The Conservatives constantly challenge Sir Keir Starmer over Labour’s dire record in Wales. They are right to do so. It is impossible for him to effectively rebut the attack. He can’t disown his comrades. But nor can he convincingly deny that in health, education and an array of other areas, the results achieved have been worse than in England.
But there is another instructive example that offers a warning of what a Labour Government would mean. Sir Keir has declared that he is “very proud” of Labour-run Camden Council. His constituency of Holborn and St Pancras falls within the borough.
In January, I detailed the Council’s extraordinary attack on free speech. Indeed it goes beyond that. Silence is not sufficient. Staff are required to pledge their adherence to woke ideology. A thorough system of thought control has been set up – awareness days, inclusion celebrations, policed pronouns, allowing men to use women’s lavatories and so on. It even seeks to inflict such impositions on private firms with a procurement policy that warns of the need to ensure their “values align with our own.”
Camden Council’s housing policies make the shortage of supply worse. They have an “additional licensing” arrangement to drive away private landlords by imposing extra costs and bureaucracy – while the real rogue landlords operate below the radar. Who suffers most from the resulting shortage? The homeless who come to the Council looking for somewhere to stay. As a result, Camden Council scatters them far and wide. Often they are put in hotels or hostels.
In response to a Freedom of Information request, Camden Council give me figures for homeless household placements in the last financial year – 2023/24. (“Household” could mean an individual or a family.) I asked where they were placed and the category of accommodation. 497 were put in bed and breakfast hotels. Within that category 140 were put in hotels in Camden – but most were placed outside the borough. 66 were sent off to hotels in Hackney, 78 to hotels in Brent. Some were sent to hotels outside London – Epping Forest, Gravesham, Gedling, Rotherham, Slough, Uttlesford and Watford all made the list. Imagine trying to bring up your children in a hotel. A very expensive way to achieve a very poor outcome.
There were 101 households put into hostels (nearly all in Camden.) There were 152 placed in private accommodation in Camden leased by Camden Council. Another 100 were placed in council housing in Camden. But then we have another 323 where places were found via private landlords (“nightly paid, privately managed accommodation, self-contained.”) Only 70 of these were placed in Camden. 68 were sent to live in Haringey. But as with hotel placements, some were sent out of London. Broxbourne, East Hertfordshire, Epping Forest, Harlow, Hertsmere, Slough, Three Rivers…
Sir Keir might not be aware of all those figures but surely as a local MP, he must have some notion of the system being under strain. Yet he is keen to “crackdown” on private landlords which could only put more pressure on Camden Council – which is doing a hopeless job as it is.
Camden Council has 591 council homes that have been empty for over six months. It has 901 empty council garages – many of which could be demolished and replaced with cottages. There is no excuse for hoarding these surplus assets. (We don’t know the full scale of it as the Council has failed to publish its assets register – in breach of the Transparency Code.) These surplus assets could be released to the private sector for housing development on condition that a proportion of social housing be included among the new homes.
Another way that Camden Council makes the housing shortage worse is by its planning policies. These include opposing converting offices into homes. Also being highly obstructive to those wishing to have mansard roofs. While Camden Council declares a “climate emergency” it disregards the lower carbon emissions from converting an existing building compared to building something new from scratch.
Camden Council is also a bad landlord. Last year, Micahel Gove, the Levelling Up Secretary wrote to Cllr Georgia Gould regarding a report from the Regulator of Social Housing:
The Regulator’s investigation has found the Council to be non-compliant with the Home Standard due to fire safety failures across thousands of your homes. These include more than 9,000 overdue fire remedial actions, with 400 of these being high-risk actions that should have been completed within no more than 30 days in the majority of cases. To compound this, the Regulator found that there were more than 9,000 properties which did not have a hard-wired smoke alarm installed, and just under 4,000 properties without a carbon monoxide detector.
“It is extremely concerning that so many of your tenants were put at risk in such a way, and I have no doubt that these findings will have caused them much anxiety, stress, and frustration. I myself am profoundly troubled by these failings given that Camden Council pleaded guilty to two offences under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 earlier this year, in proceedings related to the tragic death of a tenant in November 2017 after a fire at an address in Hampstead.
“It is clear that you have continued to expose your tenants to serious potential harm from fire. This is a shocking situation. Every single person in this country deserves to live in a home that is decent, safe and secure. Your properties should meet the standards expected and you must meet your obligations to your tenants. Your management of thousands of your homes has fallen below these standards, and I am deeply shocked by the gravity and sheer multitude of failings in this case.”
Cllr Gould has since been chosen as the Labour candidate for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale in the General Election.
It is not only the Council’s hostility to free speech and poor housing record that are of concern. I have noted previously that last year £295,007 was spent by Camden Council on children’s home accommodation for just one child.
Furthermore, that was a child in mainstream schooling. Being able to cope with attending an ordinary school is a strong indicator that being in institutional care is unnecessary and that alternatives such as foster care or adoption would be viable. It is true that each case is different. But in total the Council had 21 children last year that combined being in mainstream schooling with living in institutional children’s homes. The cost to the Council Taxpayers of Camden for that residential care was a staggering £2.29 million. But consider the human cost. We know that children in care are more likely to end up in prison than at university. We also know that the worst outcomes are for those put in institutional care rather than the environment of a family home. Has Cllr Gould really challenged the social workers over those decisions for those 21 children? Has Sir Keir?
By now you may have spotted a pattern emerging of high spending and awful results.
Then there is Camden Council’s spending on taxis. I asked about the “highest daily cost of home-to-school transport for any individual pupil in the financial year 2022/23.” Camden Council topped the league table with £969 per day taking a pupil to and from school. For context, the annual fees for Eton are £46,000 a year. With 190 school days a year, that’s £242 a day. In total, the Council spend over £3 million a year for transport from home to school. Again, each child’s circumstances will be different. Disabled children may be at a special school some distance away. But would it not be better for the child, as well as the Council Taxpayer, if an arrangement could be negotiated with the parents to take on this responsibility? At least the choice should be there. Camden is not the only local authority to manage the process in a bureaucratic and inflexible manner. But it does appear to be among the worst.
For a chilling vision of Starmer’s Britain tomorrow just consider the reality of Starmer’s Camden today.