Brent Council's New £100m Civic Centre versus Cuts to Vital Services

With Skanksa breaking the ground at the new Civic Centre opposite the Wembley Arena time is running out if the project is to be stopped. This video contrasts Brent Council's boasting about the project with the cuts they are making.

ASDA trolleys stage mass breakout!

Summers Close, Wembley

King's Drive, Wembley

King's Drive, Wembley

ASDA store, Wembley

Well Spring Crescent, Wembley

Well Spring Crescent, Wembley

I reported a dozen or so trolleys that had been abandoned around local streets to the Wembley ASDA Customer Services desk last week and they duly noted down the dumping sites. The trolleys were still  there several days later so I tried to telephone the store but all lines were busy. There was no store e-mail address on the website so I e-mailed ASDA national customer services with all the details.

One of the Service Team replied:

I'm concerned to hear about this as it hadn't been removed by our colleagues from the store. We do employ porters to stop customers taking trolleys. We're also rolling out an industry leading system called Cartronics. When a customer tries to push a trolley out of our car park, the brakes will stop it from moving. These measures help us to limit the number of trolleys removed from our stores.

If any of our customers ever feel the need to complain we certainly want to put things right as soon as possible. I've spoken to the duty manager at our Wembley store and asked him/her to arrange for the trolley to be collected and returned to the store as soon as possible.

When the trolleys were still not collected (these pictures were taken today)  I e-mailed again and was told that it would take 72 hours to remove them! In that time of course children may well have played with them and changed their location. Many will be filled up with rubbish.

Of course customers who remove the trolleys are at fault but surely ASDA have a responsibility to make sure trolleys are not taken out of the store site and to have a quick and effective collection system when they are.

I understand that supermarkets can be fined if they allow trolleys to be taken away and abandoned.

Now Lib Dems Call for Civic Centre Library to be Scaled Down to Save Other Libraries

The new state of the art £100m Civic Centre was agreed by all three political parties during the last administration amidst claims that it was 'cost neutral' in the long term, environmentally friendly and would enhance the status of the borough. Brent Green Party was the only political party to question the project and its cost.

Labour had second thoughts during the election campaign and promised to review the project but once elected decided to go ahead. On December 16th, Reg Colwill deputy leader of the Conservative Group wrote to the local press and said, 'We don't need a new sparkling civic centre at the detriment of people's jobs and front-line services'. Kenton Conservatives launched a campaign to save Preston library. 

Work has already started on the Civic Centre site opposite Wembley Arena. Skanska the builders appointed by Brent Council have outlined their December work programme in a Newsletter. LINK TO NEWSLETTER

Now the Liberal Democrats are suggesting that  the new library at the Civic Centre should be scaled down. They argue that the proposed library is three times the size of the one at the Town Hall and would cost £3m of the total Civic Centre costs.They argue that the money saved by scaling it down could be used to safeguard the future of the six libraries threatened with closure. 


As contracts have been signed and  work has already started it is unclear whether the Conservative bid to abandon the project or the Liberal Democrat's proposal to modify it could be implemented without penalties. I think I can hear the stable door slamming shut after the horse has flown!

It is also uncertain that scale down would release 'real money' (actual cash this year) that could be used to save the threatened libraries.


With the Brent cuts now a national issue the debate will heat up over the next few weeks as the cuts and library closures are discussed at the local consultation forums.

Libraries for Life for Londoners have posted a story on the .library cuts in Brent and made the link with the Civic Centre project. LINK

Library demolition not redecoration

One correspondent said that she had talked to people in one of the libraries and they had seen the discreet 'Transforming Our Libraries' notice but didn't realise it was about closures. She says it sounds more like redecorating than demolition!

There's a serious point here that the title of the consultation conceals the real issue and people will be unaware that they are about to lose their library.  That is why we need maximum publicity. It is rather like the furore over  Brent's waste management strategy questionnaire when they were accused of not mentioning  that residual household waste will only be collected fortnightly in future.

Government minister hits out at Brent charges increase

The political blame game over cuts and increased charges in Brent has taken a new turn with local government minister Grant Shapps criticising Brent's increased fees introduced on January 1st - including the 127% increase in allotment fees which put the price of a small allotment up from £33 to £75. Shapps said councils "should not be using residents as cash cows."

Full story on the BBC website 
More on Brent charges on this blog HERE

Curious Consultations

When Cllr James Powney stated from the platform at the recent Town Hall meeting that 'There is no alternative' to the library closures, someone heckled, "Then why are you consulting us?" Other speakers were equally disenchanted with consultation suggesting that major questions were already decided ahead of consultation outcomes.

A little cynical you may think...

However there was a statutory consultation before the holiday on the proposed expansion of Preston Manor High School so that it will also provide primary education in the future. A report on the consultation outcomes will go to the council Executive on February 11th 2011 and they will decide whether to approve the expansion. Obviously they will approach the issue with open minds and take note of the submissions?

However this month the Council is consulting on a planning application for a new 2 form entry primary school on the Preston Manor High School site - to be decided no earlier than January 20th 2011. (An earlier date had been given but residents protested that consultation letters arrived late because of the Christmas post.)

When we queried why the Council was seeking planning permission before the Executive had discussed whether to expand the school, Brent Council told us:

"The Planning Application has been submitted in advance of the Executive approval to ensure that  the statutory proposal can be implemented on time."

I will leave you to decide whether the statutory consultation was genuine or just another exercise in ticking the boxes.

Mental Health Day Service Cuts

The Agenda for the Jan 17th Executive has just been published. It includes Decommissioning of the Mental Health Community Networks Day Care Service.

The introduction  states:

To reflect the shift towards independence and personalisation within Adult Social Care a review of all services is being undertaken to ensure services are appropriate and sustainable. Given the changing environment and the need for efficiency savings by the Council across Mental Health and the wider organisation a plan to decommission the Community Networks Day Care Service has been proposed. Community Networks provides Day Care to approximately 175 mental health clients in the Brent Borough.

The report gives the following risk assessment:

Possible risk implications
• Reduced care package support may lead to bed blockages and delayed discharges
• Limited capacity to move people on from secondary care services to non statutory
local support
• Longer lengths of stay in supported housing due to lack of capacity to move service
users on to independent living
• Fewer staff to steer service users through the SDS process, which will impact on
Council performance targets
• Current support into employment will be reduced and will therefore impact on the
Council’s performance target.
• Possible local opposition to closure of long-established direct day care provision
• Increased pressure on Mental Health Care Coordinators caseloads

'Flakman' under fire on library closures

Cllr Powney certainly lived up to his nickname of Flakman when he appeared at last night's library consultation in front of a passionate, vocal and rebellious audience. This followed his appearances at Area Forums last year when he had a tough time defending the Council's Waste Strategy. Powney took the flak last night from the stage while other Labour councillors sat quietly in the audience.  He made a valiant attempt to defend the indefensible (the closure of half the borough's libraries) but ended up quoting Margaret Thatcher's TINA mantra (There is no alternative).

In fact the audience came up with quite a few alternatives including abandoning the expensive Civic Centre project, getting rid of highly paid council officers, reducing opening hours rather than the number of libraries, and refusing to implement Tory-Lib Dem Coalition cuts.

Contributors emphasised the importance of libraries to the cultural life of local communities and particular emphasis was placed on their importance to young people, the economically disadvantaged and older members of the community. I stressed the importance of children having a library within independent  walking distance of their homes and described the buzz at Neasden library on a Friday evening with a homework club in progress, people working at computers and others borrowing books. Children from Braintcroft Primary School and adult learners using the recently installed ICT resources will be deprived of a vital resources which could change their lives.

After the meeting I spoke to a pensioner who despaired at losing community facilities that had been in place for years and helped many generations of Brentonians. Libraries are particularly valuable to older people because they provide both stimulation through books and valuable social contact. It is also important for them that they are within easy travelling distance.

A borough-wide 'Save Our Libraries' campaign would be one way of resolving some of the differences in approach that were evident  amongst residents at the meeting.  There is a particularly active campaign around Kensal Rise Library (45,755 visit per year at a cost of £4 per visit) and the group seemed ready to form a volunteer force to help save the library. Others were against this idea, wanting a full, properly funded service.  Such volunteer support may not be available in less affluent areas such as Neasden (117,604/£2.30) but where the library is vital to raise the life chances of the local population.  Another area of potential conflict is the '40% proposal' where all  libraries would cut their opening hours by 40% rather than closing some. It was suggested this would safeguard the future of the buildings which would otherwise be disposed of or revert to  trusts such as All Souls College, which originally provided the land. A reduction in opening hours would still impact on accessibility and jobs.

On the issue of volunteers and charities Michael Rosen, the children's poet and former Children's Laureate was absolutely clear in a recent Daily Mirror article:

It is a scandal. What this Government is doing is taking over where Thatcher left off. The library system took 150 years to build up and they are destroying it.

I am completely opposed to this idea of handing libraries over to charities and retailers. It is purely ideological and there is no justification for taking libraries out of public ownership.

Books should be free to all and not reliant on charity donations. However well-meaning, charities end up begging for money. It is another Tory attempt to break the social contract by which we look after each other through taxes

When I suggested that the Labour Council were not fulfilling their commitment to protect the most vulnerable from the Coalition cuts Cllr Powney outlined the dire  condition of the Council's finance (Readers of this blog will know that I have posted articles on this), demanded that we be realistic and said that if the Labour councillors refused to implement the cuts they would be replaced by others who would implement them away  - with the implication that they would do so less sensitively.

This is an argument that we are going to hear regularly in the Area Forums in the coming month when Ann John and Muhammed Butt appear to talk about the impact of the cuts on local services and the difficult decisions they will have to make.

Meanwhile, back to Michael Rosen and some reading for adults opposed to the cuts (from the Independent)

So angered is Michael Rosen by the Coalition's plans for welfare cuts, the children's novelist and poet paid the bulk of production costs for a new anthology called Emergency Verse, a compilation of protest poetry featuring work by more than 100 writers, including the Beat poet Michael Horovitz, Jeremy Reed and John O'Donoghue. Rosen says he is "very angry" at the roll-back of "advances" that softened "some of the worst effects of rampant capitalism", adding: "These rampant capitalists, who walk off with the majority of the wealth anyway, now want to steal our services too – people who have no other means of getting health care, education and social care will have it snatched away." The anthology was launched at the Southbank Centre's Poetry Library, and copies can be downloaded for £2.99 from www.therecusant.org.uk.

Prior to the consultation meeting Brent Fightback said:

Brent Fightback supports keeping ALL our libraries open. Once closed, they are gone for ever. We hope that, while pursuing their local campaigns, the libraries campaigners will unite and will become part of our broader campaign to defend jobs, services, pensions, benefits and the environment.

The Kensal Rise campaign can be contacted at kensalriselibraryusers@hotmail.co.uk and they have a blog LINK and a Facebook group 'Save Kensal Rise' library.

Preston library users are getting organised and I will put their details up when I have them.

The Friends of Cricklewood Library can be contacted via eric.pollock@tiscali.co.uk Information

Many authors and individuals including Alan Gibbons  and Michael Rosen have set up Campaign for the Book and Voices for the Library are asking individuals to send them statements on how important libraries are in their lives.

The Guardian has also covered the meeting using Kensal Rise as an example of wider closures  LINK