Twenty-second most popular Labour blog in the UK

This blog has, for the second year in succession, been voted into the top 25 Labour blogs in the UK by Total Politics magazine readers.

I really appreciate everyone who voted for my blog - especially in a year which has seen a substantial increase in the number of Labour bloggers and hence much more competition.

Your votes allow me to display a little badge, like this, on the website - which I'll probably be doing once the complete set of results have been announced:

Staying on at school

I've written recently about some of the ways the Labour government is investing to keep the economy growing, to keep people in jobs, and to get young people who may have been unemployed for a while back into work. But there's another critical part of our strategy as we approach GCSE results day.

A couple of years ago, we set out our intention to raise the school leaving age to 18, up from 16, meaning every pupil at secondary school gets the chance to study A and AS levels, a modern apprenticeship or gain other qualifications.

We've made it possible for many pupils to stay on voluntarily by introducing educational maintenance grants so that the main reason many leave at 16: that they need to get work because their family couldn't afford to keep them in school for an extra two years, was removed.

As a result, this year 85% of 16 and 17 year-olds in inner London decided to stay on in full-time education or training - the highest ever level. And the number not in education, employment or training (the so-called "NEETS) fell to just 5.2% of 16 year-olds: still far too high, but a far cry from the levels during the last two Conservative recessions. That number is far higher among 18 year olds: the last group not to benefit from Labour's extra investment - which underlines why we need to invest to keep our kids in further education or training.

And it's why, earlier this month, the government announced Labour's September Guarantee: an extra 55,000 places in Sixth Forms, colleges and training facilities, so that every single 16 year-old school leaver from July has the option of staying on if they so wish for these two important years.

Here in Wandsworth, that means an extra 159 places and £1.876 million for 16-18 year olds. We'll offer over 5,600 places in total.

So, here's another clear choice on the way to tackle the recession and unemployment. We're doing something real, practical and now to help teenagers stay off the dole-queue scrapheap. The Conservatives don't support this funding and left an entire generation to unemployment despair - twice - when they were in power.

I'm proud to be on the side of action.

Car scrappage: boosting Britain's car industry

Melrose Road to be resurfaced in October

Last month I again highlighted the state of Melrose Road on the edge of Southfields, which I first raised a year ago.

We can chalk this one up as another success: the council has made good the worst potholes and will resurface the entire road in October once repairs to gas pipes under the road are completed.

I'll keep an eye out for other repairs that need sorting out, but if you know of problems let me know - email me: stuart.king@putneylabour.org.uk.

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.

84% say no to Richmond Park parking charges

A massive vote against introducing parking charges to Richmond Park has been announced by the Royal Parks Agency - the body responsible for looking after the park. The main reasons you and I opposed the charges are set out in the pie chart above. You can read the report here.

1,986 people took the time to respond to the RPA on the issue of charging, of which 84% were opposed to the idea and 16% in favour. That reflects the local feeling on this issue that I wrote about here back in March.

This is a great result for those of us who took the time to set out why the RPA's proposal was wrong. I hope that the Agency now goes away and takes up the suggestion I and others made of working with Transport for London to improve bus services around the outside of the park.

That includes a bus that serves Roehampton Gate and Priory Lane.

Enabling those who can't drive to Richmond Park to benefit from the wonderful resources it offers is the right way to address the issues that underlie the whole consultation in the first place - and the biggest single reason why people said no to the parking charges.

...And some action on Woodhams House

I've also had a reply from the Council accepting that Woodhams House on West Hill is in an unacceptable state.

As a result of the photos I sent in, the council has undertaken a new deep clean (albeit refusing to acknowledge that the one promised in April evidently didn't happen) and replace some of the balcony screens - which aren't broken: they're just filthy - as the above photo proves. The flytip I photographed has also now been cleared.

I'll be checking the block this week to make sure the deep clean promised has been carried out.

Woodhams House is scheduled for much-needed planned maintenance, but possibly not until 2012. I think it needs attention sooner, but it's at least something that we've got the dreadful state of this block on the council's agenda.

Sherfield squalor: council responds

I've had a reply from the Conservative Council about the appalling state they've let Sherfield Gardens on the Alton fall into.

The good news is that they've admitted the area's in an unacceptable state, albeit denying that this is anything to do with them.

The bad news is that the Conservatives want to charge leaseholders - who make up about three quarters of the residents of Sherfield Gardens - an extra service charge to bring the area up to the standard they should be keeping it in the first place.

This is simply unacceptable.

The Council's known for years that there are a large number of buy-to-let properties in Sherfield Gardens, the bulk of which are rented out to students. They know that the academic year ends in June, and that at this point there will be a lot of moving-out rubbish needing to be cleared. They know too that the academic year starts in September, and that there will probably be a lot of moving-in rubbish created then. Not only do they know this, but they are in no small part responsible for it: the way the Conservatives implemented right to buy locally is directly responsible for Sherfield Gardens becoming a buy-to-let area.

My point is that none of the mess is unexpected. It should have been planned for and charged as part of the standard annual service charge. I suspect leaseholders will argue that they're already paying plenty for cleaning that's just not up to scratch.

But there's one other point the council needs to explain before it sends out new invoices. The fact that leaves and litter haven't been swept up for months has nothing to do with students moving out. The filthy state of the walls and stairs around refuse chutes is nothing to do with students. The water damage to the ceilings is nothing to do with students. The dumping of grit and salt on the road is nothing to do with students. These are all issues that should be rectified by the council as standard. They've failed in that responsibility.

So my response to the Conservatives is: provide the basic level of cleaning for which you're already charging leaseholders plenty before you try to squeeze even more cash from them.

Helping improve the Lennox

One of the really satisfying things about being in politics is when campaigns and casework you take up produces results for local people.

The photo above is of part of Dowdeswell Close on the Lennox estate at the bottom of Priory Lane. This is the last part of Dowdeswell Close that hasn't had new windows fitted - the current windows are old, metal, don't fit properly and allow a lot of heat out in the winter. As you can see, they won't be around much longer.

This £600,000 work is something I asked the council to prioritise when I held my campaign week on the Lennox in April - it's also something the residents association has been pressing hard for. So it's great that the work's finally getting done.

This is the good news. The not-so-good news is that when I was on the Lennox on Saturday I was able to check on some of the other issues I asked the Conservative council to sort out, and was annoyed to find they had not. It's simply not good enough for the Council to promise to correct problems and then just not bother to do so, and I've got back on the case to make them honour the commitments they gave me.

Highcliffe Drive cleaning improvements

The Council has finally got round to dealing with the petition I submitted last year on behalf of residents of Highcliffe Drive on the Alton estate about the poor quality of the cleaning there.

The report on my petition can be read here.

This report is a bit of a curate's egg - good in parts. I'm impressed by the following-up the council has done with those who signed my petition; and I'm pleased that generally residents have seen an improvement.

The reason, or excuse, the Council gives for the poor state of Highcliffe Drive is not, however, good enough. Yes, I accept that the major improvement works to the estate would have hampered cleaning during the period the scaffold was up. However, my team and I are in Highcliffe Drive all year round, and the state of the blocks was poor long before the work started.

That work would also not have prevented the cleaners from, for example, sweeping the corridors free of rubbish. It would not have prevented them wiping down the communal windows, that were so thick with dust it was evident they hadn't been cleaned for months, if not years. It certainly would not have prevented them clearing up urine in the stairwells. And it would not have prevented them keeping the areas around the refuse chutes clean and clear.

I'm also disappointed that the Council does not believe that the stairwells need better ventilation. It would be very easy and affordable to get more air into the stairs; in fact I'd like to see the stairwells opened up as widely as possible, because one of the reasons we get anti-social behaviour in these areas is because they're enclosed and dark.

Finally, the improvement works to Highcliffe Drive have made a big difference: the blocks look smarter and brighter. But that is only an argument for making sure that the council gets its cleaning here spot-on - so that the money spent on smartening the place up goes as far as possible.

I'll keep monitoring this because in this the fiftieth anniversary year of the Alton estate, there's never been a better time to significantly improve the heart of Roehampton.

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.

Danebury Barrier victory

In a spectacular U-turn, the Conservative council has abandoned its plans to remove the traffic barrier at the end of Danebury Avenue by the Alton School.

Last year I exposed secret plans pushed by Putney's Conservative MP and councillors to turn Danebury Avenue into a rat-run by removing the barrier. Perhaps they hoped that their unpopular and damaging redevelopment plans for the area around Roehampton Library might be more popular with developers if the road was opened up.

In November last year I sent to the council the results of a ballot I'd held of residents in the Danebury Avenue area asking what they thought. 77% wanted the barrier left alone; just 4% agreed with the Conservatives that it should be taken out.

For the past six months the Conservatives have dithered between respecting residents' wishes or railroading their plans through. Common sense has, eventually, prevailed because next week at a council committee they'll be agreeing with us that the barrier should be left where it is. I'm delighted - it shows that residents can make their voice heard when they work with those of us who actually care what they think.

You can read the Conservative climb-down report here.

Wandsworth NHS continues to improve

Whenever I talk about some of the practical improvements Labour in Government is achieving, I always try to relate them to our area, because in many services the sums we are investing are so vast and some of the targets quite opaque that it's hard to relate to them.

But Wandsworth NHS has just sent me an email talking about just five of the local priorities they've been working on, and the results they've achieved. For example:

In the last year, 1,225 people quit smoking using the Wandsworth NHS Stop Smoking Service.

By the end of April Wandsworth NHS had screened 6,750 young people aged 15 to 24 for Chlamydia, which not only helped keep local people free of a sexually-transmitted disease that can lead to infertility, but also helped with other aspects of sex education and birth control.

Here's one that's really important, given the appalling damage the scaremongering and misinformation about the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) immunisation did a few years ago. 86% of 2 year olds in Wandsworth were immunised against MMR this year, compared to just 60% a year ago.

And just as important, Wandsworth has been immunising local women against the Human Pathloma Virus (HPV) which causes cervical cancer. Last year 747 12 year old girls received all three courses of the HPV vaccine. This year the team are extending the programme to girls in all other secondary school year groups.

An extra 9,000 people attended Accident & Emergency, Tooting Walk-in Centre or the Queen Mary?s Minor Injuries Unit this past year, yet the NHS still met Labour's four hour waiting time target.

44 out of 47 GP practices in Wandsworth open for longer hours to provide more convenient services for patients who struggle to take time off work to attend a surgery.

Wandsworth has had the biggest reduction in cancer mortality in south west London.

St George?s Hospital has massively improved its infection control and met both targets for keeping down cases of MRSA and C.Difficile.

All these things don't just happen by luck or even by judgement. They've been achieved because of the huge investment that Labour has made in the NHS - the same investment that's built 100 new hospitals this past decade; or is eliminating mixed sex wards.

There's so much more to do to improve services provided by our NHS and to improve life expectancy and fight debilitating and fatal diseases. I'm never going to seek your vote solely on the basis of what Labour has achieved. But I am going to ask you to accept that the extra NHS investment we've provided - and which the country voted for us to deliver - has made a difference; it's not been wasted. And on that basis I ask you to consider who will best protect that investment and go on improving our National Health Service.

Fixed!

This is the site of the pothole in Princes Way I highlighted a few days ago - the one that had collapsed into the drain. While the repair's not exactly a work of art, no-one is going to break their leg anymore (unless they trip over the plate!)

Hazlewell Road has also been repaired, as have most of the potholes I flagged up last year, such as in The Platt.

If anyone can explain how Putney's elected representatives - every single one of them Tory - earn their salaries (paid for by you), do please let me know, because they can't even get a pothole fixed. These are the bread-and-butter issues they're failing on. Does it give you any confidence they can get the big things right either?

All postal votes to be checked

As a result of pressure from my campaign, every single postal vote cast in Wandsworth in this June's european elections will be properly checked to stamp out voter fraud.

I want Putney residents to be absolutely sure that their vote is counted and that every vote is cast fairly and honestly.

The Council was planning to verify only one in five of the postal votes cast in Wandsworth. But as the result of a letter to the Council's Chief Executive, who's also responsible for overseeing the conduct of elections locally, this year every single postal vote will be checked to make sure it has been cast by the person it was issued to and not somebody else.

A few years ago Labour changed the law to allow any voter to vote by post without needing to give a reason why. I backed that change because I believe the right to vote should be exercised by as many people as possible and because it was the only improvement to the electoral process that substantially increased voter participation. There are now over 6,000 postal voters in Putney alone.

But in response to the - fortunately very few - cases of electoral fraud (none in our area, I'm pleased to add), last year the Government tightened the law on postal voting making it much more difficult to cast a postal vote fraudulently. We did so by requiring everyone who wants a postal vote to provide not only their signature but also their date of birth on the application form - and they have to do the same when they return their postal vote.

Those forms are separated from the votes at the town hall, and then checked against the original applications to make sure both the signature and the date of birth match. Although it's a time consuming process, I think it's absolutely right that every postal vote is checked - not one in ten, one in five or one in two. Every single one.

So I'm delighted that my campaign has persuaded the council to change its mind on this, because without having confidence that - whoever we vote for - the person who wins has done so because they won the most votes fairly and squarely, there can be no confidence in the rest of our democratic process. And that's true regardless of whether we're choosing EuroMPs, London Mayors, Councillors or Members of Parliament.

Record numbers of Putney undergraduates

The number of students going on to higher education in Putney has increased by one of the highest amounts in the country under Labour.

In the 1997/8 academic year - the last under the Conservative Government, 250 Putney young people became undergraduates. A decade on, in 2007/8, after ten years of Labour, that number was 410: that's a 67% increase. And that is the 67th biggest increase anywhere in the UK - out of over 650. In perspective, the average increase is 27%.

But what happens if the Conservatives get in? They've pledged to cut £610million from the learning and skills budget - just at the time when getting a good qualification can make the difference between getting on the career ladder or struggling to find work. Under the last Tory government, higher education funding fell by 37%.

This is what Chris Patten, the former Tory Government Minister who went on to become Vice Chancellor of Oxford University said about his own party's failure on higher education, writing in the Guardian on 14th October last year:

?What is true is we expanded higher education hugely by reducing the investment in each student. In just over a decade we doubled the number of students and halved the investment in each. The Treasury calls that higher productivity - it's a euphemism for poorer pay, degraded facilities, less money to support the teaching of each student.?

Labour has halted and reversed that trend, without reducing the numbers of students entering higher education. We've had to take tough and unpopular decisions to get to where we are today, but given the choice between the record numbers of Putney teenagers becoming undergraduates and the miserable times students faced when I was at University in the 1980s and 1990s I think the progress we've made is significant. Don't let the Tories wreck it.

Click here to download the table of undergraduates by constituency, in excel format

Making a real difference

The putneysw15 website is reporting yet another example of Putney's Police Safer Neighbourhood team's effectiveness.

A teenage robber has just been sentenced to three years in jail after being caught by the West Putney Safer Neighbourhood team just moments after accosting and stealing an I-Pod from someone in Larpent Avenue.

The Safer Neighbourhood team, who were patrolling on mountain bikes in the area were able to get to the scene of the crime promptly. From the description given by the victim and the direction the robber fled in, they were able to apprehend him within minutes.

Sgt Eric Ostrowski of West Putney Safer Neighbourhoods Team said: "This arrest within minutes of the offence and subsequent conviction has come about due to the courage of the victim in reporting this matter to police, the hard work of the Safer Neighbourhoods officers who were on patrol that day and the dedication of the Robbery Squad officers at Wandsworth.

"Due to this a violent individual has been removed from the streets of Putney for the foreseeable future. I hope this shows the public that we will continue to work with the local community in making our streets safer."

As usual, what is conspicuous by its absence from this story is any praise or support for our Safer Neighbourhood Police from Putney's Conservative MP, or any of its councillors. The Conservatives tried at every turn to stop former London Mayor Ken Livingstone introducing safer neighbourhood police teams - we now have forty of them - and voted against funding them once they lost that battle.

Ever since, the Conservatives have taken every turn to criticise, undermine and ridicule as ineffective our safer neighbourhood teams. That's despite a stream of success stories like this, and the consistent fall in crime Putney has benefited from since Labour introduced them.

Shalden House sorted

I wrote last week about the vandalism in Shalden House. I can now report that following my intervention the windows that were smashed in have been fixed. And just look at the difference a repair makes:


Then.................................................Now


Then.................................................Now


Then.................................................Now

I'm really pleased for the residents of Shalden House that we've got action - that still took too long in my book - because the conditions that they were living in were unacceptable.

There remain problems in Shalden House - the caretaking leaves much to be desired and illegal activities are regularly reported by residents who stumble across non-residents in the stairwells. These are all difficult problems to tackle, but for me politics isn't about what's easy - it's about what's right.

10p tax: democracy works

This week, the Government responded to pressure from Labour's grassroots and backbenches and produced a substantial and generous package to correct the problems created for some of the least affluent in society by the abolition of the 10p tax rate.

The package will be worth £120 per person to all basic rate tax payers - so as well as those who lost out from the 10p abolition, it will also benefit others who are feeling the pinch as fuel and food prices rise as a result of glocal economic pressures.

Significantly, the Chancellor has done this by raising the personal tax allowance: the amount of income on which we don't have to pay any tax, which is the fairest way to help the poorest. It is also welcome news that this measure will be backdated to April which means this help will go even further.

I received a bit of media attention for my criticism of the impact of the abolition of the 10p tax rate. As I wrote in my original post, I was particularly concerned about the impact on pensioners in Putney.

So I'm delighted by this announcement because, simply put, democracy works. As I wrote originally, when you have made a mistake it is a virtue, not a vice to admit to it.

For those of you who saw the exchanges in parliament, just contrast the considered, generous remarks of Labour MP Frank Field - the leader of those of us who were most concerned about the 10p tax problem, who worked constructively with Ministers to deliver this package and the braying, squeeling, Punch-and-Judy yah-boo reply from the Shadow Chancellor, still as out of his depth as ever.

I'm in politics because I want to get things done - and Putney pensioners and those on low incomes - as well as middle income earners, will now see the results of that approach.

Another example of housing neglect

On Sunday my campaign team and I were out in Southfields ward talking to residents of Brathway Road and Avening Terrace, as well as Merton Road and Morris Gardens.

Just as we found in our earlier visit to Longstaff Road and Longstaff Crescent, we found the state of repairs to the council properties in Brathway and Avening truly shocking - especially the neglect of windows. There was real anger at the refusal of the council to pay any attention to the needs of tenants in this area.

As a result, I asked Councillor Leonie Cooper, Labour's Housing spokesman and London Assembly candidate for our area, to get onto the Housing Department and find out why the Conservative-run council was being so neglectful of this area. And through our efforts, Avening and Brathway are on a list for repairs that could start next April, provided council tenants approve the schedule at a forthcoming meeting.

This is great news for the residents locally, even though it does mean another winter of draughts and higher-than-necessary heating bills, but the question must be asked: two areas of council property, two areas seriously neglected by the council - how many more examples exist around the constituency in similar urgent need of repair?

We've stalled the closure of Newlands Hall

My petition to save the Newlands Hall on Putney Vale estate went before the Council's Housing Overview and Scrutiny Committee last week.

And despite attempts by some silly Conservative councillors to discredit it - simply because some of the signatories were users of the hall who don't actually live on the estate itself - we did squeeze some concessions from the Town Hall.

There will now be a consultation with the community about the future of Newlands Hall which, given the council's determination to close it down just a few weeks ago amounts to a major U-turn.