Beginning his working life in the aviation industry and trained by the BBC, Tony Gosling is a British land rights activist, historian & investigative radio journalist. Over the last 20 years he has been exposing the secret power of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and élite Bilderberg Conferences where the dark forces of corporations, media, banks and royalty conspire to accumulate wealth and power through extortion and war. Tony has spent much of his life too advocating solutions which heal the wealth divide, such as free housing for all and a press which reflects the concerns of ordinary people rather than attempting to lead opinion, sensationalise or dumb-down. Tony tweets at @TonyGosling. Tune in to his Friday politics show at BCfm.
2017: Kate and Alan’s Burrows aka Mud Hut Woman, give a heartfelt account of what life is truly like for them trying to live in a Devon roundhouse they built on their own land – the council want to knock it down
Their application for retrospective planning permission has been refused and they have been ordered to remove their dwelling and vacate the land by December 2017.
North Devon Council: Save The Round House In The Woods
https://www.change.org/p/north-devon-district-council-save-the-round-house-in-the-woods
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Petitioning North Devon District Council
Save The Round House In The Woods
Dinah Mason
Willand, United Kingdom
18,230
Supporters
Kate and Alan have built a beautiful home on the land they own from materials gathered from the land. Their application for retrospective planning permission has been refused and they have been ordered to remove their dwelling and vacate the land by December 2017.
Kate suffers from multiple chemical sensitivity and since living in the round house her health has greatly improved, having to move back into conventional accommodation will be seriously detrimental to her health and well being.
They are lobbying the council and anyone who will listen for the One Planet Development scheme that is currently used in Wales and the low impact policy that has just been introduced in Dartmoor national park to be rolled out nation wide. Currently there is no provision in England for true sustainable development of this nature and this needs to change.
A short film about their project made by James Light can be found here
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Save The Round House In The Woods
Kate and Alan will be live from the roundhouse on Monday morning on ITV’s This Morning
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Dinah Mason started this petition
Reasons for Signing
Low impact dwellings on land owned by the individual should be welcomed with open arms by an overstretched council. Homes like this should be encouraged not blocked at every turn.
siddy langley, Plymtree, United Kingdom1 Mar 2017
The argument that “it’s not in the public interest to have dwellings popping up all over the countryside” is blatant nonsense.
Frankly most people prefer modern houses with heating and, petsonally, I’d prefer a scattering of such dwellings to the huge estates big business covers whole acres with.
Mary McCarthy, Gloucester, United Kingdom1 Mar 2017
52
This is natural. They own their land and have built their own home, I don’t see the problem. Maybe if they weren’t putting it all to good use I would feel differently but they aren’t harming anyone in any way shape or form.
Sophie Edwards, Plymouth, United Kingdom 1 Mar 2017
Draconian rules govern trail-hunting across all the National Trust’s property
Measures appeared on charity’s website on Tuesday this week without warning
According to the country sports lobby, they will render almost all trail hunting — a perfectly legal pursuit — impossible on Trust land
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Roger Westmoreland’s wife, Doreen, grew up raising sheep and cattle on a farm leased from Beatrix Potter (pictured) who lived near by and once employed her uncle Bill as a shepherd
For more than a century, Roger Westmoreland and his ancestors have carved a living from the Troutbeck Valley, where drystone walls criss-cross the purple fells in a breathtaking part of the Lake District.
The 78-year-old hill farmer’s wife, Doreen, grew up raising sheep and cattle on a farm leased from Beatrix Potter, who lived near by and once employed her uncle Bill as a shepherd.
When the author died in 1943, she left much of the valley to the National Trust. Today, the charity leases roughly 300 acres of Troutbeck to Roger’s daughter, Helen.
Upland life is tough, with three generations, including Helen’s children, working side by side 365 days a year to keep the farm going. But while the financial returns are modest, their existence has its own rewards.
One has traditionally come every weekend from September until April, when they join dozens of neighbours following the Coniston Foxhounds, who have hunted the land since the early 1800s.
After the Blair government banned hunting in 2005, the pack continued to operate legally, pursuing an artificial trail created by dragging a rag soaked in fox’s urine. Like all members, the Westmorelands followed on foot.
But this year, the Coniston Foxhounds are unlikely to be visiting Troutbeck Valley. In fact, they may struggle to operate at all.
To blame are a set of draconian new rules governing trail-hunting across all the National Trust’s roughly 2,500 square miles of England and Wales, including almost all the Coniston’s territory.
The measures appeared on the charity’s website on Tuesday this week without warning, to the unbridled delight of animal rights activists.
According to the country sports lobby, they will render almost all trail hunting — a perfectly legal pursuit — impossible on Trust land.
‘These rules represent a betrayal, simple as that,’ is how Roger Westmoreland puts it. ‘They are a betrayal of everything the National Trust is supposed to stand for.
‘They show it doesn’t understand the countryside, doesn’t understand farming and couldn’t care less about rural people and their traditions. They are trying to impose their petty urban values. It’s an outrage.’
Mr Westmoreland also believes the new rules represent an affront to Beatrix Potter.
For the creator of Mr Tod the fox was a keen follower of the Coniston (and a supporter of foxhunting) who stipulated in her will that the National Trust must always allow hunting to continue on her estates.
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A set of draconian new rules govern trail-hunting across all the National Trust’s roughly 2,500 square miles of England and Wales (stock photo)
‘My family and my wife’s family, the Hudsons, have been in this valley for over 100 years. So has the hunt,’ says Mr Westmoreland.
‘It’s a community thing which binds people together. Beatrix Potter knew that, and that’s why she protected it in her will. She would be horrified at what has happened this week.’
And the Westmorelands are not the only National Trust tenants outraged by what they see as its attack on their heritage.
A group of their Cumbrian peers this week sent a forthright letter to the Trust expressing shock and concern at the ‘completely inappropriate’ new policy.
The angry document accuses the charity of having shown ‘no duty of care whatsoever’ to its tenants and their families.
It argues that one particular new rule, according to which the Trust will publish online details of all farming tenants who allow trail-hunting on their land, will expose them to serious threats from animal rights extremists.
Written on Tuesday, just hours after the new hunting regulations were quietly added to the Trust’s website, the letter complains: ‘No one from the NT at a local or national level has been in contact with us to discuss such changes and the possible impact on us, our families and the local community.’
The letter originally attracted 36 signatories but by last night scores more Lake District tenants were understood to have pledged support for it.
Each of the farmers (who between them lease tens of thousands of acres) has threatened that, if the Trust does not reverse its new measures, they will deliberately flout them.
‘As far as we are concerned, as long as they continue to operate within the law, our local hunts will continue to be welcome on our farms,’ they say.
All of which leaves one of Britain’s largest charities on the brink of open warfare — against the very people who manage its most precious asset.
It is an extraordinary state of affairs that raises serious questions about the competence, judgment and integrity of the lofty collection of quangocrats and careerists who run the charity.
Yet at this once-loved bastion of British heritage — which, with five million members, is Britain’s biggest membership organisation after the AA — the latest self-inflicted crisis follows a depressingly familiar pattern.
Barely a month seems to go by without the Trust’s metropolitan rulers managing to engineer another PR disaster.
Yesterday it was reported in The Times that the NT stands accused of profiteering after hundreds of leasehold tenants were told they face ground rent increases of up to 10,000 per cent.
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Dame Helen Ghosh, pictured, who earns around £185,000 a year, was responsible for the decision this year to remove the word ‘Easter’ from egg hunts at several National Trust properties, rebranding them ‘Cadbury’s Egg Hunts’ as part of a lucrative sponsorship deal
And only a few weeks ago, dozens of unpaid guides at Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk staged a revolt after being ordered to wear rainbow-coloured lanyards and badges to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the legalisation of homosexuality.
Their objection was compounded by a decision to ‘out’ Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer, an intensely private poet and historian who donated the 17th-century property to the Trust after his death in 1969.
His alleged homosexuality was detailed in a five-minute film played to visitors and narrated by Stephen Fry.
Mutiny was averted only after Dame Helen Ghosh, the Trust’s Left-wing chief executive, agreed to make the wearing of lanyards (introduced as part of a trendy nationwide campaign called ‘Prejudice and Pride’) voluntary.
Ghosh, who earns around £185,000 a year, was also responsible for the decision this year to remove the word ‘Easter’ from egg hunts at several National Trust properties, rebranding them ‘Cadbury’s Egg Hunts’ as part of a lucrative sponsorship deal.
That sparked criticism not just from religious leaders but from Theresa May, who declared: ‘What the National Trust is doing is, frankly, ridiculous.’
A former civil servant whose career blossomed under New Labour, Dame Helen was appointed to replace Dame Fiona Reynolds (who previously ran the Cabinet Office’s women’s unit) in 2012.
Since then, she has managed to upset the Trust’s traditionalists regularly, presiding over a culture of endless modernisation in which Blairite values are sacrosanct.
Under her stewardship, opponents say, properties have simultaneously dumbed down and commercialised.
Believing that there is ‘so much stuff’ in old houses, Dame Helen once chose to replace antique furniture with bean-bags at Ickworth House in Suffolk.
On another occasion she declared wind farms beautiful and described global warming as ‘the single largest threat to our conservation work’. Lately, her Trust has been making stark pronouncements about Brexit.
This approach has over the years met with short shrift from many of the Trust’s 60,000 volunteers, who manage its 350 properties. But it delights the liberal Establishment and has done wonders for Dame Helen’s career prospects.
Next year, she will duly move to a new job as Master of Balliol College in Oxford, the city where she lives with husband Peter, an academic.
The search for a suitably PC replacement is under way. Meanwhile, her legacy was artfully summed up at the weekend by Sir Roy Strong, former director of the V&A museum, who called the Trust’s leadership ‘the Blair government in exile’ — a ‘Left-leaning’ cabal obsessed with ‘ticking the boxes of the disabled, the aged, LGBT and ethnic communities and the rest of it’.
This culture, now prevalent in so many of our institutions, is, of course, at the centre of this week’s events in Cumbria.
For years, tenant farmers have been growing weary of National Trust directives on everything from carbon emissions and the planting of trees to ‘sustainability’.
They complain that Trust employees, traditionally drawn from local farming families, are increasingly urban careerists with little understanding of their lives and heritage.
‘They are politically correct idiots and Dame Helen, in particular, is a disaster,’ says Robin Page, a former member of the Trust’s governing council who now runs the Countryside Restoration Trust.
‘The Trust has lost touch with its tenants. It has completely lost their confidence,’ says Lake District farmer Peter Allen, who can trace his family’s history in the Lowther Valley back 17 generations and sits on the National Park’s board. ‘But that’s what will happen when urban people try to dictate what happens in the countryside.’
So this week’s kerfuffle over trail-hunting hit a raw nerve. It began in early February, when the Trust’s 12-member board met to discuss criticism it was receiving from the animal rights lobby via social media.
Not one hunt has been successfully prosecuted for illegal activity on Trust land since the 2005 ban. However, anti-field sports activists believe hounds following artificial trails sometimes divert to real ones, killing wild animals in the process.
No laws are broken during such incidents (the deaths are regarded as accidental), so the wealthy charity’s Board of Trustees would traditionally have shrugged its shoulders.
For generations the powerful body was. after all, dominated by aristocrats, architectural historians and museum curators. Indeed, a decade ago its ranks contained no fewer than four Eton-educated landowners, along with a farmer.
‘While they might have been a stuffy lot who didn’t tick many diversity boxes, they knew about land management and understood about stately homes and estates, and protecting their heritage,’ is how one former member puts it.
Today, however, the Board has a very different flavour.
Its chairman is Tim Parker, a private equity tycoon dubbed ‘the prince of darkness’ in the City for his willingness to preside over mass redundancies.
His deputy, Orna Ni Chionna, is the wife of Adair Turner, the crossbench peer and former CBI chief who campaigns against a ‘hard Brexit’. Other prominent members are Gus Casely-Hayford, a TV historian, and Sandy Nairne, former director of the National Portrait Gallery.
The remaining members are largely academics and business people. Most live in London. The only old-school landowner in their ranks — David Fursdon — turns out to be a university friend and former flatmate of Tony Blair.
Little wonder, perhaps, that this metropolitan group decided in February to order a ‘review’ of the rules by which the NT allows legal trail-hunts on its land.
And maybe it’s no surprise that although their work spanned a six-month period, the authors did not once speak with tenant farmers or their representatives, or consult with anyone in the hunting community.
The only interested organisation the Trust did allow through its doors during the review was the League Against Cruel Sports. Its chief executive, Eduardo Goncalves, was invited to the Trust’s London office on March 1.
According to a PR statement issued by the League, he used the meeting to ‘share grave concerns’ about the manner in which the Trust ‘currently issues licences to a number of hunts to conduct trail hunts on its estates’.
The Trust, which ‘refutes in the strongest terms any accusation of bias’ on the issue of hunting, claims otherwise, however, insisting that its March 1 discussion with Britain’s most prominent anti-hunting activist was ‘nothing to do’ with the review of trail-hunting.
We must take them at their word. But Mr Goncalves will nonetheless be delighted at the six new rules the Trust announced this week. For these not only impose bureaucracy on trail-hunts but are likely to render them unsustainable.
One reason for this is that in future the charity will only permit hounds to follow an artificial scent, such as aniseed, rather than the animal-based products that are used at present.
The Trust claims this will ‘reduce the risk of foxes or other wild animals being accidentally chased’.
However, it is unable to cite a single piece of scientific research to support this hypothesis (and many tenants believe the exact opposite will be true).
Moreover, as all existing hunts operating on Trust land have bred hounds to follow animal-based scent, they will need to completely re-breed and re-train whole packs, a process that may take years.
Another new Trust rule will require hunts to post details of the times and exact locations of forthcoming meetings in advance, on the National Trust’s website.
The charity says this will provide ‘transparency’. But tenants take a different view, fearing it will lead to violent hunt saboteurs holding regular demonstrations on their land, and allow animal rights extremists from across the world to target their homes.
‘In the past we’ve had the odd incident where people have turned up wearing balaclavas and holding clubs and claw hammers,’ says Isaac Benson, a third-generation Trust tenant who allows hunts to meet at his hill farm in the Langdale Valley.
‘This website will give them a green light to do it every week. It will end in violence. And for farmers who host the hunts, you are opening yourself up to serious abuse on a non-stop basis, from some very nasty people. It will place tenants and their families in serious danger.’
The Trust, which traditionally conducts ‘risk assessments’ over everything from felling trees to walking on footpaths, didn’t consult with police forces about the wisdom of this policy though a spokesman says: ‘The safety of our tenants, our staff and those who take part in this activity is hugely important to us and this is why we have responded to the letter from our Lake District tenants to explore their safety concerns.
‘We’ll be listening carefully and, if necessary, seeking further advice from the police.’
The Countryside Alliance, which lobbies on behalf of field sports, says the new policy will end hunting on almost all Trust land, as ‘it will be too great a risk to farmers, staff and members to have meets advertised’.
Perhaps that is what the rules are ultimately intended to achieve.
Lake District farmer Roger Westmoreland certainly thinks as much. ‘The National Trust either doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care, what it’s doing away with,’ he says.
‘They are intolerant people with values that seem totally at odds with Beatrix Potter’s. For an organisation devoted to heritage, it’s all just so wrong.’
More than five million people own second homes, a report reveals today – but 250,000 are estimated to be homeless.
Second home ownership has rocketed by 30% in just over a decade, with one in 10 adults now having another property in addition to their main home.
An extra 1.6 million people scooped up an extra base, taking the total to 5.2 million, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank.
The finding highlights a deepening divide in property ownership; figures last year from housing charity Shelter estimated 254,000 people were living in temporary accommodation, with the housing crisis set to mount as population growth outpaces housebuilding.
Housing charity Shelter estimate 254,000 people are living in temporary accommodation
Resolution Foundation senior policy analyst Laura Gardiner said: “With young people much less likely to own a home at all than their predecessors at the same age, the growing concentration of property wealth among fewer families raises concerns not just for their living standards but for wealth inequality of our country as a whole.
“Recent steps to increase stamp duty on second homes and reduce tax relief on buy-to-let mortgage are attempts to address this challenge, but policy makers should consider what more can be done to ensure that home ownership doesn’t become the preserve of the wealthy for generations to come.”
The figures highlight the growing wealth inequality in Britain(Image: Getty)
The report highlighted a generational split, with baby boomers aged 52 to 71 the most likely to be multiple home owners, accounting for more than half (52%) of all the wealth held in additional properties.
Generation X, made up of 37 to 51-year-olds, accounts for a further quarter (25%) of additional property wealth.
But “millennials” – those born since 1981 – own just 3% of the additional property assets, the research found.
Baby boomers aged 52 to 71 are the most likely to be multiple home owners
Ms Gardiner said: “Multiple property ownership is still a minority sport, but a growing one that represents a significant boost to the wealth pots of those lucky enough to own second homes.
“People with second homes not only have an investment that they can turn to in times of need, for instance in later life when care is required, but if the property is rented out they also see a boost to their incomes here and now.”
National Park in privatisation row as it sells woodlands
Dean Kirby – Thursday August 17th 2017
HATHERSAGE, UNITED KINGDOM – SEPTEMBER 09: Heather glows after sunset in Millstone Quarry in the Peak District on September 09, 2014 in Hathersage, United Kingdom. Much of the UK continues to enjoy mild Autumn weather with sunshine set to last for the next few days. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
Campaigners have hit out at Britains oldest national park and the birthplace of the fight for countryside access for selling off woodlands to the highest bidder. The Peak District National Park was formed in 1951 and nearly two decades earlier was the scene of the Kinder Scout trespass, where ramblers fought with gamekeepers in the first battle for the right to roam. Now the park authority, which manages more than 100 woodlands covering 417 hectares, has sold off 14 woodlands and is currently in the process of selling six more. It says anyone can buy the woods including members of the public and community groups and any access rights will remain. But campaigners have hit back saying they fear the move is a sign of a growing privatisation of the countryside.
Cat Hobbs from We Own It, which wants public services to stay in public ownership, said: These beautiful woods belong to everyone. They’re a public asset we can all be proud of and enjoy. Selling them off for a quick buck is wrong and it could be a slippery slope. The Peak District National Park had a duty to safeguard precious public woodland for our children and grandchildren. Why is it handing over ownership to the highest bidder? The park acquired the woodlands when it was designated a national park, with the aim of securing these important landscape features and rescuing woodlands which were under threat or in need of restoration. It also took over some woodlands as part of countryside estates. The park authority says it has restored the woodlands is now returning them to the community by selling them to reduce its liabilities and make the most of our resources. It says anyone can buy the woods, from members of public to community groups and people who love trees, adding that it could be adjacent landowners, but it doesn’t have to be. Once sold they will stay as woodlands and any access rights will remain intact, the authority says.
“It is very easy to get rid of access rights”
But Tony Gosling, from land rights campaign group This Land is Ours, said: Its ludicrous that land that has been available for public use is being sold at a time when people are spending more and more of their leisure time in the countryside. Saying that the land is being given to the community is just spin. It could be bought by a foreign investor. Even if a covenant is put in place, once land becomes privately owned, it is very easy for a landowner to get rid of access rights. The six woodlands currently being sold include the 4.7-acre Flagg Moor woodland of sycamore, ash and beech trees, near Buxton, which is up for sale at 20,000. Another, Jacksons Plantation in the Peak Forest, has been sold after being tendered at the same price. A spokesman for the Peak District National Park said: There are covenants in place to ensure the woodlands are maintained to protect the wildlife and to prevent development. Money raised from the sale of the woodlands will be re-invested to look after the National Park and help people enjoy it.
Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/environment/national-park-privatisation-row-sells-woodlands/
Sale of Peak Park woodlands is sign of growing “privatisation” of countryside, campaigners say
Campaigners have criticised a move to sell off woodlands in the Peak District National Park
REPORTER Email Published: 12:44 Friday 18 August 2017 0 HAVE YOUR SAY http://www.derbyshiretimes.co.uk/news/environment/sale-of-peak-park-woodlands-is-sign-of-growing-privatisation-of-countryside-campaigners-say-1-8710025
Campaigners have said the sale of woodlands in the Peak District National Park is a sign of a growing “privatisation” of the countryside. The Peak District National Park Authority has already sold off 14 woodlands, and is currently in the process of selling six more. It says anyone can buy the woods including members of the public and community groups and any access rights will remain. But campaigners have hit back saying they fear the move is a sign of a growing privatisation of the countryside. Cat Hobbs from We Own It, which wants public services to stay in public ownership, said: These beautiful woods belong to everyone. Theyre a public asset we can all be proud of and enjoy. Selling them off for a quick buck is wrong and it could be a slippery slope. The Peak District National Park had a duty to safeguard precious public woodland for our children and grandchildren. Why is it handing over ownership to the highest bidder? The park acquired the woodlands when it was designated a national park, with the aim of securing these important landscape features and rescuing woodlands which were under threat or in need of restoration. It also took over some woodlands as part of countryside estates. The park authority says it has restored the woodlands and is now returning them to the community by selling them to reduce its liabilities and make the most of our resources. It says anyone can buy the woods, from members of public to community groups and people who love trees, adding that it could be adjacent landowners, but it doesnt have to be. Once sold they will stay as woodlands and any access rights will remain intact, the authority says. It is very easy to get rid of access rights But Tony Gosling, from land rights campaign group This Land is Ours, said: Its ludicrous that land that has been available for public use is being sold at a time when people are spending more and more of their leisure time in the countryside. Saying that the land is being given to the community is just spin. It could be bought by a foreign investor. Even if a covenant is put in place, once land becomes privately owned, it is very easy for a landowner to get rid of access rights. The six woodlands currently being sold include the 4.7-acre Flagg Moor woodland of sycamore, ash and beech trees, near Buxton, which is up for sale at 20,000. Another, Jacksons Plantation in the Peak Forest, has been sold after being tendered at the same price. A spokesman for the Peak District National Park said: There are covenants in place to ensure the woodlands are maintained to protect the wildlife and to prevent development. Money raised from the sale of the woodlands will be re-invested to look after the National Park and help people enjoy it.
About 60 homeless people involved in a long-running tent city protest in central Sydney’s Martin Place were forced to leave the area last Friday morning, two days after the Liberal-National state government in New South Wales (NSW) imposed repressive new laws giving police explicit powers to arrest and fine the homeless.
The protest, which began last December, sought to pressure the state government and the Sydney city council to boost crisis accommodation for the increasing numbers of homeless in the city. Known as the 24/7 Street Kitchen and Safe Space, the protest encampment was located outside the Reserve Bank of Australia and close to the state parliament.
Homeless protest in Martin Place
The state government responded with draconian legislation – the Sydney Public Reserves (Public Safety) Act – which it pushed through the parliament in just 24 hours last week, rejecting minor amendments from Labor and the Greens.
This measure will not just force the homeless out of Sydney’s central business district and city tourist locations but punish and potentially jail them. Its provisions extend far beyond the homeless, to cover any protest or other activity in a public reserve.
Not only can people be evicted, their tents and other possessions can be seized. They can be fined up to $5,500 for failing to comply, obstructing police or committing any other offence prescribed by regulations under the Act.
The legislation hands sweeping powers to a police officer to give a direction to anyone, or any group of people, if the officer believes that the people’s presence ‘interferes with the reasonable enjoyment of the rights’ of any ‘section of the public’ in a public reserve. It applies to Martin Place, or any other Sydney public reserve proclaimed by the state government.
Such directions can include an order to leave the reserve and not return for a specified period, but there is no limit on the type of direction that the police can issue. The only exemptions are for ‘authorised public assemblies’ or gatherings related to an ‘industrial dispute.’
This is the third anti-protest legislation imposed by the NSW state government during the past 18 months. Last year, extraordinary laws were introduced that can be used to shut down political protests and punish dissent. Two other Australian states also brought forward laws that criminalise protests or any other activities that are alleged to disrupt business operations.
The latest legislation was preceded by a hysterical campaign involving the state government and the media.
On August 4, NSW Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward declared: ‘I don’t care what it takes, we will move these people on.’ NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller added: ‘They will be gone at some stage’ but this won’t be the last time we will have a problem with the mixed homeless group with a taste for protest activity.’
Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, a so-called independent backed by the Labor Party and the Greens, had said she would oppose government attempts to expel the protesters and claimed to have organised a deal for the homeless. Moore’s promise was empty posturing – the ‘deal’ did not involve any accommodation – and the state government pushed through its legislation.
Sydney City Council had previously intervened to dismantle tents and remove the belongings of homeless people camping or staying overnight in Martin Place, Wentworth Park and other inner-city areas.
In June 2016, council workers and police evicted homeless people who had been camping for six months outside the former Westpac building in Martin Place. The homeless were presented with a letter signed by director of city operations, David Riordan, deeming the camp a ‘public nuisance.’
The assault on Sydney’s homeless occurred during ‘National Homeless Week.’ The annual publicity event generally involves corporate executives and celebrities spending a night sleeping rough, which does nothing to stem the rising numbers of homeless and acute housing affordability crisis.
Across Australia, homeless shelters and crisis accommodation centres are at capacity and turning people away. Homelessness Australia chairwoman Jenny Smith said: ‘We have 280,000 [homeless people] who have been seen by our services last year, which is an increase by 43,000 on the previous year.’
Sydney, where property prices and rents have soared, particularly over the past six years, is ranked the least affordable city for housing and accommodation in Australia and one of the most unaffordable cities in the world.
Homelessness Australia in 2013, estimated that NSW had over 29,000 homeless people, the highest of any Australian state or territory. According to the latest official City of Sydney street count, in February there were 433 homeless people and 489 people in crisis or temporary accommodation centres in central Sydney alone. This was a 28 percent increase since 2011.
While criminalising homelessness, the NSW government, like its Liberal-National and Labor counterparts around Australia, is continuing to systematically run down and sell off public housing. Inner-city public housing estates, particularly those with harbour views or at other prime locations, are providing windfall profits for state governments.
A short distance from Martin Place, the government is forcing public housing tenants out of the Sirius apartment block and selling the building. Scores of affordable rental homes and apartments are also being privatised at nearby Millers Point.
There are 60,000 people on the waiting list for public housing in NSW and almost 200,000 nationally. Only a handful of these people will ever secure the accommodation they seek. At the same time, financial speculation in Australia’s housing property bubble has produced hundreds of thousands of unoccupied homes and apartments across the country.
Organisers of the Martin Place tent city claimed the protest would ‘shine a light’ on homelessness and pressure the state government to increase the number of crisis accommodation places. Confronted with the new laws, protest leaders directed the participants to pull down their tents and vacate Martin Place. According to protest organisers, at least 20 percent of those from the tent city are still ‘sleeping rough’ in other inner-city streets.
WSWS reporters spoke with tent residents and volunteers last Friday before the protest was shut down. They explained that any accommodation offered by charities was only short-term – usually no more than a couple of nights in a hotel.
Nigel lived in the Martin Place tent city for about six months. He previously worked in advertising but went through a divorce in Hong Kong, resulting in his deportation to Australia. He had to leave his 10-year-old son in Hong Kong. A downward spiral of depression and isolation began when he returned to Australia.
‘Living here has taken me out of isolation, made me interact with people and given me confidence. Lanz [Priestly, the protest organiser] has got me working in the kitchen and around the community generally – When we have to move we’ve got to stick together. We have to keep this community together and move together somewhere else.’
Stu, originally from Auckland in New Zealand, joined the Martin Place protest when it began last December.
‘I’m here because I want to show people in Sydney how bad the homeless situation is and to be in solidarity with other homeless people. I came to Australia in 1979 and worked as a French polisher and in other jobs. I set up a small business in Canberra importing fireworks but the government changed the law and my business collapsed.
‘There were court cases and appeals. All the money I had went on that and my life went downhill. I was jailed for 15 months for driving without a licence. I couldn’t get any work and I’ve now got heart problems and I’m on a disability.
‘I’ve been homeless now for seven years. I’ve been helped by various charities but it’s only temporary. They can’t seem to be able to do much for us. The tents and sleeping bags we have here have been donated but apart from that the people here don’t have anything. It’s homeless week and there’s all this publicity. We have CEOs doing sleep outs every year but this doesn’t change anything.
‘I don’t agree with the state government or Sydney council. They talk on the media about how they’re concerned about homelessness, but what do they do? Politicians are only interested in looking after the rich. They can push us out of Martin Place or pass laws banning what we’re doing but this isn’t going to help us find accommodation and we’ll just have to go somewhere else. They want to cover up the problem.’
The so called Glorious 12th (August) sees the start of grouse shooting season in the uplands.
You may hear lots of stories about how the uplands are managed and all the benefits that come with that for some breeding birds like Curlew for example; but there is of course a darker side to all this in the form of raptor persecution. Grouse moors are intensively managed to produce unnaturally large numbers of Red Grouse, many of which will then be shot. But anything that would naturally prey on the Red Grouse is not welcome on the shooting estates and it is worrying to see a lack of natural predators in these areas.
Don’t let my opinion sway you though, take a look through some of these links and decide for yourself.
Alleged illegal killing of a protected hen harrier
Something I am learning is that where there is big money to be made there can also be criminal activity. Wildlife crime is not something you hear about enough in the news, as the environment and natural world are so far down the list of priorities in government, business, education etc.
The evidence just keeps getting clearer and clearer that serious wildlife crime is taking place in the uplands. Modern day technology is helping to bring these activities to light more and more.
Just one more statistic for you. In theory, the uplands in England could support over 300 pairs of hen harriers. Last year we just had just 4 breeding pairs. Only about 1% of what could be there. Not really a statistic to be pushed down the priority list. And this year’s number of breeding hen harriers in England is not looking promising either. But even if the numbers doubled to 8 pairs, it still wouldn’t be acceptable.
So as the social media posts about the so called Glorious 12th start flooding in, wouldn’t it be great to see #Inglorious12th trending and raising much needed awareness about the criminal activity that continues to plague these important breeding grounds.
All comments are welcome, whether you agree or disagree. It’s always good to hear a wide range of opinions and ideas to move things forward.
Last year 482 people signed up to a similar thunderclap and we created a social reach of over 1.3 million people. It would be great to reach even more people this year.
Thank you.
…………………………………………………Updates Since Blog Posted This blog was only posted weeks ago, and yet the illegal raptor persecution continues. Including this one:
Nearly 160,000 households, estimated at just under a quarter of a million people, are experiencing the worst forms of homelessness across Britain, with rough sleeping forecast to rise by 76 per cent in the next decade unless the governments in Westminster, Scotland and Wales take long-term action to tackle it.
Launched as part of Crisis’s 50th anniversary year and drawing on the most up-to-date sources available, the report estimates that at any one time in 2016 across Britain [breakdown also available by nation]:
9,100 people were sleeping rough, compared to previous estimates placing rough sleeping at 4,134 households for England
68,300 households* were sofa surfing
19,300 households were living in unsuitable temporary accommodation
37,200 households were living in hostels
26,000 households were living in other circumstances, including:
8,900 households sleeping in tents, cars or on public transport
12,100 households living in squats
5,000 households in women’s refuges or winter night shelters
Drawing on detailed economic modelling, the report warns that if current policies continue unchanged, the most acute forms of homelessness are likely to keep rising, with overall numbers estimated to increase by more than a quarter in the coming decade (26.5 per cent) and households in unsuitable temporary accommodation set to nearly double (93 per cent) [see appendix for graph].
The analysis also looks at how different policies could make an impact on this projected rise. Based on the model, a 60 per cent increase in new housing could reduce levels of homelessness by 19 per cent by 2036, while increased prevention work could reduce levels by 34 per cent in the same period.
In response to the report’s findings, Crisis is calling on the public to join its Everybody In campaign – a national movement for permanent change aimed at ending the worst forms of homelessness once and for all.
Jon Sparkes, Chief Executive of Crisis, said: “This year Crisis marks its 50th anniversary, but that’s little cause for celebration. We still exist because homelessness still exists, and today’s report makes it only too clear that unless we take action as a society, the problem is only going to get worse with every year that passes. That means more people sleeping on our streets, in doorways or bus shelters, on the sofas of friends or family, or getting by in hostels and B&Bs. In order to tackle this, we need to first understand the scale of the problem.
“Regardless of what happens in people’s lives, whatever difficulties they face or choices they make, no one should ever have to face homelessness. With the right support at the right time, it doesn’t need to be inevitable. There are solutions, and we’re determined to find them and make them a reality.
“Yet we can’t do this alone, which is why we’re calling on the public to back our Everybody In campaign and help us build a movement for change. Together we can find the answers, and make sure those in power listen to them.”
“We warmly welcome the Government’s pledge to tackle rough sleeping and other forms of homelessness. Now’s the time for action and long term planning to end homelessness for good.”
Everybody In aims to bring people together to change opinions, raise awareness and ultimately end homelessness for good, and includes a library of first-hand accounts showing the reality of homelessness in Britain.
Alongside this, Crisis will be working towards a national plan to end the worst forms of homelessness once and for all, bringing together everything needed to make this happen, including consultations in all three nations and a large scale programme of research.
Today’s report is the first of two parts, with the second – due for publication in the Autumn – to examine ‘wider homelessness’, including people at risk of homelessness or those who have already experienced it, such as households that have been served an eviction notice and those in other forms of temporary accommodation.
The community of North Kensington is demanding that the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire be widened in scope. It must, local people say, “seek to understand how residents’ voices have been systematically ignored for so long”. On the other side of London, Haringey residents took to the streets last week, protesting at their council’s plans for regeneration.
Today such criminality is rarer. Instead, we have a concerning culture of cronyism that, while not illegal, suggests a lack of accountability. From the housing minister down to the local councillor, elected politicians now routinely rub shoulders with property developers, house builders and commercial lobbyists. This is no accident. Politicians’ decisions have an impact on companies’ ambitions, whether they are reviewing planning applications, setting affordable housing targets or “regenerating” whole areas. Bluntly, companies want these decisions to go their way. Develop connections with the decision-maker and you can “strip out risk”, in the words of one lobbying firm.
The politicisation of planning has come with the growth of the regeneration industry. While once planning officers in local government made recommendations that elected members of planning committees generally followed, today lobbyists are able to exert far greater influence.
It’s not easy to see into this world, but there are traces in the public domain. Registers of hospitality, for example, detail some of the interactions between councillors and the commercial property business. Take a week in the life of Nick Paget-Brown, the Kensington and Chelsea leader who resigned in the aftermath of the Grenfell fire. In October last year he had lunch at the five-star riverside Royal Horseguards Hotel courtesy of the property giant Willmott Dixon. The previous evening he had been at a reception put on by the business lobby group London First, whose membership is dominated by property and housing firms. He had breakfast with the Grosvenor Estate, the global property empire worth £6.5bn, and lunch at Knightsbridge’s Carlton Tower Hotel. This was paid for by the Cadogan Estate, the second largest of the aristocratic estates (after Grosvenor), which owns 93 acres in Kensington, including Sloane Square and the King’s Road.
Bingle is also a player in the other big regeneration story of recent weeks: Haringey council’s approval of plans for its HDV – Haringey development vehicle. This is a “partnership” with the Australian property developer Lendlease, a lobbying client of Terrapin’s. The HDV promises to create a £2bn fund to build a new town centre and thousands of new homes, but local residents on the Northumberland Park housing estate, whose homes will be demolished, are vehemently opposed. The Haringey leader, Claire Kober, has lunched or dined six times at Terrapin’s expense.
Nick Paget-Brown, former leader of Kensington and Chelsea council.
In Southwark, just as in Haringey and Kensington, there is a revolving door between politicians and lobbyists. The former leader of Southwark council, Jeremy Fraser, went on to found the lobbying firm Four Communications, where he was joined by Southwark’s former cabinet member for regeneration Steve Lancashire. Derek Myers, who until 2013 jointly ran Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham councils, is now a director of the London Communications Agency, a lobbying agency with property developers on its client list. Merrick Cockell, the leader of Kensington and Chelsea until 2013, now chairs the lobbying firm Cratus Communications, which also specialises in property lobbying. In Westminster, the hospitality register for the last three years of its deputy leader, Robert Davis – chair of the council’s planning committee for 17 years – runs to 19 pages.
Cities other than London and rural areas also provide examples of worrying relationships. In East Devon a serving councillor was found in 2013 to be offering his services as a consultant to help developers get the planning decisions they wanted. In Newcastle a councillor who worked for a lobbying company boasted of “tricks of the trade” that included making sure planning committees included friendly faces.
Meanwhile the culture of regular meetings and socialising does not stop with councils. The diary of David Lunts, head of housing and land at the Greater London Authority for the first three months of 2017, reveals a lunch in Mayfair with Bingle, a VIP dinner laid on by a London developer, another meal paid for by a housing giant, and dinner on Valentine’s Day with a regeneration firm. Consultants and a developer furnished him with more meals before he headed off to Cannes for Mipim, the world’s biggest property fair. He also had dinner with Rydon, the firm that refurbished Grenfell Tower.
Further up the food chain, it was only because of Bingle’s boasts that we heard of a dinner he gave the then local government secretary, Eric Pickles. Held in the Savoy’s Gondoliers Room, it was also attended by business chiefs, including one who was waiting for a planning decision from Pickles’s department. The dinner was never declared on any register of hospitality because Pickles said he was attending in a private capacity.
Lunt’s former colleague Richard Blakeway, who was London’s deputy mayor for housing until last year, and David Cameron’s adviser on housing policy, became a paid adviser to Willmott Dixon. He is also on the board of the Homes and Communities Agency, the government body that regulates and invests in social housing. Its chair is Blakeway’s old boss, the former London deputy mayor for policy and planning Ed Lister, who is also a non-executive director of the developer Stanhope.
The MP Mark Prisk, housing minister until 2013, advocated “removing unnecessary housing, construction and planning regulations” as part of the government’s red tape challenge. He became an adviser to the property developer Essential Living, eight months after leaving office. Prisk advises the firm on legislation, providing support for developments and “brand” building. Essential Living’s former development manager Nick Cuff was also a Conservative councillor and chair of Wandsworth’s planning committee. A colleague of Cuff’s, who spent 30 years in the south London borough’s planning department, now works for Bingle’s lobbying firm, Terrapin.
This is the world that Kensington’s Paget-Brown and Feilding-Mellen, Haringey’s Kober and countless other council leaders inhabit. Socialising between these property men – and they are mostly men – is used to cement ties, and the lines between politician, official, developer and lobbyist are barely drawn. This culture, and the questions of accountability it raises, must be part of the public inquiry into Grenfell. It is perhaps no surprise that the government doesn’t want it to be.
• Tamasin Cave, a director of the lobbying transparency organisation Spinwatch, contributed to this article
Next to the humming streets and just a few feet away from a busy city road lies the shocking truth of the state of Britain’s homelessness epidemic.
As pedestrians walk above, a man below casts his rod into Bridgwater Canal in Eccles, Salford, Greater Manchester, in desperation of catching his next meal.
This isn’t a day out for Stuart, his girlfriend Georgia Twemlow, and John – this is their life, at least for now.
Stuart sits on a disposed sofa by the banks with a fishing rod propped against his leg. Abba is blaring from his stereo, reports Manchester Evening News .
He’s fired up a barbecue and drinks from a bottle of water.
His friend ‘Russian John’ sits by his side. They both look towards the water, hoping for a bite.
Stuart and Georgina were turned down for housing
All are homeless and Stuart and Georgia say they’ve been turned down for housing and have nowhere else to go.
Last week they were sleeping in a bus shelter, now this canal bank is their home.
The unusual settlement he has made with Georgia and John is now attracting attention from passers-by, but Stuart says people have been mostly supportive.
“I’ve made it my home, until the system changes,” he tells us.
“I chose this spot because it’s in my home town, it’s close to church, and it’s near the doctor’s – although I wasn’t allowed to register because I’ve got no address.
“It’s not near housing so we’re not bothering anyone. It’s all right, hopefully I’ll be able to feed myself and anyone else who needs it. I can totally Ray Mears it.”
Stuart has even planted chilli, garlic, apples turnips and onions in a patch of soil by the canal.
When he needs a wash he jumps into the water with his shower gel.
Friends who do have a home arrive to take a load of washing off him. They bring him food and cigarettes. Having lived here all his life, he’s well known in the area.
One visiting pal tells me: “Stuart’s a good guy, we’ve known him from growing up together on the Winton estate – he’d do anything for anyone.
”It’s sad he’s fallen on hard times and we want to help him out.”
Their camp isn’t going down well with everyone though – a visiting PCSO tells me there have been 14 complaints in two days.
But as the day continues, Stuart, Georgia and John are joined by more companions. Many explain they have mental health issues and they come to pass the time – as well as to draw support from each other’s company.
At night, they will take it turns to keep watch while the others sleep.
Georgia, 28, who suffers with depression, says she just needs a base to get her life back on track – but claims the council isn’t helping her because she’s classed as a ‘single person’.
She says she’s worked in the past but claims her landlord changed her locks to get her out, and without an address, she can’t get a bank account and is struggling to find work.
Faced with difficulties in her family estranged, she doesn’t like to ask friends for help.
Stuart, 35, known by pals as ‘Pottsy’, has led a turbulent life. In the past, he says he’s worked as a cobbler, locksmith, painter and decorator and in factories.
Stuart has been living on the streets ever since he was evicted from his social housing flat
But after suffering a breakdown and losing his family, he was kicked out of his rental property two months ago.
The housing system can often be hard to navigate – although housing bosses generally maintain that temporary housing, in the form of hostel places, is there for everyone who wants it. Stuart, however, insists he’s tried to get help from Salford Council but says he was told that he ‘was not a priority’.
“Look, I’ve got a criminal record,” he explains. “I’ve done some bad things in my life, but it’s all been petty crime. Drugs have been my problem but I don’t take them any more.
“But I’m in this situation for helping a homeless man. I met him in Rochdale and he needed somewhere to stay. I was on benefits, was living in a flat and I let him stay in my lounge. I wanted to give the lad a chance. But the landlord found out and kicked me out. He was a good landlord, he just couldn’t deal with it at the time.
“We were both made homeless. I sofa-surfed for a while, tried to find somewhere new but I couldn’t. Without an address, I can’t get a bank account, it’s the system.”
Forced out of a tent in Manchester city centre and resorting to sleeping in a bus shelter, both say they’ve appealed again to Salford Council for housing.
“They said we aren’t a priority. When will we be? When we’re beaten up, stabbed? They wouldn’t even tell me what their criteria is,” says Stuart.
“It’s just got worse and worse. People end up in prison because it’s the only place they have somewhere to live. The system isn’t working, someone needs to shake it up.
“I’ll keep living here until I get my life back.”
“I want everyone to have a nice home. Everyone says there’s enough fish in the sea – and I know for sure there’s enough land and houses for everyone to live in but there are still people starving while at the supermarkets there are bins brimming with food.”
Stuart looks back at his rod, a maggot dangling from the end of his line. “We caught our first fish last night – a roach. We had it for dinner. We’re dropping bread in and we hope that will attract the little fish.
“And then those little fish will bring in the pike, then we’ll eat. I’ll feed anyone who needs it.
“It’s about playing the long game. The slowest horse wins the race.”
Salford Council has been contacted for comment about Stuart and Georgia’s situation.
They have a sofa and two chairs, a bookcase and a bed to sleep on which they found chucked out by a nearby furniture dealer. They’ve managed to find a carpet to cover the concrete towpath as well as an old tent cover to shelter them from the rain.
With the sun shining as it has done today, it looks like the open air set of a sitcom.
But the grim reality of life outdoors is anything but funny. The fishing rod isn’t just a way of passing the time – it’s to give the group food for their next meal.
Stuart is a 35-year-old dad-of-four. He once had a stable life but has been living on the streets – including a spell in a tent in Manchester city centre – ever since being evicted from his social housing flat.
It was billed as an act of generosity — a decision that would “save” a “key piece of northern heritage” for the nation.
But Philip Hammond’s commitment in this week’s Autumn Statement to spend £7.6m on restoring Wentworth Woodhouse, England’s largest private home, also had a little-known beneficiary: the house happens to be ancestral home of the mother-in-law of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Conservative MP who is among the chancellor’s noisiest critics.
Mr Rees-Mogg said he had no involvement in the campaign to save Wentworth Woodhouse. But after hearing the Autumn Statement in which the funding was announced, he for once dropped his criticism of Mr Hammond and described his overall budget as “excellent”.
“I liked the fact that there was only one gimmick. The fact that the gimmick was Wentworth Woodhouse I liked more,” said the backbencher, one of whose children has Wentworth as a middle name.
The house is renowned as the inspiration for Jane Austen’s Pemberley, possibly erroneously given that there is no evidence that the author visited the estate. Its ill-repair dates from the post-war Labour government’s decision to allow coal mining in the gardens after the nationalisation of the coal industry in 1945. Mr Rees-Mogg described the move as “the most outrageous act of socialist envy”, although the Fitzwilliam family, the owners, had built their vast fortune from mining on their lands.
The Fitzwilliams moved out in 1946 and the house was put into a family trust. Lady Juliet Tadgell, the only child of the earl and now Mr Rees-Mogg’s mother-in-law, inherited the family fortune but not the home. She is one of the trustees of the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust, which has raised £7m to acquire the house.
Politicians involved with the campaign to save the stately home say they had no idea of Mr Rees-Mogg’s personal attachment to the property. “I am not sure he’s ever been to Rotherham but we’d be glad to see him here,” said John Healey, the local Labour MP. Robert Jenrick, the Conservative MP and heritage specialist, said Mr Rees-Mogg had “played no part in our lobbying of the chancellor”.
Located in south Yorkshire, Wentworth Woodhouse is not very well known, reflecting its limited opening to the public as well as its unglamorous location near the M1, among the area’s former mines.
The government funding, which will be used to address subsidence caused by the coal mining, is expected to create jobs in the surrounding area, which includes the town of Rotherham. “The factor that really secured the funding was making a major investment in a very deprived community,” said Mr Jenrick. The Fitzwilliam family continue to own much of the surrounding estate and have invested in restoring it.
Mr Healey said there was some irony in Mr Hammond’s rescue as the government had fought a long and finally successful battle in the courts to resist demands for £100m in compensation for the subsidence caused by the mining. The case failed in June.
Mr Rees-Mogg said he had “deliberately played no role in the campaign”. Nor had he been asked to contribute financially to the project: a recent report of his net worth being up to £150m was “not faintly true”.
The Trust expects to complete the acquisition of Wentworth Woodhouse early next year. It estimates that at least £35m more investment is needed over 15 years to make the house self-reliant, including the conversion of some areas into apartments and business units.
Mr Rees-Mogg said he had visited the house a couple of years ago at the invitation of the then owners, the Newbolds. The public will be able to visit from next spring.
To understand why people feel their voices are not being heard, it is essential to investigate the environment in which politicians and developers operate. Local government has a history of corruption that includes the jailing of the Newcastle council leader T Dan Smith in the early 1970s, and the illegal decisions made by Shirley Porter in the Westminster “homes for votes” scandal in the 1980s.
Today such criminality is rarer. Instead, we have a concerning culture of cronyism that, while not illegal, suggests a lack of accountability. From the housing minister down to the local councillor, elected politicians now routinely rub shoulders with property developers, house builders and commercial lobbyists. This is no accident. Politicians’ decisions have an impact on companies’ ambitions, whether they are reviewing planning applications, setting affordable housing targets or “regenerating” whole areas. Bluntly, companies want these decisions to go their way. Develop connections with the decision-maker and you can “strip out risk”, in the words of one lobbying firm.
The politicisation of planning has come with the growth of the regeneration industry. While once planning officers in local government made recommendations that elected members of planning committees generally followed, today lobbyists are able to exert far greater influence.
It’s not easy to see into this world, but there are traces in the public domain. Registers of hospitality, for example, detail some of the interactions between councillors and the commercial property business. Take a week in the life of Nick Paget-Brown, the Kensington and Chelsea leader who resigned in the aftermath of the Grenfell fire. In October last year he had lunch at the five-star riverside Royal Horseguards Hotel courtesy of the property giant Willmott Dixon. The previous evening he had been at a reception put on by the business lobby group London First, whose membership is dominated by property and housing firms. He had breakfast with the Grosvenor Estate, the global property empire worth £6.5bn, and lunch at Knightsbridge’s Carlton Tower Hotel. This was paid for by the Cadogan Estate, the second largest of the aristocratic estates (after Grosvenor), which owns 93 acres in Kensington, including Sloane Square and the King’s Road.
Rock Feilding-Mellen, the councillor in charge of the Grenfell Tower refurbishment, who has stepped down as the council’s deputy leader, had his own list of engagements. As the Grenfell Action Group noted earlier this year, he was a dinner guest of Terrapin, the firm founded by Peter Bingle, a property lobbyist renowned for lavish hospitality.
Bingle is also a player in the other big regeneration story of recent weeks: Haringey council’s approval of plans for its HDV – Haringey development vehicle. This is a “partnership” with the Australian property developer Lendlease, a lobbying client of Terrapin’s. The HDV promises to create a £2bn fund to build a new town centre and thousands of new homes, but local residents on the Northumberland Park housing estate, whose homes will be demolished, are vehemently opposed. The Haringey leader, Claire Kober, has lunched or dined six times at Terrapin’s expense.
In Southwark, just as in Haringey and Kensington, there is a revolving door between politicians and lobbyists. The former leader of Southwark council, Jeremy Fraser, went on to found the lobbying firm Four Communications, where he was joined by Southwark’s former cabinet member for regeneration Steve Lancashire. Derek Myers, who until 2013 jointly ran Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham councils, is now a director of the London Communications Agency, a lobbying agency with property developers on its client list. Merrick Cockell, the leader of Kensington and Chelsea until 2013, now chairs the lobbying firm Cratus Communications, which also specialises in property lobbying. In Westminster, the hospitality register for the last three years of its deputy leader, Robert Davis – chair of the council’s planning committee for 17 years – runs to 19 pages.
Cities other than London and rural areas also provide examples of worrying relationships. In East Devon a serving councillor was found in 2013 to be offering his services as a consultant to help developers get the planning decisions they wanted. In Newcastle a councillor who worked for a lobbying company boasted of “tricks of the trade” that included making sure planning committees included friendly faces.
Meanwhile the culture of regular meetings and socialising does not stop with councils. The diary of David Lunts, head of housing and land at the Greater London Authority for the first three months of 2017, reveals a lunch in Mayfair with Bingle, a VIP dinner laid on by a London developer, another meal paid for by a housing giant, and dinner on Valentine’s Day with a regeneration firm. Consultants and a developer furnished him with more meals before he headed off to Cannes for Mipim, the world’s biggest property fair. He also had dinner with Rydon, the firm that refurbished Grenfell Tower.
Further up the food chain, it was only because of Bingle’s boasts that we heard of a dinner he gave the then local government secretary, Eric Pickles. Held in the Savoy’s Gondoliers Room, it was also attended by business chiefs, including one who was waiting for a planning decision from Pickles’s department. The dinner was never declared on any register of hospitality because Pickles said he was attending in a private capacity.
Lunt’s former colleague Richard Blakeway, who was London’s deputy mayor for housing until last year, and David Cameron’s adviser on housing policy, became a paid adviser to Willmott Dixon. He is also on the board of the Homes and Communities Agency, the government body that regulates and invests in social housing. Its chair is Blakeway’s old boss, the former London deputy mayor for policy and planning Ed Lister, who is also a non-executive director of the developer Stanhope.
The MP Mark Prisk, housing minister until 2013, advocated “removing unnecessary housing, construction and planning regulations” as part of the government’s red tape challenge. He became an adviser to the property developer Essential Living, eight months after leaving office. Prisk advises the firm on legislation, providing support for developments and “brand” building. Essential Living’s former development manager Nick Cuff was also a Conservative councillor and chair of Wandsworth’s planning committee. A colleague of Cuff’s, who spent 30 years in the south London borough’s planning department, now works for Bingle’s lobbying firm, Terrapin.
This is the world that Kensington’s Paget-Brown and Feilding-Mellen, Haringey’s Kober and countless other council leaders inhabit. Socialising between these property men – and they are mostly men – is used to cement ties, and the lines between politician, official, developer and lobbyist are barely drawn. This culture, and the questions of accountability it raises, must be part of the public inquiry into Grenfell. It is perhaps no surprise that the government doesn’t want it to be.
• Tamasin Cave, a director of the lobbying transparency organisation Spinwatch, contributed to this article
• Anna Minton is a housing writer and author of Ground Control: fear and happiness in the twenty-first-century city