The Millwall CPO: My Answers To The Guardian's Questions

I have been contacted by Barney Ronay, a journalist at the Guardian and asked for my responses to these questions which relate to the stories he has been running about the New Bermondsey development project and Council's decision, subsequently not proceeded with, to grant a CPO on land owned by the Council but leased to Millwall football club. I believe that he is running a story on all the candidates who have been shortlisted for selection as the Labour candidate in next year's Mayoral Election in Lewisham. I am posting my answers on full here as it would be unreasonable to expect the Guardian to do so in the article they publish next week.

1. It emerged after a meeting earlier this year that you had described your fellow cabinet colleagues and the Mayor as "dead men walking". A source present at that meeting has since confirmed that this was indeed the case. Do you have any comment on this?

Following the decision by the Mayor & Cabinet not to proceed with the Millwall CPO, I was contacted by Steve Kavanagh, the club's CEO and invited to a meeting at the ground. The meeting was a genuine attempt by Steve to open a dialogue with the Council and rebuild a good relationship. He said that the meeting would include the two of us plus Steve Bradshaw, the CEO of the Millwall Community Scheme. No one else was in attendance. The three of us met for over two hours. My understanding was that it was a confidential meeting. I came away believing it had been productive. Steve Kavanagh and I exchanged a few cordial emails afterwards in what I saw as a useful exercise in building trust and 'keeping the conversation going'. So I was disappointed when a phrase I had used at the meeting appeared in a tweet by a supporters group. I say disappointing as I believe that this action put an end to the prospect of any further meetings between the Council and the club taking place. It appears that someone who was present at this private meeting is now briefing the press about it. I don't want to disclose more of what was said at a private meeting beyond what has found its way into the public domain. What I can say is that I used the phrase 'dead men walking' to help me to explain to the Steves where the Council was in the political cycle. The Mayor had announced his decision not to seek re-election in 2018. My view was that most if not all of his nine person Cabinet would not be Cabinet Members in the 2018/22 administration. I used the phrase to emphasis that very considerable change would take place to the composition of the Council's political executive after the 2018 elections. I didn't use it to convey the view that I thought anyone would be resigning or forced to stand down prior to that.

2. Have you met the former mayor Dave Sullivan in the last year? Is Sullivan a personal friend?

I have written about this in a previous post to this blog. You can read it here. To the best of my memory I haven't met Dave Sullivan for at least a year. The last time was at a mutual friend's birthday party when neither of us knew that the other was invited. I have spoken to him about 3 or 4 times on the telephone in the last year. He is a friend of mine as indeed are many former Lewisham Councillors and Officers. I am answering this question as I hope to show that I have nothing to hide. But I have to confess that I find the obsession of some people with a person who left the Council fifteen years ago and Renewal almost ten years ago, rather surprising.

3. It has been reported that you have been informally describing yourself in public as "the Renewal candidate" for Mayor. Do you have any comment on this?

I haven't said that I'm 'the Renewal candidate' for Mayor. I know that journalists will not reveal their sources, but I strongly suspect that this allegation has come from someone who is not in full support of my candidacy in an attempt to undermine it. However, it is fair to say that one of my motivations for running was to give Labour Party members the opportunity to vote for a candidate who had supported the CPO, as all the other councillors who were being spoken of as potential candidates had made statements that they were against it, even those who had voted to grant Renewal planning permission on the whole scheme, including the land leased to Millwall and the decision to agree the CPO.

4. Do you rule out a future CPO of land at New Bermondsey as part of the regeneration scheme there, as other candidates have?

Council's policy is to agree a CPO on the land owned by the Council and leased to Millwall Football Club. The decision not to proceed with the CPO that was agreed by Mayor & Cabinet doesn't change that. This is the legal position as I understand it. The Council's policy to seek to deliver a comprehensive regeneration scheme effectively in partnership with Renewal, involving the use of a CPO if certain conditions are met, has been in development for ten years at least. This position has been arrived at through a series of decisions which have gone through the Council's democratic processes. They have been taken in an open and transparent way, mostly in public, often involving statutory consultation and subject to the Council's Overview & Scrutiny procedures. Renewal has invested considerable sums on the understanding that the Council will essentially keep its promises and deliver its policy. If the Council decides to change its policy it can do so, but this will involve something akin to the termination of a contract with Renewal. It would be normal practice in these circumstances for the party that has suffered a loss from a unilateral termination of an agreement to seek compensation either via mutual consent or failing that, by legal action. I think the questions for the other candidates are, have you asked what the costs of changing the Council's policy on the New Bermondsey development are likely to be?, and how do you plan to fund them on top of the £52m worth of savings that the Council will have to make over the next four years?

5. You have energetically championed the Renewal scheme at New Bermondsey despite resistance from the public and fellow councillors. Do you still feel this is a good scheme and would you like it to proceed?

I supported the scheme because I was persuaded by the evidence presented that it was in the public interest. To recap, the scheme will deliver around 2400 new homes, a new sports village, a new station and bus routes and substantial improvements to the public realm. All the facilities that the Club currently enjoy on the land that is covered by the CPO, will be reprovided in the new scheme. This includes the car park and the community scheme plus the memorial garden. The developer has agreed to pay for improvements to the stadium. There is also scope within the scheme to expand the stadium in the future. I believe that the public interest case for the New Bermondsey scheme, that is, the case that it will deliver huge benefits to many, many people in and around the area, is compelling. The questions for the other candidates is, if you want a different scheme to this one, how will it be better?, who will build it?, why would they be willing to build it?, and what would be the delay in getting it built over the current, consented scheme?

My Mayoral Plan: Point 2

The second point of my 3 point plan to respond to the financial challenge facing the Council is to call for a review of its governance arrangements. The Council's constitution is broadly the same as it was when the Mayoralty was first introduced in Lewisham in 2002. Since 2010, the Authority's net revenue budget, basically the money it spends on pretty much everything outside of schools, housing and the capital programme, has fallen from £368m a year to less than £240m a year. We have lost half our staff. Yet we continue with the same old governing structures.

We need to modernise the way the Council works. At this time, given the financial pressure that the Council is under, we cannot continue to have the vast majority of our 54 councillors spending so much of their time in committee meetings, funded at public expense, in the Town Hall night after night. When Lewisham adopted the Mayoral system, councillors were promised that this would mean that they would have more time to spend in their communities, listening to residents and sharing in their activities. In fact the opposite has happened. This needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. Other Councils have already done so. Which is why Lewisham is looking increasingly like the odd one out, becoming a stand-out case of over-governance. Where many authorities have moved to having just one committee exercising oversight and scrutiny of the decisions of another single executive committee, in Lewisham's case the Mayor & Cabinet, Lewisham thinks that it needs seven to be able to do the job properly. Whilst some argue that we need more scrutiny now than ever, I am clear that the current arrangements are not affordable and need to be changed.

The Mayor currently has a Cabinet of 9 councillors to support him. If I become Mayor, my intention would be to govern with a Cabinet of 2 initially. I will review the situation 6 months into my administration with a view to possibly increasing it to 4. I will make this intention clear to the governance review.

If selected as the Labour Mayoral candidate, I will seek the cooperation of the current Mayor to commission this review. I will ask that it would report in sufficient time to allow me to incorporate its recommendations into my 2018 manifesto. Then, if elected, I will have a clear mandate to implement these reforms at the earliest opportunity.

The Council can not be run for and at the convenience of elected members. If we wish to ask our residents to accept change in the way they get their services from the Council, or in the way the Council engages with them, then it is only right that councillors lead by example and implement change that affects them, first. It may be disruptive and uncomfortable. It may come at a personal financial cost. But we must consider what is in the best interests of the public and demonstrate some selfless leadership.

I'll put forward my third point in another post.

My Challenge To All Those Who Want To Be Lewisham's Next Mayor - My Mayoral Plan: Point 1

The Issue

The Council estimate that it will have to make £52m worth of cuts by 2021/22 (see here para 1.4)  The challenge is immense. We must be honest with our residents about this. It is hard to envisage that there will be a single council funded leisure centre, library or children's centre left in the borough at the end of the process. This should come as no surprise. The Local Government Association warned some years ago that if the Government's declared Austerity plan for local government was implemented in full, then Councils up and down the country would have no money to fund any other services beyond Adult and Children's Social Care and emptying the bins.

My Challenge

This is the reality that will confront any new Lewisham Mayor on the first day after they are elected. I challenge all those who want to be Lewisham's next Mayor to say what they plan to do about it and how any policy pledge they make will impact on the cuts target.

My Plan

I have a 3 point plan that, if selected, I will begin to implement on the day after my selection. There will be no time to waste. We shouldn't wait until next May to start to do what needs to be done.

First, I will warn people of what is to come. I've been a member of Lewisham's Cabinet for over 7 years. I spent the first 4 of these leading on the budget process for the Mayor as his Cabinet Member for Resources. During this period I had to go to meetings to introduce Council budget reports that contained Government Austerity cuts that had been imposed on us. These were often extremely rowdy affairs, one of which involved the storming of the Civic Suite by protesters who let off fire extinguishers and tried to gain access to Council offices. Order had to be restored by police with extended batons. It was an experience I will not forget. More recently, as Cabinet Member for Children & Young People, I have become the focus of protests against cuts to Forest Hill School where many people seem to blame the Council for cuts that they readily admit to believing are due to Tory Government cuts.

Over this period I have been continually perplexed by the fact that people we would expect to support a Labour Council during these difficult times, Labour Party members, Trade Unionists and left leaning people, have instead attacked us. We have been subjected to arguments that I can only describe as coming straight out of the Eric Pickles' play book and Tory Central Office press releases. I will not go into more detail here. Suffice to say that many of my Labour colleagues have found the last few years disappointing.

The Tory's Austerity Strategy has been simple:

• Make a show of supposedly 'ring-fencing' the NHS and Education, although not increasing the funding to cope with inflation and increasing demand, as these things are services that people expect central government to be responsible for.
• Cut the Home Office as crime was coming down so it was thought that the police could cope with less officers and that their were no votes in protecting spending on the prisons.
• Cut defence spending as the public do not see the armed forces on a regular basis so will not notice the impact.
• Aggressively cut local government, especially in the big, urban areas that are disproportionately Labour Authorities, as the cuts they will make will be blamed on them.

This plan has worked pretty well so far. The success of the strategy as it was applied to local government depended on the compliance, albeit inadvertent and unwitting, of Labour supporting groups. It is a shame so many obliged. It is sad that it is continuing.

Whilst the Labour Party did not win the recent General Election it did make significant progress. One result of this change in the political landscape is that the Tories have backed away from imposing the 3% cut on our schools that the implementation of so-called 'Fair Funding' would have meant. We can make a difference by working together. If Labour Councils are clear about what more Tory Austerity will mean for local services, well before they have to implement it, then there will be time for all people who want a Labour Government to come together and speak out with one voice to effect change.

No Lewisham Labour Mayor will want to cut services. However, they will have no choice if the Tories do not change course. They are not likely to change course if we spend the next 4 years arguing amongst ourselves and blaming each other.

I will save my other 2 points for a later post.

My Story: Why I Am Running To Be Lewisham's Next Mayor.

My story starts in a prefab in Berthon Street in Deptford in 1965. According to my mother, I am at least the fourth generation of my family to come from Deptford. Both the Maslins and the Longs, my mother’s family, were well known in the community. As I get older, I realise how much my life has been shaped by my parents, George and Pat, and the choices they made.

They did not have the best start in life when they were born in the 1930s. My father was the cause of a shotgun wedding that was not happy and broke up acrimoniously after the War. My mother’s father was an itinerant Irish Labourer whom she never knew. My parents met at the local church, which was the Princess Louise Institute, became the Shaftesbury Christian Centre and eventually the Bear Church, in Frankham Street. They spent their whole lives in what they would have described as Christian service, running the church services and engaged in all kinds of activities for children and young people. Although both my parents died about five years ago, I am still coming across people in Deptford and New Cross who knew my parents and who tell me how they helped them. When I first was selected by the local Labour Party to be a candidate in the local elections, someone came up to me after the vote and told me, with a big smile on his face, that the only reason he voted for me was because I was the son of Pastor George Maslin.

When my parents were children and then young people attending the church, their leaders were a previous generation of children from Deptford who had, through hard work and aspiration, done well in their jobs and careers so that they could afford to buy their own homes and move out of Deptford. They would then commute back to the church to carry on working in the community. This generation of church leaders were examples to my parents. They showed that it as possible to have a different, better life from the one they knew. They showed them what self-improvement looked like. They gave them confidence to aspire to achieve more for themselves and for their family. Being in the church gave them optimism. So the ambition of my working class, Daily Mirror reading, Labour-voting parents was to better themselves by buying their own home and moving out of Deptford, whilst continuing their work in the church. Unfortunately the need to move to better accommodation came quicker than they had expected.

When my Mother was giving birth to me, I nearly died, but, thanks to the NHS in the form of Greenwich Hospital, I survived. However, I was always ill as a baby. My health was not helped by the fact that we lived in a prefab. Prefabs were very badly insulated which meant that they were freezing in the winter. Our poor housing culminated in my getting pneumonia. I was lucky to survive. After I recovered, the local doctor, Dr Whatman, told my parents that if they did not move to somewhere better, I would never be in good health. So my parents scraped together what they could, and just managed, with the help of a mortgage from Lewisham Council, if you can believe that once upon a time such things existed, to buy a small house in Crofton Park. 

From there, my brother and I went to Stillness school and then on to Brockley County, a small boys’ school on Hilly Fields, now occupied by Prendergast College. I remember that while I was at school I had a sense of optimism about the future. I believed that if I worked hard I could go to university and get a good job. My parents would say that they did not get a good education. My father passed the 11 plus and could have gone to Addey & Stanhope or Askes’, like some of his church leaders whom he admired so much, but like so many of his generation, his parents would not let him go because they could not afford the uniform and did not see the point of it anyway. Although an avid reader and excellent preacher, his lack of what he believed was a proper education weighed on my father his whole life. Their experience meant that my parents highly valued a good education and consequently gave me every encouragement they could. So they were delighted when I won a place at Cambridge to study Economics, although they did not let it be known, as to them this would have been showing off. To them, ‘showing off’ was frowned upon as this could lead to pride and, to them, pride came before a fall.

My parents taught me, by example, what a privilege it was to serve others. So my plan was to become a Church Minister. I was very active in the Christian Union at University and then worked for a Mission Organisation in Senegal for a year. I then worked in the City for a couple of years to get some business experience which I thought would be useful. I left to help set up Revival Café and Hales Gallery in Deptford High Street in 1992 in a derelict shop that the Shaftesbury Christian Centre owned, as I was interested in urban renewal, economic development and the role that the Church could play in this. By the time the recession of the early 1990s came along Deptford had been suffering from economic decline for many years. Fortunately for us, it meant that we could get some help from the government to start our business. It is still going today, over twenty years later, in bigger and better premises in Shoreditch, but we could not have done it without the help of the Church in Deptford and assistance from the Council and the government.

After we started our business, I tried to help improve the area by becoming involved in the Deptford High Street Traders’ Association, Deptford City Challenge and the Deptford Business Development Association. Whilst I was working in these organisations, I was approached to stand for Labour in the 1998 local elections in Lewisham. I have been a Councillor for New Cross and Deptford ever since.

In truth, my background did not fire me with a burning ambition to succeed. Yes, I remember working hard at school to go to a good university, but my parents’ example taught me that worldly success can come at a high price and you can be satisfied and fulfilled with a decent job, a loving marriage, a healthy family and a home of your own. This will provide the sound platform for you to serve your community and help others to enjoy these things and make your life good. My parents chose to serve others through the church. I chose the Council because I realised that I was, as a neighbour said to Alan Bennett, ‘not a patch on your Father’!

My work on the Council has been driven by two principles. The first is, ‘whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your strength’. The second is to use your power to improve the lives of ordinary people, whose hopes, dreams and aspirations are, more often than not, simple, modest and ordinary. This is probably not the most inspiring political call to arms. It is not a well-crafted, intellectually rigorous ideology. It does not generate catchy slogans. But decent street lighting, well-kept parks and properly maintained streets are likely to mean more to residents than leaflets through their door telling them about ‘The Big Society’.

Whilst it would be a privilege to be Lewisham’s next Mayor, it would also be an onerous responsibility. Despite Labour’s better than expected showing in the recent General Election, austerity for local government continues. The Council has tens of millions of cuts still to make on top of the hundred plus already made. I feel I can meet the challenge of providing leadership at this very difficult time. I believe that political colleagues, while perhaps disagreeing with some of my views and approach, are sure that I can do the job. I am standing in this contest to give people the opportunity to back me.

Selection Of Lewisham's Mayoral Candidate: My Intentions

This is just a short post to say that I am putting myself forward for selection as the Labour candidate for next year’s Lewisham Mayoral Elections. Party members were notified on Saturday that the selection process had started. The closing date for applications is this Friday 21st July, with interviews taking place early the following week. I have been surprised by the haste with which the Party intends to start and finish the shortlisting and by the fact that it plans to run the selection over the summer holidays when many people are on holiday, hence the brevity of this post. I will say more in due course. I thought it important at this stage to declare my intentions.