I wrote this article for yesterday’s Sunday Express (I’ve copied it in full below to save you the link) about some radical new ideas from the New Local Government Network think tank.
They are huge backers of the potential of local government to do good and they want Communities Secretary Eric Pickles to devolve more powers to town halls.
To ensure these new “super-councils” would be fully accountable, the NLGN (whose communications boss is Phil Baker is a former chair of the Tower Hamlets Lib Dems by the way) says they should be elected by compulsory voting.
This would also avoid rogue results and naturally this got me thinking about Tower Hamlets as I went on my run today.
Then I reached Victoria Park.
Less than a month after I raised this warning, our council has allowed London’s most beautiful park to be ruined.
And that’s not just me saying that; those are the words of Eddie Gladman and his wife Iris.
They were in the park for a walk this afternoon. They said the damage caused by the Lovebox and Field Day festivals earlier this month was “heartbreaking”.
These photos don’t do the damage the full justice, but they give you a flavour:
As I was talking to Eddie and Iris, others who had been taking their grandchildren to play also stopped by.
There is real anger about what has happened. One man said the paths that have now been churned into mudtracks were now “dangerous”, that one child had already tripped on a rut.
The mums who use the One O’Clock Club are now forced to take a long detour to avoid the ruts.
The 400m athletics track, the only free one in east London, has been turned into a commandos’ assault course: what an “Olympic Legacy” that is.
The mud is now so inviting that it’s ripe for quad bikes: in fact, two little urchins screeched by on a mini-motorbike as I was taking pictures. Here they are: not a park warden in sight.
Eddie told me he’d lived here all his life. He said: “If I had a penny for every time I have walked around this park, I’d be a very rich man.
“They had allotments here during the war. They kept it better then than they do now.
“There’s no respect for it. I called the council to complain about the mess and the woman there told me ‘not to worry’. She said, ‘It’ll be back to normal next week.’
“What planet are they on? The’ve just spent £12million of Lottery money renovating it, and now look at it.”
Even a policewoman riding by on a horse rode agreed it was a disgrace: “And they used to moan about the marks from horses’ hooves!” she said.
Yes, we’ve had a lot of rain, but this was always an accident waiting to happen. That we haven’t had rain before during these events before has been quite fortunate.
The previous Labour run council and Mayor Lutfur Rahman just got greedy.
One of our councillors must now come out and say enough is enough. This has to be the last year that Victoria Park hosts these events.
Last weekend, tens of thousands went to Hackney Marshes for the Hackney 2012 gigs. Hackney Marshes are a far more appropriate venue for these events: there are far fewer neighbours affected by noise, they’re a much larger open space and they don’t pretend to be anything more than a wide expanse. They’re not a landscaped park like ours.
One park keeper told me today that the council was going to try and bill the organisers of this month’s events £30,000 for the damage. He also said there was no way it could be repaired in time for the next festival onslaught: the 17 consecutive days of Olympic Live Nation gigs next month.
A few weeks ago, Lutfur and his unofficial deputy Alibor Choudhury came calling on a neighbour of mine, former Lib Dem councillor Ray Gipson. Alibor told Ray that Labour group leader Josh Peck, a councillor for Bow West, had been letting Bow down and that he, Alibor, was there to fix things.
Well, Alibor, here’s a message: why not start with Victoria Park? Why not tell Live Nation that, aside from the health and safety issues, the muddy park simply won’t be able to withstand more than a million people jumping up and down next month? As the man in charge of our council taxes, you are quite happy to take money for our parking permits based on CO2 emissions, so come on, be consistent in your green credentials and protect our green spaces.
Anyway, here’s the Sunday Express article on localism: given the experience of Tower Hamlets, I think the NLGN needs to think about how local leaders and council officers are more responsive to residents’ views.
ENGLISH councils should be given new powers over benefits, prisons and “the levers of economic growth”, a think tank will urge this week.
The New Local Government Network is calling for a Devolution Bill that would enhance the role of councils in England just as the question of Scottish independence rages north of the border.
It wants a new generation of so-called “super-shires and city states” elected by compulsory voting to “balance the power of the Scottish parliament and Welsh Assembly”.
The structure would be modelled on Boris Johnson’s Greater London Authority, but with services such as prisons and benefits administration and job centres also pushed out to the local level.
Skills training would also be left to the authorities to match the business needs of individual areas. Think tank director Simon Parker said voting for the councils should be compulsory, with fines for anyone who failed to vote. He said the reforms would do away with any need for a separate English parliament.
Mr Parker said: “The Government needs an answer to the English question. This doesn’t require expensive new parliaments with yet more politicians – it can be done by giving more power to towns and cities.
“That way, local people are in the driving seat of change.”
In Westminster two weeks ago, Mr Parker told Communities Secretary Eric Pickles that the Government’s localism agenda “could be running out of steam”.
In the introduction to the manifesto, he urges the Minister to go further, adding: “England stands at a moment of profound political and constitutional stress.
“The combination of economic crisis, spending cuts and an ageing population is forcing a historic reformation of public services, which has been grasped with varying degrees of enthusiasm by the UK’s politicians.
“This report argues that these challenges can be addressed in part by a renewed push for greater localism, by which we mean the devolution of substantial power from Whitehall to cities and shires and the further devolution of power from localities to neighbourhoods.
“At a time when the country desperately needs a return to robust economic growth, an emerging body of research shows that devolving funding to councils has the potential to increase GDP.
“We currently have a unique opportunity to create a new generation of self-governing shires and city states. The Government appears willing, but it must go further to give cities and shires control over the levers of economic growth.”
Only those existing councils willing to create larger strategic authorities would be eligible for more powers.
Mr Parker concludes: “The argument is for the kind of strong localities that can be found in places such as the US, Germany and the Scandinavian countries.”
Mr Pickles said he was looking forward to reading the full report.
Trial by Jeory 
We’re not the Isle of Lewis: it should be possible to have fun in Tower Hamlets. I went to Field Day and Lovebox, if you did a utilitarian calculus of the people who had an amazing time at these events, and the people made a bit sad by the aftermath, it would surely come out in the events’ favour.
There’s so much positive about these kind of events, loads of different kinds of people coming together to have a good time, all the creativity on stage, the impact of participants like Art Against Knives, a local charity working with young people who had a wee stage there. And also being able to show people how nice our area and park are.
Sure, there are always people who like moaning about other people having too much fun, but it’s hardly as if the whole park has been devastated. I welcome the council taking robust measures to ensure the park is protected and restored properly by event organisers, and to an extent even Josh Peck’s efforts to limit the number of commercial events in the park – I can imagine that the noise would be increasingly annoying if it’s too often.
But to call for a ban on events in the park just looks like yet another example of treating young people as second class citizens. EMA axed, tuition fees hiked, proposals to increase youth homelessness promulgated, and now plans to ban young people from dancing to Django Django and the Hackney Colliery Band with their mates in the park once in a blue moon. Just in case someone stands on a daisy.
Some people just need to relax and let young people have a bit of fun once in a while.
And as for the council being greedy, trying to get a bit of money together to protect vital local services in the face of brutal central government cuts is not how I’d define greed.
No one is saying “young people can’t have fun” and neither is this a NIMBY issue nor about denying that Arts Against Knives do good work; it’s about an appropriate place for fun. Victoria Park simply can’t cope with the scale of these events. The “whole park” has not been devastated, but a large part of it has been. That means less space for families, even during the couple of weeks when the barriers have been removed.
Are you against Lovebox and Field Day being staged in Hackney Marshes? Or is the rental income that pays for the Mayor’s luxury chauffeured car the deciding factor for you?
I think you’ve done well to suggest which other peoples’ back yard the events should go in. Unfortunately, the user group there don’t think the marshes suitable either: http://sustainablehackney.org.uk/hmug/closure-of-hackney-marsh – and I don’t think they’d be at all happy with events from parks all over London being displaced to their nature reserve.
We walked to Field Day and Lovebox, as did many of my friends. One of the reasons we moved to this area is because there’s so much fun stuff going on. There are more than enough stultifying places in this country – I don’t think we should be making Tower Hamlets one of them.
Point taken about the marshes and I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments of the user group there. They make the same points as those concerned about Victoria Park.
It’s great you moved here for a couple of gigs and you were able to walk to the park but what do you say to those whose backyards and gardens have been used as toilets by “young people” on the way back from Lovebox?
Perhaps Lovebox should try hiring Hyde Park for a couple of days.
A mate has just reminded me that the reason Lovebox came to Vic Park was because of the “over-zealous” noise restrictions in Clapham Common, its original base (see here http://www.residentadvisor.net/event.aspx?58391).
Would be interested to know how those restrictions differed to ones imposed by our council…
Some are referring to the Localism agenda as a move towards mob rule; a real possibility in Tower Hamlets one would think. Fancy, replacing a dictatorship with mob rule, or even worst, a dictator and mob rule! These detractors would have a point if it weren’t for the recommendation that it be coupled with compulsory voting, which few countries have adopted – Australia being one.
My fear is that our silent majority need more than compulsion to vote rationally; they need to better understand the consequences of throwing votes they are forced to make, out of sheer laziness.
NLGN can work, and work better than any previous democratic system we’ve suffered under. But, and this is a big BUT, the electorate have to understand the dynamics of local politics to be able to cast their votes based on a wider criteria than the prevailing (well funded) political party machines.
This means we need to build up community groups and forums to encourage a wider ethnic mix of our community; forums to become involved in their local community – what is now referred to (and abused locally) as ‘inclusiveness’. For this to work, we must all accept a share of community responsibility and build effective multi ethnic forums, or be dictated to by the few.
Achieve this and when compulsory voting comes, the electoral outcome should reflect the the broad spectrum of an informed community.
Ted, I think you’ve made it clear that there are constraints on having these kind of events anywhere – wherever they go there’ll be someone to complain. So either we allow these kinds of events, try to mitigate the effects they cause, and people accept that part of living in a free society is having to get over other people doing things you don’t like; or create some kind of no fun gerontocracy where there’s no excitement to be had apart from rioting, in case a toddler risks the mortal danger of falling on some soft mud.
As for people weeing in people’s gardens on the way home, there’s always some wrong-uns in any group of people. Although I’m not lucky enough to have a garden for anyone to urinate in, I do find it gross when people have a slash in the stairs in our block. But to punish the the majority of event-goers for the misdemeanors of a small minority is like banning all dogs, because a minority don’t pick up after them. Or banning cars because some people drive dangerously.
The council has a bond from the event organisers. The ground just needs raking and seeding, and in a couple of weeks it will all be fine. It really isn’t worth being such a killjoy about.
Or looking at it through the other end of your long telescope, it’s perhaps conceivable that these events aren’t very appropriate in urban residential areas where green open space, particularly in summer, is a rare commodity.
This has nothing to do with dog poo, so a bit odd to make that comparison. It’s about the council being responsive to the view of its taxpayers and protecting its resources.
I’m sure you’re being ironically flippant about the grass being ok in a couple of weeks, but just in case you’re not, it’s worth pointing out that Live Nation will be arriving in a fortnight.
It’s also worth pointing out the views of the council’s own planning department over an application to build a temporary 4000-strong bike rack near to St Mark’s Gate for the Olympics: they accept the grass in that area will be ruined for some six months.
Now, the Mayor agreed to the Live Nation deal without any consultation with residents because he deemed it an insignificant non-key decision. So i supose it would be asking too much of him to now visit the park and see for himself the damage caused.
As i say, Hyde Park might be the ideal venue.
The parks can’t take it! Let’s banish the young people from towns, forced to roam the countryside in search of a good time. Maybe they could be forced to carry a bell, to warn people of their presence like some mediaeval lepers – but not ones that could cause repetitive beats lest they fall foul of the all that 90s legislation from the last time people tried to have a few cheeky raves by the M25. And if they can’t afford the £168 ticket price, train fare and time off work to go to a camping festival, then tough.
Some spaces will be better able to accommodate events than others. http://www.londonpleasuregardens.com/ have a good site (for now, under a meanwhile lease) but there’s nowhere that can handle all the impacts from events displaced from whatever a neighbour complains, not even Hyde Park. If these events are spread around the place, then the effects are less concentrated and they’re more accessible to various local people.
So sure, show the mayor the effects that will need to be mitigated for future events, and consult with residents to garner information about where more way-home stewarding is needed etc. But this is a public park – the public includes people – TH residents like me and my friends – who want to go to such events. The council needs to BALANCE the wishes of adjacent residents and event-goers, not cancel all events because of some absurd hyperbole about devastation – it’s not like Metronomy were using white phosphorus flares as stage lighting and Grace Jones’s backing band were making a drum beat by setting off nuclear bombs. It’s some mud, on some grass. It will grow back. Meanwhile most of the massive park is still unaffected.
Let the young people have some fun, there are much more significant issues that need to be worried about. British peeps are used to a little mud I’m sure.
Architecton has missed a number of points but with his convoluted logic that was only to be expected. Quite what the relationship between the axing of EMA, rising youth unemployment and the cutting of housing benefits is to the churning up of the eastern end of Victoria Park is I have no idea.
The park was bought and laid out for the benefit of the people of East London not masses from all over the south of England and possibly further. The contrast between the battle of the Somme end and my own at the far end of Gore Road could not be starker.
If local people were to have been consulted the response would have been an overwhelming no but in his quest to balance his budget with deficits caused by his own profligate policies Mayor Lutfur Rahman has behaved in his usual dictatorial manner.
The park is for the use of local people and of course anyone else who wants to come and enjoy it in the manner it was intended. The proper place for these kind of events is Hyde Park where there are very few local people to disturb.
I agree that the Mayor should be invited to come to see the park and even more to explain himself to a meeting of local residents. I rather imagine that he would decline both.
Cycled through Vicky Park today and agree the grass in certain areas has been churned up or compacted to allow standing water to remain but agree with Arichitecton that with minimal intervention (some levelling, forking and maybe some turf) it will be OK in a couple of weeks.
Let’s have another post in two weeks with photos indicating exactly what the state of the park is.
If it’s going to recover fast fine. If it’s not, it’s time to give some very serious thought to why these festivals are being held for the benefits of lots of people who don’t even live in the boroughs immediately adjacent to the park and don’t contribute a bean to the budget that looks after this park.
If there’s going to be pain for local residents from these sort of events, let’s maybe think about sharing it around all the different parks in the borough – and then let’s see what the residents of Tower Hamlets think about having these sort of events in their parks.
Forgot to say – I’d also really love to know what Live Nation think about the state of the site they’ve got to set up on in the very near future.
I know they were very worried about issues relating to the Council and publicity – but I don’t think they factored in a Council which didn’t ensure that the stuff was down which stops the heavy vehicles from churning up the grass and turning it into mud if it’s wet.
It’s very clear from all the photos which are circulating that there was absolutely nothing done to control the routes used by vehicles or to reduce the impact of them on the grass. That’s completely unacceptable.
I can’t remember what it’s called but I’ve certainly seen it down in the park in previous years – on the pathways used by the heavy vehicles. I remember being quite impressed by how little damage there was afterwards when it was taken up.
I’ve got no particular objection to the events happening in the park, but I think the way that they are managed needs to be significantly improved. I’m concerned about how the contractors behave in the park during the set up period. The 5 miles per hour speed limit for vehicles in the park is routinely ignored and doesn’t seem to be enforced by anyone. It feels like the wild west! (and has done at many times during the last two years of refurbishment works). The reason this is important is that the park should be a place where you go to feel relaxed and safe. It should not feel like you are on a main road, particularly for people like me with 3 young children. When I’ve challenged people on this (when I could catch up with them) the drivers displayed the arrogance common to many drivers who think that they know best, and don’t need to follow the rules, and the security staff on the gates told me that there’s nothing they can do, though the vehicles have number plates, and someone must know who’s driving them. I assume that showing disrespect to park users and driving too fast constitutes a breach of the conditions of the licence. I’m now dreading the setting up of the Olympic live site. I know it’s not that important in the great scheme of things, but it makes me want to avoid the park in the summer, which can’t be right!
“if you did a utilitarian calculus of the people who had an amazing time at these events, and the people made a bit sad by the aftermath, it would surely come out in the events’ favour.”
I would be quite interested in the assumptions behind this calculus. As one of the immediate neighbours of these events I can tell you that “surely” the result would not be in the the events’ favour. A day of good fun for someone who lives far away from Vic Park (or not close enough to be disturbed) does not outweigh all the noise from the events we have to put up with (during the setting up of events, during actual concerts, during the dismantling), people using our property as toilets, park closures, park destruction, increased traffic etc. 2.5 weeks of annoyance per event, several times a year, on a yearly basis!
All these apparently ‘heartbroken’ lines that we are having to read in your blog and in the local newspapers is a complete distortion of the facts? None of our politicians are as innocent as they claim to be!
On Vicky Park, we read that the leader of Labour group, Cllr. Joshua Peck stated he felt ‘heartbroken’ with the state a patch of the park was left behind in after the field-day event and even gave us a photograph t dwell upon in his sorrows…..ahhhhh………..
But the following week at the councils Development Committee meeting, his fellow LABOUR councillors all unanimously voted in favour of allowing Live Nation to hold these events in yes, this very same Vicky park! Not one single one of them raised an objection or raised concerns when they had the opportunity to ask officers questions in relation to these Publicity hungry concerns, how disingenious? If they had voted against it, then the events woudl not be able to go ahead without planning permission. As always, they all ‘talk the talk’, but never ‘walk the walk’.
The money from these events contributes to the upkeep of the park and towards other community events such as the fireworks display. I am more than certain that the council will re-turf the natural wear and tear from the stampede of people expected to make use of the park, whether it be for an event or people just enjoying the park on a summers day. I hope Ted will give us an update of pictures once the areas he has highlighted via his photographic credentials have been duly put back to their original glory by the council?
Well said.
Funny, Labour cllrs , especially Peck and Abbas, constantly complain the borough is run by the Taliban. These events at least prove that isn’t true.
It’s obvious politics – get Lutfur to stop parties in the park (and eventually gay pride) and reinforce the ‘Islamic fanatic mayor’ propaganda! What a way ‘to get the vote out in Bow’!!
Personally, I love these events and don’t want them to end because of a selfish few. Residents’ feelings are important but there are ways to strike a balance.
[…] dirt possible on essentially Bengali Labour councillors. Even now, I read with despair when I see it is reported that the Mayor and a councillor from Shadwell came to see my former ward colleagu…. So what? Is this talking about important issues that actually matter to local people? There is an […]
[…] dirt possible on essentially Bengali Labour councillors. Even now, I read with despair when I see it is reported that the Mayor and a councillor from Shadwell came to see my former ward colleagu…. So what? Is this talking about important issues that actually matter to local people? There is an […]