The Beeston Days Out 2019 which goes to Pixels & Graphics

With luck you should be able to pick up your very own copy of Beeston Days Out 2019 at the Beeston Festival on Saturday.

In the meantime, explore:

Click on the images to enlarge.

Should Broxtowe be considering further HMO licensing before an Article 4 Direction?

This is a copy of the response I am sending to Broxtowe Borough Council's Chief Executive. I hope it is self-explanatory!

Click on each page to enlarge.

Understanding HMOs — a Nottingham Manual and learning from others

The fact that Broxtowe Borough Council is taking an interest in Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs), thanks to its recently elected Labour/Liberal council, is to be celebrated.

I had hoped they would spend the rest of 2019 gathering together what data they already have, whilst delving deeper into their records for even more. The fact that I have not asked for such data, even though I know it exists, is because I have been, and remain, mindful of the extra workload I place on diligent council officers who get the job of responding to my Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.

To give you just one example. The Council's student council tax exemption form requires the property owner applying for the exemption to list the names of the tenants/occupants of the property in question as I show below (click on image to enlarge):

The owner is not always a landlord. Parents of students buy houses for their children or the students buy them. For some the fact that they become landlords is almost accidental. 'Our Mark can live with his friends, they can all have a room each, and they can help pay the mortgage and running costs too'. 

A landlord, on the other hand, is always on the lookout for a chance to make money. His move into renting out houses to students is calculated. Look at the form below. My next FOI will ask for the number of names on every student council tax exemption form (not individual names). This will enable me to say how many of the exemptions are for small, unregistered, HMOs and how many are for large HMOs (the latter should equal the number of HMO Register entries, excluding the exceptions). The following pages from Nottingham City Council's HMO Manual should help you understand the process. Broxtowe Borough Council should be publishing something similar.

Remember, Nottingham also require small HMOs to register. Broxtowe doesn't.

Mapping HMOs and Student Council Tax Exempt properties - new maps

Broxtowe Borough Council's Jobs & Economy Committee has HMOs on its agenda when it meets this coming Thursday (4 July). Here is a link to the report:

https://democracy.broxtowe.gov.uk/documents/s4101/5.%20HIMO%20report.pdf

I will be including these maps in my response but right now I have been prompted to share my maps with you because of an online discussion currently taking place on Beeston Update about HMOs.

Click on the maps to enlarge:

I regard this map and council tax exemption data to be more important than the HMO Register when it comes to understanding why small HMOs need to be registered as well as large HMOs (small HMOs have 3-4 unrelated tenants living in them and, presently, are not registered).

The map clearly shows that there are few student council tax exempt properties outside Beeston.

You can use the 'search' facility on this blog to find posts by me dating back to 2015.

There is only one registered HMO outside the Beeston area in Broxtowe. It is in Nuthall. I suspect that there are many more properties which should be registered as HMOs.

Nottingham City Transport have kindly been mapping student halls of residence on their bus maps for the past two years. They appear on this map as numbers in boxes, which link to this list alonside the map:

Albion House and part of Broadgate Park are in Broxtowe. The other part of the latter is in Nottingham, albeit one bus stop away or a five minue walk. 

HMOs also have tenants who are workers and pay council tax, so small HMOs can easily go unidentified, especially if the tenants do not register as voters.

Right now, after years of inaction under a Conservative council, the Council is rushing headlong towards a policy for which it has yet to gather the evidence or to use what it already has. That is the data I have obtaining  from the Borough Council to compile my own tables and maps since 2015.

I really welcome the Council's interest but they need to slow down and think about what it is they want to achieve.

Finally, a link to a report from Coventry City Council in January this year which our Council might like to examine:

https://www.coventry.gov.uk/news/article/2760/licensing_properties_consultation

Euro Election result for Broxtowe Borough Council area (click on result to enlarge):

Excluding Labour and the Conservatives, the Leave camp received a total of 12,975 votes and the Remain camp 12,729. Close, but now two out of two for the Leave camp. Best of five anyone?

The Brexit Party provides a clear focus for Leave voters and that has to be an advantage.

Between a rock and a hard place - Labour’s dilemma

From the lead story in today’s Guardian about the Euro election results:

The Labour leader (Jeremy Corbyn) said “After three years of Tory failure to deliver a Brexit that works for the whole country, these elections became a proxy second referendum. Over the coming days we will have conversations across our party and movement, and reflect on these results on both sides of the Brexit divide.”

I used my postal vote in yesterday's Euro election to vote Green. As I explained in my blog post dated 11 May 2019:

The Labour Party continues to flounder when it comes to Europe despite saying quite clearly ‘Labour accepts the Referendum result’. It is split just like the Conservatives. We are either in or out. We can leave soft or we can leave hard. If we leave I’d like it to be ‘soft’, with as little disruption as possible but, like it or not, the Euro Election on the 23rd is, in effect, going to be ‘The People’s Vote’ / 2nd referendum but not a ‘Confirmatory vote’ because no one knows, as at today, what the terms of our leaving are going to be! So, if you want to leave you’ll vote Brexit or UKIP. If you want to stay, you’ll vote Change UK, Liberal or Green and I have cast my postal vote for the latter.

For me it was the last role of the dice when it came to voting Remain. It was 'a proxy second referendum' as I predicted it would be and Jeremy Corbyn confirmed in The Guardian today. 

I'm happy to go with Jeremy Corbyn on this one and anyone who heard Stephen Kinnock last night on BBC-TV's post-election results programme who is not blind to the obvious will see merit in what he says about keeping faith with Labour's working class leave voters.

The Remainers have had their chance and they have blown it.

We stayed up last night and watched the results as they came in. Two things struck us. That there was hardly any mention of the percentage turnout and on the few occasions when there was it was low. Given the media's 24/7 coverage no one could not know the Euro election was taking place. Secondly, we will have to wait a few days before we know how electors voted by age group. Brexit and UKIP have to be taken together, both being willing to leave without a deal. Again, no one voting for them could be in any doubt as to where they stand on Brexit. On the other side of the divide, the Liberals, Greens and Change UK stood for Remain.

I captured the table below from the BBC News website (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-
48403131) (click on the table to enlarge):

What it suggests to me is that Labour 'Remain' voters did not desert the Party in the same numbers as 'Leave' voters — in other words the last thing Labour's leadership should be calling for is a general election because the Brexit Party will have a field day at Labour's expense. Farage has it sights set on Downing Street and the man is on a roll. The Conservatives understand this and will choose a leader to counter him and, in my estimation, stand a better chance of bouncing back than Labour. Stephen Kinnock and Jeremy Corbyn need to be listened to, assuming Corbyn does finally show some leadership.

The last thing Labour should be arguing for before we have left Europe is a General Election. 

Post-Brexit I am in no doubt that Labour is the Party to lead England's recovery. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are, for all intents and purposes, in charge of their own destinies. 

Farage and his Brexit Party will not be sated once we have left Europe. I suspect they will then champion English nationalism and point out that those of us who live in England are not in charge of our own affairs so long as MPs from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can vote on what happens in England, and I have to admit it is a powerful argument — which I would counter by devolving power back to local government in England.

Even then there will be the question of how to stop London and Westminster dominating the rest of England?

This may seem a long way from yesterday's Euro Election and its miserable results but the seeds sown when Parliament agreed to the first referendum have reaped their second harvest with the promise of more to come and, as yesterday showed, there is no magic weed killer. From now on it has to be about care and good cultivation and I know only one national politician with green fingers — Jeremy Corbyn!

I just hope he finds the courage, albeit belatedly, to show leadership.

FOOTNOTE 1: Nottingham and Leicester were among the few bright spots where Labour came first. I am in no doubt that strong local leadership by the Labour Party played a part.

FOOTNOTE 2: The Euro Election turnout, I have just heard on the BBC 2pm TV News was 37%! Yes, a miserable 37%! I wait with interest to see what percentage of each age group voted.

FOOTNOTE 3: From today's Guardian also. 'Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable says it is "very clear" that there is a "clear majority in the country who want to stop Brexit". "We've had a brilliant result, we've got a lot now to build on," he adds.'

The 62% who didn't vote read and hear this kind of Westminster speak and it only confirms their low opinion of professional politicians.

FOOTNOTE 4: Another quote from today's Guardian. THis time from an article by Gloria De Piero, MP for Ashfield, which includes part of Broxtowe Borough Council's area: 

'Another referendum will not fix the problem, it will merely reinforce it. Further, I’ve seen nothing to suggest the outcome of a referendum would be different. But even if it produced a narrow remain victory, why would that have legitimacy when the first referendum didn’t? It smacks of a political establishment that wants to keep asking the same question until it gets the answer it wants. According to the academics Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin, 58% of those who voted to leave also say that politicians don’t listen to people like them. Surely we want to prove them wrong, not right?

Some of my colleagues argue that a second referendum is the only way out of this impasse, but it’s clear many just see it as a way of blocking Brexit altogether. If that happened, and Labour was instrumental in overturning a democratic mandate, then what do we say to leave voters, and indeed millions of remain voters, who do accept the mandate and want to move on, the next time we ask them to trust us?'.

Here is a link to the article.

Beeston Transport Spider Map update

I have updated my Beeston Transport Spider Map to take account of the L11 being withdrawn between Bulwell and Arnold (the 23 June has been mentioned but has to be confirmed). I have also added Bramcote's sunken church tower and Wollaton Dovecote to the heritage locations marked on the map. Click on the map to enlarge.