September’s meeting of Full Council took place just after the end of the period of national mourning following the sad death of the Queen. At the start of the meeting members observed a minute of silence. Group Leaders were then invited to pay tribute to Her Late Majesty. I was privileged to share some remarks on behalf of the Labour & Cooperative Group. I stressed how the Queen was a constant in decades of turbulence of change, how she deftly reshaped the role of Britain in the world after the end of the Empire and how she led as a woman in a man’s world. You can watch my tribute here https://hertsmere.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/691233/start_time/621000?force_language_code=en_GB.

After the Council united in tribute to the Queen it didn’t take long for normal service to resume and for the Tories to return to their dirty tricks by trying to gerrymander the previously agreed agenda for the meeting in order to suit their own narrow political agenda.

Cllrs Bright and Paul Hodgson-Jones appeared too collude with the Mayor to push the Leader’s report down the agenda in order to avoid Cllr Bright being held to account and having to respond to questions from Councillors. This was the latest in a run of Council meeting where Cllr Bright has either changed the agenda or not bothered to turn up in order to avoid being scrutinised in his role as leader. Most recently he missed a scrutiny committee at which he was due to be questioned by calling in sick – when in fact he was caught on camera at Rishi Sunak’s campaign launch the same day!

I challenged the Mayor to disclose whether he had discussed this agenda change at the meeting of his Conservative Group the previous day. The Mayor refused to answer my question – making the nature of this shoddy stitch up even more obvious.

The meeting moved on to questions from the public. Alex Jacobs, a prolific local campaigner asked a question highlighting the planning approval previously granted on the sire of the former Borehamwood Police Station. She pointed out that this application was granted largely on the basis of weight being given to the now “shelved” Draft Local Plan. She made the excellent point that the planning permission now appeared unsafe given that the Council claims to have ditched that Draft Plan. Unable to deliver a clear response Cllr Bright promised to respond in writing within ten days.

Next up were questions from members. I opened by asked the Chair of Planning Committee Cllr Linda Silver whether she would take steps to implement our actual policy on affordable housing now that the Council’s own appointed barristers had advised members that national guidelines did not supersede it. Cllr Silver gave a long answer, full
of waffle during which she incorrectly summarised our existing policy. In my supplementary questions I asked her again to do more to deliver affordable housing for local people. You can watch a similar exchange between my colleague Cllr Gray and Cllr Silver at a recent planning meeting here: https://fb.watch/g2Ag7dQ9TM/

I also asked the Leader a question about taking action in response to discredited academic Prof. David Miller, who made inflammatory and dangerous comments about local Jewish schools on Iranian state TV. You can read a media report of my question and the Leader’s response in the Jewish News here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/council-defends-jewish-schools-after-sacked-professor-claims-they-groom-extremists/

My third and final question was Cllr Clapper who is responsible for the Council’s assets. I challenged her on the Council’s negligence in relation to the now derelict Stonham Hostel building on Theobald Street in Borehamwood. I’ve been questioning the shocking situation regarding lack of utilisation of this high value public asset for a number of years. Cllr Clapper seemed to agree that it was a problem but blamed her predecessors saying she was doing what she could. The site was recently set on fire compounding the problem. Labour believes that the lease should be terminated and the Council should return the site to provide affordable homes for vulnerable people – which was its original usage.

My colleague, Cllr Gray asked a question about the loss of public funds following Labour’s expose of how the Council had lost over £300k in lost income due to delayed handover of the new stages at Elstree Studios. Finance portfolio holder Cllr Sachdev blamed the pandemic and continued to ignore waste of public finances under his watch. Cllr Gray rightly challenged him on why he failed to disclose this loss of income when Cllr Briski misled Council at its July meeting claiming that the project was delivered on budget and on time.

Financial mismanagement remained the key theme for the next report. The Tory leadership came to Council asking to increase the budget for the refurbishment of the Civic Offices from £3m to £5m due to a litany of supposedly unexpected problems with the work. Both Cllr Ozarow and myself firmly opposed this shocking money grab at such a difficult tie for the public purse. The reality is that the Tories are just rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic. They have avoided Labour pressure to make better use of the prime Civic Offices site to deliver much needed revenue, housing and medical facilities whilst moving the Council’s back office to a cheaper site that would be better for productivity. Our old 1970’s building is no longer fit for purpose. Lacking imagination and strategic thought the Tories prefer to put a sticking plaster over the problem. A future Labour administration would prioritise this kind of redevelopment of the site in the public interest.

The next report continued to highlight the theme of mismanagement of public assets and once again saw the Tories treating Council rules with contempt. I was shocked that a Tory member of the Council who also sits on the Board of Elstree Studios was a main proposer of the move to spend over £1m on repair work to the Studios site. A few years ago an independent audit report found major fault with the way the Council handled possible conflicts over public assets. Cllr Bright was forced to repay funds he had incorrectly claimed from the studios and it was disclosed that Cllr Paul Morris benefited from renting private office space on the site at a preferable rate. I proposed referring this matter to the Executive for further discussion so that this decision could be discussed in a fair and impartial manner. Our group supported the work itself as it is the Council’s responsibility as landlord and the environmental benefits that installing air source heat pumps would produce. Nevertheless, we are concerned about paying vast sums of money to a Studio site that appears riddled with maintenance problems and has now been without a Managing Director for some time. Labour support our studios as a key public asset generating both revenue and local employment. However, they need to be run professionally. We will remove the plethora of (exclusively) Tory Councillors who form a majority on the Studios board (and collect allowances as a consequence) and replace them with a streamlined board of industry experts and professionals.

Cllr Clapper then tabled the Council’s new Economic Development Strategy. I critiqued this document as being full of rhetoric but bereft of specific details, especially when it comes to showing where the capital funding for the actions will be raised from. We desperately need meaningful action to trigger post-COVID economic growth in Hertsmere. We are told about high street regeneration again and again, yet we see no progress. In fact we see the opposite of progress when the Tories shut down once thriving local markets and allow shops to be converted into office space. Hertsmere Labour are proud to be preparing a fully costed manifesto to improve our borough, brimming with ideas and policies contributed by members of the public during our ongoing consultation process. We have promised to invest fully in a rejuvenated and vibrant Borehamwood street market. The Tories spent money on a consultant’s report which advised them to do just that. They decided to ignore it. They are not acting to grow our local economy. Through their mismanagement and neglect they risk driving it into the ground. Fill in our public consultation manifesto survey here: https://tinyurl.com/consultationlabour.

After the debate on the Economic Strategy we saw another piece of shameless procedural gerrymandering. Having failed to use their earlier changes to reach the items they wanted to prioritise, Council Leader Morris Bright once again colluded with the Mayor to re-order the agenda to his own convenience. The Mayor and Cllr Bright appeared to be having an exchange via text message. I pressed the Mayor to disclose whether texts he had indeed received texts from executive members undemocratically seeking to steer the direction of the meeting. Again, the Mayor refused. Local people will draw their own conclusions.

Next, I proposed a motion calling upon the Council to secure firm commitments from the BBC and to take it own steps to save the BBC Studios site for the creative industries. This followed confirmation that the BBC intends to “dispose” of the site and information that it was being marketed to housing developers. The Tories opposed this motion claiming that they have assurances from the BBC. Oddly, no such assurances have been given in the public domain. Even if assurances exist, Labour thinks saving BBC Elstree is important enough to have backup plans and options in place. Labour is supporting the Save our Studios campaign https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/save-bbc-elstree-studios?fbclid=IwAR0Mu7Q5ZjOChS5KBGNiVg49rqIqP69q3h-Z7c25wrBoHX8IlqS-pavaxcc which is backed by local representatives and studio workers. We don’t trust the Tories with our creative industries. It was Labour who saved Elstree Film Studios by bringing them into public ownership. The Tories oppose this at the time.

The next motion on the agenda was a well-meaning proposal commemorating the heroes of the Falklands War following the recent 40th anniversary of the liberation of the Islands from Argentinian aggression. The motion also proposed a memorial wall at the Civic Offices. Labour fully support the motion, but called for a separate vote on a clause which made incorrect parallels to the current conflict in Ukraine. The Falklands was a traditional symmetric war between two armed forces. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a skewed asymmetric conflict involving horrific attacks on civilians and civilian targets. We can honour our war heroes and veterans whilst being very clear on the politics and underlying issues of different conflicts. These lazy comparisons risk downplaying the suffering of Ukrainian civilians or worse, even creating the impression that they are legitimate targets. The proposer, Cllr Mortimer blocked our amendment however we obviously support the motion as a whole. I hope that the local Royal British Legion will be consulted and involved as the plans for this new memorial take shape.

Shockingly, the constant gerrymandering of the agenda meant that we would now skip over the opposition business motion on the impact of the energy crisis for local people. No prizes for guessing why the Tories wanted to avoid discussing this. They opted instead to jump to a debate on a report of minimal relevance to local people.

In the closing minutes of the meeting we discussed a report about the Community Governance Review and its findings which will result in the warding of Shenley Parish Council into two distinct areas and the merger of Ridge and South Mimms into a single strengthened Parish Council. Labour is pleased that both of these changes reflect what
we have consistently argued local people wanted. Cllr Chris Myers, recently elected as Labour’s first ever Vice-Chair of South Mimms Parish Council spoke passionately in favour of these changes. See his speech here: https://hertsmere.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/691233/start_time/10243000?force_language_code=en_GB.

Prior to the meeting the Tories had sought to use this report to slip through other bureaucratic changes none of which would help local residents and were designed to frustrate the ability of opposition members to have their voices heard. Thankfully these were postponed until later in the municipal year.

All in all this meeting managed to achieve some important business. It underscored the way that the Tories and the new Mayor are prepared to play fast and loose with the norms of the Council chamber in order to minimise opposition voices. A day after the meeting one of the Tory Councillors, a former Executive member, resigned the whip (https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=218520533834813&set=a.214873854199481). Just like the broken and poorly managed Council assets I mentioned earlier in this blog, it seems that the Tory Group itself is creaking at the seams. Meanwhile, as the footage of the meeting (which I encourage you to watch here: https://hertsmere.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/691233) demonstrates, Labour is ready and willing to lead and form a new inclusive administration leading a Council that is more sensitive to local concerns, not driven by rich developers and committed to delivering prosperity, security and respect for the people of Hertsmere. It’s time for a fresh start.