Category Archives: Council

Council service cuts stories

“Worried about my 10-year-old daughter being safe in a B&B.” More homelessness stories from Newham

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An update on this story: Candice, one of the homeless women I’ve been talking with in Newham and who is quoted below, was offered a place in Canning Town by Newham council today. Yesterday, she was told that she’d be sent out of London to live in Liverpool and that her case would be closed if she didn’t accept a place there. That would have been very difficult for her, because her family live in Newham and help her look after her 17-month-old daughter as you’ll see. Anyway, things seemed to change today when Candice went back to the housing office with a few people from the Focus E15 campaign. Canning Town it is.

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Yesterday, I spent several hours at the Newham council housing office at Bridge house with a number of women who are homeless.

Two things were noticeable right off: 1) that by the time I arrived at Bridge house at about 11, the waiting room was already full of people who had housing problems and 2) there were a lot of kids in the room. Some of the children were very young: in prams, or pushchairs. Some of the children were schoolage, though. I hadn’t thought about this aspect of things before – that instead of going to school on Monday morning, some kids go to council housing offices and wait while their parents try to sort out emergency housing. That’s surely got to put kids at a disadvantage as far as their schooling goes. I pretty sure there wasn’t a school holiday in Newham yesterday. I certainly asked around.

So. Below are a few interview excerpts which will tell you a bit about life for people who spend a lot of their time at housing offices asking for help because they don’t have a secure place to live.

One of the women with a child at the housing office yesterday was Charice Thompson. Charice said that she had been in the housing office with her ten-year-old daughter since about 9am. She had her belongings and extra clothes in bags with her. She had a plastic clothes rack with her as well – that was leaning against the back wall in the housing office. Charice said she’d been evicted from the revolting flat she’d been living in for three years for complaining about the standards in the place. She said that the flat had no hot water a lot of the time and that it was so badly infested with bedbugs that she’d ended up with a blood infection from the bites. She was clutching a letter from MP Stephen Timms which asked the council to house her and outlined her health problems. (I rang Timms’ office while Charice was waiting to see a housing officer, because she was concerned that she wouldn’t get to see someone and she and her daughter had nowhere to go last night. Someone from his office did ring me back yesterday afternoon). Charice and her daughter were given an emergency room in a hostel in Ilford at a charge of £196 a week. Her housing benefit would cover a lot of that, but she would still have to meet some costs. Continue reading →

24, careworker on zero hours and facing eviction from Focus E15

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Update Monday 10 November: Quick update: the eviction was averted. Doughty Street lawyer Jamie Burton came down and was able to negotiate a repayment plan and a review in two months’ time.

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This afternoon, I spent several hours talking with a 24-year-old woman who is in rent arrears at the Focus E15 hostel and must appear in Bow County Court tomorrow at 2pm to try and stop her eviction from the hostel. If that fails, she’ll be evicted on Tuesday by East Homes. (East Homes is part of the East Thames Housing Group – if you like, give them a shout here @EastThamesGroup to ask them why they think homelessness is an acceptable option for young people who are already struggling, especially with winter approaching). If the eviction goes ahead, this young woman is pretty sure she will be out on the streets. She is probably right. She’s facing eviction from a homelessness hostel, which will make her – err, homeless. This woman suffers from depression. She is young and she is not rich. She’s in arrears and she will be punished. She has nowhere to go if she must leave Focus E15.

“I haven’t got anywhere else, because the only people I know are in the [Focus E15] hostel.” she says. “I want them [East Homes] to give me a month, or maybe two months to show that I can pay some of the money.”

A judge will make a call on that tomorrow. This young woman hasn’t got legal representation yet. She works as a carer on a zero hours contract and couldn’t get away from work on Friday to meet with a lawyer who may have helped. She will rely on a duty solicitor at the Monday hearing and hopes to get from work to court in time to get her story across to one. Such is our charming era.

I looked through this woman’s papers today. The whole situation is a shambles. It seems that as a Focus E15 resident, she once had a support worker who may have worked through some of these problems with her. She says that she went without a support worker for over a year, though, and a new one has only just been appointed. That left her foundering by herself in the usual bureaucratic hell – getting letter after letter about rent, arrears, council tax demands (she’s just sorted out a payment plan for that) and all the while wondering how many hours work and pay she’d get each week from the care agency she works for. She says that from time to time, her depression made it hard to sort her financial problems out. She’s young and she’s had nobody to guide her. A lot of people get into financial trouble when they’re young and discovering how the world works, if “works” is the word for it. Not everyone has wealthy relatives to bail them out. This woman is only 24 now. “I don’t mind admitting that sometimes, I would just think I’d let it [the problems with the money] go.”

A lot of the problems seemed to begin when this woman started work as a carer on that zero hours contract. The new income affected her housing benefit claim. She was responsible for a rent shortfall. Her income varied a lot, though – in a good month, she’d get £700. In a bad one, she’d get less than £100. Managing a housing benefit claim, and benefit claims generally, when you’re on a variable income can be difficult and painful in the administrative sense, and I meet a lot of people who aren’t at all sure what to do about it. This is one of the real problems with our zero hours age. People earn some money one week and very little the next. They don’t know if they can sign on for JSA to cover gaps, or whether they’re entitled to working tax credits, or how their changing income will affect their housing benefit claim. Wage slips need to be sent to councils and average housing benefit claim amounts decided. Big swings in income usually need to be reported to councils as a change in circumstances for housing benefit claims. A great many of the people I talk to have absolutely no idea who to ask for help with any of these things, or even that help might be available. Mix all that in with youth, inexperience, depression and you can see how people get into a mess. Continue reading →

A potential breach of conduct towards @FocusE15 mums by Robin Wales?

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Update Thursday 23 October:

All a bit disappointing at the Standards Committee meeting this week. After waiting two hours for the committee to deliberate, the Focus E15 group was told that although the committee had come to a preliminary decision about Robin Wales’ behaviour towards the Focus E15 mothers at a recent mayoral event (see the video below), the committee wouldn’t be reporting that decision immediately “because we have asked for some further matters to be looked at….as there are some matters that need further clarification that have been brought to our attention.”

The committee wouldn’t say when the decision would be made public – only that it should be “this side of Christmas,” Which was frustrating, to say the very least. God only knows what further clarification is required. You can in the video below that the sequence of events is fairly clear. You do wonder how many times the committee needs to watch the video to get the picture.

The only real highlight of the evening came when a couple of the young people in the Focus E15 group took out a “We’re watching you, Robin Wales” banner. The revealing of this banner sent Security into meltdown. The young people were told to put the banner away immediately and some bloke rushed into the room saying “Who has got a banner? Has someone got a banner?” He seemed a bit frantic, for someone who’d heard news of a simple banner. It really was only a banner. When I left the room, I noticed there were coppers in the hall. Sigh.

Rock on democracy.

Update Tuesday 21 October – should find out tonight if Wales breached the code of conduct and what’ll happen to him if he did.

Newham standards advisory committee meeting
Tuesday 21 October
Newham Town Hall
East Ham E6
6.45pm

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Original post:

Tonight, the Newham council standards advisory committee met to further consider a misconduct complaint made recently against mayor Robin Wales. The committee decided that there had been a potential breach of the councillors’ code of conduct by Wales and that another hearing would be arranged to consider more evidence and decide on any action.

This makes for interesting times for the Focus E15 campaign. And for Wales.

The history of the complaint? – Wales lost his temper with the Focus E15 mothers at the mayor of Newham’s show in July. It was a family day, but Wales spat the dummy when the Focus E15 women asked him about social housing for families in the borough:

Not one of his better performances.

Said the standards committee this evening:

“The committee has agreed that there is a potential breach of the code of conduct. We will reconvene a subcommittee – which will be the entire standards committee invited to consider the complaint. At that subcommittee meeting, we will decide what, if any, further action there is after that. We have asked the independent investigator for some additional information ahead of the subcommittee meeting. We are looking to reconvene the subcommittee within the next two weeks.”

Stay tuned.

How about we send Robin Wales out of London. Who wants him. #FocusE15

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From the Focus E15 campaign:

“Despite Newham Council’s attempt to evict us, we can today confirm that the E15 Open House occupation will continue until 7 October as planned.

We called Newham Council on the first day of the occupation to negotiate with us. The plan was never to stay indefinitely. They refused to speak to us. Instead they chose to use draconian and expensive legal procedures, threats and dirty tricks. They cut off our water and vandalized the water mains, served an unlawful court summons with only two hours notice and they have repeatedly misled the public.

If Newham had come to talk to us we could have agreed to leave within two weeks. Instead, they refused to enter into a dialogue. We would like to know how much taxpayers’ money has been spent on taking us to court, and how many people that money could have housed.

Our demands to the Council continue to be:

– Repopulate the Carpenters Estate with secure long term council tenancies now
– An immediate end to the decanting and evictions of existing residents
– No demolition of the estate
–  The management of Carpenters Estate by the residents, for the residents, no third party or private management

This experience has shown us that there is a broad based movement for council housing in London. There are empty homes in every borough, every town and every city in the country. Focus E15 show us that there are simple, community based solutions to the housing crisis.

We will continue to fight displacement and evictions and to campaign for secure, council housing through direct action, mobilisation and legal means. See you on the streets, in the courtrooms and in our future actions.

This is the beginning of the end of the housing crisis.”
Jasmin Stone and Sam Middleton Focus E15

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More articles on Focus E15:

Open Democracy article: Why is middle class feminism so disinterested in women hit by austerity? (interviews with the Focus E15 mothers on their campaign to date)

Newham council runs out of meeting to avoid Focus E15 mothers’ protest

Focus E15 mothers take their petition for social housing to Boris at City Hall

International women’s day…yeah, right

Focus E15 mothers’ battle for social housing: an update

Young mothers occupy Newham council housing offices to demand social housing

Rubbish, mice and mould – good enough for young mums without money

Put this on a banknote: young mothers without money abandoned by the political class

Why writing off the #FocusE15 campaign is dangerously lazy behaviour from Labour

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A few thoughts and interviews:

I’ve spent some time in the last week talking to people in Stratford who are not involved in the Focus E15 campaign, but who also have housing problems. Some of the transcripts from those interviews are posted below and I have more to add. The views of these people are important. They will give you some insight into the extent not only of the housing problem in this part of the world, but of the fury those problems have generated. They will give you an idea of the mistake Labour makes in running from the Focus E15 campaign (as it did last night again at a Newham council meeting) and pretending that its current problem is merely a “bunch of trots,” or “agitators and hangers-on.”

As it happens, I hear chilling talk when I speak with different people about their housing and income problems. I hear anti-immigration talk. I hear concerns about racism from people who worry that they will be treated badly if they are moved from the places they live in now to areas where they feel they will not be welcome. (“My daughter-in-law was sent to Brentwood and they put her next to a lovely man,” one Newham woman told me last week. “Racist as anything, he was. She wants to come back.”) I hear from new immigrants about the problems they face.

I took the three interviews below at a coffee morning on the Carpenter’s estate last week. One of the back rooms at the community centre is open for several hours on a Tuesday morning and people who are homeless, or needing food, or support come in for sandwiches, coffee and tea. I talked with people for a while. Not for the first time, it occurred to me that the likes of the Focus E15 campaign might just prove a sort of buffer against less positive tides: fascism, out-and-out racism and the aggression I always see when there isn’t enough to go around. Because I can tell you this – Labour isn’t providing that buffer. So. I’d imagine that Ukip is on Labour minds at the moment: certainly as you head towards Clacton and a byelection. I wondered of those sorts of issues were in Robin Wales’ mind when he took a moment during his recent ice-bucket challenge to implore council staff to vote Labour:

Anyway. A housing shortage and austerity generally does not bring out the best in people. Keeping so many properties in the Carpenter’s estate closed for so long was a bad move on the council’s part. People now know that a number of flats there were perfectly fine to live in. Exposing that has been the great achievement of this part of the Focus E15 campaign. Politicians can write a group of young housing campaigners off as a bunch of trots if they want and even drive through them in the mayoral auto, but that’s the lazy approach when you get down to it. It’s a dangerously lazy approach. It will not change the fact that many people now know that serviceable homes on that estate were closed. Nor will it change the fact that social fallout from a housing crisis and rising inequality is inevitably unpleasant.

It already is.

I’m going to add more interviews to this post as I go along. These three are to start:

Tony, 57, unemployed. Lives in Plaistow in a council flat. Angry and reluctant to talk in the first instance.

“Immigration is the problem. There’s too many immigrants. Housing is the problem and jobs. It has changed a lot here. Not for the better, either – no work. I want to get into the CCTV [to work as a security guard]. I’ve got my [security guard] certification, but I haven’t heard back from them.

“I’m 57, nearly 58. It’s hard now. I have to pay council tax now. It’s £10 a month what I wasn’t paying before. My rent went up 30p and the benefit rise was only 70p. I have to pay £2.50 in council tax. I live in a council flat. It’s okay. There are druggies upstairs, but it is okay. It’s not bad. It’s somewhere to live.

“With the work – I want to get into security. I passed all the courses. I got the badges in security, but they don’t want to know, because I got no work experience. It’s that I’m getting older now. I’m 58 this year. I got four children. I can’t give my kids money. I’m on the dole and that. It’s about £72 a week. About £144 a fortnight. You can’t do anything. You know what I mean. You can’t have a night out, or even go down the pub. So, you know. What can you do.” Continue reading →

Video and report from today: #FocusE15 mothers reopen boarded-up Carpenters’ estate flats

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Update 27 September:

Big day yesterday. To begin with, the council turned up at the Carpenter’s estate to turn off the water at the occupied flats. Jasmin Stone told me that she was sworn at when she asked why people were there to cut the water:

“We just asked them what was happening and the response we got was “don’t fucking record me or I’ll smash your camera on the floor.”

I’d ask the council for a comment on that, except that the council has refused to talk to me since the start of this year. Suffice to say for now that those of us who’ve spent time with this campaign have come to expect aggression and a not-so-latent misogyny from those who oppose it. There has been something nasty and unnecessarily confrontational about the council response from the start. I’ve often wondered why the council and its PR advisers didn’t make a better attempt to work with the women, at least at various junctures in their campaign. It would have been smart, for instance, for a councillor or two to have accompanied the women when they took a petition for social housing to Boris Johnson earlier this year. There have been chances like that which a Labour council might just have taken.

That hasn’t happened and it’s hard not to conclude that the council made a mistake by not opening things up for discussion, rather than trying to close them down. The women told me months ago that Robin Wales told them he was annoyed at their campaign. I saw that fury again earlier this year (here on video) when the council rushed from a council meeting to avoid the women and again when Wales rushed from me to avoid questions about his attendance at a property fair in Cannes. The upshot of all this is that the council now has a problem. People all over the country are watching this campaign and responding with enthusiasm. As Jasmin told me yesterday – people starting donating bottles of water as soon as news of the water being cut started to circulate on social media. I noticed a man distributing further bottles of water outside the court yesterday, too. As I said yesterday on twitter, I’m starting to get the feeling that half of Newham has been waiting for the chance to subvert Newham council. Chickens do come home to roost. I’ve spoken to residents on the Carpenter’s estate, as you can read below, and noted their enthusiasm for the campaign. They are not securely housed themselves.

As for the council’s botched attempt to fast-track an eviction yesterday – well, we all know what happened there. I spoke to Ravi Naik, one of the attending lawyers, who said:

“We were only instructed about an hour before the hearing so I had to rush to get there.

“The Council had made an application for an interim possession order – which means asking for possession of the building which would have had the effect of ending the protest. For this to be lawful, they have to give three days’ notice to the group. Obviously, the group would want to have that time to consider the position and properly defend themselves. The council wanted to shorten that time period to two hours – that’s from three days to two hours. This would have undermined any hope of legal representation.

We made the point to the judge that we’ve got all these complex legal arguments, but we haven’t had any chance to consider them with the group or look at the Council’s evidence; we only met the clients about an hour before. We didn’t have any chance to consider this with the group. The judge agreed with our position. In the rules governing civil procedure, the key rule is the Overriding Objective. This means that cases must be considered justly and fairly. The judge said that there was no chance that this case could be considered justly and fairly in the circumstances. I don’t think they expected the group to put together a legal team so quickly.”

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Update 23 September: more perfectly serviceable flats on the Carpenters’ estate:

This is a video I took a couple of weeks ago of another of the flats in the Carpenters’ estate tower block. The film is a little jumpy as I couldn’t see what I was doing – had to stick my hand with the phone camera under one of the metal security doors to film this. I believe this is one of the flats used by the media during the Olympics. Would ask the council about this to confirm, except that the council refuses to talk to me. Boo. Anyway – again, you can see these are of a good standard. There’s a video of another of these flats at the end of this post.

Another update: September 23 2014 – the many people in Newham who are struggling for housing:

Every week at their Saturday stall on the Stratford Broadway, the Focus E15 mothers have asked local people to write their own housing stories on sheets that the women taped to the pavement.

The Focus E5 women have collected all sorts of stories about people’s housing problems this way. It’s been interesting to see. There are a lot of sheets and a lot of stories. This is one of the reasons why the Focus E15 campaign for housing is so significant – and the reason that Newham Labour can’t ignore the campaign, even though it is trying very hard to right now, as the women continue their occupation of the Carpenters’ estate. A great many people have housing problems – they’re stuck in B&Bs, or temporary housing, or in the private sector where they can barely afford the rent. Those people and those problems won’t go away, even if Newham council does ultimately decide to drag the Focus E15 women out of the flats they are occupying. (Mayor Robin Wales is speaking at a Labour party fringe meeting on winning back “left behind” voters tonight, which is hilarious. When you read the comments on the sheets, you get the feeling he’s left quite a few voters behind).

You can see some of the comments people have written on the sheets in the pictures below (click on the images for a bigger pic):

“Single mum in B&B – for three years with my children.”

“Private landlord threw all my daughter’s clothes and furniture in a skip.”

Landlord_throws_Daughter_out

“The council sent me to temporary accommodation in Barking. It was so disgusting with mice running around. I was there with my children for two years. The council did not listen to us. My children had to travel far every day back to Newham.”

“I live in a  house with 10 people and only one toilet. I pay £500pm.”

flat_in_barking

On it goes.

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Update to beat all updates September 23 2014 (h-t Clifford Singer): Can Robin Wales – mayor of a borough where young homeless women who’ve been fighting him for housing all year are occupying abandoned flats – REALLY be speaking tonight at a Labour party conference fringe on “bringing insights on community organising and movement building?” What – is he going to talk about the Focus E15 campaign that has wrongfooted him at every turn? Will he show this video – the one where he spat the dummy at one of the Focus E15 mothers (an action for which he now finds himself the subject of an official complaint)? Don’t often say this sort of thing – but that’s a Labour party fringe event I wouldn’t mind attending.

Update September 22: were these abandoned flats originally adapted and made accessible?

I went back to the Carpenters’ estate this morning. On the ground floor of the building that the Focus E15 mothers have moved into, I found these abandoned flats. They have been left to rot. One of them looked like an accessible flat to me – it had ground floor access with an adapted wet-room bathroom. There’s such a shortage of accessible flats in London. Leaving an adapted place to decay does seem criminal. Pretty sure you can still see a bottle on the floor.

wet room shower

I also talked to several of the other estate residents this time – people who’ve been living at the estate for a while. A few residents visited the Focus E15 mothers in their reopened and occupied flats last night. There’s concern among residents about being identified and targeted by the council – but not about the occupation itself, it seems, at least among the people I spoke with. I spoke to four people and they seemed sympathetic to the Focus E15 fight for homes. That surprised me and didn’t surprise me. Not everyone likes an occupation, or a confrontation with council, but a lot of people can relate to a battle for housing.

Said one of the women I spoke to (she’s lived on the Carpenters’ estate for nearly 20 years):

“They [the Focus E15 mothers] should stay. We don’t mind them here at all. They have to stay longer to make it work, though. Tell them don’t do it for a couple of days and then go. Keep it going. I haven’t got a problem with them putting young mums there. Young mums got to have a place.

“I been here for nearly 20 years. It used to be lovely, with all the kids running round on that grass. But then, people moved out and they didn’t move anyone in. That’s all boarded up there. See, I will show you this place here [she walked me up a small path to another home which was sealed with a metal security door]. That has been closed up now for five years. But you don’t want to say anything. You don’t know now how long your tenancy is going to last now. It never used to be like that. It’s in the last few years.

“That’s a housing officer walking around here (she pointed out a woman walking around with papers and a small bag).

“You’ve not got a problem with that [occupation and banners], have you?” she said to another woman who emerged from her flat then.

“Nah,” the second woman said. “It’s for the right reasons. They’re doing it for the right reasons. People do need homes. The council say they haven’t got any homes, but they have.”

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Original post:

Back to Newham today – where the women of the Focus E15 mothers’ social housing campaign took the admirable step of reopening some of the long-boarded-up flats on the Carpenters’ estate. I hope news of this move has reached those Labour councillors and MPs who are all tucked up nice and warm at conference in Manchester.

Video: entering the flats and being welcomed by the Focus E15 campaigners:

The Focus E15 mothers have been fighting for social housing for a year. Newham council was planning to send them out of London to live, but pulled back from that idea when the women complained and campaigned. The women were placed in private tenancies for a year – but those tenancies will end soon. That will leave the women again with nowhere to live. Meanwhile, the Carpenters’ estate sits, partially abandoned and empty, next to Stratford station, with boarded-up flats all over. Newham council’s housing waiting list is 24,000. The women decided that flats shouldn’t be shut off when so many people are homeless, or struggling to find a decent place to live. This is a borough which likes to slap Asbo warnings on rough sleepers let’s not forget. So, the women arranged for a block on the Carpenters’ estate to be opened. They plan to stay for at least a couple of weeks.

And look at the flats they found inside the estate. I was a little shocked and surprised myself when I saw the flats. They looked pretty good. They certainly looked perfectly serviceable. I’d happily move into one myself. They’re carpeted, clean and the second one in particular looked as though it had a new kitchen. How can it be that Stratford’s homeless people are left to sleep in the Stratford centre, or run out of town entirely, when these places exist right next to Stratford station? How can it be that young women are told there’s no room for them and their children in Newham? I’ve asked the council about its plans for the estate – but no answer, alas. That council refuses to talk to me.

Carpenters' Estate new flats

kitchen

Bedroom

There will be mealy-mouthed statements about safety, planning, new builds and homes for all from the council, but the truth is that there is no justification for empty homes when so many people are homeless. It really is as simple as that. When it comes down to it, who’d rather live outside in winter than inside one of these places? The women are right to raise this issue and to force this issue.

Here’s Focus E15 Mother Sam Middleton explaining why she decided to take part in this operation and why she’ll stay in the Carpenters’ estate for a while.

“We know that if there’s the Carpenters’ estate then there’s loads of other estates out there like this. We thought – do you know what? There’s too many boardedup places and they need people to live in. If you look around today, you can see that the flats are liveable. So why not get families in and do what’s right?”

Indeed.

An unmarked car full of coppers began circling at about 5pm. I went over to ask them if they planned to “do” anything. “We’re just keeping an eye on things,” they told me. “Who are you?” Then, they asked me what “they” (the people who were occupying the flat) had inside the flats. I told them that the occupiers had found a bunch of nice flats that should be lived in. As they have.

I also spoke to one of the Carpenters’ estate residents. He wanted to go inside the reopened flats to see how the flats looked. He said he was worried about getting into trouble with the council, though, and so decided against going in.

Inside the flats: sitting room

Sitting Room

Kitchen:

Kitchen

Bathroom:

Bathrooms

This is a video I took several weeks ago inside the tower block at the estate. It’s jumpy, because I had to shove my phone under the boarded-up door of the empty flat I filmed here to get pictures. You can see that the flat is in pretty good condition, though. It’s empty, though.

Local people were ignored – why an 83-year-old man is occupying a carehome & why politics is losing everybody

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Update 24 September 3pm: Just spoke to Michelle Robson, who is 84-year-old Don Robson’s daughter-in-law. Don is an 84-year-old ex-headteacher who has been occupying the Newtown house carehome in Durham since last Thursday in protest at Durham council’s plans to close the carehome (see posts and interviews below). Apparently, council security at Don’s 84th birthday party at the occupied Newtown house carehome is heavy – see the 23 September update post below for more on the warning letter about security for the party that Durham County Council sent the family yesterday. There are six – SIX – bouncers from a private security firm present. Michelle says Don’s great granddaughter and daughter were denied entry to the party. She also said that the council was trying to stop local press from covering the story now. Don and his family are due to be evicted from their occupation at 6pm. “It’s a fine day when upstanding people like ourselves have to do this to make our point,” Michelle just told me (there’s a long interview with her on the reasons for this occupation at the end of this post). She had heard about the Focus E15 occupation of the Carpenters’ estate and sent greetings to the Focus E15 campaigners. “Tell those ladies I’m with them in spirit.” I’m thinking that Durham county council is with Newham council in spirit…they don’t want campaigners and occupiers and people protesting at service and support cuts in their neck of the woods. If this is Labour reaching out to people, they may need to refine their approach.

Update 23 September: Well. I suspect that fear of a Focus E15-type occupation has spread north. Mr Robson’s family have received a letter from Durham county council which places very tight restrictions on his planned 84th-birthday celebrations tomorrow AND gives him his marching orders. The letter, which I’ve reproduced below and will post a copy of tomorrow (posted below now), says his occupation must end after his birthday party tomorrow and that the council expects him out. Don Robson and his daughter-in-law Michelle have been occupying the Newtown house carehome in Durham since last Thursday in protest at council plans to close it. You can read about that and an interview with Michelle after this transcript of the letter:

The letter from the council:

“I write to confirm that Durham County Counciil are prepared to consent to a birthday celebration being held for Mr Robson at Newtown House on 24 September 2014 between the hours of 12 noon and 6pm.

Since you spoke, however, we have been made aware that the party has been publicised in local, national and social media. This causes us to have serious concerns as to the management of the party and accordingly, we believe it is necessary for us to make our consent to the party conditional upon the following:

– No more than 15 people shall be permitted entry at any time to Newtown House for the purpose of celebrating Mr Robson’s birthday.
– The council consents to you inviting press to attend the party. However, please note that the restriction on numbers covers all attendees, whether press, family or other persons.
– The party will take place in a lounge to be designated by DCC staff.
– You are responsible for ensuring that no damage is caused to the property by the visitors.
– You are responsible for cleaning up after the party.

Please note that the council will be providing security personnel to protect its staff and property. Should these conditions not be complied with, the security personnel will be authorised to bring the party to an end.

For the avoidance of doubt, the council does not consent to your occupation of Newtown house beyond 24 September 2014 and reserves the right to deal with your unlawful occupation after the party if you don’t leave at that point.”

Well.

DurhamPartyLetter

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September 21 – this occupation is still going on…

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Original post

So… while everyone is talking political upheaval and inclusive constitutions and disillusion with the left and the right and the Westminster elite – an 83-year-old Durham man called Don Robson is occupying the Newtown House carehome in rural Stanhope with his daughter-in-law Michelle. The two have decided to sit in to protest at a Durham county council decision to close Newtown House. They’ve been there since Thursday. They are still there today. Don is the last resident left at Newtown house.

Don has lived in Newtown house for about 21 months. He was supposed to leave on Thursday, but has not. Michelle and her husband received a letter from the council saying that they had to find Don another place to live by 18 September. Michelle says their plan is to stay at Newtown house until Wednesday next week at least, which is Don’s birthday, and for an occupation of Newtown house to continue after that. Don will celebrate his 84th birthday on Wednesday. Michelle told me that they’ll hold a party for Don at Newtown house: “we want to celebrate that big-style with the community and get people to come here and have a party for him. That’s the plan.”

The ultimate plan is for Don to move in with Michelle and her husband. They’ve prepared a room for him in their home. Michelle says that is their only option. The next-nearest and most appropriate carehome for Don is a 50-mile round-trip from her home. That’s no good: Michelle and her husband like to visit Don daily, but they won’t be able to if each visit involves a 50-mile round-trip. The council told local ITV news that it couldn’t afford to keep Newtown house open.

Michelle says that the council is going ahead with the closure, because it is a Labour council and wants to be in a position to blame cuts “on the coalition government.” She says “the majority of opinions voiced over the closure were in favour of keeping Newtown house,” but that local people were ignored.

I’ve heard that sentence an awful lot over the last few years from disgruntled people around the country: “local people were ignored.” So. This is where loathing of politicians comes from, people. This is how it starts. It starts when local people who are trying to hang onto a much-admired neighbourhood service are loftily informed by their local councillors that the service is surplus to requirements and that’s the end of the story. I suspect that the political class thought it would get away with dismissing locals of all political stripes in this way forever. I wonder if the political class feels a little differently about that after the scare its main parties had in Scotland. An elderly man sitting in at a carehome is an interesting event. In its way, it is as relevant as the independence debate in Scotland has been. People get tired of hearing that they don’t count. They really do. Continue reading →

83-year-old resident occupies Newtown House carehome in Durham

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As the BBC is reporting today:

An occupation of Durham County Council’s last remaining care home, Newtown House, Stanhope, is underway. The carehome is being occupied by the final remaining resident, Don Robson, who is 83, and his daughter in law, Michelle Robson. The occupation began today at 12pm. And they’re still there.

Michelle Robson said:
“Don and I are occupying Newtown House today because we feel we have been left with no choice and believe the wider public need to know how badly residents and their families have been treated by Durham County Council.

“We have campaigned tirelessly for over a year to stop the council from closing Newtown House and are absolutely appalled by the way the closure decision has been reached.

“We believe the removal of residential care is not only a gross dereliction of Durham County Council’s responsibilities, but also a massive kick in the teeth to the rural community of Weardale.

“Don and the other residents have been abandoned and it’s beyond disgraceful that elderly people are being forced out of their homes with no real alternative in place.

Our action today is not a publicity stunt and has a huge amount of support not only from the local community, but also on a national level, as others are also fighting similar closures.

“We will not allow Don to be treated in this way and ultimately it will mean that we will have to care for Don in our own home. We don’t know how we will manage but we will not put Don through any more distress. It’s unacceptable and he deserves better. Continue reading →

Your Choice Barnet careworkers: managers slaughter our wages and then just leave

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Photo from Barnet Unison

Barnet and Doncaster careworkers on strike this week. Doncaster careworkers want to be returned to the NHS (their service was outsourced to Care UK). Barnet careworkers want to work for the council again (their service was outsourced to a trading company) Photo from Barnet Unison.

Update 14 September 2014:

Your Choice Barnet careworkers will be lobbying Barnet council outside Hendon town hall from 6pm to 7pm tomorrow, as councillors meet to discuss further privatisation of services. It is testimony to Barnet council’s joke status that it can discuss further outsourcing – apparently in all seriousness – at exactly the moment that the council’s already-outsourced Your Choice careworkers take strike action in protest at the the effects privatisation have had on services for disabled people and staff working conditions. Their fight is discussed in this post below.

The careworkers will also take tomorrow night’s lobby as a chance to make known their feelings about Your Choice Barnet chief executive Tracey Lees. Lees implied last week that the workers who took strike action last week were disloyal to service users, and not committed to their jobs – for all the world as though already-low-paid workers take strike action without a second thought. No matter that those careworkers are trying to protect staff-to-service-user-ratios and the whole service generally from the cuts that will put services for disabled adults in Barnet in the danger zone. No matter that they risk their own jobs and incomes to do that.

Your Choice Barnet careworkers’ lobby and strikes to defend careworkers and services for disabled adults this week:

Monday 15 September 2014 lobby outside Hendon Town Hall 6 – 7 pm

Wednesday 17 September 2014 Strike action, picket lines at Flower lane, Rosa Morrison, Community Space, start 7.30 am.

Thursday 18 September 2014 Strike action, picket lines at Flower lane, Rosa Morrison, Community Space, start 7.30 am.

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Original post – striking Your Choice Barnet careworkers speak:

By total coincidence, one of the people Your Choice Barnet careworkers met this week when they were in Mill Hill handing out leaflets about their strike action was an agency careworker. He was incensed about his own pay and working conditions, to say the very least. He stopped to take a leaflet and he really let fly.

He had trouble with his housing benefit, I think – it sounded like a miscalculation and overpayments problem.

Anyway – Nigel Farage will be the beneficiary of this man’s experience. “I’m going to vote UKIP,” this careworker said furiously. Everyone other politician was useless as far as this man was concerned. He had a point. Nobody would help him. His pay was so low and his costs were so high that he wasn’t sure he could stay in his home. “I earn £102 a week. It’s about 15 hours a week at £7 an hour. Barnet council say I’m earning too much for them to pay my £300 rent. They’ve given me £58 a week and they’ve stopped me £15 week on top of that, because they say that they’ve been overpaying me since March. So, I’m living on £42 a week. I went to spoke to my MP – the Conservative Finchley MP. He had a look at the letters and he said “there’s nothing I can do. That’s the rules. I’m living on £42 a week. ”

So.

The YCB strikers I was with had some sympathy for this bloke, as well they might. Their situation is dire too.

Two years ago, the support and day services they provide for disabled people were moved from the council into Your Choice Barnet, part of the Barnet Group trading company which the council seemed to think should and would make large profits (out of disabled people and their support funds).

This hope was built on sand, of course. The promised Your Choice profits never came to pass. About a year after its glorious launch, Your Choice Barnet management began to bleat about debt and to claim that the only way to make the business “competitive” was to cut careworkers’ wages and staff numbers.

The company duly set about a very unpopular restructure, with predictable results. Staff left, or were made redundant, and the rest are still fighting to hang onto their jobs and already-small wages. Barnet Unison says that about 145 full time equivalent staff were transferred from adult services to the trading company in 2012. After the “restructure” last year and cuts to shift allowance pay, only about 105 FTE staff are in place now – a 30% cut in staffing levels.

Now, careworkers are trying to make Your Choice Barnet management to overturn a 9.5% wage cut which was imposed on them (on the careworkers, that is) in April this year. Careworkers report wage cuts between £100 and £250 a month. That’s why they took two days’ strike action this and why next week, they’re taking more. They want the service to be taken back inhouse by the council. Meanwhile, Andrew Travers, Barnet council’s amazingly crass chief executive, has been turning out on twitter to brag about the opportunities the Barnet Group offer for growth – even as careworkers at the company prepared to strike. Brilliant. I guess was can expect that Travers will restore the careworkers’ lost wages and jobs if that growth transpires. Very big If there, of course.

Anyway. Here are two transcripts from interviews I did with Your Choice Barnet careworkers this week as they took their first two days of strike action in this round. They describe their worries about low staff-to-client ratios, the problems presented at places that are increasingly staffed with low-paid, inexperienced agency workers and how it feels to lose a couple of hundred quid a month when you’ve got a mortgage or rent to pay, and you’ve given more than ten years to a job and have acquired a great deal of experience. This is the world of care and support work. You’re on low pay and you know that it will just keep getting lower unless you fight hard.

And just btw – if Your Choice Barnet doesn’t like any of this – tough shit. That company can let me come in for a couple of weeks to see how things are working out in these services. Transparency around the issues raised by these struggling careworkers would be useful. The last time I saw members of that company’s board, they were running out of a meeting to avoid Your Choice Barnet service users and their families who were furious about YCB’s proposed staff and wage cuts. You can see that action here.

Celia* (name changed). Has been working as a Barnet careworker for 13 years. Now a support worker for adults with autism.

“Our service is for adults with autism. We have people who have one-to-one support and two-to-one support as well. We have a daycentre with inhouse activities and computer sessions, sensory activities, lots of activities in the community. I work 36 hours a week.

“The [9.5%] pay cut started off this year with a consultation period. But when we were moved from Barnet council to the Your Choice Barnet [company in 2012], we were told that [our wages and conditions] were going to be safe. A couple of years ago, we were told that we were going to be safe. Then a year later, they came back and said that they were running the business at a loss. They said they need to make cuts to make savings – 400k. That’s a lot of wages. Continue reading →

Prat CE boasts about “opportunities” for private care company – as that company’s careworkers prepare to strike against wage cuts

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Update 9 September:

The Barnet careworkers continue their strike in protest at pay cuts today. There will be a rally outside Barnet House at 1pm: 1255 High Road, London N20 0EJ.

Update 7 September:

The Barnet careworkers who work for the private care company about which useless Barnet Council CE Andrew Travers boasts in the report below are on strike tomorrow. The careworkers’ jobs – all provide support services for disabled people – were outsourced to a now-famously-failed, profit-focused organisation called Your Choice Barnet in 2012. Over the next few weeks, the careworkers will take action in protest at a near-ten-percent pay cut, redundancies, Your Choice Barnet’s failed business model and management’s insistence that Your Choice Barnet will only become competitive if careworkers work for almost nothing in dangerously understaffed circumstances.

Details for the next two days’ pickets and strike action are:

Monday 8 September 2014 strike action, picket lines at Flower lane, Rosa Morrison, Community Space, start 7.30am onwards.

Tuesday 9 September 2014 strike action, picket lines at Flower lane, Rosa Morrison, Community Space, start 7.30 am onwards.

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Original post 3 September 2014:

Early days I know, but I’m calling it: Barnet Council chief executive Andrew Travers has sent September 2014’s twattiest and most disingenuous CE tweet.

Yesterday, Travers tweeted a picture of a group of people watching a Barnet worthy give a presentation.

Travers’ tweet: “Staff briefing to the Barnet Group sets out opportunities for growth.”

That tweet implied very strongly that there were and are opportunities for growth at the Barnet Group. Unfortunately, Travers’ tweet neglected to mention a key part of the picture: that growth at this Group comes at the expense of careworkers and disabled people, and that the Group’s attacks on already low-paid careworkers’ wages and conditions have been so severe that careworkers will start strike action on Monday September 8. Travers’ timeline has been very quiet on that bit. I’ve been watching his feed for redress on this point, but so far – none.

The Barnet Group is parent company to Your Choice Barnet, a part of the profit-driven Group local authority trading company to which Barnet Council services for people with physical and learning difficulties were outsourced in 2012.

That outsourcing was presented to the public on a very big pile of marketing horseshit: the council claimed that the trading company would return mighty profits and that disabled people from all over would abandon their own local services and pay good money to travel absolute miles in the rain, etc, to participate in Barnet’s.

It was clear to anyone who thought about it for even two minutes that this “concept” was a complete non-starter. I’ve read a lot of council bollocks in my time, but the so-called business plan for Your Choice Barnet really took the biscuit. John Sullivan, the father of a Barnet woman who uses those services, described the whole notion to me as “mental masturbation.” It’s still hard to think of a better description.

The council business case was full of utterly unsubstantiated claims about profit opportunities and possible markets. In a report for Barnet Unison at the time, the academic and outsourcing expert Dexter Whitfield observed that there was “no assurance provided on the quality or reliability of data and assumptions used,” in the council’s business plan. He also noted that “ethical and moral issues concerning why adult services should be expected to have such high level of profitability are absent from the business case and the report to cabinet.” He wondered, in other words, why a company should be looking to make big money out of disabled people and why the council didn’t want to discuss that. It really is priceless stuff, this council business planning for the care sector. Basically, it involves sitting round in a boardroom and pulling random numbers out of your arse. Then you tell experienced careworkers that £7 an hour or whatever is reasonable money – for them, that is – and that they can live without weekend enhancement pay and decent sick leave. You do that sort of thing for a bit and then tweet about upcoming management triumphs. Brilliant.

Needless to say, the promised Your Choice profits never came to pass. Disabled people did not descend on Barnet in their masses to pay for and participate in Barnet services for disabled people. A year ago, the company resurfaced to bleat about debt and claim that the only way to claw money back was to cut careworkers’ wages and staff numbers. That has hit the services, all right. Barnet Unison says that about 145 full time equivalent staff were transferred from adult services to the trading company in 2012. After the “restructure” last year and cuts to shift allowance pay, only about 105 FTE staff are in place now – a 30% cut in staffing levels.

On Monday and Tuesday next week, those careworkers begin strike action against a 9.5% pay cut. They plan to meet up on Tuesday with the striking Doncaster careworkers too. This is an interesting and important point. The Doncaster careworkers, who were recently transferred from the NHS to the private company CareUK, have been striking for weeks in protest at CareUK’s cuts to their pay and conditions. They can’t live on that money and have already had to give up their homes. That fight has started to generate a lot of mainstream publicity. People are beginning to understand that careworkers are at the front of a battle for wages that people can actually live on. They are beginning to understand that these private companies make money by paying their workers almost nothing. If careworkers from different parts of the country are meeting up to join forces – well, that will give Andrew Travers something to tweet about all right. And if he can’t manage it, I certainly will. Monday and Tuesday next week, comrades. See you there.