Action needed to save Central Middlesex A&E

It is sometimes thought that only the residents in the south of Brent and neighbouring areas of Ealing are concerned about the closure of Central Middlesex Hospital. However residents in the north of the borough, served by Northwick Park Hospital A&E are also affected as this Guest Blog shows:

I hear that Ealing Council's scrutiny panel has voted unanimously to refer a decision to downgrade A&E departments in north-west London to an independent panel and wonder what you think about the decision to close the A & E departments?

If Central Middlesex, Ealing, Charing Cross and Hammersmith A & E departments are to close what impact is this going to have on the whole of densely populated and hugely congested West London????

Ealing Council are campaigning hard against this decision and so far I can only see Navin Shah, London Assembly member for Brent and Harrow (see this LINK) campaigning against the closures I can’t understand why the local councillors and our MP Barry Gardiner* are not campaigning against the closures too?

Navin Shah's press release LINK said:

A&Es will be forced to cater for an extra 120,000 residents on average each. In 2010 there were 32 A&E departments in London, but only 24 would remain under these plans."

"The 32 A&E’s served a population of 8.17million Londoners, an average of 255,000 people each. Reducing to 24 A&Es will mean they have to cover 340,000 each, with London’s population due to rise to 9million by 2020. This will increase the number of people each A&E is due to cover to 375,000 residents - an increase of 120,000 for each A&E. This assumes that no further closures take place.

As you know in recent years every single bit of space in Wembley has had flats built on it, bringing more and more residents to Wembley and more and more traffic congestion.  Add to this the new designer outlet and French school coming to Wembley Park - these will both bring more people and more traffic to the area.

What about Wembley Stadium with 90,000 capacity plus staff and Wembley Arena with 12,500 capacity plus staff, these bring another 102,500 plus people to the area when both venues are holding events - should there be a major incident when both venues are full to capacity how would Northwick Park A & E cope???  How would emergency vehicles cope with getting people through Wembley to Northwick Park or through to the other remaining A & E departments???  When the stadium was opened traffic schemes were put in place to get people away from the stadium to the North Circular to try and stop the congestion in Wembley so would it not make sense to keep Central Middlesex A & E open???? 

Also we hear that Central Middlesex A & E will close this June well before the new larger A & E is supposed to open at Northwick Park – how can this be allowed to happen when it clearly says that the A & E departments will close in the next 2-3 years after the new larger A & E departments are open???

My friend recently broke his toe and went to Northwick Park A & E at 10.00pm on a Monday night and was told he would have to wait 5-6 hours before he was seen – he decided not to wait and went back the next day and had to wait 4 hours to be seen.  How will Northwick Park A & E cope when everyone has to go there?  Will the hospitals be reducing parking charges for people that have to wait for hours and hours in the A & E departments to be seen??? Will there be improved public transport - if you have to go there in the middle of the night there will be no public transport available.

What impact will all the extra traffic have on the area with people having to travel further for treatment - not very good for the environment!

*Barry Gardiner says Central Middlesex A & E is not in his constituency but a lot of the people who will be affected by its closure are his constituents!!!

 Since this guess posting was sent to me Cllr Lincoln Beswick  (Labour, Harlesden) has written in the Brent and Kilburn Times regarding the closure of Central Middlesex A&E and other Coalition policies::

All these areas that this affects must stand up, be more forceful, challenge nationally elected members and jointly have a march for freedom from this atrocious, blatant, obvious and odious decision. Those elected and in opposition should not stay silent on these issues.

This requires joint action by all those who are affected - elected politicians, health service, trade unionists, general community and media services

A first practical action will be if Brent Council decides to refer back the decision to close Central Middlesex A&E at the meeting of the Health Partnerships Overview and Scrutiny Committee at its meeting on Tuesday March 19th 7pm Brent Town Hall. LINK

The public can request to speak at the meeting. The contact is: 

Lisa Weaver, Democratic Services Officer  (020) 8937 1358 Email: lisa.weaver@brent.gov.uk

Kilburn Times opposes privatisation of Brent education

Kilburn Times March 7th 2013

It was good to see the Kilburn Times focusing on the issue of privatisation of our schools on this week's front page.  Even more welcome was their editorial:

WHY WE MUST LIMIT NUMBER OF FREE SCHOOLS

This week education hit the headlines again as the Times reports on the startling number of free schools and academies in Wembley.

The government's education policy says that any group of individuals can set up a free school and subsequently set their own admissions policy and run their own curriculum.

Provided they get enough support from enough parents, a school can effectively pop up anywhere it likes, regardless of local provision.

This is exactly the situation currently unfolding in Wembley with two proposed free schools just a stone's throw from each other seeking to open their doors.

Control

Meanwhile less than a mile away the former (Brent) Town Hall site will be converted into an independent school.

Including the schools already in the area, one of which has chosen to adopt academy status, this could effectively result in five privately-run secondary schools all within a mile of each other.

With the increased funding they will get and their own unique way of running operations, the danger is that they will detract from the remaining (local) authority-run schools.

Brent Council has said it has no control over whether free schools and academies are built, but has told us it will work with those looking to set up schools to ensure the best outcome for parents, teachers and schools.

We hope this is the case and that education can still have a local voice and will not go the same way as the National Health Service, towards inevitable privatisation.

Cllr Powney courts controversy again

Parachute Games in what could become Willesden Town Square

Cllr James Powney has once again courted controversy with a comment on his blog. This time he turned his attention to the application to register the open space outside Willesden Green Library as a Town Square. A public inquiry by an independent inspector concluded some time ago and the inspector's report has taken longer than expected to be published. Some have concluded that it has not been such an open and shut case as Brent Council and the developer Galliford Try, who both opposed the application, expected.

Last  Sunday Cllr Powney wrote on his blog:

I am told that the report on a possible Town Green in front of Willesden Green Library Centre will take longer than anticipated.  There has always been a suspicion that the entire request is merely vexatious, and an attempt to delay the rebuild of Willesden Green Library Centre.  Certainly, the accounts I have heard of some of the testimony given at the enquiry would cohere with that notion.

To his credit Cllr Powney has published a number of trenchant comments on his 'merely vexatious' claim and they make lively reading. They can be read HERE

Residents were concerned that there was a problem of 'predetermination' around the planning application itself because Brent Council had instigated the redevelopment proposal and formed a partnership with Galliford Try/Linden Homes but was also the planning authority.  Now the question arises again as Brent Executive member Cllr Powney appears to be predetermining the outcome of the independent inquiry by suggesting that the application was vexatious. Brent Council makes the decision on whether to accept the inspector's report.

Sarah Teather to meet with parents over forced academies

Gladstone Park Primary School Parents Action Group is to meet with their local MP Sarah Teather to hear her report back on a meeting she has had with Michael Gove on the forced academies issue. Sarah Teather worked in Gove's department until her sacking at the last reshuffle.

When in opposition Teather was a vociferous opponent of Labour's academy programme but appeared to change her mind when she became a minister in the Coalition and took action to enable special schools to convert to academy status.

The latest strategy shift, in which Gove forces primary schools to convert to a sponsored academy after only one poor Ofsted result,  may be a policy that Teather finds repugnant. Certainly her democratic principles must be offended by the bullying nature of the 'brokers' who are charged by the DfE with the conversion process, the refusal to consult until AFTER governors have accepted a sponsor, and the failure to take account of the views of school staff and parents.  The most glaring issue is that the process does not at present allow any of the parties involved (staff, parents, governors) to reject forced academisation outright.

The meeting is public so I am sure if you are interested in the fundamental issues raised by forced academisation that you will be welcome to attend. It is expected that some of our Brent councillors will be attending.

TAX BANKERS - NOT BEDROOMS

Roke parents get DfE and Harris 'flustered' on forced academies as they take legal action

The Save Roke parent group, along with school governor, Malcolm Farquharson have instructed a lawyer specialising in academy law to prepare a legal challenge to the plans of Michael Gove to hand their primary school over to a private academy.

The group started fund raising on Tuesday and they received their target amount within 24 hours.

Roke campaigners believe that they may have a case in law to challenge the Secretary of State’s actions, which they believe have gone beyond his powers by referring the state primary school in Kenley to the
Harris Federation when the school is not a “failing” school and also on issues surrounding the legality of the consultation process.

Roke parents joined forced with parents from other protesting schools yesterday and issued a statement  in which they announced a new campaign organisation 'Parents Against Forced Academisation'. They called for an immediate public enquiry into bullying behaviour and fake consultations endemic in forced academisation of schools.

Yesterday evening, Roke parents received the first of several what they termed 'sham consultation' meetings run by the preferred academy sponsor the Harris Federation at the school. Parents received no representation from any other party and Lord Nash has already declared the decision irreversible.

The campaigners said:

After we announced our plans for legal action on our facebook group and the Save Roke website, and after the DfE received had complaints from Roke parents about the legality of the consultation process and the fact that parents had not even been asked if they wanted to become an academy on the official consultation questionnaire, the DfE and Harris last night moved pre-emptively, and issued a new consultation questionnaire with the question added. This suggests that the initial consultation document was not indeed not legal, and that we had got them flustered enough to move very quickly to close this legal loophole. This demonstrates that legal process has not been followed with due diligence by the DfE or Harris.

Lucas: Government must reverse brutal economic policies to avoid disastrous slump

Caroline Lucas, MP, a member of the Green New Deal Group [2], challenged conventional IEA (Institute of Economnic Affairs)  thinking on the economy today by urging the Government to increase employment to reduce the deficit - channelling investment into urgently needed green infrastructure.

At a working lunch at the IEA, Lucas said

With scant evidence of the kind of strong recovery expected after previous post-war recessions, it's time to admit that austerity in the UK has failed and that an alternative approach to reducing the deficit is needed.

SINCE 2010, CENTRAL BANKERS AND POLITICIANS HAVE PRESIDED OVER THE APPLICATION OF BRUTAL ECONOMIC POLICIES THAT HAVE IMPOVERISHED THE INNOCENT, ENRICHED GLOBAL FINANCIAL ELITES, AND EXACERBATED THE WORLDWIDE SLUMP.
 
In our 2009 report, 'The Cuts Won't Work [3]'_the Green New Deal Group set out what is now clear: that austerity and cuts in public spending during a slump - when private debt has grown to become 5 times the size of public debt - is completely delusional economics.

It is extraordinary that the government focuses so ferociously on public debt - which now stands at 70% of GDP - but turns a complete blind eye to private debt - now at 420% of GDP. A massive overhang of private bank debt goes a long way to explain why banks are not lending and why private sector investment is stalling.

The Group also predicted the 'triple crunch': a credit-fuelled financial crisis, combined with accelerating climate change and growing energy insecurity, which would "develop into a perfect storm, the like of which has not been seen since the Great Depression".

So it has come to pass - we're now in the sixth year of a widespread, international depression, with 2.5 million unemployed in the UK, many millions more under-employed, and youth unemployment at tragic levels.

The impacts of the climate crisis are becoming ever clearer, with 2012 going down in history as a year in which our weather spun out of control - and having carelessly assigned the nation's energy security to the invisible and unaccountable 'hand of the market', we face an insecure energy future with all the economic implications that brings.

A programme of productive investment financed by loans from the government's own nationalised bank - the Bank of England - is a crucial way to reduce the public debt, channelling public money into projects such as a comprehensive programme for retrofitting Britain's ancient housing stock, increasing our energy security and reducing bills.

THIS IS NOT INDISCRIMINATE SPENDING, BUT ‘TRANSITIONAL INVESTMENT’, WHERE ENERGY AND MATERIALS ARE FOCUSSED ON INVESTMENT IN INFRASTRUCTURE THAT WILL LEAD TO A REDUCTION OF DEMAND FOR THEM IN THE FUTURE.

A public works spending would succeed where traditional quantitative easing has failed - going straight to help employment and companies, and the projects which can add to national well-being, generating income through employment.

Caroline Lucas concluded:

Keynes argued and proved that such spending would pay for itself. The Government must now rise from its deep torpor, ditch its flawed economic orthodoxy and finally begin to undertake the level of public investment needed to reverse this disastrous slump.

 [1] http://www.iea.org.uk/
[2] http://www.greennewdealgroup.org/
[3] http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/cuts-wont-work
[4] http://www.carolinelucas.com

Roke Primary appeal to mount legal challenge against forced academy

BREAKING NEWS The Save Roke campaign has just launched an appeal via the Anti Academies Alliance website to raise funds to mount a legal challenge against the Department of Education. All donations no matter how large or small gratefully received. We have an initial target of £600. Thank you for your support!

This money will allow us to instruct leading lawyer, Laura Hughes to mount a case to fight off the DfE and forced academy at Roke. Laura has a reputation in the field of academy law. 

Follow this LINK to donate via PayPal