Brent's Muhammed Butt to be London Councils Equalities Lead despite racial discrimination finding

Despite the Employment Tribunal finding that Brent Council racially discriminated against an employee, victimised her and construcitvely dismissed her, Cllr Muhammed Butt, leader of Brent Council was appointed Equalities Lead by London Councils at their AGM yesterday.

No action has been taken against the CMT members named in the Employment Tribunal case.

Wembley's Lycee International de Londres Winston Churchill on target for September opening

Lycee International de Londres Winston Churchill today

This week the hoardings around the Lycee International de Londres Winston Churchill have been taken down and locals are able to see the result of the work that has been going on.  Workmen tell me that the internal work is largely completed and work on the grounds is taking place as well as installation of iron railings on the existing perimeter wall.

The building includes the refurbished Brent Town Hall (before the merger of Wembley and Willesden, Wembley Town Hall) and a new block for primary pupils. The school's website shows the completed site, complete with running track where the Council car park used to be.

One can't but notice that the building looks far more substantial than many recent new school builds in the borough.

The school is due to open on September 3rd 2015 for Years 1 to 11 with Years 12 and 13 starting in subsequent academic years.

The school will offer a bilingual education with 'an Anglo Saxon' ethos and will be fee paying:

2015- 2016 school fees will be as follows:

• Maternelle: £10,470 / year
• Elementaire: £9,770 / year
• Collège: £9,770 / year
• Lycée: £10,470 / year 

These fees include lunch, insurance and, from Primary onwards, an appropriate tablet device.

Please note that:
There is a non-refundable £90 pre-registration fee per pupil.

If you are offered a place, you will receive an email explaining in detail the acceptance procedure and the Terms and Conditions. A first registration fee of £1,200 per pupil, as well as an advance payment of £1,000 on the first term fees, must be paid to secure the place. These fees are non-refundable.

The school has published a welcoming letter to parents on its website:

Dear families,

It is my pleasure and privilege to welcome you to the Lycée International de Londres. Our school aims to create a nurturing and vibrant environment where students and adults thrive sharing the joys of teaching and learning alike. The Lycée provides an international education based on the French National Curriculum leading to the French Baccalaureate.

Rooted in the tradition of French educational excellence, and aiming to offer the most modern pedagogical approaches, our ethos reflects our commitment to foster the development of the whole child along with collective achievement through mutual respect and dedication.

Our campus encompasses newly refurbished and purpose ­built buildings surrounded by large outdoor leisure and sports facilities on five acres of land. These beautiful surroundings and brand new teaching spaces will offer the school’s 1,100 pupils a wonderful campus ­style environment. The Lycée also houses a large gymnasium, a bright and spacious library, state­-of-­the­-art science labs, a music room and a drama studio: we want to offer the best a modern school can offer today.

We hope you and your children will join our community, share our values and adhere to our ethos. We look forward to welcoming our first classes Autumn 2015.

It is a great honour for me to be entrusted with the mission to build and lead, with your support, such a vibrant community of learners. Rest assured that I will do everything in my power to gain your trust, act with your support and provide the energy and inspiration to succeed in our endeavour.

Best wishes,
Mireille Rabaté
Head of school

The website includes a video extolling the virtues of blingualism/multilingualism:



 The school's website is available in both French and English HERE

Preston Community Library's reservations over Council's asset strategy

This is what Philip Bromberg of the Preston Community Library Campaign presented to Cabinet yesterday evening:

I am speaking on behalf of Preston Community Library, a charity which, as I hope you all know, is currently running a library on a temporary licence in the Preston Library building on Carlton Avenue East.

As you know, Brent Labour Party made a very clear pledge before last year's election to offer the Preston Library building "at a peppercorn rent to any local group who can provide a sustainable community library....that is our pledge....We will not open to competitive tender in order to give preference to local groups."

Since last year we have done everything that you asked us to do. We've submitted a business plan for a permanent library which has been praised by Brent CVS. From a standing start barely a month ago,  we are now offering the full range of traditional library services - we have several thousand books available for borrowing, including a wide range of large print books which cater to the needs of elderly people, we have a children's library which is lending books to a local primary school, we have a range of newspapers and magazines, we offer study space and, from today, we have four public access computers and WiFi which are free to library users.

We're also already offering much more than a traditional library. We have (free) ESOL classes on Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays, and we're talking to a local school who want to fund us to offer these classes to their parents. We've trained two new ESOL teachers. We're running yoga classes for adults and for families. We run movement, exercise and dance classes. We host a weekly creative writing group and a Scrabble group. We've worked very closely with vulnerable adults from a local residential home who've played an important part in getting the library open. And very soon - with funding from you - we will be running a community cinema. In short, we are already doing very precisely the things which Brent says it wants community groups to be doing. Needless to say, all of this has taken a huge amount - thousands of hours - of very hard work by an extraordinarily dedicated group of people.

Bearing all of this in mind, I have a couple of observations to make about the proposed Property and Asset Strategy:

The third objective of the new strategy (p.3) is to increase ongoing revenue generation, but you do note that "clearly there will be times when these objectives will be at odds with each other". So I remind you again that your election promise was to offer the Preston Library building at a peppercorn rent.

And on pp. 7 & 11 the strategy says that "all opportunities for Community Asset Transfer should be advertised" and recommends a competitive process. Competitive tendering was, of course, explicitly ruled out in the Labour Party's election pledge last year. We're not, though, worried about an open and transparent process, provided that process takes place in the context of your very clear election pledge to support a community library in Carlton Avenue East.

Preston Community Library is the area's only secular community space; it is fully accessible and open to everyone regardless of race, religion, age or gender. In barely a month, and on a very restrictive temporary licence, PCL is already doing hugely impressive work. When we have a proper lease, we will be able to do much, much more.

Complacency at Cabinet as controversy swept under the carpet

Preston Community Library representatives spoke at Cabinet tonight on the issue of Brent Council's new Property and Asset Strategy.   They were concerned that the community library they now have up and running in the building, which provides many services to the local community apart from lending books,  should not be affected by the strategy which states:

Fundamentally the strategy moves away from a presumption to dispose outright of property towards one of retaining and acquiring assets with a view to maximising revenue potential.

Muhammed Butt, leader of the council said that the  council also recognised the importance of social value of property, rather than just monetary value.

Several Cabinet members praised the campaign which had been promised the Preston library building at a peppercorn rent.  However Cllr Moher indicated that discussions were taking place on the use of part of the building to provide additional school places.

Clearly there will be some difficult decisions when weighing up any conflict between monetary and social values in a period of budgetary cuts.

Ex councillor James Powney wrote on his blog:

The new strategy has two apparently contradictory aims.  One is to maximise value through renting property.  The second is maximise "social value" through renting below market rates to worthy causes.  Of course this all takes place in an environment where the Council's income from fees & charges, Council Tax and government grant will all be in decline.  Inevitably, this locks Brent Council into cutting public services to the maximum extent possible, which I suspect is not a policy that the majority of those who voted in May 2014 would support (although it is very much what the newly elected Tory government supports).

There are likely to be a number of Community Asset Transfers with voluntary organisations running services from former Brent buildings. 

Cabinet approved the Strategy Report's recommendations which Cllr Pavey claimed marked a 'massive' change in Council policy - but he does tend to suffer from superlative inflation.

They went on to approve authority to tender for a Direct Payments Service contract for adult and children's social care. Cllr Hirani argued that this would enable better working conditions and wages as it would do away with the profit requirement of agency providers.

The Council is expecting an increase of 400 people on Direct Payments over the next three years, a total of 1,127.

Cabinet approved the award of the Local HealthWatch Service contract to CommUNITY Barnet, Cllr Pavey remarked that the current HealthWatch has been well-intentioned but ineffective. It had not been successful in getting community engagement and representing patients.

There were similar remarks about the youth service when the Cabinet discussed the £1m cut it is making which will result in further demands on the voluntary and faith sectors.  In answer to Cllr Mashari who asked if this represented a move away from a universal youth service, Cllr Ruth Moher said she doubted if Brent had such a service at present and that the present service was not coherent, it had developed rather than was planned.  She remarked that that there was no point in providing a service if what it provided was not what young people wanted, so they would be consulted. She went on to say that the Coucil had never done a proper mapping of the services that were already offered acxross the borough by the council, voluntary organisations and faith groups.

Cllr Moher referred to the paragraph about the dangers for the Roundwood Centre if the strategy was not successful. Cllr Mashari said that there were many groups just waiting to get into the centre and she looked forward to it being better used and more dynamic.

There seemed little recognition of what could be read between the lines of the report and was pixcked up by the Kilburn Times - this could mark the end of youth provision in Brent.

I was shocked that there was no delegation at the council from the youth service or its users,  or the Youth Parliament which is, after all, supposed to represent young people.  Cabinet were told that their had been a question from the former chair of Brent Youth Parliament asking what a youth worker attached to the BYP would actually do - the answer was value to say the least.  However, the BYP, kept on at a cost of £60,000 may have to watch out as Cllr Moher said that they would be looking at 'different ways' of delivering that service.

Ruth Moher also presented the report on the Expansion of Stonebridge School and was equally complacent saying that most of the respondents to the consultation had been concerned about the future of Stonebridge Adventure Playground, swallowed up by the school expansion and accompanying regeneration. Referring to the 700 letters  received against the proposal she said that these had all been the same so didn't mean much and went on to say, about a 1,000 plus petition calling for the saving of the adventure playground, 'as we know you can get anyone to sign a petition.

Dear reader, I was moved to protest at this disparagement from a councillor who had never once visited the playground!

Cllr Pavey then jumped in to tell us all how big schools were great (he is chair of governors at the BIG Wembley Primary), the bigger the better ('massive' 'bigger the better' - is there a theme emerging here?) and suggested that Quintain with its BIG profits could be persuaded to add another form of entry or two at its proposed primary school.

Cllr Butt followed this with his usual statement. The provision of school places was a statutory responsibility and the Council owes it to residents and children to provide places: 'We will not shy away from making difficult decisions'.

So, we have to admire Brent Council for making the 'difficult' decision to close a children's playground, even though it, as well as the school,  served families and children in one of the poorest parts of London. Campaigners were never persuaded that the Council had considered the possibility of an alternative design for the  expansion of the school that kept the playground or had even tried to find it an alternative site.

And wasn't Stonebridge Adventure Playground a community asset?

The meeting concluded with a refreshingly eloquent presentation by Cllr Eleanor Southwood, the new lead member for the environment. It was not about her portfolio but a report from a Scrutiny Committee task group that she led on the pupil premium and how it is used in Brent schools.

Cllr Southwood  said that the group had looked at case studies and talked to pupils not just about the impact on attainment but on enjoyment of school and the broadening of horizons.

The good practice described in the report will be shared with the Brent Schools Partnership.