Newham Council Task & Finish report on 10 Year plan to solve the Temporary Accommodation Crisis

Yesterday, I presented a report to Full Council on the recommendations of a task and finish Group that I chaired, on the Temporary Accommodation crisis in Newham. This report was accepted unanimously. 

The key recommendation was that we have to have a credible long term plan not just to manage the crisis better (as important as that it) but to eventually solve it. 

This means not only do we have to raise our own game as a Council but also that the Government needs to be convinced that they have to provide the financial support and subsidy for us to provide sufficient secure, safe, green and affordable homes to house our 7000 homeless. 

Not an easy ask considering the dreadful state of public finances after 14 years of Tory rule but one we have to make. It used to be the case that British politicians from all political parties accepted that it was their duty to make sure that everyone had access to decent housing. We need to work to restore that belief. 

Check out the report here (Public Pack)Supplementary Agenda Two Agenda Supplement for Council, 14/07/2025 19:00

UPDATE: check out online ES articule on the report Plea for more cash to support thousands of families in temporary accommodation in east London borough | The Standard

Dancing on the graves of decent pensions: Double Bubble for the Few, Misery for the Many

There was a really rubbish and ignorant article here in the Evening Standard recently about a so called "black hole" in London Local Government Pension schemes.

This story is completely nuts. Most Local Government Pension Schemes are in better shape now than there have been for decades. Many are close to being fully funded. I note that the Standard did not bother to check its facts or get an alternative view.

The lies and untruths told by some of the financial services industry about defined benefit pensions is simply shocking. The totally unnecessary destruction of defined benefit pensions in the private sector will go down as one of the greatest financial scandals there has ever been. Countless millions of Brits and their families have been deprived of any chance of a decent pension by this scandal and will have to retire and die in poverty or work until they drop.  While their dependents and kids are left destitute if they die or become ill.

While Government, regulators and employers deserve their share of the blame, many financial advisers have made pots of money by closing schemes and then opening expensive new inferior Defined contributions schemes. Double bubble for few: misery for the many.

Check out the statement below from Cllr Forhad Hussain about the facts.

"The recent Evening Standard article https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/council-pensions-black-hole-grows-to-17-billion-soaring-20-in-a-year-a3791756.html made a misleading and inaccurate link between an international accounting standard number and the pension contributions made (and by inference the level of services provided) by Councils.

Council pension contributions are determined by a valuation process which takes place every three years and certified by a professional actuary in accordance with Government regulation. The last of these took place in 2016 and in fact showed a £10bn reduction in the deficit across England and Wales when compared to 2013.

With regard to the Newham Fund having the highest ‘deficit’ in the 2016 valuation, it actually showed an improvement in funding levels to 85%, a £97m reduction in the deficit to £201m from the last valuation in 2013. Since then funding levels at Newham have continued to improve and are currently estimated to be in the region of 94%. The reduction in pension deficit enabled the Council to make £4m savings per year in its budget strategy enabling resources to be reallocated to help maintain vital services. The Government Actuary has also checked the actuary’s valuation and concluded that that the Council is “paying enough” into the pension fund. 

The accounting number quoted in the article is NOT used to determine council contribution rates (nor anything else with regard to the council pension scheme) and therefore has no impact whatsoever on the resources available to services.

Please also be aware that the Local Government Association also support the above and our position on this matter.

 

Interested readers can find more information on the 2016 valuation of council pension funds in England and Wales on the authoritative Scheme Advisory Board website http://lgpsboard.org/index.php/2016-valuations-summary.

If you have any queries on the above please do not hesitate to contact me.

Cllr Forhad Hussain

Chair of Investment and Accounts Committee

London Borough of Newham

Newham Town Hall, East Ham, London E6 2RP

London Mayor Sadiq Khan

I am so pleased and chuffed that Sadiq has been elected our Mayor for London with 1.3 million votes. I am also proud that Londoners have clearly rejected the vile and racist smear campaign that Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith, his advisors and some of his supporters have run.  Following post election comments made by some leading Tories it seems that this view was shared by even them.

The behaviour of the "Evening Standard" was also dreadful. Why do we have such an awful gutter press?

To me the 3 chief policies I look forward to Sadiq pursuing are :-

1. Ordinary Londoners now have hope that they and their children in the future can actually afford to rent or buy a home in the capital.

 

2. No more inflation busting bus and rail fare rises either

 

3. Making sure that we have a real Community Police Service that respects and protects all Londoners.

Looking forward to a similar Labour Victory in 2020 (or hopefully sooner)

Well done to our new Mayor, Sadiq Khan. 

Mansion tax would affect just four families in every thousand

If you own a £2million home you can afford to pay the Mansion Tax to help save the NHS. As Ed said it's Pure and Simple. 

Amazing that the Tories think its okay to throw poor people out of their homes if they can't pay the bedroom tax but want rich millionaires to to pay less income and property taxes.

Check out the truth about the tax here. I know that some have genuine concerns about this policy but I cannot wait for a Labour Government to introduce this measure. The report below shows that it will only affect 4 families in every 1000.  I am bothered about the needs of the many and not the rich. It is simply about time that the rich and wealthy in this county paid their fair share of taxation.

"A study compiled for the Evening Standard newspaper suggests that Labour’s proposed mansion tax would only be paid by 110,000 households, of which 86,000 would be in London.

This needs careful examination, as there is obviously a concerted campaign going on against this proposal.

First, DCLG statistics suggest that there are 27.7 million homes in the UK. The Mansion Tax would be levied on a small minority of very expensive properties worth more than £2 million. 110,000 households equates to 0.4 per cent of the UK total – just four households for every thousand.
Second, despite misinformation to the contrary, there is actually a very close association between owning a house worth £2 million and having a very high degree of income and other forms of wealth. In blunt terms, a mansion tax would be a tax on the rich".

hat tip stronger unions Paul Sellers

Boris and his Pension Merger Plan to Rescue GB Plc

On Monday the FT rather oddly announced that the new Chair of the London Pension Fund Authority (LPFA), Edmund Truell, with the support of Mayor Boris Johnson, is to merge all 34 London Staff Council funds "into a single scheme and channel more investment into the capital’s infrastructure projects".  The Evening Standard also waded in on Tuesday in a similar vein here

The fact that neither Boris nor the LPFA has any legal powers to do this was not mentioned.

Now it makes perfect sense to look into merger in order to see if it will save money and stop Councils and pension scheme members being ripped off by vested interests. Equally, no one would be more happier than me if we could use pension funds to kick start the economy and say build more homes.

But there is a problem. Some 4.6 million Brits have a local government pension entitlement. Its primary purpose is to pay an income in retirement and not to be a substitute for inadequate investment in infrastructure by Government.

Some people also think that the LPFA is looking at merger due to its own internal financial predicament as a mature scheme with many pensioners claiming their money but relatively few active members still paying into the scheme.

There has also been claims of scaremongering. The Local Government Pension Scheme as a whole has assets of £160 billion. It is not broke. Some schemes do indeed have difficulties but in many cases this is due to outdated and irrelevant accounting measures which price scheme liabilities on the current abnormal 200 year low in gilt yields.

So far there has also been no mention either that in the new LGPS 2014 scheme members (and their "widows & orphans") will face the future costs of poor investment performance.  Under European and UK law pension funds must be run in the interests of beneficiaries, then the case for or against merger or for investment in any particular asset class, must first and foremost take into account their interests. Not short term political ambitions for a flat in Number 10.

There are a number of obvious risks. What if merged Council pension funds invest in building homes for rent and there is a property price crash? What if investment in alternative electricity supply is undermined by a change in future Government policy? In other countries pension funds that invest in infrastructure get significant Government financial support or guarantees.

There is also the issue of "why only the LGPS?". While it may seem rather strange that there are 101 separate LGPS schemes worth £160 billion, there are about 53,000 private Pensions schemes. The vast majority of whom are tiny. How well managed are they? This is also important to GB Plc since the Private sector defined benefit schemes alone have £1.1 trillion in investments. Surely it makes sense to look at merging private sector schemes as well?

The Secretary of State, Eric Pickles, who the FT claims is a supporter of Council Pensions merger, may have the legal power to force merger.But unless this is done sensitively and by putting the interests of beneficiaries first, then it is likely to end in tears. Which if the supporters of merger are right, would indeed be bad news not only for the LGPS but also for GB Plc.

Shareholder Spring: Employee reps to stop crony capitalism

I was astonished to read in today's Evening Standard (of all papers) that its City Editor, James Ashton, supported as the only "surefire way for any board to keep in touch with reality" over executive pay, is to appoint employee representatives to the

board "to keep them honest".

The background to this is the revolts by shareholders (or rather asset managers not by and large the actual share owners) at Company Annual General Meetings (AGM) over excessive and unearned top executive pay. Yesterday the boss of insurance giant Aviva was forced to resign after his pay package was rejected at its AGM. So were the bosses of drugs giant AstraZeneca and Trinty Mirror. Tomorrow apparently the British Gas Centrica CEO is also in big trouble.

At a pension conference recently on executive pay I asked Government Cabinet minster Vince Cable why it was thought a good thing that employee representatives were legally required to make up to 50% of the trustee board of a company pension fund, making decisions that could make or break the organisation, yet there was no requirement to have even one such rep on the same company remuneration committee? He claimed to support the principle of employee reps but that the role of a pension trustee was very different to being on a company remuneration committee (which is completely rubbish not least since many employer reps on pension schemes also sit on you know what committees!)

I must admit to agreeing with James Ashton's conclusion that the employee representation "model has been proved to work elsewhere in Europe. What better way for the chairman to keep in touch with the shopfloor than to have the shopfloor turn up in his boardroom once a month? It could make for some uncomfortable meetings".

Update: I'll post on the campaign by Fair Pensions on how ordinary people can take action against executive High Pay soon.

Arwyn Thomas reinstated: London tube strikes off

Sacked London Underground driver and RMT activist, Arwyn Thomas, has been reinstated and the strikes due next week have been cancelled.  I had thought that Arwyn (left) had been stitched up by his management based on the evidence from the interim Employment tribunal. I had posted this here.

Arwyn was held to have been unfairly dismissed in the full tribunal and the Underground has agreed to reinstate him. I don't know the full details of the outcome but this is on the RMT wedsite here and this is the version being put out by the right wing Evening Standard here that I read last night on the way home from UNISON conference in Manchester.
Hat tip Col. Roi.

Greedy Bankers

"A public sector employee in a union, a banker and a member of the "squeezed middle classes" are sitting at a table.

In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen biscuits on it.

The banker takes 11 of them, turns around to the middle-income man and says "Look out for that  union guy.  He's after a piece of your biscuit".

Nuff said?

Today's Evening Standard Business section p 41(amazingly)

Picture

Evening Standard up for sale for £1 – Associated Newspapers losing millions

Such a shame.

(Hat tip thingy to Col. Roi)

Explaining Tory “Dog Whistle” Politics in London

Last night, we had as our guest speaker at Labour Party General Committee (GC), London Assembly member, John Biggs. John represents “City & East” consistency which is made up of the City of London, Tower Hamlets, Newham and Barking & Dagenham. Some points from his address I thought were important (my interpretation): –

With regard to the current allegations made against the Mayor, Ken Livingstone. John pointed out he is the deputy Chair of the London Development Agency (LDA) which is at the centre of (what I believe to be largely malicious) allegations made by the Tory “Evening Standard”.

There has been more than 600 projects funded by the LDA. Given the “challenging” nature of many of these schemes it is inevitable that some will fail. Such project’s takes up less than 1% of its funding.

The allegations are in reality what are called “Dog Whistle politics” as practiced by conservatives in Australia. It is no coincidence that the current allegations are mainly against black led projects and leaders. This is in order to polarise white voters and frighten them into not voting for Labour.

Recorded crime has gone down in London. More needs to be done. But one obvious reason for this reduction is the increase in the numbers of Police and the introduction of dedicated teams of regular Police and Community Support Officers in every London ward. While this reduction is due in part to the work of a London Mayor and assembly members. However, it is also due to a partnership between the Police and local Councils and their communities.

In London we have a number of very large, single deck “bendy buses”. The Bendy bus service 25, which goes though much of East London, is one of the busiest routes in London with 22 million passenger journeys per year. Buses are a “bread and butter” issue since many low paid workers cannot afford to travel on the tube or railway. There are problems on “bendy buses” with fare evasion, anti-social behaviour and overcrowding. However, there are number of sensible initiatives to tackle these problems. Such random spot checks on a whole bus by the Police and fare inspectors.

John talked about the various significant environmental issues being tackled by the Mayor and the GLA. He also acknowledged that he had always argued for greater powers for the Labour assembly over scrutiny of the Mayor, but the government had disagreed.

He concluded by re-instating that we need to maximise the Labour vote in London on May 1 to keep Ken as Mayor; Stop the BNP gaining a seat and send a national message to smug Cameron and the Tories that they will be beaten.

We also later had a lively Parliamentary report and Q&A with our MP Lyn Brown.