Highlights of the July meeting of the Leys,Iffley,Littlemore Area Committee
Creating a man of straw
Local New Labour councillors Molly Florey, Val Smith and Pat Stannard unanimously supported their party’s call for the allocation of council funds to ban street drinking at the parade of shops on Blackbird Leys Road.
The IWCA’s Stuart Craft argued that the proposed ban is a ridiculous case of misplaced priorities: ‘New Labour are continuing to ignore the growing problem of drug dealing on the very spot that they now want to outlaw street drinking. If the Council has resources to target problems on this part of the estate then surely the problem of open heroin and crack dealing should be addressed first?’
Labour’s Pat Stannard, City Sheriff and Chair of the Police Consultative Group, jumped on his high horse to accuse the IWCA of supporting the street drinkers. However, as Stuart Craft pointed out, the law already allows the arrest of those found to be drunk and disorderly in a public place.
Sheriff Stannard displayed a remarkably feeble grasp of the situation when he suggested that ‘the street drinkers and the crack dealers are very often one and the same thing.’ Another possibility, of course, is that he and his New Labour colleagues are trying to create a man of straw out of the street drinker issue so they can rush to the rescue and set to work attacking it.
Council contractors under scrutiny
Back in March the Leys Independent blew the lid on council contractors who happily rake in taxpayers money but refuse to abide by the law and cough up holiday and sick pay to their workforce.
Since then the IWCA has offered advice on employment law and holiday entitlements to a number of residents who contacted us.
We have now been promised by the council’s Area Co-ordinator Fergus Lapage that an investigation is to be undertaken of the contractors employed through Isis Accord for the City Council. Leys Independent will keep you informed.
A little less conversation and a bit more action
In response to an IWCA campaign on the issue, councillor Val Smith reported to the Area Committee meeting on 20 May that the broken street lighting outside the Starwort Path maisonettes, the scene of night-time drug dealing, is to be repaired with money from a ‘police fund and from the Tenants Forum.’ As yet there appears to have been no movement on this issue at all. In fact the minutes from the last Tenants Forum meeting reveal that the issue was not even on the agenda.
The residents of Starwort Path have waited long enough. There is far too much red tape involved in sorting out straightforward problems on the estate. The IWCA calls for a review of local decision-making processes—let’s have an end to talking shops that produce nothing but hot air and better interaction between different bodies.
UPDATE: Simon Price of the Blackbird Leys Housing Office has contacted the IWCA since the meeting to say that the street lighting on Starwort Path would be back in operation ‘within the next few weeks’. Let’s hope the council finally keeps to this promise.
Leys Independent, Issue 14, July 2002
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