New Area Forum All Go............in Crouch End

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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on June 10, 2011 at 9:39

I asked the Chair of this meeting if they could hold it in future in Hornsey Town Hall sometimes - seems obvious really. She'll get back to me after asking an officer to check out the feasibility. I put in a request that the officer document their findings, in the hope that we'll learn more - do you think that will result in a reason for the decision, whatever it is? There are no longer any car parking spaces:

The Assembly Hall is full of stuff (the Council quite sensibly use it as rotating storage) and probably won't be back until the refurb (could take a couple of years if they do it last).

The Council Chamber (perfect for an assembly!) is broken. The only room they used that at-the-time new-fangled wonder-material asbestos behind the panelled walls, apparently):

Amongst a lot of variously-sized offices there is a long committee room (with removeable dividers to double the size) which was explicitly designed (in 1935) for community meetings and still serves today - nice and clean with a big table and plenty of chairs.  They're the rooms in the first floor plan below that overlook the fountain (bottom right - Room 16).

Since the move to the civic Centre in the 1960's the Council has done it's best to use the building in it's entirety (including the Mayor's Parlour - room 103 on the plan above and the photo below of the facilities manager's use of it) 

 

I think they've calculated the value of the rental income they're deriving to be £300,000 per year according to a mention in April 2011 (probably a paper exercise - what it would cost had they to rent a non-council equivalent), so it's not as empty as it looks. I wonder why it's not been used for Assembly meetings before?

 

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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on June 13, 2011 at 11:24

Surely be the main agenda item at this Crouch End Forum should be Hornsey Town Hall, shouldn't it? (The last meeting was in January and in April the Council voted Mountview the Town Hall for £1 + a 'peppercorn rent').  

 

It's a great opportunity to form a community group of Crouch End locals to help grow this important asset, that we paid, in todays money, £150 million for in 1935.  Oh no, wait, we did that and both LBH and the Hornsey Creative Trust promised a multi use arts centre - the Council then did a massive, unannounced U-Turn and sold it to a private school with no warning and hence no local scrutiny, keeping key information secret and preventing multi-use.

 

In probably the most unequal ward of certainly the most unequal borough in the UK, the very thing that David Lammy complained about Oxford doing to poor students is happening right here - a rich private school taking over the very heart of our ward and probably unable to get anyone at all from the East a degree at these prices:

Mountview will certainly put on a student show every month but they're not allowed, under the terms of their educational Charity status, to do anything non-Theatre-Educational. I think they're probably all great people and it'll be marvellous, but that's not the issue here.  They've grabbed a huge amount of our money (they'll get £19m of the profits from selling the land behind to developers spent by us on their building) and will probably genuinely try to give us more than just a student show in the Assembly Hall every month.  They are not allowed, under the terms of their educational Charity status, to do anything that does not advance their own Theatre Education and so they won't.

 

The council's view seems to be that they are under no legal obligation to provide a multi-use arts centre.  They just want to get rid of the expense in a way that won't come back to haunt them.  Therefore, whatever happens (for example, if there is only a token amount of public access and no multi-use at all) we have no power to make the Council give us what the Creative Trust promised.  Crouch End Councillors may say they have power, but they're all Lib Dems on a Council that Labour has run and will continue to run for decades and so they don't, do they?

 

So do we have any power at all?  If so, what?  The Forums don't seem, in the past, to have embarked upon any documented actions whatsoever, and so I cant' find anything that an Assembly has done 'officially' that was as a result of local people getting involved. I also notice that a lot of the agenda I have read contain borough-wide issues that are not specific to a particular ward. 

 

All the people I've met so far (lived in Crouch End for over a decade) seem to be good-hearted people - I don't mean to undermine all the good, tireless, largely unpaid work that many good people do around here, often simply for the good of fellow residents. I don't think that, just because I want something, it should happen.  I really think it will do every one a service if we make local democracy work better.

 

I'd like to see everyone have a log on to the Council Website (every Council Tax payer has that now, but that's only used for payments) so that they can get local news and participate electronically.  What difference would it make, for instance, of everyone who lived on the Harringay Ladder logged onto the Council Website and were informed by it that a local resource, made by residents for residents (Harringayonline.com) exists and was waiting for them?  Or if, like me, you live elsewhere, be alerted to an upcoming Area Forum?

 

The Council do have a mini-version of this - some pages carry an 'alert me' system where you can put in your email address to see if the page changes, so I don't think what I'm proposing would cost anything.  In fact, if there was an option to only receive Harringey People magazine as a PDF, it might save money...

 

I'd also like to see local councillors posting in forums like this one.  I'm pretty sure that almost all the local councillors lurk and never post anything, but they do read what we write.  There is no other forum this well read in Harringey (very well done, Hugh and Liz - true professionals!) so it tends to attract many borough-wide discussions.  

 

I think we should examine why the local politicians (with very few notable exceptions) don't use this forum.  I think they may be very well afraid of the engagement they mourn the lack of. We can help them help us.  A lot of them have vast experience and huge amounts of background that we don't have.  My views on Hornsey Town Hall, for instance, take absolutely no account of what happened to Tottenham Town Hall - I wasn't around and didn't know who was involved and it's probably relevant.  Councillors could very well apply the 'lessons learned' to the Hornsey Town Hall debate. Or simply help us better navigate the labyrinth that is the Council Website.

 

It could start with the Council Leader.  I noticed she put out a statement about Tottenham Hotspur to counteract the false impression given by the press - dare we suggest that she grace us with the truth from time to time, if only to help her better communicate how she intends locals to share her power?

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