My week ahead, 12 - 17 October 2015

Monday 12 October, 4pm – Culture Portfolio meeting

6pm – Labour campaigning 

Tuesday 13 October, 5pm – Early Warning Group

Wednesday 14 October, 5pm – Housing Working Group

Saturday 17 October, 10am – Labour campaigning in East Ipswich

My first meeting as a substitute of the Housing Working Group this week, I have a big interest in housing – and know we have a major issue with the lack of housing in this country. Of course the Tories and Mr Cameron are going to solve it! Starter homes for £250,000!! The only people happy about that will be the house builders and developers who will make even more money, but who can afford quarter of a million for a starter home? My two daughters are both trying to get on the housing ladder , my oldest has a house in Ipswich with a mortgage but my youngest who is a teacher in London struggles just to pay the rent on a one bedroom flat – and she is a lucky one as she has a job.

The Tories just don’t understand the issues that concern residents – we were hoping to help over 2,000 families in Ipswich with their fuel bills by installing solar panels on their council homes (and do our bit to help save the planet) but the Tories pulled the rug from underneath us with the cuts to the feed in tariffs.  More concerning was that Ben Gummer and Tory leader Nadia Cenci both agreed with the Government decision that has seen these residents lose the chance to get solar panels.

With his re-election Mr Gummer seems to have become even more distant from his constituents, we cant all afford two homes – one in London and one in Ipswich (if he has a home in Ipswich?) subsidised by the taxpayer. Those solar panels could have helped residents with their fuel bills and made life a bit easier for them. People are struggling and any help we can give them we should. Bus as the Ipswich Tory leader indicated this weekend that she does not believe there is any poverty in the UK it is no surprise that they are not bothered about helping others.

To help us all remember Aaron McClure

This week on the Whitehouse Estate in North West Ipswich, the Borough Council asked Lorraine McClure the mother of Aaron to join the Ipswich Mayor in breaking the first ground in McClure Way.

This is a small development that will see much needed council houses built in the west of the town. The Ipswich Labour party promised residents that we would build new council homes and we have kept that promise.

But what is so special about McClure Way is that it is named after a local Whitehouse boy, Aaron McClure who lost his life in Afghanistan whilst serving with our local regiment the Royal Anglians.

I was honoured to be able to help the council and the family join together to get a road named after 'our' own brave soldier from Ipswich.

This will now be a permanent memorial to Aaron, one close to where he lived, it will help his family, his friends, his regiment and the people of Ipswich to remember this brave young man.

My week ahead, 23 - 29 March 2015

Monday 23 March, 4pm – Culture Portfolio meeting
6pm – Labour Group campaigning

Tuesday 24 March, 10am – Ulster Avenue, start of building council houses,

Wednesday 25 March, 6pm - Labour Group campaigning

Friday 27 March, 7pm – ‘Flying Start’ – launch of ‘short’ campaign to elect a Labour MP for Ipswich

Saturday 28 March, 10am – Labour Campaigning – SE Ipswich

Sunday 29 March, 11am – Labour Campaigning – SW Ipswich

More ‘Hard Pounding’ last week and more next week but council work still continues, and had a great visit last week to Holywells Park (a ‘must visit’ for all Ipswich residents this Summer) and this week i have a visit Tuesday that I have been looking forward to for a long time.

Labour run Ipswich Borough will start building council houses next to Ulster Avenue, that is a moment worth celebrating on its own but this Tuesday it will be even more memorable as the new street of houses is to be named after Aaron McClure - Aaron lived round the corner but lost his life in Afghanistan in 2007 whilst serving with our local regiment, the Royal Anglians.

I am proud to have been involved in having this street names after Aaron and it will be an honour to be there on Tuesday when Lorraine McClure ‘breaks the first ground’ to commence the building of much needed council houses in this part of the town.

Young families in Ipswich let down by Tories, Ben Gummer and Nadia Cenci

A number of Tory supporting commentators often mention that the last Tory/Lib Dem administration managed to build more homes than our current Labour run council. But the same commentators fail to mention that it is difficult to build homes when both the Ipswich Tories and Lib Dems are prepared to play the Nimby card and oppose any house building all in the hope of gaining a few cheap votes at the election in May.

Last week we found out that Eric Pickles has ‘called in’ our decision to build 94 new homes on Ravenswood (after being asked to by Ben Gummer). There is no doubt in my mind that this has been done just to try and gain a few votes from residents that were unhappy that council houses were to be built close to their current homes. Interesting that a further planning application from a private developer to build homes at Ravenswood that came to planning committee a few weeks later flew through planning with no objections from local residents and full support from the same Tory and Lib Dem councillors who were so vocal against the planning application from our own council.

Our Tory MP, Mr Gummer and the Tory leader – Nadia Cenci have badly let down the many young families in Ipswich who are in desperate need of new house in the town. Their behaviour has been disgraceful in my eyes and hypocritical as they seemed to have no issue with private homes on Ravenswood or an even bigger council house building scheme on the ‘other’ side of Nacton Road. Ipswich residents need to be informed that their Tory MP supported by Tory councillors are prepared to dash the hopes of a new home for many young families – just because those house would be council owned! Both Ben Gummer and Nadia Cenci should be ashamed that they were willing to campaign against a much needed development because they were not the sort of house that neighbouring residents wanted’ as one resident commented – having a council estate next to their home would see their house devalued! So the local Tories are willing to support short term greed over the hopes and dreams of many other residents?

I am not sure I have ever been so angry by the behaviour of our Tory MP and Tory councillors – Ipswich residents need to know why they have done this – cheap votes! The Lib Dems support of the Tory opposition also shows that in Ipswich they are just yellow Tories and have given up any real ‘liberal’ thoughts.

Here are some points about the planned Ravenswood development – all that seem to indicate how much this was just a decision based on supporting the few in order to gain their votes.

“Ravenswood UVW” is 94 homes out of a total development of 1,300 homes

When looking at the objections made to the development:

• There was no argument about the principle of building houses
• There was no argument about the number of houses
• There was no argument about the design of the houses
• There was no argument about the number of affordable houses
• The sole difference is whether 20 properties should be rented or shared ownership

The Council’s planning application was for:

• 24 shared ownership
• 68 affordable rent
• 2 social rent

A counter proposal put forward by objectors which Ben Gummer backed suggested:

• 44 shared ownership (+20)
• 48 affordable rent (-20)
• 2 social rent

£1.5m of Homes and Communities Agency funding for the scheme is at risk. HCA is an ”executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the DCLG – the same department calling in the application.
£300,000 in abortive work will have been wasted if we are forced to cancel the scheme.

Jobs in the construction industry will be at risk if the scheme does not go ahead.

The homes were specifically weighted towards smaller one and two bed roomed properties to help people hit by the Bedroom Tax who are unable to move.

Ben Gummer made no objection to the larger scheme at Bader Close of 108 council houses for rent. In fact he took Oliver Letwin there to try to claim credit for it. He has used this photo in recent election leaflets.

Comment:

The behaviour of Mr Gummer in my opinion has been nothing short of disgraceful and I am sure when (and if ) he knocks on doors in Gainsborough, Chantry and on the Racecourse Estate he will not be mentioning that he has stopped the council building much needed council houses!

My week ahead 4 - 10 February 2013

Monday 4 February, 6pm – Labour campaigning

Thursday 31 January, 6pm –Ipswich Area Committee Chairs meeting
7pm – Councillor training

Saturday 2 February, 10.30am – Labour campaigning in South West Ipswich

The two main events this week were Full Council on Wednesday followed by the North East Area Committee meeting on the Thursday. Full Council was the first with Chris Stewart as the new Tory leader and it was not the most auspicious of starts for him. The questions from the Tory group were both poorly researched and seemed opposite to his first statement s Tory leader when he stated that “I would not be opposing everything for the sake of it. We need to choose which issues to fight on.”

In the end it was left to the former Tory leader Councillor Carnall to attempt to save the car crash of Tory questioning from his new seat on the back bench.

Maybe one of the first things Cllr Stewart will need to do is to get his front bench to research their shadow portfolios. It was obvious from the question that Cllr Pope asked and then his comments on the proposed council rate rise that he does not have a strong understanding of the housing portfolio, a worry when he used to be the Tory Housing Portfolio holder. On two occasions he mentioned that tenants were being let down as IBC do not visit each house each year, what Labour have decided is to concentrate on working with tenants whose homes are felt to below the required standard. I then had to inform Cllr Pope that the frequency of visits and the change in inspections had been fully discussed at the Area Housing Panels, meetings attended by Officers, councillors and tenants. Before I could finish Cllr Pope was on his feet to say that the meetings were for administration councillors only - so it quickly became obvious that he did not know that Cllr Debman is the Tory member on the panel – then again both Cllr Debman and the Lib Dem Cllr Ken Bates have failed to attend the last three meetings of the East Housing panel. At least Cllr Bates sent in his apologies! So if Cllr Debman had attended and then briefed Cllr Pope we maybe would have had a question that challenged our running of social housing in the town rather than yet another example of the lack of Tory knowledge or interest in council housing in Ipswich.

Then we had Cllr Stroet talk about the lack of help we have given to small businesses in Fore Street, seeming to forget both the Fore Street market that we put on and the help we have given to over 100 small forms in the town that has enabled them to claim business rate relief (strange he had forgot this as six days earlier he had joined other members of the scrutiny committee in thanking officers for the work they had done on this project)
So Cllr Stewart may need to control some of his front bench or at least get them to do their homework before the next council meeting.

Thursday was a much more pleasant meeting and away from the slightly partisan arena of the council chamber, Cllr Pope and Stroet willingly contributed to a successful North East Area Committee.

At our second ever meeting of the area committee, a number of residents from Orwell Road had attended, lobbied and spoke about traffic measures they believed were needed to make their roads safer and on Thursday the committee unanimously voted for an experimental traffic order to place on Orwell Rd for 18 months. After the decision was made the room gave the residents a round of applause in recognition of all their hard work. We also heard the latest updates from another local resident in his campaign to improve one of the local parks, another scheme that is being supported by the area committee.

Tories call Ipswich a 'poor' town

Yesterday we had the last Full Ipswich Borough Council meeting of the year, as in previous meetings we had further questions on the wind turbines proposed for an area South west of Ipswich but not surprisingly the Ipswich Tories or Lib Dems were less keen to ask questions, knowing that the answers would highlight their involvement in the original deal to being turbines to the town.

The main focus of the meeting should have been the two motions that were to be debated, the first was one put forward by Labour to support the fight to save the Postal Sorting Office in Commercial Road. The Tories (no surprise) put forward an amendment, what was surprising was that their amendment did not include the name of Ben Gummer the local Tory MP.

Much of what Cllr Carnall proposedin his amendment was very acceptable to all and you wonder why he did not discuss it with the administration first, but he seemed to prefer to score some cheap political point. The good news was that a newly worded motion was agreed and that it gained unanimous support. Wonder why the Tories did not include Ben Gummers name in their amendment? Possibly because in his local paper column he seems happy for the market to decide if a sorting office is needed in Ipswich. The very opposite to when he was trying to win the Ipswich seat, then it was petitions in the town and sacks of signatures placed outside Number 10 when fighting to save a local Post office, don’t hold your breath if you expect Gummer and local Tories to be collecting signatures on the Cornhill this Saturday to save the Sorting Office.

The Tory motion was centered around the Ipswich Labour plan to start building council houses, the Tories wanted us to write a letter to the Housing Minister to thank them for the changes to housing revenue that have enabled us to start building again. What the Tories forgot was that changes to Housing Revenue had been started under the Labour Government and was just one of the very few plans from the previous government that the Tories and Lib Dems had not scrapped. It does seem strange to hear Tory councilors attempt to lecture us on social housing. Of course Ben Gummer our MP thought it was better that the new housing we were building should be run by a Housing association rather than the council, not even sure many Tory councilors would agree with him on that point.

The other main issue of the meeting was the Council Tax Support Localisation report being presented by Cllr Martin Cook – which included the effects on those in receipt of Council Tax benefit. A conservative estimate is that the changes will effect up to 9,000 families in Ipswich. So there would be less money coming to the town. Well that is what most people thought but we had Tory Cllrs queuing to say how much better the new scheme will be. Cllr Stewart even declared that we would be better off financially in the long run! Cllr Cenci also had her usual pop at those on benefit. But then Cllr Stewart came out with the comment that Ipswich was a ‘poor’ town, not sure that is a valid description of our town. I tweeted my anger and agreed with my Labour colleague who said Ipswich was not a ‘poor’ town but a town living with ‘low wages’ in what is a ‘low wage’ county.

I received a reply from a leading Ipswich Tory telling me that if I was not happy living in a low wage town, I should move. I love this town and love living here, I probably could earn far more in many other places in the world but I would rather live in my home town and fight to improve life for all Ipswich residents.

Roger Fern also angered by Tory comments, then informed us of just one center for homeless people in Ipswich had 20 of its 25 beds full last night and demand for these beds would only increase under these Tory (and Lib Dem) proposals to benefit changes.

Many residents you speak to on the doorstep mention that all political groups are the same. Last night showed quite clearly that the Ipswich Labour Party is on the side of all Ipswich residents whilst the Tories are just interested in themselves and their rich friends.

My week ahead- 19- 25 December

Monday 19 December 2pm - North East Ipswich Partnership Meeting
4pm - Culture Portfolio meeting
6pm - Political debate on ICR Radio
7.30pm - Labour Group Xmas dinner


Seem to be packing in all my work into one day!

Last week we had the last Full Council meeting of the year, we did wonder how the Tories and Lib Dems would vote when it came to adopting the Council Core Strategy and Policies Development Plan. I was quite amazed that they voted with Labour! But there was far more to this agenda item that the unanimous vote. Lib Dem Cllr Richard Atkins attacked the Tories for the NIMBY attitude that had plagued the writing of the plan. Cllr Goldsmith the Tory Cllr from Castle Hill did not rise to the bait but did speak on behalf of the Northern Fringe Group. Lib Dem Inga Lockington also spoke and maybe Richard Atkins should have also attacked some of his own party who have acted in a NIMBY way towards the development of the Northern Fringe including Cllr Lockington.

Even now the plan has been approved; I am sure that when planning permission is being sought for the area North of Valley Road we will still have a number of Tories and Lib Dems looking to refuse permission to build in this part of town.
Will be interesting to read Tory/Lib Dem leaflets over the next few months (if they deliver any!) as they both seemed to be anti any development on the Northern Fringe in their leaflets in the St Margaret’s by-election.

The Council meeting also looked at changes to Polling stations in Ipswich, the Tories tried to keep a polling district in Bixley that is not only the smallest in the town but the polling station is situated outside the Borough. As no Tories had turned up for the two Working group meetings on polling stations there was not much sympathy for them.

We also debated setting up Area Committee’s, all seemed to agree that Forums were not working but the Tories were also not keen on area committees, and in the end the Tories and Lib Dem Ken Bates, abstained - the Tories seem to becoming the abstain party - something that Tory Gavin Maclure is not happy about.

After all the debating and arguing the most significant statement of the meeting was when Cllr John Mowles, our Housing spokesman declared that Labour run Ipswich Borough Council is planning to start building council houses again in Ipswich. This development should help a number of young families as they seek their first home in the town.

Ipswich Tories still love Thatcher

Not sure David Cameron would be that pleased but only months after he gets into Parliament we have local Tories in Ipswich forgetting all this new green cuddly Tory image and getting back to worshiping Thatcher.

Tonight at the Full Council meeting in Ipswich we had Cllr Pope the Tory Housing portfolio holder informing us that Margaret Thatcher was the saviour of social housing, and to make the evening even more absurd the Lib Dems nodded their heads in agreement and went and voted for his amendment!

Labour was asking for Full Council support in a motion that asked for the Government to secure Tenancy rights for Council House occupants. Instead of support all we got was a 10 minute "Thatcher" worshiping session.

For many of us on the Labour side this was hard to stomach, especially as this morning all councilors received a letter asking us to join Borough Council staff in celebrating the 90th anniversary of the first council house in Ipswich. Tories and Lib Dems could not see the irony in this.



Allenby Road, Ipswich - where our first two council houses were occupied in 1920

But just to show where the Tory loyalties lie we were then informed by the Tory leader how they intended to solve the housing problem in Ipswich - no, they were not going to show great leadership and build on North Ipswich with a master plan, their great idea?? Build on Council House back gardens! You couldn't even make it up, Maggie would be pleased.

Deliberately misleading or a spelling mistake?

Liz Harsant- the Tory leader- not a Tory misleader (just a spelling mistake!)

Now I know I am not the best at spelling (or typing)but I can't believe the Tory Council leader in Ipswich (Liz Harsant) is blaming a factual error in their last Tory leaflet (and only leaflet for about the last 10 months!) on spelling!

The full story can be found on the Evening Star website here. Liz Harsant may feel unlucky that she has been asked to explain the "mistake", but she is the only Tory councilor who actually gets much of a mention in the leaflet as the rest is all about the 'young' Gummer.

In the leaflet Liz was quoted as saying that every council house in Ipswich has been upgraded to the 'Ipswich standard' , which dictates maintenance necessary to meet national minimum standard requirements.

However it is now confirmed that 1,670 homes in Ipswich are still waiting to be upgraded and estimated completion is not till December 2010!

Liz will next blame the schools for not teaching spelling up to a correct standard!

She states that the leaflet should have read - "all council houses are being upgraded" rather than what it did state - " all council houses have been upgraded".

Seems more than a spelling mistake to me.

Mr Gummer is meant to be happy to make a statement about the 'mistake' in his next 'Changes' leaflet. why wait? Put it on your Ipswich Tory (really only about Gummer) website, and what about the Liberals? Well I know certain Liberals read this site, are you going to join Labour in asking Mrs Harsant to make a formal apology- or are you going to stick to your normal modus operandi - and claim it is the Liberals who have forced their Tory partners to get all council houses to the 'Ipswich standard' , - even if 1,670 houses have another 2 and half years to wait!