Its no surprise to see Green Councillor Nathalie Bienfait unconditionally backing Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s plans to create a ‘Culturally Sensitive Substance Misuse Recovery Centre’ in Roman Road market. No doubt her opinion is heartfelt. But she doesn’t represent the residents in the estates immediately surrounding the market whose stairwells are already plagued by Class A drug users. Nor does she represent the shop keepers and market traders who face a constant battle against the petty thieving that fuels users’ habits.
As the councillors who do represent these residents and businesses, our concern is the way the Mayor and his team have made this decision and their refusal to consider its potential impact on the Roman Road market. Each of us has friends whose lives are affected by drugs or alcohol and so we know that more addiction services are needed. However, the use of the former One Stop Shop specifically just for this service means those attending will be easily identified and it is undeniable it will have an impact on the local community. This use will also further delay the proposed redevelopment of the whole site for a hundred or so desperately needed new council homes.
As Nathalie knows, we were notified of a meeting to be briefed about this new centre at 5.05pm on Friday 9th May. Coincidently, this was five minutes after the deadline for a ‘call-in’ of a report that had gone to Mayor Rahman in Cabinet on 30th April about his new substance misuse strategy. That strategy didn’t mention the creation of a new centre in Bow. However, if we had been notified about this meeting only a few hours earlier, we would have put two and two together and ‘called-in’ the Mayor’s decision, so it was made in public.
At the meeting the following Monday, it was made clear that we were not being asked our opinion about Roman Road market as a suitable location for a rehab centre. We were just being told it was going to happen. The council officers present couldn’t explain what consideration had been given to its impact on local residents and businesses. We were told that several other sites had been considered. One of those ruled out was because there was a primary school opposite it. Old Ford Primary School is opposite the old One Stop Shop.
This was far from satisfactory, so we requested a meeting with the Corporate Directors. That meeting eventually took place the following week. This was an unhelpful conversation. They were unwilling to accept that residents should be engaged with before a final decision and they insisted that the potential impact on local businesses was not a relevant factor in the decision. That is why we have described Mayor Rahman’s decision as “disrespectful”.
Tower Hamlets Council’s constitution requires that any ‘key decision’ that affects residents living in two or more wards should be made by the Mayor in public. Similarly, it requires that any decision which is “politically sensitive” should be made in public too. The proposed centre is only 200 metres from the boundary between Bow East ward and Bow West. Given that the Mayor’s original decision to open this centre in Wapping aroused huge public opposition there and was being threatened with a legal challenge it is clearly “politically sensitive” as well.
The refusal to acknowledge this decision reaches these thresholds conveniently enables Tower Hamlets Council not to have to consult residents and avoids Mayor Rahman having to make it in public. This kind of evasion of due process is an example of the “serious failings” in the governance of Tower Hamlets Council under his leadership revealed by the independent ‘Best Value’ inspection last year. The Government was so concerned about the extent of these failings that it has sent in ‘Ministerial Envoys’ to oversee the authority.
An FoI has now revealed that the decision to move this centre to Roman Road was actually made at the beginning of March – two months before we were told about it. The report on which it is based is clearly designed to justify moving the centre to Bow. It ignores Old Ford Primary School being opposite the site and it fails to consider the risks of an increased number of drug users on market traders and shop keepers who are already struggling because of changed shopping habits.
The online petition against the centre was created by local residents when they got wind of it, not by us. Nathalie is welcome to continue backing Mayor Rahman’s plan, just as she repeatedly enables much else that he does in the Town Hall. But we hope she will at least agree he should make his key decision in accordance with Tower Hamlets Council’s constitution, instead of hiding behind council officers. And if he still wants a rehab centre rather than extra council homes, he should meet Bow residents and businesses to explain why their own concerns are misplaced.
Signed, Councillors Marc Francis, Amina Ali & Abdi Mohamed (Bow East ward)
Lutfur Rahman doesn’t care about Bow East & West because their residents don’t vote for him.