Brixton news, rumour and general chat - October 2016

[CH1]

Has anyone got the full story behind this poll?

Seems to be related to this document. Maybe in a more recent iteration:
https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/sites/de...uncil residents survey 2015 - Full report.pdf
Looks like it is a council internal document - so how rigorous the sampling etc is - who can say?

 

[bimble]

I still don't know how to do links on my phone but the full survey is on Lambeth's website with the headline:
'Lambeth residents Happy, Survey shows".
(Really)

 

[Winot]

Talking of La Peck - she has published this refutation in the South London Press.
The Council are NOT doing social cleansing, neither are they closing any libraries.
And of course the council is supporting the businesses in the railway arches.

As Private Eye used to say - pass the sick bag, Alice.

Cllr Peck's Tweet of her SLP article was immediately re-tweeted by Chuka - who has now blotted his copybook as far as I'm concerned.

He looked to be doing OK on Question Time last night - but if he is going to be Mr Reasonable on the Telly, but simply re-Tweet a load of Newspeak locally, what chance it there.

Up yours Lib and Chuka I say.
View attachment 93599

I saw that too on Twitter. Peck's claim to be "building more homes for council rent" seems to be easily refutable if not true. Or does she mean that she is building some homes (but that the total number at council rent will decrease)?

 

[CH1]

I still don't know how to do links on my phone but the full survey is on Lambeth's website with the headline:
'Lambeth residents Happy, Survey shows".
(Really)

Can't find that - but to me it looks as though a new 2016 survey has just come to the leader's desk.

On the 2015 one - surveying was done by BMG for Lambeth council.
1,238 residents were interviewed (see under "Methodology" - page 6 section 2.1)

 

[CH1]

I saw that too on Twitter. Peck's claim to be "building more homes for council rent" seems to be easily refutable if not true. Or does she mean that she is building some homes (but that the total number at council rent will decrease)?

What is means is they are building Somerleyton Road - if they can untangle the mess they've got themselves into by delaying the project and allowing a private competitor to get planning permission for half of the site.

 

[Winot]

What is means is they are building Somerleyton Road - if they can untangle the mess they've got themselves into by delaying the project and allowing a private competitor to get planning permission for half of the site.

So will the total number of council rent properties across the borough increase?

 

[CH1]

So will the total number of council rent properties across the borough increase?

Somerleyton was due to be 300 or more completely new places for rent.

I haven't been following Cressingham Gardens and Fenwick Estate very closely, but I believe the council claim a small increase (less than 30) at Cressingham, and not sure at all about Fenwick. For some reason Fenwick residents don't seem to be protesting, despite their estate being completely knocked down and rebuilt. Possibly there are not many leaseholders there. The leaseholders are the people who are really being hit by the regeneration schemes all over London because the compensation level does not track property values.

 

[friendofdorothy]

Has anyone got the full story behind this poll?

They never asked me.

 

[editor]

They never asked me.

Didn't ask me either. I'm sure my low low mark would have nudged the happy clappy numbers down,

 

[brixtonblade]

Didn't ask me either. I'm sure my low low mark would have nudged the happy clappy numbers down,

The score seems off to me, but
- "satisfied" isn't that positive a statement
- I suspect lots of people don't get too involved in local policy... Scores were higher for young fkatsharers etc

The positive trend is weird though.. This year more than any id have thought more people would have become aware of council twattery

 

[Greebo]

They never asked me.

Didn't ask me either. I'm sure my low low mark would have nudged the happy clappy numbers down,

Me neither.

 

[editor]

Central Brixton is pretty horrible on a Friday night these days. So many drunk people. It feels like we've turned into a drinker's extension of Clapham and the West End. I'm struggling to think of a single pub I could recommend that's open last 11pm.

 

[wurlycurly]

Central Brixton is pretty horrible on a Friday night these days. So many drunk people. It feels like we've turned into a drinker's extension of Clapham and the West End. I'm struggling to think of a single pub I could recommend that's open last 11pm.

Know what you mean. High Street resembles a vomit slalom some weekends. Gross.

 

[editor]

Not entirely sure what function these two, long time lurking cops positioned directly outside the Albert were trying to achieve.

 

[DietCokeGirl]

Not entirely sure what function these two, long time lurking cops positioned directly outside the Albert were trying to achieve.

View attachment 93605

They did sweet fuck all ealier in the night when a lady got her bag snatched by KFC by a young man on a bike who peddled off down cold harbour lane. She gave chase but he was long gone.

 

[Greebo]

They did sweet fuck all ealier in the night when a lot got her bag snatched by KFC by a young man on a bike <snip>

 

[editor]

Photos from STAND UP to Lambeth Council protest in Windrush Square

Stand Up To Lambeth campaigners gather in Windrush Square, Brixton

 

[discobastard]

Seems to be related to this document. Maybe in a more recent iteration:
https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/sites/de...uncil residents survey 2015 - Full report.pdf
Looks like it is a council internal document - so how rigorous the sampling etc is - who can say?

Looks pretty sound to me. More than 1,000 responses which gives a pretty low sampling error.
How they selected people for survey isn't clear.

 

[editor]

Looks pretty sound to me. More than 1,000 responses which gives a pretty low sampling error.
How they selected people for survey isn't clear.

I would have preferred an outside agency to have compiled the questions too.

 

[bimble]

Looks pretty sound to me. More than 1,000 responses which gives a pretty low sampling error.
How they selected people for survey isn't clear.

Hmm.
"Interviews were conducted face-to-face in-home by BMG’s team of interviewers."..
https://moderngov.lambeth.gov.uk/documents/s84216/290916 residents survey cabinet report.pdf

Actually the whole thing's worth a look, if you have a slightly dark sense of humour, eg the very first statement in it is "Lambeth Council has a longstanding commitment to listening to residents and ensuring that their priorities, views and concerns are used to inform decision-making."

 

[brixtonblade]

Photos from STAND UP to Lambeth Council protest in Windrush Square

Stand Up To Lambeth campaigners gather in Windrush Square, Brixton

Nice photos.

Was a good atmosphere today.

Weren't as many people as I thought might go but was still a good turnout.

 

[discobastard]

Hmm.
"Interviews were conducted face-to-face in-home by BMG’s team of interviewers."..
https://moderngov.lambeth.gov.uk/documents/s84216/290916 residents survey cabinet report.pdf

Actually the whole thing's worth a look, if you have a slightly dark sense of humour, eg the very first statement in it is "Lambeth Council has a longstanding commitment to listening to residents and ensuring that their priorities, views and concerns are used to inform decision-making."

Face to face in home is standard for social/govt work. And probably gets the most reliable results. BMG specialise in large scale govt surveys and will have sampling strategies in place (eg knock on every 5th door). You choose your methodologies according to what you need to achieve (ie representative survey of a specific area).

This is actually more reassuring than worrying. And it's actually much more effort to to try and 'fix' a survey. So no conspiracy there.

Your worst enemy here is bad questionnaire design. Leading questions etc. I haven't seen the questionnaire.

 

[bimble]

Face to face in home is standard for social/govt work. And probably gets the most reliable results.

Is it? I thought they usually rely on phonecalls, it's much cheaper.
I'm not suggesting a conspiracy / fixing, just that the survey is a silly waste of resources.
But still, imagine if you will:
A smartly dressed person holding a clipboard knocks on your door and says Hi, I'm doing a survey about how you feel about your local council, may I come in?
Do you think they are more or less likely to get an honest answer than say an anonymous questionaire sent out (by email or post or even by phone) to 1 in 1000 or whatever of the people who live in Lambeth?

 

[discobastard]

Is it? I thought they usually rely on phonecalls, it's much cheaper.
I'm not suggesting a conspiracy / fixing, just that the survey is a silly waste of resources.
But still, imagine if you will:
A smartly dressed person holding a clipboard knocks on your door and says Hi, I'm doing a survey about how you feel about your local council, may I come in?
Do you think they are more or less likely to get an honest answer than say an anonymous questionaire sent out (by email or post or even by phone) to 1 in 1000 or whatever of the people who live in Lambeth?

Interviewers are not all smartly dressed, they tend to dress normally according the where you are visiting.

Telephone is cheaper yes but you will struggle to reach certain demographics and quite a lot of people don't answer landlines these days. It's also a rather long questionnaire (I've now read it) and it's harder to keep people's attention on the phone or even get them to remember the question they are answering (you can use showcards face to face). Or a tablet/laptop which is also likely. So telephone isn't great for this kind of thing.

And interviewers are generally not that highly paid, are quite a distance from whomever commissioned the survey and generally have no stake whatsoever in the answers people give. So unlikely to have any role in skewing the results.

Postal surveys you get very low response rates and cannot control easily how representative it is.

Face to face overall lets you quality control it better for understanding of the questions and also language.

The questionnaire looks to have been designed by the agency and Lambeth will have fed in what they wanted to know about. It's pretty balanced, not leading and addresses a wide range of issues including how the area has changed.

I'm sure there are things that could be improved (there always are), but working in the field myself, it looks like a rather well designed and delivered survey.

ETA re waste of resources, is it not good to canvas opinions? And it is possible they have to do this by law/directive.

 

[bimble]

Interviewers are not all smartly dressed, they tend to dress normally according the where you are visiting.

I like this idea. Do they carry a few changes of clothes with them when moving between say the leafy streets of Herne Hill and the Loughborough Estate?

This survey is not a big problem for me at all, just seems pointless and I don't like the self-congratulatory trumpeting tone of it, from a council who are already so smug in the certainty of being reelected every time. But you're right, they may have to do it.

 

[discobastard]

I would have preferred an outside agency to have compiled the questions too.

Have a read of the questionnaire (as an appendix to the report). It does ask some quite pertinent questions about how the area is changing.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I saw that too on Twitter. Peck's claim to be "building more homes for council rent" seems to be easily refutable if not true. Or does she mean that she is building some homes (but that the total number at council rent will decrease)?

Let me take you through the saga to date on Cressingham Gardens, one of the estates scheduled for "regeneration".

There are 306 homes on the estate. 90 are owned by freeholders and leaseholders, 6 are long-term voids (since 1999) and the other 210 are occupied by tenants with secure council tenancies.
The plan is to demolish, and to rebuild at a higher density, even though the estate is already rated as medium-high density under PTAL ratings. The intention is to build a minimum of 458 homes on the footprint of the estate, with 23-27 being NEW "homes for council rent", except that they won't be. Here's what they will be:

Homes that do not have secure tenancies, but rather have assured tenancies with few of the statutory legal protections that a secure council tenancy has.
Homes that have "council-level" rents, except that where current council rents cover service charges for grounds maintenance and water supply, these charges will now be on top of a rent that's already been quantified as at least 23% higher than is currently being paid.
Homes whose council tax rating will be two bands higher than present.

Now, if we do the maths:

210 current council homes, plus 27 new "social rent" homes = 237 homes, which doesn't sound so bad, except that Lambeth Council have been offering tenants priority moves to elsewhere in the borough, so the volume of "council homes" tenanted when demolition is triggered will be - on current numbers - 178, and more moves will reduce that number. That means that - again, on current numbers - there will be 205 homes for social rent on the rebuilt estate, but there's an added twist. Any council tenant wishing to return to the rebuilt estate is being told that they have to give up their council tenancy and any rights and protections that go with it, and accept an insecure assured tenancy" instead.

The whole "council rent" schtick is verbal trickery that merely means "at the level of council rent". Now you may be asking "why isn't it council rent?", and it'd be a good question. The reason it isn't "council rent", is because the council is setting up SPVs (Special Purpose Vehicle companies) as subsidiaries, in order to draw in investment to redevelop estates. They can't do this as Lambeth Council because Lambeth Council are confined with regard to investing in housing by the black ink on their Housing Revenue Account - they can only borrow within a centrally-defined "headroom", and Lambeth's headroom is low. The SPVs will - supposedly - allow them to develop homes as a private - but wholly-owned by LBL - company. Unfortunately (for council tenants) private housing companies, housing associations etc can't award secure tenancies. Only local authorities can do that.

Oh, and the rest of the housing to be built on Cressingham? On the council's last set of figures, 60% at local market rent rate, and 25% at local "affordable" rate. Welcome to Lambeth Council = private landlord.

 

[CH1]

I understand there was a demo by Young Lives Matter marching through central Brixton around 1 pm today.
Friend of mine (who probably doesn't post on here) showed me a photo taken from Effra Court.
Seems they started at Kennington Park and marched to Brockwell Park.

I appreciate it isn't the goût du jour on here, but I do admire Pastor Mimi and her fellow activists who are trying to do consciousness raising on knife and gun crime and bring it to an end.

 

[ViolentPanda]

So will the total number of council rent properties across the borough increase?

The boast was "1000 new homes for council rent by 2018".
The boast as stands is "1000 new homes at council-level rent by 2018/19".

It neither was nor is achievable through Somerleyton and regeneration of six estates. At best they could achieve a little less than half of that, based on their own projected development figures. Even rolling in "affordable" homes too barely achieves 1000 across their development programme.

 

[twistedAM]

Olley's in Herne Hill. Perfectly complements their 'small' fish, which is literally dwarfed by a fish finger. West Ham fans are up in arms over £9 for fish and chips at the Olympic Stadium. It's £11.20 in Olley's. Ultimate rip-off.'

Ah i don't go there cos it's so expensive and not really that much cop anyway, but i was actually referring to Fish Lounge on Brixton Hill...30p for a sachet of tomato ketchup.