Is Tottenham Being Sold in Cannes tomorrow?

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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on March 22, 2014 at 7:23

JJ, HAVING been an observer of LBH for some while, I believe that the Council is often and chronically unaware of manifold conflicts of interest.

In last Thursday's Ham&High Broadway there is a scathing letter from someone about the conflicts of interest generated by the trio jetting down to Cannes. At least some of the party ought to feel indebted to Arup.

Former Labour Deputy Leader Dennis Dillon, in his book Lessons for the Big Society, alluded to overlap athough he didn't call it conflict of interest. In reference to his co-author, former Cllr Dillon said, –

He was not (nor had he ever been) unlike some of his colleagues and many senior Haringey Council officials, a member of the Labour Party.

The import of this, is that Mr Dillon felt the need to make the disclaimer at all. Is this a clue to the prevalence and significance of Labour party-membership amongst council officials?

--

Conflicts of interest are partly a function of having been in power for so long and partly the way the Labour-run Council sets up quasi-separate bodies that are nonetheless under party-political control.

The Council has heard the words "conflict of interest" and sometimes makes gestures towards acknowledging them. However I'm not sure they understand the effect that these conflicts have on the long-term quality of decision-making.

The best way to avoid the problems caused by conflicts of interest ... is not to have them in the first place.

Disclosure:

am a prospective councillor candidate
Highgate Ward | Liberal Democrat Party

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on March 22, 2014 at 10:07

It's not a code, JJ. It's law.

The legislation followed a report in 1985/6 chaired by David Widdicombe QC, which recommended political restrictions which stopped precisely the abuses which Clive may seem to believe - without giving any evidence - are still rampant.

But even the Thatcherite Tories didn't want to remove the civil rights of council staff to be members of political parties. The rules did  bar senior council staff from: 

• standing for election
• political campaigning,
• 'writing or speaking in a manner which could affect the standing of a political party'
• holding office within a party.

These rules became law in the Local Government & Housing Act 1989. (With amendments since.)

Clive, rather than quote Denis Dillon and Brian Fanning and pointlessly speculate on what they may have meant, why not ask them?  Brian is now a university professor in Dublin. Denis lives and works in London.

(Tottenham Hale Ward councillor. My wife Zena Brabazon was previously a senior council officer and during that time complied with the Widdicombe rules.)

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Permalink Reply by Cllr Emina Ibrahim on March 23, 2014 at 8:58

Hi Clive

I must say I do find your lack of knowledge of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 rather worrying considering you are standing to be a Cllr in Highgate ward. Perhaps if some time was taken out to sit and read it this McCarthyesque witchhunt would lose some steam. I do worry Clive i honestly do that you are spending more time looking under the desks, behind the OHP projector screens and in the stationary cupboads for these rampant lefties out to get the Lib Dems from the inside. Perhaps I will join you and theorise that the colour of the council logo is some kind of subliminal Liberal conspiracy :) hmmm reality check - perhaps not.

Please note that council officers declare such things in declarations of interest to Human Resources. But has it occured to you that political parties actually benefit from people who understand the workings of local government and that residents do need a balanced perspective of local community experience as well as how to get things done. People who have Local Government knowledge often know how to ask the right questions.

Here i should rip off my mask and reveal that i am Branch Secretary of an East London Borough UNISON Local Government Branch. Not such a revelation really is it? considering its declared on my Facebook and Twitter profile!

Emine Ibrahim
Labour Party Candidate (Harringay Ward)

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on March 23, 2014 at 9:45

But some rampant righties in the Labour Party.  Entryists of the injelitant tendency.

(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)

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Permalink Reply by matt on March 23, 2014 at 12:21

Hackney is already well down the path of selling land off to developers, one way or another. Dalston One, Woodberry Down Estate and across the road the Skinners Academy came with 4 new apartment blocks 8/9 stories high. How many of the council tenants were allowed to stay living in these new developments? Where did they go if they had to move on ... out of Hackney?

Haringey is following Hackney and other areas of London.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Burnham on March 23, 2014 at 19:54

The problem with Haringey’s strategy of relying on private investors is that those investors shape public policy to make more profit for themselves.  Thus all other recent Haringey Council documents on housing repeatedly stress the need to change the ‘tenure mix’, and this always means reducing the ‘quantum’ of council housing.  So on the Northumberland Park estate, ‘housing options in the area are quite limited, with over half of all the housing consisting of affordable housing’. Now, I think that 100% of housing should be affordable – what’s the use of housing that is not. But having decided that private development is the answer, Haringey Council has set aside a communications budget from our rent accounts, of £500,000 per year in each of the next three years , to push the message from Cannes  to tenants around the borough (LBH: Medium Term Financial Plan to 2017, Appendix 5a.)   I don’t think that’s what I pay my rent for. But there is some twisted logic to it. After all, which private developer can tolerate working class tenants with permanent tenancy rights, or (horror of horrors) with a low rent regime?

Paul Burnham

Haringey Defend Council Housing

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