Tories Plough Ahead On Green Belt Land

In a press release issued today the Hillingdon Labour Group has accused the Tory led Hillingdon Council of unnecessarily building on valuable Green Belt land when suitable brownfield sites in the Council's ownership are available.

 "After the Central & South Planning meeting on 5th March 2013 no one should be in any doubt that the Labour Group in Hillingdon believe that every child in Hillingdon deserves a decent school place and that where we differ from the Conservative administration is that we consider our parks, open spaces and common land to be priceless, whereas they consider them to be worthless.

 Petitioners, Ward Councillors and John McDonnell MP highlighted different aspects of why the Green Belt site of Lake Farm Country Park and Botwell Common should be protected from development.  There were strong arguments put forward that demonstrated that the additional school places required could be provided without the need to build a new school on this site, if the political will was there to do so.

 Objectors mentioned the proposals for a new 4 form of entry primary school at the nearby Guru Nanak Academy and a proposed new 2 form of entry primary school at Hewens College, but the committee did not take these into consideration.

Other suggestions that were offered up for consideration, and also turned down, were to allow Rosedale Primary school to expand and also to make use of the old Hayes swimming pool site that the Council is selling off to a property developer. 

So the decision to plough ahead with proposals to build on this piece of common land in the Green Belt comes down to a political decision made by the administration, based on the fact that they own the site, so the land will cost them nothing.

After the meeting Cllr Peter Curling, Leader of the Labour Group, said

 “As the meeting went on it became very clear that the additional primary school places equating to 3 forms of entry could be accommodated without the need to pour concrete over Lake Farm Country Park.

 We, in the Labour Group, fully sign up to ensuring that every child has a decent school place and tonight it was demonstrated that this could be achieved without the need to destroy Lake Farm, so the proposal to build a school there is clearly driven by a political decision, rather than educational need.

What we are seeing is a Tory administration cashing in on the sale of Brownfield sites and then building on Green Belt land within their ownership.  This is more to do with money than children's education, and it shows that the Tories consider open Green Belt land to be worthless, whereas we consider it to be priceless.”

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.

Hillingdon Labour oppose Day Care cuts

Hillingdon Labour Group have expressed their full support for the parents, carers and service users in their campaign against the closure of Day Care Centres in the borough.  Lawyers representing the families of severely disabled adults in Hillingdon are taking legal action in the High Court to stop the closure of three day care centres.

In a recent statement to the press the Council said

“The proposed changes will enable service users to have more choice and independence through offering care and support tailored to their needs”.

Hillingdon Labour Councillors fundamentally disagree with the Council's closure programme because they recognise that such closures result in less choice for disabled residents by removing the option for the purchase of the centre’s tailored services with the scheme of personal budgets that now fund services for severely disabled people.


A recent report on ITV's London Tonight programme highlighted the problems that the users and their carers will face if the Council's plans for closure go ahead. 

Far from putting residents first this move is driven by the financial savings achieved by the day centre closures, which were identified in the 2010 draft of the 2011 budget.  Labour’s proposed amendments to the 2012 budget were financially neutral and included the retention of Woodside day centre but this was rejected by the Conservatives.

Cllr Peter Curling, Labour Group Leader said “People with serious disabilities now have personal budgets so that they and their carers can choose what services they wish purchase to meet their specific needs.  I therefore find it a bizarre move for the council to stifle this choice by closing the day care centres which already provide the tailored support that many people with severe disabilities and their carers wish to purchase.”

Cllr John Major, Labour Lead on Social Services, Health & Housing, added “The closure of the day cares centres is something that I had feared for some time.  In 2010 I raised a question regarding what was meant when the council put forward a package of savings described as, A modern approach to enable choice to change delivery from a traditional approach, to supporting people to access more community services. When I sought clarification on this it was confirmed that this was connected to the closure of day centres.

New Hillingdon Labour Group Leader first statement

Councillor Peter Curling

On 8 May 2012 Councillor Peter Curling, one of three Labour ward Councillors for Townfield, was elected Leader of the Hillingdon Labour Group. A few days later Councillor Curling wrote for the Uxbridge Gazette:

"For every day since this Tory led Government took office, 625 public service jobs have been axed bringing untold hardship to countless families. On 3^rd of May we saw people throughout the country go to the polls and express their deep dis-satisfaction with the Tory led Government resulting in Labour making huge gains up and down the country.  The London Mayoral result came down to the big “marmite” personalities of Ken & Boris, rather than the usual party politics and the Boris Bounce was just enough to push him back into the Mayoralty, more a victory for “Boris” brand than an endorsement of the Conservatives.

The election of the GLA Assembly Members saw Labour overturn a 28,000 Tory majority here in Ealing and Hillingdon where Dr Onkar Sahota replaced the former Deputy Mayor, Richard Barnes.  The London-wide party list candidates also saw a huge swing to Labour.  This now means that although Boris is the Mayor of London, the assembly has a majority of Labour members. Unfortunately it’s not the two thirds majority required to kerb the Mayor’s actions or amend the Mayor’s budget, but it does mean that there are more Labour members on the assembly to scrutinise and hold the Mayor to account.

Looking at local issues I am sure that a significant factor to the swing to Labour in Ealing & Hillingdon was the government’s plans to close Ealing Hospital as part of the top down reorganisation of the NHS that David Cameron specifically promised not to do.  So how fitting it is that the winning Labour candidate is a Doctor who is committed to supporting and defending the NHS. Labour is the only party that supports our great British institutions, like the NHS, the only party who will keep our public services public.

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Labour campaigning to save Ealing Hospital

The Tory led coalition abandoned their mantra of “we’re all in it together” (if we ever believed it!) when they decided to cut the tax of the wealthiest and richest in our society whilst mercilessly cutting benefits and life-lines to some of the poorest and most vulnerable.  They have reverted to type and taken a deeply unfair approach to our economic problems, their policies of tax cuts for the rich and increasing the burden on the poor have clearly failed.

The recent elections have sent a strong message to the government; The country has had enough of Tory austerity, of out of touch and no hope policies that have dragged us back into recession.  We want to prove that in tough times you can depend on Labour to fight for you, we will put residents first and we are determined to prove that in the coming months.