Brent Labour's consideration of free schools confirmed

Brent and Kilburn Times, April 5th, 2012

This week's Brent and Kilburn Times carries front page coverage of the story I initially broke on March 6th LINK about Brent Labour considering setting up a free school to address the shortage of school places. They don't give an account of  the row I reported within the Labour group on March 9th LINK but quote lead member for Children and Families, Cllr Mary Arnold, on the dilemma facing the Council.

Although no decision has been made as yet, Arnold fears that free schools could be forced 'upon us' and states that the council wants free schools to have a connection with the local authority: 'we are taking a responsible look at providing places for our children. A lot of councils are looking for partners'.

Labour's stance on this hasn't been helped by Michael Gove's Labour shadow, Stephen Twigg's ambivalence on he issue. He told the BBC on March 20th that more places to address the shortage should be funded, rather than building of free schools, stating that these would not necessarily be provided in the areas of greatest need. LINK  However he went on to say that some of the schools built could be free schools.

This still leaves unanswered the issue of democratic accountability, selection by the back door, and the undermining of the local authority's ability to coherently plan school places provision.

I wrote on March 9th:

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.

This view is echoed in the Brent and Kilburn Times editorial this week:

Not only do the teaching unions and their members need to play an integral part in the decision-making process, but parents must be allowed to air their concerns too. After all, it will be their children who will be expected to attend any free school that opens in Brent.

We must ensure that this is one issue on which the Council must be fully transparent.

Brent Labour's poor geography

Comments are closed on the Brent Labour blog LINK otherwise I would have posted a correction on the site.

They state that Labour Barnhill by-election candidate, Michael Pavey is 'the Chair of Wembley Primary School in Barnhill'. In fact of course Wembley Primary is not in Barnhill but in the heart of Preston ward. Michael lives in Kilburn.

Brace yourselves for visits to Brent by cabinet ministers

David Cameron at the Swaminarayan Temple

If the Independent  LINK is to be believed Brent residents need to brace themselves for visits from Tory cabinet ministers looking for the ethnic vote.   Learning from the 'success' of the Conservative Canadian government  they are seeking to build on what they claim is a fit between Conservative values on the family and law and order in an effort to prise them away from Labour. In the 2010 General Election only 6% of BME (black and minority ethnic) voters voted Conservative against 37% of white voters.

Action is now seen as urgent following the collapse of the Conservative vote in Bradford West. Conservative co-chairman, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi said:

We need to learn from centre-right parties in other countries how to attract votes who share our values but haven't traditionally voted Conservative. And we need to go out and persuade those voters that a Conservative government is the best way of fulfilling their aspirations for themselves, their families and their communities.

However this strategy may not be welcomed by all Tories. Warsi herself has been under attack from the party's right-wing.  An article in the current New Statesman LINK states:

Judged by the intensity and sheer volume of the anti-Warsi vitriol, it is difficult to come to any other conclusion that her critics don't like her because she ticks three very un-Tory boxes: she is female, Asian and Muslim. Since it is 2012 and they can't say as much in public, her right-wing opponents target instead her alleged lack of 'competence' and 'ability'.

Interestingly in the same edition of the New Statesman Salma Yaqoob, reviewing the Bradford West result, remarks that the Labour Party has for generations 'relied on and reinforced the corrupting influence of biraderi - clan networks - that so disfigure south Asian politics'. The by-election result marks the community's break with Labour.

Although the Conservatives will have their eye on Brent North, held years ago by right-wing Tory Rhodes Boyson, the reality is that the local Conservative Party is very weak, with just a rump left on the council, and Barry Gardiner, helped by boundary changes, strengthened his grip on the constituency against the trend at the General Election. At 62.3% Brent North has the 4th highest BME population and Brent Central is 7th at 53%.

There are pitfalls in this strategy, not least the reaction of right-wingers. The YouTube videos of Cameron's 2008 visit to the Swaminarayna Temple attracted many racist comments as well as, somewhat oddly, anti-Muslim rants. The Daily Mail, even more bizarrely, for the April 2010 visit by the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown, focused on the poor state of Mrs Brown's feet, revealed when she took her shoes off to enter the temple! LINK

Jenny Jones 'breath of fresh air"

"Jenny Jones, the Green party mayoral candidate for London, came out of the first hustings in the election campaign on Tuesday smelling of roses, or daffodils, or some other kind of green and verdant plant.

While Boris and Ken blustered and argued the toss over figures and tax affairs, Jones came across as the voice of calm - and Twitter certainly seemed to find her a breath of fresh air."

 For more of the Huffington Post interview with Jenny Jones follow this LINK

London Mayor candidates' income and tax details here

Following Jenny Jones' intervention in the Newsnight debate, when intervening in the boorish clash between Boris and Ken Livingstone she got them to agree to publish their income and tax details, the information has now been published.

Readers can make up their own minds by viewing the PDF below:

Majority reject Willesden Green plans in Remarkable Consultation

The 'Keep Willesden Green Campaign' have just released the results of the Galliford Try-Brent Council consultation on the Willesden Green Library Regeneration which was managed by Remarkable PR.

The result, coming as it does on top of Labour AM Navin Shah's support for the retention of the historic Old Willesden Green Library building is indeed 'remarkable'.

Remarkable PR had 220 responses to the public consultation (both on line and on paper). The breakdown was:

Supporters of the scheme  15
Partial supporters              24
Undecided                        10
Objections                       171

Remarkable will be contacting the people who took part in the 50 1:1 consultations with revised plans but these are not expected to include the retention of the old Willesden Green Library building.  These meetings are likely to take place the week after next. A revised flyer will also be sent to residents.

Lib Dem mystery in Barnhill by-election

There is no Lib Dem candidate listed for the Barnhill By-election according to Brent Council's website. I will be standing for the Greens, Michael Pavery for Labour and Ratna Pindora for the Conservatives.  There is another candidate named Venilal Vaglela with no party or other description. Vaglela stood as a Conservative candidate in Queensbury ward  in 2002 which Labour won.

Unless Venilal has made a clandestine switch to the Lib Dems this means there is no Lib Dem candidate for the seat which Labour unexpectedly won from the Conservatives in 2010.

In Dollis Hill some reckoned that tactical voting by Tories for the Lib Dems enabled Alison Hopkins to win. The Tory candidate's voted was slashed. Lib Dems won 16% of the vote in Barnhill in 2010 with Labour only 10% ahead of the Conservatives at 44%.  Where those 16% of votes go will be of crucial importance.

Cllr Krupesh Hirani has  tweeted that this may be a Lib Dem tactic to help their Coalition partners but two Tory candidates (or one current and one ex-Tory)  looks like a shot in the foot.

Gareth Daniel calls for Cultural Revolution

Extracts from Gareth Daniel's latest Newsletter to council staff. Gareth Daniel is Chief Executive of Brent Council.

One Council, One Building, One Culture

The next twelve months provide Brent Council with an exciting once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to re-define itself and the way it does business.  Our new civic headquarters in the heart of the Wembley regeneration area is visibly taking shape and remains on course to be fully completed in December this year.  The complex £100 million project is on schedule, on specification and on budget – and staff will start to occupy the building in just over a year from now in April 2013.  This will mean that all our departments will be able to operate from a single site for the first time ever and around two thirds of our non-schools workforce will be in the same state-of-the-art building.  In every sense, this will be an important landmark in the organisation’s history.  

By consolidating many of our services and staff into a single building, we will be able to vacate at least fourteen separate office blocks and other workplaces including the Town Hall, Brent House, Mahatma Gandhi House and Chesterfield House.  We will obviously vacate the buildings that we currently lease and thereby avoid lease costs and repair liabilities.  In those buildings that we own, we can look at possible alternative uses for these premises, dispose of them for hopefully substantial capital sums to re-invest in services or use them to facilitate the regeneration of the borough (or perhaps a mixture of all of these).  By moving into a modern, efficient and sustainable building, we will also be making a substantial contribution of at least £2.5 million to our annual revenue savings target - so the Civic Centre will therefore help us to save money at a time when we need to be careful about how every pound is spent.

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There is of course no point moving into a brand new building if we simply import our old working practices and behaviours into the facility.  The opening of a modern technologically advanced building is an opportunity to overhaul outdated business practices and to streamline our working arrangements and this is precisely what we intend to do.  The building itself will be one of the greenest public buildings in the country – it may even be the greenest public building in the UK.  Single site operation means that flexibility and multi-disciplinary working will be incorporated from the outset.  The boundaries between departments and services will become much more fluid and staff will work ever more closely with their colleagues in other service areas and partner agencies.  And we will introduce an enhanced IT offer with much greater use of electronic document storage and management.  There will also be masses of meeting rooms and break out areas of different sizes, fantastic community facilities including a 1000 person assembly hall, a programme of exhibitions and displays in and around our new central library, improved catering and retail facilities both in the building and nearby and a small leisure suite for staff.

As with moving house, we need to take this opportunity to de-clutter and get rid of the junk that we all tend to accumulate at work as much as at home.  I know many staff have already started to do this and I would encourage everyone to keep up these efforts.  We will be operating a strict clear desk policy in the new building – everyone will have some limited storage provision for personal items and the like but equally everyone will be expected to clear their desks at the end of each working day so that it is available and in a good condition for others to use if necessary the next day.  For many of us, this will be a very different way of working but I am sure everyone will quickly get used to it.  Evidence from elsewhere suggests that initial qualms are quickly dispelled once people get to know their way around and to see the potential that the new building has for working more efficiently and collaboratively.

Getting the culture right

However well executed the construction work is and however well planned the transition, there is another key ingredient we need in order to make the Civic Centre the successful and productive working environment that it is designed to be – that element is culture.  If we maintain mental and professional barriers between services and teams, we will limit the benefits we can secure from the new building.  If we ignore or undermine council-wide standards and procedures, we will increase costs and the likelihood of additional cuts being made to frontline jobs and services.  I am confident that the vast majority of staff understand the huge potential for working better in our new building but everyone of us will need to do our bit to secure the benefits on offer.  I am also pretty sure that, after a few months of working differently, most staff will be wondering what all the fuss was about in the first place!

But culture is also about values, attitudes and behaviours – the things that are emotionally important to us and which make us want to come into work each day with a positive outlook and a desire to contribute.  Feeling valued and being recognised by other people is a big part of this – this is something we all want and expect but it is also something that we all need to demonstrate as well.  Being supported and helped by your employer in difficult times is obviously important and I hope that most staff recognise that we are doing our utmost to avoid compulsory job losses and damaging attacks on terms and conditions.  Working in an efficient, transparent and professional way and showing respect and integrity in our dealings with others are all important factors in the public sector and I firmly believe that our new building will help to foster these fundamentally non-negotiable values.

Underpinning all of this is a debate about what our core values are or should be.  What do you think are Brent’s driving values and how if at all should they change in the future?  Does our rhetoric as a ‘One Council’ organisation match our real life behaviour?  How do we describe the way we do business around here and can it be improved?  Are we proud of the council, what it does and how we contribute to it? Does everyone feel valued and respected or do some of us feel left out?  How will the new building and new ways of working help or hinder our goals?  These are some of the questions on which I would welcome your reflections over the next few weeks.  The Corporate Management Team will be discussing these issues at the end of April so let me have your thoughts before then – all contributions will be gratefully received.

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