Cut Benefits to Bankers - Not Public Services

Lucas: Greens are the REAL opposition

Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has positioned herself as "the real opposition" to the coalition Government.

Speaking from her party's spring conference in Cardiff, she said: "How can they oppose the market in the NHS when they first introduced it?

"How are they opposing tuition fees when they first introduced it? How do they oppose the selling off of the Royal Mail? That was (former business secretary) (Lord) Peter Mandelson."

Ms Lucas added: "I've always been a bit ambitious, but I do think the Green Party is the real opposition.

"The Lib Dems are part of the Government - they can't speak out about proper constitutional reform or nuclear weapons or nuclear power or many of the things they stood for.

"Labour is utterly contaminated by the fact they pursued many of the policies which now the coalition Government is simply taking to their logical conclusions, so I think people are looking for a genuine opposition - and you won't be surprised to know I think that's the Green Party."

Local Press on Council Cuts

Here is another round-up of the local press on cuts. Don't forget there is a demonstration against Brent Council cuts organised by Brent Fightback from 6pm on Monday February 28th outside the Town Hall. WWO is the Wembley and Willesden Observer and WBT the Willesden and Brent Times. These are only brief notes so do buy the papers for the full story.

CUTS     - CHILDREN
LIFELINE FOR SPECIAL NEEDS UNDER THREAT WWOp1  KIDS HIT BY LATEST CUTS WBTp1 Contrary to the Council's commitment to protect the front-line the portage service, which aims to give children with disabilities an equal chance in life is to be cut. A council spokeswoman admitted the service was important but said it was not legally required.
'RESTRUCTURING WON'T HARM CHILDREN'S SERVICES' WBTp2  PROMISE NOT TO CUT SURE START, BUT NO TO NEW CENTRES WWOp10  Despite cuts of £2.25m in children's centres, and not opening those at Sudbury, Cricklewood and Kingsbury. Denise Burke, Brent early years and childcare manager,  maintains that they will not affect the service and Cllr Mary Arnold says that young people are the victims of 'right-wing slash and burn attitudes to the welfare state' but expresses pride that 'we have found a way to protect all our centres'. However Sarah Teather MP, says that the government has put the same amount of money into the Sure Start pot but Brent Council has withdrawn £2.25m. She says children centres, services and staff are at risk.

CUTS - LIBRARIES
LIB DEMS: WE CAN SAVE LIBRARIES WBTp2, OPPOSITION'S ALTERNATIVE BUDGET TO SAVE LIBRARIES AND CENTRE WWOp11  Lib Dems propose an alternative budget to the one being voted on on Monday. They propose axing the regeneration budget and using £2.2m Labour were going to put into reserves. the would not replace the director of housing, reduce the administration costs of the neighbourhood working scheme and remove the London Weighting from Hay Grade salaries.  Cllr Muhammed Butt says that the £2.2m put into reserves is a one-off grant: "If we use it this year what do we do next year? This is not spare cash." The Lib Dems claim their budget would enable libraries to stay open for a year while alternative plans are formulated to keep them open, they'd reinstate green zones, cut £1m from the CPZ charges, save the Welsh Harp Centre and reverse the children centres cuts.
MP ATTACKS PLANS TO AXE HALF LIBRARIES IN BOROUGH WBTp4 'CUT SALARIES BEFORE YOU CLOSE LIBRARIES' WWOp5  Speaking at the Save Preston Library public meeting, Barry Gardiner MP attacks Cllr Powney over library closures and says libraries are essential to any civilised society. He questioned why there are 50 people in Brent Council who earn as much as Eric Pickles.
WE BACK THE LIBRARIES BATTLE WBTp17 Brent Arts Council backs the Save Our Libraries campaigns.
CLEAR SUPPORT FOR ESSENTIAL PUBLIC SERVICE WBTp17 A Queens Park residents calls on the Council to listen to residents and adapt their policy on libraries accordingly.

MP'S VIEWS ON LIBRARY POLICY QUITE RIGHT WBTp17 Richard Cross attacks Cllr Ann John for suggesting that libraries not so important now that books are available at supermarkets, second hand and from Amazon.
NEW TORY COUNCILLOR WILL FIGHT TO KEEP BRENT LIBRARIES OPEN WWOp10 Suresh Kansagra, who won the Kenton by-election. pledge to keep fighting against library closures.

CUTS - SPORTS FACILITIES
'USE IT OT LOSE IT' BID TO SAVE SPORTS CENTRE WBTp5 Simon Rogers of Brent Eleven Streets Residents Association seeks to save Charteris Sports Centre, the 'only community space' in the area and calls for the community to take it over. He says the worst scenario would be if the council gave them the centre without support 'but the most important thing for us is to keep the doors open'.
ANGER OVER THREAT TO LEGAL CENTRE WBTp7 After 'transformation project' as the word for library closures Brent Council has coined 'decommissioning' as the term for closing the Brent Law Centre. Former  Labour and Conservative councillors as well as current Lib Dems combine to criticise the move and say it will store up problems for the future. OUR VIEW WBTp17 Editorial making the case for the Law Centre and saying Monday's council meeting should not vote to cut it.

CUTS - PARK WARDENS
FEAR OF 'NO-GO AREAS' IF PARK WARDENS CUT WWOp13 PARC (Park Area Residents Campaign) are fighting to save the warden of Brent River Park (Tokyngton Rec. Monks Park) and fear that without the warden it will not be safe for families. Ten people will lose their jobs in park warden cuts and will be replaced by mobile teams.  Cllr Ann John campaigned for wardens eight years ago but says she has been forced to cut the funding and has no choice but to balance the books. She says if funding increases, wardens will be top of the list for reinstatement.

Unequal Access to Education in Brent

There is increasing disquiet in Brent about the perceived shift of the  borough's centre of gravity towards Wembley. Nowhere is this clearer  than in the distribution of secondary schools. There are only four schools open to all pupils south of the North Circular Road (counting Crest girls and boys as two schools) which include three academies. In the north there are seven, including one academy; five are in the Wembley area.  After special needs and  sibling connection the main criterion for admission is distance from the  school which clearly disadvantages pupils from the south when applying  for schools in the north.

This inequality will be exacerbated if Preston Manor, Wembley High and Alperton follow the ARK in opening a primary school and giving priority  to those pupils in gaining access to their secondary departments. Preston Manor has already stated that it will reduce the number of  places in its secondary school available for external applications by 60.

Despite my best efforts I have not been able to persuade the council to make the case for  all-through schools or to provide an equalities impact assessment of the expansion plans. It seems that the pressure of  providing additional places in the short-term has blinded the council to the long-term implications.

The danger is that secondary schools  seeking primary provision in the face of the all-through competition from the ARK Academy, will also seek academy status on the same basis. The local education authority, already weakened by cuts, will lose further funding and will relinquish its role in ensuring fair admissions procedures and an equal distribution of school places.

The paucity of secondary places in the south of the borough will provide a rationale for private providers to seek to set up a free school (a school set up by individuals or a charity, using tax payers money, but outside the control of the local authority) in the area with a further loss of funding to the local authority. A 'bare bones' authority would offer so little to primary schools  that there would be little incentive to them resisting going it alone and seeking academy status.

This would mean the end of democratic accountability of our schools.

Primary Expansion Programme to go to Scrutiny on March 2nd

Cllr Harshadibha Patel has 'called in' the Executive's decision of February 15th on primary places expansion. This particularly relates to the controversial Preston Manor Primary School project.

The meeting will be held in Room 4 at Brent Town Hall on Wednesday March 2nd at 7.30pm.  Anyone who wishes to speak on the issue should contact Brent Council via Toby Howes on 020 8937 1307

Rally to Defend Our Public Services on Monday

NO CUTS! NO CLOSURES! NO REDUNDANCIES!

DEFEND OUR SERVICES!

Lobby Brent Council's budget fixing meeting 

MONDAY 28th FEBRUARY

Bring your placards and banners, bring your friends and your neighbours.

Be on the steps of Brent Town Hall

Forty Lane, Wembley HA9 9HD

From 6 pm.

TELL BRENT COUNCIL TO RESIST THE CONDEM CUTS!

Spread the word. 

Please forward this link to everyone who will be affected by cuts to libraries, the Law Centre, Charteris Sports Centre, Voluntary services, children's centres, services for children with special needs, services for the elderly, services for people with disabilities &/or learning difficulties, parks, council workers who will lose their jobs, council workers who will have their pay cut, council workers whose working conditions will get worse, people with mental health problems whose services are being cut and rents are going up, young people whose youth centres are being closed or cut, people with allotments, people who need to bury their relatives ..........

 

Support Cricklewood Library on Saturday and Bring Your Children

From the Save Cricklewood Library Campaign

What happened to the Mayor's cat, Ken ?
 
Local and London authors are sharpening their story-telling skills for the Read-In at Cricklewood library on Saturday
26 February (10.30-2pm,152 Olive Road NW2)

Supporting our story telling local resident  Ken Livingstone,candidate for London Mayor in 2012, by contributing their tales  are :

John Simmons - internationally known writer and teacher of writing for business and the contributing co-editor of 'From Here to Here' - 31 stories inspired by London's Circle Line amongst his numerous other books

Martin Francis - famous 'Wembley Matters' bloggist and organiser of environment education scheme 'Brent School Without Walls'

Anna Dolezal - well-known University of the Arts trained   local artist who has written five poems specifically for the  day

Jan Palmer -  retired local primary school teacher and artist whose children 'loved the library'

Graham Durham -  special educational needs expert consultant and secretary of the Save Cricklewood Library campaign

The event is open to all and is part of the campaign to prevent Brent Council closing Cricklewood Library and five other Brent libraries.

Preston Manor Primary School Approved

Brent Planning Committee tonight unanimously agreed the application to build a 420 pupil primary school on the Preston High School site despite 81 different objections from residents. To the last there were complaints about lack of consultation, disputed claims about the need for a school in this particular area, concern over the impact on local primary schools, worries about traffic and a general sense that this was a 'done deal' whatever representations were made..

Carmen Coffey, for the children and families department, continued to insist that there was a demand for reception places in the 'immediate area' (in earlier consultations we established she meant by this the HA9 and HAO postal codes!), but later said that only 40 places of the 60 place temporary school at Wembley Christian Centre had been filled.

When Cllr Bobby Thomas asked if the addition of a primary school meant that there would be fewer places at the secondary school for children from other primary schools she did not answer directly, instead she said that children from these schools often went to other secondary schoolssuch as Wembley and Claremont. In fact because children from Primary Manor Primary School will get automatic admission Preston Manor High School does propose to reduce  the places open to other schools by 60 places. She did state that children from the south of the borough would be unable to get into the school if it was over-subscribed.

Cllr McLennan asked about the impact of the housing benefit cap on pupil numbers as families were forced out of the borough. Carmen Coffey said that an assessment was being made but suggested that the families may be replaced by those forced out of inner London boroughs. This raises the question of why rents would be affordable to inner London families on capped housing benefit and not Brent families with the same cap.

The applicant suggested that residents' worries about traffic and parking would be answered by staggering the start and finish of the primary school in consultation with the secondary school and that children arriving by car from the west would be met at Ashley Gardens by a member of staff and escorted to the primary building. She conceded that in the first year because of the backlog of unplaced children there would be a number coming from the south of the borough by car but expected that by 2016 most of the children would be coming from the local area.

The issue of the covenants was raised by Councillor Cummins but he was told that this could not be considered by the Planning Committee and was a 'separate issue'. One that doubtless residents will be following up.

There is also the possibility of an appeal to the Schools Adjudicator when the admissions procedure to the secondary school is published.