Residents First

Andrew Slaughter charges taxpayers £6,390 for Spanish lessons

The Labour MP for Hammersmith Andrew Slaughter has charged taxpayers £6,930 for Spanish lessons according to a report in the Daily Mirror. Que?

He was re-elected last year after claiming to be an "expenses saint". But he claimed for a £90 pen nib, a huge quantity of loo paper, used Commons postage for political campaigning and in the latest available figure increased his expenses while most MPs were reducing them.

If he wants to learn Spanish why does he insist on an expensive private tutor? Por que? Hammersmith and Fulham Council provide a 10 week course on Monday evenings for £140. Would he have chosen such an extravagant option if he was spending his own money?

 

Council wants to pioneer pay as you dig

A west London council says it can keep utility companies on the straight and narrow if the government lets it lead a new road works scheme dubbed ‘pay as you dig’.

Hammersmith & Fulham Council  says it wants to be the first council to run a test pilot scheme where utilities are charged a daily rent for each road lane it uses to carry out repairs and are charged more for working during peak times, like the rush hour – if the scheme gets the thumbs up.

It comes as the Department for Transport launches a 12-week consultation with residents, transport groups and local authorities on the proposals to change the way utilities work in England. The aim is to make companies who dig up the roads more accountable for their actions, speeding up the length of time it takes to carry out works and freeing up the capital’s heavily congested roads.

Slaughter's u-turn on evicting rioters

Labour MP for Hammersmith, Andrew Slaughter, has attacked plans by Hammersmith and Fulham Council to evict rioters from Council homes.

His views are at odds with most voters, including most Labour supporters, as well as several Labour councils including Barking and Dagenham, Brent, Greenwich, Manchester, Nottingham, Salford, Southwark and Waltham Forest.

Having stayed on holiday during the rioting Slaughter now says:

It is an excuse to evict families from secure homes and to deduct benefits from poor families. How punishing a household for the actions of an individual is either equitable or rational, I don’t know, but it has been repeated by politicians seeking soundbites and at a loss for real answers from Nick Clegg to Tory councillors in H&F.

Promising to evict families from council homes if a member of the family is convicted of an offence implies council tenants are more prone to criminal behaviour and that they should have a greater punishment than others committing similar crimes. Of course, the Council has no power to evict in most cases, that is a matter for the courts and this is gesture politics, but if families are evicted and on the streets how is that going to aid social cohesion?

His stance offers little hope for decent Council tenants who want to see neighbours from hell removed. Also what sort of position would that leave the thousands of law abiding families who are on the waiting list for a Council home while stuck in overcrowded conditions? They would see the rioters allowed get away with retaining the privilege of subsidised, secure, Council housing.

Maintain Olympia Line or improve transport infrastructure

If Transport for London (TfL) refuse to listen to local residents who want the Olympia branch of the District Line retained, a package of transport improvements must be carried out in the area, with ‘Boris Bikes’ installed and extra bus services laid on, argues Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Council.

TfL wants to increase capacity on the Wimbledon branch of the District line by withdrawing weekdays services on the Olympia spur – which it claims is ‘underused’.

However, residents around Olympia are worried about the loss of their local service – especially as the station is the only one in the area that provides easy step-free disabled access.

Market Challenge on North End Road

Nine young men from the Clement Attlee Estate have been given a crash-course in how to set up their own market stall businesses.

The men, aged between 15 and 21 - none of whom are in education, employment or training - have been given their own pitches at North End Road Market, Fulham, in a scheme run by Hammersmith & Fulham Council and the Brathay Trust – a charity for disadvantaged young people.

The scheme, known as the Market Challenge, saw the young men given £150 to spend on purchasing goods for their stalls and the chance to take home any profits that they made. The team that made the most profit were given a market stall for a week.

A Level students are seeing stars

Hundreds of students in Hammersmith & Fulham  have collected their A Level results, with grades in the borough flying high above the national average.

Provisional results for the borough (not including Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College and Burlington Danes Academy) show that 98.9 per cent of students in H&F passed with A*-E grades, compared to the national average of 97.9%, while at 79.7% the percentage of students gaining A*-C was 3.7 percentage points above the national average of 76%.

Students hitting the heights with B, A and A* grades were also better than average with 59.8% reaching the top grades – 7.5% above the figure nationally.

This year’s results were up on 2010’s figures for students getting A*-C grades, which stood at 75.1%. It was the 29th year in a row that A Level passes have risen nationally, with the overall pass rate rising slightly from 97.6% to 97.8%.

Don’t lose your vote in 2012

Voter registration forms have been dropping through letterboxes across the borough this month.

Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Council will be sending forms to local homes over the coming weeks and residents are being urged to return the forms as soon as possible so that they can make their voices heard in the London Mayoral and Assembly elections to be held in May 2012.

Geoff Alltimes, H&F Council Electoral Registration Officer, said:

Geoff Alltimes salary: The facts

It has been (wrongly) implied that H&F Council CEO Geoff Alltimes had 'given himself' a pay rise between 2009/10 and 2010/11 of £11,193

The facts are:

• H&F Council has not increased his salary on any part we have controlled since 2008/9 - one year sooner than we were asked by government to freeze salaries.
• Mr Alltimes received an extra £11,080 between 2009/10 and 2010/11 -  £6,955 of which was for his role as Returning Officer. This is paid by the Electoral Commission NOT the Council. The other part of the increase (£ 4,125) was as a result of higher pension contributions following an overall fund revaluation by our actuaries - again this is NOT something the Council has control over.
• The cost of Mr Alltimes's salary for H&F council taxpayers actually reduced by £62,000 in 2009/10 and £34,000 in 2010/11 as a result of his joint role as chief executive of H&F Council and NHS Hammersmith & Fulham. Despite taking on this extra work he received no overall salary increase.
• The pensions contribution increase is a direct result of dire management of the council's pension fund under Labour which was covered by the Telegraph at the time.  A 2004 pension fund valuation after the decision to move into equities just before the dotcom bubble burst resulted in the council needing to increase the pension contribution rate for its staff by 2.7% for three years to tackle a £173 million pension fund deficit. The 2007 valuation reduced this to a 1% increase per year until 2010/11. These set of draft accounts are the last to have this pensions contribution increase effect. The 2010 valuation has resulted in the pension contribution rate remaining at the 2010/11 rate of 24.7%.

However, we recognise that CEO pay in local government is an issue which is why, from October 1st 2011, we will be (subject to appointment process) sharing a CEO role with The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, saving £120,000 a year.

Under our Tri-borough proposals to share services with The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster City Council we will collectively save £35m a year by 2014/15 - 35% of which will come from a reduction in senior management costs across the 3 authorities.

Mixed news on CEO pay

An interesting table from the Daily Telegraph on the pay levels of Councils Chief Executives. They have details of 128 councils. Their report stresses how most have had a pay rise and thus snubbed calls from the Government to show restraint. Specifically the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles called on those Council CEOs earning more than the Prime Minister (which is most of them) to take a 10% pay cut.

via conservativehome.blogs.com

Labour's Loser Lisa stays away from H&F too

In a week where we discovered that Hammersmith Labour MP 'Abesnt Andy' Slaughter prioritised staying on holiday rather than returning for the Parliamentary recall, a H&F Labour Councillor is also busy Tweeting about staying away from Hammersmith & Fulham. 

Indeed, this blog has previously reported Labour Askew Councillor Lisa Homan's selection to run for the Greater London Assembley in the London South West seat (Hounslow, Richmond upon Thames, Kingston upon Thames) in next year's London elections - and it seems that's where she is priotitising her time.  Street stalls in Twickenham and BBQs in Kingston are where she clearly wants to be instead of her Askew ward.

She really should be careful - as her electoral history does not make for happy reading.  Indeed losing elections is something she seems to excel at - and she has certainly tried a few times for almost every elected office going:

• She tried for Parliament in Sutton & Cheam in 2001 - and LOST.
• She tried for the European Parliament in the South East Region in 2009 - and LOST.
• She even LOST her former Council seat in 2002 - and had to resort to being given the traditionally safe Labour ward of Askew (along with other multiple electoral reject Rory Vaughan) to get her back on the council in 2006.

Furthermore, standing for GLA in South West London is unlikely to result in a turn around of fortune for Labour's Loser Lisa as Labour came in a poor third in 2008, on just 16% of the vote.

Perhaps Labour politicians in Hammersmith & Fulham should start focusing on the areas they are actually elected to represent, rather than either staying away on hols in a time of need or endlessly trying to run away to other parts of Britain.