Police cuts will risk safety of Hackney residents, warns Mayor Glanville
Decline: police numbers in Hackney are down by 24 per cent since 2010.
Mayor Philip Glanville has warned the government that further cuts to police funding will put the security of Hackney residents at risk.
The borough has been hardest hit by cuts to the Metropolitan Police Service’s (MPS) budget since 2010, with officer numbers down from 770 to 578, a drop of 24 per cent.
The capital’s police force has had to find £600 million in savings during that time, with another £400 million earmarked for the next few years.
The government is expected to decide on further cuts to police spending in March.
Figures from January show total crime in Hackney is up 6.4 per cent in the last 12 months – nearly double the London average of 3.5 per cent – after years of decline.
There has also been a worrying increase in violence and theft-related crime in the past year, with burglary up 8.9 per cent, robbery up 2.3 per cent and violence against person rising by 5.5 per cent.
In a letter to Home Secretary Amber Rudd, Glanville expressed concerns that further cuts will put long term crime reduction in Hackney at “serious risk”.
He wrote: “After many years of dedicated work, and much success, in reducing crime levels in Hackney, I fear a continued fall in policing resources and numbers in Hackney would put this trend at serious risk, damage community relations and the partnership work that underpins them.
“I am particularly concerned that our award-winning work on gangs and youth violence, through Hackney’s Integrated Gangs Unit, will be put at risk if MPS funding is cut further.”
Glanville is worried about the strain on the number of officers dedicated to tackling gangs, which he says has “reduced from 40 to around 20 currently, including a period in 2015 where this dropped to just six officers”.
He told Rudd: “I hope you join me in supporting the Mayor of London’s commitment to the strategic target of 32,000 officers across London and his decision to increase the policing precept in London by an average of 8p per week to contribute towards this – something his predecessor chose not to do last year, against the advice of his own government.”
The Town Hall’s enforcement boss Caroline Selman also called for “adequate funding and staffing” to help keep communities safe. She said: “Hackney has faced a disproportionate cut to its policing resources since 2010. This is now beginning to have an effect as we see overall crime statistics beginning to rise. Any further regressive and short-sighted cuts to London’s police service will put the safety of the capital and its residents at risk.
“Investment, not further reduction in funding is needed to ensure a low crime future for London and Hackney. We need to cut crime in London and this will not be done by cutting the MPS even further.”
If only Glanville could sort out the corruption in his own council which also puts residents homes and quality of life at risk. Instead he prefers to ignore it and sweep it under the carpet. Why doesn’t he set an example and sort out his own criminal high ranking officers and councillors?
There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that many of them are lying corrupt individuals that abuse their position for their own benefit, whilst ignoring their own policies that are designed to keep them in check. Only Glanville refuses to even look at it. That way, he doesn’t have to do anything about it and so it continues.
While Granville calls for increased funding, He should address the terrible wastage in the Met, whereby Two First Response police officers could be called out to harass a disabled person at the bequest of a relative of somebody who works in the police Legal department, where as the fence had been blown down three weeks ago, did not pose an immediate threat for the resident of the rear garden fence. The fence in fact belonged to that house owner of the relative who works for the Met police
This highlights the level of corrupt individual within the police force, the level of abuse, undue influence exercised by individuals who works in the police and could command first response services to ensure preferential treatment for their relatives, which was a complete waste of time and resources indicating an abuse of their position. Whereas as a disabled person subjected to 2 years of Hate crime by this relative of the police staff I had to wait nearly 2 months for an arrest to take place despite reporting incidents of hate crimes.
It is clear that some people are more equal than others, maybe Mr Granville can take this up with the Police commissioner
Reply
Dear Mr Glanville
My apologies but I am putting this on the Hackney Citizen so that everyone can see just how your council treats those who try to expose corruption and I don’t believe you would bother reading it otherwise.
I am sorry to see that you have taken the view that there was no corruption involved in the (mislaid) failing of planning permission and then the passing of an identical building that exceeded the height of the failed application AND the approved one.
If you are being truly honest about it you will be able to answer or have your planning dept answer the following unanswered (since the case began) relevant questions:-
Your planning department refused planning permission, stating among other detrimental things that “…would adversely affect light and outlook to the rear of these properties to an unacceptable degree, reducing the quality of life of these residents”
The full detriment to the surrounding existing properties was detailed by the planning dept. In a 4 page report which your planning dept “mislaid” to the public AND to councillor Sylvia Anderson (who was asked to stand down by the then leader Max Caller) for revealing Hackneys corrupt planning depts methods to me and acquiring the councils “mislaid documents.
The height of the failed application was to be 7.1 metres. Minuscule changes were made – the biggest being a whopping 8 inch reduction in the height. No explanation was given how this 8’” reduction would reduce or reverse the detriment that they had detailed in the first refusal.
Suddenly all the udps that it was failed on were ignored.
The final height of the building came to 7.2 metres. and I forced your regulatory service to admit that was in breach of planning, however they said that they could not prove whether the ground had been sunk. I offered them a before and after photo of the existing rear wall whereby all they had to do was count the courses of bricks (which remained the same as the ground was not lowered). but your regulatory services declined my offer as they had no intention of digging up your councils underhanded corrupt practices.
The planning officers Cindy Badoe, Femi Nwanzi and Kelvin Williams are deeply involved in this abuse of office and they
Wrote to potential objectors on the 23rd Dec knowing full well that most people would be busy doing other things over christmas and that they were closed so no one could ask them anything. They also stated that they would be informing residents when the neighbourhood committee would be held (which they had no intention of doing) and sure enough they didn’t.
The second application which they approved committed ALL the detriment that they had clearly laid out in the first and they fabricated measurements to the extent that my 5 meter garden stretched to 8meters which also falls short of the councils UDP policies.
The approved the second application 3-4 days before the deadline they gave to objectors showing that they had no concerns whatsoever about the damage they knew it would cause.
One of the reasons that they approved it 4 days before the objectors deadline was because they had to get it through the `NC before the secretary of state for the environment stepped in who also failed the first application, criticising the planning officers for using outdated merits from the 70s.
Once the SoSftE had made its decree (failing it because the site was too small) it would have been impossible for your bent officers to change and so they greased The second application through the NC before he even visited
Your planning dept also “mislaid” the SoSftE’s report which also showed the true detriment this development would cause.
Your planning officers ensured (by telling us that they would inform us of the dates and then not doing so) that there would be no objectors at the NC (as we were still waiting for them to inform us).
In the report submitted to the NC there were at least 20 discrepancies such as falsified measurements, L shaped pictures design to cut out peoples kitchens or gardens, misleading statements e.g.
“…would adversely affect light and outlook to the rear of these properties to an unacceptable degree, reducing the quality of life of these residents” got changed to “…Mr Lane will lose his light in the morning only” – even this new statement was designed to mislead as the morning light was the only light my previous home received – so Mr Lane will lose 100% of his light and have to keep his lights on all day would have been a little more truthful.
In fact in the 2nd report there was just one sentence in 4 pages of text that referred to the failed application. What was a terrible idea that would cause too much damage to the environment of the existing properties, had now become a wonderful idea and caused no detriment at all and all because the building (on paper as it was never carried out) was to be lowered by 8”
The application was passed by all councillors present (including laughably Chit Chong from the Green party) except for Sylvia Anderson who pointed out to all present that this was too close and likely to cause a lot of damage. She was ignored.
I was informed by Councillor John Hudson that if there were any anomalies (in this case there were many) that I could contact the head of the council and ask him to revoke the decision. But unfortunately he joined in with the scurrilous smear campaign your planning officers launched against me.
He asked the officers to arrange a meeting with me but they already knew i would be asking them questions which they could not answer without incriminating themselves. So the bent officers orchestrated a smear campaign against me libellously saying that they couldn’t entertain a meeting because I had threatened Ms Badoe in the one telephone conversation I was able to get with her. She had agreed to come to my home (in our telephone conversation) to see what all the fuss was about (although it was plain to see she knew full well).
A simple question would be explain how you felt the 8” reduction would alleviate the damage you yourselves have detailed in your “mislaid report. Or why did you pass the application 4 days before the deadline you gave to objectors. Or why did you lie about measurements (my garden went from 5 to 8 metres) Shortly after this conversation on the day of our meeting whereby I had a planning lawyer arranged, They cancelled the meeting stating that I had threatened Ms Badoe in “words and tone”. What they didn’t know at the time is that I had recorded my conversation with Badoe and so could prove without doubt, that she and her colleagues were lying. They merely changed their statement each time they were proven to lie (oddly the subsequent Ombudsmans whitewashed investigation allowed them to change this one to my “tone” was threatening – omitting the “words” were threatening as they knew by now that I had recorded the conversation.
There are many more things you could ask your bent officers and each question would see them floundering, but I believe that you know this already and you simply want to carry on (like your predecessors Max Caller and Jules Pipe who made Jessica Crowe deputy mayor in charge of Hackneys environment knowing full well that she was involved in this (she was one of the councillors that approved it).
The story continues with once everyone involved in your establishment knew full well about the real damage – they awarded the developers £4k of council tax payers money for there environmentally friendly eco design – of course no mention was made of the loss of light, privacy and overbearing loos of amenity it had stripped from the surrounding homes.
Your officers abused their office, destroying many peoples homes – mine was the worst hit directly behind and facing east. They then covered up what they had done by mislaying all documents that they themselves had issued detailing the damage, ignored the fire officers report (on the first application the fire officer said operations could be put in “jeopardy” so your bent officers didn’t bother getting a fire officers report for the second application as they knew he would say – what difference does 8” make?
You don’t have to do much to find out they are corrupt – you could just ask them to answer how they went from failure to passing by reducing the building by 8 inches? Or what procedure did they use to ignore the deadline for objectors, Or how do they justify ignoring the fire officers report, Or why they can’t expand on their false accusations of threatening words (although this ones obvious). Or why they felt it necessary to “mislay” or hide from public and councillors view the true picture of the damage that they knew it would cause. Or Why your council has continued to defend their actions whilst providing no answers to the above, Or how does what they did comply with any of the udp policies designed to stop this sort of corruption from happening.
You have advised me to go through council complaints and the ombudsman (which I did at the time) between both of them I was unable to get any of my questions answered and thats why I am asking you (I will ask each new mayor until I get one honest enough to investigate).
When I contacted your complaints dept. One Debbie Davey (I believe she was head of complaints) felt that she needed to “concoct” a story about me in order to side tract or obfuscate. When I contacted the ombudsman she said she was not allowed to comment on the merits of the councils decision making, as most of their lies are in the merits (or non merits of the case she was not allowed to ask any relevant questions. Although she did allow Cindy Badoe to remind her false statement of falsely accusing me of threatening her in “words and tone” to “tone” – she did The ombusdsmans inspector allowed your officers to repeatedly change their story (which is atypical thing that liars do).
Subsequent FOI reports show that the ombudsman was biased towards the council from the start in correspondence between Kelvin Williams and your complaints dept (Ms Debbie Davey) she said that “she understands the council’s point of view but she says that she still requires the documents in order that she can demonstrate (to me) that she has looked into the case properly” This is not the sort of statement one would expect from an ombudsman who normally should be unbiased.
You say “I am always happy to investigate resident’s complaints and enquiries” then you should be happy to get your staff to answer the serious unanswered concerns some of which I have detailed above.
The reason that I am unable to “move on” is because I was libelously accused of something I am innocent of, forced to uproot myself and my family and move because I could not wake up every morning to see this 7 metre high shed like monstrosity blottting out all light and amenity and knowing that my home was destroyed some very deceitful unworthy characters employed by your council.
Re – “I have made enquiries with the Council’s Planning service and have advised that the property known as 108a Palatine Road, granted planning permission in 2000, has been built in accordance with the approved plans.”
Here you are either misled or you are doing what all involved have done and closing ranks to cover up this scandal. It has not been “built in accordance with the approved plans” as they clearly stated 6.9metres high the final development went to 7.2 (there is documented evidence of this) I can provide it to you so you will be in no doubt that you are being misled.
Finally if a reduction of 8 inches was supposed to alleviate the detriment the planning office clearly detailed (then mislaid) then allowing it to go passed its illegally approved height by a further 12 inches would (according to your planning officers rational) cause at least a third more damage than they had originally detailed.
The damage your council and its bent officers have done to my mental health and any trust I had for those in authority is immense. I am a Shirley Oaks Childrens home survivor (its taken 50 years for us to uncover the criminals that called themselves Lambeth council and now they are finally exposed) my first home which your council destroyed was more of an achievement for me than most people buying their first home (I had no help just working day and night) and your council wrecked it. I should also point out that in the midst of your council destroying my property in 2000, I had a child, my father died and unexpectedly my partners father died – all these things pale in comparison to the anguish and torment your council and its operatives put me through – thats why I shall continue exposing this issue regardless of your fabricated denials
Best regards
Steve Lane