THE COMMUNITY laundry on the Boundary Estate in North West Tower Hamlets has been there for years. The laundrette has been experiencing financial problems, but Tower Hamlets Council has just announced that it has found a way to secure the laundrette’s future.
How did we get here? Many community organisations rent premises from the Council, and the system went for years without being standardised. Some of this dates from when the Greater London Council (GLC) was abolished on 1st April 1986. GLC housing estates were passed over to the London Councils in which they were situated – together with the community centres on those estates. However, in May 1986 the Lib-Dems took over the Council and decentralised it into seven “neighbourhoods”, each of which decided its own rules and rates for community venues.
Decentralisation took a long time to sort out. Under Labour, from 1994 to 2010, some councillors took a keen interest in the Council’s assets, but there were no major efforts to standardise rents, leases and policies. Lutfur Rahman was elected Executive Mayor in October 2010, with a huge commitment to changing many of Labour’s ways of running the Council. He hadn’t had a chance to get to community venues before, in December 2014, the two local Labour MPs persuaded the Tory Government to send in Commissioners to take over the running of some parts of Council activity.
One of those parts was community venues. The Commissioners insisted that the Council have a standard policy for renting or leasing out all its premises. They insisted that the premises all have commercial rates, with certain categories of community group granted discounts on the commercial rates. Some groups have never been able to get their heads round this new system and approach the Council asking for lower rents, rather than discounts.
On 11th June 2015, Labour’s John Biggs became Mayor. Some six years later, there were some attempts to look again at the policy. Some groups had been lobbying for preferential treatment – which could not be granted under the Commissioners’ new ethos. The situation, however, was not resolved. Some promises were made, some assumptions were made, but there was a lack of signatures on paper.
On 5th May 2022, Lutfur Rahman was once more elected Executive Mayor. Again, some groups asked for preferential treatment by way of smaller rents (because they couldn’t afford the commercial rents) or longer than standard leases. The mystery is why did officers not show them the policy, calculate the rents and sign the agreements – referring any systemic problems to the Executive Mayor? Much festered in the Town Hall and out in the community. Rumours circulated that the Mayor was trying to exercise preferential treatment – rumours that came out of disgruntlement, without evidence, and which were not the case.
The Council dealt with the most disgruntled groups, conducting negotiations so find agreements. These followed the Council policy, and where there were some exceptions because of special circumstances, the reasons for this were carefully set out.
The Boundary Community Laundrette was one of those bodies with which negotiations were conducted, and it is pleasing to hear that agreement has now been reached. Satisfactory rents and tenure have been agreed, while the laundrette has formalised its constitution. So all’s well that ends well, except…
If anyone wonders why the community needs a laundrette, they should be told that the flats on the Boundary estate are quite small, and they also suffer from damp and mould. It is not feasible to dry laundry in the flats, so a laundrette helps a great deal with damp problems.
Cllr Abu Talha Chowdhury, Cabinet Member for Finance, Assets and Governance, said “we are committed to working in partnership with residents and local groups to help them thrive and continue serving our communities.” He has secured a good outcome here, to a dispute that has festered for a long time. His challenge now is to find a way for Town Hall officers to be proactive – to get out into the community, identify need and identify under-used resources and make sure the communities of Tower Hamlets are getting best value for the resources they have.
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