Category Archives: Austerity cuts

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29 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Economy, Transport (local)

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“Tories accused of trying to quietly re-privatise Britain’s rail infrastructure” (including south west)

The plan is for Great Western Railways to be split into two:

“The plans would create a new West of England rail franchise to provide long-distance services between London, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall together with local and regional services across the south-west.”

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-future-of-the-great-western-franchise

“Transport secretary Chris Grayling says the government wants to break up the troubled [Great Western] Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern franchise when the current contract comes to an end, and look into reopening lines closed during the notorious Beeching cuts of the 1960s.

But the proposals also include publicly-owned Network Rail sharing its responsibility for running the tracks with private train operators.

Britain’s rail network – the tracks, bridges and infrastructure – was taken into public ownership after a bungled experiment with privatisation left it close to collapse.

Railtrack, the privatised franchise, went bankrupt after being hit with the cost of repairs and compensation from the Hatfield rail crash in 2000. …

… Mr Grayling denied that the plans amounted to the splitting up and privatising of Network Rail.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “No, we’re not privatising Network Rail. Network Rail will remain in public ownership, but Network Rail is going to be devolved into a series of route businesses, it’s not going to be one big central blob, it’s going to be a series of locally-focused, or route-focused, operations around the country.”

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tories-accused-trying-quietly-re-11606147

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28 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Privatisation, Utilities

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Two (of many) privatised water scandals

1. SOUTH WEST WATER

“A water firm has been slammed for handing more money to its owners than it spent on upgrading equipment.

South West Water paid a £213.1million dividend to its parent group Pennon last year, while investing £190million in drinking and wastewater operations.

Research group Corporate Watch said that over past ten years, it has paid £1.7billion to its owner and banks, and invested £1.4billion on upgrades.
Last December the firm was fined £1.7million by the regulator Ofwat for missing pollution targets.

Its minor spills increased from 222 to 252 during 2016, according to is latest annual report. The firm says 82m litres of water leak a day, within its target of 84m litres. …

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-5086339/South-West-Water-paid-owner-upgrading.html

THAMES WATER

“Enough has been written about a Conservative government that knows its electoral success depends on Britain remaining a property-owning democracy, yet offers nothing beyond token gestures to stop the young being priced out of home ownership. Enough, too, has been said about graduates being overcharged, pensioners soaking up the largesse of the tax and benefit systems, the failure to upgrade infrastructure, the obesity crisis, and all the other problems that can’t be tackled because of half-thought-through Tory prejudices.

Allow me instead to concentrate on the scandal of the privatised water industry. Journalists and academics have been banging on for what feels like an age about an ‘organised rip-off’, to use the words of the usually sedate Financial Times. Few took notice, and that should not surprise you. Causes can appear marginal for years. Politicians see no need to address them. Then, with no warning to those who haven’t been paying attention, they explode.

Last week Michael Robinson of the BBC presented a superb documentary on what Thames Water had done to London and the southeast. Most infamously, the company poured 1.4 billion litres of sewage into the Thames near Marlow alone, destroying fish and fouling the home lives of river-side residents. The residents were also its customers. Not that Thames Water seemed to care. Water is a private monopoly. Why should it bother itself about the feelings of people who had nowhere else to go? After hearing how managers ignored warnings from workers about persistent equipment failures, Judge Francis Sheridan encapsulated their attitude when he said that the company had presided over ‘a shocking and disgraceful state of affairs’.

As shocking is the way that the former owners of Thames, the Australian bank Macquarie, was able to pass its costs on to the public. Macquarie took on £2.8 billion of debt to buy the company; it then loaded £2 billion of Cayman Islands debt on to Thames Water and its customers, despite giving assurances to the water regulator Ofwat that it would do no such thing. Macquarie has taken its profits. According to Martin Blaiklock, an infrastructure consultant, its investors received returns of 15 to 19 per cent over 11 years — twice the expected level. All it has left behind is a £2 billion debt and a very bad smell.

Now Thames Water is owned by a Kuwaiti investment fund and a Canadian pension fund. Its managers talk the soothing language of customer service and corporate responsibility. But when pressed by the BBC to say that they would not seek to imitate Macquarie and extract rapacious returns from a captive market, they refused to answer the question.

What interest do Kuwaiti and Canadian investment funds, Australian banks and Cayman Islands financiers have in ensuring the quality and affordability of our water? The hopeless regulators have no answers. Since Margaret Thatcher privatised English water companies in 1989, six out of the nine have pulled themselves off the stock market, meaning they do not have to release to their shareholders information that the regulators can scrutinise.

They promised to bring efficiency. Instead they have brought unsustainable levels of debt that, one way or another, the public will have to redeem. Researchers at Greenwich University say that in the past decade, the nine companies have made £18.8 billion of post-tax profits. Far from using the money to make the water system better, they have paid out £18.1 billion in dividends, and financed investment through loading £42 billion of debt on to consumers.

The university estimates the English are paying £2.3 billion more a year in water and sewerage bills than if the utility companies had remained in state ownership. These costs might have been bearable in good times, but as the Brexit-induced fall in the pound pushes real wages back down again, the prices of water, gas and electricity are bound to be political issues. Customers may not be overly keen to subsidise shareholders and lavishly overpaid managers.

I am not surprised that the Conservatives haven’t joined Labour in demanding the renationalisation of the water industry. It would cost about £70 billion, and in any case, Tories don’t nationalise. But why, after the Macquarie shambles, aren’t ministers and the regulators saying that secretive private equity and Middle East funds should not be allowed to control utilities? Why have they allowed Macquarie to move to the National Grid’s gas division? Ofwat is huffing that it has got tough, but it imposes no penalties on managers who break their commitments. After loading Thames Water with debt and flooding the Thames Valley with excrement, its then boss, the unimprovably named Martin Baggs, bagged a 60 per cent pay rise in 2015.

Conservatives claim to believe in the free market. If they did, they would view monopolies as Adam Smith viewed them — as conspiracies against the public interest. They would not care whether the monopolies were public or private. Both give consumers no choice. Both can put their customers’ interests last. But to the Tory mind, a distinction without a difference makes all the difference.

Because water companies are private monopolies, politicians and regulators back away from confronting them with the necessary anger and vigour. If a nationalised industry behaved as Thames Water has, they would be outraged. As it is, the mere fact that the monopolies are private is enough to persuade politicians to stand aside and let a scandal grow. No one will be more surprised than them when it explodes.”

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/09/even-the-tories-should-admit-that-its-time-to-renationalise-the-water-companies/

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28 Nov 2017

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Austerity cuts, Education (local), Inequality, Newton Poppleford

Newton Poppleford: £3m school sacrifices new library for a classroom

Austerity – the reality:
http://www.sidmouthherald.co.uk/news/newton-poppleford-primary-school-compromises-on-new-library-for-extra-classroom-1-5293134

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28 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Affordable and Social Housing, Austerity cuts, Coastal communities, Inequality, Rural communities

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Pockets of deprivation in affluent areas – coastal and rural communities have problems

“Children from deprived backgrounds face the worst prospects in some of the richest parts of the country, according to a damning new study that lays bare deep geographical divisions across Britain.

An annual report by the government’s own social mobility watchdog warns that while London and its suburbs are pulling away, rural, coastal and former industrial areas are being left behind.

The State of the Nation report finds that some of the wealthiest areas in England – including west Berkshire, the Cotswolds and Crawley, deliver worse outcomes for their disadvantaged children than places that are much poorer, such as Sunderland and Tower Hamlets. …

… Other findings include that:

51% of children on free school meals in London achieve A* to C grades in English and maths GCSE compared with a 36% average in all other regions.

There is a gulf between the highest figures of 63% in Westminster and the lowest, 27% on the Isle of the Wight

Meanwhile in Kensington and Chelsea, 50% of disadvantaged youngsters make it to university compared with just 10% in Hastings, Barnsley and Eastbourne

Some of the worst performing areas, such as Weymouth and Portland, and Allerdale, are rural not urban

In fact, in 71, largely rural areas, more than 30% of the people earn below the voluntary living wage – with average wages in west Somerset just £312 a week, less than half of the best performing areas

In Bolsover just 17% of residents are in jobs that are professional and managerial positions compared with 51% in Oxford

The study says that a critical factor in the best performing councils is the quality of teachers available, with secondary teachers 70% more likely to leave the profession in deprived areas.

Although richer parts of Britain do tend to outperform more deprived areas overall in the social mobility index designed by researchers, that isn’t always true. Some of the most affluent areas do worse for the poor kids than some of the least well off.

Coastal areas are a focus of the report, with warnings about schools being isolated. Recommendations include more collaboration between schools and subsidised travel for disadvantaged young people in isolated areas. The commission also calls for central government to fund a push for schools in rural and coastal areas to work together.

They also say that the government should rebalance the national transport budget to help tackle regional disparities. …

…. The report calls for the Department for Education’s £72m funding for opportunity areas to be matched by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in order to link up schooling and workplace opportunities.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/28/disadvantaged-children-face-worse-outcomes-in-rich-areas-report-finds

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27 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Developers/ Development, Freedom of Information and EIA, Knowle/Honiton/Exmouth relocation, Transparency

“As Knowle Appeal Inquiry begins, FOI asks “what cost relocation?”

From Save Our Sidmouth website today:

“The cost of EDDC’s relocation project, originally stated to be “cost neutral” has been spiralling for years (see link below*).

The following Freedom Of Information (FOI) Request was lodged on 26th November 2017, and awaits a response:

Dear East Devon District Council,

I would like to make a formal request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I am also making this Request under the Environmental Impact Regulations 2004 which require disclosure on the part of Local Authorities.

Please let me have the costs to date of the Knowle relocation project, to include all preliminary pre “moving decision” costs, and subsequent costs of all work associated with the intended reallocation, including those at The Knowle, Manstone, the intended Honiton site and Exmouth Town Hall.

I should also like to know the current and projected costs of the Exmouth Town Hall move, (including all associated costs such as moving, staff compensation and travel costs and fitting out costs), and for Honiton and costs associated with the “mothballing” of various parts of the Knowle contingent upon the intended relocation of 90 staff to Exmouth.
Yours faithfully,
R Thurlow

You can monitor developments at this link:

Costs of Knowle relocation – a Freedom of Information request to East Devon District Council – WhatDoTheyKnow

Source:
As Knowle Appeal Inquiry begins, FOI asks “what cost relocation?”

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27 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, EDDC, Inequality, Local Enterprise Partnership, Scrutiny, Spin, Transparency

Government industrial strategy: Local Enterprise Partnerships have to pull up their socks

Unfortunately, we have heard this all before – words do not seem to get translated into actions:

Page 223:

“… We remain firmly committed to Local Enterprise Partnerships. From next year, the Prime Minister will chair a biannual ‘Council of Local Enterprise Partnership Chairs’. This will provide an opportunity for Local Enterprise Partnership leaders to inform national policy decisions.

While Local Enterprise Partnerships across the country have played an important role in supporting local growth, feedback suggests that their performance has varied.

We are reviewing the roles and responsibilities of Local Enterprise Partnerships and will bring forward reforms to leadership, governance, accountability, financial reporting and geographical boundaries. We will work with Local Enterprise Partnerships to set out a more clearly defined set of activities and objectives in early 2018. These will be driven by influential local leaders, acting as figureheads for their area’s economic success, and a clear strategy for local and national partnership.

We will agree and implement appropriate structures for holding Local Enterprise Partnerships to account. We will work with Local Enterprise Partnerships to review overlapping geographies and ensure people are clear as to who is responsible for driving growth in their area. We recognise that in order to deliver their role effectively, Local Enterprise Partnerships need financial support. We will make additional financial resources available to Local Enterprise Partnerships that demonstrate ambitious levels of reform following the review. …”

Click to access industrial-strategy-white-paper.pdf

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27 Nov 2017

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Austerity cuts, Economy, Inequality, Local Enterprise Partnership, Transport (local)

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“Devon and Cornwall shunted onto the slow track?”

Owl says: But, of course, there WILL be a railway to Hinkley C!

“Transport secretary Chris Grayling ready to break up railways

Transport secretary Chris Grayling is this week set to unveil a blueprint for overhauling the railways — including splitting two of the biggest routes.

It is part of a fightback against Labour’s popular policy of renationalisation.

His strategy is expected to advocate splitting the Great Western franchise, which runs from London to south Wales and the southwest.

The route could be split into an inter-city franchise and a separate Devon and Cornwall business.

The mammoth Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern franchise is also likely to be split, with the strike-hit Southern route between London and the south coast set to be carved out.

Grayling is also keen to reform state-backed Network Rail, which owns and maintains the 20,000 miles of track, 40,000 bridges and most of the big stations. He has advocated closer union between Network Rail and the private companies that operate routes to crack the problems of divided loyalties and poor co-ordination.

The strategy comes ahead of a huge increase in some rail fares from January, with the rise tied to July’s 3.6% retail prices index inflation rate.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/transport-secretary-chris-grayling-ready-to-break-up-railways-f9c8h38mk

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27 Nov 2017

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Affordable and Social Housing, Austerity cuts, Developers/ Development, Economy, Inequality

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“Property unaffordable for 100,000 households a year in England”

“Almost 100,000 households in England are being priced out of the property market each year because of a shortage of affordable homes to rent or buy, according to a report. …

… About 96,000 households are unable to afford homes at the market rate, either to buy or rent, Savills said, with the vast majority in London and the south. It said varying approaches were needed to address the shortfall in different parts of the country: low-cost rented homes were needed more in markets in which incomes were smaller, while a mixture of homes, including shared ownership, would help in more expensive areas.

In London, 20% of the households affected have incomes above £35,000, Savills said, while the same proportion earn less than £10,000.

Over the past three years, 55,000 fewer affordable homes have been built each year than were needed, the research found. Although 42,500 households in the capital required below market rate housing, only 8,800 affordable homes a year had been delivered. In the south outside London, 15,500 affordable homes a year were being built while 34,100 were needed.

Meanwhile, in the north of England, low incomes were locking out 9,600 households a year, with 8,900 homes being delivered.

A speech by the prime minister, Theresa May, at the Conservative party conference in October made a commitment of £2bn over four years to fund social housing. However, to house 100,000 emerging households over this period would need funding of £7bn a year, Savills said.

Paying for the new homes would reduce the housing benefit bill by £430m a year. …”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/27/property-england-priced-out-households-affordable-homes-savills-report

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26 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Inequality, NHS (local), Tourism

“Telegraph: Theresa May starts work on new DUP deal to stop Government collapsing in June 2019”

OUR money. To be spent on tourism in Northern Ireland and cushioning them from Brexit problems.

The first tranche of £1 billion earlier this year allowed Northern Ireland to increase its NHS spending by more than 5%.

“Theresa May has started to work on a new deal worth hundreds of millions of pounds with the Democratic Unionist Party to stop her Government collapsing in just over 18 months’ time.

Mrs May’s Government will set out plans to cut Air Passenger Duty and VAT on hotels and restaurants in Northern Ireland in the new year.

The new cash will be on top of the £1billion which Mrs May agreed to spend in Northern Ireland after the DUP’s 10 MPs agree to support her minority administration.

The Treasury has promised to publish its response to the consultation at the next Budget in Autumn next year to allow the changes to be introduced in the 2019/20 tax year.

The talks were signalled in this week’s Budget Red Book, which said: “Early in 2018, the government will publish a call for evidence which will consider the impact of VAT and APD (air passenger duty) on tourism in Northern Ireland, to report at Budget 2018.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/25/exclusive-theresa-may-starts-work-new-dup-deal-stop-government/

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25 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Health and Social Care (local)

“Councils forced to use emergency cash to pay for social care as funding shortfall grows”

“Councils are being forced to spend billions of pounds of their emergency cash reserves on social care amid a significant funding shortfall, official documents reveal.

Analysis produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to accompany the Autumn Budget shows that English councils withdrew £1.4bn from emergency reserves last year.

They are forecast to have to draw down a further £1.7bn by 2020 – significantly more than the £0.9bn the OBR estimated in March.

Experts said relying on reserves to fund social care was “unsustainable” and “a crisis in the making”.

Because they have a legal duty to provide care to those who need it, councils have little choice but to find the cash to fund increasingly in-demand services or else risk breaking the law.

Many are therefore going significantly over their allocated budgets. More than half (53 per cent) of councils expect to overspend on adult social care this year, by an average of £21m.

Two-thirds of authorities that are currently overspending on social care plug the gap by utilising council reserves.

These funds are designed to safeguard councils from an event such as a recession and ensure they have enough resources to maintain services if circumstances change.

However, the funding gap in social care means many are being forced to use the funds to cover day-to-day spending, raising the prospect that they could be plunged into crisis in the face of an economic downturn or financial crisis.

In 2014, Eric Pickles, then the Communities Secretary, accused town halls of “pleading poverty” and told them to start spending the money set aside for a rainy day.

English councils currently have total reserves of around £23bn – down from £25bn two years ago.

However, MPs and local government leaders said the practice of using emergency funds to pay for regular spending was dangerous and “unsustainable”, as councils will eventually run out of cash.

Labour’s Clive Betts, chair of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee, told The Independent: “This is a matter of real concern.

“There was nothing in the Budget on social care. There is a crisis of funding for social care and drawing on reserves simply postpones the day the money runs out.

“This is not how councils should be funding social care. At some point the Government has to recognise this and put a proper funding regime in place.

“This is a crisis in the making. There’s a funding crisis in the here and now and this is just postponing the consequences.”

Mr Betts said the reliance on reserves also creates a postcode lottery because some councils have reserves they can draw on whereas others do not.

The OBR said councils are having to go over budget by more and more each year and rely increasingly on reserves.

Town halls have been overspending on children’s social services since 2010-11 and on adult social care since 2014-15.

Last year, councils in England overspent on their entire non-education budgets for the first time since the financial crisis, largely as a result of the cost of providing social care. Previously, under-spending elsewhere, such as on transport, made up for overspending on care services.

Amid growing concern over the funding shortfall, in March the Government announced a £2bn cash boost for social care. Town halls welcomed the increase but said it was not enough to meet demand.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/councils-cash-reserves-social-care-funding-crisis-health-budget-a8074911.html

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25 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Claire Wright, DCC, Health and Social Care (local), Martin Shaw (Seaton), NHS (local), Phil Twiss, Sarah Randall Johnson, Scrutiny

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DCC Health Scrutiny Committee – not fit for purpose

The DCC Health Scrutiny Committee lurches from poor practice to bad practice to utter chaos under the continued Chairmanship of Sarah Randall-Johnson

Can you imagine saying you will vote against questioning NHS Property Services about their intentions on the future of community hospitals which they now own “because they might not come”! And Randall-Johnson saying she is “not aware of any threat to any community hospital!!!

[CCGs have been offered match funding from the government for any properties sold in their areas]
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/naylor-plan-outline-sell-nhs-10544577
http://www.property.nhs.uk/asset-management/

Claire Wright’s Blog:

“NHS Property Services will be invited to attend the next Health and Adult Care Scrutiny Committee in January.

But my simple request prompted a debate lasting over half an hour, at Tuesday’s meeting (21 November).

The lengthy and baffling discussion gave a poor impression of the committee in my view, with some Conservative councillors claiming confusion and dismissing the proposal several times as “premature.”

It all started off with a presentation to the committee by Independent councillor, Martin Shaw, under the final work plan agenda item.

Cllr Shaw rightly pointed out how many people were concerned about the potential loss of the hospital buildings, that they had put their own money into them and still there was no clarity over their future, yet NEW Devon CCG were (or at least would very soon be) paying large sums of money in rent each year when previously they owned the buildings outright.

NHS Property Services, a private company wholly owned by the Secretary of State for Health, set up under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, acquired the ownership of 12 community hospitals in Eastern Devon at the beginning of this year.

Given that the NEW Devon CCG is one of three most financially challenged health trusts in the country and must make huge cuts to try and stem a deficit of over £400m by 2020, people’s concerns about the future of the hospitals are very valid.

Following my proposal to invite NHS Property Services to the January meeting, chair, Sara Randall Johnson said there was a full agenda for the next meeting so it may not be possible to include it. She said that she was not aware that there was a threat to any community hospital.

Liberal Democrat, Brian Greenslade said NHS PS had been invited previously but questions had been remained unanswered and so should be invited again.

Conservative, Phil Twiss, who represents Honiton which has lost its own hospital beds, claimed in a number of long statements that it was “premature” to invite the company because the future of the buildings had not yet been decided.

He later added that they wouldn’t come anyway.

I replied that waiting until the March meeting was far too long and could mean that decisions were already made. Surely we need to talk to NHS PS and the CCG before their decisions?

I attempted to explain again why it was important we invited the company to the January meeting.

But apparently confusion reigned.

Conservative members became very fixated with the legacy issue, even though I had made it clear that it was about questioning NHS PS and the CCG about their plans on the future of community hospitals and the legacy issue was only part of that.

Chair, Sara Randall Johnson, suggested holding a meeting first to agree some questions to ask NHS PS. I have not seen this approach in my four and a half years as a member of the committee.

I had to make my proposal numerous times, while one or two persistent Conservative members continued to challenge it.

There was an amendment by Liberal Democrat, Nick Way, who wanted a spotlight review into the issue as well.

Phil Twiss then changed his tack and claimed there was no point in asking the company to attend as they wouldn’t come. He was in favour of a spotlight review instead (spotlight reviews are held in private).

But when the vote finally was taken, it was on the spotlight review amendment and not my original proposal to invite NHS PS to the next meeting …

I tried to intervene. Fortunately, the officers corrected matters… and then the majority of the committee voted in favour of my proposal. Finally.

My proposal couldn’t have been more straightforward or uncomplicated. It was entirely within the committee’s remit.

It was also within a couple of hours of hearing the county solicitor’s presentation about how scrutiny should do its job properly. Or be culpable. See this blogpost here – http://www.claire-wright.org/index.php/post/devon_county_council_solicitor_tells_health_scrutiny_committee_you_have_a_v

Here’s the webcast. It is the final item on the agenda – https://devoncc.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/302658

Pic: Me exasperated!”

http://www.claire-wright.org/index.php/post/nhs_property_services_will_be_invited_to_next_devon_county_council_health_s

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24 Nov 2017

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Affordable and Social Housing, Austerity cuts, Developers/ Development

Where does the money go? Developers’ pockets

Guardian letters:

“The £350m for the NHS now and £1.6bn next year is dwarfed by the extra £10bn Philip Hammond recently found to shovel to development-sector shareholders through “help to buy”. And now we have the removal of stamp duty on houses up to £300,000, which will also push up prices, with the difference again going to developers or other vendors, instead of the exchequer. Another outrage.

John Worrall
Cromer, Norfolk”

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24 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Affordable and Social Housing, Austerity cuts, Corruption, Developers/ Development, Housing (local), Inequality, Privatisation, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Spin, Transparency

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Grenfell Tower resident blogged that fire would be result of council’s deliberate neglect – local media refused to take up the story

Local media knew about this for YEARS but refused to take it up or investigate, leaving a lone Grenfell Tower blogger to document the unfolding disaster. One so-called “local” journalist was actually filing copy from Dorset!

“[Edward] Daffarn [a social worker who had lived in Grenfell Tower for 15 years] is understandably emotional when reflecting on the last few months, but more than that he is angry. Angry with the way he feels Grenfell residents were treated by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation – the people who were entrusted to maintain the estate and keep its residents safe. Angry with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council, which was meant to scrutinise the KCTMO. Angry with a society which didn’t seem to care about people like him – people who live on housing estates – until it was too late.

“The reality is if you’re on a housing estate it’s indifference and neglect, two words that sum up everything about the way we were treated,” he says. “They weren’t interested in providing housing services, keeping us safe, maintaining the estate. They were just interested in themselves.”
It wasn’t for us to tell the council what they should be doing we were just trying to raise an alarm.

Edward Daffarn, Grenfell Action Group blog

Daffarn and fellow Grenfell resident Francis O’Connor had been blogging on behalf of the Grenfell Action Group since 2012. They wrote about issues that concerned their tight-knit community – air pollution, the closure of the local public library, and their fears that corners were being cut during the refurbishment of the tower.

“We wanted to record for history how a community on a housing estate in the fifth richest country in the world could be ignored, neglected, treated with indifference. We never thought we could make change. We just wanted to record what was happening,” he says.

Daffarn and O’Connor shared a theory that Kensington and Chelsea – a London borough more widely known for its museums, designer shops and flower shows – actually wanted its council estates to go into decline, so that the residents would leave and expensive flats could be built in this sought-after location. For this they were described as fantasists.

“We weren’t fantasists,” he says, visibly hurt. “We were trying to raise genuine concerns about how our community was being run down.”

The natural consequence, he concluded, would be loss of life. Which is why on 20 November 2016, frustrated and desperate, Edward wrote the blog post KCTMO – Playing with fire!

“It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord.”

A few months earlier a fire had ripped through five floors of a tower block in Shepherd’s Bush, just down the road. Edward was worried that if a fire broke out in his tower block residents wouldn’t know what to do. They had been given no proper fire safety instructions from the KCTMO. There were no instructions on individual floors on how residents should act in the event of a fire, there was only a recent newsletter saying residents should remain in their flats – advice which in the case of the Shepherd’s Bush fire would have led to fatalities.

There’s a lot of abusive behaviour evidenced forensically about what was happening to our community, but it wasn’t sexy so it never got picked up.

In March 2017 the KCTMO installed fire safety instruction notices in the entrance hallway to Grenfell Tower and outside the lifts on every floor of the building, again urging residents to “stay put” unless the fire was “in or affecting your flat”.

It wasn’t the first time the Grenfell blog’s authors had raised concerns about fire safety.

Before the blog began, when a school was built on the only green space the residents had, they wrote to the borough pointing out that access for fire and emergency vehicles had been compromised.

Later they blogged about the blocking of a fire exit with mattresses during the refurbishment and the power surges in 2013 that manifested in flickering lights, computers and stereos blowing up, and entire rooms filling with smoke. These continued for three weeks, Daffarn says.

“We were tenants we weren’t fire safety specialists but we were switched on enough to feel this was important and it was not being dealt with on our estate and that’s why we were blogging. It wasn’t for us to tell the council what they should be doing., We were just trying to raise an alarm.”

An alarm that went unanswered. The November 2016 blog post represented the last moment at which something might have been done to avert the disaster which followed six months later. But why didn’t anyone heed or investigate Daffarn’s claims?

Hidden within the story of the Grenfell blog is another story of the decline of local media. There simply was no local press on the ground in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea scrutinising the authorities and helping to amplify the voice of people like Edward Daffarn.

The last time he had the attention of a local journalist was in 2014 when Camilla Horrox, the reporter for the Kensington and Chelsea Chronicle ran front page stories about Grenfell residents’ concerns regarding the possible presence of asbestos on the site of the new school and about the power surges.

She had met Daffarn several times, and had been concerned about KCTMO’s dealings with the residents of the properties it managed.

But when the newspaper was closed down later that year Horrox was made redundant and all her Grenfell articles disappeared from the web. The Kensington and Chelsea Chronicle was incorporated into a website that reports on 29 west London districts.

Horrox’s replacement was expected to report on three boroughs – Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham – while based in Surrey, an hour’s drive away.

Some residents of the borough might have been under the mistaken impression that they did have a local newspaper. In 2015 a free paper, The Kensington and Chelsea News, was established to fill the gap left by the closing of the Chronicle.

But when I tracked down its reporter he explained that he was the sole reporter working on the paper, and on two other local newspapers – his salary was £500 a week and he did almost all his reporting from home in Dorset, 150 miles away. He made it to the borough only twice in two-and-a-half years, and the one story he ever published about Grenfell was from a council press release about the installation of the new cladding.

Though he always searched for a “good front page splash” for each of the three editions, he also made sure to find two pages of royal stories and two pages of entertainment stories.

Edward Daffarn didn’t take his concerns to the media in November 2016 because he no longer thought anyone would listen. But the blog was out there for everyone to see, he points out, if only they had been looking.

“We’d been blogging for three or four years and you go back over that time there’s a lot of abusive behaviour evidenced forensically about what was happening to our community, but it wasn’t sexy so it never got picked up.”
For Edward, what was going on at Grenfell wasn’t just a local story, but a national one. A story about invisible people in a society that cared more about celebrity and wealth than its most vulnerable residents.

Close to tears, he admonishes the nation’s journalists.

“If you look back now our whole community of North Kensington, the policy that the local authority was taking every public space and privatising it, that that could be missed by the BBC, by Channel Four, by these wider news agencies… The question should be for you, why did you miss it?
“Why aren’t our lives important enough for you?”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-42072477

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24 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Affordable and Social Housing, Austerity cuts, Developers/ Development, Economy

“Housing policy risks ‘sting in the tail’ as new HRA freedoms combine with Right to Buy pilot”

“Councils received mixed messages on housing in the 2017 budget – with borrowing freedoms to help build more homes accompanied by a renewed threat of forced sales.

There was a cautious welcome for the chancellor Philip Hammond’s announcement that the government will increase the Housing Revenue Account borrowing cap for a limited number of councils.

However, there was concern that the government is pushing ahead with a pilot to test the idea of forcing councils to sell high value homes to fund an extension of Right to Buy (RTB) to housing association tenants….

… Paul Dossett, head of local government at accountancy firm Grant Thornton, said: “It looks like a very small pot in total when compared to other housing initiatives announced in the budget and in other recent government announcements.”

He also called on the government to clarify what the government meant by areas of high affordability pressure.

“In our view the cap should be lifted for all housing authorities so they can plan holistically across the country to build the social housing that we need,” he said. …

… The chancellor also announced plans to press ahead with a £200m pilot extending the Right to Buy for housing association tenants in the Midlands.

Councils had hoped that the idea, along with many housing policy initiatives from former chancellor George Osborne, had been shelved after a scheduled pilot scheme failed to materialise.

But documents released alongside the budget by the Office for Budget Responsibility, said: “A small pilot scheme was due to run from January to May 2016 but was delayed to July due to the process of applications taking longer than expected and there being a longer lag between issuing instructions to solicitors and completions being achieved.

“A larger pilot was announced in Autumn Statement 2016 and was due to begin in April 2017. This did not take place. It has instead been replaced by a new pilot announced at this budget, due to run for one year from July 2018.”

http://www.room151.co.uk/funding/housing-policy-risks-sting-in-the-tail-as-new-hra-freedoms-combine-with-right-to-buy-pilot/

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23 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Claire Wright, DCC, Health and Social Care (local), NHS (local), Phil Twiss, Scrutiny, Transparency

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Some councillors on DCC scrutiny committee seem to have difficulty in grasping the concept of ………. scrutiny

Claire Wright’s blog:

“Devon County Council’s solicitor, Jan Shadbolt, reminded the Health and Adult Care Scrutiny Committee of its legal responsibilities at Tuesday’s (21 November) meeting.

I had asked for this agenda item following a disastrous meeting in July where a referral to the Secretary of State for Health on the closure of 72 community hospital beds in Eastern Devon was thwarted by the Conservative members of the committee, resulting in over 20 complaints from members of the public.

Mrs Shadbolt read out a paragraph from the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry, led by Sir Robert Francis in 2013. Many people had tragically died there as a result of poor care.

The local council’s scrutiny committee was deemed to have failed in its duty to effectively scrutinise the local health trust and identify problems.

Mrs Shadbolt said it was the first time that non-executive members of a local authority were held to account because they were deemed to have failed in their duty.

New regulations were brought in afterwards to beef up the legal powers of health scrutiny committees. These were that health scrutiny committees can:
– Require a local officer to attend to answer questions
– Expect to be consulted by an NHS body or service provider on substantial developments (although there is no definition of substantial developments)
– Refer to the Secretary of State for Health (subject to a series of constraints)

The county solicitor told the committee that we had a “very powerful role to play within the community” and that we were “unique in scrutiny committees” on that basis.

Conservative, Phil Twiss wanted to know who “scrutinises the scrutineers.” The county solicitor replied that the ultimate scrutiny was being called to account over the failure of a service provider, but that generally speaking councillors were answerable to the community.

Cllr Twiss then wanted to know how the committee knew it was performing properly. Mrs Shadbolt said that the committee’s role was to ask pertinent questions, call any officer to present. She added that there are all sorts of bodies who can give information to help with this, such as Healthwatch.

Conservative councillor, Paul Crabbe, wanted to remind the committee that this agenda item had been added because “some members felt we failed to scrutinise correctly…” He went on to say that a “chap from south Devon was fizzing with excitement over the success and how about how wonderful his new system was” then they were later asked to vote that it was “rubbish.”

Cllr Crabbe said that this struck him as a nonsense then and still struck him as a nonsense and just because the committee voted against “someone’s particular view” it didn’t necessarily mean that the committee was not fulfilling its role.

Liberal Democrat, Cllr Brian Greenslade asked the county solicitor to remind councillors that scrutiny is not a normal committee of the council in that it is not supposed to be political. He said that he thought it was worth underlining this point…”

Here’s the webcast – https://devoncc.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/302658

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23 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Economy, Local Enterprise Partnership

At least one person hasn’t had a stagnant wage!

Paul Diviani has helped at least one “hard working person” to beat the trend – Chris Garcia, CEO of our Local Enterprise Partnership who got a whacking 26% increase in his salary last year as reportd here:

https://eastdevonwatch.org/2017/01/17/17562/

and here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-38648435

and here:

http://www.yeovilexpress.co.uk/news/15035937.Somerset_County_Council_leader_hits_out_at_proposed_pay_rise_for_quango_chief/

Nice work if you can get it (unless of course you happen to have a university vice-chancellorship in your back pocket!).

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23 Nov 2017

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Austerity cuts, East Devon economy, Local Enterprise Partnership

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“Growth” – shrinking fast!

Never mind OUR Local Enterprise Partnership appears to think that Devon and Cornwall (in spite of getting no budget goodies) will RACE ahead and do FAR better than any other area, not only in England, not only in the UK, not only in Europe but in the WHOLE world!

What busy bees we are in the south-west – or maybe just at Hinkley C!

“… Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, added that the economic forecasts published in the Budget made for “pretty grim reading”.

He highlighted that since 2014 growth in earnings has been “choked off”.
“We are in danger of losing not just one but getting on for two decades of earnings growth,” he said.

“Let’s hope this forecast turns out to be too pessimistic.”

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/latest-news-and-research/publications/the-high-cost-of-small-change/

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23 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Corruption, Democracy, Scrutiny, Sleaze

“The House of Lords is a rolling expenses scandal – now politicians must act”

… “At the end of 2015, the ERS conducted an audit of the House of Lords, Fact vs Fiction. It challenged claims that the Lords is a beacon of independence and professional diversity and demonstrated the huge democratic and financial cost.

Indeed, in the 2010-2015 parliament, £360,000 was claimed by peers in years they failed to vote once. On independence, over a third of Lords (34%) previously worked in politics.

The research also found that the Lords represents only a small section of society: 44 percent of Lords listed their main address in London and the South East, while 54 percent were 70 or older. More members have worked in the Royal Household than in manual jobs.

But the problems of an unrepresentative, inefficient and growing house have not improved since those revelations. The ERS’ new report, The High Cost of Small Change: The House of Lords Audit, shows that 109 peers failed to speak at all in the 2016/17 session. Sixty-three of those claimed expenses – claiming a total of £1,095,701.

More shockingly, 33 peers have claimed nearly half a million pounds between them while failing to speak, table a written question or serve on a committee in the past year. Particularly at a time when Parliament is dealing with major legislative upheaval, this kind of behaviour is unacceptable.

We know the upper house is grossly oversized. But we also know that the bulk of the work of the Lords is carried out by a smaller number of peers. The top 300 voting peers account for over 64% of all votes in divisions during the 2016/17 session – suggesting much of the work of the Lords is done by a minority of peers.

Indeed, nearly 1 in 10 of the peers eligible to vote throughout 2016/17 (9.2% – 72 of the 779) are inactive when it comes to scrutinising the government’s work on committees, in the chamber, or through written questions – vital roles for the revising chamber.

This is something that is finally being recognised by the upper house. The Lord Speaker’s Committee on the size of the House was set up to discuss how to shrink the supersized second chamber. In October 2017, they released their plans to reduce the size of the Lords to 600 in 11 years and move to 15 year terms by 2042. But by that time NASA plans to have landed humans on Mars.

Calls for reform are often dismissed on the basis that the Lords is a bastion of independence. We can reveal the truth is far from it. Our analysis shows that nearly 80 percent of Conservative peers didn’t once vote against the government last year.

Of the Labour peers who voted, 50 percent voted against the government more than 90 percent of the time. And non-partisan crossbenchers often don’t turn up – over 40 percent voted fewer than 10 times last year: leaving decisions in the hands of the party whips.

Finally, the House hosts 184 ex-MPs, 26 ex-MEPs, 11 ex-MSPs, 8 ex-Welsh AMs, 6 ex-London AMs, 11 ex-MLAs and 39 current or ex-council leaders, as of April 2017. Rather than an independent chamber, the Lords is increasingly being used as a retirement home or a gift to those no longer wanted by parties.

The ERS are calling for a much smaller, fairly-elected upper house the public can have faith in. Around two thirds of voters agree in both the need for a drastic cut in its size, and for it to be largely elected.

This report lays out the state of Britain’s second chamber today. It’s now up to politicians to meet the challenge – before trust in our democracy falls even further.”

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/money-for-nothing-weve-audited-the-house-of-lords/

The full reportis here:

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/latest-news-and-research/publications/the-high-cost-of-small-change/