Tag Archives: westminster council

Benefit caps and central London: how many children will be moving school?

Many Liberal Democrats I’ve spoken to have mixed feelings about the proposed benefit cap and some of the housing benefit changes. On the one hand, they have very little sympathy with the complaints of people such as Frank Dobson that rule changes means he wouldn’t be able to afford to stay in his council flat. Count me in the camp who doesn’t think council housing should be used to let ex-ministers with decades of salary earning that puts them amongst the best paid in the country and with membership of a decent pension scheme live in one of London’s most …

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , and | 21 Comments

Clause 81 of the New Roads and Street Act 1991 is your friend

You may have been following some of my travails trying to get repairs made to some of those telephone, broadband, traffic light etc boxes which appear on many pavements.

Although  my own local council (Islington) is very good at dealing with them either directly themselves or passing on to the relevant company and ensuring the work is done, other councils, including Haringey and Westminster, are far less so.

Haringey in theory also gets the job done if a member of the public reports a problem to them, but in practice I’ve often found problems of things going wrong or being forgotten.

Worst of …

Posted in Local government | Also tagged and | 3 Comments
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Recent Comments

  • Chloe
    I remember the long journeys into Manchester with my Mum 50 years ago. Piccadilly gardens were lovely. Looking at them now , if that's anyone's idea of progress...
  • Jason Connor
    How about the coastal and other towns left behind due to labour inertia? It's all well and good transforming Greater Manchester if you can call it that, but I h...
  • Peter Davies
    Those words at the beginning of the declaration were pretty disingenuous. It was obvious even at the time that they were incompatible with the rest of the decla...
  • TimL
    Thanks Alex and Chloe. FWIW I don't think these are resignation honours - I think it is just timing coincidence. Whether Starmer comes back with more resignatio...
  • Simon McGrath
    Oh dear. The UK is actually doing quite well for AI firms and investment here - would the state taking over some of the shares make that more or less likely to...