Council Email Admits Borough’s Elderly, Sick And Disabled Put “At Risk” By H&F Conservatives New Stealth Tax On Care

The attached council official's email tells how Hammersmith and Fulham’s elderly, sick and disabled residents are "at risk" after H&F Conservatives introduced a brand new £12.40 hourly care charge earlier this year. It seems that, in these tough economic times, many users of the service have decided to cancel it rather than pay the extortionate new stealth tax.

The email was sent three days before Christmas by a senior Social Services manager. It tells H&F Council staff that a number of residents, currently in receipt of essential care, have decided to go without after receiving a letter from the Council demanding payment.

The dilemma for Social Services is that they can’t just stop providing care to someone who may be extremely ill or in need. The consequences could be terrible. Because of this, staff have been told that services “cannot be changed until the user has been reassessed”. The email goes on to say that “the user must be advised that they may be placing themselves at risk” if the service is cancelled. You can read the email in full by clicking onto the attached picture.

The Council's email is an indictment of H&F Conservative’s harsh new policies towards caring for the elderly sick, and disabled. Prior to the 2006 elections care charges were included in the Council Tax payment. At that time, the Conservatives actually wrote into their pre-election manifesto that they definitely would not introduce any charges for care services. Then, within months of winning that election, they went back on their pledge and started consulting on bringing in the £12.40 hourly fee - much to the disbelief of local groups and residents. Now, along with many other new fees and cost, residents are being charged separately for these vital care service.

TaxPayers’ Alliance Tells H&F Council to “Hang Their Heads In Shame” On Soaring Propaganda Cost

Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, has identified Hammersmith and Fulham’s Conservative run Council on a list of authorities squandering public money on spin and misleading PR. Mr Elliott explained that he thinks "It is incredibly disappointing that, despite the economic downturn” H&F Council has increased spending by an inflation busting 11.3 per cent – one of the largest increases in the UK. This takes the total expenditure on propaganda to £836,000.00. This sum is equal to 1.4 per cent of council tax, it could be used to halt the cuts to our elderly, sick and disabled residents' care services or more than double H&F Council's current spending on police. Mr. Elliott explained that Hammersmith and Fulham Council “should hang their heads in shame. In the middle of a recession, councils need to cut back on propaganda and spin doctors and deliver savings to taxpayers.”

Hammersmith and Fulham is one of the boroughs with the smallest populations and geographical areas to appear on the list, so proportionally H&F is easily amongst the top spending local authorities in the country.

Cllr. Mike Cartwright (Lab), H&F Council’s Vice Chair of the Audit Committee, added “What is sad is that the £836,000.00 is only part of the total spend as the Council has concealed large aspects of its PR budget by allocating it differently. I think there needs to be a full independent inquiry into this highly dubious use of public money. Earlier this month, we again saw how the Council spent residents’ cash to scaremonger and spread disinformation. This can’t be right. This all comes at a time when there are 578 new Tory Stealth Taxes with parking up 12.5%, Meals on Wheels up 40% and the elderly sick and disabled now given a brand new £12.40 hourly charge for their care services. Residents deserve better”.

Congratulations For Brackenbury Residents' Association’s Christmas Carols

There were about three hundred people crowding around the shops at the bottom of Brackenbury Road yesterday evening. It’s nearly Christmas, the tree was lit up brightly and children from Brackenbury Primary School and Godolphin and Latimer School were singing Carols.

Buchanan’s Organic Deli, Stenton Butchers, and Gina’s Cakes all provided hot mince pies, and other assorted refreshments. The Hepsibah Gallery opened its doors as did SISI Hardware & DIY, and the local newsagents . Shoots and Leaves provided the tree, Horton and Garton Estate Agents provided support and the local ward police team were there to help out and do a bit of singing. Santa even arrived and handed out free goody bags to the children. It was all good fun and very festive.

The finalé of the evening was when those of us remaining had sheets of lyrics stuffed into our gloved hands and urged to join the carol singing. We did – although I’m pretty sure the looks I was getting after I started to sing weren’t admiring ones.

It was a great evening and I, for one, would like to thank the Brackenbury Residents' Association and those involved for arranging and supporting it.

Cuts To Front Line Staff's Terms And Conditions Balanced By H&F Tories' Record Salary Hikes

Just before the last local elections a prominent member of staff told me that they didn’t think there would be any difference between a Conservative Administration and Labour when it came to H&F Council’s employees’ terms and conditions. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Since the local elections H&F Conservatives has sought to cut some front line staff wages by up to 50 per cent - while giving themselves 18 per cent and 14 per cent salary rises in the respective last two years. The Council has dogmatically transferred jobs to private contractors, despite it being proven not to be best value in street cleaning, refuse collection and many other essential services. Now this October, H&F Council has issued redundancy notices to 4,283 staff with a view to re-employing them on very different terms and conditions.

H&F Council is now set to cut maternity pay, it hopes to cut dependency leave and is extending working hours to 7.30am - 8.00pm. Staff rightly feel let down. Many of these new initiatives will most harshly affect women. One noticeable consequence to all this has been that morale has dropped and service levels (that have already been cut financially) will now undoubtedly be affected even further.

I have always believed that it is an employer’s responsibility to pay people fairly and manage them professionally. The new deal being offered by H&F Conservatives means that, at the very least, the Council is set to badly fail the first of these criteria.

H&F Council’s £10,000.00 Misuse Of Public Funds To Scare Residents In ‘Super Sewer' Scam

Hammersmith and Fulham Council has so far spent £10,000.00 of council tax payers’ money to spread scare stories to local residents about the Thames Tideway Tunnel. Nearly everything the Council told local people has now been proved to be completely untrue – as previously reported here. The Council itself has now admitted the scaremongering it published was based on no more than "speculation."

Senior local Tories plotted with council officials to spread a story that “Ravenscourt Park and Furnival Gardens [were] threatened” with “eight years” of works to cut “giant bore holes” for a “Septic", "Stink Pipe” in the two local parks. None of this was true.

These scare tactics were similar to those used to generate votes in 2005 by H&F Conservatives . Then, they falsely claimed Charing Cross Hospital was set to close in a move designed to generate false anger at the Labour government prior to the last general election.

Last July, the Conservative Administration even tried (unsuccessfully) to control the Opposition's access to an independent briefing on the 'Super Sewer' from Thames Water. Instead they insisted that the Opposition would only be allowed briefings to come exclusively from H&F Council officials - many of whom had been party to spreading the untruths about the sewer plans in the first place. We met with Thames Water and it immediately became obvious why H&F Council officials had been nervous of what we would find out.

The Opposition is seeking an independent investigation into these goings on. Those involved should face the full consequenses for their roles in this misuse of public funds.

The Council’s currently admits that it spent £7,758.48 of tax payers’ money on letters to residents, leaflets, posters and other cost including laptop hire and bottles of water - all attributed to this ruse. But, this figure doesn’t include all of the full cost, such as officials' time in preparing their misinformation programme.

It’s now clear that the only possible works would involve a two year project to sink the Stamford Brook open sewer at Furnival Gardens (click on attached pic) so that it goes into the Thames Tideway Tunnel instead of the river - and that’s only if the project gets the go-ahead in the next decade.

I’ll let you know how things develop but please email me here if you require further information.

Thumbs Down For H&F Propaganda Sheet

When logging onto their PCs, employees of H&F Council are usually encouraged to answer a rather bizarre weekly survey by the Council’s Press Office. Previous questions have asked council staff about their favourite actor to play James Bond, what they think of the weather and other such fluff.

For example, this week’s Council staff survey asks, “Have you been tempted by the pre-Christmas sales?" It then gives borough employees the option of answering “Yes – I like a bargain I do” or “No - not on your Nellie, I’m waiting for the January sales”.

I think it’s a waste of public money to pay someone to think this stuff up and then arrange it into a questionnaire. However last week, for the first time I can recall, I was interested in the answer. The Press Office asked employees which free newspaper they prefer to read and included their own spin-sheet in the mix of answers. As you can see from the attached graph, taken from the Council intranet, their paper scored a lowly 5% of responses - which was around 40 employees (many of them, I suspect, working in the Press Office). It's apparent that the overwhelming majority prefer not to read the council tax-payer funded paper. That’s probably because they know, more than most, how quite a lot of it is full of misleading scaremongering and distorting propaganda.

H&F Council Argues Property Developer’s Profit Hopes Over The Needs Of Local Residents

“We need to consider the needs of the developer to generate a satisfactory profit on this scheme…” Surprisingly, these words were spoken by a H&F Council official who last Tuesday night was advising councillors on the Planning Committee to grant permission to Linden London for their multi-million pound Glenthorne Road project in Hammersmith. You can view the official planning application by clicking here and going to page 128.

My colleagues and I argued that the scheme needed to be postponed by at least a month. We suggested that the Council would lose any leverage to negotiate once permission was given. Not only was there, unusually, a complete lack of clarity on the Section 106 sum which the developer is meant to pay to benefit local residents but, the Council report recommended that the councillors back the property developer's request to radically cut the numbers of affordable homes available for residents to buy or rent. If agreed the amount of affordable housing would be cut from the London minimum of 50% to 21%.

Some of my constituents were attending from the Cambridge Grove and Leamore Street Residents Association. On the 17th September, they had also been to the Full Council Meeting to ask if the Council would use the Section 106 monies from this scheme to remedy the long-standing traffic problems in their area and fix the badly deteriorating railings that date back to 1856. At the time Cllr. Stephen Greenhalgh (Con) the Leader of H&F Council, told them “We certainly will make sure that it’s one of our priority projects to sort out.” As these were the only monies identified by the Council, since the Conservatives' £1,633,000.00 cut to the highways budget, residents had become hopeful that many of their problems would be addressed with this new sum.

I reminded the committee of Cllr. Greenhalgh’s commitment and handed out the attached photo of the everyday traffic problems residents have to put up with. I suggested that one point that we could all agree on, despite party political differences, was that we were there to represent local residents and not property developers. The Conservative members of the panel looked uncomfortable. It seems that they didn’t agree. The Chair called for a vote. It split down party lines with the seven Conservatives on the committee voting to grant permission to the property developer without further negotiation and the two Labour members voting against.

My constituents said they were astonished. I thought the Conservatives had made a mistake as last October, my fellow ward Councillors and I worked with residents to force H&F Council to negotiate an extra quarter of a million pounds in Section 106 money from the developer of the Hammersmith Grove Armadillo - just three days prior to the planning meeting. The Council could have used a similar strategy with Linden London. Instead, on page 148 of the report, they simply wrote that “Approximately £100k for highway/environmental improvement works (subject to detailed surveys and estimates for the various works) to improve the sites vehicular and pedestrian accessibility, including crossovers and reinstatement of the footway in vicinity of the site in accordance with the Councils street smart guidance and a contribution to the repair/renewal of the railings in Cambridge Grove”. The officials were unable to explain why there wasn’t an exact sum in the report concerning the Section 106 agreement, what problems would be addressed or what the eventual contribution would be. The Tories clearly didn't care, despite this all being quite unusual.

I’m not sure what Cllr. Greenhalgh’s role has been in this situation. It appears that the Leader of the Council either has little influence on his own officials, that he couldn't be bothered to follow up on his promise or he didn’t mean what he said to residents on September 17th. Either way, the local people who attended weren’t impressed. A classic case of “putting property developers, not residents, first” one later told me.

The Streets Are Filthy - Complaints From Richford Street Residents In Hammersmith

Here’s some photos sent to me by a resident in Richford Street, Hammersmith. As you can see the cleanliness of the streets leaves a lot to be desired.

I wholeheartedly agree with my constituent who tells me that “people are paying a lot in taxes to pay to clean up after others - money which could be invested in essential services. It seems to me that at least a fixed percentage of the cost of cleaning up our streets should be met from fines issued on people dumping fridges etc on the street, dropping litter and gum and allowing dogs to foul the pavement. If this approach were taken more money would be available for essential services and the streets would become cleaner (because a real threat of a fine would begin to change attitudes)”.

Those readers that have already received our latest newsletter through your door will see that we’re still campaigning to make the Conservative Administration reverse their cuts and to fully take up this approach. I’ll let you know how we get on but meanwhile, please feel free to email me pictures of how your street looks by clicking here, and I will put them to good effect as part of our campaign.

H&F Conservative's 578 Stealth Taxes

The last Labour administration delivered real-terms cuts in council tax, and kept charges for council services low. Now, H&F Conservatives have increased or introduced a staggering 578 new stealth taxes, with some charges rising by hundreds of percentage points above inflation.

Residents’ parking charges have increased by 12.5 per cent, and children’s out-of-hours play service charges have risen by a astonishing 121 per cent. The minimum increase across all council charges is 5 per cent. Many of the stealth taxes hit the most vulnerable local residents, with Meals on Wheels prices rising by an incredible 40 per cent - adding £365 to annual food bills for the elderly.

The Tories also went back on an election pledge not to introduce home care charges for the elderly, sick and disabled, telling them that if they don’t pay the brand new £12.40 per hour charge, they won’t receive these crucial services.

Included in the new stealth taxes is the controversial new charge for the garden waste disposal service, which now costs £7.25 - even though there didn't seem to be much of a service for those that signed up to it. That and many other of these charges used to be included in residents’ council tax payments. Now, residents have to pay these extra cost on top of their council tax.

Will H&F Tories Shut Another Sands End Youth Club?

When shutting down the Castle Youth Club last November the Conservatives explained that it didn’t matter as there is always the Townmead Youth Club, a few miles away. Now, it seems that this facility may also be closed down unless the Tory run Council releases £20,000 of funding needed to meet its running cost.

Readers will recall that the Castle Youth Club was sold to a property developer for £5million. Maybe the Administration could take the money out of that cash bonanza.

Residents of Sands End have been in for a tough time during the last couple of years. As well as selling off the Castle Youth Club, H&F Conservatives attempted to close Hurlingham and Chelsea Secondary School and successfully shut Peterborough Primary School. They have had to put up with cuts to police, and £36million of further cuts to front-line services. Then, this autumn it was announced that Hurlingham Park will be closed to the public for a large part of the year so that H&F Conservatives can rent it out to their friends in the international polo-set.

The Townmead Youth Club has been in operation since 1967. I hope local residents are able to make H&F Council see sense and maintain this important local asset.

Fences Go Up, Public Excluded, As H&F Conservatives Give Local Park Over To Polo Set

The London Olympics are three and a half years away. Children and young people across the country are being urged to take part and get involved in sport, and politicians are being called upon to take a fresh look at local facilities so that our young have a productive use for their energies. So, what is the answer here in Hammersmith and Fulham? Well, as far as H&F Council’s Conservative Administration are concerned it’s er… polo.

That’s right, it’s polo… and it's not for H&F's residents or indeed our young either. Instead, Hurlingham Park in Fulham has been given over to World Polo Ltd who intend to put on the traditional sport of the super-rich as an exclusive spectator event. Fences have already been erected around the public park and the mechanical diggers have gone in. Grounds that once saw schools’ sports days, families relaxing at weekends and kids playing ball games during balmy summer evenings will next year be the select reserve of the champagne-swilling international jet-set.

The scheme is the brain child of Cllr. Paul Bristow (Con) who gained notoriety this time last year when he proposed to rent out Ravenscourt Park and Furnival Gardens for such events as wrestling, film showings and raves. Opposition Labour councillors worked with local residents to restrict those activities but the people of Sands End, Fulham haven’t been so lucky. Their local Tory Councillors have supported this ruse and in doing so have denied them access to one of the few green spaces in in their area. You can click here to view the BBC News coverage of this story.

H&F Council’s ‘Super Sewer’ Shenanigans, Part Two – The Facts From The Public Meeting

About six weeks before the 2005 general election H&F Conservatives put out a story that the Government was going to close Charing Cross Hospital. The public were taken in and it won the Tories around 3000 extra local votes in that election. At the time, when I asked the Conservatives about their “Save Charing Cross” propaganda, one prominent member admitted to me that they knew it wasn’t true, and advised me to “look at the small print on the back of their leaflet”. The fact that Charing Cross hasn’t closed and that instead, the hospital is just about to receive record new investment and a much wider range of facilities has gone without mention from our local Conservatives. Their interest was always just about the votes.

So, when I read H&F Conservatives stories about the ‘Super Sewer’ I was more than a little sceptical. Our local Tories and Council have spent tens of thousands of pounds of council tax payers' money telling residents how “giant craters” will be driven into Furnival Gardens and Ravenscourt Park to build a huge “Stink Pipe” causing “at least eight years of chaos”. It’s now clear that much of this is plainly not true.

On Monday night, a publiic meeting took place concerning the ‘Super Sewer’ – which is officially known as the Thames Tideway Tunnel. The meeting was opened by a Conservative councillor who told residents that he, his colleagues and the Council are yet to form a view on the scheme and hoped this meeting would help that process. This was a slightly peculiar thing for him to say as he has recently published comments saying his administration “is bitterly opposing the super-sewer project on the basis that the cost, chaos from eight years of construction, and loss of open space outweighs any benefits.”

Thames Water’s Richard Aylard then got on to the points which of were of greatest concern to residents. Mr. Aylard confirmed that Ravenscourt Park was never considered for any Thames Tideway Tunnel works (as previously reported here) and explained that Furnival Gardens also fails any criteria for an access tunnel into the sewer - as it’s not big enough.

David Wardle of the Environment Agency spoke for the scheme next. He told us that 32 million tonnes of untreated sewage is slushed into the River Thames each year. He graphically explained what is contained in this material and how, due to tidal conditions, this pollution then sloshes up and down the length of the river for up to two years before it is eventually flushed out into the North Sea. The Stamford Brook sewer (near the Dove pub) is one of the entrance spots where this material flows into the river.

Richard Aylard said that if the Thames Tideway Tunnel goes ahead, then the Stamford Brook sewer would be required to be sunk so that the sewage pours into the new tunnel and not the river. He added that this would take up to two years to complete and that the works wouldn't begin until the middle of the next decade.

Andrew Whetnall was then called to set out the case against the Thames Tideway Tunnel. I was told that he is an amateur enthusiast representing a consumer group. He said that he thought there were “minimal health benefits” to cleaning the river and that they would largely only aid a small number of rowers. Mr. Raj Bhatia, the Chair of the Stamford Brook Residents Association in the north of the borough, also explained his concerns.

We moved onto questions. A gently spoken man was the first person called. He politely told Cllr. Stephen Greenhalgh (Con), the Leader of the Council, that he had found the meeting to be very informative but asked him why he and the Council had put out so much information that had “evidently been widely misleading?” Audience members later told me that they thought this was the moment Greenhalgh lost the confidence of the room. His body language indicated he thought he'd been found out. Greenhalgh shuffled and looked around, like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, eventually telling the gentleman that he “wasn’t there to talk but wanted to listen”. Cllr. Greenhalgh then tried to walk away from the podium but someone in the audience shouted out “answer the question!” Greenhalgh returned looking flustered but didn’t respond to the demand and simply repeated his keenness to hear the views of the public and slipped back to his seat.

Two thirds of “the public” who were called to ask questions by the Tory Chair were in fact Tory party members, councillors or candidates. The Conservative Party Parliamentary Candidate for Hammersmith was called early on. He told Thames Water’s Head of Civil Engineering that he too "is an engineer as he has a degree in the subject" (although his website says that he passed his degree in Computer Aided Technology) and asked whether the Thames Tunnel wasn’t simply an opportunity for “boys to play with big toys?”. Other questions followed, some very good, but many in a similar vein and the Chair brought the meeting to a close with two further speeches; one from Cllr. Greenhalgh and one from another Tory Councillor.

All in all, most of the audience I spoke with afterwards told me that they thought it was useful to be able hear and then question Thames Water about their plans. Nearly everyone I spoke with expressed concern that their Council had seemingly tried to hoodwink them over this issue. You can view the local journalist, Rebecca Kent’s take on things in an article in this week’s Gazette newspaper – which I have attached and you can click on to read.

Thames Water confirmed early on that there will not be any works in Ravenscourt Park. I am relieved that there has also turned out to be no truth in what H&F Council told us about major works in Furnival Gardens either but concerned to find out what Thames Water will still need to do to realigned Stamford Brook. I have therefore written to them to seek further information on this and what this would mean to my constituents. I will report back when I have that information but please email me here if you want to raise any matters with me about this and I will do all I can to help.