Agenda item
TO RECEIVE WRITTEN QUESTIONS FROM MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC
The questions which have been received from members of the public for this Council meeting are set out in the attached report. A maximum period of 20 minutes is allocated to this agenda item.
Minutes:
The following questions and in each case (except where indicated) supplementary questions were put and were responded to by the Mayor or relevant Executive Member:-
6.2 Question from Asik Rahman
I was very impressed with the Mela this year. How many people attended the event – and what other feedback has the Mayor had?
Response by Councillor Asma Begum, Cabinet Member for Culture
The Mela was indeed a very impressive event. I am proud that Mayor Biggs and I were able to return it, not only back to Banglatown, but also back to being a cultural and family-friendly event rather than the overly-expensive and commercialised version run under the previous administration. We estimate that around 40,000 people attended this year’s Mela. Those that came would have enjoyed a colourful parade down Brick Lane, amazing main stage acts by local and international artists. There was a catwalk and a family zone and a sport area.
(No supplementary question was put)
6.3 Question from Kevin Brady
When she became Prime Minister Theresa May said she would tackle “burning injustice” and inequality. Has the Mayor, as leader of one of the most deprived and unequal boroughs in the country, had any word from the Government to suggest they will stop the cuts to our council budgets?
Response by Mayor John Biggs
I think the indications so far are not good. I think every Prime Minister starts with a little bounce and a honeymoon and reaches out to everyone, but all the indications point towards Theresa May not being a great friend of local government. She doesn’t appear to be a fan of the devolution agenda, is making noises about resisting mayors in other parts of the country (people may have mixed views about that) and I don’t think she recognises that local government has been hit harder by spending cuts than other parts of the country and many, many very needy people depend on our services and that means that councils are having to make very hard decisions about how they balance their budgets with those tough decisions. Just to quote, or misquote, Ms May back at her, for her Brexit may mean Brexit, but it seems to me that, for her, fairness doesn’t mean fairness in local government spending.
Supplementary question from Kevin Brady
It is clear that the government’s austerity policies resulted in significant pressures on the Council’s budget and you have had some difficult decisions about rate rises and cuts in services, but austerity has been about since 2010, whereas your administration is relatively new, could some of the impacts of the cuts have been mitigated if the previous administration had taken more decisive action?
Mayor John Biggs response to the supplementary question:
In my view that’s a very fair question and I’m disappointed that the Independent Group isn’t here to hear it as they are an echo of the former Mayor. I think the answer is that, if you look up and down the country, virtually every other council has had to look carefully at its services, possibly restructure them, look at the needs of communities, make some tough decisions but do so in a balanced and reasoned way. In the case of Tower Hamlets it was a pretty shoddy process in my view, albeit with the advice of our professional officers, and it was in some cases too populist, opportunistic and didn’t balance our services as well as it could have done which means that we have hard decisions to make now which are going to be tougher as a result of that. So I agree with your supplementary question.
6.4 Question from Adam Allnut
How many families in Tower Hamlets have been placed in temporary accommodation for over six weeks in each of the last five years?
Response by Councillor Sirajul Islam, Statutory Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Member for Housing Management & Performance)
It is unfortunate the housing crisis has had a detrimental effect on many families in our borough. Perhaps no more than those that have had to live in bed and breakfast accommodation for extended periods of time. If I gave you the six-week overstay for the last five years I’d be here for a very long time and the speaker may not indulge me, but all the information is on the Council website as we have to report to government, but just as an example, last year at the point when Mayor Biggs was elected there were 232 families in this unfortunate position, today I am pleased to say there are none. So for the first time ever we are statutorily complaint. This is a tremendous achievement and one I am very proud of, however we understand that there is much more to do, most importantly we must ensure that we are building genuinely affordable housing that families need and doing all we can to increase standards in the private rented sector.
Supplementary question from Adam Allnut
As a young professional who has chosen to live in Tower Hamlets, obviously housing is a big cost to me. I am wondering what the Council has done to increase the provision of genuinely affordable private and housing association rental spaces, for people like myself.
Councillor Sirajul Islam response to the supplementary question:
You may know that Mayor Biggs after being elected set up an affordability commission which was chaired by my colleague, Councillor Blake – and again, that report is available – which told us a mixed tenure of housing provision is what we need to provide in this borough. We are also consulting on a new Housing Strategy, again, you may know. On the 1st October we are holding a housing conference exactly to debate those issues so that we have a housing strategy that provides for the future for people like yourselves, for future generations. I really strongly urge you to come along to the housing conference to have that debate and also the impact the Housing and Planning Act will have on some of the plans we want to put forward. Mayor Biggs has pledged to build 1,000 Council homes in his manifesto which will be launching very soon, but that conference on the 1st of October is an opportunity for
residents to contribute to the plans.
6.6 Question from Pete Dickenson
In the light of the Labour Party’s new policy, under its leader Jeremy Corbyn, to prioritise the fight against austerity, will the Mayor and Council reconsider their policy of making massive cuts that hit the most vulnerable members of our community and reverse them? Will you also reverse the recent big rise in allowances for the Mayor, Cabinet members and the Leader of the Tory group, totalling £39,848, and use the money saved to reinstate the incontinence laundry service, which costs only £40,000 p.a.? The cuts already made have been extremely damaging, for example the closure of 18 out of 26 youth centres, Queen Mary Nursery (after promising to keep it open), NAFAS support and the £200K cut to CAMHS.
Response by Councillor David Edgar Cabinet Member for Resources
I think Jeremy is right that cuts are a choice, but they are a choice by national government. National government has options about the way they manage economies and the Conservative government has made decisions that means that we, over the next few years, will have to cut £58 million from our budget. The Labour Party is a party that is campaigning against many aspects of government policy. We on this side of the house campaigned against it as well, but we recognise that as a council we have a legal obligation to balance our budget, it is not one we can escape from. If we don't then we have commissioners. As we know, commissioners can come in and control, or the Director of Resources would have power to shape our budget.
We as a Labour Council have to make decisions and when we made those decisions last year we did a whole number of things that protected services that residents said they valued. We put money into things like tackling anti-social behaviour. We put decent wages into the hands of carers. We did a number of things I think really good aspects of that budget, but this year we are going to start on the process of saving £58 million over the next few years. We are going to put those proposals out to the wider world. People will be able to comment. They will be able to tell us what they think of those proposals and when it gets to the detail the service users will speak and we will listen very carefully to what is said.
On one particular point you are just completely wrong: the whole debate earlier on was one that was clear that we are not cutting the Community Language Service. So your starting point that we are cutting that is completely wrong. We are doing what we need to do, in a context that is not of our choosing, which we have a political opposition to, but we are trying to do it in a way that means we look at the support service that we have, we run them as efficiently as we can, we look at the frontline services that we have and we do all we can to protect them, to transform them and to make them work as
well as they possibly can.
Supplementary question from Pete Dickenson
There is a
very simple way that this Council can demonstrate that it is
serious about fighting the cuts. You've cut £40,000 from the
incontinence laundry service, a relatively small amount of money.
At the same time you have increased the allowances for the Cabinet,
the Mayor and the Leader of the Tory Group, by almost exactly the
same amount of money. Without breaking any of the government's
regulations in terms of spending you could easily reinstate the
incontinence laundry service which, incidentally, is just pushing
that cost on to the NHS which is absolutely running out of cash
very rapidly. That's a very simple, perfectly legal thing that
this Council could do and it would demonstrate that you are
serious; that you don't just accept passively whatever is thrown at
you by the Conservative government. So will you do that?
A very simple thing that you could do without
breaking any rules whatsoever.
Councillor David Edgar response to the supplementary question:
Our response is not a passive response. As a party we campaign
against the government, we challenge the government, we challenge
it’s economic philosophy, but as a
Council we need to make a series of decisions that we have a legal
obligation to. That is recognised by Jeremy Corbyn. To quote him in your question, as
suggesting we should be doing something else is quite wrong. On the
incontinence laundry service, that was a difficult decision last
year. My understanding is that careful work is being done with all
the people that received that service so if they need that service,
arrangements will be made to ensure that they can.
On the point about the allowances that you raised, clearly allowances are a tricky issue for politicians, councillors, and Members of Parliament. There was an independent review in which we looked at and we only accepted one element of it, which was the amount of money to be paid for backbench councillors. In nine other categories we paid below, often way below, the amount that that independent review recommended and on the other five we were within the band. So I think we acted responsibly in response to that particular independent review and I think you have to look at the savings made last year in the round. Savings that incidentally were £8 million less than that had been planned by the Independent Group and ones where we took the decision to run down reserves by £10 million more than the Independent Group had been proposing earlier, in January 2015.
So I think we have done all we can to protect services in a way that people need, to recognise the vulnerabilities that many residents face and to be as responsible as we can in making very difficult decisions that result from a Tory government's choice.
6.8 Question from Kyrsten Perry
As a local resident, I saw how the previous Mayor's charges for bulk waste collection encouraged more people to fly-tip. How many people have benefited from the introduction of free bulk waste collection since it was introduced last year?
Response by Councillor Ayas Miah Cabinet Member for Environment
You are not alone in remembering the terrible damage that was caused by the previous Mayor’s short-sighted decision to introduce charges for bulky waste. I am pleased to say that since Mayor John Biggs scrapped the charges last summer more than 13,500 free bulky waste collections have been made. This means more than one in ten households have used this service in just one year. There is always more we can do to improve the cleanliness of the streets, but I am proud that this one change has made such a big difference.
Supplementary question from Kyrsten Perry
What's the Council doing to help encourage local residents to
recycle properly, because I live in Tower Hamlet and I find that
not everybody knows that you need to keep pink bags in the pink
container. I even put, personally, signs
up in my blocks saying 'let's help the Council because we are just
wasting their time and money'. So I am thinking, what is the
Council doing to
help that?
Councillor Ayas Miah response to the supplementary question:
The recycling is a big challenge for any council in an inner-London borough, especially Tower Hamlets, as we have such a high number of high rise buildings and narrow streets in Tower Hamlets, so we are trying our best. Last November, 2015, we sent every household a letter on how to use the recycling and there is a free recycling bag available at the Idea Stores. So we started campaigning and educating people to use the recycling bags, which is very beneficial for the Council, as it helps us reduce the cost and I think that we are dealing with housing associations as well on how they will participate to improve our recycling. So I would like to tell you, finally, we are doing our best and in future we will do more and, finally, we have a contract with Veolia and the contract will end very soon, so the next contract will be more concerned with how to improve our recycling.
Questions 6.1,6.5 and 6.7 were not put due to the absence of the questioners. Written responses would be provided to the questions. (Note: The written response is included in Appendix ‘A’ to these minutes.)
Supporting documents: