DJKillaQueen

That's a good post lounger. We never seem to discuss the level of white collar fraud and of course the gravy train that was entirely designed to descriminate against those on lower incomes, and increasingly so. Look it's simple. There are always going to be people at the bottom. We've had a situation in the past where if you didn't work you didn't eat and let's remember the poorest were working the longest hours in appalling conditions to make barely enough to eat each day - while their employers got very wealthy very quickly. We don't want a return to that do we? Homelessness is not something I think anyone in their right mind would knowingly want to create the conditions for. Nor do we want a return to families living in one room. We are not born onto a level playing field and no civilised society would ignore that. We are in a mess housing wise, both in the public and private sector. The public sector has a dire shortage of larger homes, mainly becuase they were all sold off under the right to buy scheme. More than a million homes had been sold by 1987 with massive discounts to the buyers. When Labour came to power in 1997 they cut the discount that councils could offer and in 2005 chaged the rules so that a tenant had to have lived in their home for at least 5 years before they could buy. To date almost 2 million homes have been sold. Compare that to the waiting lists nationally for council housing of 1.6 million households along with many other existing tenants in overcrowded accomodation due to a lack of availabe larger homes to transfer them to. So there is one reason for the shortage. The private sector has a different set of problems, fuelled by the speculative nature of the housing market. Estate agents, banks, government and indeed some buyers all have played a part in creating what is going to be a very difficult thing to slow down. We talk about the poorest needing affordable accomodation. But here we have many people too, on good salaries (and not qualifiying for social housing) seeing more than half their wages being swallowed up by rent often on just part of a flat. Unless they have parents with spare money to help them get on the property ladder they too are destined for a life of working to pay someone else's mortgage. The impact of this is to reduce upward social mobility for all but the most affluent (something that Thatcher's right to buy scheme ironically had set out to challenge). One way or another, rents and property prices can not continue to outstrip wages in the way they are doing. But to regulate or cap risks throwing landlords (esp those in the zero deposit buy to let sector) into negative equity. We should never have got here in the first place. So what are the current government doing to sort it out? The FSA is looking at recommendations to outlaw products such as zero deposit and self certified mortgages. The Government has decided to attack the benefits system by reducing the amount of available benefits for claiments when paying rent. The idea I think is to force local average rent levels down (or force the poorest to move) but even if the values are forced down, because the cap is limited to an average 'percentage' of local rents then the benefits cap will continue to be forced down as the the average local rents drop, that's IF landlords reduce rents (all the signs so far are that they are not and are removing their properties from the local authority housing lists). It is becoming increasingly difficult to rent in the private sector if you are in receipt of any kind of Housing benefit. And the most immoral move has to be the plan to reduce the Housing Benefit by 10% of any claimant after a year of unemployment. This is a shortfall that most will not be able to make up from their ?65 per week JSA. For a single person in a one bedroomed council flat that would be around ?10 a week. For the same in private sector rented accomodation it could be anything up to ?30 per week. So what is the answer? For me that has to lie in regulation...measures that will slow the rate of growth. That has to be rent capping at the repayment cost of a mortage on the value of the building and a minimum secure of tenure for tenants (I'd suggest 5 years). It also has to mean the end of certain types of mortgage, and products aimed at offsetting normal market forces. It seems ridiculous that we have had three recessions since the early 80's and the housing market hasn't been porportionally hit by any of them.

The corporation of London was building soical housing from 1930 onwards but council houses started being built in the late 19th century to primarily provide decent, and affordable homes to the working classes, and providing security of tenure. It was a response to a need and one that has not gone away with private rents becomes increasingly unaffordable for growing numbers of working (let alone unemployed) people. Part of the reason why councils have shortfalls in money for maintenance is because the government creams off a percentage of the rents paid by council tenants. If councils were allowed to keep all the rent they collect they would be able to afford all the running and maintenance costs of their stock. That is going to change though thankfully. As for outsourcing to private management companies.....(which is not the same as selling stock to private landlords) some Local auhorities already do that (Lambeth for example) - the aim being to improve service and mamagement/ save money etc. The local authority still own the stock. I think it would be very dangerous to only have housing provided by private landlords. We've been there before and we all know the consequences of that for those at the bottom. For me though the issue is simple. Housing in the private sector is too expensive for too many people and offers little security of tenure - something which is important for the mental health let alone anything else of a lot of people. What affordable council housing does is give those on low incomes/ or those with health issues a chance to have some stability and in some cases a chance for an upward social mobility that the private sector would never afford them.

Hmm but wasn't it Leon Britain that said we'd be rich for ever...oh and then there was Black Monday....boom and bust can NOT be laid solely at Browns door. He was just another in a line of both Tory and Labour chancellors who were eqully guilty of poor economic management. 300,000 people lost their homes in the recession of the late eighties - Brown had nothing to do with that. Both parties have a lot to answer for imo and let's not forget that the banks were the architects of this latest crisis before anything else. Regarding Holmhurst...it's not going to be suitable as a day centre in the long term anyway because of the type of building it is. I can't see any reason why, as long as the appropriate staff are there, that any kind of patient can't be accomodated at any venue. There were several reports exploring the feasibility of the closure of Holmhurst and all of them give very good arguments for the closure with little doubt that the patients can't be equally well catered for elsewhere. But the important thing to note in all of the changes being made is that no patient is losing their care service. Broken windows have nothing to do with litter James. That theory is the basis that dereliction encourages further vandalism but we hardly live in an area that is derelict or vandalised. Litter does not induce crime and is also avoidable in the main. Remember the keep Britian Tidy campaign of the 70s? That was a decade were the streets were truly litter strewn. We have come a long way since then.

Well also it seems a mystery to me that whilst over a third of council tenants are living in homes that are not up to decent homes standard, why the council should be deeming other perfectly adaquate porperties as not habitable enough. The clue of course is in the types of properties being sold, desirable higher value terraced housing for example. And if they are not being sold at the best market value either then that is something to look at. What James fails to mention is that the previous council also sold off perfectly good other buildings that could have been converted into dewellings. And they had a policy of leaving new developments to the private sector and housing associations - the elephant and castle development being a perfect case in point - where none of the social housing on offer will be council owned. In other words the previous Lib dem council had as little interest in increasing council owned housing stock as anyone. In Southwark the shortages are clear.....the borough needs affordable family sized housing. That's what the council should be focusing on.

In some other countries though...private landlords rents are regulated by local authorities. France is a good eaxmple of that and it seems to do no harm there. And the owner would get a rental income from what is making no income while it sits empty.

Tbf the level of cuts required are so high that something was always going to be lost. Litter picking can live with a reduced service. But with regards to day centres James, you know as well as I do that those that use them are transferred to other day centres. In the case of Holmhurst that is Fred Francis Day Centre which is nearby. Also Holmhurst is a converted house and is not suitable long term for this kind of service. There are often valid reasons for the decisions that are taken and the important thing to note is that the other day centres nearby can cope with the former users of Holmhurst. Labour did not get the country into a debt pickle James. The debt Pickle started in the 80's with the advent of cheap borrowing and I think you'll find that was a global trend and oh yes...we were under a Tory government then. Maybe just for once you can be balanced in your commnets and agree that both the Thatcher and Blair governments were equally culpable in building our economy on a bed of debt, both to blame for the deregulation of banking (started under Thatcher - continued by Brown), both to blame for burying their heads in the sand when warned and both equally gutless when it came to standing up to big business, the banks and global conglomerates. And we aren't seeing anything from the coalition either that is about to change any of that soon.....because it is of course extremely difficult to change any of that now, especially without some kind of international agreement.

Hang on...just where did the electorate vote for a coalition????? Also you are talking utter rubbish about Ed Balls. The fact was that a coalition with Labour would not have had an overall majority anyway so it was never really an option. I think you are right on the issues surrounding the economy but there is little doubt that the Lib Dems have been damaged by their alliance and little doubt that Nick Clegg is driven by personal ambition as much as anything else. He never had any kind of substantial support form the electorate to begin with either...his party made little improvement of past elections at the general election. Imo he has used the opportunity to have influence, but let's not kid ourselves that he represents a mandate for any large proportion of the electorate.

Whatever Huguenot...the only dickhead is you....hissy fit central everytime someone gives you as good as you give them. That's your real issue with TTT3 ...nothing more. And as for Labour hypocracy...the local council had been Lib Dem controlled for eight years.....but then what would you know about the current local Labour council? When did you last have a conversation with any local councillor about anything or attend a local council meeting? But just to make you happy I will find out directly for you just what the thinking behind the 9m contingency offset is.....because after all, wiki and google can't help you there.

Well this is where the details might be difficult to iron out. I would think that once a local authority compulsory let your porperty, they may have some control over rent too. Because whether we want to accept that or not, the unprecadented growth in the housing market of the recent decades can not continue as it has done. People in low paid jobs are increasingly finding it difficult to find suitable affordable accomodation in the south. The cut to caps in housing benefit are not imo going to change that situation either.

To comment on a thread when you haven't read the OP Huguenot is a bit ignorant don't you think? It's not new news that the economy is flatlining. All the recent figures show this with some shrinkage in some areas. It something we probably can't do a lot about at the moment either, and the deficit is something that whatever party in power would have had to address. The difference would have been in the distribution of 'pain'. Labour would not have made the poorest pay as much as the coalition are doing for example. And for me there are moral arguments to be had there. Are the Conservatives broken? Not looking at the recent local election results they aren't. Whether that is the result of a seemigly inneffective opposition or the implosion of Lib Dem support is impossible to measure but come general election time I think we'll be in a different place with the full effect of public service sector cuts being felt - so too early to answer that one I think. As for the 9m Huguenot. That is just 2.4 % of Southwarks annual spend so perhaps not quite the scandal you seem to want imply. The councils approach to realising cuts is by looking at efficiency savings within middle management and above. They have a pledge to make sure that front line services do not bear the brunt of these custs. But if you want to look at waste then you might prefer to look at the diabolical number of expensive contracts the last council locked Southwark into (an area that definitely needs reforming). I've talked about the poor value of the call centre elsewhere but even something like estates parking management is another example of an overpriced contract yielding too little return. That is something the current council are looking at and there is broad support for the view that in future it would be worth using skilled specialists in contract matters to make sure the council isn't overpaying for it's outsourced services.

There is some sense in forcing landlords to let property...esp in London where suitable affordable housing is in short supply, that is as long as the property is not the owners primary dwelling address of course.

Spike

Oh I see.. I thought you were suggesting I'd changed usernames...my misunderstanding there - I apologise for that. I edited twice to add more relevant information just in case anyone wants to argue that opposite. Pretty hard to do so of course when all the figures come from the councils own published accounts. I rarely 'lob' numbers around without knowing what I'm talking about.

I've never been under a different username. What are you talking about? Of course James is human. But a pot calling a kettle black in politics is always asking for it. He needs to stick to arguing the merits or vice versa of any given issue or matter. The moment he starts to embillish it with irrelevant criticism of the opposition he's lost any credibility imo. The council publish accounts in various forms as they have to do so by law and they are not hard to find at all Budget Book The call centre is referred to by the concil as 'the contact centre' btw. Now as to what is any saving the contact/ call centre makes...it doesn't. It was designed to improve efficiency in the same way relocating council offices to Tooley Street has done. But the truth is that it handles too small a percentage of the councils calls to be making any real difference. The types of calls it takes encompass some 200 different services. So if we say that for arguements sake those 2.4 million calls annually break down as 12000 calls per service per annum and that we then break that down by working days...it amounts to just 37 calls per sevice per day. No staff were fired because their department suddenly had 37 less calls to take each day! So the consensus is that any so called efficency in enabling current staff to do other stuff instead of answering the phone hasn't yet materialised, because the traffic to the call centre is so low. Edited to add, this is a debate that has been raging for some years and many councillors form all parties are not happy with the costings. About 400K of the budget covers the three one stop shops (which are good value for the level of traffic they handle). So that leaves 13 million paying annually for the company that provides the call centre services.....well on that level of calls it means the council are paying them around a fiver for every call they take!

Just the kind of response I'd expect from someone feeling the need to change their username eh Strafer??? I don't need to be a councillor to expose misinformation by those already serving as councillors, many of whom by the way are not full time as councillors - and I have sepnt plenty of time in the company of councillors over the years to know exactly what their job involves and how difficult it can be at times. James takes every opportunity he can to dig at the opposition....fine if they are genuinely at fault but not if all it amounts to is a kind of something out of nothing, that his misleadingly comments on the recent Census have been. James has be left found wanting many times in what he says and claims by not just me but many other better informed posters. Part of being a councillor means having to deal with scrutiny...so defending his right to be rubbish by saying could you do better, is no defense. The Lib Dem council did many things badly when they were in control. The debacle of Housing Repairs and contracts management is perhaps one of the worst areas, where contracters were being paid for work they hadn't done or twice in some cases....something the recent all party review is now set to deal with. So I find many of the criticisms James makes a bit rich tbh. Regarding the call centre. ?100 million was the set up cost in 2004. The ongoing costs per year are 13.4 million (and included in that are the running of the three one stop shops). The council publishes it's accounts and budgets annually and anyone can view them including James :) Oh and edited to add that the call centre takes around 2.4 million calls per annum...so what is the cost of taking a call then?

Milliband does seem to be MIA. My view is that with him at the helm they will struggle.

It was generaly well publicised that the cost of the call centre incuding consultancy fees amounts to 100 million James....many councillors have verified that in person. Crikey I wonder if you know whats going on half the time. And said call centre only handles around 20% of call traffic anyway. Would you like me to explore the diabilcal system of repairs that the Lib Dems created next? Re: the census...workers HAVE been calling at various times. Again you don't seem to know what's going on.

Hmmmm I just got it...man with a new baby alert ;-)

I guess this is what might be called spamming?

Well the Lib Dems wasted 100 million on a call centre.....so there ya go. Where is your evidence that labour have run a disastrous census James? They did a lot of work to get the message out beforehand to residents of the importance of the census and to liase with community leaders to reinforce that message. Their follow up on households that have not completed a census form has also been intense, with census staff every few days visiting addresses until a census form is returned. I think it can be said that they are doing everything humanly possible to maximise the number of forms returned.

Love - scrambled eggs *yum* Hate - marmite *blurgghhh*

She didn't turn up to footy tonight so you may well be right ;-)

I can't say for sure if it the school's presence is related to a rise in teenage crime, but there are a couple of ongoing incidents under investigation. For obvious reasons details of them can't be given in a public domain. It is certainly a view of the Police that such a large influx of young men into one area will present problems that concern them. The iphone and similarly expensive but easily carried items may well be an attraction for local robbers.

Sorry to hear about your son and his friends Brian. The Police are taking teenage robbery very seriously and have been doing so locally for months now, targetting hotspots. Arrests have been made along the way too but they can't be everywhere. Street robbery does tend to increase with warm weather but it's also worth saying that a boys school (a third full at the moment) but that will eventually hold 900 pupils has not escaped the Police radar.... i.e. sudden influx of teenage men into the area and a growing rise in the level of teenage robbery......even though those involved may well be small in number, but prolific and may not attend the school. Did your son and his friends report the crime right away? The Police will usually take the victims on patrol looking for the robbers if they do, on the off chance they are still nearby on foot.

Yes well we all remember the leaflet campaign on the North Peckham and Sumner Road estates telling people not to talk to the Police. Now why would they do that I wonder? They want to 'rule' these areas, it's about control and primarily control of young people living on them, and control of a drugs and crime wave. Katie is absolutely right. Every young person that gets sucked into these groups and their culture is another potential disaster waiting to happen. But for every one of them there are ten others who don't get involved but think the image that is protrayed by these gangs and their music is cool. Pk earlier asked what can be done to stop or weaken these gangs. These gangs are cyclical in that they need new members to keep going. Young teens may first come across people their own age who are already involved. The first signs are acts of antisocial behaviour and vandalism. Next they elevate into teenage on teenage robbery. By the age of 15 they are selling soft drugs (the primary business of these gangs being that) and it goes on from there. That's the usual pattern. So obviously, if you remove already existing gang or antisocial members from your community, then the chances of local youngsters becoming involved are greatly reduced. Of course they end up going somewhere else but if those involved in serious crime can be jailed along the way then it helps....and more importantly their ranks have not become swelled by members of your local community. What we do is at the first signs of anti-social behaviour is report to the SNT, Housing Officer and Youth Service. Those children are then put on an intensive radar and basically learn very quickly that they will get away with nothing - that's an important message. No resident is afraid to report any incidents and that's important too. Young people know that it's not just one person taking them on but a whole community. If their parents are council tenants, they can be threatened with losing their home and so on. Basically we get in there fast and nine times out of ten any problems stop pretty quickly. Where those measures don't work, other services will try other measures. As a last resort the council, have evicted one family. It is also extremely important that there are local activities, services to engage with those younsters and give them alternatives too. And I'm not talking about youth wardens doing a patrol once a week. That means nothing. I'm talking about local people that can engage with the younsters on a day to day basis, as they come and go. The key here is local communities empowering themsleves to to have a positive impact as that will always be more sucessful than the council employee who can only be scheduled to spend an hour or so a week with these youngsters....esp as many of those that do get into trouble just need role models or mentors, but they need to be accessible. It's kind of the 'it takes a village to raise a child' mentality. In the case of those involved in the Barry Road shooting etc, they were mainly young adults (centred around one flat)whom included a couple of teens who had grown up on the estate. They were involved in high level drug dealing locally but they kept a low profile. The Police were already aware of them and watching them long before the shootings. We are not the only place to take this approach. Peckham for example is one of the busiest local police forces in the UK but even there, local groups have had some success in weakening the impact of gang and criminal activity on their local communities by using the same methods of head on engagement.