Contact Us

You can contact the Branch Secretary, Paul Espley, by emailing sruislipandmanorlp@blueyonder.co.uk or text or phone: 07521 380497

Tuesday 27 September 2011

I’ll cut fares for Londoners - Ken


Ken Livingstone today announced details of an emergency fares package to cut fares which he would introduce if elected in May 2012.

Ken promised to rip up Boris Johnson’s ‘high fare’ policy which has committed Londoners to 20 years of fare increases at 2% above inflation and replace it with a fairer fares package starting with an immediate overall fares cut:


* An overall cut in fares for Londoners of 5% in the autumn of 2012


* No further fare rises at all in 2013.


* From January 2014 and in subsequent years no fare rises above RPI inflation.


Ken Livingstone said, “Fares must be cut - on transport grounds to make the system more attractive, but also on economic grounds to put ordinary Londoners first by putting money back in the pockets that will boost the London economy. I’m drawing a line in the sand - Boris Johnson will hit you with a painful fare increase this coming January, but if I am elected by October the fares will be cut. There could be no clearer choice."

For more information see  Ken for London

Next branch meeting - Tuesday 4 October 2011

The next branch meeting will be held 8pm Tuesday 4 October.

For more information email sruislipandmanorlp@blueyonder.co.uk for further details.

Monday 26 September 2011

Tory Housing Minister creates fear for home owners

No less than 159 leading legal academics, solicitors and barristers who practise in housing law have accused Conservative politicians, including Grant Shapps, the outspoken Housing Minister,  of "making misleading statements and failing to challenge inaccurate reporting'  thereby furthering 'the myths being peddled around squatting".

In a letter to the Guardian the legal experts point out "that it is already a criminal offence for a squatter to occupy someone's home, or a home that a person intends to occupy" and "are concerned that such repeated inaccurate reporting of this issue has created fear for homeowners, confusion for the police and ill informed debate among both the public and politicians on reforming the law."

The lawyers are adamant that there is no need for a change in the law to make squatting a criminal offence because the existing law already does this.


One has to wonder why are these Conservative politicians are stirring up such concerns unnecessarily and pursuing such pointless campaign at a time when homelessness has risen 17% in a year?

Could it be that the Tories are  protecting their rich friends' property interests by extending the law on squatting or are they deliberately turning public opinion against the poor?


Leslie Morphy, chief executive of Crisis, said two weeks ago: ‘Today’s official figures prove once again we now face a sustained increase in homelessness but, worryingly, this research predicts the worst is yet to come.

The coalition government is dismantling the buffers against poverty and unemployment that have traditionally kept a roof over vulnerable households’ heads. Homelessness is rising and we fear cuts to housing benefit and housing budgets, alongside reforms in the Welfare Reform and Localism Bills will cause it to increase yet further. We need the government to change course now or risk returning us to the days of countless lives facing the debilitating effects of homelessness.’




Thursday 22 September 2011

Cost cutting on democracy could exclude 10 million voters

At the moment, councils up and down the country are getting people to register to vote as part of their annual canvass.  The way we register voters hasn’t changed much in over 100 years but a new system of individual registration is being introduced in 2014.

Individual voter registration is supported by all the main parties and will make it much easier to prevent voting fraud. Unfortunately, the way the government is planning to implement it is causing concern and could leave as many as 10 million people excluded from the political process.

There are two big problems with the government’s plans, quietly published over the summer. They plan to drop the full annual canvass in 2014 as a cost-cutting exercise. The Electoral Commission warns that this alone could result in 2-3 million people unregistered.

The government is also proposing to scrap the legal obligation for people to provide their local Electoral Registration Officer with information; essentially people will be able to drop off the electoral map.

With only 65% of registered voters actually casting their vote in the last general election, this change in the law will inevitably make it harder for local authorities and political parties to engage with those groups who are already under-represented. Together with the scrapping of the canvass, this could lead to up to 10 million fewer people on the register, predominantly young people, people living in privately rented accommodation and members of ethnic minorities.

Combine this with the controversial new system of boundary reviews and it becomes even more toxic; some of the most deprived and alienated voters will be left without proper representation at all. It would also adversely affect the jury system and impact on individuals’ credit ratings.

The voting system leaves enough people out in the cold as it is without the registration system making things worse. We can’t let these proposals become law without significant changes.

A number of MPs have already voiced their concerns by signing “Early Day Motion 2187: Impact of Individual Voter Registration” (an Early Day Motion is a type of petition that MPs can add their name to to express an opinion about an issue).

Please write to our local MP,
John Randall MP,
House of Commons
Houses of Parliament
London SW1A 0AA

and ask him to you write to the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Political and Constitutional Reform Mark Harper to ask him to abandon these plans and,  if he has not already done so, sign Early Day Motion 2187: Impact of Individual Voter Registration.

For a draft letter click on the this link to Unlock Democracy


Acknowledgements to Unlock Democracy as the source of this article.

Tuesday 13 September 2011

Boundary change proposals published today

The Boundary Commission has just published proposals for consultation for boundary changes to reduce the number of parliamentary seats.

Councillor Beulah East
The impact of the proposal on the Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency are the addition of two wards and loss of one ward.

It is proposed that the Ickenham ward, in the north of the Borough, which currently has three Conservative Councillors and Charville ward which currently has two Conservative councillors and one Labour Councillor, Councillor Beulah East, will come into the constituency.

In the other direction, Yiewsley Ward, which currently has one Labour Councillor, moves into the new Feltham and Hayes constituency.

The consultation by the Boundary Commission is open until 5 December 2011. Anyone can comment on line or attend one of a number of public hearings. The public hearing nearest to Ruislip will be held at Brent Town Hall, Forty Lane, Wembley, Middlesex, HA9 9HD on 20  and 21 Oct 2011. If you wish to speak you must register before hand.

Monday 12 September 2011

Boris Johnson breaks another promise.

According to the Dave Hill's Guardian London Blog "Boris Johnson has made no progress at all on his manifesto pledge to sell surplus GLA  land to Community Land Trusts (CLTs) and enabling genuinely affordable homes to be built on it and managed by housing co-operatives."
 
Even the right leaning Spectator describes Johnson's  failure as a "quiet tragedy" while "Londoners have watched prices outstrip wages in the private sector and demand outstrip supply in the social sector. As a result, millions of people – from high-flying young city workers to unemployed families – have been pushed into unaffordable and unstable private rented accommodation."


"Their (CLTs) genius is that they do not require hundreds of millions of pounds of public investment. Trusts simply require elected officials to put communities before speculators."

Ken Livingstone


Meanwhile Labour's Mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone has declared full support for "Co-operative principles of mutualism and decentralisation will be a key new element of Ken's new manifesto," it says in a statement. "We particularly believe the ideas on affordable and mutual housing make an extremely valuable contribution to debate about how we can tackle the housing crisis."

Friday 9 September 2011

UK housing conditions among the worst in Western Europe

 A report being published today by the independent Pro-Housing Alliance maintains that housing conditions in the UK are among the worst in Western Europe and cost the nation about £7bn a year by adding to the pressure on the NHS and other public services.


The  Alliance, made up of a group of leading housing experts, sees housing fundamentally as a public health issue and is calling on the Government to adopt radical new measures to tackle the nation’s growing housing problems, which it claims are costing the country £7billion a year in costs to the NHS, social services and education.

 The Alliance claims a lack of affordable decent accommodation, cuts to local authority housing services, welfare reforms and overcrowding are combining to create stress and hardship for some of the most vulnerable people in the country who live in some of the  worst housing conditions in Western Europe.

The Alliance warns that  homelessness is on the rise and predicts the return of unscrupulous landlords like the infamous Peter Rachman, who exploited his London tenants in the 1950s and 1960s. Almost 4,000 people are sleeping rough on London's streets, an increase of 8 per cent since last year. About half of these are from the UK and the rest from a wide variety of other countries, notably Poland.

The report says there is little sign that the Mayor of London Boris Johnson's target of ending rough sleeping by next year will be met.
A report in yesterday's  Independent newspaper described a so-called "super-shed" in Newham, "a poorly constructed building not much larger than an average garden shed, is one of thousands of similar structures across the capital that housing campaigners label London's secret slums".

The Independent  report supports claims made by John McDonnell, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington  in a Parliamentary debate earlier this year when he described a housing crisis in the London Borough of Hillingdon which has left families living in "developing world conditions". 

McDonnell was specifically critical of the London Borough of Hillingdon’s housing policies, such as using local estate agents to gain private sector rental accommodation for families. "We have discovered that the estate agents it has been using have often used these buy-to-let slum landlords," he said.

He also believes there is an "informal agreement" in place where estate agents will only seek properties for vulnerable families in the poorer south of the borough, rather than the richer north. This is creating "an apartheid regime," he warned.


He added: "This has resulted in families living in appalling conditions and overcrowding. Some families are living in almost developing world conditions because some of the properties are so poor."

Another concern in Hillingdon is a "planning free-for-all" whereby landlords are erecting "leisure rooms" in their gardens to be rented by families.

McDonnell said: "What is happening is that landlords are constructing these leisure rooms and getting families to live in what are, in effect, garages".

"In some instances we have discovered these places only when the family has turned up to register for council tax and we have found out that they are living in a shed or a garage."
 
According to Bill Rashleigh, a researcher from Shelter, the homelessness charity,  in addition to the health risks of living in this sub-standard accommodation it leaves the tenants open to exploitation, "The danger is that tenants will be made imminently homeless, because when the council catches up with the landlords, you are going to get turfed out,"...... "You also have no recourse to law. If the landlord whacks the rent up then you have no claims to make under the law. You have no laws to protect your rights, and you are left open to exploitation, with your health at risk and with no security." 

In their report the Alliance sets out  recommendations designed to address the growing problems with housing in this country. Key recommendations include a call to provide 500,000 green and affordable homes per year for the next seven years (including the use of empty dwellings), a reform of land supply and land taxation to help fund regeneration and affordable housing initiatives, re-defining the term “affordable” and rescinding recent changes to housing benefit.
 
Dr Stephen Battersby, president of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, which brought the Alliance together, said: "The lack of a coherent housing policy for the past 30 years has created an expensive housing market with a shortage of affordable housing. 

(Acknowledgements to The Independent and Children & Young People Now)

Tuesday 6 September 2011

Housing benefit cuts 'to force 1,000 children out of Hammersmith and Fulham schools'

Following a Freedom of Information request Labour MP, Andy Slaughter, has claimed that more than 1,000 children will have to leave schools in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham due to housing benefit cuts, as many families renting their homes will be forced to seek cheaper rented accommodation in other areas, such as L.B. Hillingdon.

On his website, Andy Slaughter MP  wrote: "For some months I have been requesting information on the effect of the Government’s cuts to Housing Benefit on Hammersmith & Fulham families.

"I understand why the council wants to conceal this information as it will mean hundreds of families uprooted and forced to leave their homes, moving to parts of the country where rents are lower.

"Many will be in low paid work where HB makes up the difference between what they can afford and the high rents charged by private landlords in west London. So they will lose jobs as well as homes and be forced to move far away from friends and families.


For more information see 24 Dash.com

Friday 2 September 2011