'Parking, Potholes & Poo' or politics?

At a hustings in Mapesbury earlier this week a Liberal Democrat candidate said that the local election was about efficient emptying of bins and clean streets and not about 'political grand themes'. This was a swipe at my fellow Green Shahrar Ali, whose speech had identified the democratic deficit on Brent Council and the iniquity of privatisation and the bedroom tax.

The Lib Dem candidate was right in a way:  no one is going to say they are FOR fly-tipping, overflowing bins, litter strewn streets or pavements smeared with dog excrement. However the allocation of resources to deal with those issues is a political issue - both within the Council and in terms of government resources allocated to local authorities. The extent to which services are out-sourced and the wages and working conditions of sub-contractors are a political issues. The Council's stand on the privatisation of schools and whether it makes a principled stand on the undemocratic process of forced academisation is a political issue.

It is also important to consider how these decisions are made by councillors and that brings into consideration whether decisions are arrived at through debate and rigorous scrutiny or are mere rubber stamping of officer reports. Opposition and Labour backbenchers find they are excluded from this decision making and instead have to focus on the 'parking, potholes and poo' casework. How good they are at that is not a matter of political affiliation but of personal efficiency. An added, but reduced concession, is their role in allocating ward working money.

Lastly the controversy over the Davani affair brings into sharp focus the relationship between the political administration and officers. If the administration sees itself as a management organisation - managing the cuts, managing the school places crisis, managing procurement - it puts political principle aside and the Executive and Corporate Management Team become a single management entity.

In my view this is not a matter for personal attacks, although the current issue has become highly personal because of the huge impact it has made on people's lives and livelihoods, but of questioning why some of the most senior officer positions in the council are in effect out-sourced to people who have set themselves up as self-employed consultants.

This means that at its very core the Council has acquiesced in the Coalition's privatisation agenda - handing public money over to private companies.

A further dimension is the issue, discussed on this blog many times, of the relationship between the Council and developers, or more specifically the relationshing between the Major Projects, Regeneration and Planning Department and developers. With the Council seeing its role as smoothing the way for developers, local residents find themselves locked out of the discussion and the decisions. They become mere irritants in the joint projects of the council and its favoured property developers. Behind this is the political issue of reduced funding for local government and therefore the need for the Council to find other sources of revenue through increasing its council tax base through high density, often unaffordable, housing developments; Community Infrastructure Levy and the New Homes Bonus LINK

Of course it suits the Lib Dems to focus on street level issues and to be photographed pointing at fly-tips, because it takes attention away from their role as Coalition partners in undermining the financial stability and the viability of local authorities.

A new hotel for Wembley Central to replace tax office

Valiant House

Brent Planning Committee will be recommended to approve another Wembley hotel at their meeting on January 14th.

This hotel will replace Valiant House which is on the corner of the High Road and Cecil Avenue and currently occupied by HMRC, which is closing its offices. Copland Community High School is on the other side of Cecil Avenue.

This, the latest of several such applications, proposes a 116 bedroom hotel with an additional three storeys above the present building. The small car park in Cecil Avenue would be closed if the scheme goes ahe

Euro Hotel Elm Road

The hotel would be run by the Euro Hotel Group which already owns the Euro Hotel in Elm Road Wembley. They have other hotels in Clapham, Peckham, Leyton and Croydon.

Their hotels are at the budget end of the market. Elm Road has just one star. A room there is currently quoted as low as £15 on the internet.


According to the documentation only one objection LINK has been received. The objection was based on insufficient parking, adding to traffic congestion and disturbance caused by 'revellers' at the hotel's bar and restaurant.

The architects, Dexter Moren Associates describe the project thus:

Illustration on Dexter Moren website

Looking at ways to add value to our clients’ developments by efficient spatial planning and maximising the number of rooms is one of our core skills as specialist hotel architects. Working with Euro Hotel Group, DMA have submitted plans to Brent Council for the development of a hotel on the High Road Wembley. Our proposal looks to extend and reconfigure the existing “Valiant House” to create a hotel with 116 bedrooms with basement and ground floor public areas. A three storey contemporary box has been introduced to sit above the existing red brick building which steps down to the rear of the site where a lower extension adheres to the more domestic street scene.  The whole is clad in high pressure laminate coloured to enhance the red brick of the existing structure while large windows and brightly coloured deep reveals add a sense of play. Internally the layouts have been carefully considered to best utilise the existing plan and extend in a sensitive and informed manner creating a flow of space that offers a practical solution that both maximises accommodation on the site and adheres to planning constraints.

Another hotel is planned south of this down the Harrow Road on the site of the Bridge Park Sports Centre and more hotels are due to be opened in the Quintain development in Wembley Park.

At the same meeting the Committee will decide whether an expansion of Preston Park Primary School to accommodate 840 pupils should go ahead. Details HERE