Mayor Lutfur Rahman has announced the first ‘relief package’ of his promised 100 day plan to address the cost of living problems that many residents are facing.
The first relief package will include:
- Holiday food programme for children entitled to free school meals as well as keeping universal free school meals for primary school children and looking at extending free school meals to secondary schools
- Meeting food banks and local charities to discuss support for people in need
- Help prevent evictions through a Homelessness Fund
- Freeze council tax as soon as possible, alongside paying the 10% of council tax rebates that the government does not
- End Liveable Streets and other traffic management schemes that are not working and look at other measures to reduce air pollution and make roads safer for all
- Bring more outsourced public services back into public hands
- Set up a green jobs task force
- An alternative Truman Brewery redevelopment plan
- Challenge “fire and rehire” tactics used by previous administration.
- Begin building 1,000 new high quality council homes
No details have been provided so far on exactly which outsourced services will be back under control of the council, although the Youth Service is likely to be one.
Do you have any ideas for how the Mayor can help the borough?
If you do then please send them to mayor@towerhamlets.gov.uk with the subject line “Ideas for Tower Hamlets” or click this link.
It’s all suitably vague but on the face of it revolutionary. He doesn’t actually have to raise any new money as he can fund this through other cuts to real services that won’t be publicised. What needs to watched is his appointments as advisors as this is where he can start to recompense his contributors.