That’s right. Fifty in every thousand households are in temporary accommodation. This is double the figure for the next highest borough.

In the last reshuffle, Cllr Shaban Mohammed was charged with sorting out the temporary housing problem. Instead, the problem seems to have got worse.

It does appear that we have a little more information about parliamentary candidate for the Workers Party, Halima Khan. It appears that she is a former staff member of the Labour Party, and we presume a former Labour Party member.

Newham’s attempt to find temporary housing has caused problems for councils outside the capital. Various publications have alighted on the agreement Newham has with regard to Anchorage House in Chatham, Kent.

We noted the change in the name of the Mayor’s favoured faith body, Newham Muslim Forum, noting that it was now to be known as Faith Space London.

This seemed a little unusual to us, given the particular support of some individuals connected to the Newham People’s Alliance Facebook page with the NMF, we submitted an FOI to understand the connection that this new organisation had with the council.

We submitted a request for the publication of the report into the behaviour of the mayor and councillors at a meeting of the Budget Sub-Committee, a meeting that occurred over 18 months ago.

The Independent Group have selected Councillor Sophia Naqvi, as their candidate for the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

It’s funny how the prospect of two, as yet unallocated parliamentary seats, inspires people to come in to support Newham Labour in their campaigning.

We learn from The Workers Party, that they will be supporting an ex-Labour Party member, one Tahir Mirza in his bid to become the MP for East Ham. Those wishing to support his campaign can do so via Crowdfunder. It does appear that he needs some help.

It was only two years ago that the Labour Party managed to hand-pick its councillors and return an obviously unpopular candidate as mayor.

Having alienated much of the Labour Group and become something of an embarrassment to Labour in London, we learn that Labour is about to take action.

Readers will be aware that a former mayor of Newham, on Robin Wales recently stood as the Labour candidate, for the post of Police and Crime Commissioner in rural Suffolk. Alas, for Labour, Wales was unsuccessful in his bid to overturn a 50,000-vote majority. He did however, see a substantial swing to Labour, reducing the majority to just over 11,000. (Con 40.2%; Lab 31.6%.)

Sadiq Khan is adamant. He has no intention of introducing pay-per-mile road charging. This is the allegation made by Tory mayoral hopeful, Susan Hall. One can see her point, in a book published in his name in 2023, (Breathe. Tackling the Climate Emergency), he made reference to “plans to introduce a new, more comprehensive, road-user charging system”.

Overall effectiveness : Inadequate

Leadership and management : Inadequate

Having been slammed in the local government review of her leadership and finding out that her budget has been wrecked with a £25 million pound overspend in temporary housing. It has been a bad two weeks for the Mayor of Newham.

In December 2003, the cabinet agreed to demolish 10 Victoria St, (Brimstone House) and rebuild on the same site.

We reported that Newham Council did not seem to know which streets were in which wards. Hathaway Crescent was supposedly in East Ham Central. It isn’t.

The Labour Group has recently been lucky to have met twice. Amidst all of the items up for discussion, the looming financial crisis caused by a massive overspend on temporary accommodation was not mentioned.

Finding an extra £25m was evidently not of sufficient importance.

A special meeting of the cabinet was called on on 2nd April 2024.For some reason, when you click on the video link, it goes to a special meeting of the cabinet in February. Because of this we have had to rely upon the accounts that emanate from those present.

At the weekend, members of the Labour faithful turned out to campaign for Sadiq Khan and the Assembly candidates, Unmesh Desai and James Beckles.

They were supported by some of Newham Labour’s party big-wigs.

We have had a response to the inquiry about the publication of the Report for the Standards Advisory Committee. Readers will recall that the mayor and Cllr T Paul had an exchange of words back in December 2022. This resulted in cross-complaints and the local authority spent, we are told, a sum in the tens of thousands of pounds to investigate and make recommendations.

Readers will recall that Cllr Mirza and the Independent Group campaigned for a change of policy regarding the Stratford Village Market. They introduced an amendment to the budget to that effect.

In a process that any remaining members of the Labour Party in Newham will be familiar with, the members of the Ilford South Labour Party chose to have an open selection in deciding who would represent them on the ballot for the next general election.