The Leader of the Council's online diary January 2007
Wednesday 24 January 2007
ACA Social Enterprise is a community-based organisation that trains young people to work in the construction industry.
There are plenty of construction jobs in London at the moment. The Olympics are coming, there’s a massive school building programme underway, and with London’s economy booming the city is brim-full with development. With all these job opportunities, it’s quite wrong that we’re having to bring in building workers from outside the country while there are still pockets of unemployment on some of our estates.
That’s why organisations like ACA Social Enterprise are so important. By focusing on skills training on estates, and by being rooted in the community, they can identify young people who need support, give them the training they need, and help them into well paid work. That not only helps the individuals concerned, it gives a boost to the local community as a whole.
ACA is run by a man of great vision and drive, Abdul Mohammed. His organisation is based on Lambeth Walk, and he’s taken over three previously empty shop units adjacent to his training project and employed his trainees to help turn them into new businesses serving the local community. The profits are all ploughed back into supporting more young people into training and work. By funding organisations like this, Lambeth is helping communities to help themselves.
I was honoured to be invited to present certificates to trainees who’ve completed their basic training this week. I’d like to congratulate Abdul and all the trainees I met on my visit last week for the work they’re doing.
Changes cause concern?
There’s a bit of a storm inside the town hall this week. The opposition parties have accused me of being ‘dictatorial’ because I’ve agreed to run a three-month trial of holding public Cabinet meetings during the daytime rather than in the evening.
This may all seem rather inwardly focused, but believe it or not it’s provoked more emails to me from opposition councillors than any other issue since I became Leader last May. By law, the council’s Cabinet has to take its decisions in public. The meeting is not a forum where members of the public are entitled to speak, only members of the Cabinet have speaking rights. I always try to allow the public to speak if they turn up (which they rarely do), but because of time pressure that is usually limited to only one or two people on each major item, and they are limited to around two minutes each.
Because the agendas are published two weeks in advance, a better way for the public to make their views known is for them to contact the Cabinet Member responsible for the issue and have a longer meeting or conversation with them than would be possible at the meeting itself. Ward councillors can do the same and speak to the Cabinet Member before the meeting. That allows time for the Cabinet Member to listen and make changes to the proposals if necessary.
Now that Cabinet Members are paid enough to have time off their day-jobs, it seems reasonable to expect them to turn up to a day-time Cabinet meeting. Councillors who are not members of Cabinet also receive a basic allowance of £10,000 each, which I hoped would be enough to allow them to take time off work if they want to.
By holding the meeting during the day, Cabinet Members have an extra evening when they can get out and attend public meetings or meet with the many residents who want to talk to us about their concerns. That all struck me as a good thing. So we agreed to hold the next three Cabinet meetings during the daytime to see if it worked, find out what other councillors and members of the public think, and then take a decision on whether to continue with the new arrangement or go back to evening meetings.
So, is that “dictatorial”? Is it the biggest issue the council’s faced since last May (given that we’re trying to invest record amounts in schools, housing, youth services and crime-fighting)? Or are some councillors becoming too focused on events inside the town hall rather than getting out and listening to people?
Let me know what you think – please email your comments to: sreed@lambeth.gov.uk.
Tuesday 16 January 2007
The Lambeth Pensioners Action Group (LAMPAG) invited me to speak at their ‘Have Your Say’ forum this week. I spent two hours fielding questions on a range of subjects from a large group of older people who care very much about the quality and value of council services.
With the council’s budget proposals having been published last week, and following some rather lopsided coverage in last week’s local paper, I was expecting a grilling.
In fact, the group were warm, welcoming and clear that the purpose of the event was for me to listen to them - not the other way round! People raised issues ranging from care services to council tax, drop-in centres to drugs, and toilets to traffic calming.
I was grateful to have Cllr Donatus Anyanwu (Lambeth’s Cabinet Member for Older People) with me to help answer the wide range of questions that were raised.
Particularly harrowing were accounts from one 76-year-old woman whose council-home toilet remained broken despite six repairmen who’d come to fix it, and an 89-year-old man who was being asked to repay a benefits overpayment at a rate that exceeded his weekly income.
The council does a lot of things well, and I report on some of them on here, but there are still too many people who fall through the net. It’s quite wrong that these older people were not treated with the care and respect that their age and dignity deserve.
Donatus and I took up the cases personally and we’re helping to sort out the problems. At the same time, we’ll be asking the council’s managers to review their systems to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen in future. Older people deserve better!
If you would like to contact me, you can do so by emailing sreed@lambeth.gov.uk.
Monday 8 January 2007
First of all, I’d like to wish everyone a very Happy New Year.
The New Year started with a visit to Lambeth by Dr John Reid, the straight-talking Home Secretary. I met Dr Reid at Dunraven School in Streatham, where he was keen to endorse the tough new stance Lambeth Council’s taking to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour. I’ve long felt the council has been too soft on crime, and we know from listening to residents that they expect more action on what is, after all, people’s number one concern in Lambeth.
I was delighted to tell the Home Secretary how much progress we’re making. The council has worked with the police to roll out a Safer Neighbourhood Team of six uniformed officers, led by a sergeant, in every one of Lambeth’s 21 wards.
The council is now proposing a further boost to the Safer Neighbourhood Teams with an additional 21 uniformed officers, taking police team numbers to their highest ever. We’re giving strong backing to the police with a new Anti-Social Behaviour Unit to help serve ASBOs (anti-social behaviour orders) against persistent offenders.
Soon, we’ll start naming and shaming the drug dealers and drug tourists who encourage crime on our streets. We’re also putting a record amount of money into tackling domestic violence – a crime that’s hidden from view, but which scars the lives of too many people in Lambeth, especially women and children.
The Home Secretary was also delighted with our plans to invest in new services for young people. Instead of leaving them to hang around on the streets, we’re building new sports and leisure facilities across the borough, and we’ll be investing a record amount in youth services over the next three years. But instead of leaving it to councillors to decide how the money should be spent, we’ll be asking young people themselves to elect Lambeth’s first Young Mayor – giving young people a direct say in what services they need.
Making Lambeth safer is now the council’s top priority. The police deserve our backing, and working together we’ve already reduced crime by 10% over the past year – that’s nearly 3,000 fewer crimes committed. It was a real boost to have the support of the Home Secretary for the council’s new get-tough approach to crime and anti-social behaviour.