Happy New Year to Romford Recorder readers! My team and I have continued to serve constituents through the busy Christmas period, particularly on NHS issues. My first visit of 2023 has been to see the Emergency Department and Urgent Treatment Centre at Queen’s Hospital to talk through with their leadership and medical teams some of the challenges we need to work on together - from demand, staffing, delays and the patient experience to how to bring about improvements.
Just before Christmas, I took Havering’s Council Leader to see the Local Government Minister to highlight his concerns about cost pressures, especially from social services and social care. Following that intervention, extra money has been confirmed by Communities Secretary, Michael Gove, and Havering’s core spending power will grow next year by 9.5% from £200m to £219m. We also have confirmation of a £2.46m grant to Havering to prevent homelessness. I was glad to see the Council Leader reflect publicly on how positive the meeting had been.
We are also calling on residents to support some of our key campaigns - particularly our drive to stop the sale of Hornchurch Police Station by the Mayor of London. We believe we must retain this critical policing base for some of the 350 new officers who have joined our Borough Command Unit, so that they can improve neighbourhood policing responses. We have launched a petition after the new Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, started a review of the Met’s operations and we hope with residents’ support that we can reverse Mayor Khan’s 2017 decision to sell.
Residents have continued to make clear to us their very strong opposition to the expansion of the Mayor’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone to Havering. Once the Mayor has the equipment in place to impose vehicle charges, we are very worried he will seek to bring more cars into the charging system at a time when TfL’s public transport offer in Havering is simply not good enough to replace car journeys. We are calling on Havering Council to back the boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Harrow and Hillingdon, which have all publicly called on the Mayor to demonstrate the lawfulness of his plan and the data behind it.
Finally, we are busy organising another of our successful Jobs & Skills Fairs for February, focusing on apprenticeships. It will be held at Queen’s Theatre and we look forward to matching local businesses to local people who are looking for new skills or a role that will give them a fresh start in 2023.
