A MOCK EVICTION

At 4.00pm on Monday 7th March, the Deputy Leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Cabinet Member for Housing, Property and REGENERATION, Cllr Rock Feilding-Mellen will report back from a recent consultation designed to ignore and sideline the wishes of local residents.

It is no secret that the Council has already misled Silchester residents regarding their regeneration plans, so whatever Cllr Feilding-Mellen may say at Monday’s meeting there are strong indications that he is preparing to destroy Silchester’s homes and residential amenity, and has already engaged consultants to prepare a regeneration plan for the greater Silchester area.

We aren’t going to let this moment pass without taking some direct action to show this fascist Council that they can’t behave with impunity in their shameless land grab of North Kensington.

Please gather at ‘Our House’ 221 Brompton Road, Kensington, SW3 3EJ at 3.00pm, or at Latimer Road tube station at 3.45pm, to execute a ‘mock eviction’ outside the property of a despised Tory Councillor who is at the heart of RBKC’s hateful and evil housing policy.

You can find a detailed itinerary of this and other events planned for the run-up to the ‘Kill the Bill’ national demo via the following link;

https://www.facebook.com/events/743520599082509/

HOMES FOR PEOPLE NOT FOR PROFIT!

https://www.facebook.com/events/973999866019425/

 

‘OUR HOUSE’ COMMUNITY SPACE

We need YOU this SATURDAY 5th MARCH:

‘Kill the Bill’ activists have occupied a building in the heart of the most expensive part of London to host a community-led occupation in protest at the Tories Housing Bill, the housing crisis, and to highlight the insanity of empty properties when thousands are homeless.

We are calling a collective action: opening OUR HOUSE Social Centre for a week, publicly taking back the empty property of the super rich – used for profit – and putting it to much better use.

221 Brompton Road, Kensington, SW3 3EJ

Join us at 12PM at ‘ OUR HOUSE’ to finish making the space TIDY and NICE.

2pm MAKING FURNITURE with PALLETS!

6PM OPEN MIC : CALL OUT FOR PERFORMERS / SPEAKERS

Our House will be open to all, it’ll be a family friendly space, with activities for kids, it will be collectively hosted, and run for a week in the build up to the march against the Housing Bill on Sunday 13th March. There will be a schedule of workshops and events , music, food and much more! This will be a significant attack on property profiteers, as well as uniting ourselves and supporting those who’ve not yet taken this form of action to do so.

https://www.facebook.com/events/743520599082509/

 

WEEKEND HOUSING CALL OUTS

The Grenfell Action Group would like to highlight two important housing actions that are taking place this weekend, across our city, in the run up to the Kill the Housing Bill Demo on the 13th March. One action is being organised by the Radical Housing Network and the other by Our Brixton.

To highlight the malicious nature of the Housing Bill for all but the richest, some of us involved in the Radical Housing Network are planning direct action. We plan to set up a social centre in a highly politically significant space. When our community centres, libraries and homes are being taken away, we can reclaim space from the elite. People experiencing and challenging the housing crisis need cultural and creative spaces to share our struggles. And we need space to explore how the right to a secure home intersects with the other things we want, need, and are proud of in our lives – how the crisis affects us all differently, but how we’re all in it together.

Running this space as a social centre will involve a programme of workshops on practical and not-so-practical skills, advice drop-ins, discussions, cooking meals, performances, and a host of other events. There will be an action element discussed and decided at the centre as well. The social centre will run for the days preceding the demonstration on March 13th.

While property brokers buy up every square inch of our city, local authorities are forcing poor people to be housed out of London, with over 68,000 people in slum-condition temporary accommodation and millions more on council housing waiting lists. The government’s response is to push through a Housing Bill that marks the biggest attack on social housing provision we’ve ever seen.

UPDATE :

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2016/03/04/our-house-community-space/

https://www.facebook.com/events/743520599082509/

The Grenfell Action Group are  also proud to make a call out for this coming Sunday’s Youth March for Housing that has been organised by the most excellent anti gentrification campaigners, ‘Our Brixton’.

Young people across London will be assembling in Brixton on Sunday 6th March to demand:

• Stop demolishing our homes
• Build more council houses
• Councils: Resist applying the housing bill
• Scrap the Housing Bill

This is the event page on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1035037933205679/

Our Brixton are keen that any youth from the Ladbroke Grove area who would like to attend, speak, inform or perform at the event are invited to do so and the orgainsers of the march can be reached through;

ourbrixton@gmail.com

The Grenfell Action Group recognises the many historical links between Brixton and Notting Hill and the history of resistance demonstrated by oppressed communities in both Brixton and Notting Hill. We are keen to build on and strengthen our pan-London networks and we celebrate any direct action taken by the younger generation to challenge housing policies that will deny them the chance of ever living in the city where they were born, or which has become their home.

WHAT FUTURE FOR NORTH KENSINGTON LIBRARY?

The much loved North Kensington Library was the first purpose-built library in Kensington. Built in 1890 it was listed Grade II in 1984. The Library is an important part of the heritage of historic public buildings serving the working class communities of North Kensington. Adjoining it, with its entrance on Lancaster Road, is another Grade II listed building by the same architect and designed to complement the neo-gothic style of the library. Funded by donations to Campden Charities the Campden Technical Institute was built in 1895 as an educational resource for the children of the poor. It was subsequently taken over by the Council and has since been privatised so that it no longer serves the needs of the working class community, but has become instead the Notting Hill Prep School, a private school for the children of the well heeled.

It has been common knowledge for some time that the future of the Library as a public resource has been under threat, and so the Grenfell Action Group submitted, in August 2015, a Freedom of Information request to RBKC seeking clarification of the future intended use of the Library. Our attempts to obtain this information took far longer than the legislation allows and were frustrated by council officers on many occasions. It was only after we had referred this matter to the Information Commissioner that we received a limited partial disclosure of the information we were seeking in our initial FoI request.

north-kensington-library-and-youth-centre-site-notes-of-meeting-with-nhps-17-september-2014-pdf

Notes of Meeting with Notting Hill Prep 26 3 15

Emails from RBKC to NHPS

We learned from the information provided that the Council has been negotiationg a long term lease with the management of the Notting Hill Prep School which will effectively end the Library’s days as a public resource and surrender control to this private school. Under the terms of the proposed 25 year lease the Council will be responsible for the costs of any necessary external works to the structure of the building, prior to the lease agreement taking effect. Obviously the Prep School will need to do a major refit and refurbishment of the interior of the building, to suit their particular requirements, and they will supposedly be responsible for funding these works. However, they will then qualify for a full year rent free, amounting to an estimated £365,000 saving for them. This will probably pay most, if not all, of the cost of the interior works, so it appears that RBKC will in effect be funding the internal works at taxpayers expense, and is preparing to do a deal with NHPS that will gift them an extremely attractive leasehold agreement. It seems strange that such a decision, involving the loss of a Grade II listed historic public building to the private sector, could progress so far without the details ever becoming public. One might also have expected there to be a competitive tendering process regarding the future of the Library rather than the existing private back room deal, masked as ‘best value’ and involving just the Council and NHPS. It is little wonder that the Council were so reluctant to publicise the details of the deal!

This blatant land grab is apparently not the full extent of NHPS ambitions as they have also attempted to procure space in the replacement Library complex, planned for the site of the Lancaster Road Youth Centre. They had hoped to arrange provision of a gymnasium for their pupils and, having rejected the offer of accommodation in the basement, they proposed instead occupying an upper floor of the new building for this purpose. However, in March last year they announced that they could not agree the rent levels demanded by the Council. They then expressed an interest in the Westway Information Centre, apparently as an alternative location for their gymnasium.

Notwithstanding the NHPS interest in the Information Centre the Council granted planning permission, in October last year, for the creation of retail units and an office suite on that site, which appears to have slammed the door on any possibility of NHPS locating their gymnasium there. Clearly the creation of a gymnasium is an important element of the Prep School’s expansion plans, and having secured a deal for expansion of their main premises into the historic old library building they appear now to be stuck in a stand-off with the Council over rent levels in the new Library/Youth Centre complex. It remains to be seen whether they will agree to the rents demanded by the Council or whether the Council will back down and reduce the rental terms in NHPS favour.

At this stage one other thing is clear about the future of the North Kensington Library. When it is eventually relocated to the new complex planned on the site of the existing Lancaster Youth Centre, it will have to share premises with the Youth Centre, which is scheduled to be rehoused there, and probably with a gymnasium serving the Prep School and a MUGA (Multi Use Games Area ) serving the Youth Centre and the Prep School. It would seem, therefore, that users of the new library can expect very little peace and quiet. It remains to be seen also how much floorspace the new library will have, given that the new complex will have to accomodate at least two other tenancies, both of which will require considerable space to satisfy their own needs.

Regarding the privatisation of the historic listed Library building, one has to wonder if there is a single public building in North Kensington that is not at risk of being plundered by RBKC on behalf of their friends in private education or other private ventures. And remember, it is not only the North Kensington Library that will be lost. We recall the loss of the Sir Issac Newton Centre which was taken out of the community’s hands and sold (or leased) to another private independent school (Chepstow House), the recent loss of the Maxilla Children’s Centre, the change of use of The London Lighthouse to a private museum, the loss of Inn on the Green, the misappropriation of community space on Lancaster West Estate, the regeneration of the Silchester Estate, the continuing threat to West London Stables, etc…….

It might seem ironic, in a borough which is composed mostly of conservation areas housing, or owned by, the privileged and well heeled, that there is little evidence of any real interest in protecting the resources of the working class communities of North Kensington, or the historic public buildings that are a key component of the architectural heritage of these communities. However, the creeping privatisation and gentrification of working class areas of North Kensington, and the public resources that characterize them, is typical of the Tory majority that controls Kensington And Chelsea Council. For the most part these people have the same predatory and venal instincts as the Cameron/Osborne cabal running the country, particularly when it comes to all those who are less privileged than themselves, for whom they appear capable only of the utmost contempt.

The Grenfell Action Group will resist the Council’s plans to transfer the North Kensington Library from ‘public’ to ‘private’ use and we urge our fellow community members to join us. We call upon RBKC to protect this beautiful building and it’s unique heritage by making the modest financial contribution necessary to refurbish the current building so it is fit for public use in the 21st Century. If the Notting Hill Prep School can afford to spend the money to bring this building up to spec as a school then why can’t the Council do the same to protect our public library service?

BAD AIR DAYS – A DEEPENING CRISIS

On 25th January this year our local newspaper (now called GetWestLondon) published what was clearly meant to be a good-news item announcing the creation of green screens at Westway Sports Centre, funded by the Greater London Authority and Transport for London, and designed to offer some measure of protection to users of the sports centre against air pollution from the Westway flyover under which the largely openair complex sits.

The project was welcomed by Westway Trust chief executive Angela McConville who expressed delight that users of the outdoor Westway facilities would now have greater protection from emissions coming from the flyover and associated ramps.

Councillor Tim Ahern, head of environment at RBKC, was quoted as saying;

“Following the installation of a green screen at one of our primary schools, the council approached the Westway Trust with the idea of locating one alongside the Westway’s outdoor sports pitches. We have spent over a year working with both TfL and the Westway Trust to get this project off the ground and are delighted that it has now been installed and we hope in time sports pitch users will benefit from reduced exposure to pollutants.”

http://www.getwestlondon.co.uk/news/west-london-news/wall-ivy-placed-near-westway-10774178

Casual readers of this article might be forgiven for believing that this was, as stated above, a ‘good-news’ story, and that patrons of the Westway Sports Centre have reason to be grateful to Ms McConville and Councillor Ahern for their efforts. However, there is a lot more to this story than the ‘GetWestLondon’ article suggests and any illusion that a few green-screens at one or two discrete locations might have any significant impact on the seriousness of London’s air pollution crisis can be very quickly dispelled by reading a report posted on 8th January on the wesite of environmental lobby group ‘Clean Air In London’ which reveals that the nitrogen dioxide (NO2) hourly legal limit for the whole of 2016 was breached in London in just eight days in January.

http://cleanair.london/legal/breathtaking-breach-of-no2-annual-legal-limit-in-eight-days/

Simon Birkett, an internationally recognised expert in the field, and Founder and Director of ‘Clean Air in London’, said:

“It is breathtaking that toxic air pollution in London has breached the legal limit for a whole calendar year within a few days…..In London and across Europe, air pollution is killing more than 10 times the number of people dying from road traffic accidents. The known health effects of air pollution have rocketed in recent years with the World Health Organisation classifying outdoor air pollution as carcinogenic to humans in October 2013 as it did smoking in February 1985.  At its simplest, in public health terms, ‘invisible’air pollution is where smoking was 30 years ago in terms of the scale and certainty of the risks and the lack of public understanding of them.”

In a recent interview for the RT television news channel Mr Birkett compared the mortality rates associated with the current air pollution crisis to the mortality caused by the notorious London smogs of the 1950’s. At that time the smog was caused by burning coal on a massive scale, mostly for domestic heating. The solution was the ‘Clean Air Act’ of 1956 which banned the burning of coal, and similarly toxic domestic heating fuels, in high risk metropolitan areas. According to Mr Birkett the main cause of London’s current air pollution crisis is diesel exhaust, and the solution he suggests is analogous to the solution implemented in 1956. Diesel fuelled vehicles must be banned or strictly limited in high risk metropolitan areas. He goes on to say;

“Put simply, diesel exhaust is the biggest public health catastrophe since the Black Death.”

Regular readers of this blog may already know that the Grenfell Action Group has been campaigning against air pollution since July 2012, and since that time we have repeatedly voiced our concerns and confronted poor air quality in the vicinity of the Westway flyover generally, and at the Westway Sports Centre in particular.

(Please see below a full list of links to our previous blogs)

During the course of our campaigning we contacted ‘Clean Air In London’ and subsequently assisted a research group from King’s College, London measuring air quality in the Sports Centre Area. Throughout the entire period of our campaign we received no cooperation or encouragement from either the Council or the Westway Trust, both of which maintained, until recently, a pretense that there was no air quality problem in the vicinity of the sports complex. We now believe that they introduced the green screens largely in reaction to adverse publicity generated by our stubborn determination to keep this issue in the public eye.

When we began our campaign we were largely ignorant of the full implications of London’s air pollution crisis, and especially of the associated high mortality, but the more we researched the subject the more we learned and discovered. The same cannot be said of Councillor Ahern, or his advisors in the Council’s environment department, who surely had all this information at their disposal all along. They surely knew that the provision of a few green screens would amount to no more than a sticking plaster which would completely fail to address the scale or urgency of the air pollution problem.

It is equally clear that neither Councillor Ahern, nor the whole RBKC Cabinet for that matter, would have the power or influence to affect change on the necessary scale. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that RBKC did not even fund the green screens at the sports centre, opting instead to depend entirely on funding from the GLA and TfL. In light of what we now know of the seriousness of the health risks associated with diesel exhaust emissions, we feel dutybound to restate the opinion expressed to us by Professor Frank Kelly of King’s College when we raised our concerns with him about the possible effects of air pollution at the Westway Sports Centre;

“It was clearly not the right decision to provide planning permission to locate a sports facility at this location – one at which children would be exposed to high NO2 concentrations while exercising.”

In light of Professor Kelly’s comment we would have to say that installing green screens that will provide only limited and partial protection against the air pollution risk at the Westway sports complex strikes us as too little and too late. All things considered we believe it is past time that both the Royal Borough and the Westway Trust gave serious consideration to the future of the Westway Sports Centre, starting with the question of the appropriateness of the site and whether it might be better to move the entire complex, or at least the outdoor sports pitches, to a more suitable location.

The solution to the wider air pollution crisis suggested by Simon Birkett, is a simple but not an easy one. The UK’s whole freight transport system has long been overly dependent on diesel fuelled road transport and the changes required will need legislation by Central Government which are likely to be econonically costly and unpopular with many, not least the freight transport lobby. It is doubtful whether the political will exists, either at the GLA or in Downing Street, to prioritise public health and the saving of human life, and quality of life, over whatever competing economic or political interests the government are committed to, or the vested interests they are aligned with.

What is absolutely clear, however, is that London’s air pollution crisis is nothing short of a public health catastrophe that needs to be urgently addressed using all means necessary.

Change has got to come!

Links to previous Grenfell Action Group blogs ;

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/air-pollution-greening-the-westway/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2015/02/28/health-expert-slams-rbkc-over-westway-sports-centre/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2015/01/26/westway-air-pollution-scandal-shocking-new-revelations/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/some-awkward-questions-for-rbkc/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2014/10/27/study-reports-high-pollution-levels-at-westway-sports-centre/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/dent-coad-parachutes-into-notting-dale-air-quality-debate-2/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/the-air-our-sporting-youth-must-breathe-2/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/bad-air-days-at-shepherds-bush-roundabout/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/lancaster-green-goes-viral/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/a-sports-pitch-epilogue/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/reprovided-sports-pitches-part-two/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/north-kensington-smog-alert/

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/reprovision-of-outdoor-sports-facilities/

KILL THE HOUSING BILL – NATIONAL DEMO

The Government is determined to pass a new Housing and Planning Bill that will mean the end of social housing, higher rents, less security, and less chance of a home you can afford. If passed this Bill will mean :

• The end of secure lifetime tenancies. Council tenancies will be for 2 to 5 years with no right to pass it on to your children.
• Landlords will have access to tenant’s personal income information and any households earning over £40,000 (ie a couple on the living wage) will be subject to a PAY-TO-STAY TAX for the difference between their social rent and the market rent In Waterloo that would be an average of £26,000.
• Local authorities will be forced to sell ‘high value’ properties whenever they become vacant – what flat in London is not high value?
• Housing association tenants will get the right to buy, so reducing stock further.
• Private renters and travellers will have reduced housing rights.
• Developers will have to build ‘starter homes’ for sale instead of ‘affordable homes’ for rent. Starter homes will be worth up to £450,000 and sold at a 20% discount – but only to people with enough money to secure that kind of mortgage.

Publication of the draft Housing and Planning Bill in October last year confirmed government ministers are planning to introduce a “pay-to-stay” scheme, a system that will force families living in social housing and earning £30,000 (£40,000 in London) to pay rents nearly as high as those in the private sector. If passed, the bill will also compel local authorities to sell ‘high value’ housing, either by transferring public housing into private hands or giving the land it sits on to property developers. Therefore, rents and waiting lists will soar, making it harder for working class citizens to afford to live in the capital.

When the Bill was unveiled late last year, politicians and campaigners warned it would worsen the affordable housing crisis. On Monday 4th January, it emerged that a quietly-tabled government amendment to the bill will strip new council housing tenants of their lifetime security of tenure. It will force councils to offer tenancies of between two and five years. Commenting on the amendments, housing minister Brandon Lewis said:

“A secure tenant can currently live in a property for life. This amendment phases out lifetime tenancies….Towards the end of the term, the [council] landlord will have to do a review to decide whether to grant a new tenancy or recover possession.”

https://www.rt.com/uk/327979-housing-bill-protest-london/

Elsewhere it was reported that, on 12th January, Conservative MPs defeated a Labour amendment that would have required landlords to ensure their properties ‘are fit for human habitation’. The amendment was defeated by 312 votes to 219, a majority of 93.

https://www.landlordtoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2016/1/mps-vote-against-housing-bill-amendment

It is clear from all this that the threat to those in social housing, and to other groups including those on low or moderately low wages and those in private rented accomodation, is actually far worse than the situation described in our most recent blog  ‘RBKC – What Future For social Housing?’, and that the most severe threat is coming from Central Government, and not just from our own Local Authority.

The Housing Bill has been condemned by ‘The Radical Housing Network’ as ‘evil legislation’ and we in the the Grenfell Action Group are fully committed to joining with other UK housing action groups to oppose it. We began our campaign by publicising a demonstration on 30th January and we will continue to publicise such actions and to cover the national campaign against the Bill, and the assault on social and affordable housing which it signifies, using the limited means at our disposal.

There is currently a petition against the bill open on the 38 degrees website. We strongly encourage our readers to sign the petition, to study the information available via the links we are providing here, and to join the national demonstration on 13th March.

https://killthehousingbill.wordpress.com/
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-the-housing-bill

WATCH THIS SPACE!

We will be providing more information on the campaign against this evil bill shortly.

Housing and Planning Bill Explanatory Notes;
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2015-2016/0075/en/16075en06.htm

Overview of the Bill;
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2015-2016/0075/en/16075en02.htm