'Super contractor' bundle for Brent's waste, street sweeping and parks?

'Geometrical' plant maintenance via power saw

The above picture illustrates the kind of parks maintenance we can expect with sub-contractors: neat and tidy but totally insensitive to any appreciation of the natural and aesthetic nature of shrubs. This was well illustrated by bags of compostable materials consisting of flowers in bud and blossom that had been shorn off in a shrub equivalent of a 'Number 1'.

Brent Council has said no more about its plans to privatise the Parks Maintenance Service but I understand that the Council's Environment and Neighbourhood Services Department is now looking to procure a 'super-contractor' to take on waste management, street cleaning and parks maintenance as one deal.

This will rule out any in-house bid by the present highly skilled parks maintenance team as well as  contractors who specialise only in waste. It will favour the current holder of the waste and street sleaning contract, Veolia, which already provides parks maintenance services in other boroughs and has the Regents Park contract.

Veolia has attracted adverse publicity because of its activities in Israel and the occupied territories and gave Brent Council a rough time over changes in the waste management and street sweeping contract almost a year ago. LINK

Will Brent Council take on the fight to save Central Middlesex A&E?

In a recent posting I called on Brent Council to take a proactive stance in fighting the proposals for closure of the Central Middlesex Hospital (Park Royal) Accident and Emergency. Ealing Council have already take up such a position.

A resolution at the last Brent Council meeting proposed by Cllr Krupesh Hirani (Lead member for Health and adult Care) didn't quite do that but was a step in the right direction.

This Council condemns the Tory and Liberal Democrat Government for the lack of consideration to Brent residents over the likely closure of Accident and Emergency (A&E) services at the Central Middlesex Hospital, which will lead to people in the poorest part of Brent, having to travel longer distances to address life threatening imminent needs.

Brent Labour recently had a meeting on the NHS which was addressed by  Fiona Twycross, a Labour Assembly Member for London. Perhaps a more militant stance will emerge from that meeting. Is is certainly something the Council should be doing on behalf of its citizens.

Meanwhile at the Willesden Area Consultation Forum the item on 'Shaping a Healthier Future'  was curtailed because Dr Mark Spencer who was giving the talk had another meeting to attend. The result was a rush through a PowerPoint presentation and very little time for elaboration, questions or discussions. Neither Spencer or Abbas Mirza (Communications Engagement Manager for NHS North West London, were available to speak to residents at the break. This was scandalous given the far-reaching and poentially life and death issues being discussed. At the beginning of the presentation Mirza said, 'these are just proposals - nothing has been decided'  but in response to a question from me, Spencer confirmed that there was no option to keep Central Middlesex A and E open. Clearly its closure has been decided ahead of consultation.

Dr Spencer claimed that the A and E at Centrtal Middlesex was under-used, that many who did use it, used it wrongly and would be catered for by other proposals. He said that the privately run (by Care UK) Urgent Care Centre could answer most emergency needs. Central Middlesex Hospital would eventually become a 'localised' hospital for planned admissions only.  Asked by an audience member which A and E they could go to instead, he said that that was a decision they could make for themselves. I am sure I will enjoy exercising that choice when I next get knocked off my bike!

Earlier in the meeting I did a Soapbox where I publicised the campaign that has been formed to oppose the closure of Central Middlesex Hospital A and E and the hospital's run-down and the defend the NHS against cuts and privatisation. We will be marching from Harlesden to Central Middlesex Hospital on Saturday September 15th to buiold support for the campaign. It would be great of Labour councillors joined us.

In my Soapbox speech I said that losing an Accident and Emergency ward was often the first chapter in the running down and eventual closure of a hospital. As a qualified first-aider in  local schools I had often had recourse to Central Mid A and E for ill and injured pupils and knew of its worth. 

I pointed out the need for a  A and E in this poorest part of the borough that would be readily accessible to local residents who were reliant on public transport. Public transport links with Northwick Park Hospital (the proposed alternative A and E) were very poor.

The local area has many possible sites for major incidents requiring A and E and emergency operation facilities. These include the main Euston-Birmingham Railway line, the Bakerloo and Overground Line, Chiltern Line and Jubilee/Metropolitan. Major Roads including the North Circular, Harrow Road and Kilburn High Road. Large industrial areas in Park Royal and around Neasden Goods Yard and the major venues of Wembley Stadium and Wembley Arena.  Accidents at any of these places could involve many people requiring emergency treatment or hospital admission. Could the reduced provision of A and E cope?

Cllr Lesley Jones, who was chairing the meeting, said that the council had been pressurising Transport for London to extend the 18 bus route to Northwick Park for a long time and would continue to do so.

End the Counihan family's stress. Demonstrate on Monday.

Message from campaigners for the Counihan family.  Their plight will be repeated many times across the borough as the Coalition's housing benefit cap hits more families.

 

 We are coming together to demand justice from Brent Council for the Counihan family, who have been victimised by the actions of our council support agencies. We will be demonstrating outside Brent Town Hall, Forty Lane, Wembley on Monday July 16th at 6pm ahead of the Brent Council Executive's Meeting. Your support will be appreciated.

Isabel and Anthony Counihan and their five children, Vinnie, Aidan, AJ, Orla and Sarah, have been shunted out of the Brent to temporary housing in Ealing where they have been left since April2011 waiting for the Council to even make a decision on their situation, let alone re-house them in Brent.

Their story is an extreme and devastating example of the way lives are being ruined by benefit cuts, and the refusal to build council housing and regulate the private housing sector.  We are living in times when the powers that be think they can get away with punishing working-class people for the fact of our being poor.

Across London poorer people, especially young people, are being pushed out of the city to make way for the better off. Glenda Jackson MP's response to the family's plight was “you can't afford to live in London”. This has been echoed by council officers: Brent Housing Advice advised the family “they could afford to live in Wales”.

We are saying to Brent Council that they must immediately find the family appropriate, secure and really affordable housing in the borough -and put an end to the unbearable stress and hardship that would have totally broken many people long before now.

The Counihans have nothing to justify -their need is clear and we support them unconditionally -but their story may help illustrate how the council is failing in their moral and legal responsibility to assist people in difficult circumstances, but instead mounting attack after attack to remove people from the area.

We ask you to join us in supporting the Counihans and invite other people facing similar injustices to come forward and challenge together the vicious policies and practices of the council.

For more information, to support the Counihan’s, or raise your own issue contact:

Lesley Ryan -London Irish Centre (personal capacity): 07894 348 610

Gerry Downing -Brent Trades Union Council and Brent Fightback: 07792 966 910

Clarence -Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group: 07752 574 943

Care UK or DON'T Care UK?

Guest blog by Sarah Cox:

If the Accident and Emergency Department at Central Middlesex Hospital closes, as proposed in every option in the NHS NW London consultation document Shaping a Healthier Future, residents in Brent’s poorest wards with the greatest health needs will be at the mercy of private health care provider Care UK which runs the Urgent Care Centre at Central Middlesex.

Urgent Care Centres are designed to take the pressure off A & E departments by dealing with minor injuries and less serious illnesses. Fine, but one of the reasons people go to their doctors or to A & E when the doctor isn’t available, is that they are not medically qualified so don’t necessarily know how serious (or not) their condition is. One of the NW London NHS documents gives the example of a mother who takes her baby to A & E with a high temperature. She is told that the baby is just teething. One of the functions of qualified medical staff should be to reassure patients. What about the case where the baby’s high temperature is not caused by teething but is a symptom of meningitis? Meningitis is hard to diagnose, but if not treated very quickly, can be fatal. There have been reports of Urgent Care Centres failing to spot meningitis and sending a stroke victim home http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5185165/Urgent-care-centres-putting-patients-lives-at-risk-doctors-warn.html

 

As a patient, Care UK’s record doesn’t fill me with confidence: 

X-rays: At the CMH Urgent Care Centre, Care UK failed to carry out the required checks on 6,000 x-rays, missing such details as broken bones http://www.channel4.com/news/flaw-leads-to-review-of-patient-x-ray%20records. All x-rays should be reviewed by a specialist to make sure that nothing has been missed, they should also be checked against the child protection register and GPs should be informed when their patients have attended the UCC. Care UK neglected to do this and took more than a year to find the flaw in their system and start to review the x-rays. Channel 4 reports, ‘Asked how it had happened, Care UK blamed it on "a couple of changes in the management structure of the team that ran the centre". They also failed to report it to the Care Quality Commission. Care UK said that although it was not legally obliged to do this, it "probably should have told CQC, but nobody picked up the phone".’ What a caring attitude!

The contract to run the CMH Urgent Care Centre was given to Care UK by the former Brent Primary Care Trust. All eight Brent NHS clinical directors wrote urging them not to sign the contract, but were told they were too late. Former members of that PCT are now non-executive directors of Care UK and NHS Brent is tied into a contract with Care UK that they cannot get out of.

Friends in high places: The wife of Care UK’s then chairman gave £21,000 to Andrew Lansley when he was shadow Health minister to help run his constituency office in the run up to the general election, an investment that has certainly paid off when you see how many contracts the firm has been awarded in the NHS and social care sectors. 

Tax avoidance  Care UK, which operates NHS treatment centres, walk-in centres and mental health services, has a reduced tax bill by taking out loans through the Channel Islands stock exchange and coming to an agreement with HMRC Guardian 17.3.12 Care UK join the likes of Vodaphone and Jimmy Carr in claiming that they’ve done nothing wrong.

There’s more about Care UK, but I’ll leave that for the next instalment. What’s your experience of Care UK or specifically of the Urgent Care Centre at Central Middlesex?

Summer activities in Brent for 4 to 19 year olds

For those who may not have seen it on the B My Voice site:

 If you are aged from 4 to 19 and want a fun-packed summer, then Brent is Summer (BIS) is for you. There are over 200 exciting, free or affordably-priced activities on offer over the summer holidays.

BIS combines, for the first time, all the holiday activities provided by Brent Council, including the Summer University, Summer Sports programme, Summer Reading Challenge and Brent Museum and Archives.
All activities will be very popular, so even if the activities are free of charge, we recommend that you book where stated, to guarantee your place.

It is easiest to book online but you will have to pay by credit or debit card.

Courses / activities start from Saturday 21 July and run until Friday 31 August 2012.

• Search for an activity / course and book
• Browse through list of all activites available
• Browse through a list of all activities at Bridge Park
• Download a booking form
• How to book in person - location details
• View terms and conditions for attending a Brent in Summer activity 

 Booking online

1. Register an account
You will need to create an account in order to book on BIS courses this year, by registering online.
If you are aged 16 and under
You will need your parent / guardian to create an account.
Once they have created an account they can add an entry for each child and book them onto a course.

If you are aged 16 and over
You can create an account for yourself and start booking.
2. Search for courses
Use the course search box to discover what's on offer this year. You may start searching for courses but you need to create an account to book the courses.
3. Book courses
Bookings open on Monday 2 July 2012, click Book this Course on your chosen courses. Places are limited so book as soon as you can.

Once you have booked onto a course, you will receive an email confirmation.

Greens: End PFI scam and stop privatisation of the NHS

Greens have called for urgent action to cure the NHS of cancerous PFI payments and have written to the Secretary of State for Health calling for action to ensure that health care provision is maintained rather than allowing hospitals to go into administration. The Greens are the only mainstream party to oppose PFI and to campaign to stop the privatisation of the NHS.

The revelation that the South London Healthcare NHS Trust is going into administration with debts incurred by its contracts under PFI (Private Finance Initiative) has come as no surprise to the Green Party. The Green Party has warned of the financial dangers of hospitals being built under PFI. The news that up to 30 other Trusts may be facing administration has prompted the call for action to prevent closures.

Adrian Ramsay, Green Party Deputy Leader, said: "It is time to cut out the cancerous PFI deals that are killing the NHS. While successive governments seem to find billions to bail out banks and to quantitatively ease the economy they seem utterly beholden to the companies that they now rent hospitals from having sold them off in the first place.

"The PFI deals were simply an accounting fix that put money in the pockets of big companies and locked the NHS into huge debt. The taxpayer will end up paying £63bn towards hospitals that cost £11bn to build. As hospital trusts go into administration we can expect to see health care provision drastically reduced. This is unacceptable and the Green Party has written to Andrew Lansley calling for a solution that protects services.

"It is surely time to end the PFI scam and let the NHS focus on providing care for patients, not profit for shareholders."

Poor TV signals in Wembley - any advice?

From the Law. Forum website LINK

Hi I would appreciate any help from anybody more knowledgable than me on this subject.

I live in Wembley, as you may know the erection of the monstrous stadium was erected in the last few years, now there is non-stop building works of huge new buildings. Flats, tall ones!

Since all this, my television and phone reception, along with all my neighbours and family have been affected so badly that I can no longer even speak to people on my mobile, and my TV just freezes ALL the time, at least twice a day...I don't even watch that much TV, maybe an hour a day at MOST.

I live in a nice area in Wembley where the council tax bills are so large I feel like I'm paying it like a sucker.

Such a large proportion of Brent council's income comes from me and my neighbours round here and now we can no longer make full use of our technology, which we need for work etc. No doubt this has devalued the house, as my neighbours have recently sold their house and had been told by estate agents that they had to drop the price as people would realise how bad the signal is and find it terribly impractical.

I have spoken to the council and they do nothing but brush me off!

Is there any legal action I can take? I have lived here for 20 years and loved it, now it's a nightmare!

Keep Willesden Green enters positive new phase

Although we don't know precisely what led to Galliford Try withdrawing their planning application for the redevelopment of Willesden Green Library Centre, it is likely to be a combination of the scale of local opposition, internal Labour Party debate, technical and legal risks; and national and international opprobrium.
The reason given for withdrawal was to allow for more consultation and a possible redesign which amounts to a victory for the Keep Willeden Green's demand to 'Stop, Listen and Reflect' (above)

Whatever the detail, the successful mobilisation of local opinion by the energetic and resourceful  Keep Willesden Green campaign, which saw the council's planning department deluged with objections to the plans,  must have played a part. Thus, last participants in last night's well attended meeting of the campaign allowed themselves a modest celebration at the planning application  withdrawal whilst recognising that this was only the end of Round 1.

It was a sign of the strength of the campaign that the meeting included about eight newcomers who wanted to contribute to the next phase. Rather than tailing off as a result of the pause in the process, the campaign has drawn strength from the decision and become even more determined to influence events.

The consensus that emerged about next steps  emphasised a positive, proactive approach that will seek participation in the formulation of new plans from the start, aided by the provisions of the Localism Act. In reaction to new council leader Muhammed Butt's stated desire to work with the community, rather than against them, KWG will seek a meeting with him to discuss the way forward to ensure that any development meets the needs and aspirations of the local community.