Following an information request I submitted under the Freedom of Information act, Hammersmith & Fulham Council has been forced to admit that it spent £859,863 last year to house homeless families in temporary B&B accommodation.

This represents an 1140% increase over the £69,339 that was spent by the Council in 2011.

In 2011, the Council placed 58 families in B&B accommodation; in 2012 this had increased to 365 families.

The average cost of housing a family in B&B accommoation in 2011 was £1195, while in 2012 the average cost had gone up to £2,356. Not only is the Council placing more families in B&B accommodation, but it is keeping them there for longer.

I am regularly asked for help by constituents who have been placed into poor-quality B&B accommodation by the Council. I have been told horror stories by mums with young children who have been placed into cramped accommodation alongside drug users and who have had to lock themselves in their rooms for fear of their safety.

Many of these families have been staying in B&B accommodation for longer than the statutory limit of 6 weeks, meaning that not only is the Council housing huge numbers of families in dodgy B&B accommodation, but it is often doing so illegally.

And while all of this is happening, 10% of affordable homes that become vacant in the Borough are immediately sold off at market prices, making it less likely that the families being placed in B&Bs will ever be able to find a decent, affordable home in their Borough.

I spoke yesterday in Parliament about this, and a transcript of my speech can be found here. I have uploaded a copy of the Council’s FOI response, and it can be found on the right hand side of this page.

This Thursday a concert will be held at St Saviour’s Wendell Park at 8pm. Featured will be the young, Italian pianist, Marco Ciampi, playing works by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Admission is free, although donations will be welcome.

I recently attended an event at the Mayor’s Parlour at Hammersmith Town Hall to find out more about proposals for a ‘flyunder’ to replace the existing Hammersmith flyover.

The arguments put forward for the proposals are very compelling, and I spoke in support of these plans.

A copy of the brochure produced by West London Link Design, can be found to the right of this article, and it’s well worth a read. The file is quite large, so may take a few minutes to download if you have a slow connection.

The London Assembly Transport Committee has published a new report, “Airport Capacity in London”, which suggests that there is substantial capacity at London’s existing airport runways and that this existing capacity could be more effectively used.

Research commissioned for the London Assembly showed:

• Stansted Airport: 47 per cent of runway slots are available
• Luton Airport: 51 per cent of runway slots are available
• Gatwick Airport: 12 per cent of runway slots are currently available
• Heathrow Airport: at 99 per cent capacity, Heathrow’s runway capacity is nearly full, but some evidence submitted suggests increasing aircraft size would allow it to increase capacity

The full report and accompanying data can be found on the Assembly’s website.

Cinzia D’Ambrosi is a photojournalist, based in London. She is passionate about telling stories of our times through the lives of communities. She has written a short book, “The People Estates” –  a story based on the struggle of people in West Ken to prevent thier homes being bulldozed.

Amazon Kindle have accepted her book for publication. It is available here. You can buy it  or borrow it  - but please read it. It is a moving testament to the struggle of ordinary people on the West Ken Estate to keep their homes -while a council and a multi-million pound developer tell them they know better…..

There was a fantastic turnout for the Save our Hospitals Rally in Ealing on Saturday, proving that the campaign to prevent the closure of our A&Es is not going away, but getting stronger, as more and more people find out just how disastrous these plans are.

In front of a crowd that organisers described as the biggest there had ever been for a demo in Ealing, I took my place on the platform and spoke alongside MPs Steve Pound, Virendra Sharma and Angie Bray, as well as Ealing council leader Julian Bell.  A special cheer went up  for Julian, because of course, it is Ealing council’s determination to refer the closures to the Independent Reconfiguration Panel which has given campaigners renewed hope of success. Hammersmith council, unsurprisingly, was roundly booed for supporting of the closures and voting against referring them to the Secretary of State.

Supporters of  Save our Hospitals in Hammersmith and Ealing will join Save our Hospitals campaigners fro all over London on 18th May when a huge protest against the cuts in the NHS across London will be held in the Jubilee Gardens in Waterloo. It starts at noon – more details to follow.

Here is the ITN report of Saturday’s rally, and here is the interview I did before the rally for Catch21 – a charitable initiative which does great work engaging young people in current affairs.

A busy Saturday got off to an early start in Barnes where  I went to speak in the “Say No to Expansion at Heathrow”  rally at the invitation of  organiser, Richmond MP Zac Goldsmith. Just about every west London politician was there to echo residents’ views that another runway at Heathrow would be an intolerable imposition on the already crowded skies over our part of London.   No sign, however of Hammersmith and Fulham Tories, or the MP for Chelsea and Westminster, whose apparent inability to take a clear view against the runway is a worrying indication of government thinking on Runway 3.

Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Local Government, and cheerleader for H&F Tories (whom he calls the ‘apple of his eye’) has unsurprisingly agreed to the Council’s fire sale of the West Ken and Gibbs Green Estates to property developer CapCo, despite the opposition of 80% of the 760 families who live there.

What is extraordinary are the reasons Mr Pickles give.  He thinks £90 million is a good price for one third of a development said to be worth £8 billion.  Many independent experts – including the District Valuer who advised the Council – queried this, saying that at the least there should be reviews over the 20-year life of the project to see if it was continuing good value for the taxpayer.

But Pickles has changed the rules, so provided the deal is worth more than the debt remaining on the existing housing (£11m), he is not interested in whether H&F residents make a gift to CapCo worth hundreds of millions.

Pickles main requirement is that the developer gets vacant possession; like the council he is on their side. So there is a guarantee that everyone will be evicted, but no guarantee that they will be re-housed locally.  The 760 ‘replacement’ homes could at any stage be sold or handed back to CapCo, as happened at Imperial Wharf, and the Council is already looking to move residents elsewhere, backed by the threat that otherwise they will live for 10-20 years in run down properties on a building site.

But vacant possession may not be so easy to deliver.  When the Tories tried the same trick with Fulham Court 30 years ago, many residents sat it out until the election of a Labour Council and bad publicity for the developer saved their homes.

Hsg 12-13-46 Hammersmith – West Ken and Gibbs Green Est

On the 27th of March I submitted a formal objection to the Council’s Compulsory Purchase Order regarding the Shepherds Bush Market Area. Given the number of e-mails I received from constituents about this issue, it would seem that many local residents also made their thoughts known and submitted their own objections to the CPO.

In response I have received a letter from the Department for Communities and Local Government confirming that due to the large numbers of objections received, the CPO will be subject to a public inquiry.

This is excellent news and provides an opportunity for the full scale of local opposition to these plans to be shown.

The date and time for the inquiry has not been set, but I will put the information online as soon as I am notified.

The West London Palestine Solidarity Campaign will be holding a screening of the award-winning documentary, ’5 Broken Cameras‘ directed by Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi on Tuesday the 30th of April at 7pm.

The screening will be held at the Chiswick Catholic Centre, 2 Duke’s Avenue, off Chiswick High Rd., W4 2AE. Admission is free and doors open at 6.30pm. Refreshments will be served.