Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
How good are our basic council services?
Hi all,
Does anyone have an informed view on how competent our Council are at their "basic" responsibilities, compared to Councils in similar parts of London. Thinking of collecting bins, keeping the streets serviceable etc etc.
I've lived in Haringey for a while and was young enough not to really care or notice when I lived elsewhere in London before that, so I don't have a sense of how they perform compared to other Boroughs.
Am trying to find a reason not to abstain in May :)
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Oh please, Osbawn. Do stop repeating this right-wing nonsense. I've been a member of the Labour Party since the 1970s. I've never stopped speaking or writing outside the lined paper when needed.
Sure, Kober and her right-wing ideologues, privatisers, careerists and others are pissed-off because their previously cosy and often hollow club now has a helluva lot more members. And because at least some party meetings discuss policies and improving local services more than they argue about the minutes of the last meeting, or organising the raffle. Because this time round it wasn't always the same couple of dozen people turning up to choose the same candidates again. And again. And just one more time.
Oh yes, and they're annoyed because the Labour Party now has a Social Democrat leader. Gosh how awful.
As for "policies informed primarily by extreme leftist ideology" Can I assume you mean any left wing principles? Osbawn, If you're a Tory then don't be coy. I'm told there are some fine Tory candidates standing in Haringey who live in another borough.
But if you genuinely have an open mind and want to know about candidates - of any Party - then please take up my suggestions and go and listen to and meet them. Challenge them on the stuff being written about them. Try to look behind the curtain and probe for yourself for example, the false accusations of anti-Semitism. Their views on street cleaning, on privatisation, housing etc etc.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Couple of dozen! Ha ha ha, we wish in Harringay it was a couple of dozen. in 2009 it was NINE people. Don't ever forget how bad it was.
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You're not so bad yourself Nick.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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They ARE separate people Nick. Or are you one of those who believe that a wife should always walk two steps behind her husband ?
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Permalink Reply by Mimi on
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I won't vote Labour either. Not that it makes a difference. But even the Lib Dems have thrown common sense out of the window and voted against any of regeneration and investment in this area. It will just go down hill from now...
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Permalink Reply by Karen Alexander on
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Mimi
We oppose Haringey Labour’s HDV plan because it is simply too risky and it doesn’t gusrantee residents a right to return.
Haringey libdems costed plan would invest £148 million in setting up a wholly owned council company to accelerate building council and affordable homes. We will look at alternative ways to regenerate estates.
for more info here is our manifesto http://ldharingey.nationbuilder.com/local_elections_2018_manifesto
Karen Alexander
liberal democrat candidate for Harringay ward
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Thanks, Karen.
As you'll appreciate, I'm not going to suggest that people vote LibDem!!
But credit to the LibDems, Greens, Labour Party members, Defend Council Housing, and non-politically aligned people like Rev Paul Nicolson and everyone else who opposed the Kober Social Cleansing Plans.
Special thanks to Clive Carter for walking round streets and up and down stairs in Northumberland Park, talking to residents and taking extensive photos - posted on Flickr. These show real homes of real people. Not artists' impressions of imaginary new homes in the developers' sales pitch. Real council-owned; housing association; and privately-owned homes. An antidote to misleading comments about all these homes needing demolition.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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As mentioned elsewhere the Audit Commission collected a huge range of information on how councils performed and this was readily available as comparative data. This function was scrapped a number of years ago so that kind of information is no longer available except on issues like education and health. I would excercise caution in comparing local authorities though.
I was one of the people who’s job it was to collect and report on the performance of a London borough (over something like 200 different indicators). Without context it’s very difficult to make meaningful comparisons. For example the waste collection service (measured by the number of missed bin collections per 1,000 planned collections) could look brilliant in say Westminster but terrible in Enfield. But what wasn’t reported was that most people in Westminster live in flats so have their waste collected in large communal bins or from bags at the kerbside whereas in Enfield they live in houses so the contractor must visit thousands more individual properties.
The City of London used to come out top on individual spend per head of population year after year but that masked the fact that it’s resident population is tiny but it’s spend is high due to the number of businesses located in the square mile.
The performance reporting regime became rather counterproductive in the end with councils working hard to improve the things that were measured but perhaps turning a blind eye to things that were not. It also concentrated on outputs (how many, how quickly and so on) rather than outcomes, i.e. did the council deliver what people need and did they make residents lives better.
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Thanks Michael, I get that boroughs with a very different demographic & housing mix would not be a reasonable comparison but how about between Haringey and say Hackney or Camden or somewhere similarly zone two-ey? I was thinking if someone were to say that they'd moved from those boroughs in the last couple of years and noticed our services were much better/worse/the same it might be useful.
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Some further issues for your consideration, Diamond Lights.
Before looking at comparative stats across boroughs it seems to me that the wide variations in class, race and ethnicity in different parts of Haringey should be taken into account. This may be reflected in different ways. (As indeed there are wide variations in different parts of Hackney and Camden.)
But even if you just want to consider the basic services, and depending in your own interests and perhaps the needs of your family, you might want to explore this with candidates. And also to walk around your own local area and see what's available and the standard maintained.
For example, how far are candidates keen on local parks or sports, libraries, and other leisure facilities?
Are they going to be trying to protect budgets for say, adult social care? Or say for children's nurseries and the remaining children's centres, etc etc .
What are a candidate's thought and ideas about partnerships with the voluntary sector? There are crucial areas of developing "co-production" with these agencies and the wider community? If they don't know, are they interested in finding out?
Of course many of the candidates are new and have a lot of new topics to get to grips with. How Interested or even capable do they seem about learning new stuff? Are they even curious?
What do the candidates say about teamwork? About representing and listening to the views of local residents? Do they see the councillor job as a chance "to do". Or as a chance "to be" a councillor and use it as a stepping stone to "higher" things,
Are candidates confident in challenging the Council senior officers and political leadership? Haringey has gone through a bad patch when debate and dissent were seen as disloyal. (Look up for example what happened to Cllr Gideon Bull.) Hopefully the new Council will not have such an autocratic & stultifying regime. But it may be worth raising the specific point with your candidates.
Are candidates going to work with other parties on common areas? Or will it be back to childish yah-boo posturing in pointless Council meetings. When "leaders" pompously clown-on about "the "members on the benches opposite." (There are no benches.)
Are new candidates committed to openness as the default - as the Nolan principles require? Or do they favour secret government and cosy chats with developers etc? This might not have been relevant to you until now, Diamond Lights, but it could quickly become relevant if there are planning issues in your neigbourhood and you're being blocked from finding out what's going on.
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Seriously Darryl, people lost the support of their local Labour party members over the HDV. Momentum were supposed to deselect Claire Kober in Seven Sisters but couldn't get out of bed in time. They are nothing like the horned monster that the press make them out to be. The anti-HDV campaign were the ones handing out leaflets at the LP selection meetings, not Momentum.
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