed to it – but the fact that tenants have not been given a real choice or the opportunity to vote on the matter. Consultation New Labour-style is clearly no substitute for genuine democracy.”
Fee-paying Di's Hypocrisy Is In a Class Of Its Own
Posted: October 30, 2003 Filed under: Hackney Council, Schools Comments Off on Fee-paying Di's Hypocrisy Is In a Class Of Its Own(from Brian Reade’s column in the Daily Mirror Oct 30 2003)
Well, thank God that tub-thumping, redder-than-red, socialist MP Diane Abbott is in the clear after all. As listeners to a London radio station found out, it wasn’t HER decision to send her son James to a public school but her boy’s. Which makes everything fine. And it sends out an inspirational message to any other Labour-voting parent with £10,000-a-year to spare, who can’t bear to let their precious offspring rough it with the oiks at the local comp. Just say you can’t let your principles get in the way of your kid’s foot-stomping demand to speak posh in a cap.
But why stop there? If junior wants to invest his pocket money in an off-shore tax haven, hunt with dogs, beat up asylum- seekers, shoot burglars, join Bupa and the BNP, what can you do? At 12, they just WON’T listen. There is something about the stench of socialist hypocrisy that is uniquely repulsive. It’s to do with letting down people who have nobody else to turn to. Conning your way to power through making eloquent stands against inequalities that, deep-down, you agree with.
How can Abbott, who lambasted Tony Blair and Harriet Harman for not sending their kids to the local comprehensive, justify sending her son to a far more exclusive school, buying even better life-chances for him, than they did? How can she let him swan off to an Oxbridge conveyor belt while giving the four Hackney schools he could have gone to another kick in the guts? It is worse behaviour than any Tory’s. Because she was elected to make the most deprived educational area in Britain a better place by tackling the masonic privileges she has just signed up to.
If this were still the Labour Party every constituent member would be given the right to de-select her. But it isn’t. In fact, under New Labour Abbott has just upped her chances of joining the Cabinet because in their lingo she has “shown courage in the face of tough choices”. In other words, shown how willing she is to crap on every working-class family she represents.
The only MPs they want to kick out of the party today are ones like George Galloway. Why? Because he stuck to his principles. He said what most of the party was thinking, that the war in Iraq was obscene and illegal, and British troops should not be fighting there. His comments, which may have been expressed cack-handedly, but which stemmed from deep personal beliefs, did not cost the life of one British soldier. But Blair’s and Jack Straw’s did. And what’s worse, theirs were lies. They knew it and now we know it. So if anyone betrayed the Labour Party over Iraq and put the next election in jeopardy it is the leadership. Yet Galloway is sacrificed without a peep from his gutless backbench colleagues.
Meanwhile, party lackeys defend Abbott with the standard waffle trotted out for Blair and Harman: “It’s every parent’s right to choose… blah, blah, blah.” The same waffle she has repeatedly attacked to earn a highly- lucrative second career as TV’s token female leftie. Who is the genuine Labour MP here, Galloway or Abbott? Which one would you most like to see kicked into touch? Me too. But instead he’s excommunicated while she prospers. It’s time New Labour was given another makeover and re-named the Non-Ronseal Party. Because it is the one oily product that does exactly the opposite of what it says on the tin.
Vital Now – Vital Then?
Posted: October 23, 2003 Filed under: Media, Nurseries Comments Off on Vital Now – Vital Then?In response to an article in last week’s Hackney Gazette about the site of Bibs and Braces nursery being turned into a private nursery – with the help of lottery funding – an IWCA letter from Asha Kelly hit back. Lead letter in Hackney Gazette 23rd October reprinted here:
Councillor Linda Kelly may be denying any responsibility for shutting the Bibs and Braces nursery (Nursery Back in Business – Hackney Gazette October 16 2003) but it was her party that sold it off last year. Closing down a council-run nursery that served working class parents and reopening it as a private nursery charging £135 a week may strike some as perverse until you realise that this privatisation by stealth seems to be part of Labour’s strategy in Hackney and beyond. If the nursery is now “vital for the area” as Cllr Kelly claims, wasn’t it “vital for the area” when it was council run and a whole lot cheaper?
Isn’t it also a touch ironic that the new nursery can now be built after lottery funding was made available? After all, it’s not usually the middle class who buy the lottery tickets which provide the money for lottery funding, but the working class. A strange case of the poorer part of the community dipping into their pockets to subsidise a private venture for the better off!
A new lease of life
Posted: October 13, 2003 Filed under: Community Facilities, Gentrification / Regeneration, Media Comments Off on A new lease of lifeWith latest figures showing an astonishing increase in the number of empty properties in Hackney (from 795 to 2895 in the space of just a year), we reprint here an article from The Guardian’s website arguing the case for local councils taking over ownership of private properties left vacant for no good reason.
(Friday October 10, 2003 – Society Guardian website)
As consultation ends on a scheme to force landlords to bring their empty properties back into use, Jack Dromey urges the government to take measures to implement it
With all the talk at the moment of a housing crisis, you could be forgiven for not picking up on the fact that there are a startling 729,770 empty homes across England. Not a lot of people know that but just think of the contribution that they could make to meeting housing need?
While some of these empty homes are in areas of low demand for housing, over half are empty where there is high housing need. In London and the south-east, for example, there are just under 185,000 empty homes. Of this total more than 80% are in the private sector and 70,000 have been empty for more than six months.
Yet in 2002 there were around 59,000 families registered as homeless in the same region.
The debate on empty homes in this country has moved on. It is no longer about the shocking management of empty homes by the NHS, Ministry of Defence or local councils, as much work has been undertaken in this area over the last decade. The big challenge now is bringing back into use those long-term empty private homes to meet increasing housing need.
To date local authorities across the land have adopted empty property strategies and have worked with private owners of empty homes to ensure the homes are brought back into use. Through targeted grants programmes, and gaining the associated nomination rights, empty homes have been brought back into use.
Yet a voluntary approach is only sadly going to take us so far. Take just one local authority, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, which has for many years run a progressive empty property strategy. Despite this excellent work, the council still found itself with over 1,000 properties where their approaches had been turned down. In many cases these owners are “accidental landlords”. They may be owners of a shop, with a flat upstairs, or landlords who have inherited a property. The best long-term solution is to turn these landlords into good landlords or encourage them to make a decision to get out of the property business rather than force them out of it.
An idea was developed with such properties in areas of high housing need, where a good reason can’t be given for keeping the property empty, and the owner has turned down offers of assistance, the local authority should have the discretionary power to take over the management of the property.
The authority would undertake the necessary capital works to make good the house and then the rental income stream could pay for this work. Once the debts had been paid, the management of the house would revert back to the owner. As the management period neared completion, the owner would be offered training on being a landlord or advice on how they could continue letting out the house. The key issue with this idea is that ownership is not the issue it is occupation.
Indeed it can be seen as a win win solution. The owners receive an income and their property is improved, housing need is met and the community loses another empty home and its ability to attract crime and vandalism.
Such a scheme was advocated by the Local Government Association in its submission to the housing and planning select committee and is supported by Shelter, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and indeed my own union the Transport and General Workers’ Union. And a number of local authorities are expressing interest in this scheme, from Southampton to Salford showing that this idea is not one restricted just to London.
The recent select committee investigation into empty homes in 2002 recommended a pilot scheme to test such a scheme and the government responded with interest to this idea. In their Communities’ Plan published on 5th February 2003, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister announced that it was minded to go out to public consultation on this issue, and a consultation paper was launched at the joint Empty Homes Agency/Social Market Foundation conference in May.
And we have now come to the end of a three-month public consultation period. The government has responded quickly to the campaign run by the Empty Homes Agency, but it must not lose momentum. Compulsory leasing (or empty homes management orders as the government prefers to call it) has massive potential to increase the supply of affordable housing by using existing assets. This is a radical idea but one that we need to put into action fast.
For that reason I call upon the government to include compulsory leasing in the housing bill when it returns to parliament in the next session. With the current intense pressure for new housing the government must turn this idea from rhetoric to reality soon. We can’t afford to wait.
Jack Dromey is the national convenor at the Transport and General Workers’ Union
For more information on the IWCA’s policies on this issue see www.iwca.info
Privatisation, Privatisation or Privatisation?
Posted: September 18, 2003 Filed under: Media, Privatisation / Sell Offs Comments Off on Privatisation, Privatisation or Privatisation?An article in the Hackney Gazette (4th September) saw the Labour council’s cabinet member for housing in Hackney, claim that tenants will have a choice on the option we prefer for matching the Decent Homes Standard. In response to this article, Hackney IWCA had the lead letter in this week’s Gazette. The Council’s obvious liking for ALMO (Arm’s Length Management Organisations) is something that we have observed for a while now and it is something we will continue to monitor. Islington IWCA are actively opposing ALMO in their borough and here we link to their website’s coverage of the campaign. Below we reprint the full version of our letter in response to Jamie Carswell’s comments.
Jamie Carswell (‘£450 million’ – Hackney Gazette – 4.9.03) tells us that we have three options available if we are to meet the Decent Homes standard in Hackney – stock transfer, Private Finance Initiative or ALMO. Because the council already knows how unpopular stock transfer and PFI are with most tenants, our cabinet member for housing paints ALMO in glowing terms but at the same time claims the choice between the three “genuinely isn’t decided”. Does anyone else smell a rat?
What we are being presented with is the “choice” between privatisation, privatisation and…privatisation. What choice is that? Can we trust a Labour government who have gone on record as stating that they wish to abolish council housing? And can we trust a Labour council whose record on “consultation” consists of listening to what the community says and then going ahead and doing what they themselves want anyway?
Hackney Labour Party tells us that with ALMO, rights of tenants and council employees will not be affected and it is simply a means of putting in extra money and increasing tenant participation. But if that was the motivation, the Chancellor Gordon Brown could sign the cheques tomorrow and draw-up new laws guaranteeing tenants a bigger say in how their homes are run without setting-up an ALMO.
Once again, Labour offers us a sham consultation in an attempt to sugar the privatisation pill.
Yours
Peter Sutton
Hackney IWCA
For more information on the IWCA’s policies on this issue see www.iwca.info
Hackney IWCA Launch INDEPENDENT KIDS' CINEMA
Posted: August 22, 2003 Filed under: Community Facilities, Events Comments Off on Hackney IWCA Launch INDEPENDENT KIDS' CINEMAWHO
Hackney Independent Working Class Association (www.hackneyiwca.fsnet.co.uk) this week launch their Independent Kids’ Cinema with 4 showings of the Disney film ATLANTIS
WHAT
The Independent Kids’ Cinema is a series of film shows put on for local kids in community centres, with the help and support of Tenants Associations. We ran a successful pilot in the summer half term and are now launching it with 4 showings on 4 different Hackney estates.
WHY
The IWCA has always made a point of getting involved in the local community. We argue that young people need more facilities and more investment in their future, and that working class areas have suffered most with council cutbacks. This is a chance to put our money where our mouth is.
WHERE & WHEN
Goldsmith’s Community Centre – Thursday 28th August 10am
Fellows Court Community Centre – Thursday 28th August 3.30pm
Haggerston Community Centre – Friday 29th August 11am
Arden Estate Community Hall – Friday 29th August 4pm
Working class rule in working class areas!
IWCA Launched as National Organisation
Posted: August 10, 2003 Filed under: Uncategorized Comments Off on IWCA Launched as National Organisation10th August 2003
On Monday 28 July 2003 the Independent Working Class Association launched itself as a national organisation with its first manifesto, entitled ‘Working class rule in working class areas’.
‘The IWCA has chosen the Aylesbury estate for this event today because it is, in our opinion, symbolic of the failure of the New Labour project to improve the lives of those once considered the party’s core constituency – the millions of working class people who live on neglected estates such as this.’
See the national website for the full story and more details of how to join the IWCA and support our GLA campaign next year.
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