Barclays 'a proud British institution'- Boris Johnson

Brent's unaffordable rents - have your say

Click on image to enlarge

Darren Johnson, Green Party Member of the London Assembly, has published an interactive website LINK which demonstrates the difficulty of finding a home at an affordable rent across the London boroughs.

An affordable  rent is defined as one which takes up no more than 35% of take-home pay after tax. Based on a working week of 48 hours (the maximum allowed under the Working Time Directive) spread over five days of 9.6hr shifts, you should have earned enough to pay the rent at the end of Tuesday.

In the London Borough of Brent you would have to work until the end of Wednesday on the National Minimum wage for 18-20 year olds (£4.98 an hour) to rent a room in a shared home. However, on the London Living Wage (£8.30/hr) supported by the Green Party, you could afford this by the end of Tuesday.

For an adult on the National Minimum wage needing a 2 bedroomed home, it is just not possible even if all the wages went on rent. If they were paid the London Living Wage they would not have earned enough to pay the rent until the end of Friday i.e. 'extremely unaffordable'.

Currently these unaffordable rents are topped up through housing benefit, the Local Housing Allowance, but these are now being capped and cut, making it more difficult to find affordable homes to rent when with a job and benefits.

Go to the website for more details and to feed back your views on the issue to Darren Johnson

Bank robbery

Governors feel marginalised in school improvement changes

School governors meeting to discuss the future of  Brent Council's services to schools expressed some disquiet at being left out of discussion of the Primary Headteachers' Group proposal  that, outside core statutory services,  the local authority should opt out of providing traded services. This would mean schools providing the services to each other or buying them in from the private or voluntary sector.

The local authority has proposed that it provides 'Targeted Intervention' (Option B from 3 possibilities) with a staffing of 19 posts and a budget of £1.5m..  This new core service plus would include support to schools in a Ofsted category (special measures, notice to improve etc) and those 'stuck at satisfactory' as well as providing an overview of SEN provision, quality of provision and assessment in the Early Years, 14-19 education, pre-exclusion intervention, attendance compliance and targeted intervention and data collection and analysis. This new core service would run from April 2013.

The benchmarking data on school improvement expenditure shows how this has been cut back in comparison with other local authorities, although those authorities may also be much lower next year:

Local Authority	Number of Schools	Stated spend 2012-13	Stated spend per school
Harrow	61	£1.2m	£19.7k
Camden	64	£1.0m	£15.6k
Wandsworth	81	£1.1m	£13.6k
Brent (Option B)	78	£485k	£6.2k

Although governors were concerned about the low  spend, we were told that the council was confident that this is sufficient  to maintain the service. I am still doubtful.

At the same time services funded by the Direct Schools Grant (DSG) are under review. These include support for English and Mathematics in primary schools £370k; special educational needs and inclusive education £163k; ethnic minority achievement £589k;  Travellers, refugees and asylum seekers £166k;  Early Years SEN £167k; and Early  Years quality improvement £577k. The latter two also include the voluntary, private and independent sector. These will be reviewed in October 2012 by the Schools Forum and some may be discontinued with the money reverting to schools.

Governors were concerned that all this may lead to a reduction in the quality of teaching and learning in Brent schools. Cllr Helga Gladbaun made a passionate intervention about the danger of Brent, now achieving well in terms of national comparisons, going back to the bad old days when children crossed council boundaries to seek education in neighbouring boroughs because our schools were so poor.

John Simpson, the consultant who ran the session, said that Brent Council had made their calculations on the assumption (not the expectation) that all secondary schools and half of primary schools would become academies. They could still run Option B based on this scenario and could run the minimum statutory service of Option A if all schools opted out. The local authority would still be responsible as the 'champion of parents' and pupils' interests'.

In answer to a question he said this also applied to academies and although they had funding to compensate for lost council services, the local authorty would still have to fund any intervention required if the academy was failing.

There were many concerns about the consortium school support services proposed by the primary headteachers (although the course was advertised as having a primary headteacher  as a co-tutor, they were not present at the morning session). Concern centred around the lack of quality assurance, the lack of consultation with governors, whether the expertise existed within the schools to provide the service, the contradiction between the market environment of schools where they compete with each other and the cooperative framework required, how schools with major needs would pay for the service, and the impact on the workload of  headteachers of small schools when they would have to spend time on making these support arrangements. One contributor thought it would be a mess and if schools fell apart there would be no one available to pick up the pieces.

If schools work in partnership with the local authority the Civic Centre will provide space for teacher in-service education and training. If schools are completely autonomous they will have to provide their own training and venues.

Although we were initially told that there was plenty of time to consider these issues it became clear that with the DSG services review in October 2012 and  the results announced in November 2012, and the new Core Service to be launched in April 2013 (based at the Civic Centre from July 2013), there would really be little time for governors to consider all the implications.

In the light of these changes there was some support for re-launching an Association of Brent School Governors as a way of empowering governors.  John Simpson concluded by stating that the local authority would take note of governors' concerns but this left the question hanging over how they would influence the primary headteachers' proposals.  A start will be to ask challenging questions at governing body meetings about the proposals and insist on the strategic role of governors.

Round 1 to Keep Willesden Green campaigners as developers withdraw planning applications

Galliford Try, the developers of the controversial housing development (with Cultural Centre attached) has withdrawn its two planning application for the site.

Galliford Try and Brent Council say that this is to extend the consultation period for the redevelopment and use the summer to seek local people's views.

The planning applications have received an overwhelming thumbs down from local residents with the planning department unable to keep up with the enormous flood of objections.

Cllr George Crane, lead member for Regeneration and Major Projects insisted that 'this redevelopment has never been a foregone conclusion as some people have claimed and this extra time for discussion demontrates that' but went on to state that the development 'needs to be at no capital costs and result in a quality development - these principles remain unchanged'.

Martin Redston, joint chair of Keep Willesden Green, said that he was overjoyed at the decision but that the campaign would not put its guard down: 'We will be looking for genuine consultation leading to community engagement at all levels'.

Details about consultation events and the time line will be publicised shortly. The further consultation will include the design of the new cultural centre and the activities that people want to see in the building once it's complete.  I understand that the original architects are now working on designs that will include keeping the historic Old Willesden Library.

The shows what a well-informed and determined community based campaign can do. Congratulations to all  all concerned.

Ealing Council opposes casualty closures and calls for fightback

Julian Bell, leader of Ealing Council, has publicly opposes plans to close four casualty departments in  North- West London Hospitals, including that at Central Middlesex and called for a public fightback against them.

He told the Evening Standard yesterday:

When these half-baked plans were announced, all our worst fears were realised. It beggars belief that essential keath services like A and E could be cut nearly in half without damaging health care.

The council is committed to fighting these proposals but we need people power.  I want local people to join our campaign and to tell their friends and neighbours, relatives and colleagues to do the same. With a powerful single voice we can save our hospitals.

There were promising signs yesterday that Brent Council may follow when Cllr Krupesh Hirani, lead member for Adult Care and Health, released a series of tweets on Twitter:

• This hospital serves the poorest part of the Borough 
• The Tory Liberal move to close A&E at Central Middlesex Hospital is bad for Brent 
• If we were redesigning NHS services in Brent from scratch, we would have an A&E service at Central Middlesex Hospital

Area Consultative Forums start tonight

The latest round of Area Consultative Forums starts this  evening. Remember to get there early to register to speak at a Soapbox or e-mail consultation@brent.gov.uk


TUESDAY JULY 3RD 7pm  KILBURN AND KENSAL (Wards: Brondesbury Park, Kilburn, Mapesbury, Queen's Park) Kensal Rise Primary School, Harvist Road, NW6

WEDNESDAY  JULY 4TH 7pm WEMBLEY (Alperton, Northwick Park, Preston, Sudbury, Tokyngton, Wembley Park) Patidar House, 22 London Road, off Wembley High Road, HA9

TUESDAY JULY 10TH 7pm HARLESDEN (Harlesden, Kensal Green, Stonebridge)
All Souls Church, Station Road, Harlesden, NW10 (next to Lloyds TSB)


WEDNESDAY JULY 11TH 7pm  WILLESDEN (Dollis Hill, Dudden Hill, Welsh Harp, Willesden) College of NY London, Denzil Road, Willesden NW10


TUESDAY JULY 17TH 7pm KINGSBURY AND KENTON (Barnhill, Fryent, Kenton, Queensbury)
Kingsbury High School, Princes Avenue, Kingsbury, NW9

Labour's Denis MacShane backs Kensal Rise campaigners

From yesterday's Evening Standard LINK

Emboldened by the success of the campaign to save Gaby’s Deli in Charing Cross Road, Labour MP Denis MacShane has a new cause, the Kensal Rise Library. MacShane wrote some blistering letters about Gaby’s to its landlord, the Marquess of Salisbury, saying it was the only place he could buy a decent salt beef sandwich.

Now he has chosen a similar tactic by writing to Sir John Vickers, currently in the news as chairman of the Independent Commission on Banking. Sir John is also Warden of All Souls College, Oxford, which gifted the building to the north London community 100 years ago when it was opened by the great American writer Mark Twain.

The library has many champions, notably Alan Bennett, Zadie Smith and Tim Lott, but somehow MacShane is the one who goes for the goolies. “I write on behalf of one of my oldest friends, Maggie Gee, the novelist,” writes the former Minister for Europe, showing her how to write a letter combining praise with threat. “She was at Somerville and myself at Merton in those far-off days and have been friends ever since. The college is a community of scholars, of readers, of page turners and this historic connection to a community of readers in a poor part of north London should not be terminated just because the finance people say so.

“I hope All Souls can work with Friends of Kensal Rise Library and keep it alive. I will copy this to one or two colleagues and friends who are Fellows.” That should do the trick. 

Meanwhile Preston Library campaigners met with Muhammed Butt, leader of Brent Council yesterday.  After the meeting they released the following statement:

This afternoon campaigners from Friends of Preston Library met Muhammed Butt, the new leader of Brent Council, at his request. In what was a very friendly meeting, we spent an hour or so discussing the future of Preston Library and agreed to meet again in the very near future to continue the discussion.