These New Figures Don't Lie: H&F Conservatives' War On Motorists

To what extent are H&F Conservatives' CCTV
cash cows being misused?

Last June, the BBC's flagship documentary programme Panorama devoted most of its exposé about councils that purposefully entrap innocent motorists on our very own Hammersmith and Fulham Council. They demonstrated H&F's range of cowboy style tricks which the Conservative Administration is pulling to lift hundreds of pounds from thousands of hard pressed local car owners.

H&F Council's response was not to mend their ways. Instead, they spent thousands of pounds of tax payers' money on a misleading glossy leaflet which they posted to voters' homes across the Borough. They said they were not in fact practicing a range of horrible scams to raise money but were simply doing some pretty run of the mill traffic management that is designed to help traffic.

These figures, released by London Councils, underline why the Council's excuse is unlikely to be true. They demonstrate how H&F Conservatives have increased the number of moving traffic fines 17 fold in six years earning themselves millions of pounds in the process.

• Year 2005/6 Moving Traffic Penalty Charge Notices 3,975.00
• Year 2011/12 Moving Traffic Penalty Charge Notices 72,837.00

The London Councils’ figures also show how, despite being one of London’s smallest boroughs, Hammersmith and Fulham Council topped the list of the 33 London authorities with the highest number of moving traffic fines. H&F issued a staggering 60% more than any other local authority in London and many times more than in neighbouring boroughs.

In fact, H&F Council issued over four times more fines than nearby Wandsworth and two and a half times more than Brent. Some councils in London, including neighbouring Kensington and Chelsea, issued no fines whatsoever.

Panorama documented senior people in the Council celebrating the increased income from motoring fines and admit targeting council employees to raise millions of pounds in more fines. You can review some of the Freedom of Information files here.

Mechanisms for entrapping motorists include:

• Fixing traffic lights to make it almost impossible not to get caught in a yellow box
• Changing bus line times halfway down along a route
• Combining new traffic rules with cameras
• Camouflaged road signage to entrap motorists

There needs to be some better explanations than the ones provided by the Conservative Administration so far. The Sunday Times first featured the story here. Other local and national press have all asked questions but H&F Council expect this all to blow over and to be able to carry on regardless. I believe we need to get to the bottom of this. It needs to be urgently investigated and reviewed. I will report more as more details are uncovered.

Cutting Police Is Wrong When Shepherds Bush Is Britain's #2 Crime Hotspot

Crime hotspots require more police not less

Figures released last week reveal Shepherd’s Bush suffers the second highest crime rate in the UK. Meanwhile, Hammersmith and Fulham has lost over 60 police officers since the summer of 2011 and Safer Neighbourhood Police Teams have been slashed in half. The Conservatives are also planning to close Shepherds Bush police station - which was announced in January this year.

Cycle theft, is particularly bad. It is continuing to increase by almost 5% in the last year, with a total of 1,267 cases. This contrast starkly with what's happening elsewhere across London and in neighbouring boroughs. Cycle thefts dropped in London by 10% overall. Wandsworth enjoyed a 6% reduction and Kensington and Chelsea saw a 3% drop. 

Successful crime crackdowns require high profile
policing such as here in New York City

The Conservatives have been consistently cutting the police service since the last election. H&F Labour is calling for a halt to plans to close Shepherds Bush police station and for the already drastic cuts to police numbers to be reversed. 

Cllr. Lisa Homan (Lab), the Borough's Shadow Cabinet Member for Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour says: “The Conservatives response is the wrong one. You don’t cut police numbers and close police stations in the second highest crime hotspot in the country.

People fear for the safety of themselves, their families and their property. The Council needs to recognize that a high profile police presence is key to cracking down on crime as we see elsewhere - such as in New York.

The Conservatives are out of touch with what the public wants on this issue. They need to reverse the police cuts and ensure the area has a high profile police station."

Properties For Overseas Investors Are The Wrong Housing Priority

H&F Conservatives' dubious manipulation of planning powers
means that over 80% of this Fulham Reach scheme is being
sold to overseas investors instead of UK residents

This Telegraph article highlight's how UK home ownership has fallen for the first time in over 100 years. Meanwhile, according to this report in the Independent, the average age of a UK first time home buyer is likely to be forty by the end of this decade, while the average twentysomething is likely to be well over fifty before they buy their first home. There is a housing crisis in the UK. It is worse in London and much worse in Hammersmith and Fulham - which has the fourth highest land prices in Great Britain.

So what is to be done? At a local level, land development policies are one of the key powers councils and the London Mayor holds. They both have a range of powers to insist that land can only be developed for housing if it fits local housing needs. That should mean that there are lots of low cost homes for first time and other resident buyers and lots of decent low cost homes for Londoners to rent. But that isn't what is happening in Hammersmith and Fulham.

H&F's Conservative Administration have cosied up to a series of property speculators and use a dubious planning ruse to allow them to build housing units that are almost exclusively for overseas investors. This Russian website is marketing the investment apartments on the controversial Fulham Reach development - in which over 80% of the properties built will be to sold to investors living in Russia, the Gulf and the Far East.

The consequences of this is hardest felt by people in their twenties. A generation ago many could reasonably expect to get onto the property ladder before they were thirty but now they face living in expensive and often unsatisfactory private rented accommodation for at least two decades before they achieve their aspiration of owning their own place to live.

This needs to change. Planning powers need to be re-enforced so they prioritise building new local, genuinely affordable homes to buy and to rent. This housing crisis can be halted. But that means government needs to act nationally, regionally and locally. I will certainly make sure that this issue will be a key local priority if the public vote for H&F Labour to run Hammersmith and Fulham Council next May.

UPDATE: 12.57pm, 15th Auguest 2013. The link to the Russian website has been mysteriously taken down. It had worked for a long while prior to appearing here. Now someone has apparently removed it. So, a competition! Whoever who finds the most new links to newly developed Hammersmith and Fulham homes being marketed at oversea investors and post them in the comments section wins.

Residents Stunned To Learn Bulldozers Set To Turn Hammersmith Park Into A Car Park, A Private Bar And A Private Commercial Venture

Cllr. Mercy Umeh (Lab): Leading the campaign
to Save Hammersmith Park

Last night the Conservative majority on the Planning Applications Committee voted that most of Hammersmith Park would become a private commercial venture for 35 years. Leasing it rather than selling it was a ruse that meant that H&F's Conservative Administration did not have to seek permission from the Secretary of State which is what is meant to happen when councils dispose of public parks. So their plan now is that the bulldozers will arrive and where before there was trees and greenery there will now be a car park, a private bar and a private sports facility.

The vast majority of local residents appear to have been deliberately kept in the dark about this and those that found out are outraged.

There is an unhappy record of our local parks being sold off or rented out as commercial ventures by H&F Council's Conservative Administration. Remember the Hurlingham Park polo debacle - which later turned out to be financially incompetent? Remember their unsuccessful attempt to allow Ravenscourt Park to be used as a venue for raves, late night drinking and wrestling?

Community facilities like parks, hospitals, village halls and libraries have all been given to us by previous generations of people who campaigned for them to exist. A council has a duty to be a good custodian of those often vital community facilities. Going by the comments of the vast majority of people who attended last night's meeting, I can't see this Conservative Administration being a trusted custodian of any of the Borough's community facilities - even by natural Conservative voters.

Ward councillors Andrew Jones (Lab) and Mercy Umeh (Lab) both delivered eloquent speeches in defense of Hammersmith Park but the Conservatives used their large majority to ignore residents' concerns and block vote it through anyway. Here is what Cllr. Mercy Umeh said:

"Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address this committee. I do so on behalf of the many residents who have contacted me to express their concerns about many aspect of this application. I recognise that this is the Planning Applications Committee and understand that it has the specific brief of considering this application with reference to planning rules and guidelines. I would however like to put on record the concerns my constituents have raised with me about the conflict of interests of majority of the Planning Committee’s members.

Everyone here tonight is aware that the changes being voted on by this committee form part of an agreement the Council’s Conservative Administration has already made with PlayFootball. It is therefore a policy of the Conservative Administration. My constituents are concerned that in the pre-meeting the Conservative councillors had this evening, just prior to this meeting, that they have already agreed to vote this through.

I hope my constituents’ fears aren’t realised and that you will listen to their concerns and vote accordingly.

So let me begin by raising the first planning concern: If this park was being sold to PlayFootball rather than leased it would have to be agreed by the Secretary of State. Instead of selling this park the Administration has leased it for 35 years. In practical terms, although I accept it is different legally, a 35 year lease is the same as a sale. PlayFootball will have control of this park for over a generation of people growing up in this neighbourhood. Given those circumstances, I believe this decision should have been reviewed by the secretary of state. That would have been in the spirit of what the law intended

I do not believe that the public have sufficient confidence in LBHF’s officials or its ruling councillors for such a long term decision to have been made otherwise. That brings me on to the second point.

The consultation: Many of my constituents simply have not been consulted. You will have hopefully read the letter of objection from Virginia Ironside, the Chair of RAPA. She makes the point (and I quote) that “We at RAPA have only heard of what is going on through rumour and have not been consulted at all.” Similarly, I have had many complaints from residents making the same point and I know my colleagues representing White City have too.

This looks to me like the Council deliberately chose to take a very limited consultation. Why?

Was it because it was aware that once people understood what was happening to their park they would object?

I think so…

We have a situation where a third of Hammersmith Park is being leased to private developers for a very long time. The park will be used as a commercial venue. It will include a bar and part of the park will be turned into a car park. Meanwhile, your Conservative administration has agreed to eliminate the bowling green; to eliminate the tennis courts; to eliminate the playground; and to eliminate the basketball pitch.

Your administration has agreed to fell 24 mature tree. It hopes to destroy valuable flower beds. And if this development is agreed it will severely curtail an important green oasis in an area with one of the lowest amounts of green space in the whole of England.

The erection of a 12 foot high fence around the project will not properly lessen the considerable amount of noise and will be completely unsightly. The light pollution will be bad for my constituents – particularly those in Batman Close.

Why do this? Why cut down trees? Why put a car park for 20 cars where that had been greenery, flowers and trees? Why do we need a private bar in this green park?

Why should residents face light pollution and the noise of car’s coming and going and people shouting and yelling until late in the night? Why do any of this?

I understood the Council was trying to change the image of its planning department. How do you think most people will view its behaviour over this scheme? Why do PlayFootball need to be given the opportunity to make £70,000 a year profits out of our public park?

Everyone who is on this committee, all the planning officers and anyone who has taken the trouble to read the planning guidelines will know that this scheme is in direct contradiction to Hammersmith and Fulham’s own guidelines for the Borough.

The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham has published concerns about there being not enough tennis facilities. It has pledged to do everything necessary to curtail traffic pollution; it states that the location of night-time economy must be sensitive to residential uses and most importantly that that social infrastructure facilities in the White City area should be clearly accessible to the members of the community they serve.

There is talk of PlayFootball charging around £50 per hour to use a pitch. This scheme will not be accessible to the vast majority of residents which is presumably why PlayFootball have asked for a car park.

This is clearly a change of use of land: From a park to a car park; from a park to a bar, from park to a commercial venture. It needs to be judged as a change of use.

The failure of Hammersmith and Fulham, the failure of its planning department and the failure of its Conservative administration to do that brings the reputation of this Borough into disrepute. I ask you to vote this scheme down."

Would You Trust Them? These Are The People Running The Planning Department, Putting Out Political Propaganda And Introducing Nearly 600 Stealth Taxes

On the 12th June, the BBC's Panorama featured the tricks used by Hammersmith and Fulham Council to trap motorists so they can hit their multi-million pounds fines targets. You can view the programme by clicking here. The scams used are the type of thing one might expect from the worst type of cowboys. So the real question is what does this tell us about the people running Hammersmith and Fulham Council? 

One example profiled on Panorama was how the Conservative Administration fixed the traffic lights in Bagleys Lane so that it was virtually impossible to get through the yellow box, making it the most lucrative box junction in Britain for the folks back at the Council. Transport for London have helpfully advised that the traffic light sequencing could easily be changed to better manage traffic flows and let innocent motorist through unhindered but instead H&F Council trapped 40,634 residents in the financial year 2011-12. Another scam is to start a bus lane with one set of rules only to make the rules more stringent halfway down and again trap the innocent. This local news blog is running a competition. You can read the local newspaper's report here. If you believe you have had a couple of hundred quid wrongly lifted from your wallet by this crowd then you should follow this link to appeal.

This crowd are, of course, the same people who have agreed to sell off most of Charing Cross Hospital. They are the same crowd who, with straight faces, tried to put developments like the Town Hall Monster through and even granted permission for this one. This crowd are the people behind the demolition of the Goldhawk Road shops, Shepherds Bush Market and thousands of affordable council homes. They are the people tricking the elderly and sick to stop using council services and even admit to "putting them at risk" by stealth taxing crucial services. And as Panorama demonstrated, they are going to extraordinary lengths to raise funds from residents with over 600 of some of the biggest and creative stealth tax rises ever put forward by any council anywhere. 

The Telegraph was the first national media to expose their lead in parking stealth taxes. The Daily Mail followed up with an expose of how they tax people for using local parks and many other media have detailed many other such scams.

It doesn't have to be this way. My colleagues and I have already identified how H&F Conservatives squander £20million of tax payers' money and we will identify more. Local government needs to be straight with the people it seeks to govern. The Panorama programme shone a light into one dark corner of our local authority and thousands of viewers got an insight into the sly, cunning and often deceitful culture that is prevalent throughout much of Hammersmith and Fulham Council. This needs to change.

H&F Labour Appoints 'Cost Cutting Tsar' To Root Out More Council Wastefulness

Max Schmid, former local government finance
analyst, charged with identifying more cuts and
halting H&F Conservatives' wastefulness

Councillor Max Schmid has been appointed as H&F Labour's council ‘Cost Cutting Tsar.' The chartered accountant is charged with working through the council’s budget to identify more wasteful spending, on top of the £20million of unnecessary expenditure - already targeted for cuts by my fellow Labour councilors and I. Max will also act as a critical friend to the Borough's shadow cabinet as each proposed manifesto commitment is scrutinised, following public consultations, and prior to agreeing H&F Labour's manifesto plan.  

My Labour colleagues and I have already confirmed our costed pledge to cut council tax and will set a cost-neutral budget that will deliver better, more modern services at lower cost to tax payers.

Anyone considering just a fraction of the Conservative run council's wasteful spending and bad practice will get a feel for the scope for cuts. The Conservative administration squanders up to £5m a year on what one leading Tory MP described as "political propaganda on the rates", H&F Council is recognized as having too many senior bureaucrats which are also amongst the highest paid in the UK. They have even been attacked by Bob Neill MP (Con), the Under Secretary of State at the Department of Communities and Local Government for losing millions of pounds on unnecessary "consultants". He told the BBC that this “may simply be slackness but slackness isn’t forgivable under these circumstances.” 

Max Schmid said “There’s a whiff of complacent arrogance about the Conservative administration’s attitude to expenditure and stealth taxes. At last year’s Audit Committee they admitted their waste of public funds on consultants had been a consequence of their “carelessness” (see report on page 251). They give away land at knockdown prices to property speculators with some property firms even publicly boasting afterwards what an easy touch H&F Council is. It’s insightful to note H&F Conservatives actually wasted over £7000 on a Monday afternoon booze-up for a favoured official. At the same time, they have hiked up parking charges by 55% in one year and continue to ramp up countless other stealth taxes. These are the wrong attitudes and out of sync with these austere times. I will go through the books with a fine tooth comb.”

Max qualified as a chartered accountant at the Big 4 finance firm PwC. He specialised in analysing the practices and finances of local councils and other public services. He will join H&F Labour Opposition's finance team which reports to the opposition leadership and is chaired by Cllr. Andrew Jones, the shadow cabinet member for value and finance. The team also includes Cllr. PJ Murphy who is vice chair of H&F Council’s Audit Committee. Max was elected to the Council on 7^th February this year in the Wormholt and White City bi-election.

H&F Conservatives' Gloss On Mental Health Cuts Is No Laughing Matter

Mental health is still a subject many people struggle to discuss openly. Last year, users of the Ellerslie Centre lobbied and educated councillors (of all parties) about their respective conditions and fears of how the imminent cuts to their centre would curtail critical support.

The Conservative Administration went ahead with the £290,000 budget cut. It restricted the users to the top floor instead of the whole building they had previously enjoyed, it closed the canteen and laid off their support workers. Last week, at the Borough’s Housing Health and Adult Social Care Select Committee, we examined what the Administration says has been the consequences of all this. You can take a look at the Administration’s report on page 51.

Rather predictably it says it has been a “success.” Echoing David Cameron’s Big Society we were informed how “the service has changed in that it no longer provides meals but encourages service users to cook for themselves.” Officials detailed how a higher than average “eight service users have been admitted to hospital since the service has changed” but they had investigated this and they knew for certain that there was “no clear evidence that [the] change in day services impacted on or caused these hospital episodes.” And just in case anyone wanted to ask what lay underneath this gloss, there was no detail of any reliable source. All of this made for a pretty grim meeting - although not for two Conservative councillors representing Fulham Reach ward who laughed and giggled throughout a significant part of the official's evidence.

Last year the users of the Ellerslie Centre told how people suffering from a mental health issue can find the essential day-to-day aspects of life too difficult. Things such as eating, or eating properly, washing and doing laundry can all seem too hard to contemplate. I visited the Ellerslie Centre on a couple of occasions. Hot food was on offer, laundry was done but most importantly there was a powerful sense of caring and friendship amongst the users and the staff. That’s not something that would show in any set of accounts but was a real asset all the same.

I understand the need to maximise the Council’s budget. But this Conservative Administration has been exposed for wasting millions of pounds. It’s spending nearly £1m defending its plans to demolish Shepherds Bush market, it’s gifting £70m worth of land to get unnecessary new offices for Town Hall bureaucrats, and it’s given Conservative councillors record salary rises and even paid for them to make luxury trips to the French Riviera. I find it hard to believe that this £290,000 cut to these particular mental health services were such a key priority when there is so much disgraceful waste that should have been prioritised for the axe.

H&F Labour's War On Waste Will Keep This Inept Conservative Run Council On The Back Foot

Incompetence and waste: Hammersmith and Fulham Council
eventually handed itself over to HMRC while admitting it had been
operating outside UK tax laws because of the Conservative
Administration's self-confessed "carelessness" with public money

Fourteen months ago, at last year’s budget meeting, the public nearly got their first glimpse of Hammersmith and Fulham Conservatives’ 2014 election narrative. The visual was a large black solid circle photocopied onto A4 paper. All the Borough’s Conservative councillors filed into the chamber clasping their copies which they quickly stashed out of sight under their desk. Their plan was to orchestrate a synchronised raising of their sheets at a signalled point during the evening. Some clearly imagined it would be hilarious - unable to curtail their sniggering and offering up sneak previews of their papers across the council chamber. But the call never came and this silly stunt was never activated.

The problem the Conservatives had was that my Labour colleagues and I spent that evening underlining how we would root out waste, cut council taxes and only make funding pledges that were properly costed and rigorously tested. The Conservatives' mood slumped even further when we listed some of the incompetence and waste of millions of pounds of public money which had gained them notoriety in the national media and been investigated by the UK tax authorities. We called for a war on waste. By the end of the evening, a glumness had settled over the Conservative group. Their “Labour’s black hole” argument had been proved to be really rather daft.

Fifteen months have passed and as the election approaches H&F Conservatives will undoubtedly try and wheel out that nonsense again. It won’t work and not just because it isn’t true. It will fail because my Labour colleagues and I will set out a thoroughly costed plan that will deliver on our tax cutting and manifesto commitments and we do that against a back-drop of Hammersmith and Fulham Conservatives’ increasing reputation for financial incompetence.

Consider that in the last eighteen months Bob Neill MP (Con) (one of their own local government ministers) accused our Tory councillors of “slackness” after it emerged they had wasted vast amounts of tax payers' money. Or, that in the last six months the Borough’s Conservative Administration wrote to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs service to plead that they had been “careless” with tax payers’ money which is the best excuse they could agree on after being caught out operating outside UK tax laws. Regular readers will recall how this Conservative Administration has been exposed in countless national media for wasting millions of pounds on unorthodox uses of consultants – many of whom are retired local government officers wrongly working as “consultants” so as to not forfeit their generous pension payments. And how our council has the accolade of having both too many and having the highest paid senior bureaucrats in the UK. There is much more and it is insightful to their attitude that they okayed a £7,000.00 Monday afternoon booze-up for a favoured local government employee and did that in these austere times.

There needs to be a change and cutting council waste needs to be central to the changes this Borough needs.

What Happened To Make H&F's Conservative Councillors Capitulate In Negotiations To Save Our Hospitals?

How government health chiefs now view H&F
Conservatives since they have started
backing their hospitals cuts plan

Ask anyone who has studied negotiation: is it a good idea to back down from a strong position; take away all pressure from your opponent; and shake hands on a deal months or even years before any deadline requires you to do so? You will get a very clear answer - No! So why did our Borough’s Conservative councillors lead the Council to do precisely that when they stopped their support of the cross-party, residents-led campaign to save local hospitals?

This matter was considered at an emergency Full Council Meeting called last week by my fellow Labour councillors and I. It was a chance for Conservative councillors to explain themselves, in public and on-record. Hundreds of people turned out to listen. Some angry, some distraught and some just keen to understand what had happened. But no good answers came.

One resident perceptively pointed out how the ashamed body language of the Conservatives’ more thoughtful elected representatives became increasingly more squirmish as their own side tried to explain what had happened. In short, their argument is that this was the best possible deal they thought they could get.

But this was the first deal the government offered them and they immediately snapped it up. The Conservative/Lib Dem government also offered Ealing Council and Lewisham Council similar initial deals at the same time and those elected representatives (of all parties) turned them down and said their residents deserved much more. So what was the real reason our Conservative councillors capitulated?

It turned out that there has been a considerable amount of disquiet amongst local Conservatives about attacking their own government’s policy of hospital cuts. Many had never wanted to join the residents-led campaign in the first place. When the government offered them a cop out they took it and figured they could use council funds to blanket the Borough with propaganda spinning what they had done.

They have so far spent over £20,000.00 of tax payers’ money telling residents that they have “Saved Charing Cross Hospital.” Nobody who has studied the facts or heard their explanations believes that’s true. In fact, in the panic of trying to explain themselves last week, one Conservative councillor admitted nothing had been finalised and nothing yet agreed - underlining how the Conservatives have undermined their negotiating position. 

If this is such a "great deal" and an "amazing triumph" why did Conservative councillors sneak off behind the backs of the residents, they had pledged to work with, and agree all this in secret? Why did they only tell their former partners in the residents campaign about their "brilliant success" the day before they announced it on a glossy council leaflet posted out to all Borough residents? And why did they not call for any type of independent clinical assessment of this deal before they agreed it and before they announced it?

By the end of the meeting our Conservative councillors' had demonstrated that their position is no more than a bad-judgement call, a political mistake, an inept negotiation and a betrayal of residents who expected our council to put their health needs first.

So, at last week’s meeting my Labour colleagues and I called three separate votes. All the Borough's councillors were required to vote for or against the following:

1. A commission that will carry out an independent clinical assessment of these proposals
2. For the Council to ask the Secretary of State for Health to hold a public inquiry into how these proposals will affect local residents
3. For the Council to re-open negotiations with Government health chiefs to get a better health deal for Hammersmith and Fulham's residents.

All of our Borough’s Conservative elected representatives voted against those proposals. They were therefore blocked from happening.

So now residents face a situation where our council has agreed that the A&E at Hammersmith Hospital will close and the A&E at Charing Cross Hospital will close leaving no accident and emergency services in the Borough. Nearly all other acute health facilities at Charing Cross will close. Charing Cross Hospital will be reduced to 13% of its current size; and 60% of the Charing Cross ground site will be turned over to the Conservatives' property speculator friends. And all of this while London’s population is set to expand by the equivalent of a city the size of Leeds over the next 12 years.

My Labour colleagues and I will continue to stand with local residents and will keep campaigning against these hospital closures.

It’s not too late for Conservative councillors to realise their mistakes. I for one would welcome it if they re-joined the Save Our Hospitals campaign. I know how difficult it is to oppose those in your own party. My local Labour colleagues and I opposed the last Labour London Mayor on the western extension of the congestion zone and the last Labour government on the third runway at Heathrow. But there is no more important issue facing the Borough than saving our hospitals for current and future generations of residents. Once those critical health services have gone they will not be coming back. 

Labour Calls A Vote For Independent Assessment Of Conservatives' Hospital Cuts Plan At Next Week's "Extraordinary Council Meeting"

The Labour Opposition on Hammersmith and Fulham Council have called an emergency council meeting to discuss the private deal Conservative Councillors struck with government health chiefs at the end of last year - as reported here. The Mayor has scheduled the Extraordinary Council Meeting for next Tuesday, 19th March. It will begin at 7.00pm in Hammersmith Town Hall. You can view the agenda by clicking here.

My Labour colleagues and I called this vote as we believe that it is important that the Council agrees to have this deal objectively assessed by an independent health expert. All councillors will therefore be given the opportunity to vote on that proposition.

We are also questioning the propriety of the Conservatives’ behaviour because they did not call an emergency meeting of the Borough's Health Select Committee to assess their deal before they privately shook hands on it and they did not inform any of their partners in the residents' led Save Our Hospitals campaign that were even entering talks. Instead, they spent an estimated £20,000.00 of council tax payers' money on hospital leaflets which falsely claim they have "saved Charing Cross Hospital." It's hard not to see how they are doing anything other than playing fast and loose with public health and public money.

Schmid Hits The Ground Running With Calls For War On Council Waste And Genuine Tax Cuts

Cllr. Max Schmid (Lab) setting out the case for genuine tax cuts
and rooting out the chronic levels of council waste

Newly elected Councillor Max Schmid gave his maiden speech at the very first opportunity - the Annual Budget Meeting. Here's what he said:

"I would like to start by thanking the voters of Wormholt and White City who elected me to represent them. I also want to thank the police and election officials who ran such a smooth process.

The election, though, came under by the worst possible circumstances - the sad loss of Councillor Jean Campbell.

As we all know, Cllr. Campbell was a strong and much admired representative for her ward. She built up a huge respect in the community. She was a genuine leader whose loss has been felt deeply.

On the doorstep, many residents warned me that she is an impossible act to follow, but I will do all I can to carry on working for the positive changes she wanted to see for Wormholt and White City.

I want to use this speech to discuss two points about this budget:

I will talk about the Council’s range of taxes, fines and charges, and I will then discuss tackling council wastefulness.

In the recent by-election, I stood on a platform that supported the council tax cuts and argued for reductions across many forms of council stealth taxes.

So I understand why the Administration makes much of the Council Tax cut. They have even gone as far as changing their logo. Gone is “Putting residents first.” That has been replaced with “The low tax Borough”. But is that true? Or, is this claim contradicted by the nearly 600 stealth taxes that have been introduced or increased since 2006.

I worry that when you consider all of the costs imposed by the Council on the residents it once claimed to put first, we actually live in a High tax Borough.

Residents don’t distinguish between the different ways the Council takes money from them. They look at what they get from the Council, and what they pay in through not only the official Council Tax, but also the huge range of stealth taxes. More and more, they are not satisfied with the deal they are getting.

Let’s take the example of a 72 year old lady I met last June while canvassing in the Town by-election. She lives in a nice flat, she worked hard all her life and has always paid her taxes. She told me that since 2006 her Council charges for meals-on-wheels, which she depends on, have gone up dramatically above inflation, adding an extra £700 to her annual bill.

She thinks that Hammersmith and Fulham is a high tax Borough for elderly residents.

While canvassing in Fulham Reach ward last weekend I talked to a small business owner who told me that his costs for refuse collection had gone up drastically in the last three years alone. They go up even further in this budget.

He told me that Hammersmith and Fulham is a high tax Borough for small businesses.

During this month’s by-election, I met parents in White City who take their kids to play football in Hammersmith Park. They told me how important it was for them to keep their children active and fit. But they complained that the council has rented out the park to a private contractor that has imposed charges for a pitch to up to 90 pounds an hour.

For them, Hammersmith and Fulham is a high tax Borough for families.

And a few weeks ago the Sunday Times exposed the £3m motorist trap in Fulham that Transport for London said was specifically designed to multiply council earnings instead of properly regulate traffic.

As they sit at home and ponder their exorbitant ticket, these 80 people a day can only conclude that Hammersmith and Fulham is a high tax Borough for motorists.

And all the while lots of council waste that should be tackled isn’t. Perversely, one of the biggest areas of waste is the millions every year the Council spends congratulating itself and trying to convince residents they are getting a good deal. The expensive, glossy leaflets printed and delivered to residents, the acres of high-rate newspaper adverts, the Maoist posters hanging from streetlights and now a ridiculous rebranding exercise.

All of this £5 million of waste on PR could be cut. Instead—only a paltry £10,000 savings is made in this budget on Communications.

With massive cuts everywhere else in this budget, communities facing the sale their homes to overseas developers and our two Hospitals betrayed, the propaganda budget seems to be the only thing this Council is prepared to protect.

So, just as I did in my recent election, I will continue to campaign for a genuinely low tax Borough.

I will work to cut council waste on propaganda, to remove layers of expensive senior bureaucrats and end its exorbitant use of consultants.

But I will also fight for a better deal for local residents.

I want a Council that thinks it is worth fighting to keep Hospitals in the area instead of wasting even more money on a PR campaign pretending the local health service had been saved—a preposterous claim that yesterday even the Conservative Secretary of State seemed unimpressed by.

Hammersmith and Fulham is crying out for a fresh approach. One that genuinely puts money back in people’s pockets, tackles waste and still aspires to put residents first.

Thank you."

Residents Accuse Conservative Councillors Of Betrayal After Secret Deal To Shut Hospital Services And Turn Most Of Charing Cross Hospital Into Luxury Flats

Last July, at a packed public meeting, residents were aggressively questioning Conservative councillors about whether they could be trusted to protect our local hospitals. The Conservatives sat looking brow-beaten and so I found myself in the unusual position of speaking up for them. I said that Conservative councillors had promised me and residents’ groups that they would work with us to protect our local hospitals and that I believed it was right we should take them at their word. Just over three weeks ago the Conservatives publicly left the campaign to Save Our Hospitals. Now all of us that believed their promise feel more that a little duped. 

In short, both of the Borough’s accident and emergency departments will now close and the Conservatives have already agreed that the majority of the Charing Cross Hospital site will be turned over to property speculators who will use the land to build luxury flats.

Here’s the details of the deal our Conservative run Council has agreed with government heath chiefs:

• Only 13% of the current Charing Cross Hospital will be used for NHS care
• That 60% of the Charing Cross Hospital ground-site will be sold to property speculators and turned into luxury flats
• Both of the Borough’s A&Es at Charing Cross Hospital and Hammersmith Hospital’s will close
• Shut the stroke unit at Charing Cross Hospital
• Shut the Intensive Care Unit at Charing Cross Hospital
• Cut 440 beds at Charing Cross Hospital, leaving just 60 beds
• End acute care at Charing Cross Hospital
• The remaining 13% space of the current Charing Cross Hospital site will be turned into a specialist health clinic and adult social care convalescence centre
• Residents will spend up to 30 crucial minutes travelling by ambulance to A&Es in other boroughs and up to an hour by car
• The possible demolition of the award-winning Maggie’s Centre with it being rebuilt on a less valuable piece of land.

Once this deal had been put together the Chair of the Borough’s Health Select Committee should have called an emergency meeting to review it. But that position is held by Ravenscourt Park Councillor Lucy Ivimy (Con). She refrained from calling that meeting so there was no objective independent assessment or public scrutiny of this deal before it was agreed. Instead, the day after Conservative councillors announced they were leaving the Save Our Hospitals campaign they instructed the Council to send out a tax-payer funded, glossy leaflet to all residents in the Borough. That falsely told people that they had saved the hospitals. People will judge the truthfulness of that for themselves.

The last scheduled Health Select Committee took place on 20^th February. At that meeting Conservative councilors voted down the Labour Opposition’s request to have an independent health expert assess the deal they had agreed. They also admitted that they had been working on their deal since last year and had privately agreed to leave the Save Our Hospitals campaign before Christmas.

The time-line to the Conservative Administration’s change of heart raises further questions. Shortly after Christmas a source close to senior council officials let me know that Conservative councillors had agreed to publicly change their position and support the hospital closures. My source told me there had been a considerable amount of disagreement in the Conservative Group with many feeling uncomfortable attacking their own government’s hospital closure plans. By 30^th January 2013, Cllr. Lucy Ivimy and Fulham Reach Councillor Peter Graham (Con) gave speeches at the Full Council Meeting indicating they were actively favouring much of the government’s hospital closure programme. On the 7^th February the Conservative administration finally came clean and announced the deal done with government health chiefs before Christmas. The next day their glossy propaganda leaflet flopped onto the doormats of 180,000 Borough residents.

This privately agreed deal is awful. The Conservatives appear to have been, at best, thoroughly incompetent in their negotiations. Their underhand approach will have undermined their negotiating position and can only be seen as an effort to undercut the local residents' campaign they had previously pledged to support. I know that the residents who have worked tirelessly on the Save Our Hospitals campaign feel thoroughly betrayed.

The campaign to Save Our Hospitals carries on. My Labour colleagues and I continue to support it.