Prostitution in Bradford - what we should have said in response to that petition

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Last week Bradford Council received a large petition - over 1500 names - protesting about prostitution in and around Lumb Lane in Manningham. Under the Council's rules such a large petition triggers a fifteen minute debate in full council.

So we had the debate. It was unedifying.

The petitioners were calling for us to "stop, ban and move" prostitution in the area. There was no compromise in their argument - families, women, businesses and the community were damaged by these prostitutes. And worse the trade was associated with drugs, drinking and other bad things that the 'community' wished to see gone.

Now I have a little bit of sympathy. But that stops when I consider what happens if, in that area, we 'stop, ban and move' street prostitutes. I'm guessing that the trade will relocate and that, in a short time, we'll be hearing the same concerns expressed by another community. In fact I'm not guessing, I know this is the case since that is what happened that last time prostitution was run out of Lumb Lane. It upped sticks and moved to City Road and Thornton Road.

This was followed by a set of speeches that - with one exception - barely mentioned the women involved. We heard that prostitution is largely an enforcement issue and that, back in the day, we had the vice squad to keep a lid on it. We were told that of course the ward councillors were concerned, had driven down the roads in questions (no tittering there of course) and were engaged with the community over the matter.

And then we had a long prepared speech on the evils of 'commercial sex', on how we should control 'demand, supply and opportunity' in order to drive the scourge of prostitution from Lumb Lane. The idea that someone might actually want to offer sexual services in exchange for money was rejected - prostitution and 'commercial sex' must not be tolerated and should be banned in all its forms.

Just one speaker indicated that prostitutes were not unspecified semi-humans but were mostly women. And that the problems of violence, abuse and drug-dependency might - in part - underlie the issue (that and the fact that it's a market with buyers and sellers - something no-one mentioned).

Through all this I sat muttering in my beard that perhaps we might like to look at a gentler approach, something other than prohibition - a bit of liberalisation. After all, just because you are morally offended by the idea of sex for sale doesn't mean that it should be banned. You have the choice not to buy that sex and even to argue that others shouldn't buy that sex.

The truth be told, banning things is seldom an effective approach. And this is especially true where something as basic as sex is involved. But us politicians bite our tongues rather than challenge the dominant prohibitionist line on the sex trade. We complain about lap dancing clubs, we tut about sex shops and we call for more and more enforcement around street prostitution. And we think of prostitutes as trashy chavs less deserving of our care than nice 'community members'.

I don't know the extent to which we can - on our own in Bradford - move towards a more European approach to the sex trade. Whether we can use licensing and the drawing of boundaries to ensure that the 'red light' area is well defined (avoiding the disturbance to families or communities) and that health advice and support can be provided to the sex workers. It seems to me that this would be a better outcome than what we'll actually get - more police patrols, the hounding of punters and a lot of hot air about community safety. Not only will this change nothing, it will play into the hands of the worst sorts in the trad.

And in ten years we'll be back talking again about the 'problems' with street prostitution. There must be a better way.

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On rude Bradford councillors...

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Yesterday, at a meeting of Bradford Council's Regulatory & Appeals Committee, there was a fine example of the arrogance of institutions and the rudeness of politicians.

Let me explain:

1. Around fifty members of the public were kept waiting in a corridor of City Hall while the committee had a "briefing". If members needed to be briefed before the meeting, so be it. But other rooms are available and the public could be allowed to go into the meeting room and sit down.

2. The meeting started late. Not a little bit late but 20 minutes late. No reasons were given, no explanations made. And worst of all the Chairman, Cllr Warburton didn't even apologise for keeping people - quite a few of them elderly - waiting in a drafty corridor.

A rather poor show. The public only turn up to meetings when it's really important to them - a little more courtesy wouldn't go amiss.

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Rambler gets pleasure from rambling but does he pay?

Looking after stiles is the landowners responsibility. That is when they're not fretting about the ramblers dogs worrying the sheep or the fallen stone wall (where some walkers have decided it's a short cut) that means he can't graze cows in that field. Or filling in interminable forms rained down upon him from assorted parts of national and local government. Nope, the priority is to fix a stile so Mick Melvin doesn't rip his anorak:

The president of a Bradford rambling group has called for action on “dangerous” stiles on walking routes in the district.

Mick Melvin, of the Bradford CHA Rambling and Social Club, said on an average day walkers would have a problem with up to five per cent of the stiles they came across.

He said many stiles in the district presented a danger to walkers, young or old. He said he wanted to see landowners take responsibility for problem stiles on their land, and for the Council to take action if that did not happen. 

What Mick means, of course, is that those landowners should pay - in time and money - to ensure he can have his walking pleasure. A walking pleasure for which Mick doesn't pay and has no intention of paying. Despite this Mick and his walking buddies are prepared to pay £200 for a waterproof jacket, £150 for a pair of boots, £30 or so for those funny ski pole things and so on through rucksacks, nice warm hats and a host of other items.

What Mick isn't prepared to pay towards is keeping the place he walks spic and span, fixing those stiles, mending walls, cutting back weeds and shoring up paths worn out by the passing tramp of boots. Perhaps he should consider that as an option? Somehow I fear Mick and his mates will still turn first to the Council and then moan to the local paper. Sad really.

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People want their Council to fix the roads...

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Perhaps not a surprise to those politicians and bureaucrats actually plugged into real life:

A poll by May Gurney suggests the British public believe highway maintenance and improving local road networks should be the top priority for councils.

The research found 41% of the population wanted local roads improving compared with 33% which wanted better services for the elderly.

 

Perhaps Bradford's leaders will come to regret that 50% cut in highway maintenance then?

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Ooops! George Galloway's Respect discover the problem with 'cut and paste'!

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The first proper Council meeting for Bradford's shiny new respect councillors and, taking their lead from George who confused Bradford and Blackburn, they submit a motion containing these words:

This will condemn more families to poverty and undermine progress made in reducing child poverty in Tower Hamlets and nationally.

I salute my Council colleagues' indefatigable concern for East London!

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A further comment about Bradford and free schools (and Katherine Birbalsingh)

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This evening Bradford Council debated free schools. Or rather a motion the Conservative Group submitted on school places. We firmly believe that the opportunities presented by Michael Gove’s liberalisation provide a solution – a blessed breath of fresh air – to the challenge facing Bradford’s education.

On one level the debate was polite, considered and informed – statistics about Bradford’s need for new school places were set before the Council and options for responding to the challenge were examined. But underlying all this was an unspoken disagreement. One captured by Ralph Berry, Labour’s Education Portfolio Holder repeatedly saying, as if to convince himself:

“I am not an ideologue. I am NOT an ideologue...”

In our motion we had innocently suggested that, rather than dealing merely with what turned up as a result of the free schools idea, Bradford Council might actively seek to promote new schools, might seek out the very best managers and leaders in education. For Cllr Berry this was too much and he started burbling about “Birbalsingh” and the “IT Free School”. I think he believes we all read the Guardian like he does!

Now Cllr Berry isn’t a teacher, he’s never led a school. He’s a social worker come Labour Councillor who too often blurs the ground between these two roles to the extent that we are unsure whether he is making a political point or expressing a professional opinion. Ralph knows his stuff! He can wax lyrical in fluent educationalist jargon and the gist of this is that he believes people like Katherine Birbalsingh to be tantamount to devils.

The only route to educational salvation is through the goodly direction of a local education authority. Without the Council, what would happen? Who would decide who goes to which school and how the buses run!

So back to what Cllr Berry called “Birbalsingh’s IT Free school”. I was curious since I’d seen reports on Ms Birbalsingh’s intention to set up a free school but knew little of her intentions. So here’s what she says;

The Michaela Community School combines tradition and innovation. It attempts to give inner-city youth a taste of the private sector, where knowledge is taught, benchmarking is common, and high expectations of behaviour and dress are the norm. But the Michaela Community School also recognises it is in the inner city. So there will be an extended day where children will be required to complete their homework, where there will be classes analysing media culture, something that is extremely destructive to our inner-city youth.

Not a mention of IT! But the truth about what Ralph doesn’t like is in that phrase “a taste of the private sector”. For the Cllr Berrys of this world the private sector in education – the world’s best schools – is simply not to be considered as a model for children’s education. And those schools focus on what we might call “traditional” subjects – you know, the one’s you and I learned when we were at school. English, Maths, Sciences, Geography, History and modern language or two. The essence of a ‘liberal arts’ education.

The sort of education that people are prepared to pay thousands of pounds each year to buy – delivered free to ordinary children from an inner city community. What could be a problem with that? Indeed, in Bradford, the idea of free schools has been grasped. Here’s the list (there may be more):

Dixons City Free Primary

Dixons City Free Secondary

One in a Million Free School

Kings Science Academy

Rainbow Primary

Bradford Girl’s Grammar School

Bradford Christian School

Netherleigh & Rossefield School

Bradford District Free School

The Council should wake up and take note of these innovations – this is the future of education in the City, these are the challenges to years of underperformance by the existing schools. And this is a faster, more assured and more effective way of meeting the future needs of the City than the bureaucratic, hand-wringing, jargon-loaded system Cllr Berry (and the Council’s professional leadership) promote.

We should note that, despite panels, boards, meetings, strategies, press briefings and hours of expensive officer time, these creative and innovative schools are the only ones addressing Bradford’s need for new school places – places in good schools.

So to answer Cllr Berry’s ignorant assertion – yes, I’d be delighted if a successful, effective and exciting educational leader like Katherine Birbalsingh came to Bradford to set up a school.

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So who is running Bradford? Looks to me like the trade unions...

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Who of course haven't been elected and don't exist to serve the interests of Bradford residents:

Bradford Council leader Ian Greenwood said that he could not comment on the Conservative plans, because his group’s budget needed to be submitted to the Trade Unions first.

And you thought you elected us Councillors to run the City!

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Of course Bradford Council is pro-business! It just doesn't seem that way...

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Bradford Council isn’t actively anti-business – indeed I’m sure that the leader and chief executive will proclaim to the heavens that the aim is to support business, encourage enterprise and promote inward investment. There are whole teams dedicated to these tasks.

The problem is that the council, in its decision-making, is thoughtless and inconsiderate of the challenges facing businesses and especially retail businesses:

Business owners have hit out at Bradford Council after being told to take down sandwich boards advertising their premises.

Shops and businesses in Belmont Avenue, Low Moor have until Thursday to remove the A-frame boards from a grassy area in Cleckheaton Road, which they say are needed to inform customers of their location.

OK, so we have a policy. One designed to make it safer for the visually and mobility impaired resident to get about the high street. And it is being applied to boards put up on a grassy verge by the roadside.  One can only assume a verge widely travelled over by the blind and wheelchair bound!

Hardly a day passes without some council official or other making a decision that has the consequence of making it harder for a business or businesses to trade. It might be some nonsense about recycling, or shutters or putting some stock on display outside, or handing out flyers – almost anything a business does might just be subject to the idiocy of some jobsworth.

But it’s not just the attitude of individual officers (although my favourite was the officer who tried to stop a major event involving over 400 market stalls from across Europe because it meant moving some bus stops for a few days), it is the policy environment.

This year – in the worst retail recession in living memory – Bradford Council plans to introduce parking charges on North Parade. Forget that a few more people will decide now to go to the retail park or elsewhere out of town, never mind that the decision might just tip another of those fragile independent traders into folding – we need the revenue so on goes the charge!

Yes Bradford Council is pro-business! It just doesn’t seem that way!

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In which the Labour Party put their union paymasters before the Bradford public...

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Yesterday Bradford Council debated the £438,000 (or more) that it spends on funding full-time trade union officials. It was a time of much gaiety as Labour councillor indignation levels ticked ever higher leading to ever more fanciful interpretations of our motives for moving the motion.

We began by explaining how this wasn’t about the “reasonable facility time” that trade union (and other staff) representatives are granted in law but concerned the 15 or so full-time trade union organisers paid for by Bradford’s hard-pressed council tax payers.

Labour wouldn’t have this and chose instead to build a vast army of straw men – the motion was an attack on unions, the Labour Party and democracy in the UK according to Labour council leader, Ian Greenwood (former full time Union official, recipient of a Unison pension on health grounds and dweller in a council flat despite earning well over £50,000).

Indeed proclaimed said council leader, the motion was an attack on the “human rights” of union members by denying them representation (there are some 200 union representatives in the Council – the motion concerned only the 15 full-time officials).

Other Labour councillors rose to their feet expressing their undying love for trade unionism and the absolute rightness of spending your and my taxes on funding its activities, recruitment and organisation. One councillor – Gill Thornton – catalogued why unions were so important. After all they’d funded her seven or eight election campaigns! (Every single Labour councillor declared receiving funding for election campaigns from unions)

I found it exceedingly odd how the City Solicitor deemed that receiving a declared donation to an election campaign or other political activity isn’t a prejudicial interest. I’m pretty sure that the same answer wouldn’t apply to me if the matter concerned say, Cullingworth Conservative Club (I sort of asked but got something of an equivocal answer from the City Solicitor).

In the end, Labour won its vote – backed by Bradford’s rather supine Liberal Democrats and the watermelons in our Green Party. We will carry on spending approaching half-a-million of taxes taken from struggling Bradford residents on preening trade union officials while Labour – locally and nationally – benefits from the largess of those unions.

Until earlier this year when, by chance, we discovered about the full-time union organisers on the rates, it had never crossed my mind – not for a second – that the Council was paying these wages. Our concern isn’t an attack on trade unions but – in tough financial times – recognising that we simply can’t afford the indulgence of paying for union officials using taxpayers cash.

Instead of taking this saving, Labour prefer to shut libraries, close swimming pools and remove support from disabled adults. All so their mates in the unions keep their well paid jobs.

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Some good news, some secrecy and a worry about planning in Bradford

Cullingworth

On Friday, the Shipley Planning Panel refused an application to build over 400 new houses on land at Sty Lane in Micklethwaite near Bingley. Land next to the Leeds Liverpool Canal and close to the great pair of Bingley locks – five-rise and three-rise.

The audience cheered and stamped their feet as councillors voted six to one against proposals by developers Redrow and Bellway to build on the site at Sty Lane, Micklethwaite.

Councillors said they felt access to the site, which was principally via a swing bridge over the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, was not adequate.

There will be an appeal – indeed the date is already set – so those objecting to the development might yet have their hopes dashed.

My purpose in highlighting this decision isn’t simply to discuss the particular development but to make a wider observation about Bradford’s Local Development Framework (LDF) Core Strategy. See, you’ve already got drooping eyelids and a fuzzy head at the planning jargon. Like most people, this strategy will be informed more by professional lobbyists – the developers, the “environment” campaigns and the heritage advocates – than by local people considering what development is needed and how to go about providing that development.

The LDF Core Strategy won’t point directly at the precise locations for development but will decide how much housing, employment and infrastructure is needed and how land allocation can be used to make that provision. And, right now, it is being driven by hidden evidence – documents that Bradford Council has not published:

·         The Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment (SHLAA) – this assesses the possible sites across the district and has been conducted by a panel including representatives of the housebuilders, the social housing sector and the council. No elected members are involved in this process and other than a report on process and methodology to scrutiny, there will be no member process.

·         The Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) – this analyses the housing market in Bradford in depth advising on the types of housing needed in different areas and the amount and pattern of need for affordable housing – housing provided for sale and rent at below market prices. It was commissioned from consultants in 2009 and completed a year later. The council refuses to publish this document ahead of publishing the LDF Core Strategy

When the LDF Core strategy is published, these two studies will be presented as irrefutable evidence supporting the Council’s strategy. There will be no scope for challenging these documents – we will be expected to work with them as the basis of determining the core strategy. And I can tell you what the key proposal in that strategy – based on this evidence they won’t let us see – will be.

In order to meet the need for housing – 50,000 new houses over 15 years – we will be told that we have to release land from the ‘green belt’. Land like the site at Sty Lane where permission has just been refused. There will be no scope for creativity in meeting this requirement, we will not be allowed to question the number – all we will, as councillors, be asked to do is agree to taking large tracts of land from Bradford’s ‘green belt’.

And before you all get excited about the current proposals for a new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and begin laying into the government remember that what I have just described – a distant, bureaucratic, inflexible, predict-and-provide method – is the system introduced by the last Labour government.

Over the coming weeks, I will try to set out how an alternative approach might work – how we can negotiate development with local communities rather than simply point at land saying ‘build there’. How we can incorporate the changed pattern of employment and how we can create a plan that is ‘developer-friendly’ without ruining the amenity – the fantastic South Pennines amenity – that local people cherish.

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