The 2024 Wembley History Society Christmas Picture Quiz - the answers!

 Introduction to Christmas Quiz answers by local historian Philip Grant

Thank you to everyone who had a go at last weekend’s 2024 Wembley Christmas Picture Quiz. (If you haven’t done it yet, click on that “link” and have a go before you look at the answers!) 

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed the quiz, as part of the excellent and varied “Wembley Matters” content, which I’m sure that, like me, you are very grateful to Martin for providing. The answers document is below, at the foot of this guest post.

 

I wrote in a comment under the quiz, in relation to the photograph for question 4, that I’d been asked whether Wembley had its own band when the park, with its bandstand, was opened in 1914. The answer is “yes”, and only last week this photograph of the Wembley Town Band from c.1912 was shared with me by Richard, who wrote the letter about his Wembley airman / WW2 Prisoner of War father which Martin published last month.

 

Richard’s grandfather, Henry Hawkins (second from the left in the back row) was one of the organisers of the Wembley Town Band, when it was formed in 1910. A number of the band’s members were policemen or railway workers, and Richard’s great-grandfather, James Blackmore (seated just in front of Richard’s grandfather), the first Metropolitan Police officer to be stationed in Victorian Wembley, had played bass drum in the Met. Police band in the 1890s. The short gentleman standing next to the then bass drummer, and wearing a straw boater, is Titus Barham. He was the President of Wembley Town Band, and paid for the band’s uniforms, which were green with silver trimmings (another of his generous gifts to the people of his adopted town).

 

Hopefully, most of you knew, or guessed, that the intercity railway line through Wembley, in question 7, which opened in 1838, ran from London to Birmingham. It is interesting to compare it with the current High Speed 2 line. Robert Stephenson’s early Victorian trains had a top speed of 30 m.p.h., and at first the journey from Euston to Birmingham Curzon Street took 5½ hours. HS2 is predicted to cut that journey time to just 50 minutes. 

 

But construction of the original line took less than five years (November 1833 to September 1838), whereas HS2 began construction in 2017, and the phase from Euston to Birmingham Curzon Street is expected to be finished by 2033. So the first railway was quicker in one way!

There were probably a few of the questions that you didn’t know the answers to. If that’s the case, you have the chance over the Christmas / New Year break to discover more about some aspects of Wembley’s past. I’ve included “links” with some of the answers, which will take you to illustrated articles giving more information, if you want to take advantage of them.

 

If you were feeling competitive, and wrote down your answers, you can now see how many you got right. There are no prizes, but if you want to share your score out of twenty (just to let others know how well, or badly, you did), you are welcome to add a comment below!

 

With best wishes for the Christmas season, and a happy and healthy New Year,

 

Philip Grant,
for Wembley History Society.

Lest We Forget – looking for relatives of a WW2 Wembley airman

 Guest post by local historian Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Extract from a document produced by the Dutch Airwar Study Group 1939-1945.

 

The Second World War seems a long time ago, and we probably don’t think about it very often, unless we were personally affected by the loss of a family member. But there are some people who still give their time and effort to ensure that those who lost their lives in that awful conflict are remembered with respect. I was contacted recently by one of those, asking for help to try and find relatives, and hopefully a photograph of, an RAF airman from Wembley who died in 1943, and I’m writing this guest post to ask for any help that you can give, please.

 

Ronald Douglas Francis (no relation to the editor) was born in May 1921. By the age of 21, he was a Sargeant in the R.A.F., and the wireless operator / air gunner on a Lancaster bomber flying missions to bomb industrial sites in Germany. On the night of 3 April 1943, his aircraft was shot down by a German night fighter, and at around midnight it crashed in flames in a forest near Stevensbeek, in the south of The Netherlands. All seven members of the Lancaster’s crew were killed, and their graves are now in a war cemetery at Eindhoven.

 

Some of the war graves at Eindhoven, and the gravestone of Sgt. R.D. Francis.
(Source: Commonwealth War Graves Commission website)

 

The Dutch Airwar Study Group 1939-1945 have been collecting information about this aircraft and its crew, and have sent me an excellent information sheet, prepared by one of their members, Rene, which I will ask Martin to attach at the end of this article. As you will see, they have yet to find a photograph of Ronald Francis, or of the plane’s pilot, 20-year old Pilot Officer W.H. Swire, and rear gunner Sgt. R.R. Feeley. They would very much like to have photographs of all the crew members, to include on a memorial it is hoped to erect near the crash site. A similar memorial was recently installed to remember the crew of a Wellington bomber, who also died in April 1943 when it crashed, just inside the Dutch border, after being damaged by “flak” (anti-aircraft gunfire) on a mission over Duisburg.

 

Memorial board to a Wellington bomber crew. (Courtesy of Leo Janssen)

 

As well as photographs, the Study Group would also like to contact any living relatives of Ronald Douglas Francis, and his fellow crew members, so that they can be invited to, or at least aware of, the steps being taken and events to commemorate the lost Lancaster bomber. Ronald’s parents, John Charles Francis and Winifred Edith Francis, lived at 19 Douglas Avenue, Wembley (a turning off of Ealing Road). Does anyone in the area still remember the family, including the names of any of Ronald’s brothers or sisters who might still be alive, and where they might be found now? If you have any information which might help, please send it to Leo Janssen at: leojanssen1954@ziggo.nl  (with a copy to Wembley Matters, if possible).

 

Wars are horrible things. They bring about terrible loss of life and injury, destruction and disruption of people’s lives. Bombing, especially the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, is one of its worst aspects. But it is not the men and women who volunteer, or are called-up, to serve in the armed forces of their countries, who cause the wars, or decide what acts of war are inflicted on “the enemy”. If they lose their lives (or suffer life changing injuries or trauma) in the course of their service, they deserve to be remembered with respect.

 

It is moving, and humbling, that there are groups of people in The Netherlands who are working to ensure that British and Commonwealth war dead are not forgotten. Another organisation, in the same North Brabant province as Stevensbeek, is the Overloon War Chronicles Foundation. They are collecting the photographs and stories of the Allied soldiers who fought and died in the Battle of Overloon, a crucial victory in the advance towards Germany in October 1944, and are among the 281 who are buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in the village.

 

A remembrance service at Overloon war graves cemetery. (Courtesy of Leo Janssen)

 

For the past few years, people the municipality of Land van Cuijk, which includes Overloon, have been holding a special remembrance event at their local war graves cemeteries each Christmas time. Any relatives of the dead, or others interested, are invited to join the local community for this. On Tuesday 24 December 2024 the tour of four cemeteries will end at Overloon, with a programme of music, speeches, poems and readings, starting at 4pm. And on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, candles will be lit on each of the graves, as part of the annual Lights on War Graves commemoration.

 

The annual commemoration and Lights on War Graves at Overloon cemetery.
(Courtesy of Leo Janssen)

 

Lest we forget!

Philip Grant.

 

Have a go at 2024’s Wembley Christmas Picture Quiz!

Guest post by local historian Philip Grant

 

The Wembley History Society’s Christmas Picture Quiz has become a bit of tradition, since it began during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. Once again, Martin has kindly agreed to share it with “Wembley Matters” readers. You are invited to have a go at this year’s quiz, and the “question paper” is attached below.

 

There are ten pictures again this year, each with two questions. The images come from the area covered by the former Borough of Wembley (from 1934 this included the previous Urban District of Kingsbury), which the Society was set up in 1952 to promote the history of. That is the part of the present day London Borough north and west of the River Brent.

 

Stained glass window showing the Borough of Wembley coat of arms.

 

How many questions can you answer? The quiz is just for fun (no prizes!), and you’ll get the answers on this blog site next week. Don’t worry if there are some you don’t know, because the more questions you can’t answer, the more you’ll discover about Wembley in a week’s time.

 

Please feel free to share the quiz (and later the answers!) with friends and family living locally, or former Wembley residents, if you think they’ll enjoy it too. Good luck!

 

Philip Grant

 

 

When is complaint not a complaint? – Part 2 Is there a 'cover up culture' at Brent Council

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Opening paragraphs of Kim Wright’s email to me of 27 September 2024.

 

On 2 October, Martin published my guest post “Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease – When is a complaint not a complaint?” The email of 27 September above from Brent’s Chief Executive had been sent in response to my request for her to conduct a Final Review of the formal complaint I had made on 30 August. I requested that as I was not satisfied with the initial reply of 9 September from a Corporate Director, which did not even mention the word “complaint”.

 

The grounds for my complaint were detailed in a guest post a month earlier, “Bobby Moore Bridge – formal complaint submitted over advertising lease award”. Briefly, they were that the Officer Report to the Cabinet meeting on 28 May, and the recommendation to make the award under Option B, were biased, and that the main author of that report had an undisclosed conflict of interests, which had only come to light months later.

 

 I wanted to understand the reasoning behind the Council’s decision not to treat my “concerns” as a formal complaint, which had apparently made before the first response to that complaint on 9 September, and what evidence it had been based on. I requested some details in an email to Kim Wright on 11 October (the text is in the comments section under the 2 October guest post). The Council decided to treat this as an FoI request, and I received the response to that on 11 November.

 

If the information provided is correct (and you would expect it to be, as the response came from a Senior Brent Council Lawyer), the decision (that my formal complaint was not a complaint) was made between 30 September and 3 October, after the Chief Executive had told me of the decision.

 

In reply to my questions about what information the decision had been based on, that the matter I’d formally complained about ‘had not affected me personally’, and ‘had not caused me an injustice’, the response in both cases was: ‘Please refer to council officer’s emails sent to you dated 27/9 and 3/10.’ In other words, if Brent’s Chief Executive said that I had not suffered any personal injustice as a result of actions by the Council, or one of its Officers, that was sufficient evidence on which to base a decision justifying her claim!

 

Extract from Brent’s FoI response of 11 November 2024.

 

The response had already told me that the (apparently retrospective!) decision had been made by ‘The Complaints and Casework Manager in conjunction with the Corporate Director, Law & Governance.’ My final request had been for ‘any documentary evidence relating to’ the decision, and ‘any communications, and any advice sought or given, in respect of it.’ I was informed that the only documents were Kim Wright’s email to me of 27 September and the Council’s Complaints Policy (a copy of which was attached). ‘No further communication is held.’

 

I have set this out in detail so that any reader who is interested can see how Brent Council operates. If it does not want to deal with a complaint, it says that it is not a complaint, without having to provide any evidence. It hopes that you will give up and go away, rather than admitting that something has been done wrongly, and trying to put it right! 

 

Anyone who knows me will realise that I am not put off by such tactics. This is the full text of an open email which I sent to Brent’s Chief Executive on 12 November:-

 

This is an Open Email

Dear Ms Wright,

 

Further to my email of 25 September, requesting a Stage 2 Final Review of my formal complaint to you of 30 August 2024 (see copy attached), you will have seen my Internal Review request (sent yesterday evening) to the FoI response of 11 November, to the questions I raised in my email to you of 11 October.

 

This is getting complicated, and is taking up quite a lot of Senior Council Officer time. The reason for that is that you and other Council Officers appear to be trying to "give me the run-around", hoping that I will give up, so that you do not have to deal with a perfectly reasonable and genuine complaint that I raised.

 

This latest letter, from Brent's Senior Constitutional & Governance Lawyer, exposes that there is no valid basis in evidence to show why Brent Council should not treat my complaint of 30 August as a complaint within the Council's Complaints Policy.

 

It appears from her FoI response that the "decision", 'that this issue does not fall within the scope of the Council's normal complaints procedure', set out in your email to me of 27 September, was not made until several days after you had sent that email, rather than before Minesh Patel's original email reply, in your absence on leave, of 9 September, which is what you had suggested.

 

And that "decision", for which there is no documentary evidence, appears to have been founded solely on a claim in your email of 27 September that: 'In this particular case you have not suffered a greater degree of personal injustice than anyone else affected by the matter raised.'

 

There was no supporting evidence for that claim. In fact, you already knew that the open tender process for the new advertising lease from 31 August 2024, seeking best value for the Council, with separate bids that would give the opportunity for Cabinet to properly consider the tile murals in the Bobby Moore Bridge subway, had been my suggestion in 2021, which had been accepted by your predecessor, Carolyn Downs.

 

The process was meant to be fair and transparent, and I had put in a great deal of effort to try to ensure that it was. My complaint (there can be no other valid description for it) was that the Report and recommendation, which Cabinet accepted, had been biased, and that its main author had an undisclosed conflict of interests. How could that not affect me personally, or give rise to an injustice, not just to the people who signed the petition which I presented on 28 May, but to me personally?

 

I would ask you again to carry out a Stage 2 Final Review of my formal complaint of 30 August, in the hope that this matter can be satisfactorily resolved without my having to refer it to the Local Government Ombudsman.

 

In answer to another FoI request, which I received on 14 October, I was told that the new advertising lease agreement between the Council and Quintain from 31 August 2024 had not yet been signed. If that is still the case, then my suggested remedy No.1 still applies (as does the second suggested remedy in my open letter of 30 August attached).

 

I look forward to receiving your reply. Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant.

 

The Leader Foreword from the Cabinet Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease report, 28 May 2024.
(The “supplier” referred to is Quintain Ltd, through its Wembley Park subsidiary)

 

You will notice a reference to some other FoI requests I made, to which I have received some partial responses. Among the information gleaned on the Report to the 28 May Cabinet meeting is that the “Leader Forward” in it was not actually written by Cllr. Muhammed Butt himself (but by the Officer with the alleged undisclosed conflict of interests):

 

‘The foreword for the report was discussed by the Leader and Head of Communications, Conference and Events at a face-to-face meeting and the steer the Leader provided was included in the report and cleared by the Leader.’

 

My request for ‘copies of all email or other documentary contacts between the Contact Officers and the Leader … in the preparation of the Report’, was denied. The reason given was that:

 

‘complying with this request would exceed the cost limit set by the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Under Section 12 of the Act, public authorities are not required to comply with requests if the estimated time to locate, retrieve, and extract the requested information would take more than 18 hours.’

 

I doubt whether it would cost that much to provide the relevant emails etc between two people from 1 April and 14 May 2024, so I have asked for an Internal Review of that response!

 

There was an Appendix to the Report, headed "Advertising Lease Bid Evaluation", and I had also asked for ‘all the information in that Appendix 1 which was not exempt information.’ That request has also been refused:

 

‘The appendix includes commercially sensitive details related to an ongoing procurement process, as well as market-sensitive information. The public interest in keeping this information confidential outweighs the interest in disclosing it, as premature disclosure could harm the commercial interests of the bidders and the council.’

 

But the procurement process is not ongoing (it ended at the Cabinet meeting on 28 May!), and I had only requested the non-exempt information, not any commercially sensitive details. Again, I’ve asked for an Internal Review of this response. What is Brent Council trying to hide?

 

I feel that the treatment I have received in trying to pursue my complaint demonstrates a “cover-up culture” at Brent Council, which appears to go right to the top of the organisation. That is not a healthy state of affairs, especially for a public body paid for at our expense!

 

Philip Grant.

 

Should the Order of the British Empire be history?

 Guest post by local historian Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

Medal of an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). (Image from the internet)

 

I had been hoping to write this article earlier in the centenary year of the British Empire Exhibition, but the excellent recent guest post “An Afternoon with George the Poet: Refreshingly honest conversation about Empire”, reminded me that I had still not done so. I read that George the Poet had turned down the chance to be made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2019. Like others before him, including Benjamin Zephaniah* and Professor Gus John, George did not want letters after his name that spoke of British imperialism. 

 

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, to give its full name, is one of a number of “orders of chivalry” under which titles and medals are awarded as part of the UK’s “honours” system. Some of them go back centuries, such as the Order of the Garter and the Order of the Bath. “Chivalry” goes back even further, signifying courtesy and valour – just think of the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, or Saint George and the dragon (and those who wave the flag of England’s patron saint in protest against immigrants should remember that if he actually existed, he would have been Turkish now!).

 

15^th century painting of St George, rescuing a princess from a dragon. (Image from the internet)

 

Just as the British Empire is now history, although its legacy is still with us, and the focus for the “Becoming Brent” project, I believe that the Order of the British Empire, or at least that name for it, should also become history. But what is its history? I first started looking into that about 15 years ago, when I was researching the history of the Cox family of Sudbury, and their part in Wembley’s volunteer fire brigade.

 

Wembley’s volunteer fire brigade, with their fire engine, in 1920. (Courtesy of Carol Snape)

 

Edward Cox (standing on the right) was the brigade’s Chief Officer from 1920 until it was replaced by a full-time professional Wembley Fire Brigade in 1936. I found that he, and his brother Ernest (sitting on the running board next to him), had the letters O.B.E. after their names, and wondered how they had come to be awarded that honour.

 

A report from the “Middlesex County Times”, 10 February 1917. (Ealing Local History Library)

 

Research in local newspapers (on microfilm) took me back to a night in February 1917, when the Wembley Brigade were called out to a fire in Greenford, with Edward as the fire crew’s Captain and Ernest as the engine’s driver. [Luckily, this was during a three-month postponement to his army call-up, so that a new driver could be trained!] The Wembley firemen organised the effort to bring water from the canal, which stopped the fire at the Purex lead paint factory from spreading to the adjacent National Filling Station No.28. 

 

That “filling station” was not a petrol station, but a large complex of wooden huts used for filling 6-inch diameter artillery shells with high explosive charges and poison gas, for use against the German forces on the Western Front. If the fire had spread, it could have been disastrous for people and property over a very wide area! 

 

It was for honouring actions such as these that King George V established the Order of the British Empire in June 1917. The new Order was principally intended to recognise courageous acts by civilians during the First World War, as distinct from the medals which could already be awarded for distinguished military service. As I wrote in my first BEE centenary year article last January, the King had visited many parts of the British Empire, and considered it to be a family of nations (although not all of equal status), so the name of the Order did reflect that the honours could go to anyone within the Empire, not just to his British subjects.

 

The London Gazette list of OBE medals awarded, July 1920. (Image from the internet)

 

The Cox brothers’ awards of the Medal of the Order of the British Empire were made in July 1920 (‘For conspicuous courage and devotion to duty on the occasion of a fire at a munitions factory’). They were among the names listed alphabetically in the London Gazette, and as you can see from the image above, one of the first names was Ali Akbar Khan of the Indian Police, for his wartime work in the Straits Settlements (now Singapore and parts of Malaysia).

 

Thousands of these medals were awarded, and their holders were allowed to use the letters O.B.E. after their names. But the Order of the British Empire was expanded, to reward contributions to the arts and sciences, and for public service and charitable work. Although these were at first awarded in much smaller numbers, there were other classes of honours within the Order, from bottom to top being Member, Officer, Commander, Knight or Dame, and at the very top, Knight or Dame Grand Cross.

 

I don’t know whether it was because of class snobbery by Officers of the Order, but from 1922 the Medal of the Order of the British Empire was renamed the British Empire Medal. It is now awarded to anyone in Britain or the Commonwealth whose meritorious service ‘is considered worthy of the honour by the Crown’. Those, like the Cox brothers, who had already been awarded the medal could continue to use the letters O.B.E. after their names, but from then on BEM has been the lowest class of honour under the Order, still with “British Empire” in its name.

 

Why hasn’t that name changed, given that the former British Empire had been redefined as a Commonwealth of Nations as far back as 1949? I’m not the first person to ask that question. In fact, a cross-party House of Commons committee, the Public Administration Select Committee, considered it twenty years ago, and published a report “A Matter of Honour: Reforming the Honours System”, including this recommendation:

 

An important recommendation from the Select Committee Report in July 2004.

 

It wasn’t just politicians on the Left who thought this was a good idea. The report includes the views of a former Conservative Prime Minister on removing the word “Empire” and replacing it with “Excellence”, given as part of his evidence to the Committee:

 

‘Mr Major also backed the idea of an Order of British Excellence. This view was a direct reversal of his opinion of 1993, when he told the House that he could “see no advantage or purpose in changing the Order of the British Empire”. Today, he told us:

 

“Although that argument still has force, I believe it is now out of date. In order to remove one of the persistent criticisms of the system, I would now be inclined to propose an “Order of British Excellence” with Awards at the level of Companion (i.e. CBE), Officer (OBE) and Member (MBE). This is minimum change for maximum effect. It retains the familiar abbreviations whilst removing reference to an Empire that no longer exists. It does have an awkwardness with Northern Ireland, but no more so than now”.’ 

 

I don’t know why Tony Blair’s Labour Government did not follow this sensible advice from Parliament. The Order of the British Empire was already “past its sell buy date” then, and is even more so now. I hope that the current Government will look again at this suggestion, but the people with the greatest power to make that change are the “Sovereign” of the Order and its “Grand Master”. They are, respectively, King Charles III and Queen Camilla.

 

Do you agree that change is needed? Please feel free to add your comments below.

Philip Grant.

* Benjamin Zephaniah wrote this in 2003 about his reaction to the offer of an OBE: ‘“Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought. I get angry when I hear that word ‘empire’; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality.”

This Sunday at Preston Community Library 3pm. Philip Grant on the British Empire Exhibition

 

Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease – When is a complaint not a complaint?

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Final slide from petition presentation, asking 28 May Cabinet meeting to choose Option A.

 

On 2 September, Martin published a guest post, giving details of the formal complaint I had made to Brent’s Chief Executive over the advertising lease award. The main grounds for the complaint were that as well as being biased in favour of “Option B”, the main author of the Report and recommendation, which Council Leader Muhammed Butt had accepted (in the name of his Cabinet), had not disclosed his conflict of interests, in that he was the Head of the Council Department which benefitted financially from “Option B”.

A further guest post on 11 September set out Brent Council’s response, from the Corporate Director Finance and Resources (covering for the Chief Executive). He told me ‘that the report was drafted and agreed in accordance with the council’s standard practices,’ and expressed his confidence ‘that this procurement was open and fair and that the award of the contract will therefore stand, as formally agreed by Cabinet.’ 

“How complaints are dealt with – Stage 1” from Brent Council’s website.

 

The email did not actually address the main points I had raised, and did not even refer to my open letter of 30 August being a formal complaint, or what I should do if I was not satisfied with the Council’s response to it. I ended that article by asking (jokingly, I thought!): ‘Is Brent Council now dealing with complaints by not even treating them as complaints?’

 

As I found out that Kim Wright, Brent’s Chief Executive, was on leave until 25 September, I waited until then to write, requesting a Stage 2 final review of my complaint. I included the text of my email to her as a “for information” comment under my 11 September guest post, but this is the relevant section of it:

Extract from my email to Kim Wright of 25 September 2024.

 

Earlier in my email, I had said: ‘I realise that there will be other matters awaiting your attention on your return from leave, so do not mind waiting for up to twenty working days for your final review response.’ I was surprised when I received her response only two days later, and even more surprised by what it said:

 

‘Dear Mr Grant

 

Thank you for your emails. I understand that my office and Minesh Patel, covering for me, replied to you on 9 September outlining a response.

 

Whilst I do not dispute the significance of the issue at hand, I regret to inform you that this issue does not fall within the scope of the Council's normal complaints procedure. The complaints procedure is intended to deal with cases where a member of the public has suffered personal injustice as a result of the Council's actions or inactions. This is also the criteria that the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) uses to decide whether to investigate a complaint. This is mentioned on the LGSCO’s website and in the Council’s Complaints policy.

 

The policy states under section 3.2 “Who can make a complaint? Anyone who uses and/or is individually affected by our services can make a complaint. We cannot investigate complaints where there has been no personal injustice (in other words, where the complainant has not been directly affected by the matter raised).” In this particular case you have not suffered a greater degree of personal injustice than anyone else affected by the matter raised. Your concerns were therefore not logged as a formal complaint but were addressed in the response provided to you by the Corporate Director of Finance and Resources whilst I was on a period of annual leave. I do apologise that this was not explained to you at the outset. If you disagree with the way we have addressed your concerns, you can if you wish approach the LGSCO to ask them to review our decision to not treat your concerns as a formal complaint.

 

I understand that you have submitted a number of FOI requests concerning the Bobby Moore Bridge lease, including one relating to the signing of the lease, and you will receive replies to these within the usual deadline.

 

Kind regards

Kim Wright (she/her)

 
Chief Executive, Brent Council’

 

The Policy Statement from the Brent Council Complaints Policy (August 2024).

 

That response does not fit well with Brent Council’s stated policy of welcoming complaints, aiming to resolve them quickly and using the information gained from them to improve the quality of what they do!

 

I don’t agree that I have not suffered any personal injustice, (or as the Local Government Ombudsman’s website actually describes it ‘not affected you personally or caused you an injustice), but if I try to argue with the Chief Executive on that point she will just “kick the problem down the road”. 

 

I believe that there has been an injustice in this case, not just to me personally, but to everyone who signed the petition (which was ignored and not even considered by Brent’s Cabinet) in support of “Option A”, and also to every Brent resident and visitor to Wembley Park who continues to be denied the enjoyment of the tile murals in the subway from the station to Olympic Way which celebrate Wembley’s sports and entertainment heritage.

 

If Brent won’t consider my complaint, by abusing the words of its Complaints Policy to pretend that it is not a complaint, how else can that injustice to be dealt with? That is the issue I took up in my reply to the Chief Executive on 27 September:

 

‘Dear Ms Wright,

 

Thank you for your email.

 

Without prejudice to the question of whether or not I have suffered a personal injustice in this matter, please to me have your answer to the following question.

 

If this significant issue does not fall within the Council's complaints procedure, under what Brent Council process can the 114 citizens of the borough, who were signatories of the petition which I presented at the Cabinet meeting on 28 May, seek redress for the collective injustice which they suffered, as a result of the actions by Council Officers (and the Council Leader) set out in my formal complaint letter to you of 30 August 2024?

 

Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant.’

 

Please feel free to add your comments below on this particular matter, or on how Brent Council has dealt with (or not) a complaint that you have made.

 

In answer to my own question of “When is a complaint not a complaint?”, I would say “When Brent Council knows it is wrong, but is afraid to admit it, or to put it right.”

Philip Grant.