Hello
Everyone, It’s been a lovely bright autumnal day with sunshine but really cold!
Temperatures are expected to drop to below zero as London faces its first frost
of the season this weekend and according to the Met
Office there'll be more cold spells to come. As temperatures drop the Council’s gritting
team is also preparing to treat the roads across the borough for ice for the
first time this winter and you can check which roads will be treated on the
Council website here. So if you are heading out today please do wrap up warm and take care
when you are out and about. Don’t forget, we also have our network of Warm
Havens at all our libraries across
the borough, all open for extended hours till next year in March, so do pop in!
We’re also offering Newham Warm Haven Grants of up to £2,000 to voluntary, community and faith sector organisations to
help us expand our Warm Haven network across all our neighbourhoods; and we
continue to support local residents in the face of the Cost of Living crisis which
is eating into household incomes. Talking of autumn, on Wednesday the Chancellor delivered what’s known as the Autumn
Statement which sets
out the state of the economy as well as the government's spending plans and
budgets for every government department. As expected, it falls short of
what we have been campaigning for with other Councils in London to meet the
needs of our residents.
For instance, there was no new funding for adult or children’s social care (which
is the biggest driver of funding pressures in Newham along
with temporary accommodation costs) or any general local government funding for 2024-25, beyond
what was announced last year. Overall, the money that all Councils in London have
available to spend on their residents is on average some 18 percent lower in
real terms than what they had in 2010-11. Based on initial analysis by London
Council’s, local authorities in the capital will still need to make over £500
million of savings in 2024-25, as part of the estimated £2 billion funding gap
over the next four years.
It’s clear that the Autumn Statement this year isn’t enough to deal with
the growing demand in Newham as more and more residents turn to us for support including
those facing homelessness. For instance, due to the increasing number of families turning to us
for help, combined with high housing costs in Newham, our temporary accommodation
budget has grown massively over the past several months. It’s driving the estimated
forecast overspend of £7.3m against our Council budget of £363m, as set out in
a cabinet
report approved earlier this month.
As well as bringing this year’s budget back in line through robust financial
management plans we have put in place; we will need to make some tough choices
as we set the Council’s budget for the next financial year.
While
the government announced a
rise in Local Housing Allowance rates to a level covering 30 percent of local
market rents from April 2024, it is going to do little to help those households
in Newham living in temporary accommodation or in the private rented sector
because rents have mushroomed as housing supply locally has decreased. In our
borough alone, there’s been a reduction in housing available and it has dropped
by some 47 percent in the past 12-months.
Don’t
get me wrong, unfreezing local housing allowance is great news - but not if it
means that once the 30 percent increase kicks in next April, it will be frozen
again. It’s also vital that national government help us with more money to boost
Council-led house building, including much needed social rent homes. That’s why
ahead of this week’s Autumn Statement, I joined the Mayor of London to call on
the government to deliver on a £470m injection of money to build 76,000 homes
across London’s brownfield sites including in Newham too. Read more here.
We’ll
carry on with our campaigning work to get the money our residents deserve. Talking about our campaigning work, we
achieved a great campaign success earlier this week when the Mayor of London refused
permission for the construction of a proposed 21,500-capacity
venue for music and entertainment in Stratford, known as the MSG Sphere. Here at the Council, we’ve been opposing the
scheme for the past 5-years because the scale of the HUGE development will have
detrimental impacts on the health of residents, through unprecedented noise and
light pollution affecting the quality of life of local residents who have been
campaigning against the scheme as well.
You can read my full statement here and this massive victory reflects the power of
collective action working with local residents for the benefit of all our
communities. While we celebrate this campaign success we’ll have to keep up the
heat on the government because they have the power to reverse the planning
decision that the Mayor of London made earlier this week. That’s why our
campaign against the MSG Sphere will continue - because the health and
well-being of our residents will always come first. Finally,
today marks the start of the UN global 16 Days of Activism campaign to
end violence against women and girls around the world, and here in Newham we
are taking part. I really hope you can attend one of the many events, workshops
and online sessions we have planned, read the full programme here. With a launch event over at Canning Town library on Barking Road this afternoon, we have a jammed packed programme
including next Sunday 3 December, with the powerful Table of Love and Loss
event at East Ham Town Hall. These
16-days of action around the world kick-starts today because it’s the International
Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women; concluding on the 10 December because that’s Human Rights Day. It’s an issue that I
feel very passionately about because it is not right for any woman or girl to
face violence or abuse. Day in and day out thousands of women and girls in Newham
face violence and hate because of their gender. For many women of colour, the multiplicity
of violence and hate from the everyday sexism can be both subtle as well as
overt. Sadly, misogyny and violence against women and girls takes many forms
and it is a feature in all our lives.
That’s
not right and it’s why the UN 16 Days of Activism is important to highlight,
because women’s rights are about fairness, equality yes; but also about our
human rights. We have to do whatever we can to end the epidemic of violence
facing women and girls in all its forms. That’s why we invest money to support women
and girls, and why we have co-produced our Domestic Abuse strategy with
survivors and women’s rights advocates from all backgrounds. Read about all the
domestic abuse and sexual violence services we offer here.
If
you are a woman or girl facing any form of violence, coercion or abuse and
reading my words right now, please reach out as part of making that
all-important first step. Contact details are here, and
you can also phone 0808 196 1482 which is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you are in
any imminent or immediate danger, please call the police on 999. Please know
this, there really are so many people here to support you and keep you
safe.
Until next week, stay well and take care.
Best wishes,
Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz OBE
Follow what I am up to via Twitter: @rokhsanafiaz | 
