Showing posts with label London stadium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London stadium. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Newham Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz reflects on her first 100 days in office



"Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz reflects on her first 100 days in office and pledges to continue to drive the change that Newham needs and for the benefit of all"

Monday, July 16, 2018

London Stadium Report & LOBO legal action: Newham Full Council Meeting 16.7.18

Tonight's Newham Full Council meeting was dominated by two key announcements by Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz in her report to Council.

Firsty, she announced the result of a QC investigation on the London Olympic Stadium debacle where Newham Council lost at least £54 million in a failed investment in the stadium. 

Why did Newham go ahead with the original £40 million investment when even our financial advisors warned against it? Full report published tomorrow.

Secondly, the Mayor announced that Newham Council is pursuing legal action against Bank(s) over the selling to us of toxic LOBO loans, which is separate to the Court challenge announced by 14 other local authorities yesterday. Matter now "sub judice".

Not often I can say this but today was in my view a great day for Newham. Getting to the truth, holding people and institutions to account, seeking justice, learning from what has gone wrong while standing up for the interests of our residents. 

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

The speech that never was - West Ham Ward Labour Councillor selections 2018

Since on Saturday I was affirmed by West Ham ward members as a Councillor candidate for May, I was not able to give my speech - so will blog it here instead :)

"My name is John Gray and I have lived in Newham for the last 30 years and have been honoured to be a Newham Councillor in West Ham ward since 2010.

· Even though I am seeking a 3rd term as your Councillor the reason why I am standing here today is that I want to be a change candidate in Newham for the next 4 years. While we have done many fine things as a council over the years, we desperately need fresh political leadership and a fresh approach.

· Not only at the top of the Council but also amongst backbench Councillors. The directly elected mayoral system gives such mayors huge powers and they must be held accountable by Councillors brave enough to stand up for their constituents, regardless of the consequences.

· For example, I have been a supporter of the London Living wage foundation since it was founded in 2001. It is completely unacceptable that we still have 17 years later, hundreds of workers employed as agency or in house contractors, providing Newham Council services on poverty pay. Doing often dirty, hard, manual labour for a measly £7.50 per hour, compared to the £10.20 per hour, the Living Wage Foundation thinks is the absolute minimum to live on in London. Not only do they have rubbish pay, but they are on insecure zero hour contracts, no pensions, no company sick pay. They are even forced to opt out of the working time regulations, so they can be even further exploited.

· We need proper financial checks and balances in place in Newham Council to stop the continuing financial governance problems such as the £530 million we have committed to 50-70 year toxic derivative LOBO loans and £60 million of Newham resident’s money wasted down the plug hole on the London Stadium.

· At the moment Newham Council officers are going up and down the country buying car parks, warehouses, shopping centres in order get money to try and offset government cuts in our grants to councils. I understand the need and lay blame with for the cuts where it lies – which is this thieving tory government but if we are going to borrow billions of £s, where are the checks and balance in place to make sure that this money is invested wisely?

· As a founder member of “Newham against Austerity” I want to support our Schools to remain in the Newham family of Schools and campaign against all education cuts.

· I want to bring back in-house the management of the many outsourced Council Services, stop the use of bailiffs by the Council against the poor and vulnerable and the Council to sign the Ethical Care Charter.

· We need to build decent homes at social rents not homes for private market rent.

· We desperately need better youth services to stop gang and knife killings, we also need accessible citizen advice provision across the borough.

· I work in social housing , a school governor, Pension and Charity trustee and UNISON trade union activist (and member of its National Executive Committee)

· I have been Lyn Brown MP Parliamentary agent for the last 3 General elections & Vice Chair campaigns of West Ham CLP.

· Please also support my Councillor colleague John Whitworth. We have worked together as a team to stop the 40% rent rises of housing association key workers and working with branch members, we persuaded the planning committee to tell the Ford Show room’s developers to get lost until they change their plans and provide far more social housing homes for rent. John and I have been leading the campaign in Newham to call Executive power to account and support Mayoral candidate, Rokhsana Fiaz, in her call for a referendum on the future of the directly elected mayoral system in Newham.

Thank you for your time and hope that I have earned your trust to be your candidate.

Friday, January 05, 2018

Councillor Report 3.1.17 - "Could we become Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV) Two?"

This is my latest written report (previous one 7 December 2017).

Council Issues
Meeting with Senior Council officers

13 December. I met again with other concerned backbench Councillors senior officers at Newham Dockside to discuss and examine reports on the way that the Council buys and manages commercial properties for investment purposes. The meeting was constructive and informative but I still have huge concerns about the governance arrangements and oversight. Newham is borrowing hundreds of millions of pounds to invest in property. We are still being refused sight of the Newham Council reports on the London Stadium disaster and the reasons for the £50-60 million pound losses. This is an executive decision not to release and not by officers.

Newham Council Investment & Accounts meeting
14 December. At this meeting while discussing the minutes of the previous joint Audit meeting the Director of Finance confirmed that the £40 million original loan to the London stadium is not being “written off” but swapped in some “debt for equity” exchange? Since the loan was recently declared in our annual accounts as “impaired” (currently worthless) I do not know what on earth that means? Nor what happens to the lost £4.4 million interest charge, the £5 million loan for investments in the Olympic South Park and the £12 million of "working capital”.

I was very shocked to hear that some Newham Schools are allowing private contractors to not enrol new starters into the Local Government Pension Scheme. This will penalise already low paid female school staff and is of course a disgrace and these schools should be named and shamed.

At the meeting there were members of the Newham Carbon Divestment campaign. I suggested that they should be allowed to make a presentation at the Newham Pension AGM.

Newham Cabinet Meeting. Could we become Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV) Two?
21 December I attended Cabinet as an observer and spoke to the Mayor about privatisation of Council services and also a proposal to set up some special vehicle to run all Newham’s property assets (we are talking potentially billions of pounds). I am astonished that this is even being considered before we learn the lessons on what went wrong with the London stadium special vehicle. This could be an even worse political mess than Haringey Council has found itself over its property development vehicle. I asked the Mayor if he would bring any such future plans back to a full Council meeting for approval but he did not agree and said it would go to Labour Group.

Fortunately Cllr’s Hussain and Clark managed to amend the proposal to just doing a review of existing arrangements and nothing else.

Review of Scrutiny arrangements
The Select Committee on Communities and Local Government has recently published a hard hitting report criticising many Councils for inadequate Scrutiny of Executive decisions. I have publicly commented on this report with and I am pleased that Scrutiny Chair, Cllr Rokhsana Fiaz, will be taking the recommendations to the Overview & Scrutiny Committee.

Surgeries and case work
I have attended 2 surgeries per month in Vicarage Lane Community Centre and Brassett Point Residents Association room. Casework regarding Academies, ASB; parking ticket policy; disabled adaptations disrepair, speeding cars, Right to buy, insurance and forming a Tenants & Residents group. I was most unimpressed with repair failures in the Church Street block run by One Housing Group and I am trying to arrange an inspection. I have received a petition from residents which I will present at the next Full Council meeting.

Ward Issues

Ward meeting/Xmas Social
7 December I attended ward meeting and went on to enjoy the Xmas social. Many thanks to Lyn Brown MP for attending and the organisers for a great evening.

West Ham campaigning & petition on lack of social homes in Ford Showrooms development
We are waiting for the planning meeting. There is now a West Ham Labour ward petition at Change.org http://chn.ge/2iq4UKb. Please support this petition.

Durul Jannah Community Centre, E15 – Planning permission
19 December. I spoke in favour at a hearing for a change in planning permission for this centre. Officers are opposed but I think they have got it wrong over this issue. I was supported by Cllr Forhad Hussain and Cllr Mas Patel. Unfortunately due to a mistake with the paperwork the application had to put on hold but I hope this can be sorted out as quickly as possible.

Other Issues

Labour doorstep
9 December after Surgery I went door knocking & leaflet distribution in Stratford ward with a local Councillor and activists.

Councillor Candidate’s selection meeting postponed.
Apologies to ward members who had reserved 9/10 December for the chance to elect candidates for the local elections in May 2018. Due to a number of appeals outstanding for applicants who did not pass the initial interview the Regional Labour Party has postponed the selections. No new date yet.

Mayoral “trigger ballot” to be rerunThe Mayor, sent out a press release saying that he wants a rerun of his selection process as the Labour Candidate for Executive Mayor. I thought his release was extremely odd but it does appear that he concedes that the process was “rigged” and that it needs to be rerun. I strongly support it being redone but think that there is not enough time for a Mayoral “Trigger” and selecting Councillor candidates, so I believe that there needs to be an open selection process for our Mayoral candidate.

London Collective Investment Vehicle (CIV)
11 December I attended with UNISON colleagues for the public part of the business meeting. The CIV is planning to manage nearly all Local Government Pension funds in London (including Newham). However, the governance arrangements are nonsensical since there is no beneficiary representation.

Anti Academies Protest Hallsville School
23 December I attended a successful and well organised protest outside Hallsville School in Canning Town with parents, teachers, children and 4 other Newham Councillors (including are very own John Whitworth). I was quoted in the Newham Recorder that the Council must raise it game since schools are blaming it for “forcing” them to become academies due to lack of support.

UNISON
I am standing again for election as the Greater London UNISON Regional Finance Convenor (for the 10th year)

Workers Memorial Day 2018
Date for future is Saturday 28 April 2018 when West Ham Labour Party and local trade unions will be remembering all those killed at work or who have died of work related ill health at the Three Mills Green Memorial.

Living wages in Newham Schools
As a school governor I have sent in a question to the next Newham Governors Forum asking all schools to declare whether they pay a London Living wage to all their staff (including agency and contractors)

Donation in lieu of Christmas Cards
Once again I made a donation to a charity rather than send any Christmas cards. This year to the Magpie Trust which helps homeless families in Newham.

Congratulate Seyi Akiwowo
Finally, I think we should congratulate your ward chair (& Forest Gate Councillor) on her contribution to the UN about on-line hate and founding the campaigning group Glitchuk.

If any member wishes to contact me about this report to discuss any aspect please do not hesitate to do so.

Regards

John Gray
West Ham Ward Councillor

Sunday, December 24, 2017

Sir Robin Wales speaking at Forest Gate ward meeting  4th January 2018


Dear John

 Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Forest Gate North Labour Party.

Our next meeting is in January and will be a BIG EVENT. See details below:
Forest Gate North Branch Meeting
Speaker: Sir Robin Wales will be speaking on the Olympic legacy and recent issues about the stadium.

Thursday 4th January 2018 8.00 p.m. Durning Hall,
Earlham Grove, Forest Gate London E7 9AB

Come along and hear Robin Wales speak and ask questions.
We want to hear your point of view. 
Carel Buxton, Secretary Forest Gate North Labour
email: xubcb@yahoo.com

(I understand that he will be speaking to Stratford & Newtown branch immediately beforehand on that day)

Sunday, December 17, 2017

Update on Newham Council London/Olympic/West Ham FC Stadium loses

On Thursday 14 December I was at the meeting of the Newham Council Investment & Accounts meeting.

I had a chance to question the Newham Council Finance Director on matters arising from the joint audit meeting on the 27 September 2017.

At that time we knew that the £40 million loan (& £4.4 million interest payment due) was "impaired" (no value) and that an unknown amount of other money ("working capital") was also at risk of being "impaired".

Since then of course the Council has admitted to losing some £52 million of money (original loan and working capital) in the stadium. Apparently we will still have some legacy regeneration benefits for the next "100 years".

However, leaving aside for the moment that the stadium does not have a shelf life of 100 years, I understand that West Ham FC nor any other user have no contractual obligations to do anything for the community but no doubt they will offer some charitable benefits that they see fit to provide. Plus, there was always going to be possible benefits from the redevelopment but this could have happened anyway without us risking our money.

I asked the Finance director for an update on the "impairment" shown in the accounts (which means that the £40 million loan had currently no value) and was told that the loan was not being "written off" but instead converted into some form of "Debt for Equity" swap? Whatever that means? I assume that the £40 million loan which I think is currently valued as being Zero is being converted into a shares into what must be a bankrupt company? Need more information.

I will ask further questions about the lost £4.4 million interest charge, the £5 million loan for investments in the Olympic South Park and the £12 million of "working capital" (I think) that has also be "lost".

Watch this space.

Mentioned in the Council accounts and during the joint audit meeting I had brought up the reference to a possible significant criminal fraud in Newham Council procurement, which I must also chase for an update. What has happened? Are internal audit involved and have the Police been informed if there is evidence of criminality?

http://www.johnslabourblog.org/2017/09/former-olympic-stadium-stratford-report.html

http://www.johnslabourblog.org/2017/09/the-stadium-loan-and-questions-to.html

Thursday, December 07, 2017

West Ham Ward Councillor Report 7 December 2017


Councillor Report to Ward
7 December 2017
WEST HAM WARD LABOUR PARTY

tel: 0203 373 2615 or email John.Gray@newham.gov.uk
This is my bi-monthly written report. In October both I and my fellow ward member, John Whitworth, attended and passed a Labour Party candidate selection interview for the 2018 local elections. There will be local ward selections sometime in the New Year.

Our fellow ward Councillor, Freda Bourne, has decided not to re-stand but retire. Many thanks to Freda for her many years of service to the residents of West Ham.

Council IssuesResignation from Newham Fire Safety Scrutiny in Tower Blocks Commission
31 October I was forced to resign from being a member of this Commission because the evidence meetings are being held in secret. I did try to get this decision changed informally but was not successful. This secrecy is in my view completely unacceptable after the Grenfell Fire. We need complete openness and transparency to make sure such things never happen again.

Meeting with Director of Finance
22 November I met the Director and other senior managers with other Councillors to discuss our concerns about the Newham Council London Stadium loan impairment and pending huge investments into private sector renting (Red door ventures) and Commercial properties.

Newham Council Meeting
4 December. Following the announcement that £52 million in loans and working capital invested by Newham Council in the London Stadium has been lost, I raised emergency questions to the Mayor about the need for an independent judicial led enquiry into what went so wrong and that we should pause before committing proposed new massive investments in other property until we found out what had gone wrong. The Mayor disagreed.

Surgeries and case work
I have attended 2 surgeries per month in Vicarage Lane Community Centre and Brassett Point Residents Association room. There has been a number of cases regarding ASB; drug dealing; parking; housing disrepair, service charge disputes, Right to buy, domestic violence and neighbour disputes.

Ward issues
20th Anniversary of death of Police Constable Nina Mackay.
On 24 October both I and Cllr Whitworth attended this well organised and dignified remembrance service of PC Mackay who was killed on duty in Arthingworth Street E15.

AGM One Housing Group Tenants & Residents Association.
On 30 October I was pleased to attend its inaugural AGM and really hope that we are starting to see a rebirth of the TRA movement.

West Ham campaigning & petition on lack of social homes in Ford Showrooms development
28 October we went door knocking in the ward with Lyn Brown MP with petitions calling on the developers to commit to more social homes.

9 November we went and delivered letters to new party members in the ward inviting them to a special meeting.

Durul Jannah Community Centre, E15 – First Anniversary
5 November I was a guest with Cllr Whitworth & Lyn Brown MP at the 1st anniversary celebration. Lyn gave prizes to the children who used the centre and reminded all of them that they like her could one day become MPs when they grow up.

Estate Inspection Ladywell Street
8 November I did another inspection with a Family Mosaic senior manager and local residents. While there has been some improvements in this estate the performance by some contractors is very poor and they need to be monitored much better and made to improve.

Rebecca Cheetham Nursery School
23 November I attended its School Governor meeting. Things appear to going well at the school and I have been pleased to have met parents recently who are very complimentary about it.

Xmas Hampers for Elders
The free hampers for elders is running late this year but if you can help collect and delivery these hampers to local residents please contact Cllr Whitworth or I.

Misc.
Pension Conference
10 October I was on a panel speaking to a Local Government Pension investment conference about ESG issues (Environment, Social and Governance).

Community Land trusts
12 October I helped organise a Newham Co-operative Party meeting on Community Land trusts which I think is something that we consider supporting in Newham. 

Local Authority Pension Fund Forum
17 October I attended the business meeting and in the feedback session about the pooling of Local Authority pension funds I stressed the need to have beneficiary representation on these new funds.  

Political/Community (outside ward)
18 October I went door knocking with local Councillors and members in Forest Gate North. We visited an estate to talk with local residents where a young child had been murdered recently in what was believed to be a gang related crime.

23 October there was a successful fund raising dinner for the 2018 elections sponsored in part by London UNISON Labour Link.

4 November “Solidarity Saturday” I was campaigning in the Thurrock Tory marginal with Lyn Brown MP.

London Labour Conference25 & 26 November I was a UNISON delegate to this conference and moved a successful motion on the private rental sector in London.

Black History event
4 November. After canvassing in Thurrock I attended a very well organised and informative event on Black History in Canning town Library. I very much hope next year that the Council participates in similar events.

Ramgarhia Sikh Gurdwara Temple
4 November. Next I went to the temple to help mark the 548th birth anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak Dev Ji.

Workers Memorial Day 2018
Date for future is Saturday 28 April 2018 when West Ham Labour Party and local trade unions will be remembering all those killed at work or who have died of work related ill health at the Three Mills Green Memorial.

If any member wishes to contact me about this report to discuss any aspect please do not hesitate to do so.

Regards
John Gray
West Ham Ward Councillor
JohndotGray2012aticlouddotcom