Local Election result

[DJKillaQueen]

I do know what I am talking about here....have been involved with local council issues for years. Yes there was a meeting regarding issues that both councils are responsible for along the borders of the borough and it was discussed that a joint management of those border services might be cost effective....(would you like to see minutes?)..like for example rubbish collection, parking etc. It had NOTHING to do with housing management as the Lib Dems claimed. So that WAS a lie.

But I take more offence with the tone of your post. The attitudes of some posters on this forum is questionable....too quick to patronise those who do actually know what they are talking about. It is possible to post a view without then belittling the poster who makes the point you disagree with. I suggest that your trunkline to debating needs an overhual.

[Huguenot]

What, and you don't think calling innocent people liars is a problem? You think I have an attitude problem?? Ha ha.

You'll notice that I refrained from calling you names, and refrained from accusing you of lying.

People in glasshouses DJKillaQueen, people in glass houses...

If Labour councillors don't want to people to suggest they plan to centralise services, then they should probably desist from posting on public forums that they plan to centralise services.

[DJKillaQueen]

Let me put this in plain english for you. A political party puts out a leaflet telling voters that a Labour council WILL transfer housing mamagement to the team lambeth use to manage their housing stock. Secondly they then scare voters by telling them that that same team increased rents in the first year by 17%.

Lie number one - no option to move housing management to Lambeth council has ever been discussed.

Distortion number two - that actual rent increase was 14% (large yes) but not the 17% which was claimed in their leaflets.

I can't see how you can argue with that.

In fact at no point did the Lib Dems in their campaign take any responsibility for the poor management of housing, the poor performance of decent homes, the vast money wasted on the call centre and new offices, the poor record on recycling, roads repairs, providing enough school places, do I need to go on?

That's why they came out as the worst borough council in London for management and performance and THAT'S why more people elected Labour councillers.

Maybe you can now post a reply of substance.

[Huguenot]

A reply of substance?

LOL!

It seems that your aggravation with the Lib Dems is that they didn't put out election material telling people that they weren't the right people for the job?

That's a little bit silly billy.

As I said, your problem with the centralised services issue is not the Lib Dems, but your own Labour councillors who trot around telling everyone what a good idea it is.

For the 17% figures you'd need to ask them where it came from in a grown-up manner, instead of running around squealing 'liar liar'.

You appear to be lost in old fashioned politics, and I think Labour need to move on. You've tried smearing, you've tried attacking your critics, you've tried complaining that you're hard done by, you've tried bullying.

None of it is impressive, and it's not working anymore.

[DJKillaQueen]

You haven't read a single word of my post have you? I did ask the local Lib Dem candidate....he had no answers and couldn't wait to run away.

You haven't adressed a single point I have made on the Lib Dem Tory performance. I am a floating voter fyi and have voted Lib Dem in local elections in the past. I look at performance and then form a view. There are many good Tory and Lib Dem councillers but the fact remains that they failed whilst in control of the council in far too many areas. Not just my opinion but that of local government auditors.

And I suspect your only issue is that you have no counter argument to any of that. I haven't bullied anyone. I've made a good case for why the lib Dems lost control of the control.

You on the other hand have posted nothing but attempts to ridicule and belittle my cogent argument.

Sad really.

[all_things_handy]

The decent homes scheme locally to me has been a sham and don't get me started on potholes. I'm glad Kim Humphries appears to have gone. It was definitely time for a change in Southwark. Time will tell if we get any better service.

[James Barber]

Hi DJKillaqueen,

Lambeth Housing issued letters to tenants stating an increase of 17% in rents while slashing repairs down to critical H&S ones only. The government then changes it rules which then meant Lambeth Housing could revise the hike to 14% but still only conduct critcal H&S repairs.

2006 Labour in Lambeth came to power and with no indication or anything in its manifesto transferred all council housing to an Arms Length Management Organisation. It seems/ed reasonable to assume that after all the praise Labour in Southwark have given Labour in Lambeth they'd repeat this - especially after stating they would review all departments to see which ones could be merged etc between Southwark and Lambeth.

You've implied critiscm of Lib Dems with regards to various topics:

- recycling. Labour 2002 3.6% recyclnig rate and falling. Mar'10 its 24% and will be over 38.6% in 2014 as per current plans with the contractor heavily incentivised to be over 40%.

- housing repairs. the repairs service in customer satifaction surveys is significantly better with 90% happy but 10% is still a large number of unhappy customers.

- decent homes. DEcent standards includes kitchens and bathrooms less than 35 years old. Huge proprtion of Southweakr council homes have reached 35 years and frankly keeping up with modernising this bulge hasn't happened. Equally Southwark owes ?650M in debt for loans taken out to buy estates such as the Aylesbury and Heygate which are in the process of being demolished.

- call centre. What vast amounts of money?

- New office at Tooley Street. This has so far saved in excess fo ?35M. You wont see Labour closing or reversing this decision. Criticising adding up 15 years rent and stating that ?100M is wasteful as if spent in one year is exactly the shoddy politics that give us all a bad name.

- road repairs. Labour in 2002 spent ?0 on road repairs. Every year since then the Lib Dems have spent ?4M. We've just had a 1 in 30 year winter. Every part of northern Europe has lots of pot holes. Planned that in June the Dulwich Community Council be allowed to spend capital road renewal on fixing this years pot holes.

- enough school places. Every child in Southwark who wants a Southwark school place has one. The vast majority of primary schools kids within 1 mile of home.

[DJKillaQueen]

Hi james,

Thank you for your response,

Lambeth Housing issued letters to tenants stating an increase of 17% in rents while slashing repairs down to critical H&S ones only. The government then changes it rules which then meant Lambeth Housing could revise the hike to 14% but still only conduct critcal H&S repairs.

Then why not say that in the campaign leaflets. The fact remains the raise was 14% not 17%. The only assumption can be that 17% is a more scary figure than 14% hence the campaign literature using it with no explanation of the facts

There is a clear difference between an assumpotion and fact. The election literature stated as fact that a Labour council would transfer management of the housing department to the team currently managing Lambeth. Surely you can agree that is not the same as making an assumption but rather a direct attempt to frighten the electorate with assumption sold as fact.

As you also know very well, the housing department under Lambeth was in very poor shape and the action that Lambeth took was an attempt to radically improve that situation. Sothwark Housing is not in any kind of similar shape to Lambeth so there is no reason to assume any similar measures would even be discussed.

On the other hand the new Elephant and Castle development, the brainchild of Nick Stanton will have no local council owned housing to replace the council owned homes that will be lost from there. Social housing from outside bodies yes but nothing council owned. So the Lib Dem Tory alliance could be accused of caring less about council housing by cynics too (although I don't personally hold that view in general).

Recycling - forget Labour for the moment. Yes there are improvements in recycling collection but the improvements are not as high as the Lib Dems originally promised. Four years ago I asked at a community council meeting why only one type of plastic could be recycled when other boroughs take all types of plastic. I was assured it would be improved. Four years later - nothing. I know there are technical issues involved and people need to be recycling in the first place but I like most people don't like promises being made and then broken.

I have to go out but will come back in an hour to address your other points - esp decent homes because in that I have a very good example that illustrates how badly the council have gone about things.

They are important points to make.

Part 2 in an hour :)

[James Barber]

Hi DJKillaQueen,

Do you read every word of every political leaflet delivered to you?

If you and everyone else did then we could add the level of details you've suggested.

Lambeth Council increased council rents by 17%. Period. They then reduced the increase at a later date. They were willing to raise the rents by 17% and were slow to change their minds later down to 14%.

Yes I do know that Southwark ran housing better than Lambeth. But as you also know very well, Southwark Labour Party have stated they want to adopt the Lambeth model of housing directorate and wanted originally to merge services but now review joint purchasing.

Elephant&Castle redevelopment. Only government money for housing is via housing associations. With over ?600M of debt incurred decades ago to build the Heygate estate and Aylesbury estate and ridiculous treasury rules about borrowing Southwark can't afford to build council houses on the scale required. So you work with what is available.

However, the Southwark Labour Party leadership has stated they don't think enough social housing being made available as part of the scheme. Either he waves a very magic wand or the definition of social housing will be watered down or the scheme close to signing will collapse.

You can recycle 14 different types of plastics in Southwark. More than almost all other boroughs in London and its collected from your doorstep. Southwark's recycling rate is depressed as so few homes face onto streets. 80% are flats and half of those social housing. Both tend to reduce recycling rates.

[Gimme]

Hilarious. Someone with Labour leanings complaining about misleading leaflets, after the 'Tories will take away pensioners bus passes' leaflet being sent round GB's Kirkcaldy constituency and other places. Pot, kettle etc.

On top of this you have also made 2 fatal errors:

1) Reading political leaflets at all

2) Thinking that anyone else has read them or that anyone has actually believed anything that was on them, or cares...

DJKillaQueen Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Let me put this in plain english for you. A

> political party puts out a leaflet telling voters

> that a Labour council WILL transfer housing

> mamagement to the team lambeth use to manage their

> housing stock. Secondly they then scare voters by

> telling them that that same team increased rents

> in the first year by 17%.

>

>

[Loz]

I can't believe that DJ is caring so much whether the rent hike was 14% or 17%. Pretty insignificant difference.

> A political party puts out a leaflet telling voters

> that a Labour council WILL transfer housing

> mamagement to the team lambeth use to manage their

> housing stock.

Since you seem to take an interest in such things, what are the new Labour administration's plans for housing management then?

[bawdy-nan]

Had that Vernon Bogdanor in the "back of my cab" recently who is very interesting on the demise of party orientated politics, arguing that the party allegiances make little sense any more now that individualism has come to the fore and individuals want to be the agents of change rather than looking to political parties to do it for them.

Not only that but party loyalty subsides in the face of fractured identities and allegiances: you might be a parent, a Londoner, a woman, a member of a professional group, a euro-sceptic etc and opens up the possibility for people voting across different parties where there are a number of opportunities to vote according tp which of their interesys is most dominant or pressing at the time. This is why he likes certain forms of PR but its also a bit like this time around, where you could vote in the GE as well as pick 3 councillors not necessarily from the same party. This might explain the Labour surge in councils as well as som eof the odd Southwark results thathave been described.

He also suggested that the idea of representative democracy is only a transitory one (originating from the short 20th century) and arising as a necessary stepping stone from (relatively recent) universal suffrage but maturing into something more participatory.

[James Barber]

Hi Loz,

Southwark Labour plan to recreat a dedicated Southwark Housing department. I can see the temptation. Some well run housing depts equally many rubbish ones. So a housing department as such isn't the key.

Southwark Lib Dems merged housing with the environment dept as so much commonality and lots of money saved by the merger. For example when Southwark Lib Dems took over from Labour in 2002 6 grass cutting contracts - some overlapping - of Southwark grassy areas. Merging these into one covering housing grassy areas and all other grassy areas made huge savings and improved the quality. Many similar areas of duplication - energy, littering, roads, anti social behaviour, etc.

Once you split housing out a housing department it's likely to want to have ownership of each of these areas seperately. Creates duplication and the boundaries of estates. We want to integrate estates into high quality streetscape not seperate them.

The key to Southwark council housing it having enough capital to invest to catch up with decades of under investment. For the last 8 years around ?320M has been spent so far. A full condition survey is due to be completed soon which will state the scale of problem.

[DJKillaQueen]

Hi james,

Sorry I never made it home yesterday after getting knocked off my bicycle. And I'm backtracking posts.

Yes i do read every word of election leaflets. And any party that lies will get equal criticism from me and most voters.

By the way Southwark does NOT offer more plastics recycling than other boroughs. I can only put hard plastics in my recycling bags not soft plastics. Some others boroughs will take it all. Southwark is the 6th WORST council for recycling in the COUNTRY.

Southwark's Housing department and particularly Kim Humphries was slammed for mismanagement.

You are in complete denial of the views deleivered by auditors (who have no party preference).

Where I live decent homes were set to come to us two years ago. Apollo was appointed to do windows, doors, kitchens, bathrooms etc. Residents had campaigned for six years to get the work done on an estate that has had no money spent on improvements in decades. At a public meeting tenants were assured all the work that needed doing would be done. They didn't tell us that the contractor had a contract only allowing for 38% of properties to be improved internally. No detailed survey had been done beforehand (incredulous)and 38% was plucked out of thin air (or as I suspect from a report created in 2002/3 giving a general estimate of the cost of the decent homes scheme to the borough as a whole).

In reality more than 80% qualified for the work. The councils response was to withdraw the internal parts of the work from the contract with the promise that a few pilots would be done (to assess the final cost) and a new contractor appointed to complete the work. Apollo did the windows and doors and three pilots and have now left the site. There is no date or contract for the rest of the work. Broken promises and silence and you wonder why people lost faith in the previous councillors?

Yes there isn't enough money for everything but to make promises and then break them is not acceptable. Maybe a Labour council won't do any better, we are going to find out soon enough but please don't continue with this idea that the previous council was doing a good job when the Audit Commission judged it to be the second worst in London. Take the rate of collection of council tax for a start...what's your excuse for that? Housing Services were given a red flag and there was equal criticism in that report of social care services. Those things speak for themselves.

[Huguenot]

There you go again DJKillaQueen. Calling people 'liars' doesn't strike me as the most effective way to get your point across. It turns people off.

It strikes me that there was a mismatch in the residents' perception of need, the budgets available, and the council's resources.

It doesn't need anyone to be 'liars' - just being human is usually sufficient.

[DJKillaQueen]

Give it a rest Hugenot. You don't even live in London I'm told. And I don't even know why I'm bothering to waste my time replying to you (you are clearly on some mission to stalk my posts). My experience on the decent homes issue is as first hand as it can get as I sat on the progress meetings between the council and the contractors involved (throughout the entire process)....so whether you like it or not I have minutes that show that tenants were mislead and that promises were broken. I am not responsible for the points of the Audit Commission report but the criticisms are clear and I suggest you read it for yourself and take up any disagreements with them directly. It's all there.

[James Barber]

Hi DJKillaQueen,

I've had the deep joy of sitting on Southwark Council's Audit & Governance committee. I chaired it the first year. We rotate the chair to ensure cross party. The internal auditing reports were really interesting and helpful in our role. We have made real strides with these internal auditing reports (using external auditors to assist).

The Audit Commission by law decide who Southwark Council and other councils are allowed to use to perform external audits on them. They decide how much we will be charged. They decided they will be our external auditors.

Every year we asked for a copy of their project plan. They have never produced one - not even in closed session. I tried FOI'ing them but they decided it wasn't in the public interest to produce one. They once produced a list of things they'd probably do in a sort of order they'd like to do them. They produce a document plan of what they'd like and when and then don't stick to it.

Every year they decide to increase the fees Southwark pays above the rate of inflation. Well over ?1/2M and heading towards ?1M.

The audit for this year just gone will probably be completed next year. How can you learn lessons so retrospectively when financial regs are constantly changing. As a member and chair of the audit & governance committee we just could'nt use the Audit Commission report because it was always so out of date.

No private company would put up with such attrocious service and bad value.

The private company work for will have its end of year results in the public domain with 3 months.

So from my personal experience of how badly they appear to run audits it is galling to have the results held up as gospel.

Now I have been internally and externally audited in a private company. Both have been thorough, quick and the external audit after two years they've come back to ensure the actions completed two years ago have stuck.

Why can't a council choose auditors - it would surely tighten up the Audit Commissions act.

[DJKillaQueen]

Hi James,

To be fair to you I think those are some valid points in respect to the form of the Audit Commission and I particularly agree in respect to the 'out of date' thing. But there are some areas of the report that nonetheless are a fair and factual representation but you are right, it's usefulness to any council is negated if the report is out of date by the time it's delivered.

I thought the whole point of the freedom of information act was to increase transparency? It does seem strangely selective of them to deny the FOI application.

At the end of the day I think balancing books

[Huguenot]

"You don't even live in London I'm told" Ooooh... oooh... how could you, you... you.. rotter you. :))

LOL! You talk about me behind my back and then call me a stalker? Freaky ;-)

Glad to see you're being 'fair' now.

Interesting to see the issues with the Audit Commission.

[DJKillaQueen]

lol let's just say I had support from others after your over-reactions to my posts.

As for fairness, I've voted Lib Dem before. There are good reasons why the council swung back to Labour. Too many people were let down by broken promises and misguided priorities.

Sure if you own your own home and live in a quiet street in a good area with nice schools you would never have known anything was wrong.

If you were a council tenant, living in a property with poor heating, electrics, and kitchens and bathrooms more than 30 years old, told you would get new ones last year and now have no idea when and if that'll happen then you can be forgiven for not voting for more of the same.

Now the Labour council have to sort out the decent homes mess, provide more council owned homes instead of selling off council owned buildings and land to private developers, improve the rate of council tax collection and expand recycling, improve roads etc amongst other things. If they fail on those things then the vote will swing back in another 8 years time.

I think you strongly objected to any idea of dishonesty from the campaign material of the Lib Dems. But it WAS dishonest and that's why I didn't vote for them in the end.

[James Barber]

DJKillaQueen,

I really take humbridge at being told Lib Dem Literature in East Dulwich was dishonest.

What leaflets were dishonest?

NB total council tax collection rate is running at 96% in Southwark along with Wandsworth and Westminster. The in year collection rate is lower as many residents in Southwark have to be chased in the following year before they pay.

Recycling at year end is 24%. In 2002 when we took the lead in Southwark it was 3.6% and falling. Contracts with Veolia will see recyclnig at 38.6% minimum with lots of financial incentives to go higher and expecting it to be 40%+ for 2014.

ni 2002 Labour spent ?0m on roads every year Lib dems have sepnt ?4M. Still circa ?18M backlog of long term road renewal.

[Trump]

So why id you loose and less MP?s as well?

[DJKillaQueen]

In Peckham ward, four leaflets posted to council tenants by the Lib Dems said, and I quote 'Labour WILL transfer management of your home to Lambeth and the same company that has put ruents up by 17%'. There were no other details, just that glaring statement of fact. If that wasn't a blatent attempt to scare council tenants, at best an assumption reported as fact, at worst an outright lie, then what was it? It backfired anyway as all three seats went to Labour candidates.

And Trump is right, if the former council was doing such a good job as you see it, then why did so many seats go over to Labour? Especially at a time when the electorate were not voting Labour for government. People obviously voted on local issues and on some of those, especially housing, the former council didn't deliver a high enough service.

[Loz]

People obviously voted on local issues and on some of those, especially housing, the former council didn't deliver a high enough service.

Actually, there was a national swing towards Labour at local council level. Weird (considering the national swing away), but true.

[DJKillaQueen]

That's true. I think Labour took four NOC boroughs in London and one from the Conservatives (don't quote me on that though - just remember a fair few going red).