Peter Golds and I sent the attached letter (& copied below) to the Mayor, Cabinet members and Council officers today as to what we think they need to do as regards Covid-19 given that the Council is responsible for Public Health in TH (not an NHS responsibility since 2013). It maybe that they have already agreed to do all of this in their meetings since the 30th January WHO announcement but to be sure we sent it to them.
 
It is based in part on information gathered from social media and ideas from you so if we have missed anything let us know and we will amend.
 
Draft Emergency Response to Covid-19 – Version 1
From Cllr Peter Golds and Cllr Andrew Wood
18th March 2020
Dear all.
 
I assume that these measures have already been put into place or are being planned but if not we believe this is what needs to be done:
 
Communications – we need to hugely ramp up our comms on this and involve the Council in community conversations underway already

1. Pulp the new March ‘Our East End’, it is dated March 2020 but does not mention the words ‘virus’ ‘coronavirus’ nor ‘Covid-19’.  It would send mixed messages about the importance of a response if the latest Council communication said nothing on this subject;
2. A replacement ‘Our East End’ – a new edition focussed on practical advice (in multiple languages);
3. Send a letter to each household (since we do not have to send polling cards now) with links to information and what to do (including in different languages); 
4. Hand out at grocery shops & food markets information to shoppers as the quickest way to get information into the hands of people likely not to be on the internet, remind them about social distancing at the same time;
5. First send a separate letter to vulnerable residents to let them know that we know they are vulnerable and how to get help, put phone numbers on letters;
6. Run the NHS ‘how to wash your hands’ video on permanent loop on display screens in public spaces and on social media, apparently 1/3 of people are still not hand washing and many may not be washing properly;
7. Shut down all other non-essential public relations campaigns to ensure clear messages except for the stop smoking campaign e.g. anti-idling;
8. But it has never been more important for people to be healthy and resilient, communications should also focus on how to stay healthy and to stop smoking:
9. Email – your first email specifically about Covid-19 was sent on the evening of the 17th March, it is a start we need regular updates, pushing messages out on a regular basis;
10. LBTH Website – permanent link in a prominent location linked to all Covid-19 information, place the NHS ‘How to wash your hands’ video in a prominent location, publication of the pandemic plan on the Council website so that we can all see it plus LGA & government guidance, plus detailed Q&A, all information in one place;
11. Social media – as an example the Canary Wharf & Isle of Dogs Residents Facebook group is currently having 10,000 active members a day, the number of daily posts has tripled. People are talking about little else but Covid-19 and panic buying;
    1. Facebook paid ads (we can ask FB to make them free), we should be actively using social media to push messages on cleanliness and social distancing;
    2. Nextdoor – the Met Police are using Nextdoor, the Council needs to do the same as a backup to Facebook to send messages to wider community;
    3. Facebook + Nextdoor + Twitter + Instagram should ensure a good distribution of information on social media. Only one post on Instagram so far. No Facebook posts until last week;
12. Plaster Tower Hamlets with a version of the DoE poster – it should be on each bus shelter, each Ideas store, each school child should have a copy to take home, each faith location should have multiple copies; 
13. Ensure faith locations have copies of the appropriate material;
14. Channel S and other media – what is the engagement plan?;
15. East London Advertiser & Wharf Life – pay for multi-page ads with Covid-19 information in the next edition; 
16. Provide Councillors with material to share in different languages:

 
Database of vulnerable people
We need to build a database of all vulnerable people, based on:

1. Electoral data (which has birthdates?);
2. Freedom Pass data (over 60);
3. NHS data;
4. Adult social care data;
5. Social input from volunteers and Councillors;
6. Gather contact details for that group and ascertain who can provide care for each individual;
7. Send the vulnerable group additional information;
8. If vulnerable have no family or other care support allocate to a voluntary group;

 
Adult Social Care 

1. Hygiene standards for carers visiting vulnerable people clearly has to change;
2. What training is being provided to care staff?;
3. Are they being provided with the appropriate PPE?;
4. Do we have a database of ALL vulnerable residents, see point above;
5. Stockpiles, see point below;
6. Staff numbers? What is plan if large numbers of staff go off ill? Can we train replacements?;
7. Rotation of staff should be reduced e.g. they do not visit different people each week but as far as possible keep the same clients to prevent transmission;

 
Volunteering 
I assume you are aware by now of Facebook groups like ‘Tower Hamlets Covid19 Community Support’ as well as a number of WhatsApp groups trying to co-ordinate a community response and to help the vulnerable;

1. How will LBTH engage with these groups?, will staff join these groups to help provide advice and guidance?;
2. Will it use these groups to help build a database of vulnerable people?;
3. Will it mobilise support if it needs to supplement the adult social care staff?;
4. Will it provide training, support and DBS checks to volunteers?;

 
Strikes
This is not the time for strikes and other disruption by Council staff or those providing essential services, if necessary delay ‘Tower Rewards’ for a year. It is a distraction. Push Veolia harder to sort out their issues.  
 
Food delivery for those told to self-isolate

1. 14 days is likely to exceed peoples stocks of food at home;
2. How to help people without internet access or ability to internet shop (which is anyway under pressure)?;
3. Will we set up a food distribution network?;

 
Q&A information

1. Dedicated phone line, email (is the new email to be made publicly available), weblinks to provide advice and support;
2. Provide detailed Q&A in various locations, for example as posters on bus stops;

 
Personal Hygiene

1. Clear messages in all publicly provided toilets about acceptable behaviour;
2. Wash facilities: No spitting, no face washing, no washing of other parts of the body, nothing that leaves viral material on wash basins;

 
Parking

1. With staff being sent to work from home and more driving generally to help with social distance we have cars parked in TH during weekdays that do not have permits, can we only ticket vehicles which are blocking emergency access or are parked dangerously;
2. We need to avoid elderly etc coming into Ideas stores to renew parking permits etc, can we automatically extend all permits until end of crisis;
3. Provide NHS and other emergency staff who work in TH but live elsewhere with free parking to help them avoid public transport which is anyway being reduced in frequency;

 
Retail/Panic Buying/Price gouging

1. Remind all retailers about the Competition and Markets Authority advice on pricing and information;
2. Panic buying also means customers in close proximity to each other, no social distancing is in force. Can we be visiting supermarkets / larger shops to encourage them to enforce social distancing at all times;
3. Trading standards officers to help enforce, starting with biggest retailers and then work down;
4. Work with retailers to understand their supply issues and to provide them with support to enforce any rules on limiting the sale of certain items, this may include placing THEO’s in stores to assist staff to enforce rules as the reports suggest they are not being universally applied, staff are busy and may not want to confront panicked shoppers;
   1. We have 7 main supermarkets, 4 large grocery shops plus a number of markets;
      1. Waitrose * 2 – Wapping and canary Wharf
      2. Tesco - Bow
      3. ASDA – Isle of Dogs (this is a particular problem shop)
      4. Sainsbury - Whitechapel
      5. Lidl – Burdett Road
      6. Marks & Spencer – Canary Wharf
      7. Four Tesco Metro – Canary Wharf, Roman Road, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel
      8. Plus smaller Sainsbury shops
      9. Plus important markets at Watney Street, Chrisp Street, Roman Road, Whitechapel with their own stores;
      10. It should be possible to have staff present at many of these locations:
5. Work with retailers to find some method of allowing the vulnerable to shop, for example at set times after shops have been restocked, or set aside separate areas only accessible to people in vulnerable groups?;
6. Environmental health rules – can they be used to force retailers to behave;
7. Restaurants & pubs – remind them that they can run a take away service in the meantime;

 
Financial
We clearly need to be worried about:

1. The survival of businesses; 
2. The survival of families/individuals with no cash savings and / or who have lost income;

 
Suggestions might include:

• Council tax holiday – is it possible to delay payments for people in need?;
• Speeding up of payments by LBTH to its own supply base?;
• Speed up project delivery, spend money, pump prime TH economy;

 
This section needs more work, how will we use extra money granted by government?;
 
Education

1. Are schools ready to close?;
2. What help can we provide those on lower incomes with food given loss of free school meals, can we provide take away food for children on free school meals?;
3. What help will we provide parents in critical occupations with child support, can schools provide limited child care for selected parents;
4. What help will be provided to students to keep studying especially those close to exams?;

 
Stocks

1. What stockpiles exist of emergency equipment e.g. face masks, gloves, alcohol hand sanitisers, thermometers, toilet roll, soap, coffins, lime, etc?;
2. Care packages – are we creating care packages for vulnerable people i.e. masks, toilet roll, thermometers etc;
3. What storage space do we have?;

 
Faith gatherings
The Church of England has stopped public worship and the Muslim Council of Britain strongly recommended the same the day before. Have we passed that advice onto all faith groups and facilities?
 
Gyms, Libraries, Public facilities

1. Do we keep them open? We think yes for now subject to clear information in each about what to do and provision of hand sanitiser etc. Maybe ban larger meetings in them
2. How are we cleaning them?
3. Recycling bags – can we restart process of sending them out to people after 1st April rather then ask people to come into Ideas store to pick up?
4. Library fines – good step to extend return date

 
Registering deaths & funerals

1. Are we ready for a big increase in deaths and funerals should it happen?;
2. Storage capacity for bodies?;
3. How much capacity remains in our multi-faith burial plot?;
4. Where is the nearest crematoria? What is its capacity?;
5. What rules will be implemented at funerals to prevent further infections?;

 
Council Meetings

1. Livestream all meeting to encourage public to stay away, post links; 
2. Review agenda of Council meetings to ensure that only urgent items are dealt with;

3.    The Government have already made proposals for adjusting the procedure of council meetings during the current crisis;
4.    Lawyers in Local Government and the Association of Democratic  Service Officers have  come forward with proposals to lobby to permit remote meetings in the event the current situation deteriorates to the point that all meetings are cancelled;
5.    Tower Hamlets operates under an Executive Mayor and so decision making is different to most other councils;
6.    There is no reason why full council meetings should only undertake business that it is legally required to do;
7.    The May Annual Meeting can be restricted to electing the speaker ad appointing committees. There is no need for anything else to be on the agenda and the meeting can be formalised in a short time;
8.    Obviously there will not, this year, be a reception following the meeting;
9.    The Cabinet should meet but it’s deliberations can be web cast and members and officers can sit with wide spaces;
10. The regulatory committees;  planning and licensing, have public involvement. Again, members and officers can sit and deliberate with spaces between them. The problem comes with public representation. Meetings can be webcast and limits can be placed on those attending the meeting, with public attendance limited to those making representation;
11. Parliament has placed restrictions on access to the parliamentary estate, this includes mass lobbies and no longer being able to enter the estate and access not permitted to non-pass holders who may only attend on parliamentary business.

On Thursday I was asked to give a presentation about Urban Densification to the London Irish Town Planners Association, the audience was half Irish based and half London based. The Irish are looking at densifying new developments so Irelands Government Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government visited the IoD Thursday with Irish planning colleagues to learn some lessons from us.
I had to do the attached quite quickly although I re-used some slides from the IoD Neighbourhood Planning Forum presentations (but the comments are all mine)
Thought you might find interesting and I do plan to do more work on it for future presentations so comments etc welcome

I am in an odd situation, London needs to build new homes and I agree that quite a few can be built on the Isle of Dogs but I have none the less spent a lot of time to write 10 pages of reasons as to why the Inspector should refuse the new planning application for Westferry Printworks. It is basically too tall for the area.

You can see the appeal information here. 
https://acp.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/ViewCase.aspx?caseid=3225474

You cannot just say that you do not like an application you have to provide planning reasons as to why it should be rejected. Which are in the attached file.

After the garden bridge debacle cost £43 million of public money (£24 million by TfL) before collapsing in ignominy we would normally assume that politicians as well as TfL would learn from mistakes made.

But quietly another debacle is gathering pace, in October 2016 Mayor Sadiq Khan announced that a new cycling and pedestrian bridge would be built to connect Rotherhithe and Canary Wharf, he said ‘the new bridge could be open by as soon as 2020’. But the TfL team to deliver the project did not start work until early 2017. They knew they had to deliver a bridge and deliver it quickly before they had done any work looking at options.

The new bridge will be the largest pedestrian and cycling bridge in the world. It will also be the largest vertical lifting bridge in the world in order to allow ships through underneath. All to replace the existing pedestrian ferry which has never been full. One of the main justifications for the bridge is to relieve pressure on the Jubilee line between Canada Water and Canary Wharf after TfL decided not to buy ten extra Jubilee line trains because TfL did not think they were needed to relieve capacity.

In October 2016 I wrote to the then Deputy Mayor for London responsible for Transport suggesting that as an interim step that they make the existing ferry free to use. It would allow TfL to understand pedestrian demand from the existing population in Rotherhithe (the ferry has a very limited ability to carry bicycles but that could be expanded). TfL refused. This has been the fundamental problem all along with TfL. The refusal to consider alternatives which would contradict the Mayors publicly stated promise of a bridge. A promise made the same day he announced that the Silvertown road tunnel would go ahead (perhaps to appease the green lobby he felt he had to offer them a clean bridge?). 
 
If you believe funds are unlimited then this bridge might make sense though it cannot be open 247 due to the need to open for ships passing by (up to 60 minutes for large ships). As of February 2019, TfL has already spent £9.9 million on the new bridge and the TfL budget suggests another £8 million to be spent this year before planning permission is even sought. But the cost of this bridge is becoming the critical issue. 
 
TfL originally said it will cost between £120 and £180 million to build and £2.4 million a year to run each year (it will need to be staffed 247 like Tower Bridge). But other reports say it will cost £200 million to build and unofficially TfL do not dispute that the build cost may go to £400 million. We should get the next estimate of costs in late April but £300 million seem to be a fair assumption of the cost for now (the shorter and simpler garden bridge was originally estimated to cost £60 million and ended up being forecast to cost over £200 million).
 
TfL assume the equivalent of 3,333 pedestrians and 1,875 cyclists will use the bridge each day. Although with a 27-minute walk from Canary Wharf to the main area of new development at Canada Water across the 800-meter-long bridge (assuming not closed for ships) it is not clear how many people will make that walk on a dark winter’s night. If it did cost £300 million to build and £2.4 million a year to operate that is a capital cost of £57,604 to build per user and £461 a year to operate per user (the bridge would be free to use). The benefit/cost ratio for the proposed bridge suggest that it maybe negative with a value possibly as low as  0.7 (1 being value for money), the ferry benefit/cost ratio starts at 1.

TfL did model the cost of up to three electric roll on roll off electric ferries and new pontoons at £30 million + £2.4 million a year to run (same as the bridge). But thereafter they have actively discounted it as an option even though we know it would cost less, be more comfortable in winter and would often be quicker to cross for pedestrians.
 
But the main cost is the opportunity cost. £300 million on a bridge is about 21% of the total Healthy Streets capital programme between 2019-2024. If we build a bridge what projects won’t now take place elsewhere? The main justification for the bridge is to encourage more cycling and walking, but perhaps smaller projects will deliver more benefits?
 
TfL will say that the last consultation showed that 93% supported the bridge but only 37% of respondents said they would use the bridge to commute, 56% would use for leisure use. But that consultation never mentioned the ferry as an option, nor the cost of the bridge!
 
A ferry does not mean you cannot later build a bridge later if the ferries are packed each day (you can move the ferries and their pontoons easily to other locations). But the reverse is not true, if you build a bridge which is then under-used it is too late.
 
The Mayor of London should first test demand for this new bridge by making the existing ferry free to use. Then when more user data is available re-consult people offering two choices: an expensive but permanent bridge and a cheaper roll on roll off electric ferry. Failure to do so means that the Transport and Works Order which would give the bridge permission to go ahead would fail as TfL won’t be able to prove that they properly considered alternatives. But it is possible that is the intention. The bridge is now financially unviable, and it would be politically less embarrassing if the Mayor could blame the government for its rejection rather than his own failure in announcing a solution before properly looking at the options (a similar mistake to those made by Boris Johnson).

Picture below of a vertical lifting bridge in France so that you can see how it works

I had hoped that 2019 was to be a year without elections but we now face the possibility of three more: general election, EU Parliament & EU referendum: the Council is preparing for all three just in case. You may wish to register to vote :) 
https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote
 
I have not supported a Peoples Vote until now but if Parliament cannot resolve issues this week then we need some dramatic solution to cut the Gordian knot. I had hoped that Parliament would do its job, but they only have days left to do so. A referendum would do that, but what should the question be?
 
I am surprised that the government did not consider earlier a referendum between different forms of Leave. A Canada or Norway model could have been put to the vote to resolve this quagmire. It would have offered both Remainer’s and Leavers something to fight for. Perhaps now the argument not to include a Remain option in a referendum is weaker but I still hesitate at including it.
 
The argument to 17.4 million leave voters that you cannot have what you voted for because our politicians, parties and leaders are not up to it is not a good one even if true. We did vote to leave despite lies on both sides, leaves were worse but remember Obama's back of the queue comment requested by Cameron, despite Remain outspending Leave once you include government spending, despite Project Fear promising economic disaster if we left.
 
I have not changed my mind on supporting Remain in 2016, I fear long term relative economic decline, that the Union will disintegrate, that we are stronger in the EU and that it is good for the EU that we are in. But we lost the argument and as somebody who believes that democracy is more important than our relationship with the EU, I really struggle with any option that says we can ignore the result.
 
And if Remainer’s are truly convinced that leaving would be a disaster perhaps they should be pushing for a managed no deal exit as that would most quickly lead to the economic damage they claim and the support of the British people to then return to the EU. After 2016 I realised that perhaps you cannot be members of a club if the majority of the country do not understand how the club operates. Perhaps we need to leave in order to better understand the rules?
 
I always thought that being outside the EU could work in theory, but it would require a revolution, we are not ready for the revolution and the leaders of that revolution do not inspire confidence. A Norway like exit would give us a smoother exit in the meantime.
 
I am not sure what a general election now would resolve. What would the parties offer be? The Conservatives are struggling to coalesce around the Withdrawal agreement, we have not even worked out yet where we see the UK in the global economy. Labour will offer a softer form of Brexit, or will they? But I think one is inevitable before 2022. 
 
There is an argument for revocation of Article 50 to restart the process from scratch, but it has to be on the basis that we have another referendum in a year or two and a clear process as to how to conduct that referendum so that it sticks and is not advisory. If we hold EU Parliamentary elections in May they could be used to judge the countries mood on the subject if parties offered clear alternatives. A general election result would provide less clarity on what the country wanted as regards Brexit.
 
Had I been an MP I would have voted for the Withdrawal agreement at the 2ndand 3rdgoes but not the first one, last night I would have voted for Common Market 2.0. But I would not have voted for Theresa May as leader of the Conservative party last December. I do not support No Deal.
 
I think the last four years have been a failure of government process on a monumental scale. I got actively involved in politics in my 40’s when I realised that our political systems, processes and some politicians were not that good, it is worse than I thought. 
 
I think it would be more honest if the Conservative party split, the question is which side leaves first. And almost every day I think about my position in all of us but in the meantime,  I only have time to focus on local issues. It is not as if Tower Hamlets is a beacon of excellent government either!

We sent the attached report to the government, Tower Hamlets Council and the Police last year as a lessons to learn report last June. But we never quite finished the public version of the report and then got distracted by other events. But here is a copy of the report we submitted (but with names of some contributors removed).

​Below and in attached link here