Last month my daughter went off to university. This means that I have even more time to spend at meetings! More seriously, I have noticed as various landmarks have passed in my life that they have shifted subtly or abruptly my political perspectives. I remember for example seeing the first policeman who was obviously younger than me. I suddenly felt a lot more responsible. Having a child at college makes you feel: a. old, b. skint, c. resentful of tuition fees and d. (of course) proud. Last month I also celebrated 21 years since first being elected (as a Councillor in Wapping). This accentuates the sense of oldness. But I am of course extraordinarily wise.

The Mayor has had an eventful month. He of course attended the Tory Conference and upstaged Dave. He made a perhaps dodgy decision re the London Arts Council (see below). He published his draft transport, planning and economic development strategies. More recently still, he has, as predicted, announced a major increase in transport fares, somewhat overshadowing his freeze of Council Tax and protests of efficiency. Of course everything continues with an ever-looming General Election in the background. In East London, plans to replace the 25 (bendy) bus continue and Barking was offered the prospect of and then lost its place as an Olympic Borough. And this was meant to be a quiet month!

The Mayor’s Month

The Mayor made a star turn at Tory Party Conference, as you would expect. While there he announced that he had found £5billion in savings at Transport for London, and that he would freeze his part of the Council Tax next year. Some of us found it quite odd that a major announcement for London be made to an audience 200 miles away but then it was clear that his Party, and not London, was the audience he most wanted to speak to, with an eye perhaps to the future. He made a headline-grabbing interjection on Europe, in an apparent attempt to ‘out-sceptic’ the leadership, and perhaps to hoover up more headlines.  Interestingly, just before going to Manchester he had made a brief appearance in Eastenders. This helped to launch him into the media spotlight to be noticed and lauded by the faithful. The sun still shines, clearly. I wonder why these rumours persist that his leader may not love him totally…?

The odd cloud loomed too. Ian Clement, the trusted former Deputy Mayor who left under an expenses cloud, was convicted of fraud. The savings decision at TfL was somewhat overshadowed days later by the announcement in London of fares rises. And it emerged that our Mayor had intervened in an attempt to appoint a Chair(woman), Veronica Wadley, former editor of the Evening Standard, to the Arts Council in London after an independent panel at the short listing stage had rejected her.  Anybody who lived through the last days of the John Major Government will have spotted the reputational risk in such an appointment. Someone close to his office attempted to discredit the process by both smearing the panel (it was a ‘leftie’) and then claiming virtue, as his leadership had been open by using a hostile panel. Rather disingenuous but he still gets away with it. This will change in time….

Transport – Fares, Savings, Demands

The Mayor announced in Manchester that he had found savings of £5billion in the Transport budgets. He didn’t mention that half of this had been announced previously, or that the savings are over 9 years in a budget through which roughly £8billion passes each year. These are details but they show the claim to not be quite what it seems! However, £5billion is still a big number needing hard decisions – but it is not exactly Rambo territory.

There are three big challenges with the TfL budget. The first is that in a recession fares income falls. The cumulative effect of a quite small fall can become a big number, and create a hole in the budget. Second, we are just reaching the first financial review of the tube PPP. This is the provision to renegotiate the price every 7½ years of the 30-year contract. Even though one contract (Metronet) collapsed and has been brought back into TfL where its works have been severely reduced, the other (Tubelines) is still operating and needs somewhere up to £1 billion more to deliver its agreed outputs. Although bits may be snipped off the contracts, several £100millions will need to be found. Third, a spending agreement was made with the Government that means there is no new money, and yet a range of projects such as Crossrail, need funding, to an agreed schedule. But nobody said being Mayor was easy.

And so to fares – big increases were announced. Rises average over 12% on the buses, including 20% on the flay £1 fare, and over 3% on the tubes, from January. As stated last month, the RPI + 1% figure used last year would have led to a cut. In its place the Mayor has announced this increase followed by future year rises of RPI + 2%. At the same time the Mayor announced that the Congestion Charge would rise from £8 to £10 a day (but £9 with a new electronic account). This is an interesting development from a Mayor elected as an enemy of the charge. It is also interesting that three of the Mayor’s early decisions with a budget impact – not implementing Phase 3 of the Low Emission Zone, scrapping the Western Congestion Charge Zone and scrapping bendy buses – have a revenue effect on TfL roughly equal to that secured through the fares rise. In other words, that tough decisions were needed anyway but underlying this the Mayor made easy decisions early on that we are having to pay for now.

A further part of the budget announcement, and subsequent business plan, includes bus service cuts in future years, plus other savings including delays to works including station refurbishments not yet started. In East London the station fixes at Mile End, Aldgate East and the minor works at Upney, are apparently safe but I am double-checking this. The TfL business plan says that over the next nine years bus journeys across London will be cut by 26 million kilometres and the level of subsidy for bus services will fall 37%. This will inevitably mean fewer buses running on local routes, longer waits at bus stops and more crowded buses.

Strategies

This month the draft Spatial Development (Planning), Transport and Economic Development strategies were published for public consultation. They look very similar to the earlier drafts presented for consultation to the Assembly. I will provide a note on these in my next report.  

Budget

At the Conservative Conference, the Mayor announced that next year, again, he would freeze the Council Tax precept. As written before, this is of course good news to the bill payer. It does however have a downside, or ‘opportunity cost’. Most fundamentally at risk must be police numbers. First, because increased police numbers were funded through the precept and a freeze is a real terms cut, after inflation has eaten into a fixed income. Second, because a growing number of police are funded by other budgets – Boroughs or TfL – and as budgets are squeezed in those organisations the funding agreements must be under threat. In the next month we will begin to get a clearer view.

Recorded Crime

And so to some good news. Figures released this month show crime in London at its lowest recorded level in ten years, with further reductions since last year. Statistics for the first six months of this financial year show that overall crime has fallen by a further 1.2% compared to the same period last year. This drop follows a reduction by 18,621 total offences (2.2%) over 2008-09. The most significant reduction has been in homicide, with around a third fewer deaths this year so far than at the same point last year, the lowest murder rate in at least ten years. Youth violence and knife crime both continue to fall. Incidents involving blades are down by 303 offences (4.7%), a further drop that follows a significant reduction of 13.3% last year. There are, as always, areas of concern. ‘Most Serious Violence’, has risen in many Boroughs, but from a low number, and residential burglaries have grown in many places too, but the overall trend is down.

I include this not just because it is good news but also because there is often not an obvious causal link between other events (more or fewer police, new policing initiatives) and recorded crime. There has for example been no great rise in crime as unemployment has grown, as some predicted and as has happened in the past. But the anti-knife crime initiative seems to have had some effect – fundamentally because high profile publicity and policing seems to have changed people’s behaviour. It is interesting that politicians will often claim credit where the reasons are less obvious or tangible. You can be sure though that when trends go in the opposite direction, we will tend to get a sizeable slug of the blame. Another example of where rhetoric doesn’t easily translate into results. And this creates a hostage for the Mayor, who has adopted a high profile as a crime ‘enforcer’.

Olympic Funding Hole  & problems with the LDA

Last month I commented on the £165million budget hole, caused by apparent failure to properly record Olympic land transactions. Four further things to report this month. First, there have been consequential swingeing cuts in LDA funding for a whole range of projects across London, including East London. This has included a batch of Olympic Legacy Budgets. Of course, to cut budgets designed to spread the benefits of the Games might be viewed as defeating the Games’ objective so we need to watch this development closely. Second, the affair adds to the view that the LDA under Boris may be proving as unmanageable as under the old Mayor. Third, it is increasingly apparent that, whoever forms the next Government, regeneration funds will be under severe pressure – they are ‘discretionary’ spending and so are easy to cut - and cuts in budgets for RDAs or their successors seem inevitable.

Finally, and sort of following from this, delicate negotiations are now taking place to work out who will pay Olympic land debts (roughly £1billion owed to the LDA and £600million to the Lottery), as it becomes clear that the previous model – that ever rising land values would clear the debts painlessly – will not work in the current market, and that to burden the Olympic Park with such debts would crush its ability to churn money into longer term investment to create jobs and homes in legacy. For the future of our area we need to recycle Olympic land values into the area. This is a challenge I will return to.

Olympics and Barking (not)

In the past Month, Boris both raised and then lowered the hopes of Barking that it might become an Olympic venue. The proposal was that either shooting, or badminton and rhythmic gymnastics might be placed in a temporary venue in the Borough. I strongly supported the Mayor as this sort of development – attracting the right sort of interest and investment – is what the Borough needs. Boris duly huffed and puffed, and claimed this as a target. I was refreshed with a tentative belief that, party politics to one side, he might start talking up the East End. But after a two-week adventure this was then dashed, with alternative venues found and the borough getting nothing.  It seems it will take a little longer to get the Mayor to support East London.

25 Bus review

As a part of the programme to remove all Bendy Buses, TfL is now consulting on the replacement to the 25, that workhorse between Ilford and the West End, running across Newham and Tower Hamlets. I don’t have the Mayor’s problems with the bendies but in responding I have suggested that we look closely at the demand in order to ensure that the mixture of needs is addressed. It is early days but this consultation is very important for us and providing a reliable service is a vital need to which I will return.

Thames Gateway Bridge

The Mayor has stunned us all by making a policy U-turn on the abandoned Thames Gateway Bridge (TGB) just east of the Blackwall Tunnel. He cancelled the bridge last year, saying he favoured a crossing at Silvertown further to the west. He has not given up on Silvertown, but has now resurrected proposals for a new crossing at the site of the TGB, now renamed Gallions Crossing. What an odd world. Of course nothing will be built while he is Mayor, because of the delay his cancellation has introduced but this is on the face of it a bizarre development, suggesting drift and confusion.

Other Stuff

Plenty more this month (more detail next report) including: Columbus Tower rejected by Tower Hamlets Council who were then overruled by the Mayor and Bank DLR Station facing a one month closure from Christmas – I have been trying to mitigate this, with limited success to date. East London line replacement buses facing cuts – a local issue but one that has been running for some years. And a development on the Dagenham Prison with the Mayor’s Office, having tried to pretend they weren’t, finally admitting that they knew all about it and were involved in agreeing the site.