Government says we can film council meetings. Get in.

Posted on February 26, 2011 by Kate B

We win! Woo hoo.

Having spent several years telling bloggers and journalists to get lost, councillors have been told by Eric Pickles to welcome bloggers, journalists and anyone else who wants to film, record and tweet council meetings.

Bring your cameras, phones & recorders to council meetings this week as more cuts budgets are set:

I’m one of the many blogging journos who’ve been told by councillors to stop recording and tweeting council meetings over the past few months.

West Lancashire borough councillors were among them. This is an amusing little update on the “West Lancashire tries to stop me from recording a council meeting” story:

As reported last week, (Tory) West Lancashire borough council planned to hear (and very likely agree) a new constitution item to ban members of the public from recording council meetings. The item was due to be heard at the council’s 23 February meeting.

This all came about because in December last year, I recorded the selfsame rotters at a council meeting when they were trying to justify an expensive council-buildings refurbishment project. They took a very dim view of my committing that item to MP3.

“The constitution does not permit the recording of meetings and the ability to do this is in the gift of the council,” the council intoned in reports released before the 23 February meeting.

By the time the meeting rolled around, though, the council had been forced into a squealing u-turn by its very own government – and us, I like to think. Continue reading →

Punishing the vulnerable

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Kate B

My latest New Left Project article with people affected by public sector cuts around the country.

Lambeth council occupation 23 February 2011

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Kate B

43 tweets

A large group of community members, council workers and anticuts protestors occupied the Lambeth Town Hall tonight as councillors tried to vote through a controversial cuts budget.

Lambeth councillors left the council chambers when the crowd poured in. Protestors set up their own council.

Here are some videos from the occupation. Haven’t edited them, so they’re a bit rough.

First: protestors refused to go into a side room that had been set up for the public, and pushed past security to get to the public gallery of the council chambers:

Protestors had been told the public gallery was full, but that wasn’t right. The gallery was empty until they arrived.

Then, protestors and the mayor started to yell at each other:

Protestors started to file into the chambers as councillors started to leave it:

Kids talked about the adventure playgrounds in Lambeth that the council plans to cut.

The No Recording recording

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Kate B

In December last year, the Tory administration at West Lancashire borough council tried to stop me recording and tweeting a council meeting at which they were discussing an expensive council-buildings refurbishment.

Town hall refurbishments are controversial at the moment, as you can imagine. People do not think councils should be spending money on their own digs while they’re telling everybody else to put up with service cuts, etc. Proposed town hall refurbishments generate plenty of heated chat.

Anyway – this week, at a full council meeting, West Lancs council will hear a report called “Recording council, cabinet and committee meetings and use of mobile phones and other social media devices.” This report recommends that the council bans the informal recording of meetings unless a formal request to record is made and the meeting in question agrees.

Getting back to me – the report says that this all came about because:

…” at a meeting of the Council on 15 December 2010, an incident occurred when a member of the public at the back of the council chamber was holding her mobile phone up in the air, which led several councillors to raise the issue with the chief executive as to whether she was recording the meeting. As the smooth running of the meeting was affected, the chief executive asked her to refrain from texting, phoning or recording, but it was agreed to report back on these issues.”

The buggers. I’d sue their rightwing butts off, except that such an action would waste public time and money. I, at least, have standards. For the record (ho ho), I waved nothing in the air at that meeting. It was a council meeting, not a Bieber gig. I had no reason to hold my phone up in the air – not least because I didn’t use my phone to record the meeting.

The truth is that the smooth running of the meeting was affected by the opposition’s anger at the council’s plan to refurbish council buildings while the rest of the world endures austerity. Now, these appalling people want to add a rule to the council constitution that will make publicising service cuts even harder. Can’t understand the paranoia, myself – either at West Lancs, or at other councils that take this closed-doors approach. It’s not like recordings would reflect a different reality from meeting minutes, or anything awful like that. Councillors are entirely trustworthy, always. Everything’s completely above board.

I particularly liked this line in the report: “the constitution currently does not permit the recording of meetings and the ability to do this is in the gift of the council.” Says it all, really. Recording and sharing council business and decisions with other members of the public is not a right, but a “gift” that the council may or may not favour you with. Bollocks to that. Big Society indeed.

The full council agenda is here. The recordings report is Item 21.

Notts county union members to strike

Posted on February 19, 2011 by Kate B

From Unison East Midlands:

One to watch on Thursday this week –

“Members at Notts County Unison have voted to take strike action in defence of jobs and services. The one day strike is planned for 24 February, the day that the full council meets to set the budget.”

Of particular interest here is the fact that the union wrote to Notts county council and showed where the council could make £26m in savings. It seems that letter was ignored. The union takes this to mean that cuts at Notts are ideological, as opposed to judicious:

“We are left to draw the conclusion that the current budget position may be a deliberate misrepresentation taken for party political reasons, with the aim of building up a “slush fund” to reduce council tax before the next county council elections. Of course, we may be wrong about this and we would be grateful for written confirmation that the council does not intend to do this.”

About 1400 jobs are due to be lost at Notts county to meet a grants cut of £25m. Could be an interesting scene if strikers (a group which will doubtless include many of the 1000 or so people in line for compulsory redundancy) turn up to protest at the Town Hall.

This is the alternative budget Unison presented to the council (PDF 1.8MB)

So council services go

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Kate B

Updates for week starting 28 February are at the end of this post.

Updates for week starting 21 February are further down this post.

Updates for Thursday 17 February are further down this post.

First post – Tuesday 15 February:

Bit surprised by the national political and press silence on the battles that are raging at council meetings this week…

As noted here, councils around the country have begun to agree and sign off budgets for the 2011-2012 financial year. Most will complete in the next two weeks. Council budgets must be set by March 2011.

These are budgets for the first year of much-reduced grants settlements from government – which means they incorporate the first wave of council service cuts.

Public council meetings to agree these budgets this week have been feisty and memorable – and it’s still only Tuesday. There are still several weeks’ worth of meetings to go.

It seems extraordinary that the public outrage at these local service cuts isn’t being followed more closely by the national press, or championed publicly by the Eds Miliband and Balls.

Councils are cutting services to very vulnerable groups. The Barnet protest last night (see below) included people who were trying to save the onsite warden service in sheltered housing. Service cuts in Cambridgeshire include a special education unit for children on the autism spectrum who couldn’t cope in mainstream schools. On Thursday, parents of disabled children in Lancashire will protest about council plans to introduce charging for care and to tighten care eligibility criteria.

Once these budgets are agreed and voted through by councils, it will no longer be a matter of fighting cuts. It’ll be a matter of fighting to have funding and services returned.

Since last night, we’ve had: Continue reading →

Year one done

Posted on February 13, 2011 by Kate B

Over the next fortnight or so, those councils that haven’t already done the dread deed will sign off service cuts and budgets based on this year’s much-reduced local government grants. Councils must set budgets by March.

We have Barnet and Norfolk tomorrow, controversial Lancashire later in the week, Liverpool early in March, Leeds towards the end of February and most of the rest along the way. I’ve yet to hear of a council that has refused to set a budget, so – barring spectacular results at the many protests that are planned in the next two weeks – these budgets and cuts will be set. Hope I’m wrong.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people who use (Tory) Lancashire county council services and are extremely concerned about that council’s plans to cut and/or charge for adult and children’s care services.

They feel the cuts to those services are disproportionate. Lancashire has a staggering £110m in reserves (the seventh highest in the country – Essex is first with reserves of £200m), but will cut £179m from service budgets over the next three years. Eligibility criteria for adults who need care services will be tightened and children’s care respite services closed. The GMB says that council will cut 6000 jobs – a claim of a monumental cull that the council has rubbished so far, without making an alternate announcement.

All this with £10b in council reserves nationwide and nary a peep out of Labour about forcing councils to part with some of the stash to avoid this astounding frontloading. I’m writing a longer article on all of this at the moment.

Barnet decides on service cuts

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Kate B

From the Barnet alliance for public services:

Tory Barnet council will hold a budget meeting on Monday 14 February 2011 at 7 pm in Hendon Town Hall (address: the Burroughs, Hendon NW4 4BG).

By agreeing this budget, the council will seek to save £53.4m over the next three years. The impact on the Barnet community will be devastating (a list of some of the threatened services is here).

The council has received an unprecedented number of questions from residents who want to speak at the meeting. At the start of cabinet committee meetings, there is a slot for public questions of about 30 minutes. The Barnet alliance for public services has asked for an extension to time for public questions given the unprecedented circumstances. The alliance is concerned that this request will not be granted.

The alliance asks all supporters to come to the Hendon Town Hall to join the meeting. See: barnetalliance.org for more.

Ringside at the Big Society circus

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Kate B

Following my tweets from the Hammersmith and Fulham council cabinet meeting this week, here’s a take on that meeting and the cabinet’s decision to give council rights to sell community buildings.

Note the various betrayals people refer to – the Irish cultural centre’s horror at finding the council had not signed an agreement to extend the lease on the Irish centre and so on. Note also the nature of the vote at the end of the meeting – the cabinet simply stood up, broke for recess and agreed the decision. There wasn’t even a show of hands.

More “Tough Shit, Scrubbers” from Hammersmith Town Hall this week, as that borough’s appalling cabinet ignored pleas from locals to delay a decision to sell much-loved local community buildings.

Locals (thousands of them, if their petitions are anything to go by) wanted the council to give or extend leases on the Sands End community centre, the popular Irish centre and the Shepherd’s Bush village hall. Several hundred turned up at a cabinet meeting to make that point (rowdily) in person. Lease extensions would give community groups the chance to fundraise and buy the buildings for community use – à la the Big Society, one would have thought. Certainly, that is what locals thought: statements like “the government is talking of the Big Society – well, we ARE the Big Society,” went down a storm all night.

People also wanted the brakes put on a decision to throw 20 or so community groups out of King Street’s Palingswick House and move Toby Young’s proposed West London free school in. Some are bigger than others in Big Society.

The cabinet gave people a hearing, even though the decision to ignore them had clearly been made. Let us walk you through the charade.

We heard a passionate speech from West London school of dance director Anna du Boisson, who paid tribute to the many groups that use the Shepherd’s Bush village hall: church groups, karate, yoga and tai chi organisations, tea-dance groups and exercise classes – “all have a good, loyal membership,’ du Boisson said.

Her dance school (now 25 years old) has 750 children on its books and an admirably egalitarian take on entry criteria: the school offers “a scholarship programme [which] means that nobody is turned away on the basis of the inability to pay fees.” (The school is run and funded by a charity). There is literally nowhere else with the space and wooden floors (for dance) in the borough – with the possible (and ironic) exception, as du Boisson pointed out, of the very room we were sitting in at the Town Hall.

“We would like the opportunity to raise the funds to buy [the village hall],” du Boisson pleaded. “The government is talking of the Big Society. Well, we are the Big Society and selling this hall runs exactly counter to the letter of their objectives. Grant us the lease and we’ll do the rest. Give us the chance to buy it.”

Continue reading →

Big society getting smaller…

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Kate B

Via Hammersmith and Fulham Unison:

Leading Tory Hammersmith and Fulham council members will meet tomorrow evening to rubberstamp the sale of four big community centres. Thousands of residents oppose these sales.

Community members who want to run the centres as community-based Big Society projects have been ignored – local MP Andrew Slaughter is reporting that supporters of the Shepherd’s Bush Village Hall made an offer to lease the building commercially under a charitable trust, but have had no response. The Shepherd’s Bush Village Hall is in one of the borough’s most deprived wards. Yours truly will have to try and catch up with some of the players in this story tomorrow. If the Shepherd’s Bush group is struggling to get hold of a building for community use, but Toby Young is not struggling to get hold of Palingswick House for his free school as below – well, we’ll have to spend some time deciding what that all means.

The four threatened community centres are:

Palingswick House: home to more than 20 charities in Hammersmith and Fulham. Slaughter is reporting that Toby Young’s controversial West London Free School has been identified as the likely buyer.

Sands End Community Centre: includes the Sands End library, children’s and social services, an affordable gym and adult education.

The Irish Centre: a self funding arts and cultural centre. About 7000 people signed a petition asking the council to reconsider this sale.

The Shepherd’s Bush Village Hall: used by about local organisations and offers Sure Start services and the Shepherd’s Bush Families Project.

There will be a protest outside Hammersmith and Fulham Town Hall in Kings Street tomorrow night before the cabinet meeting: 6pm Monday 7 February W6 9JU.