Wembley Stadium mayhem on tonight's Brent_Council Scrutiny Committee agenda

 From the Independent LINK

It is worth reading the above article in full ahead of tonight's Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee. Using an innovation introduced by Committee Chair, Cllr Roxanne Mashari, the Committee will be able to have a preliminary discussion about Sunday's events, under Item 8 : Topical Item.

The meeting starts at 6pm and can be watched live HERE.

Scrutiny calls for Wembley Ambulance Station closure to be paused and a formal statutory consultation undertaken on the plans

 Standing Orders were suspended at the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee this evening to allow for a discussion of the plans to close Wembley Ambulance Station on December 1st - next Tuesday. London Ambulance Service managers attended.

They told the Committee that Wembley was called an ambulance station but was basically a garage from which ambulance were prepared for the road. They claimed it was not fit for purpose and that the site was down for regeneration by NHS Property Services. It was not a health care setting or health care provision as such. 99% of ambulance respones were provided on the road on a 24 hour basis. The closure had made no impact on response times, which were in fact better and comfortably met targets for Grade 1 call-outs.

It had been closed since March under changes due to Covid and formal closure would take place on December 1st.

The LAS spokespeople were challenged on the lack of consultation which councillors claimed was a statutory requirement, the contradiction of saying it was already closed while also stating that it would close next week, the lack of a Equalities Impact Assessment, response times bound to be better because of lack of traffic in lockdown and the closure of Wembley Stadium, closure being nothing to do with improving the service but NHS Property cashing in on an asset, and its impact could not be considered alone as other ambulance stations in North West and West London were also earmarked for closure.

A clearly dissatisified committee recoemmnded that the formal closure should be paused and that London Ambulance Service should embark on proper statutory public engagement and consultation on the proposal.

After the meeting a member of the union told Wembley Matters that although the discussion was brief they thought it went well.

Brent Trades Council will be discussing the closure and possible action at its meeting on Wednesday November 25th.

Good to see Brent Scrutiny doing its job well.

Brent Council's statement on 'secret' Scrutiny meeting on Poverty Report

Following concern expressed by myself and others on why a Scrutiny Committee Meeting on the Brent Poverty Commission Report (published yesterday) was not being held in public I asked Brent Council to respond to this question:

There is considerable public interest in the Brent Poverty Commission following the publication of its report yesterday and your Press Release on that.  Can you explain why the ‘Briefing’ being held today for members of the Scrutiny Committee is not open to the public?

Can you comment on why No 5 of the 7 Principles of Public Life does not apply to this meeting:

No 5 of the 7 Principles of Public Life 5 Openness Holders of public office should act and take decisions in an open and transparent manner. Information should not be withheld from the public unless there are clear and lawful reasons for so doing.

This is the Council's response:

A briefing is taking place today with Scrutiny Committee Members about the Poverty Commission report which was launched yesterday. This was not a formal Scrutiny Committee (which is not a decision making body) but a chance for members to hear about the report before it is referred on to Cabinet for formal consideration in September. The decision about how the council will respond to the Poverty Commission report will be made at the Cabinet Meeting and this will be open to the public to view as a live web stream.

Brent moves forward on reviewing pension fund investments in the light of the Climate Emergency

World Economic Foundation - Top 5 global risks in terms of likelihood

Brent Scrutiny Committee made common purpose with local pressure group Brent Divest on the case for ending investment in fossil fuels and investment in renewable energy  and low carbon funds at this week's meeting.

The situation is complicated by the fact that Brent's Pension Fund investments are now largely made through the London Collective Investment Vehicle (CIV). Change will come through action by the various local authorities represented on the CIV but there are positive signs that  things are moving with the launch of a low carbon industries fund expected within the next six months. 

There are issues about whether decisions can be made on purely ethical grounds but the financial case is now clearer with both Mark Carney at the Bank of England and Schroders warning of the poor prospects of fossil fuel investments.

The overall responsibility to ensure the best return on investments has to be balanced by the risks attached to such investments and there has been considerable change over the last few years as the WEF chart shows.   The Committee ended with a recommendation that the Pension Fund Committee would do all it could around divestment and investment in low carbon funds without detriment to the financial position of the fund.

Before the meeting Simon Erskine of Brent Divest, writing to all committee members commented:

1.       To put the discussion in context, I think it is fair to say that, although the paper refers in its title to the responsible investment policy generally, in fact it is largely about the climate emergency. By this I mean that 4 of the 8 sections of the paper under the sub-title Responsible investment (paras. 3.6 to 3.13) feature climate change, carbon footprint and renewable energy. The paper is therefore talking largely about the question of investing in fossil fuels.

2.       I think it is a moot point whether this is a discussion about ethics as suggested in the Chair’s introduction to the paper in his report. Greta Thunberg has said, in relation to the climate emergency, that “our house is on fire” – and recently that has been proved to be literally true through vast areas of Australia, which follow other exceptional wildfires throughout the world, such as in California, Canada, Siberia – and even in the UK (on Saddleworth Moor). Is it an ethical question whether or not to get out the extinguisher if your house is on fire?

3.       It is not simply a case of deciding if Brent Pension Fund can afford to dispose of its fossil fuel investments. Para. 3.11 of the paper makes it clear that “Climate change has the potential to impact all asset classes over the Fund’s lifetime” and many commentators have made clear that these investments are becoming increasingly risky – not least former Bank of England governor Mark Carney. The United Nations Principles of Responsible Investment recently carried out a study (https://www.unpri.org/inevitable-policy-response/forecast-policy-scenario-equity-markets-impacts/5191.article) suggesting that, for example, oil and gas stocks could lose nearly a third of their value by 2025. Para. 3.11 of the Responsible Investment paper also points out that the Council, with its advisers, is modelling various scenarios (e.g. “business as usual” compared to robust action taken internationally to counter the climate emergency). This should help clarify the risks involved – but there seems to be no evidence at all that fossil fuel investments should be retained for financial reasons – quite the contrary.

4.       Para. 3.13 of the paper comments on a £50m investment in an infrastructure fund which will include 25% renewable energy. This is warmly to be welcomed but the priority has to be to reverse the growth in CO2 emissions and an important element of this is reducing the supply of fossil fuels. 

5.       A short-term problem is that most of the Pension Fund is now invested in the London Boroughs’ investment pool, the London Collective Investment Vehicle (LCIV), which currently has no fossil free equity funds. Recently, however, I met with the Chief Executive of LCIV who said that they were launching their first fossil free fund by the end of March and that they were aware of the need to provide a range of funds for the benefit of the increasing number of London Boroughs which have committed to divest – and indeed more than half the London Boroughs have expressed an interest in fossil free funds. There is accordingly no reason why the Council should not commit to divest when suitable alternative investments are available.

6.       One point that is not mentioned in the paper is the fact that the 2018 Brent Labour manifesto committed to divest the Pension Fund and this was reiterated in the Council’s climate and ecological emergency declaration last July.

7.       I therefore very much hope that the Committee will welcome the report on the Pension Fund’s Responsible Investment Policy and encourage the Pension Fund Sub-committee to move forward, after completing its current due diligence work as described in paras. 3.11 and 3.12 of the report,  with divesting the Fund at the earliest possible opportunity in accordance with the manifesto commitment and climate and ecological emergency declaration.

Urgent call for Strathcona supporters to protest at Brent Civic Centre on Monday as Cabinet rushes decision on Strathcona

The Scrutiny Committee's recommendations on the Cabinet's Roe Green Strathcona closure decision has been rushed on to the agenda of Monday's Cabinet, which already has an over-loaded agenda.

There is no report of the Scrutiny's deliberations and recommendations on the Council website - they are 'to follow' - this gives the public little or no time to prepare any representations to Cabinet which surely undermines democracy and transparency. On such an emotive and controversial issue you would think the Council would be careful not to alienate people further.

I queried this and was told,  'A covering report and report from the Strategic Director of Children and Young People will be made available in due course.'

The meeting, like all Cabinet meetings currently, will be held at 4pm which means people working normal hours will be unable to attend and Roe Green Strathcona staff and parents will be hard put to get to the meeting in time after work.

Anyone available is asked to get to the Civic Centre for 3pm to make their feelings known before the meeting.

Public urged to come along on October 2nd to support teachers & parents in a further round of the fight to save Roe Green Strathcona School from closure

From Brent National Education Union

Roe Green Strathcona School will be closed for the fourth time due to strike action on Wednesday 2nd October; NEU members are attempting to save their school from closure. Despite giving the go-ahead to several new free schools in the borough, Brent Council wish to close this successful local authority run school.

Jenny Cooper, District Secretary for Brent National Education Union, said:

We commend our brave members and their parent supporters for their fierce, collective campaign to try to defend this successful local authority school; our action will be suspended as soon as the council reassures us the school will be saved.

Eight councillors have opposed the decision to close the school as they believe further scrutiny is needed to look at possible alternative futures for the school.

Teachers, parents and community supporters will protest outside Brent civic centre from 4.30pm Wednesday and following this will attend and speak at the council meeting in a bid to save the school. This is certain to be a contentious meeting with strong feelings expressed.

The special meeting of the Community and Well-being Scrutiny Committee will be held in the Conference Hall at Brent Civic Centre and will begin at 6pm.  The call-in was made by an unusually broad group of Labour councillors: Cllrs Abdi, Afzad, Chan, Gill, Hector, Kennelly, Marquis and Pavey. (Alphabetical order).

The councillors' reasons for calling the Cabinet's closure decision in for further scrutiny are set out in the document below. Click bottom right for full size version.


Full documentation HERE

Requests to speak should be made to bryony.gibbs@brent.gov.uk and will be considered by the Chair of the Committee, Cllr Ketan Sheth. All requests to speak should be received at least 24 hours before the meeting.

Council restricts number of speakers at Monday's Cabinet meeting considering Scrutiny Report on Carlton-Granville proposals

The Scrutiny Committee's recommendations on the Carlton-Granville issue will be considered by the Cabinet on Monday April 15th. The controversial proposals inspired a record number of speakers from the community at Scrutiny but the Council has moved to restrict the number allowed at Cabinet.

In an email to applicants Brent Governance Services said:

Please be advised that due to the high number of requests to speak received so far, the number of speakers has had to be limited on a first come first served basis.

There have been two previous opportunities for members of the public to express their views on the Carlton and Granville Centre Sites proposal - one at the recently held Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny call-in meeting on 3rd April and one at the original Cabinet meeting on 11th March 2019.

A further representation will be made by the Chair of the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, Cllr Matt Kelcher, who will also be in attendance on Monday to relay the Committee’s stance on the proposals. For more details on the views expressed at the call-in meeting, you may wish to refer to the minutes of that meeting.*

In light of the above, therefore, your request to speak could not be accepted.

*Editor's note:Minutes of April 3rd Scrutiny Meeting can be found HERE

The Cabinet Meeting is at 4pm (when most people are working!) on Monday April 15th in Boardrooms 3-5 at Brent Civic Centre. The meeting is open to the press and public.

At last...Brent Scrutiny Task Group to investigate affordable housing in new developments

In a welcome move Brent's Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee is to set up a Task Group on Affordable Housing in New Developments.

This has been a controversial issue for some years now, not least in terms of what 'affordable' actually means. The brief of the Task Group has been widened from the original focus on Viability Assessments - the procedure in which developers make a case for providing less affordable housing on the basis that otherwise the development is not financially viable.

The membership of the Task group has not been finalised but its Chair will be Cllr Neil Nerva and Vice Chair Cllr Robert Johnson.

The draft terms of reference look promising although the penultimate one should perhaps be first:

Affordable Housing in New Developments Task Group Terms of Reference

·       To understand the policy context of subsidising housing and the barriers and solutions to affordable housing delivery

·       Examine forthcoming changes to regional and national planning policy and guidance

·       Analyse the supply of affordable homes (numbers and percentage) from new developments in Brent over the past 10 years

·       Review best practice from other London boroughs

·       Understand the full range of “affordable” and “intermediate” housing

·       Learn from case studies in Brent where planning targets for affordable housing have been met

·       Examine how land owned by public authorities can contribute to targets for affordable housing

·       Understand if Brent is maximising the affordable housing contributions from developers and whether better use could be made of late stage reviews and Section 106 payments

·       Investigate alternative models for delivery of genuinely affordable homes, such as Community Land Trusts

·       Understand what the council believes is genuinely affordable for communities in Brent

·       Gather evidence to feed into and influence the development of the new Local Plan and Housing Strategy

Duffy forces Council U-turn on out-sourcing

Following recent controversy about the Kingdom littering contract, including the Scrutiny Committee discussion from which the public were excluded and the revelation that no formal minutes existed for the original contract meeting between officers and Kingdom LINK, it appears that Cllr John Duffy may have achieved a break-through, forcing a re-think by the lead member and Cabinet.

I understand that following Duffy's production of figures showing that an in-house solution would offer better value for money than the Kingdom contract, that this is now likely to happen.

Duffy has maintained that the original Cabinet decision to out-source the contract wasted over £100,000 of the environmental budget at a time when council finance was under pressure from government cuts.  Duffy challenged the Cabinet's claim that Kingdom paid the London Living Wage and it does now appear that the company was not LLW accredited and that rates are far below those for similar officers directly employed in the public sector.

In an interchange earlier in the Scrutiny meeting Duffy quoted 73 fly-tipping fines versus 4,000 fixed penalty, notices mainly for dropping fag ends. Cllr Southwood said the proportion of FPNs for fag ends had been reduced to nearer 60% after talks with Kingdom. Cllr Duffy claimed that this was still still out of balance. An Environment Department officer claimed it was more difficult than people might think to get admissable evidence on the perpetrator of  fly-tipping. Even if addressed letters were found inside black bags you still had to prove the addressee was responsible for the fly-tipping.

The figures suggest that Duffy has been vindicated and that an in-house service will not only produce a better service and value for money for council tax payers but that workers involved will secure  better pay and conditions.

Prevent secrecy prevents effective scrutiny

 

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Wednesday’s meeting of the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee is to discuss a report on the implementation of the controversial Prevent duty in Brent.  However the report is framed in such a way as to undermine any effective scrutiny. It appears to actually discourage any action on the part of the Committee:

This report is submitted to the committee not as a result of seeking any specific recommendations, but as a direct request from the Committee.

Having stated that it sets out what the report is NOT about:

This report aims to provide an overview of Prevent programme delivery in the borough of Brent. The report will outline how Brent Council are meeting their statutory obligations to deliver the Prevent duty, alongside the aims of the broader Prevent Strategy. 


Whilst the Government published a Counter – Extremism Strategy in October 2015, this will not be covered by the report. Counter – Extremism work is complimentary (sic) to the aims of the Prevent strategy, but is not currently supported by a statutory duty to deliver it. 


Counter – Extremism work is distinct from Prevent programme delivery and does not form an active part of Prevent work. 


The report will concentrate on the implementation of the Prevent duty and related programmes, and not specific project work funded by the Home Office at a community level. 


The result is that the report is purely descriptive of the processes involved with no evaluation and no data.  There are hints at the more controversial  issues but these are not explored:

High quality and consistent training helps Brent to guard against misguided Channel referrals; in particular where there might be a limited understanding of cultural norms and practices. It is our priority whilst trying to successfully deliver the Prevent programme, not to conflate practices that may be regarded as highly observant or extreme, as indicators which actually do not pose a violently extreme, counter – terrorism risk. 


To ensure professionals possess confidence in assessing this area, Brent Council centrally commissioned ‘In depth Extremist Ideology Training’ to provide wider context and a firmer understanding of the triggers and drivers that solidify terrorist ideologies.

Brent’s Strategic Prevent Coordinator is currently developing a training module that sits between WRAP and the In Depth Extremist Ideology Training to help frontline staff assess for themselves when a case might be better suited to Early Help, Universal Services, the Channel Programme or wider Social Care support

 

Despite earlier assurances that Prevent is not aimed at the Muslim community the report states:

The Government has stated that the greatest threat to the UK and its interests comes from Al-Qaida, its affiliates and like-minded groups, for example, ISIS /ISIL. Brent’s main concerns currently come from this strand. These organisations have based their rhetoric on alleged Islamic principles. The borough of Brent has a large Muslim community; this community may feel particularly marginalized as Prevent objectives are addressed. 

The possible marginalisation of the Muslim community is not explored in the report but again surely something that the Scrutiny Committee would want to discuss.  Evidence of community concern, about the Prevent Strategy, as demonstrated at the October ‘Time to Talk About Extremism’ event LINK is not included in the report.  In fact the voice of the community most affected by Prevent is completely absent from the report, but surely must not be absent from the actual Scrutiny meeting.

So what should Scrutiny be asking? Here are some suggestions? 
 

1.  How many initial referrals were made under Prevent through schools, further education and health?

2.  What was the age, ethnicity and religious profile of these referrals?

3.  For how many of these referrals was no further action taken or referred to other agencies?

4.  How many initial referrals were carried through to the Channel process?

5.  How many individuals refused Channel referral?

6.  What happened to these individuals?

7.  How many Channel referrals were deemed successful in terms of diverting the individuals away from involvement in extremist groups?

8.  What was the breakdown in the nature of the referrals (e.g. right-wing extremism, Islamic extremism, animal rights extremism, Northern Ireland extremist groups)

9.  Who are the community groups chosen to advise the Prevent Delivery Group, how were they chosen and what steps have been taken to ensure they are representative of the community?

10.       What impact has the Prevent Strategy made on the relationship of trust between schools and parents and students and their teachers?

11.       What impact has the Prevent Strategy made on the ability of students to debate controversial issues in schools and college without fear of referral?

12. Please tell us more about 'In depth Extremist Ideology Training'.

Clearly some of these issues would be best addressed by seeking ‘expert witnesses’ to come forward and be examined by the Committee in the manner of Parliamentary Select Committees. 

Full report HERE