Public event, Sat May 26th

In opposition to Government cuts to housing benefits, we demand…

AFFORDABLE HOUSING FOR ALL – BRING RENTS DOWN!

Calling all private tenants in Haringey

• Is your rent too high?
• Do you get enough Housing Benefit – has it been cut?
• Do you want to see affordable housing for everyone, and rent-reductions (instead of evictions) for those unable to pay?

Come and find out about your rights and what you can do to stand up to your landlord. All private tenants and those wanting to support them are welcome.

WOOD GREEN LIBRARY
Wood Green High Road, N22
Saturday May 26th, 2pm-4pm
Information stalls  *  Know-your-rights sessions  *  Discussions about what can be done
Includes refreshments & a small toddlers play area

Event supported by Haringey Housing Action Group, Haringey Solidarity Group, Day-Mer, Haringey Federation of Residents Associations, Haringey Alliance for Public Services, Haringey Defend Council Housing, The National Private Tenants Organisation

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This special public event has been organised in response to the shocking Government-driven cuts to the housing benefits of thousands of Haringey private tenants (especially hitting people under-35, those with large families, and those in anything but the cheapest 30% of local available tenancies).**

Unless landlords can be forced to lower their rents then these people and their families face eviction and possibly inability to afford anywhere in the borough.

Some of the key questions we aim to discuss at the event are….

• How can private tenants get together to support each other, know their rights and find the strength to stand up for themselves?
• What rights do tenants have if they cant pay / won’t pay high rents?
• How can we encourage people to support private tenants in defending their homes and their rights to a home, and in opposing evictions?
• What pressure can be put on landlords, including specific landlords, to get them to lower their rents?
• What can we learn from past tenants’ struggles and housing rights gained?
• Could we and should we demand a local maximum-rent level / rent-capping like existed up to the 1980s?
• Is there a need for a Haringey Private Tenants Organisation or Action Group, like in some other north London boroughs?
• What should the Council be doing to support such tenants and to provide housing to any made homeless?
• What can be done in the longer term to campaign for longer tenancies and security of tenure agreements?

On May 3rd there’s an open planning meeting to discuss the organisation of the May 26th event and how to publicise it widely throughout the borough (especially to private tenants). Publicity will include mass leafletting (contact us to let us know how many you need), doing street stalls, involving residents associations, word of mouth, posters, leafletting specific places to reach private tenants affected (eg hostels, CABs, customer centres etc), emails among local networks… please help spread the word!

The next planning meeting is at The Tollgate Pub – Thursday 3rd May, 6.30pm.26 Turnpike Lane, N8 0PS. Please come along if you have some ideas and if you can help organise the event – eg help with publicity beforehand, interpreting at the event itself, donations towards the costs etc. If you dont know us look out for the leaflets on the table in the pub!

Contact: info@haringeyresidents.org   0208 216 9651
Housing info: www.haringeyhousingaction.org.uk  Includes briefings on: ‘Cuts to Housing Benefit – The Facts’, and ‘Non-payment of Rent – Your Rights’

Note:

** The Housing Benefit Cuts

Private Tenants on Local Housing Allowance:

-Tenants will no longer be able to keep up to £15 excess, an average weekly loss of £11 income for around 440,000 low-income households
-LHA rates will now be set at the 30th and not 50th percentile of local rents leaving households even less choice of landlord or area than before
-Maximum LHA rates will also be capped for each property size, further constraining the available private rental market in pricey areas like London
-The 5-bed LHA rate is being abolished meaning families currently renting a 5-bed or larger home will now only receive the 4-bed rate, a huge reduction in benefit that will inevitably force large families into overcrowded housing conditions
-Single people aged 25-34 years old will be downgraded from the 1-bed to the shared-bed rate, hitting around 62,500 people by an average of £41 per week
-From April 2013, LHA rates will no longer be calculated by monthly market rents but will rise annually in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI)

Social housing tenants:

-From April 2013, working age tenants in council or Housing Association housing who are deemed to be living in homes ‘too large for their needs’ will have their HB cut per surplus bedroom – this is likely to hit some 670,000 households by an average of £13 per week, with 70,000 losing more than £20 per week

Dear Friends,

Legal Challenge: As you know we are currently awaiting the response from the Treasury Solicitor with regard to the letter of claim submitted by one of our parents on behalf of the parents of Downhills.  Michael Gove’s Solicitors have until this Wednesday the 11th April to respond.

Best wishes,
The Save Downhills Campaign

- Videos about the protests against Virgin taking over our  health services up and down the country.

And news about the National Conference for NHS workers on 23/6/212  and building towards a National Demonstration for NHS called by Unite.

Plus more detailed information about what services are being put to tender now- you can check whats being tendered in Haringey.

More information from www.keepournhspublic.com

- Updates: on the school academies campaigning, defence of the NHS, public sector pensions dispute, local Council services, boycotts of workfare schemes, housing benefits / affordable housing action etc..
- HAPS newsletter/bulletin: we have agreed to produce and distribute a bulletin (depending on available finances – see below) to help encourage, publicise and link up opposition to cuts and privatisation of our vital public services.

Lawyers acting for Susan Moyse, who sends her child to Downhills Primary School in Philip Lane, have sent a letter to Education Secretary Michael Gove saying they believe his decision to impose Government-approved governors at the school is illegal.

Ms Moyse and other members of the Save Downhills campaign want the old governing body, which was sacked ten days ago, to be reinstated. They say the board should be allowed to run a consultation with parents on whether the school should convert to an academy.

But the Department of Education is putting pressure on the school to become an academy, due to “inadequate” standards.

Ms Moyse said: “This school was already rapidly improving as a community school. The parents recognise this and have voted overwhelmingly against academy status.

“We’re not the ideologues and we don’t want our children used as guinea pigs in the forced academy experiment.”

The letter gives Mr Gove until April 6 to respond before legal action begins.

The Department for Education had said it would wait until the full report of an Ofsted inspection carried out last month before making any decision, but investigators recommended earlier this month that the school be placed into special measures – the worst rating.

Mr Gove argues that the school has been underperforming for several years and believes that the switch to an academy, run by the Harris Federation, is the best way for the school to improve.

The Harris Federation runs 13 academies in south London and is sponsored by Conservative peer Lord Harris, whose Carpetright store was burned down by looters during the riots last August.

Harris Federation chief executive, Dan Moynihan, and primary director, Robin Bosher, are two of five members of the interim executive board installed at Downhills to oversee the school’s conversion to an academy.

The Department for Education (DfE) has denied there is any conflict of interest with Dr Moynihan and Mr Bosher sitting on the board as it runs a consultation with parents. But campaigners argue that the process should be independent.

Beth Handley of Hickman and Rose, solicitor for Ms Moyse said: “The Secretary of State has considerable powers under the laws surrounding academy conversion, however there remain checks and balances in the system which the Secretary of State has ridden roughshod over.”

Three other schools in the borough have also been told they must convert to an academy.

Last month, Coleraine Park Primary School in Glendish Road reluctantly agreed to become an academy, following the same move by Noel Park Primary School in Gladstone Avenue a week earlier.

Governors at Nightingale Primary School in Bounds Green Road were removed by the DfE and replaced with a Government-approved board when they refused to comply.

(Haringey Independent)

http://www.haringeyindependent.co.uk/news/topstories/9612641.Downhills_campaigner_to_take_Michael_Gove_to_court_over_governors__removal/

It is reported that sanctions have been removed from the DWP’s ‘Work Experience’ scheme, which is one of five schemes which compel people to work without pay on threat of welfare sanctions. But is this yet another example of the DWP’s willingness to mislead the public?

There is no sign that sanctions have been lifted in the DWP’s press release which states: ‘The sanction regime remains in place’. Chris Grayling seems to be painting a murkier picture in TV interviews. Speaking to Sky, he first claimed “If somebody sits down with [the employer] after a couple of weeks and says ‘This really isn’t working out, I don’t want to carry on’, they wouldn’t be sanctioned. I was happy to agree to that’. But by the end of the interview, he offers an example which suggests that it will be in exceptional cases only that sanctions won’t be applied.

With workfare, the devil is in the detail. We should beware that George Osborne said of the scheme: ‘Young people who dont engage with this offer will be considered for mandatory work activity’.

Workfare schemes that compel people to work unpaid are still in place. Whatever today’s developments, they do not affect Mandatory Work Activity, Community Action Programme or the Work Programme. Thousands of people are still doing workfare through these schemes, all of which are mandatory, and can currently see people put on placements for 6 months. It is not at all clear whether today’s announcement affects the Sector Based Work Academies.

Today DWP also reported that they would expect people on ESA – a beneffit for sick and disabled people – to begin on the Work Programme within 3 months. People placed in the “Work Related Assessment Group” by ATOS can face unlimited workfare placements.

Most people have two problems with workfare: that it is forced and that it is unpaid. There is evidence that workfare replaces paid work and no evidence that workfare schemes have created a single new job. The companies who continue involvement with the government’s schemes can afford to pay the people doing the work but they choose not to.

The government is clearly under pressure: in the last two weeks, thousands of people have taken action to end forced unpaid work in the UK and the campaign continues to gather momentum.

Actions against workfare on Saturday 3rd March are going ahead across the UK. Asda, Barnardos, British Heart Foundation, Holiday Inn, Pizza Hut, Savers and Wilkinsons are companies in just one area of the country taking workfare through the Work Programme. There are hundreds of others. Take action with us!

You’ve got the opportunity right on your doorstep: Friday 2nd March, 9am, Tottenham Town Hall to show Inane Drunkan Smith what you think of Tory plans to Wreck the Future.

David
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Ministers drop benefit sanctions threat from work experience scheme

The scheme is aimed at people between 16 and 24 who have been unemployed for more than three months. Photograph: Rex Features

All benefit sanctions on the government’s work experience scheme are to be dropped by the Department for Work and Pensions following meetings between ministers and employers.

The news was conveyed by Anne Marie Carrie, the chief executive of Barnardo’s and one of the employers present at the 90-minute meeting between the employment minister, Chris Grayling, and more than 50 firms involved in the scheme.

They had met to seek reassurances that the government was not seeking to force young unemployed people into work experience schemes.

The government says the scheme is voluntary and gives someone eight weeks’ work experience. But participants can lose two weeks’ jobseeker’s allowance if they leave for no reason after more than a week on the scheme.

There have also been suggestions that some jobcentre staff do not make clear that participation on the scheme is voluntary.

The removal of the sanction after one week was a key demand of employers, some of whom said they would withdraw from the scheme unless reforms were made.

Grayling claimed the attacks on the scheme, by what the government has described as the “Trotskyist right to work” campaign, had led to an increase in employer interest in joining the scheme.

At prime minister’s questions David Cameron said 250 extra firms had shown interest in joining.
Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pension secretary, said the protesters outside Tescos were anarchists and half of them were unemployed.

“The reality for us is that this is a great programme … the kkids are getting experience,” he said.
Grayling said: “The participants are volunteers, the employers are volunteers. The employers said to us: ‘We would like to modify it. At the moment you have a got a situation where people can leave voluntarily after the first week. We would like to be able to sit down later in a work placement if it is not working and say we want to opt out.’

“We thought that was reasonable so we said fine and we will accept that.”

He added: “If you look at where we have applied sanctions it is not about turning up or not turning up, it is about inappropriate behaviour, such as theft in the workplace.”

Arguably the rules until now allowed a much wider set of reasons for sanction withdrawal.
Grayling denied he had caved in to the “Trotsykists”, saying: “The real argument of the Trotskyist is that unpaid work experience is wrong, and is denying people the right to work; they are wrong.”
Critics of Grayling and the DWP will say that they should have acted earlier in order to get rid of any accusation that the scheme amounted to workfare, since he has been under pressure from employers for more than a week on the issue

The government workfare schemes of forced labour for benefits (pushed by Iain Duncan Smith [IDS] and Chris Grayling) are starting to collapse under the pressure of protest and recent bad publicity.

On Saturday 3rd March there will be a national day of action against workfare, with protests in 20 towns in the UK.  But we have the opportunity to show our opposition locally when IDS visits Haringey on Friday morning.  He will be spinning the government nightmare at a lecture ‘Building for the Future’ at the Dream Centre in Tottenham Town Hall (9.30 am to 12 noon).

Join the 9am picket/protest outside Tottenham Town Hall (5 minutes walk up the High Road from Seven Sisters tube station) – called by Boycott Workfare

www.boycottworkfare.org

Approximately 150 people from an array of concerned groups – including Haringey Defend Council Housing, Haringey UNISON and Defend Haringey’s Health Services Coalition – joined the peaceful protest to show their concern about council funding cuts.

Zena Tafari, who has lived in Tottenham for 14 years, joined the march to represent former users of The Six8Four Centre which shut down in January due to council cuts. The Tottenham centre helped people suffering with mental health problems in the borough to improve self-confidence and develop life skills. Mrs Tafari, who used the centre regularly and works full time as a babysitter, said: “The centre was the heart of Tottenham and it is like the government pierced it with an arrow right through the heart.

“Since it closed I have seen so many people just walking on the street in a daze, they don’t know where to go. I don’t have a big enough house for people to come and sit down together inside. “I can’t even imagine it can get worse but if it does, there will be more riots, I can guarantee you.” She added: “We are supposed to stand up for progress, that is what the Labour party always say – so why aren’t they standing up to the government to say ‘look, this community needs building up, not breaking down.’

“People are going to suffer if it gets worse and it will lead to more tension and more drugs on the streets. “People will turn to crack cocaine and there will be a horrid atmosphere in the borough.” Other campaigners spoke through a loud speaker at the entrance to the Civic Centre about their concerns regarding council cuts. The protestors waved anti-cut banners and chanted “no ifs, no buts – public sector cuts” and “they say cut back, we say fight back.”

Mhairi McGhee, from Haringey Disability First Consortium – a community group which aim to support and represent disability issues in the borough – also showed her dissatisfaction with council cuts outside the Civic Centre last night.

Ms McGhee, who works in Tottenham and lives in Turnpike Lane, said: “I am here to show my support to members of our group that will be affected by council cuts. “What I am concerned about is that the impact from the cuts made in last year’s budget still haven’t been felt from last year, so what’s going to happen once there are more cuts? “I’m incredibly worried about the impact it is going to have to these people, their lives are getting nibbled away at as these cuts continue.”

At last year’s meeting, where £41million was cut from the budget, protesters stormed into the Civic Centre and clashed with police, breaking into the council chamber and temporarily stopping proceedings.

All the protestors had left the Civic Centre in High Road by the time the meeting finished at 9.30pm.

http://www.haringeyindependent.co.uk/news/9560441.Protest_march_against_council_cuts/

Thursday 8th March, 7.15pm  at the North London Community Centre
Moorefield Road, London N17

- Please attend, or ensure someone from your organisation is present
- All welcome – whether as an individual or from an organisation