Welcome

This blog is about Hackney Council's famous incompetence. It contains far too much information about bureaucratic failure and corruption, but we hope that it will remind council officials that they are in fact accountable to us, Hackney's voters and taxpayers.

Hackney residents have long had to put up with a council that rides roughshod over them. This is our way of saying we care.

If you have any links or stories, please contact: residentofhackney@googlemail.com.

Council Pay Shocker

From the Hackney Gazette:

AS council workers protested over pay last week, it has emerged that a town hall chief pocketed more than £310,000 last year.

Hackney Council's accounts for the last financial year show that the senior officer took home a massive pay-out, which could include redundancy payments, expenses and other allowances.

A council spokesman refused to identify the officer, saying: "The council is not able to disclose details of payments to individuals as these are confidential".

When pressed by the Gazette, he said: "I am not prepared to say anything more.

"You can spin it any way you like."

Penny Thompson, who was the council's chief executive for the first month of the year the numbers cover, received a salary of £164,839.

She suddenly announced her retirement in April after two-and-a-half years in the post

The accounts show that another officer received a payment of between £230,000 and £239,000.

Borough solicitor, Meic Sullivan Gould, quit his job the week before Ms Thompson stepped down and Hackney Homes chief executive, Steve Tucker, also retired during the period covered by the report.

It is believed that the council's current chief executive, Tim Shields, earns between £160,000 and £169,000 a year.

Matthew Waterfall, branch secretary of Unison, the trade union which represents council workers, said: "It is shocking to think that a single council officer should receive such a massive pay-out when our members, some of whom earn less than 12 grand a year, have been taking industrial action to secure a decent living pay rise.

"Taxpayers in this borough should be asking some serious questions of their council about how their money is being spent."

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the public spending watchdog, the Taxpayers' Alliance, added that it was a staggering amount to give someone in one year, especially as many Hackney families are struggling to pay their council tax.

"Whether it's a basic salary, a bonus or a severance payment, it's utterly wrong to lavish so much money on one public servant.

"The council should name who it is, so taxpayers can assess whether they gave good value for money."

At the time of going to press the council had been unable to tell the Gazette what other perks council officers were receiving and explain why more than £10 million in council housing rent arrears was written off.

 

Judge slams "hopeless" Hackney Council

From the Hackney Gazette :

A woman is celebrating after the threat of eviction from her De Beauvoir home was lifted following a bungled court bid by Hackney Council which a judge described as "hopeless."

Eco-campaigner Michelle Goldberg, 55, who lives in Lawrence Court on the De Beauvoir Estate, breathed easier this week after the council decided not to lodge an appeal over the judgement made against it at Shoreditch County Court a fortnight ago.

The council had alleged she had breached an injunction they took out against her two years ago not to harass "anyone going about their lawful activity in the London borough of Hackney."

But it blundered by failing to specify how the injunction had been breached as well as re-applying for a possession order when they should have applied for a warrant to evict.

The injunction, prohibiting "abusive or threatening behaviour," was also found to be "defective" because of discrepancies between the original draft and an amended version.

The judge threw out the application describing it as hopeless and "incontestably bad" and ordered the council to pay all Ms Goldberg's legal costs.

"The council needs to get it own house in order before it victimises others," said an angry Ms Goldberg this week.

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"Non-muslim" father banned from Hackney pool

From the Telegraph:

A father has described his anger after he and his son were refused entry to their local swimming pool because they weren't Muslims.

David Toube and Harry, five, were turned away by staff from the men-only session.

The council admitted yesterday that workers at Clissold Leisure Centre in Hackney, north London, made a mistake and offered the family an apology.
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Mr Toube, 39, a lawyer, said they visited the baths at 9am on Sunday.

“I arrived at the pool to discover that they were holding what staff described to me as 'Muslim men-only swimming’,” he said.

“I asked whether my son and I could go as we were both male.

“I was told that the session was for Muslims only and that we could not be admitted.”

Mr Toube then spoke to the duty manager, who confirmed he could not enter.

“I asked what would happen if I turned up and insisted I was Muslim.

“The manager suggested that they might ask the Muslims swimming if they minded my son and I swimming with them. If they didn’t object, we might be allowed in.”

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Hackney Council Persecute Pensioner

From the Sun:

A DEFIANT market trader appeared in court yesterday for selling fruit and veg by the pound.

“Metric Martyr” Janet Devers is charged with failing to display prices in kilos and using incorrect measuring scales.

Her case was brought by Hackney Council in East London – despite a European Commission decision last year to end efforts to make Britain ditch imperial measures.

The 63-year-old was granted bail by Thames JPs yesterday and her case was sent to Snaresbrook Crown Court, where she will enter her plea next month.

Janet, of Wanstead, East London, said: “I was hoping that they would come to their senses and withdraw these charges.

“Unfortunately not. We are dealing with Hackney Council after all.”

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Three Star Big Brother

The council gets three stars out of four. LMAO. From Clives World Order:

Complete Control, 1984

..Or I'm A Libertarian, Get Me Out Of Here!

The dumb dumb local council apparatchiks of our stinking corner of London have become all-powerful and omnipresent. I guess at heart, all politicians and their lackeys have -- to a greater or lesser degree -- God complexes. But this unbearable.

Hackney (sodding) Council has now officially assumed control over every aspect of my life.

I'm woken each morning by its clumsy street cleaners, who while noisy, fail to actually remove any litter.

My street and all those around it a constantly filthy because recycling and refuse collection isn't properly coordinated. Pick-up on our road is Thursday, immediately south and to the right, on Mondays, opposite us on Wednesdays and to the North, on Fridays. Ipso facto, the whole neighbourhood is in a perpetual state of accumulative rubbish. Indeed, many of the flat dwellers simply don't have room for all the recycling paraphernalia, so their stuff constantly lives on the pavement. And what of my neighbour's penchant for discarding TVs, computers, fridges, furniture, carpet and the like by just leaving it on the street..?

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Hackney's Planning Department

Yet more incompetence, this time reported in the Gazette. Give them all OBE's:

PLANS for a new school and affordable housing for the Jewish community in Stoke Newington have been put on hold after council officers failed to produce the correct paperwork at a planning meeting last Wednesday.

The planning application was withdrawn after bungling officials failed to explain why they had not carried out an environmental impact assessment on the development on Lordship Road.

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Ms. Devers and the Imperial System, Indeed!

A letter from America:

Seattle, Washington

Hello, Hackney Blogger!

The story of Ms. Devers and her travails before the Hackney Council were
featured last evening on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news show, "As It Happens," that leaks across the border. The piece included an interview with Ms. Devers that touched a nerve on the other side of the world (well, eight time zones distant, anyway), in part because she and I are the same age. "Metric Martyr" puts it mildly, I'd say.

We both grew up learning - and admiring - a Britain for which that inspiring phrase, "so many owe so much to so few" did not describe the apparent
relationship between the residents and the governing body of Hackney. Not at
all your "finest hour" to put up with this crew of people "clothed in a little authority," to borrow from another prominent Brit of yore.

I could relate how metric was tried and soundly rejected here thirty and
more years ago, including the use of shotguns on roadside speed limit and
distance signs, but I have a better idea: Send your delightfully batty Council
here for a vacation or even a lecture tour.

Yes, perhaps they could come to inform us benighted colonials about the benefits and requirements of metric. I'd bet you wouldn't get them back unless they had private medical insurance and perhaps if they displayed the same stupid attitude they'd find out why so many Americans keep guns in the homes and shops.

Don't you have Recall or Initiative and Referendum rights? Good luck casting off your tyranny!

Barry

 

Hole in Maintenance Standards

From the Hackney Gazette:

FEARS have been raised over the safety of Hackney Marshes after the ground gave way beneath a 15-year-old boy's feet on Sunday, plunging him into a six-foot hole.

It is believed that the hole may have been caused by tunnelling to bury overhead power cables beneath the Marshes 14 months ago as part of a £50 million project for the 2012 Olympics.

Hackney Council, which manages the Marshes, has been forced to close off two football pitches on North Marsh and carry out inspections each weekend amid safety fears of further cave-ins

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Hackney Council charges pensioner with 13 "criminal offences" -does using Imperial scales really make her a menace to society?

Is persecuting a 63 year old woman for using non-metric scales the best use of council resources? Of course it is, this is Hackney. From the Telegraph:

An extraordinary thing happened one week last September. Gunther Verheugen, a vice-president of the European Commission, announced that Brussels had abandoned its policy of forcing Britain to go exclusively metric.

The British, he said, could use non-metric weights and measures as long as they wished. Indeed he went further. The belief that it was a criminal offence under an EU directive to sell in non-metric measures, he said, was an invention of the "tabloid press", which had "repeatedly and erroneously printed stories" of "people having to buy their food from markets in kilograms rather than pounds".

Mr Verheugen's announcement won front-page headlines in the national press. Yet, only a day later, trading standards officials made a mockery of his statement by seizing two sets of "illegal" imperial scales from a stall run by the sister of Colin Hunt, one of the five original Metric Martyrs, in London's Ridley Road market. This event was totally ignored - except by this column.

Just before Christmas the stallholder, Janet Devers, a 63-year-old pensioner, received a 67-page document from Hackney Council charging her with 13 criminal offences, including use of her old imperial scales. Yet only a month earlier, in a letter to the British Weights and Measures Association, one of Mr Verheugen's senior officials had stated that "use of pre-2000 weighing instruments in imperial-only units" remained entirely legal under EU law, since "the directive does not prohibit the use of such instruments".

Mrs Devers was told the council's costs, for the time of the officials who seized her scales (£68 an hour each, equivalent to £141,000 a year) were already £2,000. Fees for Hackney's lawyers will bring the total much higher - apart from any fines to which she might be liable (up to £5,000 each), for offences which Mr Verheugen insists do not exist.

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Hackney pensioners pay more Council Tax than Gordon Brown

From the Times:

Hackney is a borough of London not exactly renowned for the prosperity of its residents. Yet anyone living in a modest family home in this deprived part of the capital pays more in council tax than the Prime Minister, who lives in a luxurious flat in prosperous Westminster.

In fact, a pensioner living in a Band E property in Hackney on a pension of only £13,000 a year paid £255 more in council tax last year than the Prime Minster, who earns more than £180,000. No wonder reform of this iniquitous tax is low on Gordon Brown’s agenda. But the pressure for change will grow with the news this week that council tax is to rise by an inflation-busting 5 per cent for most people in April.

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Hackney Council wastes money on "unnecessary roles"

From the Daily Mail:

In November alone, Hackney Council and the East London NHS Foundation Trust each offered three separate equality and diversity jobs paying £39,030 each – a total salary bill of more than £225,000.

The phenomenon, which has continued despite a promise by Gordon Brown three years ago to cut non-essential posts, was branded Jobzilla after the all-devouring screen monster Godzilla.

Peter Cuthbertson, research fellow for the TPA, said: 'The public sector is clogged with these ridiculous jobs, draining huge amounts of resources away from essential activities.

"It's insulting to expect taxpayers who struggle to meet the taxman's demands to foot the bill for unnecessary roles."

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Taxpayers' cash lost in translation

From the Hackney Gazette:

TOWN hall bosses have come under fire for wasting taxpayers' money after revealing at least £125,000 was spent on translating council documents last year.

The huge bill run up by Hackney Council accounts for translating the information into some 100 languages spoken in the borough.

The costs have been attacked by the government's Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears, who says local authorities are spending too much on translations and not enough on encouraging people to learn English.

She has sent out guidelines to all local authorities to advise cutting down on costs.

Meanwhile, the council seemed confused over how much had been spent and gave the Gazette several figures, some as high as £200,000, before settling on £125,000.

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Swimming club welcomed home with slashed pool bookings

From the Hackney Gazette:

Clissold Swimming Club has 'moved home' to Clissold Leisure Centre.

But a spokesman has admitted club officials are "disappointed" with Hackney Council's decision to offer them exclusive use of the pool on just one night a week.

The centre, in Clissold Road, Stoke Newington, has been closed for the past four years for refurbishment - but now that the work is complete, the club is set to make a welcome return.

Throughout the four-year period that the centre had been closed, the club had been forced to do much of its swimming outside the borough.

Spokesman Kate Cornwall-Jones said: "The re-opening of Clissold Leisure Centre will allow us to swim in Hackney six days a week.

"However, it is disappointing that Hackney Council have cancelled our two whole pool bookings at Kings Hall and are only offering one similar session at Clissold Leisure Centre between 6pm and 8pm.

"Clissold SC is ambitious on behalf of young swimmers in Hackney and to deliver our vision for excellence and increase participation in swimming we need more whole pool bookings at more appropriate hours. We look forward to working in partnership with Greenwich Leisure Limited (GLL) and Hackney Council to increase the opportunities for local people to achieve their maximum potential in swimming and other aquatic sports.

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Christmas Demonstration for Housing

From an email:

Hi, this is the call out for the next London Coalition Against poverty
demonstration at Hackney,
x


*pls forward widely*

CALL TO ACTION: Christmas Demonstration for Housing
MONDAY THE 17TH OF DECEMBER
6 - 7:30 PM
Hackney Town Hall, Mare Street E8 [http://www.tiny.cc/vdevt]

Contact: 07932241737
londoncoalitionagainstpoverty@gmail.com

Hackney "Scrooge" won't house us: We won't be turned away


London Coalition Against Poverty (LCAP) will demonstrate at Hackney
Council's Cabinet meeting on Monday the 17th of December 6pm to 7.30
pm. As Christmas day approaches its difficult to see the seasonal
spirit in Hackney's Homeless Persons office where homeless people are
daily denied their rights and left without anywhere to go. LCAP will
demonstrate this Christmas to send a clear message to Jamie Carswell
(head of Housing strategy and deputy Mayor) that we will not tolerate
this any more. LCAP will be campaigning for change in Hackney's
dealings with the homeless for as long as it takes.

Come to the picket, there'll be some hot soup, and Christmas festivity.
Dress warm, bring noisemakers and mince pies if you like.

More info:

London Coalition against Poverty (LCAP) has been at Hackney Housing
Needs office since July 2007, and we have seen time and again that
homeless people are turned away unlawfully. By law some homeless
people have to be housed immediately but Hackney Council cares more
about balancing their budget through not housing people then about
their residents needs. They try to delay or stop people making a
homeless application. To achieve this the staff often act in an
intimidating and sometimes abusive way. Because of this "gate keeping"
at the housing needs office many vulnerable people and families are
left on the street or other insecure, dangerous places. When
accommodation or advice on how to find housing is offered by the
council its likely to be out of Hackney, often even out of London.
Hackney Council will be held accountable for their failure to house
Hackney's people.

LCAP demands:

- An end to gate keeping at Hackney HPU

- Stop the intimidation of people that approach the HPU

- Genuinely affordable housing to rent in Hackney - no more people chased
out of the borough

Jamie Carswell is scrooge!
We are the ghosts of Christmas present!

 

“It’s no secret... it was a fairly chaotic managerial arrangement.”

From Building:

Hodder soon encountered the sort of problems that go with local government work. “In the early days, there was a constant change of personnel at the council,” he recalls. “Tony Ellison, the chief executive, left, the [in-house] project manager changed. There was a tremendous lack of continuity.”

Kim Wright, director of community and leisure at Hackney, admits: “It’s no secret. There was no overall political control and it was a fairly chaotic managerial arrangement.”

But the real difficulties started in 1997 when Sport England, one of the scheme’s co-funders, designated Hackney a priority initiative area, which meant, according to Hodder, that there was money available to take the budget to £10m. However, what should have been a boon for the project quickly became a poisoned chalice.

“That prompted Hackney, not unreasonably, to rethink the brief,” says Hodder. “I felt there were things that we could improve … the size of the gym facility could be bigger, there was no spectators’ facility. There was quite a lot of public consultation that led to changes – for example, to the changing rooms because of the Orthodox Jewish community.”

There was debate, too, over the scheme’s two 25m swimming pools. Some felt that there should be a single 50m Olympic pool – an idea that was dropped – but one of the pools was stretched from six to eight lanes.

These were substantial changes, but Hackney was keen to start work on site as soon as possible, partly because it had been advised that this would save on VAT. However, tenders for the project came in at £13m, £3m higher than anticipated. The design team and the council came up with a compromise budget of £11.5m, but in the meantime Gleeson, the contractor, was being pushed to get started.

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Dalston's Heritage Destroyed

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Dalston Lane's historic buildings were now on the footprint of a proposed 20 storey tower block. They were, in effect, on death row awaiting demolition. The Council made a planning application to itself and, in the face of objections and demonstrations at the Town Hall by the local community, its Planning Committee voted in February 2006 to demolish all the historic buildings.

 

Hackney Social Services: delays and accusations of negligence

From the Hackney Gazette:

AN investigation into failings by Hackney social services, which may have contributed to the deaths of two children, has been delayed for the second time this year.

A panel looking into the deaths of Antoine Ogunkoya, 10, and his three-year-old sister, Keniece, who were killed by their schizophrenic mother, Viviane Gamor, at her home on the Pembury estate in Lower Clapton in January, despite warnings from their father, will now report its findings in February - more than a year after the tragedy.

The report, which will look at the involvement of Hackney social services and East London and City Mental Health Unit in the children's deaths, has been delayed once already.

A spokeswoman for Hackney Council said the decision to delay again had been to allow the family of the two children to contribute to the report.

The Safeguarding Children Board, a multi-agency body which oversees child protection, commissioned the independent serious case review.

It was due to present its results in September. Now this second delay has led to fears that other children under care of Hackney social services may be at risk.

The children's father, Gabriel "Jimi" Ogunkoya, who lived with them in Trehurst Street, Lower Clapton, has already accused Hackney's social services of "frogmarching" his children to their deaths.

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Council "care packages could be cut"`

From the Jewish Chronicle:

Families in need hit by budget cuts
22/11/2007
By Dana Gloger
CHAREDI families with disabled children claim that social workers told them their care packages could be cut because a council had overspent.

This follows the JC’s “Forgotten Parents” campaign, which revealed that many large families were forced to cope alone with their severely disabled children.

MP Diane Abbott raised the issue with Jules Pipe, mayor of Hackney, one of the worst-hit areas of NorthLondon.

Mr Pipe refused to comment at the time, but this week Orthodox families said that the situation had worsened following visits from social workers.

Chaya Spitz, head of services at Interlink, an umbrella organisation for voluntary groups in the strictly Orthodox community, said: “People will have a review with a social worker they haven’t seen for two years and the minute they come in the door they are saying, ‘We have to make cuts now because we have overspent’.

“People feel they have to beg and plead to maintain the care packages they have. It’s so depressing.”

A mother of eight living in Stamford Hill, Hackney, who has a 12-year-old son with cerebral palsy, said: “I was terrified I was going to lose the little [help] I have. I only get seven hours of care a week, which is not enough as it is.

“Now people are terrified every time a social worker comes round in case they lose the little care they have. I begged for more help. I am desperate. But they just have their budgets in mind. I survive, but it’s a struggle and I don’t have the strength to fight any more.

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Hackney "forgot to renew" council policies

From Hackney Planning Watch:

We have now received a letter from the Government Office for London. It appears that the Council may not have a legal basis for the policy document that includes the proposed areas of exception.

This is quite a technical point, but a Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) cannot make council policy, it can only give guidance on existing policy. The proposed SPD relied on three Council pre-existing Council policies, two of which have lapsed (it appears the council forgot to renew them), the third of which applies only to conservation areas.

Consequently it appears doubtful that the Council can adopt the SPD without first adopting some basic policies.The Council is suggesting that it can rely on a general 'plan for London', the principles of which the Council has adopted, but this seems unlikely (or should I say 'desperate'). The Council intends to continue with its existing proposals.

We have been led to believe that the Council may remove the phrase 'area of exception' which is viewed a problematic, but they are currently committed to the substance of the proposals. The latest proposed timescale is that the report will go to Cabinet in December, but there is every reason to suspect that this timescale will be extended. In any event, our campaign must continue to build in strength.

The accidental lapsing of important Council policies is of course a typical Hackney Council 'cock up', but what does it mean for our campaign? Well the good news is that it makes it even harder for the Council to simply ram through the existing proposals, and consequently more likely that we will, eventually, get them amended.

The bad news? Well it appears the Council no longer has any policy on residential extensions! It is therefore possible that unscrupulous developers with good lawyers can appeal any application (however outrageous) that is rejected on the basis that the Council has no policy grounds for rejection.

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