Residents Push On In Bid To Be Heard After Riverside Studios/Queens Wharf Property Developers' No-Show

Residents from the immediate neighbourhood asking to be heard

Broadly speaking, on Monday night it was a good natured eighty-strong crowd of residents that turned up to consider the proposal to redevelop the Riverside Studios and Queens Wharf on Hammersmith riverfront. All were supportive of Riverside Studios as a local institution. I know that because they voted unanimously to say they were. But there was also a unanimous vote to say that they were concerned about a range of aspects about the scheme which they believed could well damage Riverside Studios viability as a community arts centre and cause unnecessary harm to the immediate neighbourhood which, as H&F Council admitted, is the Borough’s “most sensitive site”.

The Crisp Road Residents Association organised the public meeting and paid for the publicity and hall hire. You can follow them on Facebook here, or on Twitter here or email them here.

Oddly and I mean very oddly, nobody representing the development was there. They refused to attend despite being asked several times. This was presumably a decision they reached after taking advice from their communications consultants – the Remarkable Group. It was a remarkably silly mistake. In fact, they didn’t ask about the format of the meeting, they didn’t ask how it would be run, they clearly didn’t want to know. They just repeatedly said they weren’t coming and used a variety of changing and quite ridiculous excuses as their reasons – the last one being that they had already consulted and had “done nothing other than ask for people's views.”

Quite a lot of people disputed that which I think was the reason for such a large turn out on a cold winter Monday night. One person told me how after a recent visit to Riverside Studios they had been urged to fill in a card to support the scheme. Another said how all staff at Riverside Studios had been emailed at least twice asking them to respond positively to the consultation.

 

Consultations can be manipulated to such an extent that they are simply about generating positive responses rather than genuinely listening. I am sorry to say that this consultation has many of those characteristics.

It was a shame that nobody from Riverside Studios, A2 Dominion, Mount Anvil, Assael Architecture or even the Remarkable Group felt they should turn up, set out their case and hear what people had to say. Most of the residents in the room were the immediate neighbours of the proposed scheme. People often prefaced their remarks saying how much they loved the Riverside Studios before saying what they thought needed to be amended. Representatives of local residents associations were there from the Crisp Road Residents Association, HAMRA, the Hammersmith Embankment Residents Association, the Hammersmith Society and The Queen Caroline Residents and Tenants Association. Former Council Leader Barry Stead attended and spoke about how he had purchased the Riverside Studios’ freehold in the 1970s. Other notable people that came along included Peter Gill, the former Riverside Studios Artistic Director, Hammersmith Broadway ward Councillors Mike Cartwright and PJ Murphy and Andrew Slaughter MP.

If anyone from Riverside Studios had been there they might have been able to provide some more details around their stated belief that this development is “critical.”

 

Riverside Studios have written to me to say how they “were saved by support from the Arts Council in the early 2000's under their Recovery Programme. As part of this we undertook a "condition survey", which was one of their requirements. The result of this was a report that stated the building had a limited life of span of around ten years; and that it was not fit for purpose for the future. Which is why the Riverside Trust has been working on a re-development plan in recent years… We have lost all our Arts Council funding since last year and this outcome would severely impact our earning ability and in all likelihood would stop the viable operation of the building.” People disputed this view and raised concerns that this scheme could be more about securing the commercial venture, winning H&F Council a profitable return or simply about the profits of the property speculator. Others said this scheme would end Riverside Studios as a community arts centre.

 

The proof of the pudding will be in the numbers. The developer needs to set out what those are and explain the finances rather than just pushing this line. I must say I find it very hard to believe that this exact development without any changes whatsoever is “critical” to the future of Riverside Studios.

 

Councillor Peter Graham (Con), a representative of the neighbouring Fulham Reach ward, also turned up. Until recently he was a member of H&F Council’s Planning Applications Committee (PAC) and he has been a strong advocate and voted for many other property speculators’ schemes including St. George’s Fulham Reach development and the even more controversial 2011 Town Hall development - which was later quashed. I was chairing Monday night's meeting and despite asking my fellow ward Councillors Cartwright and Murphy not to speak as everyone wanted to hear from residents, I called Cllr. Graham to speak on two separate occasions as he insisted he had something very important to say. Rather predictably, he spoke in favour of this scheme and spoke longer than anyone else. Cllr. Graham explained that he was a council appointed member of the Riverside Studios board but ended up arguing with a variety of residents, wrongly accusing one Chancellors Street resident of telling “lies” and heckling others when they were making points he disagreed with. It would have been better if someone from the scheme was there instead.

My fellow Hammersmith Broadway ward councillors Mike Cartwright and PJ Murphy and I will continue to seek more details around this scheme and push for our constituents’ views to be heard and taken into account. There may well be more public meetings. We would urge all those behind the scheme to attend and fully engage in the residents’ consultations. It doesn’t reflect well on any of them when they refuse.

 

Meanwhile, with the help of residents, I have collated the concerns of many local people and will be writing to the developers, H&F Council and the GLA asking them to amend this scheme where it is reasonable to expect them to do so. Please email me here if you have any points you want my colleagues and I to make about this scheme. I will let you know how we get on.

The Wrong Priorities: New £35m Town Hall Offices Approved After H&F Conservatives Gift £70m Of Public Land To Property Speculator And Set Aside £800k Parking Lot For Town Hall Officials

Flats for overseas investors on Nigel Playfair Avenue

Look at this photo of just some of the luxury flats about to be marketed to overseas investors and it is likely that the £70m price tag charted surveyors placed on the public land H&F Conservatives are gifting to their chosen property speculator is an underestimate. In return for this generous gift the property speculator is providing H&F Council with £35m of unnecessary Town Hall offices and £800,000 worth of private parking for senior bureaucrats.

 

H&F Conservatives could have used the council's planning powers to insist there would be affordable homes for residents to buy or rent but they voted not to do that arguing instead that the offices and private parking are a greater priority. That was negligent if you consider that Shelter says the likelihood of a Londoner in their 20s getting onto the property ladder during their lifetime is estimated to currently be at just 15%.
 

At least it wasn't the last scheme which local Conservatives
voted through in November 2011 despite
this residents' protest

But there is still a palpable sense of relief about this scheme. The type of relief one experiences when you're told something really bad is about to happen then something not quite so bad happens instead. That's because it isn't the scheme that H&F Conservatives argued for and then voted through at this meeting on 30th November 2011.

 

The residents behind stopping that scheme deserve our thanks. They ran a formidable campaign which ultimately had the advantage of getting thousands of people in south west London to pressurize the London Mayor just before the last GLA elections. He quashed their decision in the spring of 2012 and poured derision on the comments of H&F's Conservative councillors and planning team which had wrongly argued it was the only possible viable scheme.

 

Interestingly, at last week's planning committee aspects of this scheme were attacked by some Conservative members of the planning committee. They didn't like the design and some said they felt let down by the architects. People raised doubts that this was the best scheme to improve this part of Hammersmith but they all still voted for it anyway. Ravenscourt Park Councillor Lucy Ivimy (Con) turned up and spoke in favour of this scheme and I heard the property developer congratulating her on her speech on the way out. It was a different meeting to the last one in 2011.

 

My Labour colleagues and I think this is a waste of public money and land. Cllr. Mike Cartwright sums up our position here: “Residents will rightly question why their local Conservative councillors voted to gift £70m worth of public land to a developer to get £35m of worth unnecessary town hall offices and why the Conservatives set aside just short of another million pounds to ensure the most senior officials have somewhere handy to park their cars. The bigger priority should obviously have been build a good scheme that provides a good proportion of genuinely affordable homes for residents to buy and rent instead of the overpriced flats, targeted at overseas investors, that the Conservatives ended up voting to approve.”

Public Meeting To Review The Impact Of The Proposed Riverside Studios Development

An example of the change in scale the proposed Riverside Studios
development will bring as viewed from Hammersmith Bridge

The Riverside Studios and neighbouring Queen's Wharf are both to be redeveloped to a single scheme increasing to an eight storey high block which will include 165 luxury flats (no affordable housing to buy or rent) and will be the landmark building next to the grade II listed Hammersmith Bridge. Mount Anvil and A2 Dominion are the developers behind the scheme which has been designed by Assael Architecture.


Residents in the neighbourhood immediately surrounding the Riverside Studios have arranged a public meeting to consider the developer’s rather ambitious plans for the site. It will take place at 7.00pm on this coming Monday (18th November) at St. Augustine's Church Hall, 55 Fulham Palace Road, W6 8AU.

 
You can also send your comments about this planning application in to Hammersmith and Fulham Council by following the details on this link. Please copy me in here if you do.
 
The journal Planning Design reports residents’ concerns that the plans appears to have been “drawn up in haste.” I have been briefed by a wide variety of people on the matter that does appear to be the case. Indeed, I have been told by more than one reliable source that Hammersmith and Fulham Council actually urged the developer to rush in a planning application so it could be dealt with (whatever that means?) before next year’s local elections.
 
While I think everyone I have spoken with supports the Riverside Studios as an institution people do have legitimate concerns about the size, density, loss of light and design of the scheme. Here’s is an excerpt from the residents’ flyer: “Local residents want Riverside Studios to thrive but believe that the redevelopment of a local cultural institution in a landmark riverside location on this scale should be done with care, consideration and the full consultation of the local people it will impact upon. Many are objecting to the planning application because of the height and density of the proposed development, which will put Crisp Road conservation area in shadow even in high summer. It seems that no thought has been given to the impact on the area from the loss of light, increased traffic and placing of car park and lorry entrances, vents and rubbish collection on Crisp Road - now a lively neighbourhood with cafe, shop and pub. Some think that the design of such a monolithic structure is completely unsympathetic to this stretch of the river, and would impact negatively on Hammersmith Bridge and river views.”
 
Residents will recall the out-of-character behaviour of Hammersmith and Fulham Council when it turned down this previous application on part of that site for reasons it has never put forward before or since, leaving many to question the administration’s motives and the goings on in the private meetings between Conservative councillors and the people behind varies schemes on that site.

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.