Campaigns

I have the passion and the experience to make things happen for Labour and for Walthamstow. Every campaign I have run or contributed to reflects both my commitment to both the people of this constituency and my commitment to the politics of social justice. I believe we can't just talk about how things could be different, we need to act too. These are just a selection of some of the current campaigns I'm involved in, putting into practise my Labour values.

The Beauty of Life: Supporting Culture and Arts

In recent months I've been very involved in a number of projects locally to support creativity in our constituency. I've always found the ideas of William Morris powerful. He talked about the importance to socialism of the "beauty of life" which is expressed through culture and arts. It seems right to me in the place of his birth that we support the potential we have here, especially in the run upto the cultural Olympiad programme ahead of the Olympic games. Most recently I've been involved in the Walthamstow Festival. I've been supporting this grassroots festival since it began four years ago. It gets bigger and better every year, showcasing local artists and drawing people from across the borough to our town centre for a weekend of entertainment. I'll be helping out on the day at the Cleveland Park Avenue area so do say hello - http://www.walthamstowfestival.com/

I'm also helping the Forest Philharmonic Orchestra - Founded in 1964, it is rated as one the country's leading community orchestras. It is a performance and training orchestra with members drawn from diverse backgrounds including music students, teachers, freelancers and amateurs. Local financial pressures mean there is a real danger that it will have to move out of Walthamstow. I'm organising a campaign to raise funds to help keep it within the borough- http://www.forestphilharmonic.org.uk/

Social Justice in Action: Supporting Community Empowerment and Education

As well as being an active school Governor at Sybourn Infants (http://www.sybourninfants.com/) and Junior Schools I've been working with the residents of Lea Bridge to secure £2million to refurbish the Lea Bridge library. Over the last five years we've grown from a small committee of residents to a group capable of attracting thousands of local people to events at the Library. These encourage local children and young adults to use the building, supporting learning in schools and building links between residents of all ages through their shared use of the building. I'm now campaigning for the residents to have the top floor of the library as a Development Trust so that they can run activities for young adults, police outreach surgeries and healthcare sessions there. You can view our film about the project at our website- www.library4leabridge.org.uk

I helped set up a project working with young muslim men in Walthamstow, seeking to encourage them to achieve their potential. This club now attracts hundreds of young adults to its activities, and has helped not only address concerns around radicalism and Islam on our streets but also gang crime and anti-social behaviour. I'm proudest of the fact we've helped many young men also succeed in life including getting several now to train  to become police officers and PCSOs. Recently a journalist from the Times came down to meet the group and wrote this article about them:
Article at www.timesonline.co.uk

Tackling Poverty on the Ground: Addressing Benefit Traps

When I was a councillor I lead an inquiry into how we could increase benefit take up in the borough and ensure that local residents received the funds to which they were entitled. I still believe we need to do more to simplify the benefits system and make it easier and fairer for all concerned. Recently, I've been working with our local CAB to look at how we could address the difficulties facing people in Walthamstow, especially those who are homeless. We were discussing how in London a lot of problems are caused by people being housed in a different borough to the one in which they're declared homeless. Often the borough in which they live ends up chasing them for rent/council tax because they don't know they have to claim housing benefit/council tax benefit from them rather than the authority which housed them. This is both a waste of money for all parties concerned  as well as a reason many claimants get into debt and poverty. We were thinking of different ways you could tackle this - we were thinking there could be three options:

• A London wide agency dealing with homelessness given the scale of the problems with housing - a person is declared homeless, they have their benefit entitlement and housing allocation all dealt with by one body (i.e. some agency run by the GLA perhaps?)
• A requirement for any authority which houses an individual out of borough to assess their benefit entitlement and make a claim on their behalf with the authority into which they're moved.
• A requirement for all new housing allocations from homeless applicants to be automatically given a benefit check by an independent agency i.e. the LA would pay for an advice service to do it as obviously there could be a "conflict of interest" for either LA

I've now taken these ideas up with CPAG (Child Poverty Action Group) and Shelter to get their feedback. www.cpag.org.uk and www.shelter.org.uk . I'll report back on their views as soon as I get them.

Our Children, Our Future: Community Engagement and Empowerment

There are many changes taking place locally and nationally that will affect families- from the new parental leave rights, to changes in tax credits and benefits as well as the new surestart and childrens centre services - and I want those in power to hear first hand from people in Walthamstow what they think of these changes and what our priorities for our locality are. That's why every year I organise an "our children, our future" event to enable local children and parents to have their say on what services and support they need to thrive. So far Harriet Harman MP and James Purnell MP have come to Walthamstow to respond to the issues raised by local families. And its not just about national government listening to local people-  I'm keen too that those who work with families participate so that they can bring their experience to our discussions and also get to know each other too. At every event we've had hundreds of local people along with politicians and officers responsible for services and the ideas and issues raised are then fed back to local and national service providers. I hope in time this event will become a key part of empowering Walthamstow's residents to shape public services to fit their needs- and as their representative I would work hard to make sure those voices are heard.