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.

 

The following questions and in each case supplementary questions were put (except where indicated) and were responded to by the Mayor or relevant Executive Member:-

 

6.1 Question from Nick Garland

 

With the Tory Government hammering the NHS, what, investment has the Council made in our local health services?

 

Response by Councillor Rachael Saunders Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Member for Education & Children's Services

 

I am covering for Councillor Amy Whitelock-Gibbs as she is on maternity leave.

 

Conservative Government cuts to the council budget means we will have £58m less to spend on services by 2019/20. This has left us with difficult decisions to make, but we are investing in our local health services.

 

We have secured over £15m of investment from developer Section 106 contributions in health services across Tower Hamlets including these GP surgeries:.

13.1              £3.1m in Aberfeldy Practice – Lansbury ward

13.2              £2.5m for the Globe Town GP Practice

13.3              £3.4m for the Whitechapel Health Centre and City Wellbeing Practices

13.4              £3.1m for the new GP practice at the William Cotton Place development – in Mile End ward, in my ward.

13.5              £3.1m for the Wellington Way Health Centre – Mile End ward, which used to be in my ward.

 

From the two that are in the area that I represent I know how important it is that we invest in our GP surgeries because there is huge pressure and a real need for appointments and a better quality of care.

 

We have also just launched an Ethical Care Charter in Tower Hamlets, which guarantees the London Living Wage for all home care workers, including for travel time. This is not only an investment in our homecare workers and in the high quality of work that they provide.

 

No supplementary question from Nick Garland.

 

6.3  Question from Matthew Dickinson

 

Please could the Council provide an estimate of the costs incurred as a result of the legal case against Councillor Shahed Ali for housing fraud?

 

Response by Mayor John Biggs

 

It’s a disgrace that instead of serving his constituents Shahed Ali chose not only to commit housing fraud but then to lie about it, costing taxpayers tens of thousands more in legal fees.

 

That decision to lie about his criminality meant that Cllr Ali cost the council over £70,000 in legal fees. Had he pleaded guilty when he was first charged it would have simply cost, we estimate, £3,428.

 

In my opinion we should use all the forces of the law that we can to pursue that debt, because as far as I am concerned he has cost the people of Tower Hamlets money and he should be asked to pay it.

 

Just by way of comparison, what we could have spent that on would have been 30,434 free school meals, for example, or an extra housing fraud investigator to check other people are not doing the same thing. But there are many other examples of things that we could have spent it on. His behaviour was an outrage.

 

Supplementary question from Matthew Dickinson

 

I would also just be interested to know what current safeguards are in place to ensure that a similar case doesn't happen again. Or is the Council introducing anything new on the back of this case?

 

Mayor John Biggs response to supplementary question

 

We have an anti-fraud initiative within the Council. We employ people and we have increased our resources in that area to pursue people in that area who are committing housing fraud. It can be quite a difficult offence to detect as people might informally pass the keys to a property to somebody else, but somebody obtaining a property as a tenant through deception does require extra checks and safeguards and we are looking at how we can better introduce those and copy good practice from other places as well. But I think also good exemplary behaviour in terms of the sentences and punishments to people that have been found out will help to deter this sort of behaviour as well.

 

6.4   Question from Abukor Essa

 

What steps is the Mayor taking to tackle the housing crisis in Tower Hamlets?

 

Response by Councillor Sirajul Islam, Statutory Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Member for Housing Management and Performance

 

Over the past 6 months the Council has developed its first new Housing Strategy since 2009, which is later in the agenda.

 

The Strategy aims to tackle the housing crisis through a number of interventions which impact across both the public and private sector.

 

Progress has already been made: In the last year over a thousand affordable homes were built in the borough, over 400 more than the year before. 

 

The Council built more family sized homes at social rents than at any time in the last six years with over 300 completed in the last year. Over 1,000 overcrowded families were also rehoused last year too.

 

The Mayor haspledged to build 1,000 genuinely affordable council homes.  Over the past year it has made significant progress on this front and we have now completed the process of identifying the schemes which will enable the Council to meet this target.

 

All our new council homes will be let at rents which are genuinely affordable to local residents. Either social or genuinely affordable rents.

 

Working in partnership with the borough’s existing Developers and Registered Providers we estimate that at least 2,200 social, affordable homes will be built between 2015 and 2018.

 

We will also be working with the GLA to take advantage of the £3.5bn awarded to London in the Autumn Statement for 90,000 homes after Sadiq Khan’s excellent work highlighting the need to tackle the housing crisis.

 

In the private rented sector, where many of our residents face short-term tenancies and poor conditions. The Council has introduced a landlord licensing scheme across three wards in the west of the Borough to push up standards and give private tenants more protection.

 

We have rehoused 238 homeless families who were in bed and breakfast and now there is none, not a single Tower Hamlets family who has been in temporary B&B accommodation for more than six weeks. I think we are probably the only borough that is statutorily compliant.

 

The Government’s Housing and Planning Act will make things harder for boroughs like Tower Hamlets but the Mayor and I are dedicated to protecting residents and tackling the housing crisis in this part of London.

 

Supplementary question from Abukor Essa

 

As a voluntary worker I regularly see families who are overcrowded. I know houses are being built in the borough, but I am not sure how these properties are meeting the local community’s needs. Strategically, are these houses that are being built meeting the needs of the local community, including the family sizes, affordability etc? I know the Deputy Mayor slightly covered these things, but I want him to go deeper into these issues a little bit.

 

Councillor Sirajul Islam response to supplementary question

 

We are as an Administration under the leadership of Mayor Biggs, we want to tackle the issue of affordable rent which Mayor Biggs himself says that affordable rent is not affordable. Therefore, after getting elected, Mayor Biggs set up a housing commission that recommended that as a Council we should be building more homes at social rent, or a genuinely affordable rent that is a Tower Hamlets living rent product, which we feel would be affordable to local people. As an example we inherited a scheme in Watts Grove when I was chair of the Planning Committee which is affordable rent and the difference between social and affordable rent is, on a three bedroom social rent it is about £150 to £160, affordable rent is about £280 to £290. You can see the difference. Even on the Watts Grove scheme our Mayor has asked officers to look at how we can bring the rent down to social rent and this is our commitment.  The 1,000 homes that the mayor has pledged to build will also be social rent. We know things are very difficult, we know about the Government’s U-turn on pay to stay where they were proposing to charge our residents who are earning £40,000 a sub-market rent, this has been a turnaround due to the campaign that London Councils have done overall. So we are pledging as an Administration to deliver homes that people can afford, to reduce our waiting list as well as our commitment to housing homeless people who are living away from Tower Hamlets.

 

6.5   Question from Dipa Baidya

 

A recent study into air quality has suggested that air pollution is causing more traffic accidents. The study, covering west London, showed that as many as four extra traffic accidents a day could be triggered by a spike in dirty air levels. What is the Council doing to improve air quality in Tower Hamlets?

 

Response by Councillor Ayas Miah, Cabinet Member for Environment

 

The Mayor has made tackling poor air quality a priority and the Council is taking action to tackle this significant public health issue.

 

The Council will review the LSE study, which suggests that air pollution may have a causal effect on road traffic accidents.

 

We have made it a priority in the Health and Wellbeing Strategy as well, which is currently out to public consultation. A communications campaign is being planned for residents and organisations, aiming to:

 

1. increase awareness of poor air quality, how to minimise exposure and adopt less polluting behaviours;
2. introduce pledges from individuals and organisations to minimise their impact on air pollution.

 

The Council is currently reviewing its air quality action plan which will incorporate a range of measures to improve air quality.

 

Working with partners will be crucial, and residents will need to play their part as well – by walking and using public transport where possible, instead of making unnecessary car journeys. As much of the most-polluting traffic in the borough is through-traffic to and from central London, we will be working with City Hall to tackle this aspect of the issue.

 

Both myself and the Cabinet Member for Health & Adult Services have already met with GLA members to discuss how we can tackle poor air quality, and we will continue to work with colleagues and partners on this vital area.

 

No supplementary question.

 

6.6    Question from Muhammad Sulaman Alipir

 

Recently I had visited a One Stop Shop in Bethnal Green and I had noticed that there are no toilet facilities for customers! At our One Stop Shop local people come including children and families for their council services. Often they have waited for an hour or more.

Could the mayor look into staffing levels and service provision to see, if any improvements can be made to the time taken to resolve enquiries and serve people especially families with young children including toilet facilities for them?

 

Response by Councillor David Edgar, Cabinet Member for Resources

 

As you say there aren't any toilets at Bethnal Green One Stop Shop and this is clearly not an ideal situation. Apparently the constraints of the space and the layout of the building make it difficult to put the toilets in. When there was a refurbishment several years ago it wasn't possible to add them. I am told that if people, for example parents with babies ask to use toilets, they are given access to staff toilets. I appreciate that that is not an ideal arrangement. In future as we develop any One Stop Shops and integrate them with Idea Stores we need to make sure that toilets are available because, as you say, people sometimes have to wait a while and in any event there should be toilets.

 

On the point about the waiting time and the staffing levels, the average waiting time I am told is about 15 minutes, but clearly there are situations particularly at peak times when people have to wait longer and although some people are able to be flexible about when they turn up that is not going to be true for everybody. What we have done though is recognised that although there are constraints on the budget that limits the staffing levels, we have been able to recruit for additional staff on a temporary basis, so that during the winter months when demand is higher we hope that will help keep waiting times down. What we are also doing is trying to move as many services as we can online so for those people that would be able to get an answer to their question or do the business that they want to with the Council online are able to do it, which I think will help to reduce the pressure from the number of people who actually need to go to the One Stop Shop and have a face to face conversation. I think over time we will begin to see the benefits, both for those who are happy to use things online but also for those people who need to go to one of these shops in order to get an answer face-to-face, often for more complex issues.

 

Supplementary question from Muhammad Sulaman Alipir

 

I never visit any other One Stop Shop in Tower Hamlets, but Bethnal Green One Stop Shop when it was in the previous location, I saw that in that office were toilet facilities, so why is this shop not facilitated for the citizen?

 

Councillor David Edgar response to supplementary question

 

On the position my understanding is that the layout, the structure of the One Stop Shop in Bethnal Green, is simply one where it is quite hard to fit a toilet in. When there was some refurbishment a few years ago then the cost of putting that toilet in was seen as too high, but I think the things I've talked about are things that I hope will ease the pressure on that and if there was anything that we could do in the meantime I am happy to try to facilitate that, so I will have a conversation with Council staff but I wouldn't want to raise hopes too high because I think what we’ll need to do is the measures I have outlined to ensure that any future facilities we have do have adequate toilet facilities.

 

Questions 6.2, and 6.7 were not put due to the absence of the questioners. Written responses would be provided to the questions (the written responses are included in Appendix A to these minutes).