Minutes:
Councillor Bramley announced that he had in his possession a BNP leaflet which states the proposed artwork outside the Civic Centre is supposed to be a celebration of immigrants. He asked the Lead Member to agree with him that this is nothing but a barefaced lie designed to upset people and set one section of the community against another one.”
Councillor Fairbrass referred to a book entitled ‘Destination Art’ (written by Amy Dempsey and published by Thames and Hudson, London 2006) in which is featured the A13 Artscape project. He quoted from the dust cover, ‘Destination Art is the first ever comprehensive guide to the two hundred most important modern and contemporary art sites around the world’.
He explained that for some years, the Council has been using visual arts to reflect the history of this Borough. The nearest art work is located just outside the Barking Town Hall Council Chamber and reflects the history of the Borough from over 4,000 BC to 2005, which was extremely well done and was a great way of introducing visitors, of all ages, to our history.
Three hundred yards west of the Town Hall building are located some very special lampposts designed by local children. The castings at the top of the lampposts portray the history of Barking Abbey and Barking’s old industries and agricultural background.
To the north of the location of the lampposts is located the latest artwork, the ‘Lighted Lady’, which is very effective. This represents the history of the nuns of Barking Abbey and the blue light at the top is a symbol of ‘Our Lady’. The abbey was, until the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII, a Roman Catholic institution.
Close to the boundary with Redbridge, near Barking Park, is ‘The Catch’; a marvellous piece, portraying Barking’s oldest lost industry, its fishing fleet.
He explained that what was being achieved in these artworks was to reflect the history of the Borough or to mark the entrance to the Borough or both. When someone travels past one of these pieces of artwork, they know they are in Barking and Dagenham.
He pointed out that Members would note that all these artworks were in the west of the Borough and that this was because it was not possible to do all these art projects at once. He explained that about three or four years ago, he had asked the Arts Officer to give some thought to an artwork to be located near the Civic Centre, which would mark the eastern boundary and also point to our major open space – the Eastbrookend Country Park, which starts from behind the Civic Centre. The Kestrel is that proposed artwork, which would tower above the Civic Centre.
He confirmed that the Kestrel was not a ‘celebration of immigration’, as referred to in a BNP leaflet, and that with the exception of the artwork just outside the Barking Town Hall Council Chamber, which was done as part of the refurbishment of the building, no council tax has been spent on any of these artwork projects.
Councillor Fairbrass concluded that he agreed with the second sentence of Councillor Bramley’s question, that it was yet another lie.
Councillor S Gill explained that he had received and read a BNP leaflet and asked Councillor Barnbrook to tell the Assembly:
Councillor Barnbrook stated that in order to answer the first part of the question he would refer to Jon Cruddas’ website in which he says that between 2003 and 2006 up to 5,000 white people left his constituency to be replaced by 5,000 Africans’.
He then referred to minutes from Westminster City Council and quoted Dr Eamonn Butler who states that Westminster Council plans to offer up to £100,000 to its social housing tenants, to relieve up to 26,000 properties, in order to buy homes in the Thames Gateway area.
He explained that Barking and Dagenham fell in the centre of the north bank of the Thames gateway area. The BNP leaflet referred to in the question stated that up to £100,000 was being offered to families to move to Barking and Dagenham, with the minimum grant being £50,000.
In response to the second part of the question, Councillor Barnbrook denied receiving an invitation to join the Barking and Dagenham Health Scrutiny Panel saying that his Council e-mail address had not worked since receiving his laptop.
Councillor Barnbrook referred to the £40 million that he considered had been ripped away from the local health budget and announced that his Party had collected a petition containing nearly 5,000 names which would be submitted to the two local Members of Parliament and Downing Street. Councillor Barnbrook also commented that the only decent thing the Labour Party had done was to keep the local health budget in the black.
Councillor Mrs Flint referred to the BNP’s website which states that “immigrants are often gifted up to £100,000 from other London boroughs such as Westminster to free up their own housing stock”. She asked the Lead Member to verify if this information was correct.
Councillor Fairbrass stated that he had previously, at the Assembly, given the facts and figures with respect to grants offered by London boroughs to their residents who are willing to surrender their council home tenancies as sitting tenants. He had also advised the opposition party to contact all the London boroughs and use the Freedom of Information Act to verify his statement to the Assembly, just as he had done, to seek the facts.
As Westminster Council has been specifically mentioned on the BNP website, he confirmed that he had contacted Westminster Council again and read out the following response received from Mr Steve More of the Housing Department:
‘I can confirm that Westminster has never made any £100,000 grants to immigrants to move to Barking and Dagenham. The analysis of our Assisted Purchase Grants scheme shows that over the past 5 years, out of 81 grants only one grant has been paid where the recipient moved to Barking and Dagenham. As required under the scheme, the recipients were existing Westminster City tenants and received a total of £25,000 towards their purchase of a home in Barking and Dagenham. The ethnicity data on this household shows that they have classified themselves as British and English speaking.’
Councillor Fairbrass explained that the statement was clear, in that grants were made to existing Westminster tenants and not immigrants, and that over the past 5 years only 81 grants had been made. The grant of £25,000 was probably actually less than the tenant would have received as a discount under the Right to Buy scheme.
He confirmed that the statement on the BNP website was a complete fabrication, put in plainer English, it was a lie, as were previous claims by the BNP that there was an Africans for Essex campaign organised by the Labour party. It follows therefore, in light of the information from Westminster Council that the answer given by Councillor Barnbrook, to the question to him by Councillor S Gill, was incorrect and Councillor Barnbrook has misled the Assembly. Whether by error or deliberately Councillor Fairbrass asked for others to judge. Councillor Fairbrass referred to Councillor Barnbrook’s statement as being incorrect and asked him to withdraw it, apologise for misleading the Assembly, to undertake to amend the BNP website and make sure that this erroneous claim does not appear in any future publications circulated by his Party.
Councillor Vincent asked the Executive Member for Environment to outline the Council’s strategy for ensuring efficiency in waste collection.
Councillor McKenzie thanked Councillor Vincent for the question as this enabled him to outline details of the rapidly improving waste service. He explained that through making long term investment in the state of the art waste processing plant at Frog Island, the Council has been able to save £1/2 million through collecting black and orange bags at the same time, but also the new machinery at the site will ensure that very little of residents waste will end up in landfill. This means the council will not get fined as other boroughs will and will save at least £5 ½ million over the next 20 years. That represented a saving to the Council.
He stated that Members will know that we have always put spending on cleaner and greener services first because we are determined to have the cleanest streets and highest recycling rates in London. Achieving this is taking a lot of hard work.
However, he was pleased to announce that the modernisation of the street cleaning and refuse service was almost complete, and that we have now made our vision of ‘the right street cleaner, in the right place at the right time’ a reality. The street cleaners now work in 6 shifts across the working day, with the earliest sweeping starting a 3:30am and the last sweeper going home at 2am the next day. Street cleaners now follow behind the refuse collection and do not go in front of it. This took some negotiation with the Trade Unions to agree. Nor do they go home at 2pm but stay and work outside our schools until all the children have gone home.
He stated that management had also improved and informed the Assembly that if Councillors haven’t been contacted by their new area manager already, they would shortly be in contact. That person is responsible for all street cleaning, grounds maintenance and refuse and recycling in their respective areas. He asked that Councillors work with them and let them know what is going well and what is going wrong so they can change what we are doing to make the borough cleaner.
Councillor McKenzie explained that none of these changes have been easy, and making these savings has required us to take long term, difficult investment decisions. But these decisions have been made by a Party that is committed to the Borough over the long term and that it was too easy to make cheep comments and slurs about what they were doing. He referred to the last piece of consultation in which two-thirds of residents think the Borough is cleaner than a year ago as a direct result of what this Labour Council is doing to improve services.
Councillor N Gill asked the Lead Member to comment on the recent success for Longbridge ward residents in opposing the plans by Orange to install a phone mast in the Longbridge ward and the implications of the Government Inspector’s decision on the Council’s policy towards phone masts.
Councillor Fairbrass explained that he was present at the Development Control Board when it made its decision. He welcomed the success of defending this appeal and congratulated the Longbridge councillors and residents on their collaboration on this matter.
He felt that it was important to note that one of the Council’s policies with respect to telephone masts was that the visual aspect should be minimised by the use of the smallest available equipment, sympathetic colouring and screening, where possible.
He announced that for the first time, inspectors from the Planning Inspectorate had accepted the council’s reasons for refusing planning permission. The appeal was not refused on grounds of health but on grounds of visual appearance. The telephone company concerned wanted to erect a telephone mast disguised as a telephone pole and located on an island in the middle of a road. It was hoped that the Council may be able to use this decision to influence the mobile phone companies with respect to any future applications for phone masts.
Councillor Rustem asked how many of the 14 remaining allotment sites would be sold off for housing development in the next four years.
Councillor Fairbrass explained that the Council reviews usage of the allotment sites within the Borough to ensure the maximum take up and cultivation. Where sites do become uncultivated and where there is little or no demand, consideration may be given to redevelopment. In the case of the development of an area off Reede Road, the Council used some of the resources raised to improve facilities for allotment holders on another part of the site. At present there are no allotment sites on the land disposal schedule, although consideration is currently being given to one such allotment. Councillor Fairbrass concluded that the Council was talking to allotment holders to improve existing sites by looking at things such as installing paths and toilets, etc which would serve to attract new allotment holders.
Councillor Mrs Knight asked why are pensioners, who are in residential care, expected to finance their transport for hospital visits. The transport providers are saying that if the person can walk that they must fund their transport. Some of these people have Alzheimer, and yes they can walk but no distance, and are unable to climb up stairs on moving buses and alight the same way. The manager of a particular home has confirmed this and it was brought to my attention by a member of the local community. The money that they have to spend is a pittance and could well be spent on more essential items and personal needs.
Councillor Little explained that for many years now the responsibility for providing assistance with transport to hospital, for patients who are unable to make their own way to hospital, rests with the NHS through the ambulance service or the passenger transport service. Indeed the current guidance dates from 1991.
In brief, he explained that the NHS provides transport when an eligible patient needs support from the NHS passenger transport service before, during or after their hospital appointment if it is felt that it would be detrimental to either their medical condition or their recovery to travel by other means or where the patient’s mobility means they need this kind of support. Care home managers have been asked to assist residents to access their entitlement to this transport.
He advised that should Councillors be aware of anyone who has not been given access to transport services, that the Councillor should take this up further to push the issue and get the relevant GP involved in order to turn round any decision not to provide transport services.
Councillor Little was pleased to inform that the government has recognised that more health care is now provided in primary health care settings, such as health centres that transport services need to be extended. The Department of Health is currently consulting on detailed proposals with a view to bringing in new arrangements from 1st April 2007. Improvements which will benefit many elderly and disabled residents are to be welcomed.
Councillor Barnbrook asked for an explanation of what the Council meant by ‘Affordable Housing’ and what level of house price is meant by this – £80,000, £120,000 or £250,000. He made reference to Abbey Housing working on old allotments bought for “peanuts” in Hedgemans Way in the Goresbrook ward, and that Abbey Housing had initially promised that 22 houses would go to the Council, this was then reduced to 19 units and now the figure is ‘0’.
Councillor Barnbrook referred to information that had been passed to him from a standing Chair of a Residents and Tenants Association showing that 3 and 4 bedroom houses are now on the market for £250,000. He asked if this was “affordable” and who in Barking and Dagenham can afford this without the Westminster grant of £100,000?
Councillor Kallar pointed out that the question was so full of inaccuracies that it was hard to know where to start.
Councillor Kallar referred to Councillor Barnbrook’s statement that we had received “peanuts” for the sale of the disused, abandoned and vandalised former allotments off Hedgemans Road. He explained that the facts are that the Council received over £5.1 million for this sale. This sum helped support the capital programme in building Children’s Centres, investing in school building, maintaining our roads and the list goes on.
With regards to the Council being promised 22 then 19 then 0 homes for local people in housing need to be nominated to, Councillor Kallar explained that the facts are the Council secured 57 nominations – 17 x 4 bedroom houses for rent and 40 shared ownership homes.
With regards to affordable homes, Councillor Kallar explained that the Council made it clear to all housing association partners that they must produce, for all new schemes, shared ownership homes which are affordable for local people on or below average incomes for Barking and Dagenham. In the last 3 years, together with housing association partners, the Council has produced 335 new shared ownership, low cost homes which have been taken by families in the Borough to help, if they so wish, to get on to the home ownership ladder.
Councillor R Bailey stated that he had been informed that since the BNP had questioned the number of void properties in the Borough, Thames Accord have now changed their policy regarding void properties and now no longer secure the properties with Site ‘X’ but put up curtains to give the effect of the property being occupied. He believed that that this change of policy was a directive from the Labour Party and not initiated by Thames Accord so that the true level of voids would be camouflaged.
Councillor Bailey stated that we all know that the Borough has more crime now than at anytime anyone cares to remember and asked was this change in policy such a good idea or were the Labour Party playing politics with our homes and the security of neighbouring properties. He also asked if the change of policy was done for economic reasons, then why is it less important to protect void properties now or have the Council been wasting money on Site ‘X’ for years.
Councillor L Smith clarified that Thames Accord does not set policy; it was the Council that sets policy.
He explained that the Council have had in the past large numbers of void properties particularly as a result of the Shape Up programme to enable families to decant from houses whilst work was being undertaken. Although sitex had been used to protect properties, a range of different forms of sitex had been trialled but some of these were not suitable to be fitted to the various ranges of door frames on council properties and so the Council had to look at alternatives.
He confirmed that here was now a reduced voids programme. However, where properties required extensive works, sitex would still be used. He gave anecdotal evidence of an elderly lady who lived in a property with a shared archway where the other property had been boarded up with sitex. The resident was concerned for her safety as children played around the vacant property knowing it was empty because of the sitex, and requested it be removed.
Councillor Smith confirmed that the Council does not hide figures of void properties. Details of void properties are available at each Community Housing Partnership meeting. He stated that if any councillor had details of a void property and wanted to enquire as to why it was void, they could contact him direct for a response.