Were Brent councillors not informed of consultation on council estate parking proposals?

It certainly seems to be so from this letter circulated to Brent Councillors the Head of Housing and Neighbourhoods:

Dear Councillors,

 

You may be aware of a consultation launch by the Project Centre on behalf of Brent Housing Management to introduce off street controlled parking to all Brent Council Estates. 

 

I firstly want to apologise for the breakdown in communication between yourselves and us. I understand this must make it particularly difficult when residents come to you for information and briefing should have been sent to you ahead of the consultation launching.

 

Additionally, there has been interest from the local press and I am working with the communications team on this. A key concern raised via the local media outlets is whether this is a scheme to make money. Please see the link to the Cabinet report and supporting documents:  LINK which includes the financial information associated with this project.

 

I have attached a briefing outlining the key points on the introduction of off street controlled parking and the motivations for this proposed change.

 

All residents have been posted a hard copy of a leaflet (see appendix 1), have the opportunity to attend a face to face meeting and / or submit their comments online. We will be extending the consultation to the end of November to ensure everyone has the opportunity to express their views. We will also be organising a members specific briefing session with our consultants and details for this will follow shortly.

 It appears that the not univerally respected Serco will be enforcing the new arrangements. The briefing indicates that Wing Parking was contracted to undertake parking enforcement in 2012 but then (highlighted in yellow) says Wing is not taking any enforcement action. I wonder how much that lack of action is costing?

Off street controlled parking on Brent Council Estates – Councillor Briefing

Introduction

Prior to transferring back to the Council, Brent Housing Partnership (BHP) contracted Wing Parking to undertake enforcement action on council owned housing estates and this has been in operation since August 2012. In 2012, the government introduced The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, which reduced Wing Parking’s ability to take any meaningful and effective enforcement action. The Act stopped Wing Parking from accessing information from the Driving Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and as such, any parking tickets issued cannot be pursued unless driver’s details are already known. This has made it difficult to control parking from non-residents on council owned housing estates. This means that, perversely, Wings can only enforce parking tickets against the residents who have purchased permits. The system is therefore only punishing those it was meant to protect.

Following on-going complaints from residents, Councillors and emergency services regarding obstructive and inconsiderate parking by both residents and non-residents of the estates, BHM set out to review alternative options for parking enforcement on Council housing sites and it was approved in July 2020 for Brent Housing Management to proceed with introducing Traffic Management Orders (TMO) across all Brent Council Estates subject to consultation with residents.

BHM has to date piloted this approach on five Council Estates and implementation on these estate is now underway.

Key points to note

•   Under the existing Wing Parking arrangement, residents pay £10 per year for a parking permit. Under the new proposal, residents will pay £50 per year for a parking permit. Whilst this is a increase compared to £10 per year, Brent Housing Management negotiated a reduced rate for residents living on Brent Council estates.

•   Currently under the existing arrangement with Wing there is no enforcement that takes place, whilst the signage and presences of Wing Parking officers does act as a deterrent, the effectiveness is limited and has resulted in continued complaints from residents affected by unauthorised parking on estate. The new arrangement will be managed by the Councils contractor Serco and deliver effective enforcement on estates and tackle abandoned vehicles and anti-social behaviour linked to non-residents vehicles on estates.

•   An example of the consultation leaflet sent to each of the residents accompanies this briefing (see appendix 1) and the contractors carrying out the consultation are called the Project Centre (link to FAQs is prepared by The Project Centre) https://consultprojectcentre.co.uk/brenthousingestateparking/widgets/18431/faqs).

•   This leaflet outlines the position on visitors, as implementation must firstly prioritise residents living on the estate. This means visitors in the short term will not be able to park on the estate but it will be reviewed once the scheme is live and availability can be reassessed.

•   Through discussions with Wing Parking, it is apparent that the legislation has affected their financial viability for the type of contract with Brent Housing Management. Brent Housing Management currently subsidises that lack of income generated through penalty charges. Wing Parking have also confirmed that due to further upcoming Government changes current schemes would become inoperable. If residents choose not to go ahead with the new parking controls on their estate it is not possible to continue offering Wing Parking as an alternative.

 Through the consultation, residents do have an opportunity to influence whether and how the traffic management order is applied. Statutory stakeholders such as the emergency services also have an opportunity to comment. We encourage ward members to submit their views via the following link Project: Brent Housing Estates (pclengagement-hub.co.uk).

Communications going forward

•   All Councillors will be notified of the outcome of the consultation for each estate within their Ward prior to any communication going out to residents. Should Councillors wish to attend, the dates of face to face meetings with residents are available Project: Brent Housing Estates (pclengagement- hub.co.uk)

•   Questions can be sent directly to Estate.Parking@brent.gov.uk this applies to both residents and Councillors. 

•  

  Note: Some council homes have been left off the list Brent Council published (see previous post) These include Gauntlett Court, Summers Close and Saltcroft Close.
  

'Not a penny more to Serco' - Give Track & Trace cash to local public health

On the day the government decided to restructure Public Health England, in the middle of a pandemic with a new wave expected in the Autumn ,Brent Trades Council demonstrated against plans to give 'Track and Trace' cash to Serco rather than local councils' public health departments.

FULL STORY

Demonstration Tuesday Brent Civic Centre Noon: No more 'Track & Trace' cash for SERCO - give it to Brent Public Health instead

From We Own It and Brent Trades Council

Matt Hancock needs to scrap Serco and Sitel’s failed contracts now instead of renewing them on August 23rd.


The government must give the £528 million allocated for these contract extension to local authorities and Public Health England teams instead. Privatised track and trace has been a disaster that is costing lives.

It’s time to put local public health teams in charge of the whole system. They have the tools and the local knowledge they need to do this vital work before any second wave this winter. Now they need the money.
 

Join us tomorrow, Tuesday 18th August 12 noon, outside Brent Civic Centre for a demonstration in support of a local Test and Trace system, run by the Brent Council Public Health department. Social distancing and please wear a mask.

Will Veolia, as sole bidder, represent Best Value for Brent Public Realm contract?

The Officers' report on the Public Realm contract to be presented to the Brent Council Executive on Monday October 14th reveals that only Veolia submitted a final bid. Serco dropped out at Stage 3 due to internal changes within the company structure and 'issues relating to resourcing and targets' but more controversially at the final stage Enterprise, the only competitor to Veolia left, asked for extra time to finalise their bid. The report states:

Officers fully considered the merits of the request but determined that it was not appropriate to agree such an extension.

The report contains no explanation or justification for this decision in the same way as campaigners were given no explanation for the panel's decision that no grounds existed for the exclusion of Veolia on human rights grounds.

A spokesman for Amey, who now own Enterprise said unfortunately as there is an on-going procuremnt process, we cannot comment further at this time.

The officers' decision means that the comparative tables for the Invitation to Submit Final Tenders (ISFT) stage look rather ludicrous:

In an email to Brent Executive members I wrote:

It is clearly legitimate to ask if ‘Best Value’ has been obtained when such a large contract is awarded with no competitive bid to evaluate it against. It is also legitimate to ask why Enterprise was not granted more time to submit. (Enterprise has now been taken over by Amey)

The new contract is a mixed bag with some improvements envisaged for the service but other changes which impact on jobs.

The Council expects costs for the new contract to be £1.3m less in the first year 2014-15 rising to £1.7m in 2017-18. This is brought about by reduction in the crews of bin lorries and the expectation that all residents, except those not physically able to, will leave their bins at their property boundary. These changes will be implemented before the new contract with a reduction in costs this financial year of £300,000.

88 council workers are directly affected  and will be subject to TUPE, although Veolia has said it will honour their pension position. Wetton's employees who service Brent Housing Partnership estates  and SDK employees who empty the dog excrement bins will also be subject to TUPE,

More positively, Veolia has undertaken to pay those who remain the London Living Wage, although that will be little comfort to those who lose their jobs. Volia has also undrtaken to fulfill the 'Safer Lorries' pledge which protects cyclists, to offer 8 apprenticeships and to take action to offer jobs locally through various agencies.

One aspect that may concern councillors is that Veolia will be responsible for monitoring itself:

The contract will be self-monitoring, meaning that the contractor is accountable for measuring, monitoring and improving their own performance with the council carefully auditing their performance. This, along with Key Outcome Targets set for each of the different services will ensure that the Contractor is motivated to deliver the services.

Veolia will also be dealing with complaints from councillors and residents in the first instance thus 'placing responsibility on the Contractor to ‘own’ and be accountable for service complaints'.

All new or replacement residual bins will be 140litre rather than the present 240litre. Large households or multi-occupied premises will be able to request a largr bin if they can justify it. Although increased recycling should mean a smaller residual bin is adequate I do worry that some of the fly-tipping so evident on our streets is the result of residual bins being full and residents then dumping the excess on the street.

There are changes to the street sweeping regime with the expectation that streets will meet the Grade A standard after cleansing and will not fall below Grade B:

Grade A: No litter or refuse
Grade B: Predominately free of litter and refuse apart from some small items
Grade C: Widespread distribution of litter and/or refuse with minor accumulations
Grade D: Heavily affected by litter and/or refuse with significant accumulations

This is clearly a challenge given the current state of our streets.

One of the main concerns of residents has been over parks maintenance. We are rightly proud of our parks and have witnessed the sensitivity of Brent staff in maintaining them properly, rather than the 'chainsaw' gardening that we see on some estates where shrubs are reduced to three dimensional geometric shapes regardless of whether they are about to come into flower or have a different natural shape.

Although the report says that Veolia has agreed to maintain the parks to Green Flag standard, without any further explanation it also says that the council will no longer submit  applications for Green Flag Awards. Given how the council has always proudly publicised these awards, and the tremendous effort parks staff put into achieving them, I can only ask why not submit applications? Surely the Award is a prestigious external audit of the success or otherwise of the contract?

The full report can be found HERE

Hundreds urge Brent to exclude Veolia from Public Realm contract

Around 40 human rights demonstrators gathered outside Brent Civic Centre last night as a petition signed by hundred of Brent residents was presented to the Brent Executive calling for Veolia to be excluded from the Public Realm contract procurement process. The contract worth up to £250m over 16 years will be awarded by the Brent Executive at their October 14th meeting.

Exclusion is sought on the grounds that Veolia in its operations in the occupied territories of Palestine is colluding in the maintenance of illegal settlements and this infringing the human rights of Palestinians.

Veolia has been short-listed alongside Enterprise and Serco for the contract.

After hearing the speech from Liz Lindsay, Secretary of Brent and Harrow Palestine Solidarity and an activist in the Bin Veolia in Brent Campaign, the Executive referred the petition to FionaLedden, head of procurement for consideration.

Liz Lindsay's speech was warmly applauded from the crowded public gallery.

THE CASE AGAINST VEOLIA'S INCLUSION IN THE 

BRENT PUBLIC REALM PROCUREMENT

Just as pension funds are concerned about ethical investment we believe the council should be concerned about ethical procurement. 

The public would not want the council   to give contracts to companies involved in the exploitation of child labour or the arms trade.

Veolia who are bidding for the Public Realm contract are serving the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The UK Govt and UN do not recognise Israel’s annexation of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Veolia helps support Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land by

• Supporting the Jerusalem Light Rail between West Jerusalem and an illegal settlement
• Running bus routes along the Apartheid road 443 that link illegal Israeli  settlements .
• Owning  the Tovlan landfill site that takes refuse from illegal settlements and Israel.

Veoila therefore profits by actively supporting Israel’s continued violation of international humanitarian law

 

Under Public Contracts Regulations, a public body may exclude a bidder or reject a bid where it is found the organisation has ‘committed grave misconduct in the course of their business’

In 2009, the UN General Assembly called on Israel to cease the dumping of waste  in occupied Palestinian land.

In 2010, UK was one of countries that voted in support of the UNHR Council resolution that stated JLR operated by Veolia is in clear violation of International Law and relevant UN resolutions.

In 2012, Richard Falk UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the OPT concludes that

– Veolia’s grave breaches of the UN Global Compact make it an inappropriate partner for any public institution, especially as a provider of public services.

Also, Veolia was forced to withdraw JLR recruitment advertisements because they discriminated against Palestinians.

Locally,  WLWA, Ealing, Harrow, Richmond did not select Veolia as the preferred bidder and all had been involved in discussions with anti-Veolia campaigners.

Veolia withdrew after 2 years from the final stages of the £4.5bn NLWA procurement when they were one of only two bidders left.

As Veolia has become the target of worldwide campaigns, Veolia  has tried to waive responsibility, claiming in 2011 for example that it had sold Tovlan. 

However,  on the 17^th Jan 2013, the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection –in response to FOI by a Women's Peace Group in Tel Aviv confirmed that Veolia is the sole owner and operator of Tovlan.

We informed Brent Council of this on the 14^th March but Veolia repeated its claim on 21^st May 2013.

The Council does not appear to have challenged this misrepresentation. 

In June 2013, an Israeli Court fined Veolia 1.5 million shekels for burying mixed waste to avoid higher fees and for keeping inconsistent records.

Brent Council should seriously question any information that Veolia provides in its defence in its bid to win the contract.

One argument used against exclusion has been that Veolia in Israel and in the UK are separate entities. There is ample evidence available that Veolia is one commercial entity. 

Also, Justin Brazier, Tory MP, facilitated a meeting between Veolia Executive, Robert Hunt and Canterbury Campaigners at which Robert Hunt confirmed that Veolia was one commercial entity. 

Francis Maude on the 23^rd May, 2012 stated explicitly,  regarding illegal settlements that companies that have committed ‘an act of grave professional misconduct in the course of their business may be excluded from a tender exercise’

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR BRENT COUNCIL?

Brent Council is particularly proud of representing a diverse population and is committed to equality and opposed to racism as demonstrated recently by their stand against the 'racist van' and the UKBA raids. 

Human rights issues are at the core of the Council's values.

Our campaign has been supported by members from many religions and non-religious residents, by members of the Labour, Lib Dem and Green parties, by Brent TUC, trade unions,  GCs of Brent Central,  and Hampstead and Kilburn Labour Parties and local members of Jews for Justice for Palestinians.

We call on the Executive to take a principled stand on the issue of Veolia's collusion in the abuse of the human rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories and to take action by excluding Veolia from the £260m Public Realm contract.

Bishop Tutu said what he saw in occupied Palestine could describe apartheid South Africa.. Nelson Mandela, now a Freeman of Brent, said he would not be truly free until the Palestinian people are free. Respect them -  BIN VEOLIA!.

Bennett: 5 steps to restore the NHS to the proud state Bevan intended

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett has identified a series of actions that need to be taken to save and restore our publicly owned and publicly run NHS.

Bennett was speaking at the Call 999 for the NHS rally in Darlington yesterday, organised by a concerned group of local campaigners.

She focused particularly on the need to pass Lord Owen's Bill to restore the duty of the Secretary of State to provide healthcare, and on the need to allow commissioners to choose "preferred providers", removing the pressure to put services out to tender.

Here is the full speech:

I have to begin, by congratulating the organiser of this rally, Joanna Adams. She’s demonstrated what one person can achieve when they say ‘I’m not going to take this any more’.

And congratulations to you for being hear to listen, on this glorious sunny day when the park looks so attractive.

Earlier this year, I came down with labyrinthitis, an infection of the inner ear. It isn’t a serious condition, but it is a rather dramatic one. The world suddenly started to spin wildly, and I found myself in the Green Party office, head down on the desk, unable to move.

An ambulance was called, and I was carted down in the lift and out of the office on a stretcher. As I lay on the trolley in that ambulance, a kind officer offering reassurance while filling in her paperwork, one political thought did flash through my head – “at least I’m not in America”.

I didn’t have to think about the cost of the ambulance, the cost of the high-tech tests to check I hadn’t had a stroke or didn’t have a brain tumour. I didn’t have to think of the cost of drugs, or have to leave hospital before I felt ready because of the bills.

So I was thinking – thank Nye Bevan for the NHS, for the principle, fought for and won more than six decades ago, of treatment on the basis of need, free at the point of use.

And, later, when the world had stopped spinning, I thought again, often, of how important it is to defend it.
In common with many healthcare experts, I could see even before it came into effect that the Tory-Lib Dem government’s Health and Social Care Bill was the gravest threat that the NHS had ever known.

I, with the rest of the Green Party, joined the campaign against the pernicious Bill, and Green MP Caroline Lucas voted against it.

And we pointed out the democratic deficit: that voters had not been presented with this option in any party manifesto, and that 70 MPs and 142 peers - a significant proportion of those voting on the bill - have or have had financial interests in private health care companies. (And of course we’ve seen an increasing revolving door between private sector executives and senior public administrators.)

But on that day in January, on the ambulance trolley, the campaign had a new, real, intensity for me.
It has become horrifically, horribly clear since the Bill was passed and begun to be put into effect that the worst fears of  experts like the Royal College of General Practitioners and Unison who had opposed the now Act were entirely correct.

We’ve seen an acceleration of the already extensive privatisation of health services that began in the Thatcher era and was embraced wholesale by the last Labour government.  A privatisation that saw more than 100 NHS PFI schemes signed off, with projects valued at £11 billion, and index-linked contracts which are already bankrupting NHS Trusts. (As many as 70 of these are now owned off-shore, meaning the profits are beyond the reach of British tax.)

The NHS spent £8.7 billion on private medical services last year, out of a total budget of £104 billion and that figure is expected to rise fast.  As we heard only this morning from the Guardian, the “biggest privatisation yet” is set to see a single contract worth £1.1bn let for “care for older people including end of life care” in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.

And the existing NHS services are highly unlikely to be able to bid for it. Virgin, Serco or Circle, the usual roll call, are expected to bid to make profits out of care for older people.

The former Labour Government explicitly embraced competition, arguing that it was needed to make NHS providers more productive - the "grit in the oyster" argument.  But in fact, there’s strong evidence that  cooperation, not competition,  delivers the best, most cost-effective, results for patients.

Furthermore, efficiency savings were imposed on the NHS by way of the "Nicholson Challenge" and Labour didn't commit to maintaining real term health spending increases in the 2010 election.  The current government has risen to this so-called challenge with relish, overseeing  £20 billion  of  “efficiency savings” that are really just a transparent fig leaf for cuts.

We’ve seen a huge push towards private-style structures – particularly “foundation trusts” -  in the public hospitals built with public funds and often also large charitable donations.

But there’s even worse on the horizon. The drive to soften up the public for “co-payments” – to end the “free at the point of use” principle that is the most essential NHS principle at all – has clearly begun.

In April, Malcolm Grant, chair of NHS England, said he personally wouldn’t support charging for NHS services. But then went on to say: “It’s something which a future government will wish to reflect [on], unless the economy has picked up sufficiently, because we can anticipate demand for NHS services rising.”

That idea was backed by leader articles in the Financial Times and  Daily Telegraph, which also reflected on the supposed “inevitability” of charging for NHS services. This week we saw a survey of GPs encouraging the idea.

BUT – it’s not too late. It’s important to say that loudly and clearly.

The public is increasingly concerned about the state, and fate, of our NHS, despite concerted campaigns to run it down.

We’ve seen a clear attempt to stigmatise, to smear, to attack, the NHS.  Clearly, there are problems – some related to privatisation and the managerialism brought in by Labour to facilitiate it – Private Eye pointed out this week that all of the hospitals identified as problematic either were foundation trusts or were seeking that status. Some of the problems are related to underfunding, and some related to real problems of management and organisation. And they cause reasonable concern.

But it’s also clear that the public fears that privatisation – the introduction of the profit motive into the NHS – is undermining the very principles and  future of their health service. And they are right!

And so there are five clear steps that we can – and must - take.

First, we must back the National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill proposed by Lord Owen in the House of Lords.

Most importantly, in Clause 1, the Bill restores the Secretary of State for Health’s duty to provide the NHS in England. (This duty was abolished in 2012 – with responsibility to determine what is provided free transferred to the new clinical commissioning groups, which have no public accountability.)

This clause will also restore the duty to promote a comprehensive and integrated service, which the Coalition split between the NHS Commissioning Board, clinical commissioning groups, Monitor, and Health and Wellbeing Boards.

Second, we must allow commissioners to use a public “preferred provider”, rather than forcing them to put services out to tender and they must be allowed to make decisions in the public interest without being called ant-competitive. After all, we know that  private companies – not just multinational healthcare
companies but also giant feeders at the public teat such as G4S, A4E, Atos, Serco, Virgin, Circle - can demonstrate their one great skill and competitive advantage: the ability to make attractive bids for contracts, yet  as we’ve all too often found to our cost, they are not always so successful at delivering on them.

Third, we can encourage patients to give their GPs notes or postcards, as provided by the Keep Our NHS Public campaign, expressing their preference for being treated by public rather than private providers whenever this is possible.

Fourth, we must demand health funding is maintained. Spending on health fell in real terms by 0.7% in 2010 and a further 1.2% in 2011. This must not be forgotten, especially after the Coalition promised to protect NHS spending from cuts.

Finally, we must challenge every person or organisation that pushes us down the slippery slope towards “co-payments”.

We only have to look to the United States of America to see what we must avoid. We don’t want to mimic a health system that costs 18% of the GDP of the world’s wealthiest country, yet puts the US 17^th out of 17 developed countries when ranked on the state of its national health.

We don’t want to emulate a system where vast profits are made by a few giant companies, which want to cherry pick the easy patients, the simple operations and conditions, while driving staff wages down and down, and leaving patients with complex needs and needing high-cost treatments stranded.

And above all we don’t want to copy a system where your access to the best health care, be it a good local GP or a specialist cancer surgeon, is determined by your ability to pay, or by a private healthcare provider’s decision on whether you meet its criteria for treatment.

We have a system which has worked – provided excellent health care free at the point of use – for 67 years. We do not want a system in which the standard of healthcare is dictated by cash, where those able to pay more are simply less likely to die than those who cannot afford to.

Let’s join together and say NO.

Let’s restore our publicly owned and publicly operated health system to the proud state that Nye Bevan intended – the health service that was established to give every Briton the best possible health care, local to them, when they need it, driven by a philosophy of care, not profit.

That’s what the Green Party believes in, what we are fighting for and what we have the genuine principles to deliver. And I know many other individuals and organisations will too. Let’s join together to rescue the NHS, and win. The principle of publicly provided healthcare free at the point of use is just too precious to lose.