Labour goes for dual power

It was a strange Cabinet meeting on Wednesday (8th April) as politicians ploughed on with getting the necessary jobs done while waiting for the verdict of the election court – and, for that matter, the verdict of the electorate at the coming General Election.

Mayor Lutfur Rahman opened the meeting, as usual, with a few general words by way of introduction to the agenda. This time he spoke briefly to remind everyone that he had given a manifesto commitment to deliver the “Whitechapel Vision” and he was determined to see this through. He also said he was pleased that the multi-faith burial ground was now secure, and he welcomed developments in primary care in the borough which seemed to mean that the Council had helped the NHS locally to extend GP surgery hours so people could get to see their GPs more quickly (the latter, presumably, not negating need for the former).

Cllr Joshua Peck, the Labour Chair of this Committee, then gave the customary Overview & Scrutiny (O&S) Committee’s report to the Cabinet. Across the UK, O&S is supposed to be the place where backbench councillors scrutinise what a Council’s Executive is doing. In Tower Hamlets, Labour has a majority of seats on O&S as it is the largest party in the Council. Usually it doesn’t so much “scrutinise” the Executive Mayor as look for opportunities for Cllr Peck to come to Cabinet and give him a good telling off while playing to the gallery (usually packed out with as many as half a dozen members of the public) and the CCTV cameras.

At this meeting, Cllr Peck reported that O&S has been trying a new tack, which amounts, pretty much, to trying to run a sort of “dual power” mini-administration. The Committee has decided that some of (probably most of) the social landlords in the Borough are not very good. It is therefore inviting senior staff from some of these landlords to come to the O&S Committee and… well, giving them a good telling off, really.

Tenants might well point out that this is a bit rich – coming from the party which insisted on getting social landlords to take over Council stock in the first place. At the time, tenants warned that social landlords would not be very good and Labour didn’t listen. Labour didn’t even manage to get its own Council to write up transfer documents that made the promises in the Offer Documents (which were the basis on which tenants voted for transfer) legally binding or even enforceable post-transfer. Now, Labour is telling tenants that because social landlords are not very good, it is giving these landlords a good telling off and asking them, very firmly, to do better. It’s hard to be impressed.

At this Cabinet, Cllr Peck reported that O&S had interviewed representatives of Circle 33/Old Ford – a fudged together conglomerate which runs some of the housing in Bow (Labour’s stronghold). The landlord had promised to do better. Previously, the Committee had interviewed representatives of One Housing Group, who, as a result, promised to do better. However, as O&S has absolutely no power to enforce these promises, the whole charade is turning into a ghastly re-run of the stock transfer process, in which social landlords promised to… do better. They didn’t keep these promises, which is why O&S hauled them in… to hear them giving yet more unenforceable promises.

O&S is thereby rather sidestepping its role: it’s not scrutinising the Executive Mayor, but it is scrutinising those third parties carrying out the (rather poor) decisions of a past Labour Administration.

However, Cllr Peck ended this bit of his report by saying that these landlords needed watching and suggesting to the Mayor that he should keep an eye on the social landlords in the Borough. The Mayor, Cllr Rabina Khan (Cabinet Member for Housing and Development) and Mr Dalvi (Director of Development & Renewal) all gently pointed out to Cllr Peck the various meetings they had each had over the last months and years with these social landlords, before Cllr Peck’s committee began its social landlord drive, precisely to try to enforce better performance.

Cllr Khan pointed out that her directorate had been using Environmental Health legislation, to the point of prosecuting some of the landlords, to enforce better performance. They may have been too subtle: Cllr Peck has probably not taken on board just how much work Cabinet members and Council staff have had to do to try to sort out the mess that Labour left us with in terms of social housing. As Cllr Khan said at the meeting, Mayor Rahman always says that residents come first: despite Cllr Peck believing he has had a new idea, the Administration has been working on this for years.

Cllr Marc Francis was then invited to speak to the Cabinet. He had “called in” the Mayor’s decision to reduce the percentage of lettings offered to residents in “band 3” of the waiting list. “Calling in” is a Council procedure which, basically, means that the Mayor has to reconsider his decision – he can then confirm the original decision or change it. Cllr Francis spoke well about why the percentage should not be reduced at this stage – not least because if there was a Labour Government next month, it might be able to change certain rules about social housing that would make matters easier for the Borough. Conversely – as everyone in the room acknowledged (except Tory Leader Cllr Peter Golds, watching from the councillors’ gallery) – if a Tory or Tory-led government continues, things will get very much worse. Cllr Khan reported that she and the Mayor had carefully considered Cllr Francis’s points and the Mayor had decided to change his decision: to keep the percentage of lettings where they were and review it at the end of the year.

Cllr Peck concluded his report by mentioning that the Committee had had a good open meeting, which Cllr Khan had taken part in, on how to change planning policy in conservation areas. The issue seemed to be that house owners in conservation areas are not able to apply to build extensions to their homes, as there is a blanket ban. House owners therefore have to move out of the borough if their household grows in size. A member of the public also addressed the Cabinet, pointing out how disruptive this is for those households and their local communities.

There was a report later on the agenda in which the Executive Mayor agreed to review the planning policies in each of the Borough’s conservation areas to see how the blanket bans could be removed in favour of more specific policies which would protect the conservation areas but also offer householders more room to vary their homes. Everyone was happy: Cllr Peck had been able to raise an issue and see change happen; Cllr Khan had, as always, enjoyed meeting residents and getting something done; the resident was happy that change would now happen.

Perhaps the deep irony in all this was only audible from the press gallery. For over four years, Labour has railed against the directly elected Mayor and refused to work with him to implement his manifesto (in 2010, that was actually Labour’s own manifesto; and in 2014 it was probably the manifesto that most Labour voters would have wanted to see). Although Mayor Rahman invited Labour to serve in his Cabinet, implementing what was basically their own manifesto, the Party refused – probably a unique response in the UK, where Labour has been known to run various councils in coalition with a range of parties, even including the Tories.

On the other hand, when Labour tries a little co-operation, it ends up seeing what is possible when it tries to work with the Mayor rather than against him. What has been lost to this Borough in a failed attempt to salvage Labour’s pride!