Fire cuts in London and consultati​on - Hillingdon meeting this Tuesday

A public meeting on the Mayor's propsals to get rid of 12 fire stations, 18 fire engines and 520 fire fighters across the capital, will be held in Hillingdon at 7pm, Tuesday 2 April,  at Middlesex Suite, Hillingdon Civic Centre, High Street, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 1UW

The Labour London Assembly Members of the London  Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) voted against Mayor Johnson’s proposals.

Despite the Fire Authority voting against the cuts, as they will risk the lives and properties of Londoners, Mayor Boris Johnson issued a directive to overrule this vote and proceed to consultation on his plans. This consultation is running from 4 March until 28 May.

The Mayor tried to stop the Fire Authority consulting the public through public meetings for each Borough, but the Authority are going ahead with meetings despite his wishes and twenty-four public meetings are being held in different London boroughs.

The implications of the Mayor’s proposals are very serious – it will take longer for a fire engine to reach 4.7 million Londoners when they need one. Every second counts in a fire as a domestic fire can quadruple in intensity every 2 minutes.

London’s fire chief has said the cuts are driven by financial considerations but we think the safety and security of Londoners should come first. Boris Johnson wants to cut the council tax by the equivalent of just 1p per day for a property in Band D. Labour’s GLA members think most Londoners would prefer him to put the penny towards the fire brigade instead.

For more information on how the cuts will affect you click here.

To have you say on the consultation click here.

Boris fails on pledge to end street homelessness

Boris Johnson is very good at big announcements and warm words. But the bolder the pledge, the more serious the issue, the more important it is that you deliver.

In 2009 Johnson made a very bold pledge that he said he would end rough sleeping in London by the end of 2012.  This is a pledge that he repeated during the Mayoral election campaign just six months ago.

With just over a month to go until the end of the year, Johnson admitted at Mayor's Question Time last week that he would not be able to keep his pledge.  In fact, the number of people sleeping rough has increased every year since he became mayor, with more than 2,000 more people spending at least one night out on the streets than in 2008.

 

 

 

(acknowledgement to Tom Copley AM for source information)

 

Affordable homes built by Boris drop by more than half

As reported by the BBC yesterday only 7,500 affordable homes will be completed in London during 2012 despite Tory Mayor Boris Johnson’s election pledge to build 55,000 over the next 4 years, which is an average 13,750 per annum.

It compares with 16,000 completed last year ahead of the election, when Boris Johnson claimed he had delivered record housing.

And this ignores that this Tory led Government has changed the official definition ‘affordable’ as between 60% and 80% of market rent , which reduces the public investment required but is actually unaffordable to many households on low incomes.

Changes to the mayor's housing strategy means there will no new social (council) housing schemes in London.

Hillingdon Tories block limits on betting shops

Cllr Peter Curling

Labour Councillor Peter Curling writes “Once again, the Tory group in Hillingdon has proved that their marketing strap line of “Putting residents first” is precisely that, a marketing strapline, and one with absolutely no substance.

At the full Council meeting on Thursday 5^th July the Labour group tabled two motions, one asking the Cabinet to reconsider their decision to close three day centres for the disabled.  Not surprisingly the Tory group put their party whip before the residents and voted down that motion.

The other motion was for the Council to support the Government commissioned, Mary Portas  (otherwise known as Mary Queen of Shops) review of High streets and the High Steets First campaign led by Cllr Rowena Davis (Southwark Council) in their efforts to get planning law changed so that the council can control the number of betting shops in town centres.

Given our continued economic slump and an economy that has flat lined for the last 2 years, there is real concern that of betting shops on our high streets are exploiting people’s desperation for a way out of poverty, giving rise to payday loan companies and creating a trickle up movement of money moving from the poor to the rich.

Other boroughs and campaign groups are now working together to force a change in the law. Under current planning law betting shops are taking over vacant high street units with their existing A2 classification meaning they don't need any planning permission. This is because betting shops, according to Planning Law, are listed as “financial services”.

Labour Councillor Lynne Allen proposed the motion and made it absolutely clear that we are not against betting shops per se and that our concerns are centred on clusters of Bookies which are said to hamper work around regeneration by discouraging businesses from moving into the area and making it difficult to create a more diverse and vibrant high street.

Mary Portas made a recommendation in her review that would have changed the classification of betting shops and placed limits on their numbers.  ” campaign also calls for the government to change the law in order to give local communities a say over the number of betting shops in their area.

During the Mayoral election campaign Boris Johnson indicated his support for these campaigns by saying:

"We certainly should be making it easier for councils to block them (bookmakers) - they're not only spreading false hope, they're reducing the economic vitality of high streets. Bookmakers are a spiritual narcotic that breed false hope and it's a terrible thing to see."

It was therefore very sad to see the Tories speaking against the campaigns to curb the proliferation of betting shops and by doing so they actually started arguing that clusters of betting shops and the encouragement of gambling was a good thing. 

Rather than put the residents first in this debate, the Conservative group put their need to play pointless party political games in the Council chamber, before any commitment to the residents that they were elected to serve.