Contents

1. Would you vote for who’s responsible for this?
2. The leaked memo
3. Need advice? ...go elsewhere
4. Laburnum Primary
5. Laburnum Boat Club
6. St John’s Nursery
7. Trust the Learning Trust?
8. Costly reorganisation plan for libraries
9. Old Fire Station reprieve


nothing is safe...
Laburnum Primary School...Kingsland Secondary
School... Rainbow Nursery...St John’s Nursery...
Shoreditch Centre... Springfield 1 o’clock
Club...Saturday opening in libraries... Dalston &
Hackney Citizens Advice Bureaux...playgrounds...
funding for voluntary groups...
All gone or still under threat since the May
elections.

1. Would you vote for who’s responsible for this?
The summer holidays are over, schools have returned
and the Mayoral Election is upon us. Time to check in
to Hackney Council and see what is left of our
services. Remember the “Rose”, the Labour Party
election pamphlet posted through our doors in May?
Remember the headline “Only Labour Can Save Hackney!”
and how they boasted about ending the threat to
libraries and nurseries? Why then are our libraries
still closed on Saturdays and suffering on a daily
basis because of lack of staff? Why then was St
John’s Nursery closed at the end of August, when there
is a long waiting list, in addition to a whole host of
other completed or immanent closures? Why are
voluntary groups yet again uncertain about their
future? You might well ask but the huge new Labour
majority obviously has something to do with it. Was
the headline “Big Improvement in Children’s Services”
in August’s Hackney Today meant to be a joke?
Inside this newsletter we give you the gory details of
facilities that are closing or under threat. It is a
long list from a party that is hoping the public will
elect one of its main protagonists as mayor for the
next four years - Jules Pipe, present Council Leader.
His Council has presided over a year of cuts and
uncertainty over funding and created a feeling that
‘nothing is safe’. With added authority as executive
mayor, what shape will Hackney’s services be in this
time next year under his rule?
Our questions to mayoral candidates should include: do
you or any of your family actually use these services?
There are certainly doubts that many Councillors in
Hackney Cabinet need them. If they did they would
know what it is like to live without them.
Also worrying is a recent decline in access to
information. There is little evidence that the new
Cabinet/Scrutiny arrangements are of benefit, or
accountable, to the public. For many people trying to
save their facilities, lack of consultation and
accurate information just adds insult to injury.
Advice and information points such as the Citizens
Advice Bureaux have been forced to close and there are
threats hanging over the First Stop Shop. It seems
impossible that such services, vital to the daily
welfare of many people, are allowed to disappear with
little debate. The Council may not care about such
concerns but the work of the CAB resulted in the
return to them of a substantial amount of debt (see
right). Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
Whatever you do, before you vote, find out what each
candidate’s vision for our borough is and how they are
going to stop the decline in services. We will all
live with the result for four years.


2. The Leaked Memo
An interesting memo from Max Caller to the Head of
Community and Learning, was recently leaked to the
Gazette. It suggested that, in order to avoid
‘unnecessary industrial action during the Election
Campaign’, the controversial plan to use part-time
staff in order to undermine the striking library staff
should be deferred. This memo raises doubts about the
impartiality of the Managing Director who is also
responsible for the conduct of the election as
Returning Officer.


3. Need advice? ...go elsewhere
Many of you will have noticed the closure of both the
Citizens Advice Bureaux in Hackney. The Council
withdrew 40% of its grant, leaving the CABs in an
impossible operating position. Staff were given
redundancy notices in July and the public told to find
help in Tower Hamlets! Each year the Bureaux dealt
with over 20,000 cases, and were responsible, from the
debt management work with clients, for swelling the
Council's coffers by £250,000 a year. It is very hard
to understand the logic behind the Council's decision
to withdraw funding from one of the few remaining
means by which the community can get advice on crucial
issues. The service CAB gave us was essential and
irreplaceable, and the cuts will prove to be a false
economy. Once again it is the most vulnerable amongst
us who will be most affected.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, claims from an
opposition councillor have been made that almost half
of the staff of the First Stop Shop in the Town Hall
are to be axed, while the others are re-employed on
lower salaries. The Council refutes this, but admits
that the service is being ‘looked at’ as part of a
‘best value’ review on the public’s access to Council
services. We would like to take this opportunity to
remind the council that ‘best value’ does not mean
cheapest.
Contact Max Caller on 020 8356 5000 to tell him how
you feel about this loss of a vital service.

(correction – since publication HN4S has found out
that Hackney CAB has not finally closed but staff have
worked out their redundancy period and are now waiting
to hear about their future).


4. Laburnum Primary
Laburnum School, threatened with closure by the
Council, is fighting for its life. A committee of
parents, teachers and local residents was set up on 11
July. The children mounted a postcard campaign and
an Open Day was held on 31 August. Consultation is in
process until 30 September. All parents/carers with
children at Primary Schools anywhere in Hoxton,
Haggerston, De Beauvoir and London Fields have been
circulated with a consultation response form to “The
Review of Primary School Places in the South of the
borough, within Planning Areas 1 and 2”. The governing
body of the school has mounted a stout rebuttal to
this document, and the committee recommend everyone to
answer “no” to all questions on the form.
The Council intend to disperse the children from the
school between Queensbridge and Randal Cremer and say
they intend to build a secondary school on the site.
This seems unlikely due to its size, and since it
stands on a prime canalside site, its development
potential cannot be overlooked
Contact: Save Laburnum School Campaign 020 7684 1743.


5. Laburnum Boat Club
The threat hanging over the future of the Laburnum
School building and site raises the question of the
security of the Laburnum Boat Club next door. The
club was set up by local parents in the early 80s to
provide recreation for children and young people. It
has grown steadily and successfully in that time and
now has a range of services for kids, families,
schools etc. throughout the week. It is a unique and
valuable recreational resource in an area of
particular need.
The Club has occupied the site since 1981, clearing
the remains of the gas works, dredging the basin,
building the Club Hut and classroom, and landscaping
the site. However there is no formal agreement with
the Borough about the tenure of the site. It could
well be that Hackney night decide, in the light of
their poor financial position, to take the opportunity
to evict the Club and parcel up this site with that of
the school for disposal.
Contact: 020 7729 2915;  laburnum@bcuinternet.com


6. St John’s Nursery
At the end of August, the parents of St John’s Nursery
occupied the building, in the spirit of the Atherden
Nursery occupation last year. The Council and police
arrived to board up the building one day earlier than
anticipated. At the end of the day the children were
made to wait in the garden so parents would be unable
to enter the building, but a number managed to get in.
A large number stayed there for 3 days and held a
lively Festival of Resistance but were intimidated by
the Council on Sunday and decided to leave. In defense
of the heavy handed threats of court action, Alan
Wood, Director of the Learning Trust, laughably
claimed that the parents were damaging the children’s
education.
The parents have fought a strong campaign to try and
save the nursery after the Council notified them in
March this year that one nursery would close in order
to make savings. After little consultation, confusing
statements and Council demands that parents come up
with a savings plan, a decision was made in June,
based on inaccurate claims that Fernbank nursery, with
whom St John’s was forced to compete, has room to
expand and because St John’s building needs work and a
rent increase was likely. It appeared that
councillors had not been shown proposals submitted to
the Council by parents and it was not mentioned in the
official report. And no reference was made to the
welfare of the children. The parents disputed the
Council’s points but the decision to close was made at
a Cabinet meeting at which no councillors even
bothered to debate the issues. The Council’s
suggestion that a private or voluntary nursery may
want to use the site is an admission that the nursery
places are still needed.
At the Scrutiny Committee it was evident that adequate
consultation had not taken place but, despite one
Labour councillor having the courage to go against the
party line, the decision to close was stuck to.
A final appeal to save Hackney’s oldest established
nursery was made to the new Learning Trust, who were
able to evade responsibility by saying they were
unable to undo any decisions made by the Council.
Parents were able to secure alternative places for
their children after some pressure but the closure
willl reduce places available to kids coming in to the
nurseries.
The nursery was used by more than 40 children and was
an ideal environment for kids, with a large garden and
surrounded by peaceful green space in the vicinity of
St John’s Church. The Council projects that £190,000
of savings will be made – a tiny amount; and the real
figure is likely to be even less as more staff will
have to be employed at other nurseries. And, very
embarrassingly for the Council, they found out only
after making the decision to close, that the rent on
the lease to the church has to be paid up until 2005.
The saving will be miniscule but the cost to the kids
of Hackney will be dear.


7. Trust the Learning Trust?
Dream on, if you thought the government was setting up
the Learning Trust to protect the interests of
children and education in Hackney. In the first month
of its operation, the Trust has forced the closure of
St John’s Nursery (45 places lost), is standing by
while Rainbow Nursery fights for its survival (45
places), is pushing ahead with the closure of Laburnum
Primary (200 places) and Kingsland Secondary (1000
places) and has abandoned the longstanding committee
negotiating with teaching unions. All these cuts
reveal the same old Council obsession with false
economies, lack of planning, betrayal of local people
and cruel determination to sell off vital resources
whatever the human cost, and confirms what we all know
- it is the same people who are running the Trust as
were running education when it was in the hands of the
Council.
They claim they are closing Laburnum not because it
occupies a prime canalside site, but because there is
a surplus of primary school places in the south of the
borough. Any surplus will vanish once new housing
developments are finished, and in the north of the
borough where a chronic shortage persists, parents are
advised to ship their kids to Enfield or keep them at
home.
At secondary level, the situation is even more
horrific. In the third week of the new school year, at
least 70 children in Hackney are sitting at home
without a place, despite the fact that more than a
third of Hackney’s secondary school children are
educated outside the borough – amongst the highest in
the country.
So why has the Trust chosen this moment to announce
the closure of Kingsland School, one of only two
non-denominational mixed schools in the borough? Is
it a coincidence that for the second time in two years
the Council has instituted a victimisation campaign to
dismiss maths teacher Indro Sen, a well-known
campaigner and union activist? Everyone admits that
Kingsland had its problems in the past but, according
to frequent inspections, over the last two years it
has made enormous improvements under its new head; and
its current staff are dedicated to continuing this
process. The Trust wants to close Kingsland in July
2003, even though Alan Wood recently stated that
Hackney needs up to five new secondary schools and
even though the one new school that is under way – the
City Academy – will not be ready until September 2004
at the earliest.
The Council did not even institute a consultation
process about closing Kingsland until it was forced to
do so. ‘Interested parties’ can comment on the
consultation document until the end of September. The
Trust seems to think this only means parents of kids
currently at the school. However, parents with
children due to start next year, particularly
non-Christian boys, are devastated by the potential
knock-on effect of a further reduction in places.
Like all Hackney schools, Kingsland’s buildings have
been neglected for years but, unlike others, it does
possess extensive grounds. This space could be used
to rebuild the school and to create more school
premises. Or, of course, the land could be sold to a
property speculator!
When Mike Tomlinson returns from digging the
government out of their latest scandal as chair of the
so-called independent inquiry into the fixing of A
level results, perhaps he could attend to the scandal
on his own doorstep, as he is supposed to be the
hands-on, caring chair of our very own Learning Trust.
Contact: 0208 981 7741.



8. Costly reorganisation plan for libraries
Despite the rejection by library staff of a plan to
reorganise library opening hours, Hackney Council are
pushing ahead with it in an attempt to avoid paying
Saturday enhanced pay. This is the reason why staff
have been on strike, and libraries have been closed on
Saturdays since last autumn. It involves opening four
libraries on Wednesdays and employing only part-time
staff to open three (Stoke Newington, Hackney Central
and Shoreditch) on Saturdays.
But the bad news is that, for the foreseeable future,
3 of the 7 libraries will only be open 4 days a week.
There are also serious concerns that employing staff
for just one day a week will create organisational
problems for perm-anent staff and will not deliver a
good service.
It is estimated that the new plan will cost two and a
half times what it would cost to pay workers their
Saturday enhanced rates. How can this be justified
with Hackney’s funding problems? And with savings to
be made from the Community and Learning budget next
year and the difficulty it has recruiting staff, it
seems likely that the net result will be that other
libraries will effectively become permanently closed
on Saturdays.
The plan identifies ‘higher volume’ libraries as those
which should have longer opening hours, but how can
libraries increase their turnover if they are shut on
the most popular day of the week. In the short-term
the new plan will create a two-tier service and in the
longer term it could be a self-fulfilling policy
resulting in the picking off of libraries for
permanent closure. People in Clapton, Homerton and
Dalston (the most deprived areas of the borough) also
need a proper library service. In addition, libraries
are increasingly subject to temporary closure at any
time due to lack of staff.
The Council has already started the recruitment,
despite no formal decision made by councillors or any
public consultation. Under ‘best value’ guidelines the
public should be consulted before implementation, not
after. The Council has twice refused to hear
deputations to councillors about this issue, delayed a
third and says it is not ready to go to a tribunal on
the matter before February 2003. They say they will be
interested in library users’ views but now is the time
to let them know that all libraries should be open
five days a week and staff should be paid their proper
rates.
Contact: friends_hackney_libraries @yahoo.co.uk or 020
8806 6272


9. Old Fire Station reprieve
The good news in this issue is that a building used by
community groups, such as a nursery and the local,
organic fruit and veg group Growing Communities, has
been saved from sale to the highest bidder. The
building had been up for auction once but was
withdrawn after protest. After mounting a strong
campaign, the groups were able to secure a promise
from the Council that a Community Covenant would be
put on the building. This means that it can only be
used for community purposes and would be of little
interest to developers were it ever to go on sale in
the future. They also said that they want to negotiate
leases with all the community groups in the building
and to retain the building for community use.