Reply to comment

Published: 19 November, 2010
by JOSH LOEB

THEY are more used to trading angry words in the council chamber or parliament, but on Tuesday night Conservative politicians joined their Labour counterparts to sip champagne with members of a Bayswater residents’ association, writes Josh Loeb.

MPs Karen Buck (Labour, Westminster North) and Mark Field (Conservative, Cities of London and Westminster) were at the South East Bayswater Residents’ Association annual meeting, which was also a party to mark 40 years of the organisation.

Winners in the raffle included Anthony Kilbey, a Westminster City Council cleaner who clinched a European city break.

Council leader Colin Barrow addressed the meeting about plans to share services with neighbouring Kensington & Chelsea and Hammer­smith & Fulham.

He said: “There is no intention to create a super­council. When you tell the Evening Stan­dard that you are proposing to share services with another council or two other councils, people imagine that you are going to create a single organisation.  In some areas you will, but in most of the areas, the areas that are important to you – of services on the ground – the service will continue to be deliv­ered to a West­minster specification.” 

He predicted that there would still be separate local author­ities in five and 10 years’ time.

• Above, the packed Porchester Hall meeting. Inset: the Sebra chairman John Zamit.