strangely contorted language only spo- ken in the Town Hall, which is not un- derstood by most regular people. The Publi
No 85 13.06.16 Newsletter of Tower Hamlets Federation of Tenants and Residents Associations (TRAs) FEDERATION MEETINGS
Monday 27th June: What do residents want to see in the Council’s new Housing Strategy? Monday 18th July (AGM): Speaker: Tower Hamlets Mayor John Biggs
All meetings in Collingwood Hall, Collingwood Street, E1 5DY (7-9pm). (ramp outside,level inside, disabled toilet) Tower Hamlets Homes (THH) Sub-Group 7pm, Monday, 13th June Sidney Estate TRA office, 2 Jarman House, Jubilee St. (Disabled toilet, level inside, high doorbell). Discussion on Tower Hamlets Homes’ policy and practice on resident engagement. Open to all residents. Contact us if you have a story but can’t come to the meeting. Tower Hamlets Axe the Housing Act Group (formerly “Kill the Bill”) Next meeting: 7pm, Tuesday, 14th June Ogilvie Tenants Hall, Pitsea Estate (outside ramp, level indoors, disabled toilet) This is a working body which plans meetings and actions to spread awareness of the Housing & Planning Act 2016 and organises opposition to it.
Public Health cuts will cost lives
We have a fantastic National Health Service which helps ill people get better. It is underfunded. We also have a Public Health Service, run by Councils, which helps people not get ill in the first place. That is also underfunded – and matters are about to get worse. The Government’s Public Health Grant to the Council has been cut, and the Council will be scaling back services accordingly. The Council is now running a public consultation on which Public Health activities it should cut or reduce (on the Council website – see link below). Services are divided into seven groups. There’s a short description of what each group of services does and how the proposed cuts would change this. Unfortunately, most of the description is written in “Council-ese” – a strangely contorted language only spoken in the Town Hall, which is not understood by most regular people. The Public Health Team has clearly tried hard to find ways to cut funding without affecting services. Some of its proposals seem to be cuts on paper, rather than in real life. For example, shifting people from the least successful stop smoking programme to the most successful one will improve the cessation rate – so it will look like the cost per quitter is less! Other proposals are a bit cheeky: stopping working with the youth service to educate young people about tobacco because schools already do that work. There is a very user-friendly way of giving your feedback. There are tick boxes for you to say if the proposals will have a positive or negative impact and then you can say what they are, which is good. Unfortunately, it is very hard to read through the descriptions of
the proposed cuts and understand them. It is disappointing that the Council has just got down to the business of cutting services to match the cut in government grant. There is no sign of it having protested to the Government about the human costs of its cuts – or of anyone having worked out how much it will cost the NHS to deal with sick people who could have been kept well by Public Health services. We have had two meetings on Public Health in recent months and it is clear that many TRAs believe the service helps many of their residents. We suggest that you help put the residents’ case across by responding to the online consultation and making the Council aware there will be a negative impact from their cuts. lTo take part in the consultation, go to: http://bit.ly/URELF lThe consultation ends on 16th June. lThe Council is reviewing the structure of the Public Health Service and the Fed’s trying to help find ways residents can be more directly involved in the service in the future. If your TRA is interested in health services you have or don’t have, please get in touch. Tower Hamlets Private Renters This group gives help and support to tenants who are renting homes from private landlords (including absentee leaseholders), as well as campaigning on issues which affect private renters. Contact THPR on:
[email protected]
Contact the Federation
[email protected] tel. 079 03 06 03 03 www.th-federation.org.uk
