Brixton news, rumours and general chat

[editor]

Xmas trees STILL uncollected by Lambeth on Brixton Hill. McCloud is unimpressed

Only 309 days until next Christmas!

 

[Mr paulee]

Those 'properly run businesses' would probably take the form of far more expensive gastro pubs though.

price counts for more (no pun intended) than properly run businesses that don't rip people off.

Dear me Ed.

 

[editor]

price counts for more (no pun intended) than properly run businesses that don't rip people off.

Dear me Ed.

I don't actually understand this comment, sorry. Are you saying you prefer more expensive gastropubs that, by their very nature, are likely to exclude lower income locals?

 

[GarveyLives]

Lambeth Council appear to follow Hackney Council's lead in declaring war on 'Black'-led voluntary organisations:

Voluntary group threatened with eviction say it’s an ‘attack on Black community’

“Lambeth Council is strongly committed to equality and diversity in all its activities, and has the policies and practices in place to achieve that.”​

ORIGIN Graduation 2019 - a Rites of Passage programme that was borne out of New Initiatives at 55 Willington Road​

"We are joining the dots up and it doesn’t look good. In Lewisham, Brent and Hackney we find similar things taking place, where Black groups are being threatened with eviction or closure and are being turfed-out onto the streets.

The contradictions are clearly evident. On the one hand we celebrate the Windrush generation and Black history month but on the other this uprooting of community organisations goes on in the background.

It’s absolutely disgraceful but unfortunately, those who have been around long enough will recognise this pattern of behaviour."

See: Black-led voluntary organisation The Village HQ battle Lambeth’s winding down order

 

[friendofdorothy]

What do people think about those 'How does Brixton Poo?' posters are all over Brixton? is it just Brixton or are they everywhere?

 

[editor]

What do people think about those 'How does Brixton Poo?' posters are all over Brixton? is it just Brixton or are they everywhere?

I find them a bit weird and I don't think they're very effective.

 

[friendofdorothy]

I find them a bit weird and I don't think they're very effective.

bit shit maybe.

 

[editor]

Dr Bike in Brixton today and Sat Dr Bike will be fixing bicycles for free in Coldharbour Lane, Brixton: Weds 24th Feb and Sat 27th Feb, 2021

 

[editor]

Now open The Windrush Fund now open for applications

 

[felonius monk]

What do people think about those 'How does Brixton Poo?' posters are all over Brixton? is it just Brixton or are they everywhere?

There are elsewhere. First saw it in Stockwell and then Balham. Bit odd that they are in pink.

 

[urbanspaceman]

It's disappointing to see that more than half the lights on WIndrush Square are not working. I attach a selection of pictures to illustrate, There are two sorts of fixture: tall lighting poles around the Square, including two across Effra Road, and shorter reflector type, bordering Effra Road. In almost all cases, some or all of the lights are not working. Lambeth has such grand visions and plans, but it can't even - literally - change a lightbulb. I've notified my local councillors (Emma Nye and Scarlett O'Hara), and posted the problem on Fixmystreet, which, incidentally, is a really good way of logging problems/defects/issues in the public realm

www.fixmystreet.com

 

[friendofdorothy]

free zoom event this weekend - part of lgbt history month

Feb 27th - LGBT Housing History Month Event 2pm - 3:30pm

Looking to the past to inform our future. Discussion with audience Q & A. There will be stories from the past from a former Brixton Faerie Julian Hows, from Stonewall Housing in '80s Femi Otitoju, And hearing about present day housing issues from Carla Ecola Director The Outside Project, Josh Willacy a Trustee of Stonewall Housing and Daniel Hibbs-Woodings of Tonic Housing for older lgbt people.

Zoom meeting hosted by Lambeth Libraries as part of Lambeth Links LGBT History Month. Free!

Lambeth Links - Housing

 

[ViolentPanda]

I don't think it's helpful to simplify it to this kind of thing.

I don't give a fuck what you think, you shonky contrarian miserablist cunt.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Lambeth Council are property developers now!

This is the point we made at our 2nd Judicial Review in 2016 - that thru Homes for Lambeth, Lambeth Council were becoming not only (as is proper) a provider of social housing, but also a developer & landlord of market-rent private housing, & that the two roles were conflicting. Who comes first, the people paying a £250 per week private rent to HfL for a studio flat, or the person in the studio flat paid for by Local Housing Allowance? They should both receive equal priority, but as has been established with regard to other "registered social landlords", private renters tend to be given priority.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Lambeth council have been accused a number of times of corruption in terms of handing contracts to their preferred providers rather than through fair tender. I personally have experience of this but I cannot post this on public message board - not as someone who was hoping for a contract but as someone who suffered due to the fall out of this.
Not carrying out proper consultation or making consultation inaccessible is corrupt in my books. Hiding evidence of alternatives, even ignoring this, having your housing officers support projects when they're supposed to be neutral, having hidden and vested interests in developments - this is all corrupt.
Unfortunately our election system doesn't offer a way out with no alternative but voting for others who also support the status quo.

There's also a history - if you dig thru the paperwork - of waivers granted for procurement without tender AFTER THE FACT. I also personally know of a couple of former officers who, while they worked for LBL, had contracts awarded to their private companies (which, of course, they hadn't declared as outside interests to LBL).

 

[ViolentPanda]

You are willfully ignoring the whole history of how this has played out and the alternatives Lambeth could have chosen and met their targets.

What people - including teuchter - ignore, is the "story behind the story", which is that Lambeth see a need to establish new revenue streams, and an easier (relatively!) route to this, is to monetise the land under existing housing estates. It's no accident that the 6 estates chosen for the first phase of regeneration, are all in locations that have considerable visual amenity &/or excellent transport links. This is the story that Lambeth's cabinet & senior officers refuse to tell - that their "pragmatism" around housing is such that it condemns existing residents in favour of servicing the needs of attracting households of "higher net worth" (their words).

Does this signal corruption in the old John Paulson/T. Dan Smith sense? No, there aren't any bundles of used fivers changing hands in the Town Hall's Masonic Lodge. What there is, is what Edwin Delattre called "noble cause corruption". This is where finessing the rules to ensure what is viewed as a good outcome, becomes routinised behaviour that is, nonetheless, either unlawful, or extremely morally dubious. This happens all the time in local authorities simply BECAUSE it has become routine for cllrs to not scrutinise officer reports - here in Lambeth I've lost count of the number of times at meetings where I've brought up an obvious detail in a report or summary, & cllrs are clueless as to what I'm talking about - or to even question (let alone interrogate) officer claims & assertions.

Lambeth could have, had it the will to actually build social housing as opposed to housing for market rent, have done infill borough-wide, hitting their "1000 homes" target in 4-5 yrs. Instead they've chosen a model of housing gain that builds minimal numbers of social homes, gets developers to build some as Section 106 gains, & excuses its behaviour by saying "but we have to build homes for market rent, to pay for the development!". On Cressingham, that's £130 million of costs, for a *maximum social housing gain of 27 homes.

*Obviously, depending on "the market", this could dip to zero.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I have mixed feelings about criticising this Labour Council for its SPV Homes for Lambeth.

What people do not realise is that a lot of Labour Councils have gone down this route ( and they are not all as right wing Progress as this one). Main reason being is that it gets around right to buy.

I really do not know what alternative Labour Councils have. If they build purely Council housing right to buy kicks in and makes it financially unfeasible for Councils to build. The big discount tenant gets makes long term financial planning impossible.

What is needed imo is end of RTB. Starting with any new builds Councils do.

"Getting around RtB" is currently illegal. The Secretary of State for Housing can, if he wants to, kick the board over on local authorities doing this.

 

[ViolentPanda]

The Local Plan lays down planning rules for Lambeth and aims for development in local areas.

It is revised and updated every so often.

The amended version goes to a Planning Inspector. Who takes submissions from local groups and business. He can suggest further alterations.

This is the version with his amendments.

LJAG/ LJ neighbourhood forum put in submission to protect Grove Adventure playground. Which Council opposed.

I'm going to search through this doc to see what happened about that.

Not that Lambeth ever bother to stick with their Local Plan, unless it suits them.

 

[teuchter]

Lambeth could have, had it the will to actually build social housing as opposed to housing for market rent, have done infill borough-wide, hitting their "1000 homes" target in 4-5 yrs.

But if you've sold people the story that councillors and councils are inherently corrupt and driven by "naked greed and prejudice" with the attitude that tenants are "horrible poor people", how do you then persuade people that they should be trusted to build social housing of any form? Wont they just build substandard housing and shovel public money to their contractor friends? Wouldn't these be typical arguments used against the principle of proper, publicly funded social housing?

 

[ViolentPanda]

But if you've sold people the story that councillors and councils are inherently corrupt and driven by "naked greed and prejudice" with the attitude that tenants are "horrible poor people", how do you then persuade people that they should be trusted to build social housing of any form? Wont they just build substandard housing and shovel public money to their contractor friends? Wouldn't these be typical arguments used against the principle of proper, publicly funded social housing?

I don't believe they're "inherently corrupt". Rather, I believe that the system they work within is so flawed & lacking in oversight, that "bending the rules" has become the norm/has been regularised into decision-making. As I mentioned earlier, "noble cause corruption", which is different from the sort of corruption people were used to w/r/t local authorities. I don't necessarily trust ANY local authority to BUILD social housing either. Most of them have been out of that game for at least 35 yrs, with the concomitant lack of experience & skill in every Town Hall. As for "sub-standard" housing, in Lambeth's case I'm unimpressed by the product of the PFI at Myatt's Field North, but accept this could be due to the same lack of experience & skill in assessing build quality, or down to their proven difficulties (pay peanuts, get monkies) in reviewing contracts with big construction companies.

The prejudice part is real on the part of some councillors, sadly. There's the Coldharbour bloke who railed against "too many bloody council tenants in my ward" in May 2018, 3 ex-cllrs I know of who made diatribes against council tenants who dared contradict them, and half-a-dozen current ones who've done similar, plus the likes of "Lying" Luke Murphy, who thought it was fine & dandy to tell fibs at a Scrutiny Committee meeting, with regard to tenants on Central Hill estate.

 

[teuchter]

I don't believe they're "inherently corrupt". Rather, I believe that the system they work within is so flawed & lacking in oversight, that "bending the rules" has become the norm/has been regularised into decision-making. As I mentioned earlier, "noble cause corruption", which is different from the sort of corruption people were used to w/r/t local authorities.

Well, that's not far off the reasons I don't like what I see as the simplistic representation of what happens as just greed and corruption and no further discussion necessary. That doesn't get anyone anywhere closer to doing something about systematic problems or working out how to try and change these flawed decision making processes. I don't really have any great suggestions because the whole thing is so complex and I struggle to fully understand it all. People making hand-wavy statements about greed and corruption doesn't get me any further in trying to comprehend the situation.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Well, that's not far off the reasons I don't like what I see as the simplistic representation of what happens as just greed and corruption and no further discussion necessary. That doesn't get anyone anywhere closer to doing something about systematic problems or working out how to try and change these flawed decision making processes. I don't really have any great suggestions because the whole thing is so complex and I struggle to fully understand it all. People making hand-wavy statements about greed and corruption doesn't get me any further in trying to comprehend the situation.

My personal opinion is that we have to start tackling this somewhere, & that supporting a referendum on cabinet governance could be that start. Back in the '80s & '90s we didn't think the committee system was too accountable, but compared to the cabinet governance of the last 15 yrs, it was the last word in local democracy! The ability to attend a meeting & speak without having to pre-book a slot with Lambeth's "democratic services" dept was much moe inclusive, & garnered a much wider variety of views, albeit it was "slower" than councillors & officers liked. To me, "slower" always came over as more thorough, though.

 

[Not a Vet]

So coldharbour is shutting for 5 weeks between brixton road and Atlantic according to a letter I got today from southern gas board. It talks about a diversion but who knows where. Baring in mind that coldharbour takes all the traffic displaced from the LTN, I’m wondering what the route will be?

 

[teuchter]

Gresham Rd would seem the obvious answer.

 

[happyshopper]

Coldharbour doesn’t take all the traffic displaced by the LTN.

 

[Mr paulee]

Low-traffic schemes benefit most-deprived Londoners, study finds

Data dispels myth that low-traffic neighbourhoods are disproportionately found in privileged areas

www.theguardian.com

 

[CH1]

Low-traffic schemes benefit most-deprived Londoners, study finds

Data dispels myth that low-traffic neighbourhoods are disproportionately found in privileged areas

www.theguardian.com

I think the argument in the article is tendentious.
Apparently the LTN areas are not more yuppified, upmarket or lacking in BME residents. And those residents also already walk more.

What this issue is is this. Traffic is being shifted from already low traffic roads such as Mervan, Dalberg and Trelawn onto heavily trafficked roads such as Morval and Coldharbour.

 

[teuchter]

What this issue is is this. Traffic is being shifted from already low traffic roads such as Mervan, Dalberg and Trelawn onto heavily trafficked roads such as Morval and Coldharbour.

How do you know?

 

[CH1]

How do you know?

Because I live on Coldharbour Lane and a close friend lives on Morval Road - and was amazed at the latest measure stopping people turning into Trelawn Road from Effra Road - meaning all traffic into Trelawn now has to go down Morval Road first.

Sorry and all that but nobody seems to have been consulted - this is just continuing traffic fascism.

 

[teuchter]

The question is how you know where the traffic that you currently see on Coldharbour Lane would have been instead, had the LTNs not happened.
But this is probably for the other thread...