Wednesday 30 October 2013

Peoples Assembly National day of Action November 5th Lewisham Events.

People Before Profit will be working with the huge number of groups across the UK taking part in this high profile day of action, The Day of Civil Disobedience against Austerity called by the Peoples assembly .
Starting at 9.00am, people are asked to meet at the...We Care  food Bank 467 New Cross Road Deptford SE14 6TA and be part of majoy action headed; Poverty makes me Sick, Fight Poverty not the Poor, this will be a major event with stunning visual events and with everything People before Profit do will be awesome.
At 4.30 in the afterrnoon we will meet at Lewisham Town hall to march in our Carnival atmoshere as we march to hold small protests at Royal Mail. Hospital.Fire station. Banks. Pay day loan Companies none tax paying stores etc. by 4.30 we will be burning Bonds and giant figures of ploticians in our Bond Fire of the Cuts at the Lewisham main station on the grass area.
We need as many people to bring old shoes for am protest and for people to bring banners and posters. more details on; Carnivalagainstcuts.org.uk or www.peoplebeforeprofit.org.uk.

Peoples Assembly National day of Action November 5th Lewisham Events.

People Before Profit will be working with the huge number of groups across the UK taking part in this high profile day of action, The Day of Civil Disobedience against Austerity called by the Peoples assembly .
Starting at 9.00am, people are asked to meet at the...We Care  food Bank 467 New Cross Road Deptford SE14 6TA and be part of majoy action headed; Poverty makes me Sick, Fight Poverty not the Poor, this will be a major event with stunning visual events and with everything People before Profit do will be awesome.
At 4.30 in the afterrnoon we will meet at Lewisham Town hall to march in our Carnival atmoshere as we march to hold small protests at Royal Mail. Hospital.Fire station. Banks. Pay day loan Companies none tax paying stores etc. by 4.30 we will be burning Bonds and giant figures of ploticians in our Bond Fire of the Cuts at the Lewisham main station on the grass area.
We need as many people to bring old shoes for am protest and for people to bring banners and posters. more details on; Carnivalagainstcuts.org.uk or www.peoplebeforeprofit.org.uk.

Lewisham Hospital Victory Oct 2013 but we are still under treat. read on..

The Courts may have awarded a further win to Save our Hospital campaign, but behind the scenes much is going on and People before Profit will as always seek to push forward on the protection of the NHS under risk from both this Goverment and the Labour party, who by signing the PFI contracts for Greenwich and Bromley Hospitals lead to the closure of the area health trust.
From day one the Labour party have sort hard to bury there role in the PFI scandle and to keep it of the agenda, but as people befiore profit have been such a major part iof the Hospital campaign, we have been able to defeat the objection and win support to insure PFI is not forgotton, whilst accepting that the Hospital campaign is a cross party group we have chosen to work with Labour and other groups for the best interests of the NHS and our Hospital.
This weeks court win, is as always not as straight forward as media and Labour would have you believe, the Goverment have stated they will change the law, whilst it beggers believe that throughout the entire campaign the Labour party never once promised that should they win in 2015, they would have scrapped the closure plans, so clearlyy the Hospital is no safer with Labour than it is with the present Goverment.
As you read this Queen Elizabeth Hospital Woolwich have negotiated a merger. The new Trust will inherit all of QEHs PFI liabilities. the initial capital cost of the PFI project at QEH was £91m; £295m has already been paid yet the unitary payments between now and the end of the contract amount to a further ?£713m. It is only a matter of time before those debts lead to the cuttinmg of whole departments at Lewisham Hospital or QEH or both, selling off land and leaving local residents in deswperate need.
People Before Profit believes that all PFI contracts should bev annullied or renegotiated.The only long-term solution for Lewisham and elsewhere is a major campaign against those companies and banks which are growing rich on peoples misery.
But the Labour Party turned out in force at a public meeting of Save Lewisham Hospital campaign to push through the idea that the goverment should give MORE public money to help pay the bankers! Remember , it was Labour who forced hospitals to use PFI in the first place, a policy which they have never apologised for or disputed, and Labour which embraced privatisation and outsourcing of services. It is this dangerous legacy which makes us question how far them NHS will be any safer in Labour hands.
People Before profit does not support a merger and transfer of the Debt from Greenwich which puts Lewisham in to Debt and at further risk. We oppose the whole Privatisation agenda of the NHS and are not afraid to remind people of the last Labour Goverments record on Public sector, we support the whole of the NHS and will not keep quiet to save 1 hospital while hundreds more facwe cuts and closure, the Labour party by seeking to mislead the public about its riole in this scandle aqnd the fact it is committed to carry on the Tory privatisation and cuts agenda once as expected it wins in 2015. Lewisham residents are justly angry with the way Labour have hijacked the Hospital campaign for political advantage we trust in our fellow residents to see through this and in 2014 we will be putting forward People before Profit Council, candidates across every ward in Lewisham and supporting fellow anti privatisation and cuts candidates standing across London in 2015 Local elections.Labour is just another branch of the establishment with only more cuts and more privatisation. More Info on ; www.peoplebeforeprofit.org.uk
I am at last on twitter you can follow me on@Raywoolford
 

Thursday 17 October 2013

local food bank , needs your donations.We Care Food Bank. New Cross London Update October 2013.

Dear All,
            The huge media profile of the We Care food bank has lead to a constant increase in numbers by 10% each week, growing from 28 people to almost 1000.

We Care is in our second year, and it has taken us this long to get systems in place and thanks to the work of Gene who has  transformed our charity shop into a sustainable organisation allowing our team to develop our advice, support and out reach work.

The way ahead; I do not intend the Food Bank to act as a subsidy to cover the Governments Welfare reform, and its impact on the poor.

 We care is about fighting poverty and the cause and empowering communities, the way I see this developing is trough  building self esteem, confidence and helping people to learn how to cook great food on a budget , how to grow your own food, this we hope can be developed by taking over local residents unloved gardens and turning them into places to grow fresh fruit and veg, keeping Bees and chickens and developing strong neighbourhoods of people supporting and helping each other, not creating another level of work for me to do.

Other Projects we are developing are a cloths exchange, turning the CV workshops into a larger project empower people to create there own business,  ideally through co -operatives to create local jobs and boost the wider community,

We are Looking to set up a Tea Club to help isolated members of our community come together and support each other over tea and a chat, as well as boosting the support and interaction between the increasing numbers of clients unable to read or write and or speak English, the numbers of local residents desperate to engage but isolated buy lack of communication skills is time consuming but crucial to our work, and I hope people out their will come and take ownership of projects to make them happen and help us builder better communities of support NOT dependency.

Christmas is coming and we plan to insure NO one in Lewisham or Greenwich goes without a Christmas dinner, and we are already collecting food donations and kids presents, we would also welcome some one helping with a fund raiser, as clearly feeding 1000 people with no state funding is tough on the charity shop income. We are still seeking to raise the £5000 we must raise to get charity status, once we have this we will be £800 a month better of, as this is what we have to pay Lewisham Council in business rates.
Housemartins continues to pay wages of staff and pay any shortfall as part of its Community support programme.


Security of the Project;
We have had this building on a short term agreement for 3 years, with the property market booming, we expect the landlord to develop our shop and office into flats. Lewisham council has given planning consent for flats, and so we almost certainly after Christmas have to raise money to buy our own secure building, if you have ideas or can help with this, please email me.

November 5th National Day of Action;
We Care will be working with All London Groups to raise awareness of Poverty under 2 slogans. Fight Poverty, Not the poor, and Poverty makes me sick. We are building a huge installation to highlight and to gain international publicity, we need huge numbers of donated shoes for this, and people to help between 9am-11am on November 5th, Can you help? this will look amazing but cannot disclose until the day.

Supermarkets; Thanks to amazing work by Emma, We are shortly to get the chance to collect food from Sainsburys more often, whilst the new Waitrose at Deptford/Greenwich has given us the food waste contract helping us use food for people, not for landfill. The work our Small team do is amazing and i am constantly amazed at peoples energy and the way in which project manager Nicola mobilise and gives such positive energy and warmth to the endless people coming through our doors, and the timeless energy Stewart puts into make the project work, without not thanking all the truly amazing group of people that come out day after day supporting my next big idea. I hope that the one think i am always clear with my work with the food bank and the amazing team at People Before Profit, is that We make things happen.

Emily is presently making a short film about the Food Bank which will go on our website soon, highlighting our work at the Food Bank and our campaigns with People Before Profit.
Lewisham Council is looking to sell its Community Centres, we Care hope Lewisham Council will lease or sell We Care a community centre for us to run and boost the projects we can organise, we Hope Lewisham Mayor will offer these sitres to community groups before selling community assets on the open market.


We Care have a bank account with the Lewisham Co Op; We Care food Bank; Sort code 08 92 99 Account number 65659328.



All the Best.

Ray Woolford

Tuesday 15 October 2013

November 5th, National Day of Action. The South London Actions.

This week People Before Profit, Peoples Assembly and others met up to plan joint actions as part of the largest number of direct actions across the UK, to happen in a single day.
Whilst clearly i cannot go into great detail, i can confirm the following. at 10am we are asking people to come to the  467 New Cross road Deptford Se14 6ta and bring any old shoes you have, the action planned will be to highlight the impact of Poverty as direct result of establishment policy, so we will be stating, fight poverty and the causes of poverty, NOT the poor.
We will through a huge installation be highlighting the fact that poverty is the hidden killer in our midsts, so this event should have global media profile, and as we can no longer count on national news coverage, scale of this will be hard to ignore and local film makers will be filming for social media.
We have planning meetings open to every one to help us  every sunday 4-5 at 467 New Cross Road Deptford SE14 6TA.

At 4.30 in the afternoon Every one will meet for a family  parade against privatisation and cuts at Lewisham Town Hall in Catford Lewisham, it will march with banners and puppets to Lewisham Train Station were the grass bank area will see a fire and puppets of your favoritye people can be burned, so make your on posters and puppets, the March will highlight and hold small rallys outside the following along the parade; Lewisham Hospital. Library, Fire station. Post Office. Pay Day Lender. Housing association. Bank.Job Centre and others.
More Details by looking at www.peoplebeforeprofit.org.uk website closer to date and on the spot by following me on twitter@Raywoolford and  People before Profit on @LPBP4

Silvertown Tunnel, Are Greenwich Voters really going to Vote in Developers friend Labour in 2014? .



Some of Greenwich's most high-profile development sites suffer from air pollution far in excess of European limits, research carried out for No to Silvertown Tunnel has revealed.
Volunteers, including myself, used tubes to record the pollution in the air at over 50 locations close to the A102, A2 and A206 for four weeks during June, using similar methods used by Greenwich Council for its own pollution records. Over half the tubes came back with readings over 40 μg/m3, the EU limit.
The Woolwich Road/ Blackwall Lane junction in Greenwich, outside where new homes are now being built by developer Galliford Try, recorded 70 micrograms per cubic metre. The site is opposite the flagship Greenwich Square development, which will include homes, shops and and a leisure centre.
Meanwhile, readings of 50 μg/m3 were recorded at two locations at Greenwich Millennium Village - at the centre, by West Parkside; and at the junction of Bugsby's Way and Southern Way.
The highest figure recorded, unsurprisingly, was 70.55 μg/m3 at the Woolwich Road flyover, with a reading of 69 μg/ at Farmdale Road, where houses face an A102 slip road.
A pollution tube outside Kidbrooke Park School
High readings were also recorded along the Woolwich Road (64 μg/m3 outside the Rose of Denmark pub in Charlton) and at Blackheath Royal Standard (52 μg/m3 at Westcombe Hill).
With Greenwich Council and London mayor Boris Johnson backing a Silvertown Tunnel, which will attract more traffic to the area, the figures can only get worse.
The figures will be discussed at a public meeting at the Forum at Greenwich, Trafalgar Road, SE10 9EQ on Wednesday (tomorrow) at 7pm.
Further south, high readings were recorded in Eltham at Westhorne Avenue, Eltham station and Westmount Road, where the A2 forms a two-lane bottleneck. Local MP Clive Efford supports the Silvertown proposal, despite compelling evidence that it will make traffic in his constituency worse. So do local Conservatives - even though we recorded a big fat 50 μg/m3 outside their local HQ.
Sssh - it's one of Greenwich Council's pollution tubes. Readings haven't been published since 2010.
What's more, when we contacted Greenwich Council to tell it we intended to place pollution tubes on its lamp posts, we discovered it had been collecting its own statistics since 2005.
But mystifyingly, no figures were published since 2010 - until now. We obtained the results through a Freedom of Information Act request, and have published a full archive on the No to Silvertown Tunnel website.
These borough-wide stats bear out our own research, revealing that the borough's worst location is outside Plumstead station - possibly due to the bus garage being nearby, but also a regular scene for heavy tailbacks.
Despite the council also pressing for a road bridge at Gallions Reach, it appears to have made little serious attempt to record pollution levels in the Thamesmead and Abbey Wood areas, which would be affected by such a scheme as well as emissions from London City Airport.
The whole borough has been an air quality management zone for 12 years, which makes Greenwich Council's position on road-building even more mystifying. Its decision to stop publishing air quality reports smacks of carelessness at the very least. Pollution has become the council's dirty secret.
If you drill down into the statistics, you'll actually find air quality gradually improving in some areas. But in places where traffic remains heavy, it's stubbornly awful.
Incidentally, the tubes are very easy to install and relatively cheap - if local groups find Greenwich Council's response to pollution wanting, it's simple for them to carry out their own studies, just as we did. Indeed, we were inspired by a study done by the Putney Society - so it should be easy for groups in Greenwich, Blackheath, Eltham and Charlton, or elsewhere, to follow suit.
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Greenwich Council's pollution readings from May 2013 - you won't find this on the council's own website, but you'll find it all on the No to Silvertown Tunnel site.
Greenwich Council continues to back new road schemes on the grounds that they will take traffic off existing roads - despite a heap of evidence that proves the opposite. Indeed, studies show new roads simply increase traffic by making road travel more attractive.
It also claims economic benefits for new schemes - but it hasn't been able to produce a shred of evidence that this is the case. And will it take the health costs from the extra pollution caused by yet more traffic on local roads into account?
Even more perplexing is that neighbouring boroughs don't want Silvertown - leaving Greenwich's Labour council in a position where it's just a figleaf for a Conservative mayor's scheme. If Greenwich opposed it, would Boris really go ahead?
So how can we persuade local decision-makers to wake up and realise they're backing a scheme would could be disastrous? Well, we thought we'd invite them to our meeting, where they can hear from experts and see what results we got.
Here's the response from Don Austen, Labour councillor for Glyndon ward.
Don Austen email
Incidentally, Don's ward not only contains the borough's filthiest air, his own home is very close to Charlton Village - where air quality also breaks EU rules. We had a few other responses that were nicer, but it's hard to dispel the feeling that Greenwich's councillors simply aren't taking this seriously.
That said, some of the nominees to be Labour's candidate for for Greenwich & Woolwich are alert to the dangers of blindly following a Conservative mayor's policy. Lewisham councillor Kevin Bonavia (whose own council opposes Silvertown) voices his concern in his manifesto: "According to a recent GLA report, 150 deaths per year across the borough are caused by air pollution. We shouldn’t be encouraging more traffic in already concentrated areas."
And yesterday, outsider Kathy Peach took aim not just at the proposal, but the way Greenwich Council has handled it:
I'm not convinced Boris Johnson's Silvertown Tunnel is the answer. Nor do I believe there's been an informed democratic debate about it.
I have heard from several quarters that Labour councillors who oppose the scheme have been banned from voicing their opposition in public... the fact that such stories gain traction points to something insular and complacent about our local political culture. We need a breath of fresh air. Let's get rid of stale tactics and encourage a vigorous inclusive open debate. We need to bring the community along with us - otherwise other parties will jump into the gap.
Hopefully we'll see Kathy, and Kevin, and others, and hopefully you, down at the Forum tomorrow night. If you're sceptical, feel free to come along and lob some tough questions.
But if Greenwich councillors won't listen, and Boris Johnson won't listen, then we need to find our own way forward - because this is a battle that can be won.
And we might even have some fun on the way. If you want to help, come along tomorrow night.
No to Silvertown Tunnel public meeting: Wednesday 16 October, 7-9pm, Forum at Greenwich, Trafalgar Road, London SE10 9EQ. Speakers are transport consultant John Elliott, the Campaign for Better Transport’s Sian Berry, King’s College London air quality expert Dr Ian Mudway and Clean Air London’s Simon Birkett.
PS. If you have the time, it's worth reading the 1994 Government report Trunk Roads and the Generation of Traffic. These studies are backed up by another report, published in 2006 for the Countryside Agency and Campaign to Protect Rural England.

Wednesday 9 October 2013

Deptford High Street. Yet another example of why local residents need to vote People before Profit in 2014. We will put our People,Community and environment FIRST no ifs, no butts.

A job not so well done on Deptford High Street

Pic: Oatsy40 (Flickr)
Pic: Oatsy40 (Flickr)
A classic roadworks cock-up on Deptford High Street.
Who would have thought a simple project of repaving one road would have ended in such an obvious act of idiocy?
The £2 million project began early on October 7, 2013 managed by what one would have assumed to be a well planned and organised group of professionals.
The road was freshly paved after new lighting columns were installed, only to be dug up minutes later when workers realised they’d forgotten one tiny detail… the ducts for the electricity supply.
The lighting columns were being installed by one company while the highway resurfacing was done by another. Each worked to their own schedule and it seems both had some communication issues.
The lighting contractor put the lighting columns in but no ducts. The paving contractor then paved right up to the lighting columns. All the newly laid paving had to then be taken back up and the job done twice.
One can hope that for the next simple task needed in our local area, the right amount of planning and management will be undertaken.

Social & Council Homes in London support this Lambeth United petition seeking to stop Labour selling of for development not homes.

ign our petition against:

Lambeth ‘the cooperative’ (sic) Council: stop the ‘short-life’ evictions

at Change.org, click on the link below to register your support…

5 Responses to Petition

  1. pierre says:
    STOP THE EVICTION OF PEOPLE AND YOU SHOULD BE DISGUSTED WITH YOURSELVES BY THE DISMANTLING OF SOCIAL HOUSING
  2. Sarah Jarrett says:
    Lambeth Council are useing Bullying tactics which are nothing more than criminal .
  3. I support the Lambeth United Housing Co-op and it’s proposals. It is appalling what Lambeth are doing not just to long term individual tenants but also to established families that have actively taking part in their communities for many years.
  4. Rosalind Powlesland says:
    I wholeheartedly support members of the short life co-ops in their efforts to stay in their homes. Why should they be made to pay with the loss of their homes for Lambeth’s gross inefficiency, mismanagement of funds and negligence?
    R Powlesland
  5. Claire Knight says:
    Lambeth, look to your values! Support the people who are already living in these houses.
  6. Ray woolford says:
    Your comment is awaiting moderation. 
    Huge Shout and support from People before profit in Lewisham, What Labour is saying about Housing in public is clearly at odds with what is going on in Lambeth, We set up a whole movement opposed to privatisation and cuts due to Labour sell out to big business agenda.Think Direct action Putting forward Candidates in Local elections 2014 and keeping profile only way to win. Clearly Low paid and poor in London no longer can count on Labour party for support a total disgrace and abuse of power.
    Readers may find our successful housing campaigns worth reading on ;www.peoplebeforeprofit.org.uk or reading my blog; Lewishamcampaignerblogspot.

Tuesday 8 October 2013

Could People Before Profit discover of old Law save the NHS? Read up and give us your thoughts.

  • I've set up a new Twitter account for People before Profit which I hope we can use, and use both as a communication device with other people (particularly those young people who are up on their technology) and a news source. I think a good strategy for this would be to manage it with a focus on motions and actions which have been discussed and decided upon - making sure it's a clear and strong message for followers. That, and links to the many interesting and thought-provoking articles which people mention. So, three points to this:
    • Clear point of access for the twitterati who can find us @LPb4P - I think it would be really worthwhile if we can build this @LPb4P into any of our printed material from now on.
    • Place to announce our news - manifesto launch, actions, statements etc.
    • News source for relevant news stories from other sources - e.g. the above link about Odious Debt or anything else we find interesting (lamp posts/columns privatisation!)
  • With the new twitter we also needed a new email address, so I've set up Lewishampeoplebeforeprofit@gmail.com for functional purposes. Not that google is an ideal organisation or anything! If this second email is any help let me know and I can provide the login details, at the moment it's just plugged into the social media.
  • I've also set up a basic Facebook page for now which can be found by searching for 'Lewisham People Before Profit' or visiting https://www.facebook.com/LPb4P/ . I've added one post on there just as a sample of what we might want to put on there, in addition to our own news and updates.
    •  I think facebook might be one area where we want to focus on a simplified message, and links to articles which will be really, directly, educational or are perfect, outrageous examples, of what we are standing against. Again, with our marketing (especially for youngsters if we're going to follow this) it'd be important to add 'find us on Facebook by searching for 'Lewisham People before Profit'.
    • Facebook is also linked into twitter so that we don't have to worry about updating it especially if we're all busy! Again, to make sure we're not just constantly updating (and annoying folk !) we should make sure out twitter account is good quality news and updates.
Twitter access: lewishampeoplebeforeprofit@gmail.com

National Day of protest November 5th, What will you be doing? Why not Join People Before Profit action in London?

Dear Editor 
                      November 5th will see largest number of direct actions across the Uk on a single day.
Organised by community groups, NHS campaigns, pensioners groups, Peoples Assembly and in London People Before Profit.
As labour continues to fail the low paid, poor disabled  and elderly, it has been left to the community to fight our battles, calling for energy and transport to be renationalised to end the rising prices & green and profit agenda.
Events will see groups highlight devastation to the NHS from privatisation and both Labour and Tory PFI deals bleeding the NHS dry. payday loan and betting shops who pay no UK tax litter our streets and with acres of Tesco Metro stores seem to be the only option to regeneration as offered by our Labour councils, instead of PB4P agenda of more Credit Unions, Green enterprise zones and Business rate relieve for small companies supporting the local community, Our Much loved  Libraries, Post Office & Fire stations, being closed down or  sold off to the privatisation agenda putting greed before people .
We will also be holding a fixed time in which people can come out onto the street to bang pots and pans , groups and residents wanting to get involved can go to our website; www.peoplebeforeprofit.org.uk Or Contact John Hamilton on 0707986 998172  for what is going on in your street and for readers to target their own direct actions, such as opposing bed tax, calling for homes to be built to address the London housing crises, not as at present 40% sold offshore.
Targeting companies happy to pay no wages on workfare or zero hour contracts giving multi nationals who pay no uk Tax Cheap Labour  to boost profits and giving an unfair advantage to small local busines who do pay tax and fair pay..
 
After all Welfare to low paid is a tax payer subsidy to big business.
 
Ray Woolford
 
 London People Before Profit

Monday 7 October 2013

Bed Room Tax appeal. Judge rules tax UNLAWFUL in UK.

Redcar – Another bedroom tax appeal success and judge says council decision-making is unreasonable!

A couple from Redcar have won their bedroom tax appeal and the two page judgment is included and makes very interesting reading and is significant as it is yet another first in its type of appeal ground.
The couple live in a 3 bed house and the council imposed the 25% bedroom tax reduction.  The couple argued that due to the severity of the wife’s disability they needed a bedroom each and so had a two bed housing need.  The judge agreed and so the bedroom tax was reduced from 25% to 14%.
The ruling is significant as many couples, including those who lost at judicial review in the MA & Ors case a few months back had precisely the same issues.  As did many of the early cases shown on TV news when the bedroom tax began to hit the media in February, one member of the couple had to sleep in a separate room due to the others medical and disability issues.
This case will prove to be an incentive for all those couples in the same situation, having to sleep apart from their partner on disability and medical grounds and is likely to prompt many more appeals on this basis.
The couple wish to remain anonymous and the judgment below has been suitably anonymised for that reason and all redacted parts relates to name, address and other personal details and nothing turns on them.
Paragraph 6 outlines the scale of the disabilities and also states letters of support from GP and a specialist CFS nurse.
Paragraph 7 states some very significant points:
“In considering whether there is under occupation of the appellant’s property, the Local Authority have not taken into consideration her disabilities and her reasonable requirements, as a result these, to sleep in a room of her own.”
This is significant as it (a) criticises the decision-making process which I have always maintained is a sham; (b) states that the council should have considered these specific issues rather than impose the bedroom tax based on ignorance of these facts; and (c) the council SHOULD have considered the facts.
Many councils have said we didn’t have to consider individual facts of each individual case; there was no need and no regulatory need to do so. Yet the judge is unambiguously stating that is wrong in law and the councils should have considered the facts.
Paragraph 8 simply says the local councils DHP budget has run out and 5 months into the bedroom tax – make of that what you will with regard to the coalition mantra that we have put in £m of DHP monies for disability cases!
Paragraph 9 has the judge summing up saying this couple “reasonably require one bedroom each” or in simple terms it was unreasonable for the council not to allow them a bedroom each given the disabilities and medical evidence.
So not considering any of the facts is unreasonable and taking a line that we (the council) do not have to investigate individual facts of each case is especially unreasonable.  How many unreasonable decisions for whatever reasons becomes a strong appeal ground because of this and not taking regard or even asking about the facts of each case, be they room size, room usage, room purpose or facts about the individuals resident in each property as in this case is unreasonable.  Or as I have always said – the decision-making process was a sham.
One key point I wish to make and make strongly.  I have been quick to castigate social landlords for not standing four-square behind the bedroom tax tenant and so it is only right and very well deserved when I say here that Coast & Country Housing did here what all social landlords should have done from the beginning – they stood four-square behind the tenant.
Why other social landlords have not done this remains a pertinent question and one I have criticised them for so it makes a refreshing change to be able to praise Coast & Country.
Read the full tale here and Coast & Country stood behind and supported the tenants as part of a mortgage rescue scheme before the bedroom tax came into being and knowing the consequences of doing so as this was 7 months before the bedroom tax hit.  They then supported the tenants to appeal the bedroom tax decision – other landlords take note and doing the right thing as Coast & Country did here should be part of your culture as it is theirs.
I spoke with the landlord earlier today and they were genuinely modest in accepting my praise for what they did here, a sure sign this landlord accepts that what they did was only what ALL landlords should be doing!
I have no qualms about being effusive here if for no other reason that when I have criticised social landlords for not doing this I have done so severely but in my view justifiably.  I hope this doesn’t read as sycophancy but Coast & Country deserve much praise for their role and ALL other social landlords should follow their example and actions.
Two quick final points.  I have seen some of the appeal letters written here too and the tenants asked the 2 simple questions of how the council decided what a bedroom is and what information did the landlord provide, the two questions I originally advised tenants to ask before I modified this into the 6 of the standard template.  Note I am not taking any credit here as those questions were always stating the obvious.
Secondly I do admire the tenants for using the English Bill of Rights from 1689 into their articulate appeal arguments:
bill of rights bedroom tax
I just like that argument as it says that no bedroom tax imposition should be taken without a full investigation of the facts being considered and to do the opposite is ….well….what did the judge sayunreasonable!
The significant two-page judgment is below:
m1
m2