I think almost every young woman in London knows the feeling of unwanted attention on a night out. However, it’s one thing to feel intimidated by the a group of men who are making suggestive remarks on a busy bar-lined street, it is a different type of intimidation to be walking alone to a bus stop with the same group of men walking behind you.

Few will appreciate more keenly the cut in police numbers than those young women who rely on them to keep the crowds in order and to be patrolling the streets all through the night. The Mayor’s cuts to police numbers, of course, leave all Londoners at a greater risk of crime, a fact that is particularly worrying as we head into the Olympics. But as it is, London’s women find themselves in danger every night.

Poor street lighting, less staff manning tube stations, and increased parking charges in central London have resulted in a perfect storm forcing women onto public transport at night with fewer police officers around to protect them. And with wage freezes, VAT increases and fare rises, fewer will have the disposable cash now for that lifeline on a night out – the taxi home.

But we must not fall into a trap of dividing London between the raucous centre and leafy suburbs. The argument that we should beef up police numbers in zone 1 at the expense of police in outer boroughs has no weight given the widespread and terrifying rioting we saw last year across the capital. Boroughs like Ealing are just as exposed to the rise in crime. In the last two years Ealing has lost 26 police officers. 2,245 total theft offences were reported, an increase of 15%. Shockingly in the past year sexual offences increased by 16% in Ealing. The crimes young women worry about most – rape, assaults and muggings – are crimes of opportunity. We must not present those opportunities to criminals and it should be the Mayor’s first priority to ensure that we have more police on the streets especially as the Justice Secretary has admitted he anticipates a rise in opportunistic crime as a direct result of government policy.

I don’t think Boris Johnson has consciously put London’s young women in danger. I just don’t think he has ever stood in the cold at 3am, waiting for the bus home after five buses have gone past that are ‘Not in Service’, with a group of leering drunk men.

Ken Livingstone will reverse Boris Johnson’s police cuts. London’s young women deserve a Mayor who will make their safety his priority.

Mabel McKeown, CLP chair and candidate for London Assembly

A short bus ride away are four of the poorest areas in the country. In Golborne Ward, 51% of the children live in poverty, residents endure high levels of disability and ill health and life expectancy for men is 71 years, compared with 89 in the richer parts of the borough. Exhibition Road is sited next to Queens Gate, the most affluent ward in the country. Labour is incensed that the North Kensington residents they represent consistently fail to get a fair share of funding from Kensington and Chelsea Council to provide services and support.

Labour Leader Cllr Judith Blakeman said: ‘we are facing a brutal package of cuts. One pensioners’ health and social care centre has already shut down; mental health day centres are closing, a Children’s Centre is to go and nursery provision will be “rationalised”. The Council is ruthlessly cutting sports for schools, homework clubs, youth centres and the vital voluntary organisations that help vulnerable residents to live independently. Despite holding reserves of over £170 million, Kensington and Chelsea Council, chooses to spend its money on Exhibition Road rather than the poor and vulnerable of the Borough. That says it all’.

Labour planning spokesperson Cllr Emma Dent Coad said: ‘Spending £25 million on a paving scheme and £175,000 every year just to keep it clean would be obscene at any time. To do so when savage cuts are being made to essential services in the north of the borough is indefensible. The spectacle we have seen today is a slap in the face for our poorer residents, many of whom can’t even afford the bus fare to the Museums. The performers alone must have cost more than the after-school clubs that have been cut; how appropriate that a white elephant is on parade today. There can be no justification for this level of frivolous spending in these difficult times.’

Listen to this audioboo by Rob Dyson, Guardian blogger: Comments at Exhibition Road opening event

CUTS AND SPENDING AT RBKC

SAMPLE OF PROPOSED CUTS 2012/13

Early Intervention Service                                              -£350,000

High Need Adolescents                                                   -£200,000

Play Services                                                                       -£100,000

Early Years provision                                                       -£1m

Youth Services                                                                     -£520,000

Care leavers                                                                         -£468,000

Voluntary Organisations                                                  -£40,000

Supporting People                                                            -£500,000

Adult Social Care                                                               -£601,000

Home Care Services                                                         -£950,000

Mental Health                                                                     -£260,000

Learning Disability/Short Breaks                                 -£116,000

Learning Disability/Day Services                                 -£203,000

Sports for schools                                                             -£279,000

Street cleaning                                                                   -£336,000

ADDITIONAL CLEANING EXHIBITION ROAD                      +£175,000

Unbelievable? Read it here: http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/pdf/Budget-Proposals-2012-13DRAFT.pdf

Labour councillors Judith Blakeman and Emma Dent Coad are seeking a review of the Borough Standards Committee’s decision to exonerate Council Leader Sir Merrick Cockell and his Deputy Cllr. Nick Paget-Brown over their handling of the resignation of former councillor Andrew Lamont. Lamont, who is to be tried in March for allegedly possessing child pornography, was permitted to remain as a non-functioning councillor for eleven months before standing down from the Council.
Councillors Blakeman and Dent Coad, Leader and Deputy Leader of the Opposition Labour Group, had asked the Standards Committee to investigate concerns that the Council had been brought into disrepute by not immediately requesting Lamont’s resignation when the police investigation was first reported in October 2010. They argued that Councillors Cockell and Paget-Brown did not act in compliance with the Member’s Code of Conduct nor with the Council’s Constitution and that this had damaged the public’s perception of the Council.
The Standards Sub-Committee met in November and decided that there was nothing the Council’s leadership could have done to require Mr. Lamont to resign and that their behaviour was entirely consistent with both the Member’s Code of Conduct and the Council’s Constitution. However, the two Labour councillors claim that this decision is riddled with faulty reasoning and inconsistencies.
Cllr. Blakeman disputes the Standards view that agreeing that former councillor Lamont could forgo his allowance and not attend meetings during the police investigation was purely a matter for the Council’s leadership. She said: “This was pre-eminently a matter for the residents of Norland ward, whom Cllr. Lamont was elected to represent. During the by-election to replace him we met a number of people who had asked him for assistance and got no reply. Leaving vulnerable residents in limbo like this is unacceptable. At the very least the Council should have put a message on Cllr. Lamont’s e-mail referring residents to the other two ward councillors.”
The fact that the matter took eleven months to resolve without any intervention by the Council’s leadership was also unacceptable.
Cllr. Dent Coad was baffled by the Standard’s Committee view that how a councillor chooses to represent his constituents is “up to him” and legally only requires that he attend one meeting every six months. She said: “all political parties have clear policies governing the way they expect their councillors to carry out their duties; the Member’s Code of Conduct similarly expects a high commitment from all councillors. Without surgeries, casework, support on planning or housing or schooling or police issues, whatever are councillors for? Former Cllr. Lamont clearly fell far short of these expectations, yet his Chief Whip appeared content to allow this to continue over a very long period of time.”
Both Labour councillors are particularly concerned at a statement in the Standards decision that their complaints could have “given rise to what some might construe as a politically-motivated complaint.” Both complaints were deliberately withheld until after the by-election precisely to avoid this allegation. Once the by-election was over, however, it was entirely proper for the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labour Group formally to ask the Standards Committee to investigate objections raised by many residents about the way the Council’s Conservative Leadership had handled the matter. Cllr. Blakeman said: “sadly, if the Sub-Committee’s logic is followed, it is difficult to imagine any circumstance under which a councillor could turn to the Standards Committee when a councillor from another political party is felt to have violated the Member’s Code of Conduct”.
The Standards Committee now has three months to answer the request to review its original decision.

As Labour’s candidate for West Central, I am standing in an area which is undergoing a radical experiment that is turning swathes of London into no-go zones for ordinary working people. West Central is made up of Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham, which have the 1st, 2nd and 5th highest mean average private rents, respectively, in England. Affordable housing is in desperately short supply, and housing tops the concerns of residents at my advice surgeries.

This week the Conservatives announced their latest housing policy; this will do nothing to help the worsening crisis in West Central. Thousands of residents have recently received letters telling them that due to new caps, their housing benefit will be cut drastically. For some this will mean a rapid spiral into debt; for most, this will mean that they will be forced to leave their homes and move to distant areas where they can find rental properties within the new benefit caps. Children will be uprooted from schools; workers will face impossible and expensive commutes to jobs; and families will be forced to move far away from friends, loved ones and communities. In short, we are about to see a massive social experiment that is part of a deliberate strategy by the Tories to turn West Central into an area that is only affordable for the wealthy.

And it’s not as if the local Tory councils are helping matters, either. Take Hammersmith and Fulham, which suffers under one of the most vicious Councils in the country, and where the Tories are in a race against time to change the character of the Borough before Council elections in 2014. Their strategy is Dame Shirley Porter 2.0. Housing owned by the Council is being sold off and legal loopholes are found to maximise profits at the expense of providing affordable homes. Stable communities such as the Hammersmith’s Queen Caroline Estate are labelled “not decent” by the Council and slated for demolition to make way for unaffordable private housing, without a guarantee to local residents that after ‘temporary’ decanting they will ever be able to return to the area.
Tory policies are increasing homelessness; in Kensington and Chelsea, statutory homelessness is up an eye-watering 41% from 2009-10 to 2010-11.

The consequences for West Central are terrible. Young people have little hope of staying in the area as they reach adulthood, and the socio-economic diversity is being squeezed from our communities.

The free market will never provide a solution to West Central’s lack of affordable housing, especially when government is actively making matters worse. We need a Labour GLA and Mayor who will prioritise affordable housing and use their planning powers to promote truly affordable housing developments and restore the affordable housing targets which Boris Johnson scrapped. And London’s regional government must lobby central government to encourage Councils to build more affordable housing for social rent. The scale of the challenge is immense, and it is critical that we elect a Labour Mayor and Labour GLA in 2012 so that we can begin to tackle London’s housing crisis.

Todd Foreman is Labour’s GLA Candidate for West Central and Councillor for Notting Barns ward in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

At a meeting at Kensington Town Hall on 1st November, HSBC bosses have agreed that whilst they still intend to close the 152 Portobello Road Branch on 16th December, they will work with Labour Councillors, led by Cllr Dez O’Neill of Colville Ward, to find an alternative location for the ATM cash machines on Portobello Road that we said are so important for the local economy.

Cllr Dez O’Neill, Colville Ward, Cllr Emma Dent Coad, Deputy Leader of the Labour Opposition Group, and Labour Group Chair, Cllr Pat Mason, told HSBC bosses that it was wrong not to have consulted with Portobello and Golborne Road shops and market traders before deciding to shut the local bank. Councillors were enraged to learn that HSBC had been planning the closure for a year, but had failed to contact local Councillors.

Mark Barr, Chairman of the Portobello and Golborne Management Committee, who sent a statement to the meeting said:

“My committee represents shops, stallholders and residents, and the closure of this branch will be a devastating blow to the financial well-being of Portobello Road, Golborne Road and the surrounding area”. (The full statement will be forwarded).

Councillor Dez O’Neill said, “The cash machines are very important for visitors to Portobello, for traders and local people, and for the local economy, and I am going to work with HSBC to find a suitable location to keep them on the market”.

In an unprecedented move following the resignation of former Councillor Andrew Lamont who is facing criminal charges, the Labour Opposition Group on Kensington and Chelsea Council have asked the Borough Standards Committee to investigate complaints about the way the Council Leader Cllr Sir Merrick Cockell and his then Chief Whip, Cllr Nicholas Paget-Brown handled the matter. Labour Leader Cllr Judith Blakeman and Deputy Leader Cllr Emma Dent Coad claim that their behaviour could have brought the Council into disrepute as they had not acted in accordance with the Council’s Constitution.

Specifically, they claim that the two councillors had:

• Permitted Cllr Lamont to take unpaid leave of absence for 11 months without following correct procedures and in breach of the Council’s Constitution
• Failed to tell members of the Council or the residents of Norland ward that Cllr Lamont had been absent since November 2010
• Not ensured that residents contacting Cllr. Lamont for help were informed that he was unable to respond to them
• Failed to encourage him to resign immediately it became apparent that he could be facing serious criminal charges
• Allowed him to attend a committee meeting in March while on unpaid leave of absence; and
• Appointed to him a scrutiny committee while on unpaid leave without informing the committee’s chairman that he would be unable to take up his duties.

Cllr Blakeman expressed regret that her Group had been obliged to take this course of action. She said “I have tried to resolve these matters in private with the Leader of the Council, without success. In a similar case last year two councillors were asked to resign immediately. We can only assume that Cllr. Lamont was permitted to remain on the Council because the Conservatives wished to avoid a further embarrassing by-election for as long as possible”.

Cllr Dent Coad said “we have asked detailed questions and have not received satisfactory answers. We believe the Council Leader and his Chief Whip did not act in compliance with the Members’ Code of Conduct nor with the Council’s Constitution and this could seriously damage the way the public perceives the Council’s activities”.

A very good swing to Labour for our wonderful candidate Beinazir Lasharie, and huge thanks to the local and London-wide teams who pitched in with many hours of leafleting and canvassing.

We put in an outstanding performance in polling district NOA, which is where the vast majority of our energies were concentrated, and met many residents with concerns that are not being addressed by the Tories, who think it’s all about ‘planning and conservation’ in Norland. How wrong can you be?

Con: 675 43.8% (-11.6%)
Lab: 438 28.4% (+5.0%)
LD: 358 23.2% (+2.0%)
UKIP: 69 4.5% (+4.5%)

The following is an excerpt from an article in the Independent:

‘Labour edged up in the latest council by-elections during Tories’ conference week.
In its best result, at Norland in London’s Kensington and Chelsea Borough, Labour slashed Conservatives’ majority from more than 1,000 in last year’s polls – on the same day as the general election – to 237.
Kensington and Chelsea London Borough – Norland: C 675, Lab 438, Lib Dem 358, Ukip 69. (May 2010 – Three seats C 1864, 1804, 1654, Lab 787, 722, Lib Dem 714, 693, Lab 681, Lib Dem 534). C hold. Swing 8.8% C to Lab.