Beware: Pickpocket Operating On Public Transport

At a time when many households are crunching the numbers on their household budgets the maths is pretty straight forward when it comes to travel fares in London. The current Conservative Mayor of London has increased fares by an extra seven per cent this month. He has put London’s travel fares up every year he has been in office and by many times more than inflation. Some fares have risen by as much as 56%.The Conservative Mayor has pledged to continue to do this until 2017.

Labour’s candidate to be London’s Mayor has pledged to cut fares by seven per cent if elected in May. That will save the average household at least £800.

The full scale of the Conservatives' fare rises over the last four years may not have been absolutely clear to everyone - that's the nature of stealth taxes. People may have been aware their wallets are a little lighter or that they had a little less cash to spend but they may not have clocked the exact amounts this crafty stealth tax ruse was lifting from their pockets. So Ken Livingstone’s silhouette of the all too familiar Conservative London Mayor reaching into a commuter's bag is spot on. The metaphor works. And, rather than simply criticise, Labour is offering voters the opportunity to get their money back by cutting fares and halting Mayor Johnson’s planned extra fare hikes.

TfL Update On Hammersmith Flyover Closure

Transport for London have advised that Hammersmith flyover “will remain closed this week.” But that they “hope to open it for some traffic next week”.

The flyover was dramatically closed on December 23rd. Hammersmith has been locked with high levels of traffic congestion almost every day since.

Responding to a series of queries I raised with them, TfL have written to say they have “been concerned about the structure for some months and we have been conducting engineering assessments over this time. Unhappily, the assessments have increased the level of concern. On the Thursday before the Christmas weekend an inspection raised the level of concern to the point where we had to close the flyover. 

The problem relates to corrosion of the steel tendons which help to hold the structure together. The assessments and monitoring include ultrasound and physical examination following exposure of the tendons from the surrounding concrete.

Your constituents would have seen very little activity on the flyover. That's because the majority of the work is taking place inside the structure within the underside of the flyover. Teams of engineers trained specially for confined spaces have been working day and night on the problem.

We are taking a range of measures to ease the inevitable congestions, including phasing traffic signals, limiting road works, providing traffic advice - but our best advice remains telling drivers to avoid the area. We will be monitoring traffic levels and pinch points.”

TfL have promised to send me “a technical briefing this week” and will let me know if they’re able to achieve their aim of re-opening the flyover to some limited traffic next week – once they have finished all their evaluations.

It's not clear why the corrosion of the steal tendons, critical to the structure of the flyover, have been allowed to deteriorate to such a apparently dangerous extent. It is not yet evident if TfL had been engaged in sufficiently regular maintenance of the structures and whether that could have avoided this sudden closure? I expect that information to be in the technical briefing.

What is clear is that there are chronic levels of traffic congestion, pollution and increased rat-running traffic in residential roads around Hammersmith. It's a mess. I hope that TfL can demonstrate they they have done everything possible to avoid this and are putting all necessary resources and effort in getting it back in use. I'll let you know when I get their briefing.

H&F Council's Wins Private Eye's Annual Rotten Borough Award For Second Consecutive Year

The Conservative run Council has again won
Private Eye's annual award

Hammersmith and Fulham Council has made Private Eye's Rotten Boroughs section again - for a fourteenth time. This time for winning one of the 2011 Rotten Borough Annual Awards.

The dubious accolade was given because the Conservative run Council closed a support centre for Afghan refugees without taking any care or thought about where they could go for help. The Administration argued it was okay to do this because the refugees could go to the Southern Afghan Club instead. But that turned out to be a dog fanciers' club for those that particularly admired Afghan hounds. You can read more about that and the other heartless advice they offered by clicking here.

This is the second year in a row that H&F Council has made the Rotten Borough Annual Awards pages. In 2010 it found itself winning under the Retiree of the Year category. That was awarded to Mr. Nick Johnson, one of H&F Council's long standing "full time" "consultants". In 2007 he retired as the Chief Executive of Bexley Council at the tender age of 54 because of ill health - which entitled him to draw his generous pension. But he then popped up in Hammersmith and Fulham fourteen weeks later as a consultant Chief Executive. H&F Council has now paid him an amount of money that is roughly the same sum as equivalent to a 2% council tax cut for every household in the Borough since he started working here in 2008 .

You can read more about Private Eye's Rotten Borough Awards in its Christmas edition (no 1304) which is available at all good newsagents.

Town Hall Planning Debacle: GLA Slaps H&F Conservatives In The Face

H&F Conservatives' Town Hall Scheme
stopped - or at least "kicked into the long grass"

H&F Conservatives’ Town Hall office and demolition scheme has been stopped – for now. The Greater London Authority was apparently about to refuse the controversial scheme which was granted planning permission by H&F's Conservative councillors on 30th November. The GLA had reached the conclusion that it breached their regional planning rules - as well as those of this Borough. However, H&F Conservatives pleaded with Mayor Boris Johnson to let them "withdraw" it instead "until further notice." He agreed and so has allowed them the opportunity to bring it back at some future point without the public currently seeing all of the GLA's criticisms. It is still a "live planning application."

So sadly this is not our VE day, it's more like D Day instead. But it is still a battle victory and a humiliating slap in the face for the Conservative Administration, their planning officials and for those Conservative Councillors that block voted it through, without asking a single testing question.

There appears to have been some intriguing goings-on behind the scenes. I understand that Mayor Boris Johnson (Con) was furious at having this issue land on his desk just five months before the Mayoral and GLA elections. Thousands of residents from across south west London have protested about it and were emailing the him in droves. Indeed many, including actress Vanessa Redgrave, were taking part in a vigil outside City Hall only yesterday. A reliable source told me that Mayor Johnson and leading members of H&F's Administration have been engaged in "heated discussions." It has now been "kicked into the long grass."

However, H&F's Conservative Administration needs to rip these plans up, drop their £35m office project and agree to protect the cinema, the park, the skyline and the homes they were going to demolish. They should use this opportunity to start fresh talks with residents about what might work best. That's what I will do should Labour win control of the Council  on 1st May 2014 - assuming H&F Conservatives haven’t been allowed to grant a further planning permission by then.

For now, we must understand exactly what concerns the GLA raised about this project. Those need to be published so Hammersmith and Fulham's Conservative Administration can properly be held to account should they bring this back after the Mayoral election or propose anything similar during the next two and a half years.

There also needs to be an inquiry into the money that's been wasted on this scheme. Senior Conservative councillors and their officials have been working on it since 2006. They have spend millions of tax pounds on consultants, trips abroad to meet property speculators and time putting it all together. On top of that, they were in the process of offering property speculators well over £70m of public land to make this scheme go through.

Anyone that attended the Planning Committee on 30th November would have got a strong whiff of the weakness of the Administration’s case. This is a gargantuan mess. We need to understand how they got it so wrong and how that was allowed to happen consistently during the five years they all worked on it. And when we do, maybe there will be some resignations from the Cabinet Members and senior officials that were behind this project as well as the Planning Committee members that voted this scheme through.

You can read more about this in The Standard, the Shepherds Bush Blog and the local Chronicle.

How H&F Labour Will Cut Council Taxes Without The Conservatives' Octopus Tactics

Labour's campaign for cuts in
Council Taxes

Over the last year my fellow Labour councillors and I have resumed our campaign for cuts in council taxes. Times are tough but the council has the money to do it. Today the Council announced that it will cut roughly £30 from the average band ‘D’ council tax bill. That’s a move in the right direction and I'm sure it will win them some easy headlines.

But H&F Conservatives are like an octopus that gives with one arm but rifles through your pockets and takes your money with its seven others. Early on their Administration introduced nearly 600 new or higher inflation busting stealth taxes. The Telegraph have put them on their List of Parking Shame for, until this year, introducing nearly 60% hikes in charges in a single year; elderly and disabled people now pay £12.40 an hour if they need home care; and even introduced new charges this year for people who want to use a personal trainer in our parks. The real mission for H&F Conservatives should be how can they genuinely put more money back into the pockets of hard pressed households up and down the Borough.

Consider that roughly £600,000 is equivalent to a 1% council tax cut in this Borough, It’s therefore easy to understand the scope for further cuts if you look at what our money has been wasted on in recent years. Here’s a list:

• Wasted £35million on the unwanted Hammersmith Town Hall office scheme by handing over expensive council owned land and paying for much of the work undertaken by officials and professionals
• Wasted up to £12million on employing unnecessary consultants that the council admitted were paid despite many no longer doing any necessary work for the council.
• Wasted £5million a year on what a leading Tory MP said was “political propaganda on the rates”
• Giving senior bureaucrats 16% salary rises and, at an average of £220,000 a year and therefore employing the highest paid senior council bureaucrats in the UK
• They even admitted wasting £250,000.00 because they failed to turn the lights off in the Town Hall extension

H&F Council have now paid this consultant almost the same as a 2% council tax cut for every Borough household. And the culture around respecting public money is wrong when they argue it’s OK to spent £7,000 on a booze up that started on a Monday afternoon. There is more and it can be stopped.

Labour will cut Council Taxes should we win the election in 2014. We will use zero based budgeting to access all H&F Council’s expenditure and will strip out waste such as that listed above.

Town Hall Scheme On Boris Johnson's Desk After H&F Conservatives' Predictable "Yes" Vote

Residents queueing to get into the planning meeting just
before the 7.00pm start. Dozens were barred because
H&F Council booked too small a room
to accommodate everyone

Well over 400 Hammersmith residents turned out to a special session of the Planning Applications Committee (PAC) last week. They had come to hear the arguments the Conservative Administration would use to justify their office and tower block scheme. But, as one leading resident later wrote: council “officers offered no real analysis or justification for their recommendations” adding we have “rarely heard such a display of double-speak and flummery.” Needless to say, none of that stopped all seven Conservative councillors on PAC from somewhat predictably block voting their own Administration’s plan through. Labour’s three PAC members voted against. Now the decision goes to Mayor Boris Johnson (Con).

The Mayor has to review this scheme, not least because the Council has a clear conflict of interests. Boris Johnson has the power to instruct H&F Council to refuse permission. If he looks at the evidence objectively then it’s hard to see him doing anything other than that. But many residents fear that Boris Johnson’s close relationship with H&F Conservatives could be an obstacle. The Mayor and H&F Conservatives work closely on policy together, H&F Council hosted Boris Johnson’s campaign day, the Council Leader worked on the Mayor’s Audit panel and is said to be chairing his re-election committee.

The scheme could also be called in by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. But many residents are equally wary of that, noting that this post is currently held by Mr. Eric Pickles MP (Con). He has described H&F Council as the “apple in his eye” and even made the Council Leader the Chair of his Innovation Unit.

None of that should affect the process but I understand why residents are concerned. H&F Council’s PAC meeting looked like a stitch-up from beginning to end and has left many with little more than contempt for the way the Administration and Conservative PAC members have acted. I cannot recall witnessing such a thoroughly disingenuous approach to any planning application – and that’s really saying something. I therefore think there should be an independent investigation of what has gone on.

Over 1,300 residents, local community groups and English Heritage had written in to offer their criticisms of the project. English Heritage had taken the unusual step of detailing why this scheme will cause “considerable harm” to the environment. But none of that appeared to matter. The meeting was characterised by Conservative PAC members lining up to ask planted questions and planning officers then nervously responding with their often rehearsed answers. Nobody in the audience had any confidence that any of their concerns were being properly dealt with.

The scheme is the end result of four years’ of negotiations which had been led by Cllr. Mark Loveday, H&F Conservatives’ Chief Whip and Cabinet Member for Strategy and Nigel Pallace, the Director of the Council’s Environment and Planning Department. Driving it all was the Administration’s desire for £35m of new offices for Town Hall bureaucrats. To get those, the Conservative Administration had traded land, will agree to CPO and demolish homes, shops and the cinema; it had agreed to build on a quarter of the riverside park; and for its chosen developer to build tower bocks reaching up to 15 storeys high into the Hammersmith skyline. It is a ridiculous deal and it’s hard to find anyone that supports it other than the Conservative Administration or the developer.

I asked Nigel Pallace how the process had worked, what minutes had been kept of the many private meetings with the developer and who had been involved? Notably, I wanted to know what had come first, the deal or the changes to the Local Development Framework (LDF) and justifications for the scheme his officials are using to recommend “approval”? His response was long and didn’t answer my questions. I asked him another four times. But each time he gave a similar answer. He talked about an earlier scheme that he had worked on with some of my colleagues in a previous Labour Administration - the subtext of all that appeared to be to try and link the current Labour Opposition into this current scheme. A young Conservative councillor pounced on that and tried to articulate an accusation. But Mr. Pallace knew all too well that this was irrelevant; that those people behind the 2002 scheme had listened and dropped it; and that it was me, Cllr. Mike Cartwright (Lab) and former Cllr. Chris Allen (Lab) who ensured that scheme was killed as soon as we found out about it. Labour's last Borough manifesto confirmed that this scheme would be dead forever - had we won the elections last year.

By the time Mr. Pallace had finished his remarks I think many in the audience were of the view that officials had changed the LDF and written their justifications with the sole aim of recommending approval for the Administration’s scheme - not that he said any of that.

Ravenscourt Park ward Councillor Lucy Ivimy (Con) added further clarification. She told the PAC that “the report is deeply defective. It contains basic errors of fact; it appears to accept without criticism arguments and evidence put forward by the applicants, and contains arguments that bear all the hallmarks of being disingenuous. I note that those responsible for producing it, report to that same executive which has been the main moving force for the council behind these proposals, and I wonder what influence that executive has had on the professional judgement of officers.”

Until last May, Cllr. Ivimy was in that Executive as the Administration’s Cabinet Member for Housing which made her evidence all the more insightful and powerful. She gave an excellent speech.

Councillor Mark Loveday, the Conservative Chief Whip and the lead Administration councillor for the scheme, was stood at the back of the room eyeing the proceedings at the front. He would have been an anonymous figure for all but the councillors and a few residents.

I wondered what pressure the Conservative PAC members must feel given the importance of this scheme to senior members of their Administration.

The vote took place just before midnight. It had been a long night and it was impressive to see hundreds of people wait so long to see the outcome. Indeed, dozens had been barred from entering the smaller hall the Council had booked at Latymer Upper School. But the outcome was thoroughly predictable. So much so that as we left members of Save Our Skyline (SOS) were stood by the door handing out a press release printed prior to the meeting but criticising the vote that had just happened.

Residents can ask Mayor Boris Johnson to refuse this scheme by emailing Mr. Giles Dolphin here. I think it’s worth copying in Boris Johnson at this email address too. As well as that, residents should write to The Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. You can email him by clicking here. If you want to consider what others are saying the main objections are you can see those here on SOS’ website.

“A Disaster:” “Britain’s Experiment In Austerity”

Professor Krugman's analysis from across the Atlantic
offers an alternative view of how Britain should
rise to its economic challenges

Professor Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist, has again reported on the British economy - his first analysis since the Autumn Statement. He’s not a fan of the Conservative/Lib Dem government’s austerity experiment which he says “will depress the economy even further in the short run, leading to further depression of long-run potential.” You can read his article by clicking here.

Writing in the New York Times Professor Krugman notes that things are unlikely to change because “the truly awful thing is that Cameron and Osborne are so deeply identified with the austerity doctrine that they can’t change course without effectively destroying themselves politically.” Professor Krugman has also spotted that the government is well aware of the effects its policies are having and has effectively admitted that in the latest report from the Office of Budget Responsibility. If so it makes our current economic predicament even more depressing.  

It is admirable that Professor Krugman resisted all attempts to crow that he told us so. But he offered his first warning about the government’s austerity programme less than six months after the last election saying it “will lead to a renewed economic slump” and has charted what's actually happening since.

The Conservative/LibDem government had effectively gambled that Britain could get away with running an austerity budget, not least, because they expected our major trading partners would have sufficient growth to pull us along in their slip stream. But our biggest partners are the European Union and the United States and they are hardly in a position to do that. We therefore need another economic plan, but as Professor Krugman pointed out, that’s unlikely to come from Mr. Cameron and Mr. Osborne.

Labour’s Ed Ball argues that there is a better way. It is without doubt in our national interests that we have a thorough public debate on how that might work and what we do next.

H&F Conservatives Say £7,000 Tax Payer Funded Booze-Up Was Er... "Good For Morale"

Hard to earn but easy to waste. Over £7,000 of tax payers'
cash squandered on H&F Council knees up. But H&F
Conservatives say they'll do it all again

There has been quite a lot of squirming from the Borough’s ruling Conservative councillors over the last few days. That's all a consequence of this story about how they squandered £7,104 of tax payers’ money on a leaving party that started at 4.00pm on a Monday afternoon. 

The Shepherds Bush Blog and HFConWatch also featured the story and I expect other media to pick it up too.

Just for the record, I want residents and senior officers of Hammersmith and Fulham Council to know that should Labour win control of the Council on 1st May 2014, I will stop all tax payers’ money being spent on parties, socials, leaving functions and other such frivolous waste. I’m more than happy for people to have leaving get-togethers which are paid for privately with their own money and happen after work hours. But that’s it.

I’m actually surprised that H&F Conservatives think this is OK. The Fulham and Hammersmith Chronicle contacted three people in the Conservative Administration and is reporting Cllr. Stephen Greenhalgh (Con), the Leader of the Council saying “I am never going to stop spending some money” on such celebrations.

Cllr. Peter Graham (Con)

Cllr. Harry Phibbs (Con), the Cabinet Member for Community Engagement was recently calling for even more cuts but on this occasion he advised the Chronicle that this £7,000 bash was “good for morale” and says the public will “understand it was the right thing to do.”

Going by the Twitter exchanges between the recently elected Cllr. Peter Graham (Con) and the Chronicle, he appeared to have a touch more apprehension of what the public would really think. That was presumably why that paper had to ask for his view an incredible ten times while he tried to obfuscate and duck out of directly answering whether he supported this £7k splurge or not. Others joined in and he eventually came clean and said that he “doesn’t have a problem with it” because the Council is making cuts elsewhere. 

Hmmm. These are really very tough times for many local people but even if they weren't, I would still have a problem with this. That £7,104 was not the Council's money, they were simply custodians of it - it was the public's money. The politicians and officials that decided to squander it in this manner showed no respect for that or indeed any appreciation of how hard many people work just to pay bills, such as their council tax. I hope H&F Conservatives get that message before we uncover more such senseless waste.

Guardian's Interview Gives More Insight Into Mr. Cameron's Character

See the Guardian's interview

There is a good interview with Prime Minister David Cameron (Con) in today's Guardian. They have innovatively had fifty five famous people, from all walks of life, each ask him a single question. It's well worth a read. All the Prime Minister's answers are interesting but he inadvertently demonstrates that Flashmanesque bullying characteristic, that's been commented on before, in one or two of his answers. Look at Mr. Cameron's response to Polly Toynbee's question about child poverty:

Polly Toynbee, Guardian columnist
"On the basis of your government's present policies, the IFS predicts child poverty will rise steeply, after nine years of falling. What emergency measures will you now take to correct this trajectory and fulfil your pledge to cut the numbers of children living below the OECD recognised poverty line?"

Prime Minister David Cameron, "I note that she doesn't refer to that fact that we've had a series of budgets that have not added to child poverty and the reason is we took steps to increase child tax credits, to demonstrate that while we were making cuts, we were doing so in a way that was fair… There are many things I can do in life, but making Polly happy is not one of them, I'm afraid." 

Polly Toynbee is a committed campaigner on child poverty. I've seen her ask equally tough questions about progress on that subject to Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. But Mr Cameron not only refused to answer Ms. Toynbee's question he had a couple of digs at her too. It was an odd subject for him to judge such a petulant response would be reasonable.

I am sure Mr. Cameron's advisers must tell him to keep that aspect of his personality under wraps. But I suspect he just can't help himself. I recall a similar response on 5th January 2010 when he did a public meeting in Hammersmith. Maxine Bayliss, one of my constituents, asked him about the safety of her home on the Queen Caroline Estate, which H&F's Conservative run Council has listed for demolition in their Local Development Framework. Mr. Cameron became visibly irritated by her question, turned his back on her and while walking away snapped, "If you don't like them stand for election?" 

I expect we will see more of this unbecoming characteristic next year as the Prime Minister’s economic policies begin to cut further into the fabric of our national life. There will be much greater scrutiny given to the Cameron government’s role in failing economic growth, rising unemployment, rising child poverty and plenty of other areas the Prime Minister would no doubt prefer not to be asked about.

Residents Associations' Call To Arms: 30th Nov Meeting Is "Last Chance" To Say "No" To Hammersmith Skyline Blight

Click to expand and view. Feel free to print SOS'
poster and put it in your window

H&F Conservatives’ much criticised proposals for the Town Hall tower blocks will go to a “special meeting” of the Council's Planning Applications Committee (PAC) this Wednesday. It will begin at 7.00pm and will be held in Latymer Upper School and NOT in Hammersmith Town Hall. Unsurprisingly, its planning officers have recommended “approval.”

But many residents tell me they want to know if there is a conflict of interest? This is not an independent planning application such as any resident may put in to extend their home; nor is it a situation where a developer has approached the council with a scheme. This project is the brainchild of the Council’s Conservative Leadership and senior council officers.

Conservative Councillors actually went looking for firms to deliver this scheme and even flew to the French Riviera to court developers. Nigel Pallace, the Borough’s Director of Environment and Planning has led on this project since the outset. So residents understandably question how can H&F’s PAC make an independent decision that isn’t unduly influenced in some way by senior members of the Administration?

It’s an interesting question. A lawyer would advise that it would be unlawful for members of PAC to be Whipped on which way to vote. But they would also caution that people with any concerns about any particular members of PAC will have prove with evidence that there is undue influence. If they can't do that then the good name of those councillors should be left in tact.

Save Our Skyline and other residents’ groups are calling on people to attend and protest. I will be there and I will be arguing against this disgraceful scheme. I may see you on Wednesday night…

Is That Really A Spending Priority?!? H&F Conservatives Waste £7,000 Of Tax Payers’ Money On A Booze-Up

Mr. Geoff Alltimes, Council's former CEO. H&F Conservatives
spent over £7000 on his goodbye party. It is also
estimated that he received a £270,000 tax free
 lump sum pay-off and will receive a
£104,000 annual pension.

This year, the Borough’s residents will hand over between £747.74 to £2,243.20 to Hammersmith and Fulham Council in Council Tax – depending on the banding of their home. They may have to add extra payments for parking, parking fines, meals on wheels and even for using fitness trainers in our local parks. H&F Conservatives has consistently added record hikes to these stealth taxes. All of us know these are difficult times of austerity. Or so we thought…

Yesterday, the Council reported that the Borough’s ruling Conservative Councillors spent an incredible £7,184.00 (excluding VAT) of tax payers’ money on a booze-up. The party began at 4.00pm in the afternoon on Monday, October 31st and it took place in the Assembly Hall in Hammersmith Town Hall.

I find it genuinely hard to fathom why the Conservative Administration spent that amount of money on a shin-dig. This year the Conservative/Lib Dem government has slashed funding to Hammersmith and Fulham Council by a record amount. Our local Conservative councillors called for even more cuts and to show the way, added an extra £1 cut to every £3 cut by their government. That meant that £33million was slashed from front line services or added as stealth taxes. Sure Start nurseries are a pertinent example as many up and down the Borough found that their budgets were dropped from over £450,000 a year to just £19,000 a year. Think what an extra £7,000 could do for any of those facilities. Indeed, think what an extra £7000 could do to significantly improve any of the many reduced services. Consider that an average Band D council taxpayer will pay £1,121.60 then almost six and a half Borough households have had their payment for this year thoroughly wasted paying for a get-together.

The reason given for such extravagance is that it was a retirement party for Mr. Geoff Alltimes, the Borough’s former Chief Executive. I have nothing against people putting their hands in the own pockets and having a retirement party after work hours. I am sure that is what will have happened often during the last two years for many of the 296 H&F Council staff that have left because of redundancy or retirement. But Mr. Alltimes has already been treated extremely generously by this Administration. He was remunerated almost £300,000 a year; his annual pension is estimated to be £104,000 a year and he is also estimated to have received a tax free, lump sum payment of £270,000 as part of his leaving package.

I think we should get the money for Mr. Alltimes' leaving bash back. I can picture some Sure Start nurseries that would happily welcome it.

H&F Conservatives Place Borough's Vital Mental Health Service Under Threat

For many years now, the Ellerslie Centre has offered some truly excellent day services that have proved critical to supporting people with enduring mental health needs. H&F Conservatives are looking to curtail these services and move in other community groups which they intend to evict from other council buildings they are planning to sell off. The users of Ellerslie Road are devastated and upset.

This process has reached the “consultation” stage which I encourage people to take part in by clicking here. Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative Administration have built a reputation of never doing a consultation unless they have already decided what they want the outcome to be. So at the last Select Committee (click on link and see page 84) meeting on 5th November many users of these services expressed an understandable cynicism about the consultation process.

I must say I didn’t find the evidence presented by the council officials leading on this to be in any way convincing. “This isn’t being driven by building sales” was offered up early on as a particularly hard to believe assurance about these service changes. Instead, we were told that the numbers of users had mysteriously dropped off despite their best efforts to encourage people to attend.

So I asked the officials if it was true they had stopped referring people to the centre last year? “Er, yes… that did happen” came the answer. I enquired how long that was for “I’m not sure” came the nervous response concluding with “I think it was about three months.” I thought it was peculiar that the officials hadn’t mentioned that in their presentation.

You put the lunch prices up as well didn’t you? I asked. “Yes we did” came the response. They went up from £1 to nearly £4 a lunch or from £7 a week to nearly £24 a week. "Would that deter people from attending?" I asked? The forty or so users of the centre in the audience shouted "Yes!"

One in four of us will suffer some type of mental health issue during our life times. If that happens our eating, hygiene and day-to-day communication habits may all deteriorate. And so when people are on the way back up it’s places like the Ellerslie Centre that are there to help with the lifting providing an affordable hot meal, laundry and washing facilities and expertly trained staff.

It appeared to me that the Council has been purposefully been running a policy of trying to cut the numbers of users attending this service. That in itself then allows them to justify the cut, then move in other groups and sell off the other buildings.

At the Select Committee, Cllr. Joe Carlebach (Con), H&F's Cabinet Member for Community Care, asked us all to believe that this is just a consultation. I asked him what would he do if the answer came back saying, "No thanks." He prevaricated but despite that, I suggest we take him at his word his word, print it out and send back our views. We’ll see what he does with that at the next Select Committee meeting on 18th January 2012.