'Who put the CON into Consultation?' asks Michael Rosen

After Keep Willesden Green had a successful morning outside the Brent Council - Galliford Try Consultation I came across this on Michael Rosen's blog. LINK  Michael is the children's poet and BBC broadcaster. It may ring bells for you!

In many streets, there is a scarcely visible process going on: developers eye up land and properties with a view to convincing councils that there is a place or space which they can make a profit out of. They don't call it that. They call it 'regeneration' and proceed to line up various agencies or authorities to back them: eg the local transport people, some 'business people', some kind of 'development agency' or ngo in the area and so on. They will also try to capture some key members of the council (elected or non-elected). Sometimes this process is initiated by a council committee as part of their own 'regeneration' scheme.

In fact, more often than not, it's a con. The 'affordable' housing that is sometimes promised at the outset, starts diminishing in numbers as the developer pleads economy and 'returns  on investment'. Quite often some kind of half-hidden subsidy is engineered by either the council or one of the ngos whereby the developer gets the land cheap or received some kind of suspension in the council tax etc. And when it comes to the 'retail units', more often than not, this is in fact an effort to bring in the multinational chains.

Prior to all this, the land or properties that the developers have been eyeing may well have been deliberately run down by the public authorities eg the council or transport authority. The 'dereliction' they talk about in their glossy brochures may well have been engineered, by refusing to let tenant holders, short-term occupiers or some such stay and develop their own property. Groups (eg council subsidised self-help groups, community organisations and the like) are often told that they can be moved out at any time. Another trick is for the council to have not updated and upgraded some properties they owned so that they are in effect falling down.

At this point the developer's plan is presented as the only viable alternative. The possibility of people on the ground developing their places and spaces has been eliminated by refusing to let them (!), some deal is on the cards whereby the developer is getting some kind of subsidy from us, the council tax payers, but which may well be hidden as a non-ask eg a very low payment for a slice of property, and the council and the developer produce some great big brochure of blather saying how this is all a marvellous retail opportunity, everything is going to look smart and nice, Marks and Spencer are going to be on your doorstep etc etc.

Now to the council meeting to see if they can get it through.

At this point, I'll break off the story...with this:

Just up the road from a historic defeat for the people, places and spaces of Dalston in Hackney, comes a historic victory:

http://opendalston.blogspot.com/2012/03/dalstons-voice-is-heard-hackney-reject.html

When is a Lib Dem leaflet not a Lib Dem leaflet - see for yourselves

In a previous post I mentioned Pete Murry's puzzlement at an anti-Labour leaflet that came through his door without any advocacy of another candidate or party. He eventually discovered after forensic analysis where it came from. Here is the evidence as requested by someone who commented on my earlier posting LINK

The leaflet distributed in the Dollis Hill by-election

Now here is a challenge. Can you find the imprint which is required by electoral law? Put on your specs or get out your magnifying glass. Still can't see it?

Okay, look carefully at the fold on the first page of the leaflet.... can you see what looks looks like an ant's footprints? Yes?

Well done - you have won the '2012 Spot the near anonymous Lib Dem leaflet imprint competition'.

How dodgy is that? If cigarette manufacturers tried the same trick with the 'Smoking Kills' warning they'd be hauled through the courts.

PAUSE, LISTEN AND REFLECT, Brent Council told

Keep Willesden Green have launched a new paper and e-petition on the Willesden Green Regeneration issue that encompasses the various concerns of the local community are by calling for Brent Council to Pause, Listen and Reflect before proceeding.

You can sign the E-Petition HERE

PETITION TEXT

We the undersigned petition the council to Pause the Willesden Green Library Centre regeneration plans to allow for full consultation with residents in order to ascertain their views on how the area should be developed and the amenities that should be provided or retained.

Brent Council is handing over public land worth £10.4 million to a property developer in exchange for rebuilding the Willesden Library Centre. The original 1894 library building on the High Road will be demolished, The Willesden Bookshop is likely to be driven out of business, the public car park will be reduced to 8 spaces and a children’s play area will be lost. Over 18 months, three five-storey blocks of 90+ luxury flats will be built behind the existing Library Centre.

We all want a thriving, welcoming and dynamic library and cultural centre, but the current deal has been sealed with virtually no public consultation and very little available information, ignoring the wishes of over a thousand local residents who have expressed opposition to these plans in two Brent e-petitions.

While the developers get a healthy profit from the sale of luxury flats and Brent councillors get some fancy new offices, the cultural and financial cost to rate-paying citizens is disproportionately high. It smacks of ‘profits before people’.

Borough residents need to have a say in the content and design of the library centre redevelopment, but we have not yet been given the chance to do so.

The Council says: Plans for the development of the library centre were raised at the executive committee in February 2011, and quickly followed by two public consultations to ‘test the market’. The council had to abide by commercial confidentiality, so no detailed plans could be made public until a deal was signed with the developer on 15 February 2012.

We say: Did you know about this in 2011? Not a single local resident or tradesperson we spoke to knew about the plans until Jan 2012, and only then through word of mouth. The Feb 2011 consultations were conducted with, respectively, 5 and then 7 people. One person present recounted that they were asked for their opinion, then shown plans for the centre that were drawn up before the meeting. This does not conform to the generally understood definition of a ‘consultation’

REMEMBER TO MAKE YOUR VIEWS KNOWN AT THE EXHIBITION ON SATURDAY 10AM-2PM, WILLESDEN GREEN LIBRARY. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO MEET KEEP WILLESDEN GREEN CAMPAIGNERS OUTSIDE AND SIGN THE PETITION.

Big push on Willesden Green tomorrow

The Keep Willesden Green campaign has had excellent coverage in the Brent and Kilburn Times this week. They will be out in force tomorrow for the Brent Council-Galliford Try Exhibition at Willesden Green Library.

Campaigners are pushing to get 5,000 signatures on the petition to save the historic Old Willesden Library building from demolition. Reaching 5,000 will mean that the issue has to be discussed at full council. E-petiton is HERE and the paper version will be outside the Library tomorrow morning and lunchtime.

The main issues are summarised in the video below:

Ann John challenged on free schools

 I hear that there was a right old ding dong at Labour's Brent Local Government Committee last night when they debated the Brent officers' recommendation that the Council should get involved in setting up a free school.

Nationally Stephen Twigg has failed to issue a clear policy and this has left local Labour parties in a quandary. When a new secondary school was required under the last Labour administration it was argued by Brent officers that there was no alternative to an academy because of the Labour government's policy that all new school should be academies. This opened the way for the ARK Academy and the subsequent conversion of other former local authority schools in Brent to academy status.

This  argument is now being repeated on free schools and the Coalition government policy. Andy Donald, Director of Regeneration, who seems to be directing education policy rather than Krutika Pau who is Director of Children and Families, told Brent Labour Group a week ago that in order to address the shortage of school places that there was no alternative to the Council setting up a free school in partnership with an outside body. I have argued before that the 'numbers' approach to school place shortage was leading to school expansions and bulge classes which paid little heed to the quality of education on offer. Putting builders rather than educationalists in charge is likely to have major repercussions in the future.

In my previous post on this issue I remarked that Brent officers' wouldn't have put forward a free schools strategy without the tacit agreement of Labour leader Ann John. This proved to be the case last night at an emergency meeting.  Ann John and Mary Arnold (lead member for children and families) supported by half a dozen others argued that although they didn't like free schools there was no alternative to supporting them because otherwise children would be denied a right to be educated.

Former Brent South MP Dawn Butler was joined by Cllr Moher (not a Trot as far as I know!)  and veteran Brent Labour activist Colin Adams in opposing the principle of free schools and only agreeing if further work by external consultants established that there was no alternative. Their motion was narrowly carried.

Ann John was not happy as she is used to being 'She who must be obeyed' and suddenly the cavalry arrived in the person of several more councillors who appeared to have been mysteriously summoned and a new motion was put. This opposed free schools in theory but stating that Brent Council should choose a free school partner to work with.

This motion was also carried so Labour now has two policies both opposed to free schools in principle with one seeking delay for further research and the other advocating an immediate partnership.

This debate need to move outside the Labour Party so that Brent teachers and parents have a say in the future of educational provision in the borough. Free schools do not have the democratic accountability of local authority schools, take a disproportionate amount of funding and open the way to experimental teaching and curricula with a potentially damaging impact on children. As with the ARK Academy the first free school in Brent will open the way for others to follow, producing an ad hoc competitive system where working class children may well lose out.

All Souls give Kensal Rise campaigners hope

The Friends of Kensal Rise Library have received good news from the Bursar of All Souls College.

 I am writing to confirm that All Souls College has contacted the council via its solicitors to inform them that the College would be happy to consider the library being kept open as proposed in the Business Plan prepared by the 'Friends of Kensal Rise Library, Ltd.

This puts the ball firmly into Brent Council's court. I await developments with interest.

Audacious Lib Dems attack Labour on cuts in near anonymous leaflet

Alison Hopkins hidden in the fold

My Green Party comrade Pete Murry, our candidate for the Dollis Hill by-election has posted an interesting piece on the Brent Greens blog LINK

What at first appeared to be an anti-cuts leaflet with no obvious party identification lambasted Labour over cuts and included quotes from trades unionists Bob Crow and Dave Prentice criticising Labour cuts. The leaflet is headlined: Who Can You Trust to STOP THE CUTS.  It was only after a meticulous search that Pete found, printed in a tiny font along the leaflet's fold, that it was printed on behalf of Alison Hopkins the Liberal Democrat candidate.

Pete Murry comments:

 This verges on a 'dirty trick'  Lib Dem bid for disillusioned Labour voters, whilst totally omitting any mention of Lib Dem involvement in coalition government cuts. I can at least say, as Green Party candidate in the Dollis Hill by-election, and Secretary of the Green Party Trade Union Group that the Green Party nationally opposes cuts and supports Trade Union opposition to them through its affiliation to the Coalition of Resistance and its support for the creation of at least one million jobs to build the infrastructure that the country needs for a low carbon economy that can help to combat climate change. What can the Lib Dem’s say?

That they are part of a coalition imposing swingeing cuts to public services and initiating privatisation programs that are making ordinary people pay for a crisis of international finance? That is the truth. So, no wonder they don’t wish to acknowledge it by pushing leaflets through voters’ doors that seem almost ashamed to ask people to vote Lib Dem

Will Brent Labour sell-out on free schools?

In January it appeared that Brent Labour was ready to gear up to defend community schools when they held an Education Conference for members and Labour governors on academies and free schools.  They decided to be more proactive in making the argument for schools to remain within the Brent 'family of schools' working with the local authority, rather than to convert to academy status. LINK

I welcomed this move but it appears that Brent Council officers have stepped in quickly to thwart any attempt at independent thinking. On Monday in a presentation to the Labour Group Brent Council officers recommended that Brent Council should collaborate with the Coalition's free school policy and actively seek partners to set up free schools.  It is unlikely that they would have been such a move without at least the tacit support of Ann John, Labour leader.  John was late for the Education Conference as she and Muhammed Butt were at an Area Consultative Forum making their presentation on the budget.

The suggestion provoked a lot of discussion at the Labour Group but no decisions were taken.  It will now go to the LGC on Thursday as an emergency item.  It will be interesting to see if Labour members let Brent Council officers dictate policy, or whether they take a stand on Michael Gove's  policy that undermines local authority school provision and commandeers  a disproportionate slice of the education budget.

Meanwhile Brent Council's provision of school improvement services will be discussed with governors at two meetings (Wednesday March 14th 10am-Noon, Thursday 22nd March 2012 7pm-9pm). Unfortunately the latter coincides with the Dollis Hill by-election which will rule attendance out for quite a few people.

The two issues are connected because one of the arguments for academy conversion or free schools is that local education authorities are now so weak that they cannot provide adequate services and they they do not represent good value.

Brent Council is proposing that in 2013-14 it only offers a core statutory service which will be provided free to schools. Everything else will be subject to 'self-funded trading arrangements' which means that schools will have to make their own arrangements and pay for them themselves.  Apart from amounting to an actual cut in the schools' budgets this also removes a major part of the argument for staying with the local authority.

Brent Council seems to be in the process of opting out of its education authority role unless urgent action is taken by those who support community schools and democratic accountability.