The new Royal Borough has a new Mayor.  Amid the splendour of Christopher Wren’s Painted Hall of the Old Royal Naval College, Councillor David Grant took office as First Citizen of Greenwich.

The great and good of Greenwich life (who we seem obliged nowadays to call ‘Stakeholders’) were in attendance:  The Deputy Lord Lieutenant,  the Borough Police Commander, business representatives,  charity leaders, the Chairman of the Royal Artillery Museum, Military top brass, Freemen of the Borough, assorted Councillors…  But, the chances are, not you, dear reader.  Though paying for the celebration out of your taxes, the public were not invited.

Of course, we can’t fit 230,000 people into the hall, and it is undoubtedly important to thank the community representatives and (urgh, that word again) ‘stakeholders’ who play an important role in making the Royal Borough what it is.  But I honestly think we are missing an opportunity to involve more people in this annual civic celebration.

But first, a sketch of last night’s proceedings.  With the assembled guests seated, serenaded by an odd selection of Italian operatic music played over the loudspeakers, an expectant hush falls.  “Pray be upstanding for the Worshipful The Mayor” calls a loud voice from the back, and we all upstand.  Councillor Jim Gillman, red-robed, fur-trimmed  and preceded by the ceremonial mace (historic function – clouting peasants out of the way) makes his way up the central aisle to the raised dais at the end of the hall, where the identically-robed Mayor-elect Grant is waiting.

Oh yes, “Mayor-elect”.  I call him that, because for the last few years, the ceremony in the Painted Hall has been purely symbolic.  When I was first on the Council, the event had the status of the Annual Meeting of the Council, during which the Mayor was actually elected by Councillors.  This also meant, of course, that under local government legislation the public had a right to attend, and the opposition parties were able to have their say on the nomination.  Those familiar with Greenwich politics will see the problem with that last point.  Any opportunity for dissent is viewed as inconvenient by the Labour leadership, who decided a couple of years ago to dispense with the democratic element of the evening.  So the Annual Meeting is now held a week before at the Town Hall, safely away from invited guests, and the new Mayor’s accession is deferred.

So back to the ceremonial.  Mayor Gillman has bid us not be upstanding, and we are now downsitting.  He makes his valedictory address, reminding us of his eventful year in office.  This was his second time in the role, and he gets a genuine laugh for pointing out that whilst Charlton Athletic’s promotion may not have been his doing, the same thing happened during his previous term in 1985/6.  He leaves to warm applause, and takes a bow.

Next up is the annual state-of-the-Borough address by Council Leader Chris Roberts. This follows a basic formula every year – a roll call of the year’s triumphs, some tributes to the incoming and outgoing Mayors, then some thinly-disguised political propaganda for how wonderfully his administration is doing.  His praise for David Grant includes comparing him to another Mayor, Boris Johnson, apparently due to their mutual habit of standing with their hands in their jacket pockets.  Mr Mayor-elect looks nonplussed.  Then it’s onto the politics, and soon soundbites like ‘growth not austerity’ are bouncing off James Thornhill’s magnificently painted walls and ceiling before ricocheting into the audience.  Mid-way through, a baby starts to cry.  It surely speaks for many.

Then the actual ‘Mayor-making’ begins. Jim Gillman reports the previous week’s election, and invites his successor to sign the declaration of acceptance of office.  They then move round in front of the top table and, and with the help of an assistant the Mayoral chain and badge (18-carat gold and ‘shaped like an astrolabe’) is transferred from old Mayor to new, in slightly awkward silence.  Once it is safely around the neck of its new wearer, applause breaks out, and the participants return to their seats.  There follows a charming musical interlude, as children from St Alfege school perform African-themed songs and a dance routine that has Mayoral, councillorial and stakeholding toes tapping.

Music over, the new Mayor makes the last (and thus most well-received) speech of the night.  Witty and gently sardonic, Councillor Grant promises to do his best to be impartial in his chairing of Council meetings, and particularly not to be condescending towards the opposition.  He also makes what sounds to be a slight dig at the Leadership, stating that the Council should listen to the people and be responsive. “We are a democracy” he says, to wry smiles from many.  And with that, it is over.  We are bidden to be again upstanding, and the macebearer leads out the Mayoral party, after whom we troop down to the Queen Mary Undercroft for refreshments and a mixture of forced pleasantries and genuinely useful conversations with those holders of stakes.

So, all very nice for those of us invited.  But to return to my original point, it could be so much better.  We saw with the public celebrations of Royal Borough status in February that involving the community in civic events is a great way to bring people together.  In fact, each one of last night’s speakers mentioned the fact.  So here’s an idea – let’s do something similar every year.  Instead of the exclusive ‘Mayoral inauguration’, let’s open it up.  ‘Royal Greenwich- The Mayor’s Show’– can you imagine it?  No?  Well, OK, here goes:

It is Saturday lunchtime.  The Council meets in the splendid Victoria Hall of Woolwich Town Hall for the Mayor-making ceremony (and ideally the AGM too, but let’s not quibble).   There are the usual speeches, the exchange of the chain of office, and the great and the good head up to the committee suite for a modest buffet.  Outside, however, people have begun to gather along Wellington Street and in General Gordon Square.

At 2pm, there is a trumpet fanfare, and the new Mayor and Mayoress, preceded by their macebearer, emerge from the Town Hall.  The Mayor waves his hat around, as Mayors are wont to do, before walking at a stately amble down Wellington Street (briefly closed to traffic) and into the square.  There, entertainment has been laid on all day, with community stalls and other activities taking place.  The Mayor (not the Leader) gives a speech of welcome, before being serenaded by a variety of excellent performances by local schoolchildren and arts groups.

At the end of the show, the Mayoral couple travels to Greenwich, where at the Old Royal Naval College another community event is getting underway.  After another speech of welcome, they watch a parade made up of schoolchildren, scouts and guides, and marching bands.  In the evening, a dinner in the Painted Hall raises thousands for the Mayor’s charities, and the day is rounded off by a fireworks display.  Business sponsors ensure the whole event can be held at little or no cost to the taxpayer.

Possible?  I think so.  It could be scaled up or down – a march-past by the King’s Troop would be superb.  Moving the main celebrations to other parts of the Borough each year would be good, or the Mayor could visit other events in Eltham and Charlton on the way to Greenwich.  In short, the start of the civic year would become a big public celebration, showing off all that is best in the Royal Borough.  That’s something we could all be proud of.

Councillor Nigel Fletcher is Greenwich Conservatives’ spokesman for Culture.

Over the last election campaign, which seems far more than 18 months ago, there was a lot of concern from residents in Peninsula ward and myself about the fate of the East Greenwich Library. During the election campaign, residents were led to believe that the Council had promised to secure the future of the Library in the long-term and in 2010 renovated the library.

Therefore I was a little surprised last Thursday evening to be informed at the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee, that work had started on the new Greenwich Centre (to be based on the old Greenwich Hospital site) and that “It (the centre) will replace the current East Greenwich library.”

In March 2010 greenwich.co.uk reported that “He (Cllr Fahy) added that he would continue to work with the Friends of East Greenwich Library and Ward Councillors ‘to maximise a long term future for the building’”. It would appear from the report on Thursday that this ‘long term future’ will not be as a Library.

The report explained that the closure of the Arches Leisure Centre and East Greenwich Library will result from the creation of the new Greenwich Centre and implied that the buildings will be sold off to pay for this project. The report explained that the cost of modernising the Arches would be £17.6m but failed to explain why the Council had invested in repairing and improving the East Greenwich Library only to sell it off once a new centre is built.

I did ask about whether there had been any consultation about the closure of the Library but was told this would take place in the future. This seems strange as the decision to spend £30m building a new set of Council Offices and homes which the centre will be part of, has clearly already been taken. Surely any consultation will be irrelevant as the Council has already decided on the final outcome.

The closure is a real blow to those people who thought they had secured the future of this historic library which was built by the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie’s foundation and celebrated its 105th birthday last year.

The Committee was informed that plans for the new centre include:-

• 645 homes in 5 blocks (of which 314 homes will be affordable & 53 will be family homes).
• A new library
• Two new swimming pools and leisure facilities
• A new service centre
• A new Health Centre

Although the report suggested that work on the new centre would start in 2012, officers informed Councillors that holes were already being dug and the centre should take around 27 months to complete.

Cllr Spencer Drury is the leader of Greenwich Conservatives.

Greenwich is facing the loss of an extraordinary and unique community resource – and yet virtually no one appears to know of its existence or of the threat to its existence.

Occupying two acres of former industrial land on the Greenwich peninsula is the Meantime Nursery. An offshoot of the wonderful (and much better-known) Greenwich Ecology Park, it features insect hotels, vertical gardens, living willow fencing and a series of raised nursery beds containing experimental turf seeded with wildflowers, aquatic plants and more.

Created by volunteers and opened with a little fanfare only in Spring 2011 (yes, 2011), it is now threatened with closure. The threat looming over it is that the land is to be turned over to a Dutch company to create a ‘glamping’ attraction (glamorous camping, with beds, wardrobes, internet and mood lighting), decked out in lurid orange, for mostly Dutch tourists, and planned to be operational in time for the Olympics and a tall ships sail-past next year.

The Meantime Nursery, just a few months ago, was being hailed as a wonderful new local resource for conservation and biodiversity, benefiting community groups and local schools. It would be an educational resource, help to cut carbon and host food-growing projects. At the time of the nursery’s opening, attended by a government minister, the landowner, the Homes and Communities Agency, said: “This is a really fantastic project and we are proud to be involved. As well as providing the land rent-free we have undertaken the essential enabling works on site to ensure that this land can be put to good use immediately.”

So what has changed? How and why did the HCA’s proud commitment to this project evaporate? It is time local people realised that this wonderful site is under their noses, time that it was publicised and opened up to the public more widely, and time that the community demands answers from the HCA and from Greenwich Council. An application for the ‘glamping’ site to have a licence for alcohol and music has run into trouble, so there may yet be time and opportunity to mobilise to save the Meantime Nursery.

I was lucky enough recently to get access to the site. I hope the photographs here will give a sense of what we face losing in the name of a profit-seeking, temporary, tourist jamboree.

Gavin McGregor lives in east Greenwich and is a member of the East Greenwich Pleasaunce orchard care group, a keen forager and a frustrated balcony veg-grower.

Would you like to have your say about a local issue? To contribute a ‘Platform’ article, email rob@greenwich.co.uk.

Parliamentary constituency boundaries are being radically redrawn all over Britain and Greenwich is one of many areas affected.  This is the consequence of new legislation which rewrites the rules on boundary changes.

In the past the Boundary Commission, the independent body which oversees the process, was required to review periodically Parliamentary constituency boundaries, and in doing so had to take account of a series of objectives, including the maintenance of natural boundaries and community links as well as the number of electors in the area.  The process also allowed extensive opportunities for representations from interested parties and individuals and for a public inquiry to consider proposed boundary changes.  Under the new rules, the number of electors has been made the overriding consideration, with no discretion for the Boundary Commission to allow a variation of more than 5% from the quota, even if this involves severe disruption of existing community links.

The timetable for conducting the review has been accelerated, and the opportunities for the public to influence the process have been restricted.  Yet paradoxically the need for thorough scrutiny of the proposals is greater than ever.  The changes are far more radical than in the past, mainly because the size of constituencies is being increased substantially (from around 67,000 to around 76,000 electors) and in consequence they involve many more constituencies crossing local authority boundaries.

In our case, the Boundary Commission’s initial proposals, published on 13^th September, involve splitting East Greenwich from West Greenwich.  Greenwich West ward, including the Ashburnham Triangle, Greenwich Railway Station and the Cutty Sark DLR station, St Alfege’s Church, the Town Centre, the Old Royal Naval College and Greenwich Park would be transferred to a new constituency called Deptford and Greenwich, the bulk of which would lie in the borough of Lewisham.

Peninsula Ward which includes Trafalgar Road, Park Vista, the Heart of East Greenwich (formerly Greenwich District Hospital) site, the East Greenwich Pleasaunce, Blackwall Lane, Greenwich Millennium Village, North Greenwich underground station and the 02 would all be within a new Woolwich constituency which would stretch eastwards to cover much of Thamesmead and Abbey Wood.

The boundary of the proposed new constituency would not just divide SE10 in half, but bizarrely would separate the Old Royal Naval College from the Trafalgar Tavern.  Blackheath Westcombe ward would also transfer from the current Greenwich and Woolwich constituency so the new constituency, called Deptford and Greenwich, would include Kidbrooke Parish Church but not Trafalgar Road.  This is a nonsense.

Even though psephologists tell me that the proposed new Woolwich constituency, as well as the Deptford and Greenwich one, would be safer Labour seats than the present arrangements, I will be strongly opposing the changes.  I believe that Greenwich’s historic identity should not be broken up and divided between different Parliamentary constituencies.

These are initial proposals and can be changed.  There are alternatives.  But if Greenwich which has been represented by one constituency in Parliament since 1832 is not to find itself split in two, it will require forceful and well-argued representations from as many members of the public and representative bodies as possible.  Anyone who wants to express their views about the Boundary Commission proposals must do so within the next 12 weeks – i.e. by 5^th December – by writing to:

The Boundary Commission for England
35 Great Smith Street
London SW1P 3BQ

or email  information@bcommengland.x.gsi.gov.uk

Full details of the Boundary Commission proposals can be found on http://consultation.boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk

Local government, Greenwich Council in particular, has become easy prey for the TaxPayers’ Alliance and other pressure groups who seriously misrepresent the public sector.

While they are entitled to their view, they might reflect on a scale of one to ten where the greedy bankers sit alongside the commitment and dedication of public servants.

Column inches have recently been published about the costs of the Mayor of Greenwich inauguration at the Painted Hall.

This has taken place in the same venue for the last eleven years. As Mayor in 1999 I well remember the first occasion in which the event was held there.

Should the Council have an annual event? Of course.

Has anybody complained about the City of London’s annual Lord Mayor’s Banquet? Of course not, because it is a tradition that has been held in the City for hundreds of years. Local councils up and down the country hold similar events and rightly so.

The Painted Hall, part of the UNESCO World Heritage site, is a wonderful setting for such an important event. Hundreds of partners and stakeholders attend and it gives the Council the opportunity to showcase the heritage of the borough.

Of course there is a cost, but the difference between the event being held in the Town Hall or Painted Hall is minimal. We are always sensitive about costs for everything we do and this event is no exception. Mindful of the austerity measures, the costs of the event have been scaled down to reflect our commitment to saving money where we can.

We continue to be lectured by Government ministers and Eric Pickles (Secretary of State for Local Government) in particular. I was at a meeting in Portcullis House last week and was tripping over Members of Parliament sliding off to hospitality events. Has the Houses of Parliament locked up the wine cellar? No, because they see local government as an easy target.

I have not had a single constituent complain about this event. They understand the importance of civic life in which the Mayor plays a key role.

Cllr John Fahy is Greenwich Council’s Cabinet Member for Culture and the Olympics.

When considering what secondary school might best serve their child, parents often look to the Government’s performance tables for GCSE results.  In recent years in Greenwich these have often been an embarrassment.  One thing which has particularly needled the Town Hall has been the number of  potentially high performing pupils from the Borough who have chosen to go to a grammar school in Bexley.

Some years ago the council tried to combat this by an advertising campaign featuring well-known people who had been educated in the Borough exhorting others to “Get a Greenwich Education”.  I remember in particular footballer Anton Ferdinand and Trudie “June Ackland from The  Bill” Goodwin.    While the posters told us when Anton had attended Blackheath Bluecoat School, they were too polite to tell us Trudie’s Eltham Hill vintage.

On the same theme the rebuilt Crown Woods campus near the Bexley border will be split into four distinct units including Delamere School for “high-ability”  11-16 year olds and seemingly a grammar school that dare not speak its name.

However the recently published results for 2010 are interesting.  Just over 50% of pupils at Greenwich achieved five GCSE passes at A*-C Grade including English and Maths.  This puts us in a lowly 29^th place out of the 32 London Boroughs.  At the same time it continues a significant upward trend from the nadir of 2007 when Greenwich was firmly at the rear with a 34% pass rate.

2010 GCSE results 5 A*-C passes including English & Maths

Rank	Borough	%
1	Kensington & Chelsea	71.3
7	Bromley	65.1
13	Bexley	59.8
	London Average	58.1
29	Greenwich	50.1
31	Lewisham	48

5 GCSEs at Grade A*-C including Maths & English

Trend 2007-2010

Rank	Borough	Increase in % pass rate
1	Southwark	17.7
2	Westminster	16.5
3	Greenwich	16.1
	London Average	10.5

So is the glass half full or half empty?   Greenwich Time has predictably concentrated solely on the improvement and ignored the raw figures, while   Greenwich Conservatives provide an alternative, somewhat churlish, slant.

I feel that while there is clearly a lot of scope to do better, things do seem to be moving in the right direction and that Greenwich officers and lead Councillor Jackie Smith(no relation to the former Home Secretary) have cause for some limited trumpet blowing.

Whether examination results are the best indicator of a school’s performance is, of course, another issue…

Department for Education results for all schools can be seen here.

Paul Webbewood is a former Liberal Democrat councillor for the Middle Park and Sutcliffe Ward.

On 9th December the Evening Standard published an article on councillors’ allowances in London. I’ve constructed a table which tries to put Greenwich in context:

2009-2010 Figures	London Average	Greenwich
Total of councillors’ allowances	£994,991	£943,330
Leader of Council’s total allowances	£50,529	£62,816
Basic allowance	£9,972	£10,210

Looking at this, it appears that Greenwich is in the mainstream on total expenditure and the amounts paid to ward councillors, but that Council Leader Chris Roberts receives almost 25% more than the average for his job. Indeed the figure in the table is inflated by including the three elected Mayors. In the 29 Boroughs without elected Mayors, only two leaders seem to have done better than Mr Roberts.

When challenged previously about his allowances Chris Roberts has correctly claimed that they are in line with the recommendations of London Councils (LC) the representative body for local government in London

Now LC is effectively run on behalf of Council Leaders and cynics might say that its views on what they should get paid are about as valuable as those of a committee of sharks on bathing arrangements at Sharm el Sheikh. Indeed Chris Roberts received £10,000+ from LC in 2009-10 on top of his Greenwich Council money (as did many other leaders).

Be that as it may, it is true that an independent panel appointed by LC says that being a Council Leader is

“a full-time job, involving a high level of responsibility and now includes the exercise of executive responsibilities. It is right that it should be remunerated on a basis which compares with similar positions in the public sector, while still retaining a reflection of the voluntary character of public service“.

This panel recommended that Council Leaders in London be paid a total of £64,864 per annum. I would agree with the principle set out by the panel but not necessarily with the amount they came up with. In practice almost all Councils choose to regard it as a ceiling rather than a direction – indeed Greenwich pays its councillors who are Cabinet Members significantly less than the LC recommendation for their role. However for Chris Roberts alone the letter of the law applies.

Does Mr Roberts deserve more money then his peers in the rest of London? Well it is certainly true to say that Greenwich has a good record in keeping Council Tax low over the last decade or so, although it is difficult to disentangle how much of this is down to good housekeeping and how much to the effects of Government funding formulas. On the other hand Greenwich is consistently ranked as being below the London average in the quality of its services.

I conclude therefore that, while Chris Roberts has displayed a basic level of competence as Council Leader since 2000, he is by no means a municipal superstar and his pay should be reduced to the London average. While a saving of £12,287 would only be a drop in the ocean in the Council’s current position, it would be a sign of the Council’s good faith and common sense as it starts to navigate the troubled waters ahead.