Seb Coe's visit to the temporary swimming pool at Chalkhill Primary School was a great success with the pupils who excitedly showed him the pool and talked about how much they enjoyed having it at the school. Many have begun swimming as a result of the 10 lesson programme and the pool has also been used by the local community and neighbouring schools.
It was a shame then that the next day we read in the Evening Standard that Chalkhill may be the last school to have the temporary pool - at least for the time being. The two pools in the six borough scheme are to be moth-balled because London Swimming needs to find £250,000 to receive match funding from City Hall's £15.5million Olympic Sports Fund. The former is a small amount amount shared between six boroughs so I hope Brent Council will be able to find a way to help the project continue.
The Comprehensive Spending review announced unprecedented spending cuts with local government being one of the hardest hit areas. The government has, in effect, outsourced responsibility for spending cuts to town halls.
The effect on jobs and services in Brent will be devastating.
The full extent of the cuts in Brent will not be properly known until December when the Local Government Grant is finalised and a more detailed analysis of the Comprehensive Spending review has been undertaken. However, I anticipate that some services currently taken for granted will simply disappear and services which councils are not required by law to provide will be shredded.
The cuts will cause real pain and anxiety for people who provide the services and those who receive them. Consultants KPMG and PriceWaterhouseCoopers have warned that many councils may cease to become financially viable faced with cuts of this scale.
I urge everyone – fight to defend jobs and services.
I have been a member of a public library continuously since before I started school (in fact the old Kingsbury Library now replaced). When I move house joining the library is the first thing I do once the electricity and gas are connected and the furniture in. As one of a large family with parents unable to give me a lot of attention, the library was in a sense my home educator, and librarians actually quite important in encouraging me to widen my reading tastes. Without a library I think I would have not progressed much educationally,
Currently I see queues of young and older people outside the Town Hall Library, waiting for it to open, not all just to keep warm but somewhere they can advance their education. Library staff could probably tell you that young children use local libraries after school as a place to do their homework, but also an unofficial safe place to be picked up by their parents when they finish work.
A lot of the youngsters on the Chalkhill Estate use the library, encouraged by the school and by class visits, and there is also a high usage of the internet there, for learning but also for job seeking. This is essential if we are to tackle the gap between those who have access and those who do not. They are fortunate in being near a library not down for closure - although it will be less accessible when it is moved to the new Civic Centre.
However youngster who currently use Barham Park, Cricklewood, Neasden, Tokyngton, Kensal Rise and Preston libraries, all down for closure, will be less fortunate. The proposal for the remaining six libraries to be 'community hubs' with other council services located there does not replace the local accessibility of these small libraries.
Brent libraries are also the source of much cultural input including Black History Month events and other activities that bring a diverse community together including language and citizenship test classes. The Town Hall library is currently running a reading club for primary school children and others have homework clubs for children without access to books or computers at home. As the recession bites this will become even more important.
As Greens local libraries are important to us because we believe in easily accessible community resources which do not involve car trips.A local library is a place where children of 10 and over can easily walk to on their own rather than rely on lifts from parents - this encourages one area of independence in a landscape where children are more and more dependent on adults, with few opportunities for independent activity. Libraries even save paper, and therefore trees, through multiple lending of one book rather than individual purchases of many books - and the authors get a steady source of income, albeit it small, from public lending rights.
The Young Greens, the youth and student branch of the Green Party have made the following comment on the student demonstrations.
Sam Coates, co-chair of the Young Greens, was at Millbank. He said:
"The anger at Wednesday's protests was remarkable, especially towards the Lib Dems who have left so many students feeling betrayed and unsure where to turn next. Students have begun the fight against the Coalition's dangerous and damaging policies. This is what you get when you condemn a whole generation to a lifetime of debt, unaffordable housing and a lack of decent jobs. Obviously we abhor violence against people, but the events at Millbank were a totally understandable response to pent up anger of young people who feel they are being jilted at every turn.
"Many of the protesters at Millbank were younger college and sixth form students worried they will be priced out of university by a trebling of fees. Hundreds of people went inside the building and thousands more were cheering from the courtyard. This was a spontaneous action uniting thousands of ordinary students."
He concluded by calling for an escalation of peaceful but forceful student protests:
"What happened yesterday generated momentum in the student movement that must be harnessed if these cuts are to be defeated and the movement escalated. We fully support direct action, occupations and other activities that utilise sensible tactics to show the Government we will not accept higher fees, and we will not accept cuts to higher education funding. Manchester University students have already begun a campaign of occupation, and we support them in their efforts to fight cuts to their education.
"The Green Party opposes cuts to public services and is calling for investment hundreds of thousands of green jobs to kick start the economy on a low carbon direction. With money markets desperate to buy government bonds, there is absolutely no reason to panic about Government debt in the short term. In 1945 public debt was 5 times larger than today and our grandparents managed to build the welfare state. The Tories have always tried to argue that we cannot afford decent education, health and housing, and they've been proved wrong."
Roe Green residents have asked me to publicise their campaign on Wembley Matters:
Not again! Yes! Brent council has done it again. This time they have completely ignored procedures that should this have been Joe-public they would have descended on them breathing fire and brimstone.
Brent Council has granted itself planning permission to erect an ill-planned, poorly conceived structure that would shame any area within this Borough’s boundaries, let alone a conservation area.
The Council, in order to grasp a last-minute grant from the previous Government for an Intergenerational Centre, short-cut the public consultation procedure to secure this money, despite disagreements with the locals as to whether it was necessary.
The residents of Roe Green Village, one of the last few remaining examples of small First World War settlements just beyond the North Circular, are stunned by what they perceive to have been anti-democratic procedures adopted by Brent Council to put through a planning application for an insensitively proportioned and badly designed block, to be built on the edge of this small enclave of stone-white and mellow brick cottages that have survived all sorts since the First World War.
What has come to the fore when this almost project was finally and properly revealed, was the Machiavellian way the Council went about finalising the planning permission for such a building.
The argument rests whether Brent has the right to erect such a building without following procedures that their Planning Dept would not have correctly considered in other circumstances.
The present Council has no deep knowledge or understanding of the area and its Senior Officers fail to properly advise them.
Once we lose this unique and historical area, there will be no turning back, it will be gone forever.
BACKGROUND
Roe Green Village is a circa 1918 garden village styled residential conservation area, situated in the district of Kingsbury, which is part of the northern extend of the London Borough of Brent.
The Community is supported by a local association, the Roe Green Village Residents’ Association.
Preston Manor High School governors have decided to go ahead with the next stage of consultation on expanding the school to include children from 4 to 11 year. This will ultimately in crease the population of the school by 420 Reception to Year places to give a total population of 1980 places. The pupil entry for Reception will be 60 and for Year 7 252. If the plans go ahead the permanent primary provision will be opened in September 2011. However 60 reception age children will start in temporary accommodation at the school in January 2011.
The statutory notice confirms that Year 6 pupils attending the primary provision would be prioritised for entry to Year 7 at the secondary school.
The plans were opposed by residents at their consultative meeting and again by residents and others at the Wembley Area Consultative forum. Opposition is likely to continue at this statutory stage.
Although the notice says that the consultation period starts from November 4th, the date of publication, the full documentation was not available on the consultation website today.
Extract from Statutory Notice
Copies of the complete proposal can be obtained from: Nitin Parshotam, Head of Assets Management, Children and Families, London Borough of Brent, 4th Floor Chesterfield House, 9 Park Lane, Wembley, Middlesex, HA9 7RW.
Within six weeks from the date of publication of this proposal i.e. by 16 December 2010, any person may object to or make comments on the proposal in writing by sending them to Nitin Parshotam, Head of Assets Management, Children and Families, London Borough of Brent, 4th Floor Chesterfield House, 9 Park Lane, Wembley, Middlesex, HA9 7RW. Email: Consultations.schoolorganisation@brent.gov.uk
