Dear Sir,
Earlier this year, Cllr Theo Blackwell, as chair of Camden's Resources Scrutiny Committee made an unusually thoughtful speech highlighting the tough choices ahead for Camden Council no matter who won the general election.
Cllr Blackwell explained, whichever party that won control in Camden should look to see how other councils elsewhere delivered equally good services at less cost and examine ways of sharing services with other boroughs.
Following May's council elections, Cllr Blackwell is now Cabinet Member for Resources and, following the financial excesses of the Gordon Brown and Tony Blair administrations, there is no question that he and Camden have been left facing a very tough financial outlook, as with every other part of the public sector.
Further to his speech earlier this year, Cllr Blackwell has indeed highlighted the need for Camden to explore the sharing of services with other London boroughs. I and other Conservative councillors support this approach. However, Cllr Blackwell has added an additional rider that these boroughs must be ones that share the same 'values'. The same values as whom, I am forced to ask? For Cllr Blackwell seems to have decided that Camden, a top performing council, has similar values to Islington, Haringey and Hackney - councils hardly reknowned for their quality of provision - rather than other councils with top performing services such as Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham.
Our residents are used to four star services. Camden should be looking to share environmental services with Westminster, not Islington; social services with K&C, not Haringey; and, education with Hammersmith &Fulham, not Hackney.
I am left to lament that when Cllr Blackwell spoke about sharing services with councils sharing 'our values' he was meaning his own tribal Labour values rather than those of our local residents. Why else would he want to tie Camden to local authorities reknowned for profligacy, waste, inefficiency and political correctness?
It's impossible not to conclude that Camden's Labour leadership has decided to prioritise its own doctrinal comfort over the quality of local services and local residents have every right to be feeling extremely worried by this.
Yours etc
Monday, 19 July 2010
Monday, 5 July 2010
Towaways - Letter July 2010
Dear Sir,
Certain small parts of Camden have single yellow lines and residents' parking bays which apply for only a couple of hours each day. These are quiet residential areas a fair distance away from shops and tube and rail stations. Two hours parking control a day is sufficient to deter commuters with normally very little impact on the lives of residents living in these roads....
Normally, that is, until Camden sends in the towaway trucks! Towaways are primarily aimed at removing illegally-parked vehicles causing an obstruction.
It is difficult to understand how, when a car can be legally parked on a single yellow line for 22 hours in a day it suddenly becomes a perfidious obstruction that needs urgently to be removed on the remaining two hours of the day. Parking tickets for cars parked illegally in this way are perfectly reasonable, just not the towaways.
Apparently there's a review going on at the moment into parking enforcement, although I haven't seen any consultation announced on Camden's website. I'd hope this particular injustice will be simple and straightforward to adjust, but in case any other resident has an issue with parking they would like to see addressed in the review, I'd suggest they send an email to the new Labour Parking Czar Cllr Sue Vincent at sue.vincent@camden.gov.uk and ask her to confirm that it's within the scope of the review.
Yours etc
Certain small parts of Camden have single yellow lines and residents' parking bays which apply for only a couple of hours each day. These are quiet residential areas a fair distance away from shops and tube and rail stations. Two hours parking control a day is sufficient to deter commuters with normally very little impact on the lives of residents living in these roads....
Normally, that is, until Camden sends in the towaway trucks! Towaways are primarily aimed at removing illegally-parked vehicles causing an obstruction.
It is difficult to understand how, when a car can be legally parked on a single yellow line for 22 hours in a day it suddenly becomes a perfidious obstruction that needs urgently to be removed on the remaining two hours of the day. Parking tickets for cars parked illegally in this way are perfectly reasonable, just not the towaways.
Apparently there's a review going on at the moment into parking enforcement, although I haven't seen any consultation announced on Camden's website. I'd hope this particular injustice will be simple and straightforward to adjust, but in case any other resident has an issue with parking they would like to see addressed in the review, I'd suggest they send an email to the new Labour Parking Czar Cllr Sue Vincent at sue.vincent@camden.gov.uk and ask her to confirm that it's within the scope of the review.
Yours etc
Monday, 28 June 2010
Primary places - letter June 2010
Dear Sir,
One item on which the new Labour Council has been uber-quiet since taking over has been the need for two new primary school forms of entry in the north of Camden.
Let me remind that this is not dependent on the current level of applications for Camden's primaries, but on the independent GLA predictions of future pupil numbers in the borough. Money is obviously in very short supply - Gordon Brown's Primary Capital Programme was never fully funded, thus already forcing councils to prioritise certain schemes before others.
Camden's previous Conservative-LibDem Administration prioritised the provision of new school places. It is highly likely that the new Labour Administration will instead prefer to finance long-needed improvements to some existing primaries. This is their decision and politics is full of tough calls. However, local authorities still have a duty to ensure there are sufficient school places for our young people. The Labour Council has, therefore,a responsibility to local families to explain how they will provide theprimary school places this borough will require into the future.
If it says no to the expansion of St Pauls CoE Primary, what next? Are they gambling on the new Government's 'Free Schools' policy releasing them from the burden of providing school places? We should be told.
A creative solution might be to use the FreeSchools policy to look once again at smaller sites for schools and invite in private providers to work in tandem with the local authority -but does Labour have the vision to do this? There's a lot riding on this for very many families in Camden...
Yours etc
One item on which the new Labour Council has been uber-quiet since taking over has been the need for two new primary school forms of entry in the north of Camden.
Let me remind that this is not dependent on the current level of applications for Camden's primaries, but on the independent GLA predictions of future pupil numbers in the borough. Money is obviously in very short supply - Gordon Brown's Primary Capital Programme was never fully funded, thus already forcing councils to prioritise certain schemes before others.
Camden's previous Conservative-LibDem Administration prioritised the provision of new school places. It is highly likely that the new Labour Administration will instead prefer to finance long-needed improvements to some existing primaries. This is their decision and politics is full of tough calls. However, local authorities still have a duty to ensure there are sufficient school places for our young people. The Labour Council has, therefore,a responsibility to local families to explain how they will provide theprimary school places this borough will require into the future.
If it says no to the expansion of St Pauls CoE Primary, what next? Are they gambling on the new Government's 'Free Schools' policy releasing them from the burden of providing school places? We should be told.
A creative solution might be to use the FreeSchools policy to look once again at smaller sites for schools and invite in private providers to work in tandem with the local authority -but does Labour have the vision to do this? There's a lot riding on this for very many families in Camden...
Yours etc
Monday, 14 June 2010
Martin Davies - Letter June 2010
Dear Sir,
The sad news of Cllr Martin Davies' sudden death will have come as a terrible shock to very many people living in Camden, but especially to all the local residents in Frognal and Fitzjohns Ward, so many whom he had got to know personally since he was first elected for the then Fitzjohns Ward in 1998.
As Martin's fellow ward councillors, we share the loss felt by others, not least his partner Richard and his family. We are well aware of the affection so many people held for him, and of the number of individuals he helped over his years on the council.
We miss him hugely.
Yours sincerely,
Cllrs Andrew Mennear & Laura Trott
The sad news of Cllr Martin Davies' sudden death will have come as a terrible shock to very many people living in Camden, but especially to all the local residents in Frognal and Fitzjohns Ward, so many whom he had got to know personally since he was first elected for the then Fitzjohns Ward in 1998.
As Martin's fellow ward councillors, we share the loss felt by others, not least his partner Richard and his family. We are well aware of the affection so many people held for him, and of the number of individuals he helped over his years on the council.
We miss him hugely.
Yours sincerely,
Cllrs Andrew Mennear & Laura Trott
Monday, 24 May 2010
Fordham's Folly - letter May 2010
Dear Sir,
I enjoyed hugely Richard Osley's account of his 'unparalleled' access to the doomed LibDem election campaign in Hampstead & Kilburn.
Will you be publishing more anecotes of how it all turned pear-shaped?
Or was it also being filmed for wider release?
More please!
Yours etc
I enjoyed hugely Richard Osley's account of his 'unparalleled' access to the doomed LibDem election campaign in Hampstead & Kilburn.
Will you be publishing more anecotes of how it all turned pear-shaped?
Or was it also being filmed for wider release?
More please!
Yours etc
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