First time at the Court of Common Council

Anne Corbett

Thank you for electing me as a resident councillor and a Labour candidate. Natasha, Frances, and I are now part of the “Cripplegate Eight” and we are committed to working together for residents. I am delighted that we will be holding resident surgeries in the Golden Lane Community Centre on the first Thursday of every month (except the Bank Holiday on 2nd June – the date for June is Thursday 9th).

Our first Common Council on 21st April, 2022 was when we were presented to the Lord Mayor of London in the Guildhall as the “newbies” – there are thirty-eight new Common Councillors, we are told (unofficially) that the new council has more women and more people from Black, Asian minority ethnic groups. Unfortunately, the City of London does not profile the twenty-five Alderman and one hundred Common Councillors, so we don’t know for sure how the make-up of the Council has changed. However, we know that the majority of those elected are businesspeople who work mostly in finance, insurance, and law.

My first impressions of the Common Council were mostly positive, and I enjoyed the day which included a rehearsal in the morning, a church service and lunch followed by the Court at 1pm and then afternoon tea. I was not able to attend on the morning due to work commitments, but I was well-directed by Natasha, Mark and Sue who guided me into the right places for the Court in the afternoon. During the afternoon I met new and established councillors who were friendly and interested in the Golden Lane Estate. We need to keep our estate issues live and make sure that the business councillors continue to listen to residents’ concerns.

At the Court of Common Council, Mark and Sue spoke clearly and forcefully about resident representation. Natasha also petitioned the Court to consider substitutions for places on committees when a resident councillor is unable to attend and vote. The Cripplegate voice was loud…

Here are the election results for Cripplegate Ward. These are pretty remarkable. Susan Pearson, Natasha Lloyd-Owen and Anne Corbett have each won more votes than any other candidate anywhere in the City of London. They have also, almost certainly, won the most votes won in the last 100 years. This is a huge credit to residential engagement. There are four main residential wards of the twenty five in the City of London. The level of votes in these wards was signifcant and makes an interesting contrast with the few votes that are needed to win in the business wards.  

Have a look at the election results across the whole of the City here.

On the 13th January there was a full City Council meeting where Sue Pearson, your local Common Councillor, proposed a motion that the repairs programme for all the City Estates be accelerated by using some of the City’s financial reserves. 

The repairs programme is moving incredibly slowly even by the City’s standards with the last 5 year plan being inadequately funded while the Estates decay and tenants live in unacceptable conditions. 

The City has a fund called City Cash which has reserves of £2.6 billion. They have dedicated £50 million of this money to support small business during the pandemic but nothing to support residents. £37 million of this money has not been spent and Sue suggested that, as a start, it might be a good idea to redirect this to Estate repairs.

At the Council meeting discussion of the motion was cut short by a point of order and the the motion to speed up repair of your Estates was lost by 75 votes to 19. A supportive councillor, Graeme Harrower, has written a report of the meeting at the link below:

https://gbr01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fr...

He has also, usefully, made a record of which way councillors voted and perhaps electors would like to think about this when casting their votes in the elections in March. 80% of councillors are elected by businesses and 20% by residents. This split is reflected in the vote.

Public call for the City of London Corporation to respect the law

We, the City councillors named below, call on the City Corporation to pay its social housing tenants a full refund of a profit that it (and a number of other local authorities) made on “water reselling” from 2001 to 2019 following a ruling by the courts that this profit was unlawful.

The City Corporation should have taken the lead in paying a full refund, because it:

- prides itself on upholding the rule of law,

- is the wealthiest local authority in the country, and

- has the smallest number of social housing tenants. 

But it hasn’t done that. While many other local authorities - including Kensington and Chelsea (https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/housing/rent-employment-and-financial-support/water-charges-rebate), Southwark (https://www.southwark.gov.uk/housing/water-refunds) and Lambeth(https://beta.lambeth.gov.uk/housing/council-tenants/overpayment-thames-water-charges/how-credit-calculated) - have been paying full refunds plus interest for some time, the City has yet to make any announcement about what it will (or, it seems, won’t) do. 

The issue of water charge refunds appeared in the agendas of the meetings of three City committees over the last nine months: the Housing Sub-Committee in May, the Community and Children’s Services Committee in September and the governing Policy and Resources Committee in November. Although each committee discussed the issue, no announcement has yet been made. The issue is expected to appear again in the agenda of the meeting of the Policy and Resources Committee on 20 January.…