Minutes:
General Question 1 from Councillor Alasia:
"The Metropolitan Police, though slow in their initial response, are to be congratulated on their hard work in achieving two convictions in the Stephen Lawrence case. The Council recognises the dignity and courage of Doreen and Neville Lawrence in their relentless fight for justice for their son, Stephen, and would urge the police to continue the good work so that the rest of his murderers are caught.
What is the incidence of hate crime in Barking and Dagenham currently, and how successful are our Barking and Dagenham Police in getting convictions?
What are the recent trends?”
Response from Councillor Alexander, Cabinet Member for Crime, Justice and Communities:
"I share the sentiment of Councillor Alasia and very much welcome the convictions of Gary Dobson and Davis Norris for the racially aggravated murder of Stephen Lawrence.
I am pleased to report that the partnership is working very hard in Barking and Dagenham to respond to the many different types of hate crime that people experience, whether they are racially motivated crimes like that against Stephen, or incidents of disability, harassment, homophobia or gender based crimes.
While the police sanctioned detection rate continues to increase in Barking and Dagenham, we are not complacent as we believe, as is the case across the country, that there is likely to be a high level of under-reporting. Therefore, we have taken a two pronged approach to increasing reporting levels: firstly by working to raise awareness of the different ways in which people can report these incidents and secondly by becoming more effective in our response by joining up with key stakeholders through a Hate Incident Panel. This Panel meets monthly to discuss cases and to ensure that our responses are well co-ordinated and, perhaps most importantly, they work. This ensures that each case receives the appropriate level of input from a specialist group of partner agencies."
General Question 2 from Councillor Butt:
"What powers has the Council to force landlords to dispose of household goods when a tenant has left the property? We have plenty of complaints from residents who take a pride in their neighbourhood, objecting to those landlords who leave beds, mattresses and other rubbish in their front gardens for weeks on end making the area look run down and filthy. Do you agree that the landlord should take the responsibility for making sure that front gardens are checked upon and kept clean, and how can we enforce this? Landlords take maximum advantage of the Council to get a free removal of their rubbish. This costs the Council thousands of pounds. The free removal of bulky household goods is for residents and not for the benefit of rogue landlords who mainly take advantage of this free service. What can we do to recover the costs from landlords of removing their rubbish?"
Response from Councillor Alexander, Cabinet Member for Crime, Justice and Communities, on behalf of Councillor McCarthy, Cabinet Member for Environment:
"The number of private landlords in the borough is increasing. In general most of these landlords behave very well. In fact, Councillor Phil Waker, the Cabinet Member for Housing, tells me that we have 220 landlords registered in the London Landlord Accreditation Scheme, which is the quality mark for good landlords, and many more have joined our landlords' forum.
But as we all know, we do have some landlords who don't seem to care.
The Council has a whole range of powers to take enforcement action against landlords who do not behave and, as Councillor Butt describes, clear out their properties and dump the waste in the garden.
If the waste is a public health threat such as rotting food or something like a mattress that could provide a home for rats and mice, then it can be shifted very quickly. If it is rubble or builders' mess, we can still move it but it takes a little longer.
In all cases, the Council does not pay for the removal. The Council's enforcement officers use legal notices and then send the landlord the bill and if they don't pay it, we then take them to court.
Councillor P Waker also tells me that following work done by Councillor Channer and the Living and Working Select Committee, we will be introducing compulsory licensing for private landlords. This will really help us to manage landlords better and because the licence will include things such as proper commercial waste facilities, I am confident this will put a stop to these profit making landlords taking advantage of our free service which is meant to be helping our more vulnerable residents."
The meeting closed at 8.45 pm