Category: Blog Post

Grant Shapps was born to entertain us.
Today the Guardian told us the story of Shapps posing as a ‘web guru at $3,000-a-head Las Vegas conference’ in his double life as ‘Michael Green’.  They claim that Shapps said he was a ‘web marketer’ named Michael Green and ran a company charging callers £183 an hour for internet advice.
On Wednesday, the Telegraph revealed the latest chapter in the story of 9 Madryn Street, Dingle.  Back in 2010, when the house – in which Ringo Starr lived for four years – was lined up for demolition, the great localiser stepped in and ‘saved’ it with a fanfare.
Quite what 9 Madryn Street had to do with the Housing Minister for the whole country is not clear.  Forgive the thought but he may have been trying to court some popularity – at one stage he travelled to Liverpool to have his picture taken outside – the house was ‘a significant beacon of Beatlemania’ he said.
When the original story broke there was a rush of blood to the head in the CLG Press Office.  Well it was that time of year, between Christmas and New Year, when anyone working is suffering a little and needs some light relief.  So they quoted our star performer saying ‘Let It Be’ and he must have been delighted by the widespread and friendly coverage he got, a Minister so modern he has heard of the Beatles!   But the challenge had been thrown down and a retaliatory Red Brick post, March of the Meanies, squeezed 8 Beatles song titles into 2 short paragraphs in amongst a couple of serious points about the contradictions of localism and the Minister’s willingness to say anything to get a headline.
This week the Telegraph alleged that the self-same Mr Shapps later ‘accidentally signed off’ approval for the house to be demolished as part of a wider decision to demolish houses in Pathfinder areas, which the Government opposed but then approved and funded.  To be fair, as we scrupulously are, Shapps has since rubbished this on Twitter.  The Telegraph  – normally we wouldn’t dream of doubting them – says there will now be a full judicial review where no doubt more evidence will emerge.
Picking a headline for this post was really difficult.  Beatles song titles offer so much scope for satire.  Fixing a Hole?  I should have known better?  The Fool on the Hill?  Bad Boy? Nowhere Man?  But in the end, it had to be Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey.

In the early 1970s I went to Berlin for a European conference of community activists. At the time I was doing community work in north Paddington, working mainly with tenants living in private rented accommodation subject to the pressures of gentrification and with council tenants on poorly-managed Westminster and GLC estates.
Berlin was an extraordinary contrast, the close juxtaposition of a capitalist city and a communist city, separated only by a wall.  In West Berlin, we saw much high quality housing but also large areas of appalling slums where local community activists worked with working class tenants and squatters to argue for improvements.  One day we went from the American sector through Checkpoint Charlie, across no-man’s land under the scrutiny of machine gun towers, and into the East.  Wandering about randomly we found rows and rows of concrete apartment blocks, workers’ housing that met a certain standard but could only be described as drab and uniform. 

Today saw the launch of the report – ‘To have or Have Not?’ – of the Housing Voice Inquiry , the progress of which we have covered on Red Brick before. As an independent report produced with the involvement of people from all the major political parties and all the major housing interest groups, it will hopefully carry some weight and increase the pressure for action.

By Nicky Gavron AM
Nicky is Labour Housing and Planning Spokesperson on the London Assembly.  She is on the Executive Committee of Labour Housing Group and of London LHG.  She tweets @nickygavron
The economy is not flat-lining because of the planning system or because of Section 106 agreements for much needed affordable housing, it is flat-lining because of the lack of confidence and demand, caused by the government’s failing economic plan.

Last week’s lament that Red Brick would have fewer things to talk about now that Grant Shapps has moved from the Housing job to become Tory Party Chairman is proving to be wrong. First because the new team of Mark Prisk and Nick Boles may be more interesting than we thought – Boles in particular started by making a complete tit of himself as the new Planning Minister trying to explain away his comment that he preferred chaos to planning  – more about them in the coming weeks.  And secondly because Grant Shapps seems determined to continue to grab our attention.

After our post earlier today called ‘Plan A on its deathbed’, it was nice of the Government to get around eventually to issuing statements about its new housing package, putting a little flesh on the bones after the confusion sowed by the Prime and Deputy Prime Minister as they toured the studios early this morning promising manna from heaven.

Oh no I’m missing Grant Shapps already.  Instead of the great (mis)communicator we have had to rely this morning on Nick Clegg to tell us about the Government’s latest housing announcement.  So he managed to tell us on BBC Breakfast that the right to build an extension without planning permission will be increased from 3 metres to ‘more than 3 metres’.  Great.  Cameron was equally unintelligible on ITV’s Daybreak muttering something indecipherable about council houses, as if he knew what one was.

What will we do without Grant Shapps to talk about? His promotion to Tory Party Chairman means the housing world is free of him at last.  Regrettably, in his new role the great British public will be seeing more not less of him. His promotion is a prize for failure and a reward for spin.

No-one who watches TV News could have missed the intrepid Housing and Immigration Ministers in Ealing going on raids of ‘beds in sheds’, outbuildings being used illegally as accommodation.
On the same day they published guidance on dealing with rogue landlords.
The issue of rogue landlords is a serious one that we have drawn attention to on many occasions.  ‘Beds in Sheds’ is just one manifestation of the problem of landlords exploiting poor and vulnerable people by providing substandard or hazardous accommodation. 

By Cllr Marc Francis, Tower Hamlets Labour Party
Nowhere did the last Labour Government’s stock transfer policy arouse more controversy than in Tower Hamlets.  The East End is the birth place of council housing and tenants understandably have a strong emotional attachment to it.  Many of the individual estate transfer ballots were won, but others were lost.  And in 2007, Labour councillors decided to set up an Arms Length Management Organisation for our remaining estates.