Labour Elected Mayor Marvin Rees’ Policies for Bristol

I got this newsletter from Bristol’s elected mayor, Marvin Rees, via email yesterday. In it he lays out his policies for Bristol and how his administration is working to stamp out housing discrimination against people on benefits. He also promotes the Labour candidate for the Southmead ward in the forthcoming council by-election, Kye Dudd. The mayor writes

‘I hope you’re keeping well.

I’m writing to you regarding the Council’s budget – including our plan for homes – and the upcoming election. If you have any questions, then please do get in touch.

On Tuesday, our budget came to Cabinet for sign-off. Drafting this budget was always going to be difficult. The circumstances are challenging: a decade of Government austerity and the pandemic which has simultaneously reduced council revenues and increased the need for council services. This has resulted in us needing to find £19m worth of savings in the General Fund. 

These are challenges facing councils across the country. Across Britains major cities budget gaps average £30m and range from £7m to £79m. In Bristol we’ve worked hard to protect our frontline services by delivering these savings by reducing the Council’s internal expenses, such as through selling off buildings and leaving unfilled posts vacant.  As a result, we remain the only Core City to still maintain the 100% Council Tax Reduction Scheme, which means Bristol’s most vulnerable don’t have to pay any Council Tax. We have protected all of our libraries and children’s centres, our parks, and our social care plans that enable people to stay in their homes for longer. Budget decisions are never easy, but I’m proud that we have managed to find a way to prioritise helping the worst-off and our transition to net-zero.

It’s important that our General Fund is not taken in isolation, because it is only part of the budget. We have also set the Housing Revenue Account which commits £1.8bn of investment in housing delivery, and a separate investment budget for social housing. This is one of the most ambitious plans in the country and will enable the Council to:

• Build over 2,000 council homes by 2028, and 300 more every year after
• Invest an additional £80m in to retrofitting (making council homes more energy efficient, saving them money and reducing Co2 output) bringing funding to a total of £97m.
• £12.5m to upgrade council tenants’ bathrooms improving quality of life and improving water efficiency in thousands of homes
• £8.7m investment into communal areas
• £350k for council tenants’ in financial difficulties
• £13.5m funding to adapt homes to make them more accessible

Building affordable, quality homes is one of the single most significant policy tools we have for shaping life chances and the carbon and ecological cost the planet will pay for meeting our population’s needs. Housing remains at the forefront of our priorities. 

Benefits discrimination

Cllr Tom Renhard, Cabinet Members Homes and Housing Delivery, recently put forward a motion to stamp out anti-benefits discrimination in Bristol. If you have tried to rent a home in Bristol, you will be familiar with seeing advertisements listed as ‘working professionals only’, meaning people on benefits aren’t allowed to rent the property. This is discrimination – plain and simple – and we’re committed to eradicating this practice from Bristol.

In the past few years, we’ve been expanding our Landlord Licensing scheme, meaning rogue and slum landlords are no longer allowed to rent out properties in Bristol. This has driven up standards where it’s been in place and we intend to expand the scheme to cover the whole of Bristol.  This, combined with our anti-discrimination motion, means that landlords who discriminate against people on benefits won’t be allowed to let properties in Bristol.

It will take some time to expand the licensing scheme citywide so in the meantime, we will be carrying out other policies to help renters. The Council will now assist tenants’ efforts to take discriminatory landlords to the appropriate authorities, will run a public awareness campaign on tenants’ rights, and will create a local action plan to formulate policies to build on these in future – among other things.

Southmead by-election

As former councillor Helen Godwin stood down in the new year, a by-election has been called to fill her vacant seat in Southmead. I am delighted that Kye Dudd has been selected as our candidate for the seat. Kye has been a stalwart of the trade union movement, working for the Communication Workers’ Union for fifteen years, and has served as the Cabinet Member for Transport, Energy, and Connectivity – leading our work to expand our bus and active travel infrastructure, develop our work on mass transit, and decarbonise our energy systems. More recently, he has been working with Empire Fighting Chance, a boxing charity who work with some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable young people in our city.

He will be running on a campaign of:

• ·        Investing in Southmead’s youth services
• ·        Investing in Council homes
• ·        Protecting local green spaces
• ·        Making Southmead safer for all
• ·        Supporting the community-led regeneration of Arnside’

It ends with the statement that it is vitally important to get Mr Dudd elected and the email address Southmead Labour party if I wanted to be involved.

I broadly support mayor Marvin, as I think he has done a good overall governing the city. He has tried to remain impartial about the controversy over the wretched statue of Edward Colston, despite his justifiable hatred of it as a man of colour. I believe the policies outlined here are excellent. My problem is with the Labour party as it stands under the leadership of Keef Stalin. Starmer has done everything he can to purge the left and turn it into another version of the Tories. One of his favoured MPs, the vile Rachel Reeves, added insult to injury a few days ago when she described those who have left the party in disgust at Starmer’s factionalism and treachery as ‘anti-Semites’. As I’m sick of saying, the people Starmer and his collaborators in the NEC have smeared and purged are most definitely not Jew-haters. They are decent people, many of them with proud records of fighting racism and anti-Semitism. About four-fifths of those he’s thrown out are actually Jewish, decent, self-respecting people, often the victims of real anti-Semitic abuse and vilification. They are not ‘self-hating’. But then, truth means nothing to the liars of the right, the British media and political establishment, and the Israel lobby.

I had a series of emails from the Labour party over the past week or so asking me if I would care to campaign for Mr. Dudd and help get Boris out, and Starmer in. Well, my health at the moment prevents me from getting out much. Southmead isn’t my ward, and the buses from where I live have become very unreliable, so I simply won’t be able to join them. And obviously I do want to get Bozo out.

But I don’t want Starmer in.

I see no difference whatsoever between him and Johnson. Both are lying, treacherous right-wingers with precious little real ability to govern and an intense contempt for the working class. They both want to privatise whatever has been left, including the NHS. I don’t trust him to restore the welfare state to anything like the level that’s needed, nor to strengthen the trade unions. He won’t give workers much needed rights at work. And he definitely won’t do anything to improve public services by nationalising them, despite the obvious fact that they’re decaying as we look under private ownership.

And the voting public aren’t enamoured of Starmer either. I’ve got the impression that at the moment Labour’s haemorrhaged support to the Greens so that they’re almost neck and neck with Labour on the local council.

Now I do support Marvin and hope Mr. Dudd wins the council election when it comes.

But I very much do not want Starmer to get anywhere near No. 10 and definitely want him out as leader of the Labour party.

Protests Against Estate Agent CJ Hole in Bristol This Saturday

This Saturday, the 11th April, there’s due to be a demonstration by the tenants’ rights group, ACORN, and members of the on-line petitioning group, 38 Degrees, outside the Southville branch of the Bristol estate agent, CJ Hole. The demonstration’s organiser, Nathan Williams, organised a petition on 38 degrees against the estate agent after it sent letters to local landlords asking them if they were receiving enough rent and advising them they could raise them even further.

He explained in the petition that

An estate agent in Bristol called CJ Hole has been sending out letters to its landlord clients asking “Are you getting enough rent?” and “How do you get more rent?”

The letter they are sending to landlords explains that “with rents increasing every week in Bristol, it is highly likely your property is due a rent increase.” It goes on to say that “the demand from tenants is far exceeding the number of available properties and we have never seen such a buoyant rental market.”

It doesn’t once mention the rights of tenants.

The letter shows how some estate agents and landlords are seeking to cynically profit from the housing crisis in Bristol at a time when inflation has declined to 0.3% and deflation is predicted. I think there is no justification for increasing rents at a time when prices are actually going down. In addition, real average earnings have fallen by 8% since 2008.

Such predatory rental practices are an attack on low income people and threaten the most basic of rights – the security of a home to live in.

Bristol’s housing supply has been described by an official report as “in crisis.” In 2013 just 60 affordable homes were built across Bristol.

According to Williams, the petition has so far been signed by 11,400 + people, and the figure is still rising. The boss of five of the CJ Hole branches in Bristol has also denounced the letter. The estate agent is trying to combat this negative publicity by hiring a PR firm.

Mr Williams further explains

We must make sure this petition is just the start of a campaign to stop bad estate agent practice and advance fairer tenants’ rights. The stories signatories told of extortionate rent increases, huge fees, withheld deposits and poor accommodation were all too common. So please get involved this Saturday, check out ACORN, question your MP candidates about their plans for tenants’ rights, vote, and help fight for a fairer future.

The purpose of the demonstration is to force the estate agent to sign the Ethical Lettings Charter. This requires landlords and letting agents to commit to providing accommodation which positively supports the lives of tenants, with an accreditation system reflecting the level of commitment made. In fairness, a number of landlords have already signed up to the charter. More information is available at https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/acornbristol/pages/62/attachments/original/1425338034/Bristol_Ethical_Lettings_Charter_Final_-_Email_Version.pdf?1425338034

The demonstration is due to begin at 11.00 am.

Further information on rent campaigns or ACORN is available from Nathan Williams at nathan@newcommunciations.co.uk and Nick Ballard at nick.ballard@acorncommunities.org.uk.

Further information on ACORN is at http://www.acorncommunities.org.uk/.

Updates on this and other future campaigns will be tweeted on Action On Rent and ACORN @Action_On_Rent and @ACORN_tweets.

I’m unable to go to these demonstrations, but I wish them every success. There’s a real problem with housing in Bristol and house prices in some parts of the city are comparable to London. They’re so high that local people are unable to afford them.

About four or five years ago now, the archaeology department at Bristol Uni organised a dig on one of the traffic islands used by homeless people in Bristol. This innovative exploration of a pressing issue was organised jointly by Paul Schofield, a leading British archaeologist, and a former archaeological student at the university. She was annoyed at the way Bristol’s working class environment was being closed down and destroyed in order to develop luxury housing for the rich.

With rents and mortgages so high in the city, it is wicked that CJ Hole should be advising their landlord clients to raise their rents even further.