Lorber calls for end to Brent Council infighting

Cllr Paul Lorber, Liberal Democrat and former leader of Brent Council has made the following statement on the current situation on the Council:

This is an extraordinary breakdown in relationships and poses a real risk to the effective running of Brent Council. I have had my differences with Gareth Daniel over the years but have always found it possible to maintain a professional relationship.

If Labour councillors are clumsily trying to ease Mr Daniel out of his position they are risking very large sums of public cash on redundancy and compensation payments, not to mention the damage to their and the council’s reputation.

It’s clear that the Labour group is split down the middle and Cllr Butt is being undermined even by his own Executive members. For the sake of Brent’s residents this infighting needs to end.

What future for education in Brent?

Education has been very much in the news recently from parental protests over the ending of hot meals at Our Lady of Grace Junior School hitting today's front page of the Wembley and Willesden Observer, to the failure of several free schools to open leaving children adrift and Michael Gove admitting the GCSE marking was 'unfair' but doing nothing about it.

In Brent the headteacher of Newman Catholic College (formerly Cardinal Hinsley High School) has admitted there is a danger of forced academy conversion after poor results and other schools are considering academy conversion or becoming cooperative federations. In nearby Harrow the biggest free school has just opened.

Brent Council has embarked on another round of school expansions creating primaries with more than 1,000 pupils and the possibility of more 'all through' schools. Headteachers are promoting a consortium public enterprise to replace Brent Council's School Support Service.

Sarah Teather has lost her job as an education minister but Michael Gove holds on to his position and will continue his 'reforms'.

So there couldn't be a better time (for the worse possible reasons!) to hold a debate about the future of education in Brent.

I hope as many people as possible make it to the debate that has been organised for September 20th at Copland High School. Details below:

Apology over new WLA bus service for special needs children

Monday's meeting of Brent Council will be debating the West London Alliance.  Ian Nichol, Chief Executive of the West London Alliance will speak on the progress being made on the work of the Alliance after which members will debate the issues arising. The WLA shares services across several boroughs (Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon and Hounslow) LINK  in order to save money through rationalisation, sharing of resources and reductions in backroom expenses. Last year the then Brent Council leader Cllr Ann John expressed mixed feelings about the WLA remarking that it moved services one step further away from direct local accountability.

Coincidentally Brent Council has had to issue an apology today to special needs children after problems with the new WLA Transport Service:

Many children with Special Education Needs (SEN) will have experienced difficulties in their school transport arrangements this week. 

We apologise for the inconvenience and upset that we know these problems will have caused to children and their families.

The new transport system operated by the WLA Transport Bureau has experienced some significant problems in these early days. 

We are reworking transport arrangements to ensure that they work more reliably from Monday 10 September and will ensure that parents and carers have written confirmation of the arrangements for their child over the weekend.

This confirmation may be hand delivered.

In the meantime, if you experience problems, please call the WLA Transport Bureau on 020 8583 5530 / 5531 / 5536 / 5537 and we will work with you to resolve them.

Duckworth: Greens can be attractive to working class voters

I am proud to have voted for Will Duckworth who was elected deputy leader of the Green Party on Monday.  Here is what he has to say for himself:

I am thrilled to have been elected as the new Deputy Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. I am very much looking forward to working with new Leader, Natalie Bennett, who has a clear, strong and exciting vision for our Party.

I will do my very best to run with the baton passed on to me by Adrian Ramsey, who has done an excellent job as our Deputy for the last four years. I am sure I speak for everyone in the Party when I say that Caroline Lucas cannot be thanked enough for the incredible hard work she put in as our first ever Leader.
The next two years will be crucial for us. With important local elections due in 2013 and a great opportunity to increase our number of MEPs the year after I am looking forward to lending my support and enthusing members and voters alike, wherever possible.

As this Government's disastrous economic policies continue to hit the least well-off the hardest we will show that we have not only viable, but attractive social and economic alternatives to the ConDem's cuts and Labour's slightly watered-down version. I intent to make the most of being in the position of being able to communicate this to an ever widening audience.

2012 has seen the wettest summer in England for 100 years, the USA's worst drought for half a century, as well as the Arctic sea ice shrinking to an historic low. I will enjoy spreading the word about how the Green Party is the only one that understands the urgent measures needed to tackle climate change, while making the world fairer at the same time.

It is sometimes said that our policies are only attractive to the middle classes in leafy suburbs. Nothing could be further from the truth. Earlier this year I became the Black Country's first Green Party Councillor in a working class Labour stronghold. To me, this clearly showed that people in all walks of life agree with our way of thinking and that can achieve greater electoral success.

Here in the West Midlands we have gone from having three councillors to thirteen in just two years. I will take particular pleasure in working with local and regional groups to replicate that success, build the membership and strengthen the Party at all levels.

These are exceptional times. There are unique challenges for people and for our Party. We will only meet them by working together. I am confident that we can succeed.

The Brent leadership boil close to bursting

 Back in December 2011 in a posting on this blog about the relationship between Gareth Daniel and the then council leader, Ann John, I asked 'Brent Council: Who's in charge?' and questioned the apparent political role that Daniel had adopted. More recently in 'U-turn if you want to-this gent is not for turning'  (July 2nd 2012) I wrote:

The June 21st (Chief Executive's) Newsletter exalts in the close relationship between officers and councillors and gives this insight into Gareth Daniel's view of decision making. It sounds as if he has formed his own version of the 'No Turning Back' group which was formed to prevent any change of mind on Margaret Thatcher's 'reforms'.:

Once any necessary consultation has taken place, we should always move confidently into action mode and when we make a decision we need to stick to it.  Nobody respects an organisation that bends to the demands of every pressure group or the inevitable special pleading of sectional interest groups.

Presumably this is what he is saying to Muhammed Butt, the recently elected  'official' leader of Brent Council.

Now Muhammed Butt, according to the Brent and Kilburn Times (Council at War, front page today), has had enough and has stood up to Daniel.  I understand that that Butt's admirable decision to pay the London Living Wage to directly employed Brent council workers was opposed by Gareth Daniel and was the catalyst for the ensuing row.  The BKT reports that this has resulted in a split 'after a senior Labour councillor tried to put forward a motion backing Mr Daniel and other senior managers in the council rather than his leader' failed.

The 'senior Labour councillor' is not named but I have asked a senior councillor who has been on the frontline of cuts and closures and subject to much public flak, to confirm or deny rumours that he is challenging Muhammed Butt's leadership.

I have had no response as yet.

Meanwhile there will be much activity over the weekend culminating in possible fun and games at Monday's meeting of the full Council.

I am off on holiday tomorrow away from the internet so will miss it all!

Gove must go

From Guardian letters:

It's a shame David Cameron did not sack Michael Gove as education secretary. Cameron has complained about "dithering" in his government. Gove's response to the alarming shortage of primary school places is a case in point. We need 500,000 new school places by 2015. Gove's free-school programme will perhaps deliver 20,000. It is also costly and, in some cases, wasteful. Gove is so hidebound by ideology – the privatisation of education – that he cannot rise to the challenge. If we are to restore faith in our education system, Gove must go.

Alasdair Smith
Anti Academies Alliance

Teather: My priority is to represent my constituents

Sarah Teather has issued the following statement after losing her job in the reshuffle to fellow Lib Dem and preciously disgraced colleague, David Laws:

It has been a huge privilege to serve as an education minister in the coalition government over the last two and a half years. I'm hugely proud of the part I have been able to play in ending child detention, and rolling out the pupil premium, giving free nursery places to disadvantaged two year olds, amongst many other achievements.

Particularly close to my heart has been the work to reform the system of support for children and families with special educational needs and disability. It is a cause I have championed partly as a result of my own experience of illness and disability as a teenager. I would have dearly liked to be able to carry that work through to completion. I now hand that task over to others in Government to finish.

I am certain David will be an outstanding education Minister. We have been friends for many years and I am delighted for him that he has been given one of the best and most rewarding roles in Government. I shall support him and the Government now from the backbenches.

My number one priority will continue to be representing my constituents, which has always been my first love, and I'm also looking forward to having a little more time for myself.

Perhaps she will represent her constituents by joining the protest march against the closure of Central Middlesex A&E on September 15th.

Sarah Teather chopped in reshuffle

Brent Lib Dem MP, Sarah Teather, has lost her job as a junior education minister in David Cameron's reshuffle. Labour MP Steven Pound had teased her in the House of Commons yesterday, singing out, "You're going to get sacked in the morning".

Sarah Teather will be under pressure from her constituents to take a stand on Coalition policies now she is not restrained by ministerial guidelines. The most immediate issue will be the closure of  Central Middlesex Hospital. With the loss of Lib Dem membership in Brent and poor by-election performances by the party her prospects for the next General Election look poor.

James Lyons, deputy political editor of the Daily Mirror, tweeted this afternoon that Teather was standing down in order to fight for her Brent Central. Another explanation is that she was sacked as punishment for absenting herself from the House of Commons when there was a three line whip on the Coalition's welfare reforms. At the time a Tory back bencher asked David Cameron why she was still a minister and Cameron defended her LINK

Teather has been prepared to step out of line in the past, not least in previous battles over the Lib Dem leadership, so there is a possibility that she might become a critic of the Coalition from the left.

Watch this space.