Open Letter to Cllr Ketan Sheth: Hydrotherapy Pool closure needs effective scrutiny

 Cllr Sheth's article (Brent & Kilburn Times 21.8.25)

The Northwick Park Hydrotherapy Pool will close at the end of this week. Wembley Matters has received an  Open Letter  from a patient.

 

29^th August 2025

 

Dear Councillor Sheth,

 

Re: Hydrotherapy Pool Closure

 

I have read your statement about the closure of the hydrotherapy pool, which contains a number of misconceptions and inaccuracies. As the Chair of the Scrutiny and Wellbeing Committee* you need to scrutinise this decision on behalf of Brent patients.  However, you have simply repeated the position put forward by the Trust.  Misinformation was provided by the CEO of the trust who admitted at a meeting with physiotherapy staff that she had consulted no-one, staff, patients nor the public, about the implications of the closure upon patients; she said that she had made the decision herself and would stick with it regardless.

 

 

A Freedom of Information Request to the trust has revealed that in 2024-5 the pool was used by 617 new medical referral patients [who get three sessions each before being charged], plus  a total of 7493 who paid for individual sessions at the pool, so it is obvious that a large number of patients have been benefiting from this facility.  This means that 9344 treatment sessions were provided to patients in that year, which comes to around 200 patients being helped each week of opening. The pool is open for 22 half-hour sessions weekly, totaling eleven hours, so there is scope for more users to be accommodated and possibly for a wider range of needs to be accommodated also.

 

Contrary to information released by the Trust, we are not private users. We have all been referred to the pool by hospital consultants, physiotherapists, and doctors.  Many of us are awaiting or recovering from surgical procedures and it is vital that we obtain and keep body strength to avoid damage from falls. Others have long-term conditions which can involve muscle wastage or persistent pain. Hydrotherapy assists all of these conditions. It needs to be provided in a warm pool under medical supervision.  Because after three sessions we are asked to contribute to the cost does not make us private users.  My consultant told me that I was ‘still acute’ after a year of therapy.  When we go to an NHS dentist we fill out a form and are asked for a financial contribution. This does not make us ‘private users’ who it seems that according to the CEO of the trust, do not matter and have no relevant needs.

 

The possibility of the pool being run by a private or charitable provider has not been explored at all by the hospital trust, who say that this would be an ‘inappropriate use’ of a facility for NHS patients.  However, the Aspire Leisure Centre with its specialist pool is located within the grounds of the National Orthopedic Hospital and is run as a charity. [It has been suggested that Northwick Park patients use this pool, but it is not heated to the same temperature and has no physiotherapist led sessions.]  It is also one and a half hours journey from this area by bus and there is no indication that they have the capacity to take-on patients from Northwick Park Hospital. The Royal Orthopedic Hospital in Birmingham has a hydrotherapy facility run for them by a private provider, so there are other examples to explore for a solution in Brent and Harrow. Our pool is open for 22 half hour sessions weekly, totaling eleven hours, so there is scope for more users to be accommodated.

 

 

No consultation has been carried out, and not a single word has been communicated to patients. We first knew about withdrawal of the service by a petition posted on the hospital wall. We have had no letters to say our service is cancelled. Staff who run the facility were told not to talk to us. We gained access to a staff meeting and physiotherapists said no-one had asked them about the affect on their patients. Patients who need this pool feel like we have been treated with contempt by the Hospital trustees.

 

I am sending this as an open letter, because local residents need to know what has happened at Northwick Park Hospital.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

Linda in Preston Ward

Patient at Northwick Park Hospital

[Name and address supplied]

 

 

 

*For information:  From Brent council Website.

 

Scrutiny in Brent

Brent's scrutiny function has two scrutiny committees:

·       the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee

·       the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee.

Each is composed of 11 elected members (nine from the Labour Group and one member from each opposition group which is consistent with current political balance arrangements). There are a total of 12 scrutiny meetings held during the municipal year, six per committee. This enables an integrated approach within each committee to scrutinise thematic and related policy and service issues. It also gives the opportunity for members to develop expertise across services and hold detailed discussions.

The Chair of the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee also participates in the North West London Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee as chair. It is composed of eight voting members from across North West London and one non-voting co-opted member. There are four North West London Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee meetings held during each municipal year.

 

Are Continental Landscapes up to the job of looking after Brent's parks, estates and grass verges?

'Are Continental Landscapes up to the job?' is the question that the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee should be asking at their meeting on September 4th.

Continental Landscapes took over the contract for the maintenance of Brent's parks and open spaces, grass verges, sports grounds and council estate grounds from Veoloa. The contract is worth £17.6m over eight years. 

The Scrutiny review is of the first year of operation. 

From comments and complaints reaching Wembley Matters things are not looking good. I understand that Continental is about 50% under-staffed with lower wages blamed for failure of Veolia staff to transfer and general recruitment problems.

This of course raises issues around procurement and the pricing of the contract as well as its design. The company appear not to have realised the sheer size of the maintenance task with particular issues around the acres of grass verges and small green spaces, particularly in the north of the borough as well as common areas on council estates.

 

On the Kings Drive/Pilgrims Way Estate cut grass was left to turn into hay and the path between Saltcroft Close and Summers Close became overgrown and almost disappeared in places. After a complaint the cut grass was cleared from the path and the problem attributed to the rapid vegetation growth in the very wet Spring. Tall wet grass was more difficult to cut. My suggestion that perhaps the electric tools that Continental had introduced could not cope was rejected. 

Residents who supported the concept of 'No Mow May', letting wild flowers grow to encourage bio-diversity, became perplexed when it turned into 'No Mow' June, July and August. 

Is this really environmental care, cost-cutting, or just 'Can't Cope Continental'? 

Undoubtedly, the close mown verges of the 1950s were pretty sterile and typical of a suburban obsession with neatness, but residents point to the messiness of some streets this year.  Not many shared my excitement at some of the less common wild flowers that emerged. A particular issue is that litter, strewn across the verges and hidden in the tall grass, gets cut up into tiny pieces when the grass is evetually cut.

Sudbury

Church Lane, Kingsbury

 St Andrew's Road, Kingsbury

 

Salmon Street, Kingsbury (Between Fryent Way and Slough Lane)

Jaine Lunn has raised the issue of wild flower meadows and bee corridors in our parks that have not been maintained. Neglected they turn into fields where rampant thistles or stinging nettles dominate.  They need preparation and sowing as part of the maintenance process.

However, it is not always apparent what has been sown or just left to grow unhindered. The stretch of Salmon Street in Kingsbury, between Salmon Street and The Paddocks roundabout is an interesting case. 

The pedestrian path there on the Wembley side has recently been replaced with tarmac and cross-overs paved with brick (some of the large houses have two cross-overs). Equipment and materials were stored on the verges and new top soil brought in to remediate damage.

It is not clear whether the top soil contained all sorts of seeds or whether they were deliberately sown, but the result is pretty wild, and quite different from the previous grass verges:

Salmon Street poppies (since turned to seed and seed pods snipped off for culinary or medicinal purposes)

Sweet corn and tomato plants spotted here

 

Lots of Fat Hen in this patch

 

The officers' report for the Scrutiny Meeting will be published tomorrow and should make interesting reading.  Readers may wish to make representations to the Committee in writing or in  person and should write in the first instance to James Kinsella, Governance& Scrutiny Manager  Tel: 020 8937 2063 Email:  james.kinsella@brent.gov.uk

Will Brent Council decision on Scrutiny call-in disempower Labour backbenchers as well as opposition groups?

 

 The importance of scrutiny in a council with a massive one party majority was the subject of two debates at Brent Council Annual General Meeting last week.

In the first debate a bid to have at least the deputy chairs of Scrutiny Committees from opposition parties was defeated by the Labour majority with the Brent Council Labour leader, Cllr Muhammed Butt, arguing that their election mandate gave Labour the right to hold all the positions.

The second debate was over a Labour move to curtail the right of the opposition groups, and its own backbenchers, to refer Cabinet decisions or Key Decisions to Scrutiny Committee for further decisions.

There had been a Labour move earlier this year to increase the number of councillors required to sign a call-in from five to 10.(There are 8 Opposition councillors in all) This was dropped and replaced by a more subtle change that requires the five councillors to be from more than one political party.

As you will see from the video above Cllr Muhammed Butt made no attempt to justify the change, either in his moving the motion or responding to the Liberal Dem amendment. It sas more a case of 'we are doing it, because we can.'

 So what was behind the change?

It is well known that Cllr Butt is not all that keen on criticism but what infuriated him and his colleagues was a Conservative call-in opposing the siting of a children's home in a conservation area.  LINK They claimed this showed a 'lack of respect' for a conservation area. The move was not supported by the Liberal Democrats but with five councillors the Conservatives were able to do it on their own.

Under the new proposals they would need support from the Lib Dems or Labour backbenches for such a call-in.

That one unpleasant episode should not be the basis for a significant constitutional change but the officers' paper quoted Centre for Scrutiny and Governance advice that was not cited by Cllr Butt in the debate:

Guidance was issued by the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny (CfGS) in March 2023 which comments, in respect of requirements in call-in thresholds that the councillors involved should represent different parties, that “This can help to ensure that call-in’s reflect matters on which there is crossparty

concern”.

However, the CfGS had said that a call-in review should happen after an election and change of political control:

The guidance from CfGS is that requirements on numbers/types of members, bodies or persons requesting call- in’s should be clearly justified and reviewed following each election and after a change in political control to ensure their ongoing fairness and applicability as endorsed by the authority.

The proposal was not made after an election and there has been no change of political control for a very long time. There has been a change of Chief Executive.

 The paper concludes:

Arrangements across London are very varied, especially once the effect of political balance is taken into account. A significant number have arrangements that mean more than one party group must be in support of the call-in request.

 

The possible introduction of this requirement in Brent was discussed at a recent meeting of the Constitutional Working Group (CWG) but a consensus was not reached. Full council is therefore requested to make a decision on this issue.

So the whipped Labour majority was used to defeat the Liberal Democrat amendment which had stipulated:

To maintain the objectives of effective democratic scrutiny, as intended by the Labour Government which introduced the current decision making process, we therefore propose, having taken account of the current review of arrangements for call-in:

(1) That any Cabinet decision which has implications for the whole or a large part of the borough can be called in by any three Councillors (for the avoidance of doubt these can be Councillors of one or more than one group).

(2) That any Cabinet decision which has implications for just one ward within the

borough can be called in by any one councillor.

In answer to criticism that this would substantially increase the number of call-ins it is argued that there are are already guidelines in place that would ensure call-ins were legitimate. A call-in in the past has been refused on that basis.  LINK

 As Cllr Kasangra pointed out. the new rule  requiring more that  one party submit a compliant call-in request, also means that Labour backbenchers, however many may support a call-in would not be able to do so with Opposition councillor support.

There was such a call-in previously over plans for the Granville Centre in Kilburn LINK:

The call-in of the proposal to build housing on the Granville-Carlton site on the South Kilburn estate will be heard by the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday. The Cabinet's decision was called in by required 5 non-executive councillors in this case Cllrs Abdi, Chan, Hector, Pavey and Hassan.

An example of a Liberal Democrat - Conservative call-in was Altamira in 2022 which was not well-received by Cllr Butt. LINK

The change effectively means that any call-in must now be supported by both Opposition groups and, given their widely differing political perspectives. can we expect fewer call-ins in the future?

Is this good for democracy?

 

Lib Dems make AGM bid for Scrutiny changes to ensure 'healthy and functioning' governance

 Brent Liberal Democrats are making an attempt to enhance scrutiny in Brent Council with a raft of constitutional amendments to be put to the Annual General General Meeting of the Council on Wednesday.

Their first amendment to Item 7 sets out their case for Opposition chairs of Scrutiny:

Democratic scrutiny is a pillar of healthy and functioning governance. To ensure it is effective there should be a clear separation between Councillors who lead Scrutiny Committees and the governing party in the borough.

Changes made by the current Labour Administration in Brent to the way the two Scrutiny Committees are chaired and Vice-Chairs are appointed have effectively locked Opposition Groups from having a meaningful say in the way scrutiny is led.  This includes in the setting of the work programme for each of the Committees.

 

To ensure renewed confidence in the scrutiny process in the borough it is important that the two Chairs of the Scrutiny Committees in the borough are appointed from the Opposition Groups.

 

To safeguard the effectiveness and independence of Brent’s Scrutiny Committees we therefore propose the following change to Standing Order 49 relating to the appointment of Chairs for the scrutiny function:

 

(1)    Standing Order 49 (ii) be amended to require that the Chairs of the existing Scrutiny Committees are Opposition Group appointments (in order to emphasise the independence of Scrutiny from the Executive).

 

(2)    That Standing Order 4 in Part 1 of the Constitution be waived in order to enable the above changes to come into immediate effect during the meeting.

 If that amendment is not approved they propose that Vice-Chairs are members of the Opposition Groups:

 

(1)    Standing Order 49 (ii) be amended to require that the Vice-Chairs of the existing Scrutiny Committees are Opposition Group appointments (reverting to the previous arrangements for appointments to these positions)

 

(2)    That Standing Order 4 in Part 1 of the Constitution be waived in order to enable the above changes to come into immediate effect during the meeting.

 

 Under Item 11 Review of Call-in Arrangements where the Labour Group want to make any call-in subject to a rule that call-ins must be made by 5 councillors of more than one political group (See LINK for explanation) they submit the motion below:

 

Review of Call-In Arrangements

 

The replacement of the Committee System of decision making by Local Councils with a Cabinet/ Executive system was made by the Blair Labour Government.

 

The then Labour Government recognised that handing decision making power to a small group of councillors had to be balanced by a strong and effective scrutiny function.  As part of this there had to be a meaningful ability of any councillor or Political Group to call-in decisions for review.

 

To ensure effective democratic practices in the London Borough of Brent it is essential to ensure that:

 

1.         The Cabinet can make decisions based on sound information and advice; and

 

2.         That Cabinet and their decisions can be held to account through an effective scrutiny process.

 

To maintain the objectives of effective democratic scrutiny, as intended by the Labour Government which introduced the current decision making process, we therefore propose, having taken account of the current review of arrangements for call-in:

 

(1)    That any Cabinet decision which has implications for the whole or a large part of the borough can be called in by any three Councillors (for the avoidance of doubt these can be Councillors of one or more than one group).

 

(2)    That any Cabinet decision which has implications for just one ward within the borough can be called in by any one councillor.

 

(3)    That’s subject to the approval of (1) and (2) above the necessary amendments are made to Standing Order 14 (Call In of Cabinet, Cabinet Committees and Officer Decisions) to reflect the change in arrangements.

 

(4)       To confirm, the current arrangements for review by officers of any call-in to ensure that it is relevant and justified will remain in place.

Brent Labour move to limit Opposition groups' call-in powers

Having apparently dropped plans to increase the number of councillors required to call-in Key and Cabinet decision for further scrutiny from 5 to 10 LINK, Brent Labour has come up with another proposal to be tabled at the Council AGM on May 22nd.

This time the proposal is that the number remains at five but must consist of members of more than one political group. As there are five members of the Conservative Group this means that a call-in will only be successful if also supported by the Liberal Democrats, or (very unlikely given whipping), some Labour councillors. The Liberal Democrats currently have three councillors so will not be able to call-in anything on their own.

As the Tories and Lib Dem differ on many aspects of policy it is likely that there will be fewer call-ins in the coming municipal year. It appears to be a deliberate political act as there are already safeguards in place to ensure the validity of call-ins.

The words in red below are the proposed changes.

I expect Brent Labour to again resist calls for opposition groups to be given a chance to chair or vice chair either of the Scrtutiny Committees.

Complaint over party political content of a Council report – Are Cabinet Member Forewords appropriate for Brent?

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

This is a continuation of the correspondence which you may have read last week, in a guest post headlined “Abuse of Power?”. One anonymous comment was glad that Brent Council were being held to account, to which I replied: ‘It is not an easy task, especially when Senior Council Officers seem determined that they have to defend what is sometimes the indefensible.’

 

If you read the previous emails, and feel interested enough to read this further exchange, you may see what I meant by that. I felt that, rather than dealing with the issues I’d raised, the Senior Officer was trying to create a smokescreen. I have tried to cut through that, politely I hope, with a view to seek a resolution of the points I thought it important enough to write to her about in the first place.

 

Email from Brent Council’s Corporate Director of Governance at 4.25pm on 12 April:

 

Dear Mr Grant

 

Thank you for your email and I have considered the points you raise.

 

I have also had a quick look at practice elsewhere.  The templates used by councils for reports to their Cabinet (or Executive) are varied.  In at least 8 councils reports are expressed to be from the Cabinet member(s) to the Cabinet, in others the reports are jointly from the Cabinet member(s) and relevant senior officer(s). The template used by at least 5 councils includes a cabinet member foreword or introduction, e.g. Haringey and Newham.

 

The new approach in Brent was adopted for the reasons I gave in my previous email and is not out of step with the approach elsewhere.  Having adopted this template, reports addressed to Cabinet for decision are prepared using the template.  The legislation then requires the council (subject to rules concerning exempt and confidential information) to publish those reports and permit the public and press to attend and observe the Cabinet meetings at which they are discussed.  The publishing of the reports is clearly undertaken in compliance with the Regulations i.e. in discharge of the council’s duties under them. 

 

I remain of the view that it’s perfectly clear from the heading of the Cabinet Member Foreword section of the report that the comments in that section are comments of the Cabinet member and not of the officer.

 

I note what you say about section 3., “Contribution to Borough Plan Priorities & Strategic Context” in the particular report.  On reviewing the other reports on that agenda and other recent agendas I have noted that there is an inconsistency in practice, with some reports including this additional heading and some not.  The template itself does not have two separate headings.

 

Thank you for drawing this to my attention and I have reminded the officers who sign off the report and also the Governance team of this.  I have also reminded them of the purpose of the Cabinet Member Foreword as indicated in my previous email.

My response to that email at 4.45pm on 17 April:

 

This is an Open Email

 

Dear Ms Norman,

 

Thank you for your email of 12 April. 

 

I will make this response shorter than my email of 10 April, and will concentrate on the two main points.

 

1. Did Councillor Tatler’s Cabinet Member Foreword contain political material?

 

You appear to have overlooked that my original email of 5 April was a complaint, about political content in the Cabinet Member Foreword, and you have managed to avoid addressing this question in both of your replies to me (8 and 12 April). So that we can finalise this point, please let me have your straightforward answers to these two questions:

 

a) Do you accept that the Cabinet Member Foreword, in the SCIL Request Officer Report to the Cabinet meeting on 8 April, contained some political material, including at least one piece of Labour Party political material?

 

b) Do you agree that it is wrong for Officer Reports to Cabinet meetings to include material which ‘in whole or in part, appears to be designed to affect public support for a political party’ (irrespective of whether or not its publication breaches Section 2 of the Local Government Act 1986)?

 

2. Are Cabinet Member Forewords appropriate in Officer Reports to Brent’s Cabinet?

 

For ease of reference, this is the purpose of Cabinet Member Forewords given in your email of 8 April:

 

‘The purpose of the introduction of the Cabinet Member Foreword was to provide an opportunity for the council policy context of decisions to be made explicit in reports to Cabinet by the Cabinet Member who is accountable for initiating and implementing council policies within the relevant portfolio.’

 

You have not explained whose decision it was to adopt the practice of including such Forewords, or at whose request. Please provide that information.

 

You have brought in information about what some other local authorities do, but all that should concern us, as citizens, Officers or Council members of Brent, is what is appropriate for our borough.

 

I understand that it helps Officers drawing up reports for Cabinet meetings to have a template, and that template (or necessary variations of it) can be drawn up or amended as appropriate, when the question I have asked in the heading to this section is resolved.

 

I think the best way to resolve it would be through a review, as I suggested, overseen by yourself, as Corporate Director of Governance, but taking views from other Senior Officers, Cabinet members and, I would suggest, the Leaders of the other Party Groups on the Council, and perhaps also the Chairs of Scrutiny Committees.

 

I have already put forward my views, as a politically independent observer of local democracy in Brent, where I have lived for more than 40 years. To summarise my views:

 

·      Officer Reports should be written solely by Council Officers, as their role is to provide the Cabinet, impartially, with all the information they need to make key decisions, and to make recommendations based on that information.

 

·      Officers making and signing off those reports must be aware of the Borough Plan Priorities and other Council policies for the service area they are responsible for, and it makes sense for that to be included in one section of their reports.

 

·      If the Cabinet Lead member with the portfolio covered by the report wishes to add their own views on the policy context, they can do so when introducing the item at the meeting, and also by circulating their own briefing document to their colleagues, should they think it necessary.

 

Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant.

 

Brent Lib Dems launch epetition to defend democratic decision making

 From the current Kilburn Times

 

 Brent Liberal Democrats have launched an epetition on the Brent Council website LINK opposing changes in the number of councillors required to call-in key decisions by Brent Cabinet (or senior officers) for further consideration.

The proposal for 'close to '10 signatories is 2 more than the number of opposition councillors thereby requiring Labour backbenchers to also sign. Given Labour members are whipped this is is unlikely although any group of backbenchers can officially sign for a call-in.

 

 DEFEND DEMOCRATIC DECISION MAKING IN BRENT

We the undersigned petition the council to Oppose any changes to the required number of signatures to initiate a call-in (review) of Cabinet decisions and to support the continuation of democratic scrutiny in Brent.

 

Scrutiny is an important part of the democratic process.

 

When Brent's Cabinet is only made up of Labour Councillors, it is important that democratic scrutiny is possible by Opposition Councillors to request a review of Cabinet decisions.

 

The suggestion by the Labour Leader of Brent Council (Cllr Butt) that the number of Councillors required to initiate a review (call-in) should be raised to close to 10 would make democratic scrutiny in Brent impossible.

 

Started by: Councillor Anton Georgiou (Brent Liberal Democrat Council Group)

This ePetition runs from 07/02/2024 to 20/03/2024.

 

LINK TO PETITION