Full Council Meeting: 8 October 2018
There was a meeting of Camden Council on Monday, 8th October. As part of my accountability to residents, below are the actions I took at the meeting. I paid tribute to the sadly recently-deceased Sir Alan Greengross, one of my predecessors as Leader of Camden Conservatives and councillor for Hampstead Town, and also formerly Leader of the Conservatives on the Greater London Council. Lib Dem leader Flick Rea helpfully pointed out in her tribute speech that local councils shouldn’t waste their time talking about foreign policy, e.g....
read moreAIR Studios gets new investment
I’m pleased that AIR Studios’ new owner Maxim Demin has pledged to invest money in the studios on Lyndhurst Road and keep the studios open as a going concern for years to come. The studios were put up for sale earlier this year after its survival was ensured by the withdrawal in November of an application to build a basement next door. I had asked both Camden and the Secretary of State for Culture to do whatever it could do to save it from having to be closed. Maxim Demin has a record of investing real money into concerns of...
read morePutting stopping HS2 back on Camden’s agenda
I am one of the most outspoken opponents of HS2 in the Conservative Party. Sometimes, that’s meant ploughing a pretty lone furrow. But over time, it’s been noticeable how opposition to it has risen: and none more so than at this year’s party conference. I continually lobby for HS2 to be scrapped, both publicly and privately, as I did at party conference. And I am more convinced than ever that HS2 will be stopped. As you would expect, the Camden New Journal has given this proper coverage, including this week’s front...
read moreCamden’s £13m a year tax on Hampstead
As noted previously, Hampstead receives a raw deal from Camden on capital investment. Despite Hampstead bearing the brunt of development, and developments in Hampstead paying millions a year in CIL and s106 payments, it receives almost nothing in return. I wrote the below column for this week’s Ham & High (below version was unedited) on this unfair treatment, which amounts to a £13m a year tax on NW3. It’s time for Camden to treat Hampstead with proper respect and give it a fair share of the CIL pie. 200 years ago, while lodging...
read moreConservatives left to stand up for Camden on CS11
The Camden New Journal published the below letter from me on TfL’s defeat in the High Court regarding CS11. I note that this was only possible because residents were backed all the way by Camden Conservatives and Conservative-run Westminster Council, while Labour-run Camden were nowhere and actively sniped at Conservatives for standing up for Hampstead residents. Last week’s judgment by the High Court that CS11 is unlawful is a major win for residents and a vindication of those that have pointed out the flaws in the plan for years. The...
read moreBoundary Commission confirms Hampstead seat – and Tulip Siddiq moans about it again
I’m delighted that the independent Boundary Commission has confirmed that Hampstead will have a single, united parliamentary constituency in the next Parliament. The new boundaries, subject to MPs’ approval, have been drawn up after extensive consultation (you can see my responses to that consultation here and here). As noted before, Hampstead had the most one-sided response to the Boundary Commission of any constituency in the country. Twice as many people responded to the consultation in Hampstead as any other constituency, and...
read moreBelsize Village needs a level playing field
The proposal to open a Co-op in Belsize Village has sparked a huge amount of interest and a large amount of correspondence for all local councillors. Unlike some objectors, I have no problem with supermarkets opening locally. With food bills consuming a large proportion of household budgets, little raises the standard of living of a local area more than the lower food prices that supermarkets can offer. However, little can reduce the standard of living of an area more than the traffic congestion that has become synonymous with poorly-policed...
read moreGoing in-house would lead to worse services
The Camden New Journal published the below letter from me on Labour’s ideologically-motivated, but economically-illiterate, plan to stop using contractors to deliver housing repairs. This is in response to Richard Ferraro’s excellent letter saying similar last week. Camden has the second-worst social housing in the country, and something has to change – but moving services in-house is not the way to do it. Improving monitoring of the contracts is. I was pleased to see Richard Ferraro show his great knowledge of building...
read moreHS2 and the sunk cost fallacy
Despite disruption, full construction work on HS2 is yet to begin. Nonetheless, the costs of HS2 have already started racking up, with an estimated £4 billion already spent on the biggest infrastructure project in British history. This, it has been argued, means that it is too late to cancel, with too much precious taxpayers’ money poured into the project to turn around now that the true cost – of over £100 billion – has become apparent. It’s a tempting argument, but it’s one that any economist would see through...
read moreOliver gets Sadiq Khan officially reprimanded for passing the buck on crime
I’ve written before about my exasperation about Labour’s abuse of crime statistics for political purposes. The official statistics, from the Crime Survey, show that crime has fallen by a third since 2010. However, because of various social factors and better recording methods, the number of crimes recorded by police has risen. The chair of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) has officially reprimanded Labour before for using the latter figure, when the former is the only reliable and meaningful metric. With that in mind, I wrote on...
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