Council candidates

On Thursday 6th May there will be elections for local councillors as well as the general election to elect your MP. Putney has six council "wards" and each of them elects three councillors for a total of 18.

At the moment, every single one of those councillors is Conservative. As well as being bad for democracy - the Conservatives barely won 50% of the vote in 2006 but took 100% of the seats - it's also bad for Putney, because without anyone being able to hold them to account the Tories have closed Wandsworth Museum and West Hill Library, slashed spending on road maintenance, neglected our council estates and allowed grotesque overdevelopment plans that will change the character of our area.

There are only two parties on Wandsworth council: the Conservatives and Labour. Only a Labour vote can break the Tory monopoly on Putney and bring back some balance to Wandsworth politics. Even if you want to see a Tory council re-elected you have three votes, so why not give at least one of them to elect a local Labour councillor?

Here are the lists of candidates standing in your area with your three local Labour councillor candidates highlighted:

On on 6th May, remember what the Conservatives did to Wandsworth Museum

Shirely Passmore is no Labour activist - she's a former Conservative council candidate and the wife of one of Wandsworth's longest-serving Conservative councillors and twice borough mayor, Gordon Passmore. She also chaired the campaign to try to save Wandsworth Museum, that was in Garratt Lane, from Tory closure in 2008.

So when she writes a letter like the one published yesterday in the Wandsworth Guardian, I take it as a reasonable reflection of the outrage and anger the borough still feels about the way the Conservative council destroyed the museum and two local libraries, wasted tens of thousands in a game of musical chairs, and ended up with less as a result.

The way the Conservatives rode roughshod over the wishes of thousands of borough residents who petitioned against the Tory plans caused uproar at the time - and it's refreshing to see that the borough has not forgotten how the Tories treat anyone who disagrees with them (but only in years when they're not up for election).

Well, there are elections for the council this year, and if you want the Tories to feel vindicated about their behaviour return them with the same absurd and damaging landslide majority they won four years ago.

But if you want to hold them to account, whoever you normally vote for, the only way to do so is to vote Labour. Labour fought tooth and nail against the Tory closure of the Museum and two libraries, but when the Tories have 51 councillors and Labour just 9, there is very little we could do to stop them. Even those who broadly like the way the Tories run Wandsworth recognise that such a vast gulf is not healthy for our local democracy - and that's why this year we all need to do our part to change things on the council.

Labour is the only other party on Wandsworth Council: Wandsworth has always only been a two-party borough. It's the only party second in the key marginal wards across Putney and Wandsworth that will decide the result. And it's the only party, therefore, that can cut the Conservatives down to size.

A vote for any party other than Labour in the council elections on May 6th is a vote to re-elect the Tories with another massive majority.

Breathtaking arrogance

I wrote a few days ago about the plight of Putney constituent Christine Walker's mum, who more than qualifies for a disabled blue badge but who is being denied one by the Conservative council.

Yesterday we got this latest reply from them:

"senior council management staff have previously written in response to many contacts received from your constituent's MP, various borough councillors, the Local Government Ombudsman, General Practitioners and Mrs Self's own family members...I have also more recently replied separately to the Director of the 'Transport for All' organisation...

"...I am afraid that we will not acknowledge or respond to further communications in this matter and any such documentation received from [Mrs Walker's mum] or her representatives will be filed for information only"

It takes a special kind of arrogance to claim that MPs, councillors, the Ombudsman, GPs and transport and disability action groups are wrong and that the Conservatives - alone - are right. And it stems from having absolute power without break for over 30 years. Power may corrupt but it also makes those who have it contemptuous of all other opinion.

A democracy thrives because of checks and balances - one party vigorously held to account by its opponents. In Wandsworth those checks and balances are failing. There are currently 51 Tory councillors in Wandsworth and just 9 Labour; no other party has any seats or a chance of winning any.

And before you say it doesn't affect or concern you, then until they needed help from the Conservatives it didn't directly affect Mrs Walker's family either. My point is this: ignore our democratic deficit only if you are 100% certain that you'll never, ever need to turn to these out-of-touch, power-gone-to-their-head Conservatives for help.

The Conservatives have forgotten that they are the servants, not the masters. I can provide the evidence but only you, by voting Labour - the only alternative to the Conservatives locally - can change it.

Orchard railings to be fixed

The railings off the path leading through to Royal Orchard Close in West Hill are finally to be fixed by the Conservative Council.

The Conservatives had been failing to repair the banister - which is the edge of a fairly steep slope down to Linstead Way - because they thought it was the responsibility of the housing association that manages Royal Orchard Close.

They were wrong in this case - it's always been the responsibility of the council - but what's more disturbing is that they were more than happy to sit back and allow dangerous and unsightly vandalism to persist, simply because they (wrongly) believed it was "nothing to do with us, guv".

I've been writing a lot about the state of Putney Bridge - and it's exactly the same attitude: washing their hands unless something can be proved beyond any doubt that they are responsible for it - that has led to the decay and erosion of one of our landmarks.

The Conservatives call this "the Wandsworth Way" - and I don't doubt it plays a part in keeping council tax low. What it doesn't do is get problems elected representatives exist to sort out sorted out. And that's one reason why the Conservatives' Wandsworth Way is the wrong way.

Path to nowhere

You may have heard of the Bridge To Nowhere - a highway project in one of the most remote parts of Alaska that connected a road no-one travelled on to an island no-one visited, at vast expense to US taxpayers.

On a somewhat smaller scale, Wandsworth Conservatives have created a path to nowhere on the Lower Ashburton estate.

The picture above shows a pathway pounded out of the estate by weight of numbers who use it - it's the one right at the top of Gwendolen Avenue, across Chartfield Avenue. The path's come about because it is the direct route into and out of the estate, and a bit like water always finding it's level, paths will always appear on routes people find most convenient to travel.

I contacted the council because I thought it was slippery and dangerous with a kerb at the top that could trip people right into the path of oncoming cars. Unfortunately for pedestrians on the estate, the Conservative council has only recently spent thousands of pounds of your money laying a tarmac pathway a few yards further down Chartfield Avenue, away from Gwendolen Avenue - a direction people don't so much want to go.

The result? A posh path to nowhere, and a muddy cut-through which is more of a risk to users. I'd have thought the commonsense solution would be for the council to have looked at the natural routes through the estate and built pathways where they were needed. Instead, they now intend to fence off the path, relandscape it and force pedestrians to travel the long way.

I suspect this is just throwing good money after bad: the fencing will be torn out sooner or later and the cut-through returned to use. But as usual, the Conservatives think they know best and regard the rest of us as impertinent to even voice an alternative, commonsense alternative.

What price security?

Kimpton House in Fontley Way on the Alton estate is, unfortunately, a greater focus for anti-social behaviour and crime than some of the others. One of the reasons for this is that, alone among the six Fontley Way blocks, it doesn't have a controlled entry system.

And the reason that's the case is that, again alone among the Fontley Way blocks, Kimpton House contains a (big) majority of leaseholders who effectively hold a veto over plans to make such changes because they are liable for the costs of the work. 31 of the 45 flats here have been sold off by the council - not only high for the Alton but strange given that the average for the other Fontley blocks is 8. Such quirks, incidentally, don't happen by accident - it was Conservative policy to target blocks for sell-offs right across Wandsworth, and this is one of the consequences.

I've just had an email from the council telling me that they're going to try and persuade Kimpton House to vote for controlled entry in the New Year. But they go on to tell me that the cost of such work will saddle leaseholders with £1,500 bills.

Just think about that for a minute. £1,500 per flat. 45 flats. £67,500 in total. To fit some secure doors and provide entryphones in each flat. Is it any wonder that the leaseholders vote "no" when presented with such absurdly inflated costs by the Conservatives?

Council contractors are notorious for thinking that council funded contracts are cash cows where over the top quotes can be submitted with impunity: in one case a quote to provide a few flowerbaskets came back at more than £1,000 per basket - but was eventually whittled down to less than £200 - including maintenance costs!

For £67,500, I'd expect gold-plated doors and entryphone systems. Well, not quite, but you get the point. Kimpton House deserves greater security of the sort the other Fontley Way blocks have benefited from for years. They could get it; but not while the Conservatives keep trying to impose extortionate charges on leaseholders.

Introducing Labour's Thamesfield team

I'm pictured above with (from left) Bibi Qureshi, Chris Locke and Janet Grimshaw: Labour's three council candidates for Thamesfield - Putney town centre and riverside. All three are excellent local candidates with years clocked up living in the area, contributing to Putney.

Janet Grimshaw lives in Kenilworth Court on Lower Richmond Road with her teenage daughter who went to All Saint?s School. She is a Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator and works closely with the Police team. She was a Civil Servant for over 22 years working at the Department for International Development. Janet has lived in Putney for over 20 years

She's leading Labour's plan to tackle Thamesfield's high crime rate that the Conservatives have ignored. Town centre patrollers, which - when we had them in Clapham Junction and Tooting town centres - cut street crime by a third; and a larger Safer Neighbourhood Police team for Thamesfield are two of her suggestions.

Chris Locke lives in Norroy Road, off Putney High Street in the heart of Thamesfield. He's lived her for 25 years. Chris's commitment to Thamesfield shows in the fact that he's standing to be our councillor for the fifth time next May. An editor for a major newspaper, Chris organises the Bricklayers' Arms cricket team and has an interest in the regeneration of London's urban rivers like the Wandle, the mouth of which forms the eastern boundary of the ward.

Chris's political priorities are transport and planning: pushing for better facilities at Putney Station and East Putney, and fighting the Conservative council-backed tower block overdevelopment threats to Putney.

Bibi Qureshi lives in Fawe Park Road with her husband - and like Chris and Janet, she's lived here for decades. Because she's retired, Bibi's got the time and commitment to really devote to Thamesfield issues - like improving Wandsworth Park near her home. Formerly her area's neighbourhood watch co-ordinator, Bibi is heavily involved with Wandsworth's NHS, chairing one of the user groups that hold our health service to the high standards we expect.

Bibi's been campaigning on the quality of the local environment: the dreadful state of Putney Bridge, the cluttered, congested, polluted and run-down Putney High Street, and the basic quality of life issues like potholes, dangerous pavements and overgrown bushes and trees that should be the first priority of good councillors but which go neglected in Thamesfield.

This is a really strong team for Thamesfield and I'm delighted to endorse Janet, Chris and Bibi.

The Blue Badge shame of Wandsworth Tories

On Saturday I brought a Southfields constituent, Christine Walker, to meet with Sadiq Khan MP, Minister for Transport and MP for next-door Tooting.

Mrs Walker's mum suffers from some serious disabilities, including Meniere's Disease which affects balance meaning that sufferers often cannot walk without falling over. More than a year ago, after being assessed for Attendance Allowance, the Department of Work & Pensions assessor set the ball rolling to get her a disabled person's blue badge so that she can be driven around more easily by her husband.

As is usual and right, Wandsworth Council invited Mrs Walker's mum in for an assessment, to make sure she wasn't attempting to fraudulently obtain a badge. Having failed to adequately test her - at no time, for example, was she asked to walk unaided (which she can't) to demonstrate the severity of her Meniere's problems - and then subjected her to a rigorous interview, the council denied her claim for a badge on the grounds that she wasn't sufficiently disabled. So badly treated was she that she had an angina attack in the foyer of the town hall.

That's when Mrs Walker asked for my help - and as a result of repeated interventions the council eventually consented to review the decision, but only if her mother was willing to undergo another medical test and interview. Understandably, the family was unwilling to put their mum through this ordeal again - and have made the fair point that either the council believes it was right, and should therefore stick to its guns, or that it thinks it's wrong and is trying to save face by agreeing to a retest when instead they should just accept their mistake and issue the badge.

This nonsense has been grinding on for over a year now. The council still has not backed down, and that's despite representations from her GP and consultants, from the Department of Work & Pensions which recognises the severity of her disability; from the Local Government Ombudsman and from local legal advice organisations.

When people like me talk about the carelessness and callousness of the Tory regime in Wandsworth we do so because we've seen at first hand the sharp end of Wandsworth Conservatism - a far cry from the soft-centred Conservatism David Cameron would like you to believe characterises his party. And it's examples like this that go to the heart of our criticism of how the Tories treat anyone who actually needs help from the council.

I'm in politics because I believe we have a duty to those who need help - we should never walk on by when we see people whose lives could be immeasurably transformed with just a little support and intervention. This outlook isn't shared by Putney Conservatives. They clearly couldn't care less about Mrs Walker's mother.

Getting the Points

Last week my campaign team (some of them pictured above) and I were out and about calling on residents in the Alton estate's Point blocks: the eleven high rises in Norley Vale, Dilton Gardens and Wanborough Drive.

We called on residents during the day on Thursday and got as good a response as we do during our regular weekend visits across the constituency - and our Roehampton councillor candidates - Ben Smith, Peter Carpenter and Donald Roy got lots of support for my Alcohol Exclusion Zone campaign, and found lots of relief that the Conservatives' disastrous demolition of Danebury Avenue plan had bitten the dust.

The choice for the Points and the rest of the Alton is simple: local Labour leadership on the issues that matter to residents or the same old Conservatives who neglect the estate, sell off so many council homes that there's no room left for the sons and daughters of local people, pour hundreds of thousands of pounds down the drain on a botched demolition plan for the centre of the area and simply don't care about Roehampton.

Credit-worthiness?

In some recent posts, I've remarked upon the trait of local Conservatives to claim credit for things they're not responsible for delivering, like:

• The redevelopment of Putney School of Art (paid for largely by the Labour Government)
• The plans for a playground on the Dover House estate (paid for by the Labour Government)
• The opening of SureStart Centres around the constituency (paid for by the Labour Government)
• The rebuilding of local schools (paid for by the Labour Government)

The list goes on and on. And on.

This trait has also been noticed further afield - by the non-political Clapham Junction Action Group (CJAG): the group set up to stop the 42-storey Tory towers there which they defeated four months ago. They've received a copy of the Conservatives' newsletter for that area - Shaftesbury ward, which covers the Lavender Hill are - claiming credit for all sorts of things they had absolutely nothing to do with.

You can read their line-by-line debunking of Conservative claims here.

I understand the desire of politicians to be identified with major issues in their patch. There's nothing like being associated with a good news story if you're trying to win votes. But there's a big distance between trying to get associated with something going on, and claiming that you're responsible for that issue being resolved - as the Conservatives time and time again do. Isn't that a little shoddy - disreputable?

I think it is. So let me make this promise which you can hold me to.

I will not claim credit for something I have not been involved with. I will not claim sole credit for something I have worked on with others - be they the Putney Society, local residents, residents associations or anyone else. When the Conservative Council is solely responsible for an improvement I welcome, I will acknowledge their responsibility for it.

Now - will the Conservatives make an equivalent pledge?

Weekend casework

I was out and about again this weekend, and here are a few of the issues I've taken up on behalf of local residents.





These three photos are all of the passageway between Royal Orchard Close and Beaumont Road in West Hill - dangerous pavements where paving bricks have been pulled out and the hole is now covered by leaves, and a collapsed railing/fence.



More dangerous paving in Limes Gardens in Southfields; and in Albert Drive - by Mortimer Lodge.



A flytip on the Morris Gardens estate, also in Southfields



Dangerous paving outside John Paull II Secondary School, and a blocked drain creating a pool of rainwater that sprays pedestrians just before you get to the school, in Princes Way

These are all issues good elected representatives should be identifying, reporting and getting sorted. Unfortunately, we don't generally appear to have those in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields - just a Conservative MP and councillors who claim fat allowances but don't do the bread and butter work they should.

That's why it falls to me to get these problems sorted out - and I'm happy to - but just think how much better our area could be if we had an MP and active local councillors on the case for you. You can vote for that in the May council elections and next year's general election.

Hands up who doesn't know where Roehampton is?

Imagine for an instant that you're a Conservative councillor for Roehampton, representing one of the most deprived parts of London.

There are huge problems to tackle: housing, employment, crime, poverty, keeping the estates in something passing for a vaguely acceptable state, traffic and of course the collapse of your plans to demolish Danebury Avenue. Which of these do you start with?

None of the above.

The thing that's keeping Roehampton Conservatives awake at night is a desire to change the name of their ward from "Roehampton" to "Roehampton and Putney Heath". They say that without the name change the residents of Putney Heath - that's less than 300 households - just won't know where they belong.

The Conservatives locally really need to sort out their priorities. This is what happens when one party ends up holding all the seats in an area: they lose touch with reality and lose track of what really matters: good housing, well-maintained streets, decent services and a desire to improve lives. Instead, they think tinkering with the name of one of the most easily identifiable parts of the borough is what passes for leadership locally.

What absurd dilitantes.

What a pitiful way to mark 50 years of the Alton

Up until a few days ago, Conservatives in Roehampton were delivering a newsletter containing the story above promoting their dreadful demolition plans for Danebury Avenue. Earlier this week the plans were dropped. Talk about the right hand not knowing what the far right hand is doing!

Particularly notable is the quote from one of the Tory candidates for Roehampton: "We need to make sure that any investment in Roehampton really delivers for our local community."

I agree. What investment HAVE the Conservatives made in Roehampton and what HAS it delivered - REALLY - for our local community? Absolutely nothing.

At the end of four years of broken promises the only people who've benefited have been the printers of the endless, banal, glossy leaflets the council churned out (many of which never seemed to reach residents) and the (two sets of) expensive consultants paid huge amounts of money to tell the Tories that their plans won't work.

They could have saved taxpayers that money and simply taken the word of Roehampton residents, members of the Putney Society, Labour councillors, Roehampton Labour Party, English Heritage, the Conservative Mayor of London, the Wandsworth Cycling Campaign, local businesses and, err, me - all of whom told them this over and over again these past weeks.

A shambles would be too kind a description for the debacle the Conservatives have made here. This has been a folly characterised by ego, arrogance, ignorance and woeful incompetence. Roehampton has had a Tory council for 30 years, Tory councillors for 11 and a Tory MP for four.

We have to hold these hopeless bunglers to account but let's just remember that Roehampton - the most deprived part of our area - is still without any investment, any leadership and any cohesive plan to transform lives on the estate. That's the real cost of the Conservatives' failure.

What a pitiful way for the Tories to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Alton estate.

Labour's councillor teams chosen

I spent most of today with Putney Labour Party members choosing our councillor candidates for the six council wards in Putney.

There is a real chance that the councillor elections next year could coincide with the general election - in which case you'll have four votes: one for your MP and three to choose your councillors.

I can't guarantee this because I don't know the details of every candidate the opposition parties are fielding but we're likely to have the youngest ever councillor candidate in Sean Lawless, who's standing in East Putney.

Sean is just 18 - and last time councillors were elected in Wandsworth the law was that you had to be 21, so there's a good chance he'll be a record-breaker next May - hopefully as our youngest councillor as well as our youngest candidate!

So, I hope you'll use those votes to elect me as your Labour Member of Parliament and these excellent local people as your three Labour councillors:

East Putney
Tim Creber, Sean Lawless, Gemma Reay

Roehampton
Peter Carpenter, Donald Roy and Ben Smith

Southfields
Matt Hay, Alex Lisinge and Tom Marsom

Thamesfield
Janet Grimshaw, Chris Locke and Bibi Qureshi

West Hill
Gill Gray, Jim McKinney and Ferdous Rahman

West Putney
Maureen Booker, Andrew Crawford and Patrick Macfarlane

Conservatives claim they've fixed the potholes!

When my campaign team were out on the Alton estate yesterday they came across a Conservative newsletter which makes the amazingly impressive claim that "a large area was repaired on the Putney Vale estate at the junction of Stroud Crescent and Frensham Drive".

The reason this is so amazing is that also yesterday, I got a reply from the Housing Department about the pothole above, reported a few days ago by me, which just so happens to be at the junction of - yes, you've guessed it - Stroud Crescent and Frensham Drive (you know, the area the Conservatives claim they got repaired already!)

The thing is, the Conservative newsletter would have gone to print before I got this incredibly dangerous pothole on Frensham Drive fixed. And while we're on the subject, does the road in the background of the photo - that's Stroud Crescent - look like it's been "repaired"?

So what to make of the Tory claims?

Well, they claim they're also responsible for getting "some 200 potholes resurfaced." Again, I leave it to you to decide whether that's a believable claim - but at least they're finally recognising the scale of their neglect of our roads.

But why is it, then, that Danebury Avenue is still in an atrocious state and why only on Monday was the massive pothole in Tangley Grove at the junction with Danebury Avenue repaired after I asked for it to be fixed? Or Holybourne Avenue? Or Harbridge Avenue? Or Bessborough Road?

There's something just a little sad about claiming credit for something when you're actually responsible for causing the problem in the first place; and when what you're claiming is evidently untrue, and actually the result of hard work by someone else. I'm relaxed about this because I know local residents are aware of my long track-record on this issue, and it demonstrates perfectly that the Tories have no local achievements of their own to boast of!

Wandsworth Museum Tory fiasco continues

According to the latest edition of the Friends of Wandsworth Museum newsletter there has been another twist in the debacle that has been the Conservative council's abject management of this issue.

To recap, the Conservatives decided over two years ago to close Wandsworth Museum, along with Alvering Library by Wandsworth Common and West Hill Library in Putney. They planned to sell off the West Hill Library site, convert the Wandsworth Museum site at the top of Garratt Lane into a town centre library and build a new museum on the Ram Brewery site, beneath the 42-storey towerblocks they have been supporting.

In unprecedented numbers borough residents gave this Tory plan a big thumbs down: a petition of over 13,000 names was submitted, with many of the signatories from Putney. The Conservatives however decided they knew best and pressed ahead with their plans - which, for the record, were supposed to save council taxpayers money.

Today, the situation is somewhat different. With a lengthy planning inquiry into the Ram Brewery overdevelopment looming, the Conservatives have now decided to house the museum at West Hill Library, and open a library in the Wandsworth Museum site.

In other words, after three years and at great expense to the taxpayer, the Conservative Council has managed to move a library to where a museum was, and a museum to where a library was.

Utterly pointless and utterly wasteful. Who says the Conservatives spend money wisely?

Tileman terminated

Councillors tonight voted unanimously to reject the Tileman House overdevelopment on Upper Richmond Road. Along with everyone else in the public gallery I was delighted that not a single member of the committee spoke in favour of the application.



Councillors Jeremy Larsson for the Conservatives and Tony Belton for Labour spoke firmly against the plan, while Conservative Council Leader Edward Lister supported the height and design of the building - but opposed the application because it was in "the wrong place".

This is another really significant victory for people power. Just consider that in a few short weeks we have gone from the East Putney Conservative councillors circulating a letter clearly advocating for this dreadful application, to a 9-0 unanimous vote against it. And it's because of the weight of representations, the strength of feeling among local people and the united, co-ordinated efforts we have all made to turn back yet another overdevelopment nightmare.

Another good night for Putney.

Heat is no substitute for light

One issue arising from the Richmond Park consultation I wrote about yesterday is the incredibly loud, but remarkably irrelevant campaigns the Council and MP waged against the plans.

The response cards the council sent out, at considerable cost, to every single household in the borough elicited a reply of less than 1% - and were excluded from the consultation findings because they didn't provide a usable response to the consultation questions. They were simply noted towards the end of the consultation analysis - not in the actual consultation figures.

Should the council really be spending money - your tax money - on campaigning on issues that are nothing to do with council services and outside its remit?

Especially when they so mishandle their campaign that the responses aren't even counted? Instead, shouldn't they be spending more on keeping council housing clean or building more affordable homes, repairing our potholed roads or making sure our secondary schools aren't failing? These are, after all, the things councils actually exist to do and which this council isn't doing well at all.

Almost 2,000 people took the time and effort to set out their objections in a way that was counted - and was overwhelming in its clarity of opposition. All the political parties were united on this issue - Susan Kramer, the Lib Dem MP for Richmond Park, Putney's Conservative MP and me were all clear in opposing these plans. It's right that public representatives make their views known and campaign on them.

But there's a big difference between politicians and parties campaigning to win support and be seen to back a position we believe to be popular, and the use of taxpayers money by one public body to campaign against another, driven solely by the party political motives of the Conservatives who run the council.

Heat is no substitute for light if you want to be taken seriously over an issue like this. And a reputation for financial prudence cannot be squared with the scandalous and party-political abuse of taxpayers money like this by the Conservatives.

One year on...Melrose Road still potholed

If you were the Leader of the Council, and you lived not a million miles from Melrose Road (as is the case for Conservative Councillor Lister), wouldn't you have got your own council to fix their dreadful neglect of this street?

Especially when I flagged up the problems here over a year ago? These photos were taken today, Wednesday, 13 months and three days on from my original report on this neglected road.

Three years matters

This week you're going to hear a lot about climate change as the Labour government sets out, in detail, how the UK's energy industry is going to meet our ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions. Because that's this week's news agenda, organisations all over the place will be scrambling to jump on the bandwagon. Wandsworth's Conservative Council is no exception.

Yesterday it announced that it has plans to reduce its own "carbon footprint" by increasing the amount of renewable energy it buys and reducing energy consumption.

This is good news. But it's nowhere near progressive enough. Three years ago, Labour's manifesto for Wandsworth in the council elections argued for everything the Council announced today, and then some. It including incentives for local communities to produce their own energy and, if that production exceeded their own uses, to invest it back into the national grid, much like the one Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband talked about yesterday.

Three years is not that long in the overall scheme of things. But we've all seen how slow progress towards curtailing climate change has been: lots of targets, little delivery. Every year that passes is one less year that we have to prevent the effects of climate change transforming London and the south east.

All I'm saying is that if we had ambitious, progressive local leadership we would have got us to the point Wandsworth Conservatives have now staggered to - and in fact much further beyond it - three years sooner. Those three lost years matter.

Click on the manifesto extract above to read a larger, clearer version of it.

Tories FINALLY let Labour halve Wandsworth rents

After four months of outrageous dithering, Wandsworth Conservatives have finally decided to accept the Labour Government's offer to halve their massive 6% rent increase for all council tenants.

The Labour help will put £2.77 a week, on average, back in council tenants' pockets. It's something I've been calling for since March when I wrote to the Council's Director of Housing about this issue.

I am still appalled that while the Conservatives can find the cash to freeze council tax, they choose year after year to ratchet up rents for some of the least wealthy members of our community. It's not fair and it's not right.

Despite Labour's help, under the Conservatives Wandsworth still charges the highest rents of all 32 London Boroughs. And this makes their dithering over whether to accept the Labour Government's help even worse.

Fortunately, now they've finally decided they do want Labour's help, the rent cut will be backdated to the beginning of April; so that will put a few pounds back in tenants' pockets this summer.

As of Friday...

My response to the Tories' Tileman letter

Putney Conservatives have made some quite extraordinary claims in a letter to residents encouraging them to support the Tileman House application. Highlighted below are the most contentious and self serving of them:



I agree that the building (there's only one) is in need of substantial refurbishment, but to suggest that redevelopment of a large, prime town centre site could not be "economic" is absurd. The developer is seeking permission at the depth of a global recession. The situation in six months, or a year, or two years, will be unrecognisable to that of today. It does not mean that we should agree to whatever gross overdevelopment anyone tells us Putney needs out of blind panic or hysteria.




"Somewhat higher"? "Somewhat higher" is, in fact, twice the height of the adjoining building: No.125. Four times as high as the beautiful curved Victorian terrace that leads round to Putney Hill. That's not my definition of "somewhat" - it's what I call "significantly higher". In any other planning authority we'd have elected representatives standing up for the wider public interest, not swallowing the developers' spin without question.




Of course there's a risk of it standing empty - indeed it has for stood empty for some time now. No one is suggesting the site is not in need to regeneration and development. But the Putney Conservatives evidently believe that standing empty is worse than a massive overdevelopment that we will be saddled with for years and years to come.




A reduction of 10 flats does not represent major change. And here's the context, which is missing from the Conservatives' letter: there are currently fifteen flats in Tileman House; the developers want to increase that number six-fold. The building remains 15 storeys at its Upper Richmond Road frontage. Twelve storeys at the rear will not consequentially alter the blight residents of St John's Avenue will suffer.





While I'm delighted at the recognition that Upper Richmond Road is in need of substantial improvement, we're again only being presented with a "my way or the highway" argument from the Conservatives. But we don't have to choose between the less disastrous of two dreadful options: we can have regeneration of our town centre; more commercial opportunities and some affordable housing without making Upper Richmond Road into an even darker canyon with massive tower blocks. But only with strong leadership, willing to stand up to developers, enshrined within a crystal clear plan for Putney. We're lacking both in spades from the Conservatives.




These are statements of fact. But the key word in this sentence is "any" - any redevelopment, not exclusively this disaster of an overdevelopment, would provide planning gain for Putney, and could diversify our local economy for long term benefit.




This is the most bizarre claim of the Conservatives' appalling letter. Putney is not in competition with Wandsworth: they are entirely distinct town centres catering to different communities. But hidden in this sentence is the real Conservative agenda for Putney: they want to emulate the same sort of 42-storey skyscrapers they're pushing for on the Ram Brewery site in our area. The Conservative effort to replicate massive out-of-town developments like Croydon as if there is some sort of prestige to subsuming our area beneath tower blocks is really alarming.




Where do I start with this sentence? Well, how about the fact that the building to which they refer is in Brewhouse Lane, not Brewer Street. There is no Brewer Street in Putney.

But more substantively, this building is - at most - five storeys high; it's also, incidentally, a block of entirely affordable housing - another problem with the Tileman House scheme. So if they want to use this site as an example of best practice, I'm with them on that: submit a five storey Tileman House plan, with exactly the same sort of "versatile trading space" and a similar proportion of affordable homes and it could well command my and residents' support. The current plan for Tileman is nothing like the Brewhouse Lane development and it is duplicitous to say otherwise.

I know some residents, at least initially, questioned whether there really was a link between the overdevelopment plans our borough has been bombarded with and the Conservative Party locally. With each passing piece of evidence I present - on this and all the other overdevelopment plans they're pushing, it is clear that the link is not only there - it is significant and inseparable.

Here we have the current Chairman of the Planning Applications Committee, Conservative Councillor Leslie McDonnell, and his immediate predecessor, Tory Councillor Ravi Govindia, presenting the developers' case to residents. It shows the utmost contempt for the hundreds of objections sent in by local people and The Putney Society. It demonstrates that their priorities are the developers' interests, not Putney's interest. And as usual, Putney's Conservative MP is nowhere to be seen.

No leadership, no accountability, no representation. That's what you're currently getting from the Conservatives. It's in your power to change things. Please object to this planning application and then decide how best to respond at the elections for your MP and Councillors due next year.

Tories push developers' case FOR Tileman House

Further proof that local Conservatives have completely lost the plot over Tileman House and how Putney should develop emerged over the weekend.

Some East Putney residents received a letter from two of their councillors (plus a third who represents the Balham area but who they want to move to East Putney at the next election) presenting what amounts to the developer's case FOR the application.

This is an extraordinary turn of events, not least because one of the East Putney councillors who has signed the letter is also the Chairman of the Planning Applications Committee. This has caused some conasiderable concern amongst local residents who are now openly speculating that the Tories have decided to support the "new" application. Iin fact there is very little new about it - it's close to identical to the previous application so overwhelmingly opposed by local residents; the same residents Councillor McDonnell and his colleagues were elected to serve.

I'm reproducing the Conservative letter in its entirety below, and will leave readers to judge what confidence they can have in the role that will be played by their Conservative councillors. Later today I will respond to the claims they make. The highlighted sections are ones I've marked, as these are the most extraordinary claims of an extraordinary letter.