Last month, Barnet eye blogger Rog Tichborne was sent a confidential document in a stamped Barnet council envelope. He posted the document on his site.
He assumed the document had been sent to him by a Barnet council staff member who was concerned about the council’s methods for choosing big private companies as partners and service providers.
He was probably right. Only a day after he’d posted the document on his site, he received a letter from Barnet council’s legal department which threatened him with legal action if he didn’t take the document down.
It’s easy to understand why the council was and is so sensitive. For several years, Barnet council has been working towards commissioning-council status – as a commissioning council, the borough would outsource all council services to the private sector and administer contracts for those services, rather than provide services directly.
This has been a tremendously controversial project in Barnet. Staff aren’t onside: workers have taken several days of strike action so far in protest and were on strike again on Thursday 9 February to oppose the council’s outsourcing plans. An enormous amount of money has been spent (many say wasted) on consultants to advise the council on its outsourcing plans – that figure runs into the millions and does not, as Rog T says, include the council officer time and resources diverted to the project at a time when services to vulnerable and young people have been cut.
The public-private partnership projects that are developed by outsourcing councils are themselves extraordinarily costly – last year, for example, Barnet council agreed to set aside £750m for a private partner to assist in the delivery of a support and customer services project.
So – the leaked document. I’m happy to link to it and have been doing so for some time. It’s been in the public domain for a while. As it should be. Like Rog Tichborne and many council bloggers, I believe these commissioning documents should be public. Council services (and the NHS for that matter) are rapidly being transferred to private providers with almost no consultation with service users and voters. The contracts private companies are winning are enormously lucrative – for them. The Mail’s investigation this weekend into McKinsey’s influence on NHS reforms gives people some idea of the extent of private sector influence on public sector “reforms” and the scale of the behind-the-scenes operations that protestors and opponents of privatisation are up against. Councils need to open their books up on some of these massive outsourcing deals, too. Continue reading →
Met with the occupying group several times last week. It seems that the council went in last weekend and changed the locks on the building doors, so now the occupiers are locked out – as is anyone who hopes to use this community building. The occupiers’ posters have also been taken down. The building is empty and unused. Amazingly, it seems that the council would rather have an empty community building than one utilised by community groups. The occupying group said that there were still several years to run on the council’s lease of the building, so they can’t understand why the council is so keen to empty the building out.
Updated Friday 3 February
A newly-formed group of centre users and Hammersmith trades council members occupied the Hammersmith information and visitor centre in Hammersmith on Tuesday (the centre is in Unit 20, Hammersmith Broadway, W6 9YD).
The council planned to close the information centre down as part of its austerity cuts programme, but protestors denied the council entry when removal staff arrived to clear the building on Tuesday.
The occupiers have a set of keys to the centre and the council does not.
Gwen Cook, a Hammersmith trades council member and occupier told me that the occupiers planned to continue their protest past this week. They expected things to get more difficult next week if the council made a decision about gaining access. “What can they do, though? Are they going to kick the doors in to a building on the Broadway?”
Cook said it was “disgusting” that the council was planning to close the information centre. The information centre had been a vital public space for voluntary and community groups in the middle of Hammersmith for many years. Meeting space and public building options for voluntary groups in the borough were reduced considerably last week when about 20 voluntary groups were forced out of Palingswick House on King’s Street to make way for Toby Young’s freeschool.
“People think the Tories win everything, but they don’t. We don’t want to just hand it [the information centre] to them.”
From the occupiers’ press release and subsequent interviews (they were still there on Friday):
“The Hammersmith information and visitor centre has served the borough for many years. During that time, it has hosted new community organisations and helped them to grow. It has provided a resource for small unfunded local groups to meet. It has provided a gallery space for local artists and photographers to showcase their work. Above all, it has served as an information and visitor centre helping visitors and residents to find their way around the borough, to seek out social and commercial services and has been a friendly face to thousands of people seeking help.
The centre has been staffed entirely by experienced and expert volunteers during its lifetime.
In this 2012 Olympics Year and Royal Jubilee year, many more visitors are expected in the borough. Is it a good idea to close the only place visitors can go to get information and help in this vast city of ours?”
Update Thursday 2 February:
Went down to the information centre this evening after work and spoke to the occupiers.
Chris Tranchell, from the Hammersmith Community Trust, said the trust, which had used the information centre for about nine years for meetings and community activities, had known for months that the centre was likely to be closed. (For several years now, the council has been closing and selling popular public buildings, in the face of major opposition from local people. The council inevitably argues that buildings and services are underutilised. Service and building users always say different. Tranchell shows me artwork, folders, signs, pictures, photos and other material belonging to community groups which use the centre. They’ve left their equipment and stocks in the centre for now, because they have no other buildings or rooms to move things to. The centre is just full of those belongings. That was the material that the removal workers were meant to take away on Tuesday.
Tranchell says the council told the trust that the centre would be “given back” to Hammersmith Broadway’s landlords, so he and other members of the trust went to talk to the landlords to ask if they and other community groups could somehow stay on at the centre. Tranchell says that the landlords were surprised to hear that the building was to be “returned” to their custody – that seemed to be news to them.
He said Labour MP Andrew Slaughter was looking into this for them. Tranchell and his group want to negotiate continued community use of the building with the council and the Broadway’s landlords. He said the council gave the trust a list of about 140 alternative community buildings to use, but that a lot of the organisations in charge of those buildings were charging commercial rates. “They don’t seem to be making these decisions [about closing public buildings] with the community in mind.”
“On Thursday 9 February, hundreds of Barnet council *UNISON members will go on strike.
Barnet council workers are fighting Barnet council plans to mass-outsource council services and jobs to the private sector. The council is proceeding with a £750m “support and customer services project” where a private company will be engaged to deliver services like council estates, finance, human resources, information systems, procurement, revenues and benefits and project management services. Unison estimates job losses of between about 190 and 250 for workers in these areas.
The council is also planning to move adult social services (learning disability and physical and sensory impairment services for adults) into a profit-focused, local authority trading company.
What is happening in Barnet is likely to happen across NHS services – private sector companies fighting to win lucrative, guaranteed contracts to provide public services. These contracts are all funded by the taxpayer.
Up to 70% of Barnet council’s workforce could be transferred to the private sector in little more than 11 months’ time.
For many of Barnet Unison’s members, this will be the fourth day of action in response to the One Barnet Project which seeks to transfer the majority of staff out of the council and develop partnership projects with private companies to deliver services. The total cost of these projects will very likely exceed £2bn, which is why private sector companies are lining up to win contracts with the council.
By agreeing to take action next week, members make an important statement. They want to remain council employees, they want inhouse service bidders to be allowed to compete with private companies, and, most of all, they want to serve the community they are passionate about.
After taking part in the picket line, a group of strikers will help out a local charity. Members want to make it clear that “while they will be withdrawing their labour from the council, they are not withdrawing their commitment to the community they are so proud to serve.”
John Burgess, Barnet Unison branch secretary said
“Doing nothing is not an option for our members. The council is playing high stake risks with our members’, and council taxpayers’, future payments. The council needs to recognise that the One Barnet programme cannot be allowed to continue to expose residents, services and staff to this high risk strategy and expect them to pick up the bill.
Barnet Unison is asking for the One Barnet programme to be put on hold.
*workers in these departments will take action: trading standards & licensing, land charges, planning & development, building control & structures, environmental health, highways strategy, highways network management, highways traffic & development, highways transport & regeneration, strategic planning & regeneration, cemeteries & crematoria, parking services, revenues & benefits, ** housing and social care direct
** Subject to outcome of a strike ballot
Contact: John Burgess, Barnet Unison, on 07738389569 or email: john.burgess@barnetunison.org.uk.
Second article in the series I’m doing at False Economy on welfare reform and the failure of the American welfare-to-work programme (the workfare programme that Iain Duncan Smith is pursuing with such enthusiasm here). This second article looks at the sexism and racism that has informed US welfare reform. African-American Wisconsin benefit claimants on the workfare programme had their benefits sanctioned at several times the rate of white claimants. It’s a cruel and biased system.
Very interesting post over at Rog T’s (THIS LINK IS NOW BROKEN – SEE REASONS WHY BELOW) – it seems he has been leaked a document which describes the (very) loose process the council is using to choose a private strategic partner for a £290m project. Makes worrying reading, all right. I went through a more selection stringent process when I joined the girl guides.
Will add more as it comes available.
The Barnet bloggers take a risk by publishing this document out – there will be nervous moments as its authenticity is confirmed and the council will hit the roof either way. But the hell with the council – it wouldn’t be the first time questions were asked about its procurement processes. And I know bravery when I see it – I publish this in solidarity with Rog T and will add more as I get my head round the document.
Update 21 January 2012
It would seem that the document’s authenticity has been confirmed:
From Rog’s blog:“At 19.10 last night, I received a letter from Barnet Council legal team. The letter suggested that as the document I published on Thursday concerning the One Barnet tender process was marked confidential, I was not allowed to publish it and must remove it from my website immediately. They also suggested that I may be liable for any legal costs of claims arising from publishing it. As it the letter arrived at such a late hour on a Friday evening as I was going out, I removed the document from my website pending legal advice.”
Will provide more updates as they come through. Bloggers are organising to support Rog AND the public’s right to know how councils like Barnet select private companies for these massively costly private sector contracts. The document Rog T published on his site demonstrated that process of selection/elimination very clearly and that’s why it’s vital that bloggers are supported as they fight to bring details of council deals with private companies into the public domain. Millions are being spent with private companies in this era of so-called austerity and people have a right to know which company gets what and why. This is a big issue and I’ll be supporting Rog all the way on it.
Update: Mr Reasonable has blogged about the issue. He’s right, too, when he says he can’t understand why the council wants to hide documents which describe how councils choose private companies for projects that are worth a fortune. As he says:
“There are 350,000 people in Barnet whose lives will be affected by this outsourcing project [Barnet council’s plan to outsource a swathe of services to one of four companies currently bidding] yet no more than a handful are privy to the detail or involved in the decision making. What is taking place here is wholly undemocratic so it is not in the least bit surprising that people are leaking details and even less surprising that there is a desire to make these leaked documents public. Rather than hassling Roger T perhaps the Council should be spending more time engaging with the residents to explain what the hell they are doing and asking why the staff are so unhappy that they feel the need to leak these documents. Doing long term mega-outsourcing deals without public consensus and scrutiny is a both a disgrace and, in the long term, politically unsustainable.”
Article by me at False Economy where I interview people from the US about the failure of welfare-to-work programmes to place people in real, long-term jobs, or even lift many above the poverty line. More to come about US welfare reform pushing people off benefits and into homelessness and deep poverty. Disgusting times.
Over the next three months, councils around the country will begin to agree budgets for 2012. The agreement of these budgets – and the service cuts they entail – will mark the start of the second year of appalling cuts to local government services.
Adult care services, children’s care services, daycentres for people with disabilities, daycentres for the elderly, respite carehomes, libraries, youth centres, youth offices, children’s homes – vital local government services took massive hits around the country in 2011. More will go as the government’s slashing of local government grants continues.
I’m drawing up a list of proposed council cuts around the country, job losses expected and council meetings where cuts proposals will be agreed over the next few months (have also pointed out privatisation threats here and there). Generally, council budgets are agreed in February and March at full council meetings.
Points to note: specifics seem harder to come by than last year. There’s a lot of rhetoric in council documents about departments having to cut costs, but less about actual services that will be lost or shut. That may be because the cuts proposed on those lists drew a lot of lightning last year. When councils named the libraries, daycentres, and carehomes they planned to cut, people publicised that information and organised campaigns around them. It’s a lot harder to campaign around general statements about reducing budgets. Anticuts activists are accusing councils of caginess and they have a point. More on that as things develop.
Job losses will be a real problem. Unemployment is already climbing and estimates show that councils are expecting to make thousands more people redundant this year, often in parts of the country least able to cope (national unemployment is highest in the north east of England, where both the public and private sectors are shedding jobs). That is not good news, with the jobless rate over eight percent already. In the north east of England, unemployment is over 11%.
Another point worth noting is that a lot of councils are (almost pointedly) running public consultation exercises on cuts – they’re crowdsourcing views on services to slash. This may because councils were subject to public and legal pressure last year for failing to consult service users about cuts proposals. It’s probably also a useful way to diffuse anger about cuts – the more a council meets and talks with people, the more often it can ram home the “we have no choice except to cut” line.
Will be adding details for more councils, and adding and changing numbers as things become clearer and more information becomes available.
List:
Anglesey council (h-t @londonhackette) A total shambles. Run by commissioners appointed by the Welsh government, this council released a bleak budget this week (16 January) which outlined how schools could be hit with 5% cuts, swimming facilities closed and road maintenance budgets slashed.
The linked story also says taxpayers could face a 5% rise in bills this year which may rise to 15% over three years. The council’s commissioners say they must save £4.5m this year and up to £11m over three years. Commissioners say jobs will be lost, although numbers were unclear at the time of writing. Anglesey council also misses out on elections this year – commissioners will be kept in place, it seems, until the council recovers from “stability problems” identified by the Audit Commission. Intriguing.
Budget cut for 2012: £4.5m (£11m over three years) Job losses: Numbers not known but job losses likely Threatened services: Services across the council, including schools and leisure services. Date budget and cuts to be agreed on: Full council meeting March 6 2012.
No matter, presumably, that the council found £750m in 2011 to engage a private partner in a “support and customer services project.” That project will see a private company (possibly Capita) delivering services like council estates, finance, human resources, information systems, procurement, revenues and benefits and project management services. No matter either that hard-hitting reports last year asked serious questions about Barnet council’s ability to manage procurement processes and relationships with the private sector. Look for private companies to do very well out of Barnet council this year. There has always been plenty of money at Barnet council for those who need it least.
Budget cut for 2012: £43m (might be spread over several years) Job losses: The council says 100. Unison says many more than that if the council pursues its plans to mass-outsource services. Threatened services: Services across the council, including adult social care and children’s services. Date budget and cuts to be agreed on: Possibly full council meeting January 24 2012.
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Birmingham City Council: The council is consulting on cuts it wants to make to achieve £65m reductions in its 2012-13 budget. The BBC is reporting that could mean the loss of up to 1200 jobs– which would be disastrous for Birmingham. The story says that nearly 2500 jobs were lost in 2011. Major job (and therefore service) losses are expected in areas including A&C home care, CYPF children’s homes, adult social care residential homes and adoption and fostering, according to Birmingham Unison.
The proposed budget will go before cabinet on 13 February and full council on 28 February.
Budget cut for 2012: £65m Job losses: 1200 Threatened services: Services across the council, including home care, children’s homes and residential homes. Date budget and cuts to be agreed on: 28 February 2012 at full council meeting.
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Blackpool council The Blackpool Gazette is reporting that there will be considerable service cuts and job losses this year as the council looks for £10m in savings.
Compulsory redundancy figures could be around 100 – which may mean that there are voluntary redundancies on top of that. Unions are predicting losses of at least 200. Last year, the council made cuts to the tune of £27m and shed 750 jobs. That figure included around 350 compulsory redundancies. Over 2011 to 2012, then, the council’s job losses will near 1000. That’s a lot of jobs.
Budget cut for 2012: £10m Job losses: 100-200 Threatened services: Services across the council? Consultation is ongoing and voluntary redundancies are apparently being sought across the council. Date budget and cuts to be agreed on: February 2012 at full council meeting (tbc).
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Bradford council: One to watch closely. This confusing story suggests that the council intends to both protect and cut frontline services in adult social care. The council says that cuts of £31m will be required to balance books. The story says that departments like adult and community services and children and young people’s services are among those likely to be cuts.
About 600 job losses are expected. Council leader Ian Greenwood says it would be dishonest to say those job losses won’t affect services (and he’s right. It would be). Consultation on proposals (full list here) lasts until 7 February 2012 and the budget will be decided at a full council meeting on Thursday 23 February 2012.
Budget cut for 2012: £31m Job losses: 600 Threatened services: Across the council. Date budget and cuts to be agreed on: 23 February 2012 at full council meeting.
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Bristol city council: Bristol is consulting on £21m in jobs and services to be cut from April 2012. Anticuts groups say that the council is releasing the bare minimum of information and disguising plans. Battlegrounds this year will include council plans to close or privatise care homes and day centres for the elderly (there’s a list of threatened centres at the end of this post) and to cut £1m from the youth services budget. Job losses of 350 are being touted. Bristol city council will finalise cuts decisions at a full council meeting on 28 February 2012.
Budget cut 2012: £21m Job losses: 350 Threatened services: youth services, services for the elderly Date budget and cuts to be agreed on: Council meeting, 28 February 2012
This blog will be taking a small break over Christmas and New Year. Still available for short-post abuse and interaction on twitter @hangbitch.
Before we go, though – a special mention for Dave, Gideon and the Boy Wonder Clegg for setting civilisation back 500 years in 2011. The coalition’s annihilation of local government grants has destroyed council-run services and leaves a whole class of people (ie – anyone who can’t pay for the services that councils once provided) adrift, and probably for dead in some cases.
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The losses
I’ve had the dubious privilege of seeing the coalition’s cuts handiwork up close this year, right around the country as I’ve talked to people dealing with the loss of vital local services. There’s a brief retrospective with excerpts from of some of those interviews below.
The service-provision remit for councils is (or has been) enormous. Not everyone will know that councils provide a very wide range of essential services, or that a great many of these services have disappeared, or have been compromised, as this year’s cuts have taken hold.
Councils provide adult social care (which this post focuses on) – a huge service which includes homecare for the elderly and people with disabilities, residential care for people in those groups, sheltered housing with onsite wardens for the elderly, daycentres for the elderly, daycentres for people with physical disabilities, learning disabilities and dementia, and services like meal on wheels. These services are disappearing at a time when the population is ageing.
Councils provide supported-living accommodation (staffed hostels) for people with severe mental health difficulties – these hostels are (or were – some have closed) essential for people who need somewhere to go when they leave hospital after treatment for severe mental illness (that group is growing, too). Without supported-living hostels, people will have fewer places to go, unless you count appalling, unstaffed B&Bs, or the side of the road.
The excerpts below are just a few takes from a few interviews by one journalist. The true scale of the devastation is enormous. Unfortunately, it’s just not been reported widely enough. Local government cuts have only been covered sporadically by the mainstream press. There have been stories about specific service closures here and there, and I understand that one film company is producing a piece on this year’s cuts at Stoke, but in general, the slaughter has taken place below the radar. That is in itself a kind of travesty. The death of this all-important layer of the public sector should near the top of any big media agenda, especially since there is worse to come. There are years of these cuts ahead. The impact on anyone who can’t afford to pay for services like care will be appalling.
Cambridgeshire: “I meet Tracy and Stuart Evenden – as I meet a lot of people these days – at a small anti-cuts protest outside a town hall in a bitter January wind. The Evendens are at this protest because they’re trying to fight a Cambridgeshire county council decision to reduce resources available to the special unit (called CSSC-EOTAS) that their 15-year-old son attends. They’re worried and they look it: tense, tired faces and a quivering chin and red eyes in Tracy’s case (which is probably the cold as well as the stress – she says she’s freezing).
“EOTAS caters for children who are unable to cope in the mainstream. Some have problems with their physical health, some with mental health and some with emotional health. The Evenden’s son attends EOTAS because he was bullied so viciously by students at his mainstream school that he started to go under. It seems that by the time he was 11, his terror was destroying the family. The move to the EOTAS unit, with its expert staff and supervision, pushed that horror into the past. Now, of course, it is back again. The council’s plan is to return these refugees from the mainstream to the mainstream.”
“In December, Shropshire council announced that it planned to close the centre as part of its austerity measures – an early decision which shocked service users, who thought that they were in the middle of consultation about the centre, rather than at the end of it. They had been told a decision about the centre’s future wouldn’t be made until January. Local campaigners have spent the six months since then trying to beat the council back, but the council still plans to shut the Grange at the end of July.
“[Centre user] Eddie Davies says… that for all the promises the council has made about replacing the Grange with a like-for-like service, he is losing half his support hours and has only been offered a group in a church as a replacement. He is an older man and had formed close friendships at the Grange. The thought of change does not appeal to him: “We won’t have the same groups that we did at the Grange.”
Video: Users at the Grange talk about the loss of their daycentre:
“I’m in a room in Gateshead with about 15 older women at a Personal Growth – Take Individual Steps session (known as PG Tips here at the Tyneside women’s health centre). I wouldn’t describe the group, or the session, as a touchy-feely waste of public money and focus, although I imagine George Osborne would without looking round the door.
“…A lot of the women in this room collect incapacity benefit – a means of drawing income which the Murdoch stable would have us believe is leapfrogging politics and pimping to top the list of pestilent ways to source a buck. Not that these women will be sourcing income through incapacity for long. Their days of drawing incapacity (and perhaps any) benefit are numbered. Incapacity is being phased out, along with any notion of genuine need. Everyone who collects incapacity is being assessed for fitness for work. They’re being moved to the smaller job seekers’ allowance, or to the employment support allowance if they’re deemed to need support to work. Some will be found ineligible for support altogether.
Nobody I’ve spoken to likes their chances. I’ve even met rightwingers who are worried about assessment. Only ten days ago, I interviewed a physically disabled woman called Mel Richards who felt that the coalition (which she generally supported) was wilfully failing to recognise people she referred to as “deserving poor.” She insisted that her good work record and national insurance contributions entitled her to support when illness struck (and was technically correct – incapacity benefit recipients must generally have paid national insurance).”
“…The centre has a daycentre for adults with disabilities, an accredited ESOL training programme, back-to-work support for people who are looking for jobs, computer classes, a youth club, a cafe with affordable meals and so on…[it’s a vital place for] people with learning and physical disabilities, worried locals whose cafes and takeaways are going bust in the slump [and need retraining], youth offenders who want work experience on projects (that were once) funded by council, discarded public sector workers who want to retrain for jobs that don’t exist….
“Between 400 to 800 people come through the doors of this centre in any given week. They prize it highly and need it badly, so naturally, it is due for closure. The centre is – perhaps ironically, or perhaps not, in these plotless times – a victim of its own popularity in a roundabout way. The loss of direct council funding isn’t the problem – the centre does not, as manager Amanda Buck tells me, rely on a council grant to keep and manage its buildings. It relies on room-hire income that it makes from community and council groups that rely on council funding. Those groups are losing their funding, which means the centre is losing a vital income stream.
“Nobody’s got the budget to hire the rooms out, so we’ve had a decrease in staff and a decrease in grants available to the facility – even though we’ve had a 38% increase in people requiring our services.”
“Lottery provided some funding for six years, but the centre trust doesn’t expect that funding to continue forever and is paying Amanda’s salary out of reserves. The government cut the Future Jobs Fund last year – that paid for a staff member and work placements for young people keen for employment…Middlesbrough has the worst jobless rate in the country (a prize it takes in a competitive field).”
Photos of service users at the Breckon Hill centre in Middlesbrough by deptfordvisions.com
“Lancashire county…is consulting parents of children with disabilities about plans to close some of the county’s short breaks units. The units give parents much-needed breaks from caring, and children a chance to socialise.
“The plans to close units could impact on families such as Colin and Jennifer Dalley’s. They have three daughters with learning disabilities and behavioural problems, all needing supervision and support. The youngest, Kirsty, 11, needs constant care and monitoring, because she has severe epilepsy. She has an adapted bed and bathroom.
The Dalleys are full-time carers, and they struggle with isolation and exhaustion. Both have been treated for depression over the years. They manage the children, the behavioural problems (their eldest is prone to aggressive outbursts), transport, equipment, relationships with social workers, endless correspondence with the council, journeys to and from school, doctors and so on. They’re also employers – they use direct payments to manage two carers who help the family before and after school, and take Kirsty out on weekends.
They get a break when Kirsty goes to a short break unit for overnight stays. Kirsty spends several nights a month at Maplewood House – a residential unit with adapted beds, bathrooms, a playroom, a sensory room and professional staff. With Kirsty at Maplewood, “you get to sleep”, says Colin. “You have a night when you’re not worried … because obviously, with her epilepsy, when she’s here, you’re always worried.” He says he accepts “some cuts have to happen”, but that he didn’t expect short breaks units to be targeted.”
“One elderly Lancashire parent of a severely disabled adult man uses a pseudonym in interviews because he’s concerned about [angering Lancashire county council if he complains about cuts].
“His son, who is now nearly 30, has cerebral palsy and needs round-the-clock care. He can’t move, or speak. He is fed through a stoma and tube.
“His care is organised through Lancashire council and the NHS. But adult social care at Lancashire is harder than ever to come by. This year, Lancashire tightened eligibility criteria for adult care. Only service users in the “substantial” or “critical” fair access to care bands are eligible for paid-for care now. People with “moderate” needs have to finance care themselves. The council is reassessing nearly 4000 people to decide which category they belong in. In September, council officers told me that the council had reviewed just 100 cases since July.
Everyone else waits in fear. The man with the pseudonym has been waiting for his son’s review – and to find out what services he can negotiate – for a year. He describes the council’s snail’s pace as “cuts by default. [The council] has learned not to just shut things. That gets bad publicity. Now, it is letting everything run down without actually closing anything.”
“Hammersmith and Fulham council’s cabinet [has] decided to close the 14-unit Tamworth hostel, make all staff redundant and sell the building. The council said alternative accommodation would be found for the hostel’s eight residents. The council’s rationale for closure was a Supporting People fund contribution towards a £300,000 austerity saving. Selling the building would be a nice little earner.
“Things aren’t looking as bright for those in the hostel, though. Inside, you find angry, soon-to-be-unemployed staff, concerned residents and a sort of muted, but palpable, sense of calamity…
“High-level supported-living housing is a unique service. Experienced staff monitor residents’ medication and keep and eye on drug and alcohol use. They arrange transfers, community activities and help residents organise appointments. The Tamworth hostel building is secure and always staffed. Many have worked here for years – a contribution that means little in our austerity age. Council reports dismiss their expertise and concerns: “Although there was some opposition to the proposal from the staff, the consultation did not present any strong arguments for keeping Tamworth open,” stated authors of the council’s March cabinet report on the closure. Spinning to reassure, the report’s authors insisted that Tamworth residents would be catered for: “evidence demonstrates that there is sufficient provision for the client group in the borough’s other mental health supported housing”.
“Visits to the hostel revealed a different narrative. It emerged that two of Tamworth’s residents were to be moved to accommodation out of the borough. One of Tamworth’s occupants still had nowhere to go. Aged 47, she has schizophrenia and is an alcoholic. She has been living at Tamworth for five years. Temporary accommodation had been discussed, but she felt she’d be vulnerable there. She’s physically small, often confused and unwell. People prey on her. She knows this because she’s lived in low-level support accommodation before. “People take my money from me, don’t they? I would hand it to them. They would take my money for drugs.”
“I meet Susan Gates [name changed], a furious Camden mental-health service user, at a packed and dismal public council “consultation” meeting in early October. I’ve been to a great many meetings and protests like this in the last year. This one’s in Kentish Town library.
Like many in the room, Susan is here to register her upset at Camden council plans to close and sell support centres for people with mental health difficulties, dementia, learning disabilities and sensory disabilities.
The council wants to use cash generated from sales to build a single building on a self-funding, mixed-use site (there’ll be private flats and business space for rent and sale) at Greenwood Place in Kentish Town…
Audience members like Susan are convinced that the council has already decided to close and sell their centres, even though councillors deny it. “We haven’t made any decisions!” council cabinet member for adult social care Pat Callaghan responds – a statement somewhat negated by the thick, glossy brochure that councillors circulate to promote their plans.
Susan is a long-time (about 14 years) user of Highgate – one of the threatened centres. It’s a small, staffed service which offers groups and social support for people with mental health difficulties. Susan suffers from severe depression. She is hospitalised during bad episodes. For her, Highgate is familiar, unthreatening and essential. “I couldn’t cope without it.”
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Those are just a few examples from this first year.
In 2012, I’ll be travelling around the country again to talk to service users and providers as budget cuts for the second year are made. It is not at all heartening to know that 2011 was just the start.
Legal observers being searched just after people were released from this evening’s kettle at Panton Street.
People had to leave their names and addresses with the police – if they didn’t, they were arrested. Pretty clear that these kettles are an information-gathering exercise. Kettle lasted for a couple of hours. Those of us with press cards were permitted to enter and leave without having to give personal details (although names appear on press cards).
Otherwise – a weird few hours. Probably about 50 protestors, 20 members of the press who were able to come and go freely and about 300 coppers who didn’t look old enough to be out. Seemed like someone somewhere was desperate to tag a “Jesus – look at these radicals” story onto the 6pm strike day news. Snore.