Parents unite against Michael Gove's bullying

"If every school did the same as us...." another step forward

Parents have called  for a public enquiry into bullying behaviour endemic in forced academisation of school. They state that that parents from schools that have experienced bullying from the DfE are fighting back and launching a new campaign group - Parents Against Forced Academies (PAFA). This arose from the frustration parents feel at not being listened to on key decisions about the handing of our schools by rich businessmen running academy chains.

PAFA was born at a half term meeting by parents at several primary schools across London, where they decided to join forces in condemning what they perceive as extreme bullying tactics by Michael Gove and his academy brokers.

Governors and head teachers who resist forced academy are routinely threatened with the sack and in some cases this has been carried through Interim Executive Boards with no previous knowledge of the school or the community   Fake consultations with parents are being run after decisions have already been made and controlled by the academy chains who stand to gain most. The conflict of interest could not be clearer. In the case of Downhills Primary School in Haringey 94% of those taking part in the consultation did not want the school to become an academy sponsored by the Harris Federation. On the same day the consultation was published and available to parents the Secretary of State handed the school over to the Harris Federation. The DfE had funded the consultation to the tune of £50,000 of public money.

Parents are repeatedly being met with rude, abrupt, dismissive and patronising responses from DfE officials when they make a reasoned case for proper consultation and genuine choice over their school’s future. The behaviour of the DfE contravenes key principles set out in the government’s own legal advice and other government agendas such as localism, Big Society and community rights. When making a decision that will impact on the general public, Civil Service Departments are required to meet a series of tests in measuring the lawfulness of an exercise of public law, PAFA believes that Michael Gove is ignoring these basic rules of public life. It is more like dictatorship than democracy.

Parents from schools facing forced academy conversion are joining forces to call for a public enquiry into the decisions made about our schools behind closed doors and the privatisation of our education system by stealth. ‘We know that we are not alone in resisting the forcible academisation of our school,’ says Maria Bache, 40, an HR manager for a media group who has two children at Gladstone Primary in NW London. ‘We stand united with other schools across the country in publicising the unfair treatment we are being subjected to by the DfE.’

Another Gladstone parent, Zaman Wong, said : ‘The decision by the DfE to impose academy status on Gladstone Park Primary is a grossly disproportionate course of action, ignoring the many strengths of our school identified by Ofsted, the indisputable achievements of our pupils and the wishes of the parents. The entire process has been unjustified and artificially rushed, with a complete lack of transparency or any consultation with parents and governors’ The father of two children at the school, one in Reception, concluded: ‘Even a Year 3 child will tell you a choice with one option is no choice at all. ‘ 

PAFA is protesting against these illegal tactics. Key members along with Gladstone Park include protesting parents from high profile schools: Roke Primary in Croydon, and Downhills in Haringey. Other schools protesting schools include Calder High in Hebden Bridge and Thomas Gamuels in Walthamstow.

Angeline Hind of Roke Primary said: “We expect more and more parents and schools to join us as with Ofsted shifting the goalposts once again, there will soon be a torrent of schools subjected to the bullying and underhand methods we have experienced. At times it feels surreal like we are living in Communist China. Our schools are at the tip of a tidal wave to come as more and more schools are forced to convert. This is not about standards but political ideology and privatisation by stealth.”

Notes

The test measuring lawfulness of exercise of public law:

• Legality -  Departments must act within the scope of any powers and for a proper purpose; not  acting in a hasty and disproportionate fashion.
• Procedural fairness – for example giving the individual or individuals an opportunity to be heard.
• Reasonableness or rationality: including the principles of proportionality and the ‘Wednesbury principle’ (when making a reasonable and rational decision all relevant factors must be taken into account and all irrelevant factors omitted). Compatibility with the Human Rights Convention rights and EU law.

·        Parents from Downhills School were involved in working with filmmaker Rhonda Evans in a film about forced academies available online http://www.academiesandlies.org.uk/

These principles are all described in the Judge Over Your Shoulder (JOYS) document issued by the Treasury Solicitor: http://www.tsol.gov.uk/Publications/Scheme_Publications/judge.pdf)

Brent Planning: Incompetence or Corporate Cover-up?

This Guest Blog by local historian Philip Grant is longer than usual but raises some fundamental issues regarding planning that merit full exposition.

If you are interested in how Brent’s local government works in practice, I invite you to consider this case study. Although I have asked the question, I will leave you to decide the answer. If you wish to leave a comment, please do. You can comment anonymously, but it would help if you could give some (genuine) information, so that other readers know whether you are a “Willesden Green resident”, a “public relations consultant from Winchester”, a “Brent Council insider” or an “unconnected outsider”.

At a special Planning Committee meeting on 21 February, consent was granted to an application in the name of Galliford Try Plc to redevelop the Willesden Green Library Centre. On 22 February I lodged a complaint with Brent's Chief Executive that there had been a breach of Brent's Planning Code of Practice at that meeting. This breach was the failure to make available for inspection at the meeting the public register in which the Planning Officers reporting on the application should have declared a "prejudicial interest", so that the decision was taken without the committee being aware that the report, and the recommendation which they accepted, might not be impartial. I made it clear that my complaint was about the actions of Council Officers; I was not criticising the Planning Committee members in any way. Councillor Ketan Sheth had chaired the meeting in an exemplary way, treating all parties fairly and with great courtesy.

Brent’s Planning Code of Practice is part of the Council’s Constitution. It ‘seeks to ensure that officers and members consider and decide planning matters in an open and transparent manner’, and sets out rules which are intended to make sure that planning decisions are not only made fairly, but that they are seen to be made fairly. Item (or rule) 12 says:

12. If any officer of the Council who is involved in making recommendations or decisions on planning applications has had any involvement with an applicant, agent or interested party, whether or not in connection with the particular application being determined, which could possibly lead an observer with knowledge of all the relevant facts to suppose that there might be any possibility that the involvement could affect the officer's judgement in any way, then that officer shall declare a prejudicial interest in the public register held by the Director of Regeneration and Major Projects and take no part in the decision making process. The declaration of such interest shall also be recorded in the minutes of the meeting. This public register to be available for inspection at Planning Committee meetings.

The complaint was not some "trumped-up" delaying tactic or "sour grapes" on my part. As Brent was in reality a “joint applicant” with Galliford Try in the plans for the new Cultural Centre, I had first raised the question of the need for any of Brent's Planning Officers reporting on this proposed development to declare a "prejudicial interest" in the public register, with Brent's Chief Planning Officer, Chris Walker, as far back as May and June 2012, in respect of the initial application which was later withdrawn. I had reminded him and his Area Team Manager, Andy Bates, of this a few days before 21 February.

I had also alerted the Democratic Services Officer responsible for the Planning Committee meetings of the importance of this matter, and that I would wish to inspect the public register a few minutes before the meeting. At around 6.45pm on 21 February I had approached this Officer in the Committee Room, introduced myself, and asked to see the public register. He gave me conflicting reasons as to why the register was not available to view, one of which seemed to be that no such register existed, another that it was only available to view online and a third that it was kept at Brent House, and that I would have to make arrangements to view it there. I asked him to inform the Chairman, at the start of the meeting, about the absence of the public register, and that it was important for the business of the meeting that it should be available. He did not do so.

When it was my turn to speak, as an objector, I took the opportunity to say that the public register of Officers' prejudicial interests should have been available to inspect at the meeting, and that Mr Walker and Mr Bates should have signed it. Later in the meeting Councillor Mary Daly asked the Chief Planning Officer for his comments on the points I had raised. Mr Walker did not refer to the public register or to "prejudicial interest", but did say that his department took care to separate staff dealing with planning applications from those who were giving advice to colleagues in Regeneration and Major Projects on proposed schemes. He also said that no one could tell him what to recommend in terms of planning matters. The committee’s Legal Advisor stayed silent on the Code of Practice points throughout the meeting.

My complaint was passed to Fiona Ledden, Brent’s Chief Legal Officer and the Council’s Monitoring Officer for ensuring that all its planning procedures are carried out properly, to look into and reply to me. If he considers it appropriate, Martin will have added links below to pdf versions of her letter to me 1 March and my reply of 2 March to her, setting out our respective views. Please feel free to read them if you are interested, but I will summarise the main points as follows:

It is Fiona Ledden’s view that:

1.   Chris Walker and Andy Bates do not have an “involvement” with Andy Donald, Director of Regeneration and Major Projects. They just happen to work for the same Council department.

2.   Because of the Separation of Powers between the Planning and Regeneration sides of the department, there is no real possibility that the report to Planning Committee could be anything other than totally impartial.

3.     She agrees 'that as a matter of good practice the Public Register should have been available at the Committee meeting for inspection', but does not consider that this had any effect on the Committee's decision.

It is my view that:

1.    Messrs Walker and Bates should have declared a "prejudicial interest" in the register (it is possible that they did, but without seeing it I can't be sure) because their "involvement" with Andy Donald, and his with the WGCC project, might possibly have affected how they wrote the report and recommendation.

2.      Applying the proper tests for "prejudicial interest" it is clear from the actual report that there were parts which were not impartial. This, coupled with their "involvement" (although they may not have taken part in discussions with the Regeneration Officers, they have been working together in Brent House for the past year with colleagues who were promoting the scheme and expecting it to be approved, and their boss was the man responsible for "delivering" this project for Brent Council), means that item 12 of the Code of Practice must apply.

3.      The public register of prejudicial interests is supposed to be available to inspect at each meeting of the Planning Committee, but it was not and members were not made aware of the key information it should have contained. Reports to committee have to be impartial, and the committee are generally expected to accept the Planning Officer’s recommendation. Had they been aware that this report might not be impartial, they would have considered it in a more critical way. As a result, their decision cannot be seen to have been made fairly, which is the whole point of Brent’s Planning Code of Practice.

Another important part of Brent’s Planning Code of Practice is item (or rule) 1, which puts in formal terms another of its stated purposes: ‘The provisions of this code are designed to ensure that planning decisions are taken on proper planning grounds’. Item 1 says:

1. Members of the Planning Committee shall determine applications in accordance with the Unitary Development Plan [now the adopted Local Development Framework] unless material considerations indicate otherwise.

As the committee need to know whether applications meet Brent’s adopted planning policies, and if they do not whether there are “material considerations” which mean that an application should still be accepted, you would expect the Planning Officer’s report to contain this sort of information. The report on the Willesden Green Library Centre application was noticeably lacking in such details. I will illustrate this using the issue of open space as an example.

The Officer’s report to the 21 February meeting on application 12/2924 included a list of 22 issues on which objections had been raised, including these on open space

OBJECTIONS

The principal issues that have been raised are set out below:

2. The new building would lose the sense of openness towards the front of the site that the existing building provides for.

3. The loss of the open space to the front of the existing library is unacceptable in itself. It is well used by the community. The proposed open space is hidden around the back of the new library building and will not be welcoming.

I had actually sent a detailed letter about the open space issues to Planning Case Officer, Andy Bates, on 13 January. I summarised in an online comment, which can be seen on the Brent Planning “view comments” webpage for application 12/2924. Here are some extracts:

14/01/2013: BRENT'S PLANNING POLICY SAYS OPEN SPACE SHOULD BE PRESERVED - The development proposals contained in this application, to build the new Cultural Centre over that open space, go against policy CP18 in the adopted Core Strategy of Brent’s Local Development Framework and against policies set out in Chapter 7 ("London's Living Places and Spaces") of the 2011 London Plan. / This local open space was created as part of the Willesden Library expansion scheme in the 1980's, as one of the policy commitments given by Brent Council in the Willesden Green District Plan, adopted in December 1980. / The District Plan identified the site which Brent Council was then acquiring for its new Library Centre as the ideal location for a variety of new community facilities. The plans which were then drawn up for those facilities, in full consultation with the local community, included this 'much-needed open space' on the Willesden High Road side of the Library Centre. / Part 5 of Brent's 2010 planning Core Strategy shows that the area around the High Road in Willesden Green is still an area of open space deficiency, and says that local open space in such areas is 'crucially important to the borough' and in 'need of protection'. That is why core policy CP18 says 'Open space ... of local value will be protected from inappropriate development and will be preserved for the benefit, enjoyment, health and well being of Brent's residents, visitors and wildlife.' / It is clear that the proposals in the planning application to build over the open space in front of Willesden Green Library Centre would be 'development harmful to its use and purpose as open space', so that the open space should be preserved. 

The summary of objections did not reflect the planning policy points I had made, so what did the main body of the Officer’s report say on these matters? These are the main extracts:

FACILITIES OUTSIDE THE BUILDING

The development proposes to change the current open areas around the building – principally by providing the new ‘Brondesbury Walk’ and improvements to the public realm in Grange Road. / The range of current outside areas includes the space to the rear of the library, the small children’s play area adjacent to it and the space to the front of the library building./

The application scheme creates a new street entitled ‘Brondesbury Walk’ to the rear of the new library which provides a single space larger than any of the single areas that exist at present. However, the space would be some 65 square metres smaller than a combination of the existing space to the rear and the open area to the front (total 565 square metres rather than 625 square metres). This small reduction is acknowledged. However, in qualitative terms it is considered that the proposed spaces will, at least, be equal to the existing offer.... / The intention is that the space will be used as a new local square for use by existing and future communities. It will be predominantly hard paved, but will include mature trees to provide visual interest and shade. The level change between the WGCC and the residential Block A will allow for a double terrace of seating to be provided for visitors of the Centre to use. /

It is proposed that the new WGCC building will sit in a sensitively interpreted civic space which will provide a high quality setting for the building. The spaces will not only provide formal civic amenity, but interesting play facilities making the public space around the centre as much of a destination as the building. The quality of landscape interpretation, including the use of level changes, has allowed a sensitive designed progression from the civic public spaces adjacent to the Cultural Centre to the semi-private and private areas of the residential development behind.

There was still no mention of Brent’s core policy CP18, an admission that there would be a smaller area of open space of at least equal quality ‘to the existing offer’, but a claim that it would be a better ‘civic space’, which presumably is regarded as a “material consideration”. If the report had stated that the application’s proposals on open space went against Brent’s planning policies, but had then set out a clear argument as to why the benefits of the new scheme were considered to outweigh those policy considerations, then it might have been considered even-handed. However, I can see no valid reason why core policy CP18 was not brought to the attention of Planning Committee. 

The report also failed to mention that the main function of the top level of “Brondesbury Walk” is to provide pedestrian access and natural light to one side of residential Block A (which will be built right up to the edge of the land which Brent is giving to Galliford Try in return for the developer constructing the new Cultural Centre). Another factor making the proposed new open space even smaller is that its western (Grange Road) end must be kept clear, to allow lorries servicing the Cultural Centre to reverse into “Brondesbury Walk” in order to turn round.

The open space issues are just one of a number of areas where clearly identified failures to comply with Brent’s planning policies, which were brought to the attention of Planning Officers, have not been properly reported to Planning Committee in this case. The Officers' report can hardly be claimed to be impartial in these circumstances. Add to this the strong case as to why those Officers should have declared a “prejudicial interest” in the public register, and the failure to have that register available for inspection at the Planning Committee meeting, and I hope you can see why I felt it necessary to complain about the apparent breach of Brent’s Planning Code of Practice. 

Was what has happened the result of incompetence, a corporate cover-up or was there nothing wrong at all with the actions of Council Officers? Fiona Ledden is a trained lawyer, and I am not, so it is possible that I may have misunderstood how the Code is meant to work in practice. What do you think?

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