During this latest "lockdown" the food bank will be open every Sunday from 2-3pm at Sylvia's Corner in Stratford (please register beforehand - see poster)
We helped out activists filling bags of food and handing them to local residents. All credit to local self help and mutual aid groups, who have done such a brilliant job during this crisis.
She is the only female candidate standing in a union were one million of our 1.3 million members are women.
You should have received your ballot paper by now via royal mail at your home address. If you have not it by now ring the helpline free on 0800 0 857 857 or on textphone 0800 0 967 968. The helpline opens on 10 November and closes on 20 November. Ballot papers must be returned by 27 November (but if you have a ballot paper please compete now and send it back by the freepost envelope)
If you lose the pre-paid envelope sent with the ballot paper you can return for free using your own and just write on envelope "Freepost Civica Election Services" and pop it in the post.
Usually we would have attended the Remembrance Day Service at the West Ham All Saints Church with our local MP, Lyn Brown. Due to Covid this was cancelled although Lyn was joining an online service and reading a lesson.
John and I decided to go and lay a wreath and show our respects at the nearest cemetery to West Ham Ward with a war memorial, East London Cemetery. Our ward colleague Cllr McLean was at another wreath laying event in Forest Gate.
There was one other wreath already on this memorial dedicated to some ones Great Grandfather "Albert Childs" who was killed in action on 31 October 1918 (less than 2 weeks before the end of the War)
Compared to other remembrance services it was very quiet and despite there being only the 2 of us it was quite moving.
I noticed at another war memorial another small group had gathered around it for the 2 minute silence.
Afterwards I reflected on a picture that had recently been sent to us by local historian, Alan Regin, of the Claxton family who lived at 46 Hampton Road, Forest Gate. See the picture below. Out of the five boys pictured four of them died due to the first world war and only the youngest Jonathan survived since he was too young to fight.
"Newham has one of the most extensive,longest running and most effective landlordlicensing schemes in the country. It was set up in 2013 and renewed for another 5 years in 2018. At one stage Newham was prosecuting more criminal landlords that the rest of the country put together. Despite this, every day our enforcement teams have to tackle serious disrepair, anti-social behaviour, illegal evictions and harassment of tenants. Since February 2018 we have fined 247 landlords and prosecuted 38.
We regulate 17,000 landlords who between them hold 40,000 licences. Nearly 50% of our entire housing stock is privately rented, 20% of which have repair hazards. The vast majority of landlords are not “rogues” and want to do the right thing for their tenants but there is an issue that 13,000 landlords only own a single property.
I have worked for Councils and Housing associations for nearly all my professional life and know how hard it is to manage properties even when you have a big organisation behind you. So education and support for landlords is a must.
We have established forums for landlords and intend to resume holding quarterly meetings (virtually) and workshops. Since Covid we have been sending out e-newsletters to landlords offering advice and reminders of their responsibilities.
We think we can make a difference by encouraging landlords to become more professional, but we will not hesitate to prosecute the true rogues. We are doubling the size of our enforcement team and working with Planning to shut down unlawful HMOs.
We are also working with Council Tax fraud investigators and trying (not that successfully so far) to get Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to tackle tax evasion by landlords. We also want to work with renters’ unions and other campaigning groups. We are helping tenants who have been illegally evicted or lived in unlicensed properties to claim back their rent from these landlords.
� We call on the government to do what they have promised and abolish so called “no fault” evictions, whereby tenants can be legally thrown out even if they pay the rent and look after the property. Some landlords use this power to frighten tenants from reporting repair issues or harassment.
� We also need compulsory national landlord registration, a requirement to have written tenancy agreements and an increase in criminal sanctions, fines and effective powers to compulsory purchase the very worse properties.
� We demand an end to the inexplicable anomaly that allows landlords who rent their homes to local authorities and the Government for temporary accommodation to be exempt from licensing. Well done to our East End neighbours, Waltham Forest, for their legal challenge on this.
� My final licensing demand would be for Councils to be able once again to regulate rents. Between 2011 and 2018, rents in Newham increased by 56% but salaries have only risen by 21%. A reasonable 2-bed flat in my ward can cost £1500 per month. 49% of all families in Newham live in poverty after their housing costs are taken into account. A staggering 66% of our children live in poverty for the same reason. We have powers to tackle rogue landlords but not rogue rents. Why not?
Cllr John Gray London Borough Newham.
This is a fabulous picture in so many way but I especially appreciated this comment on the site "I remember once being told that I will never be a true east ender because I’m not white, seeing photos like this honestly fills me with joy
"
 Dear John, I hope that you and your family have remained safe and well. I know that many of you have been playing a really important role in supporting Newham residents during this terrible time and I just want to thank you so very much for all that you do. I’ve seen pics and posts on Facebook and Twitter and it makes me so proud to represent this Labour Party in Parliament. This period has been particularly difficult for many of us because of the uncertainty we see all around us. We know that Covid is rising quite quickly again in our community and others, but at the same time it is thankfully not yet nearly as bad as it was in the Spring. We know that many businesses are going to struggle, with no end in sight to these Tier 2 restrictions in London, and the very likely prospect of a movement into Tier 3 within weeks. I am worried that so many local people have already lost work, and so many more will do so in the coming weeks. None of these anxieties will be helped by the Government’s incompetence over privatised and failing test and trace, divisive attempts to force local lockdowns without proper financial support onto areas in the North, or their appalling plans to force Sadiq into terrible choices in his attempt to save Transport for London. I wrote a long and detailed letter to the Chancellor Rishi Sunak after his ‘Winter Economy Plan’ was published, and raised many detailed concerns. Essentially the same points about the lack of levers to encourage businesses to keep workers on, to ensure family incomes are protected, and to encourage available work to be shared fairly across the workforce, were also made by my friend the Shadow Chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, and many other expert commentators. Last week, the Chancellor u-turned on many aspects of his Plan after just a few weeks, making some, but unfortunately not all, of the changes we had called for. I believe that the level of support that is available is still inadequate, and it is appalling that those excluded from any support earlier this year are still excluded now. However, I expect that fewer livelihoods will be lost under the new version of the Plan than would have been if these U-turns had not been forced. I believe that the priorities should be to focus on preventing harm to children and their life chances, and to the broader physical and mental health of people in our communities as the crisis drags on and further operations and tests are cancelled. I agree with Keir that a short but full, and fully financially supported, national lockdown would have been far preferable to letting the virus slowly but surely climb back to disastrous levels. As we know, this approach has now been taken for Wales. I believe it is likely that the Government will still have to put a further national lockdown in place, out of fear for our overwhelmed NHS if not out of proper compassion for those who will lose loved ones. Many of you will know that the Home Office is planning to open a new ‘Reporting Centre’ for immigration enforcement at Warehouse K in the Royal Docks. They have said that it is a simple change of site from Southwark and wouldn’t result in extra harm to Newham residents from the hostile environment. However, through my Parliamentary Questions I have discovered that actually the plans are to create more detention cells in Newham than were in Southwark. As I wrote in the Newham Recorder this week, more hostility from the Home Office is the last thing our communities need during this time of crisis, and I am hopeful that, given the Council is also opposed, we will be able to stop these plans. Participation in Parliament remains constantly risky because the Government has still not brought back virtual voting or speeches for most debates, despite the increasing rates of infection and numbers of MPs either getting sick or foolishly risking spreading the virus through their actions, as Margaret Ferrier did. The biggest stupidity is the ‘Rees-Mogg Conga’, where MPs who have to vote in person, often several times in succession, are forced into a queue where social distancing is rarely observed and many irresponsible Tory MPs refuse to wear a mask. Despite these unnecessary barriers, I have fortunately been able to speak more frequently during the Autumn so far. In September I gave evidence about the damage that is being done in our community due to Covid to the Petitions Committee. I was also able to secure a debate of my own, continuing a seven-year long campaign in support of women who are subjected to terrible pain and trauma during hysteroscopy procedures. Last week, I was able to speak briefly in a statement on the impact of Covid-19 on our Black and Asian communities, and then in a general debate on Covid where I spoke about child poverty and how we identify and protect children at risk when so many aren’t being seen in school or by the NHS. The council and schools need funding to enable them to do this really important work, and the Government needs to lead and have a strategy to protect all children in the UK. In my frontbench job as Shadow Minister for Prisons and Probation, I had my in-person debut in Parliament in the week before last, speaking for Labour on a Bill to change the way drugs are tested for in prisons. You can see two clips of my speech here and here. I have also had another round of meetings with experts and frontline prisons and probation workers to ensure I can identify the best ways to hold the Government to account. This included an excellent roundtable on how women are affected by the criminal justice system, and a good meeting with representatives of the prison officers' union the POA, from across London and the South-East of England on Monday. Meanwhile I have been asking an enormous number of Parliamentary Questions to put pressure on the Government on issues across my brief, which you can see, as always, on TheyWorkForYou. The numbers of worried constituents contacting me continue at unprecedented levels. Last month the level of casework correspondence was around double what it was in September 2019, and many more of these cases are complex, because we are all dealing with new, unpredictable and worrying circumstances. Policy letters to me have also been far more frequent than normal. These have focused on the Agriculture Bill and food standards, support for hospitality businesses, animal welfare issues, building social housing, and the need for a green and fair recovery from the pandemic. I am strongly sympathetic to the points constituents are making on all of these issues. However, if you have written to me recently and have not yet received a response, please do be patient. I have a very small office, I must prioritise the personal appeals for help that are most urgent, and the much higher levels of correspondence this year mean that in some cases emails are taking longer to respond to. I know this is a desperately worrying time for many of us. Anxiety is increasing again with a long Winter ahead after what, for many of us, was the relative calm and comfort of the Summer. It is all the more important, especially with the Government continuing to astonish with its incompetence on a regular basis, that we unite in solidarity in Newham, and join together to support each other, and especially the most vulnerable, however we can. Food poverty has been in the news of late with the Government’s disgraceful decision not to fund school meals during half term. Our food bank is struggling. Any of you who can, please click this link and donate some money to feed a family during these dreadful times. Please stay safe and keep well. Best wishes, Lyn |
I am supporting Christina because I think she is the better candidate but also I think it is about time that a big union had a women in charge.
None of the top 5 trade unions have ever(repeat ever) had a female General secretary (GS).
In unison 1 million out of our 1.3 million members are women.
Let's break the union glass ceiling and elect an experienced and competent women as our next GS.
Dear Mayor and Councillors colleagues
I will be stepping down from my position as Statutory Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Lead for Housing Services. I wish to play an active role in the 2021 Newham Mayoral referendum campaign in support of a committee model.
After working as a Councillor for over 10 years under two Mayors I have come to the conclusion that this is the right model for Newham. I therefore do not think it is appropriate for me to remain in the Cabinet.
I will, of course, fully support whoever is appointed as Cabinet Lead for Housing Services.
Regards
John Gray
Councillor I West Ham
Ward
Deputy Mayor I Cabinet
Member for Housing Services I
London
Borough of Newham
