Butt paints gloomy picture for Brent residents

Brent Council leader Muhammed Butt has posted his second blog on the Council website. He cites the current state of the economy as causing 'terrible' problems for Brent residents. Clearly it is the Coalition's austerity policies that are worsening the economic situation but it is also the deliberate attack on the welfare state and targeting of the disabled, women, large families and single parents that hit people in a very personal way. Added to that are the cuts local councils are making as their budgets are slashed by central government. The question that must be asked is, how long can the council continue to implement cuts that they know are damaging an already vulnerable population?

Muhammed Butt's blog posting:

...we face big problems which mean making the changes we believe in isn't easy. As a borough, as a council and as a community, we face some grave long-term challenges.

I think it is important to be open and honest with residents about these challenges, as not everyone realises just how bad a situation we are in. This gives some perspective to some of the difficult decisions we have already made, and others we will have to make in the coming years.

Unemployment and the economy

The current state of the economy is causing terrible problems for many Brent residents who are struggling just to keep above the breadline. Wage levels in Brent are significantly below the London average and are declining, even while they are rising in the rest of London.

For a family with two children to have an acceptable standard of living in London they need an annual joint income of £37,000.The median household income in Brent is £27,500, and in our poorest areas it is as low as £15,000. This means many of our residents often have to choose between food and warmth.

Over the last decade, unemployment in Brent has remained above both the national and London levels, with a particularly sharp rise over the past year. Our residents are really struggling to find work. Long term unemployment can devastate communities and in some areas of the borough child poverty is as high as 50 per cent as a result.

The make-up of our community

As well as our economic problems, we also face a huge demographic crisis due to our disproportionately aging population. By 2030 the number of people over the age of 65 in the UK is set to increase by 50 per cent. On top of this the continued downward trend in the economy means more people are relying on council services. 

This is such a dramatic change that it is predicted that by 2030 it will cost more than 100 per cent of our current budget just to pay for social care to support the elderly. This creates a huge dilemma. We will need to make difficult decisions and radical changes if we want to continue to provide other services that residents rely upon.

Budget pressures

The budget crisis we face as a council is unprecedented. As a result of Government cuts, we have to reduce our spending by 28 per cent by 2015. We have to find £100 million in savings, that means less to spend on helping residents and providing services.

If you can imagine having to cut a third from your weekly household budget, this raises impossible decisions. We will have to make tough choices every day to prioritise the most essential services that protect the most vulnerable people in the borough and to maintain the everyday services that keep Brent up and running.

Hope

All this paints a gloomy picture, but there is hope.

Through relentless focus on our priorities and innovation we can continue to improve resident's lives, even in these impossible circumstances. We are on your side during these tough times.

Over the coming weeks I will be blogging about some of the things we are doing to ensure that we continue to make Brent a fairer place, create more jobs and growth and strengthen our community. 

Brent Communication Team refuse to communicate with Wembley Matters

by Martin Redston

 Every now and again I get asked by readers why I do not let Brent Council give their version of events when I run critical stories on this blog such as the recent one on the apparent demise of the four borough supercontract.

The short answer is that the press office refuses to respond. An earlier reason given was that this was because I was not 'official media' . I retorted that this sounded rather Stalinist. When trying to get a quote on the supercontract story I was again refused.

I suggested that the Council needed to revise its policy in the light of the development of 'citizen journalism'. I pointed out that I was trying to be fair to the Council by including their comments. With 400-600 page views a day (14,000plus last month) and followed via Twitter by local councillors and our local MP, surely it was to their advantage to be able to comment on stories that were often followed up by the local press.

They went away to consult on this with the Head of Communications and issued the following statement:

The press desk deals with enquiries from accredited journalists e.g. a local radio or newspaper journalist, a member of the National Union of Journalists or a recognised freelance.

It does not currently include enquiries from citizen journalists and blog authors because the expected volume of enquiries would be extremely difficult for the Communications Team to manage.

So with a Communications Team that won't communicate I am left with the option of making cumbersome Freedom of Information requests that take weeks to get a response or hoping that the 'official' press follows up the stories.

By the way, I regularly get official press releases sent to me from Muhammed Butt's office...

Supporters have suggested that readers should tweet Brent Council to tell them they should talk to me @BrentCouncil.

Feel free! 

Will you support a Reclaim Our Schools campaign?

Downhills Primary school protests against forced academy

I wrote this article for Green Left's EcoSocialist broadsheet that was distributed on October 20th.  I would be interested to hear from anybody who would support a local Reclaim Our Schools campaign:

Michael Gove may have been making a shambles of education policies over the last couple of months but his position has, if anything, strengthened within the cabinet. The rebellious right-wing of the Tory Party hail him as one of the government’s few successes and his policies are becoming more extreme in response.

Looking beyond the GCSE marking fiasco and the failure of several free schools to open on time, it is clear that a contradictory combination of privatisation and greater central government control of schools is succeeding in dividing and fragmenting the education system.

Labour has failed to oppose these moves, tainted as it is by the fact that it started the process. Stephen Twigg has been ambivalent about free schools and academies and Lord Adonis’s recent intervention suggesting that private schools should sponsor academies ‘taking complete responsibility for the governance and leadership’ will undermine democratic accountability further.

We need a massive popular campaign, such as that for the NHS, to build opposition to Gove’s policies, perhaps under the heading of Reclaim Our Schools (‘Keep Our Schools Public’ may confuse people!)  The possibility of such a campaign was clear in the case of Downshill Primary School in Haringey when pupils, parents, teachers and governors took to the streets to demonstrate against Gove’s decision to force the school to become an academy.

In campaigning to Reclaim Our Schools we could:

• Resist academy conversions
• Oppose free schools
• Call for a good, local, democratically accountable, school for every child
• Campaign against the Coalition Government’s ruling that any new school must be either a free school or an academy
• Campaign for all free schools and academies to be reintegrated back into the local authority community of schools
• Press for democratic accountability through elected governing bodies and local authorities
• Demand fair admissions arrangements and fair funding
• Demand that all schools should accept children with special needs and be resourced as necessary
• Oppose Gove’s examination reforms that look likely to return us to a two-tier system and mean that many students would leave school without any qualification
• Call for the end of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check which the NUT Survey showed 9 out of 10 teachers thought was ‘A lode ov owld rubbish’
• Press for quality teacher assessment of pupils rather than SATs
• Encourage ‘bottom up’ curriculum and learning innovations lead by classroom teachers rather than  ‘top down’ imposed curriculum and learning strategies
• Reform inspection so that it becomes a positive professional partnership rather than a politicised pressure on schools to conform to the government’s agenda
• Argue for the needs and interests of children to be put back at the centre of the education system rather than the needs of industry or the UK’s position in international comparison tables
• Make ‘Reclaim Childhood’ a central demand for children who are presently the most tested, pressurised and (in the case of the annual ‘dumbing down of exams’ campaign), rubbished generation.

Learning for a full life rather than just work, no taxation without representation, and the right to enjoy childhood – who could argue with that?

There's a great article by Michael Rosen on the upcoming Year 6 tests HERE

Harlesden Town Team call for informed debate on Willesden Junction waste plant

The Harlesden Town Team issued this statement today:

A Statement on the Proposed Energy Recovery Centre at Willesden Junction

Harlesden Town Team were disappointed to learn about the proposed Energy Recovery Centre at Willesden Junction only after formal consultation by LB Ealing had ended. Although the site is closer to many more Harlesden residents than Ealing ones, Harlesden Town Team were not formally consulted. Brent Council planning officers were notified.

At this stage Harlesden Town Team has no view for or against the energy recovery centre. What we seek is an informed debate so that all Harlesden residents who could possibly be affected by the development are informed and their views sought. We expect that this number of households is considerably more than the 1,000 leafleted in the consultation, as the majority of Harlesden (Town)'s 10,000 households are directly down-wind.

We recognise the danger of much ill-informed comment that is starting to circulate and we therefore believe that wider explanation and consultation is urgently required.

To this end we shall discuss the development proposals at the next Harlesden Town Team meeting on Monday 12th November (Salvation Army Hall, 6.30pm). We expect representative of the developers, Ealing and Brent Council planners and local councillors from East Acton, Kensal Green and Harlesden to attend as well as those Harlesden residents that actually live in Ealing.

If, at the end of the meeting, a majority of our members consider it appropriate for the Town Team to take a position, then we shall do so.

It is worth noting that, earlier this year, Harlesden Town Team helped facilitate a consultation on changes to Harlesden High Street which covered over 10,000 households and achieved a 10% response rate.

Setting the record straight on All Souls' 'support'

Thanks to Jodi Gramigni  for this update:

I felt it was essential to provide an update on the developing situation with All Souls College, Oxford, due to inaccurate information being circulated by Thomas Seaman, Estates Bursar and Fellow of All Souls (http://www.all-souls.ox.ac.uk/people.php?personid=61).

He has said that the College is giving the library campaign the space that was requested in our bid. This is incorrect. In addition, their offer of support is a fraction of the over £1m in proceeds that they expect to receive for the sale of the building, and is short term, leaving the library to secure resources to pay for commercial rents in perpetuity. An unsustainable proposition due to the very limited size of the space we are being offered. 

Laura Collignon elaborates:

“Just so you all know what this "support" means, All Souls College are selling the building to property developers who will turn it all into flats, except for the old children's section which will be demolished and turned into our new library. That is all we are getting. Oh, and it is suggested that we should pay a market rent for the space we get. And if we don't want to run a library on that basis, apparently they will find someone who will, because we have persuaded them of the importance of a library remaining there!!” https://www.facebook.com/groups/krlibrary/permalink/421730247880408/

All Souls are requiring the Friends of Kensal Rise Library to negotiate directly with the developer Andrew Gillick of Platinum Revolver Ltd, whose proposal includes partial demolition of the existing building which would require a change of use from Brent Planning (http://www.companiesintheuk.co.uk/ltd/platinum-revolver).

If this is the Colleges idea of support, god help us if they turn against us…

More details to follow soon.
Kind regards,
Jodi
about.me/jodi/gramigni
twitter: @jodigramigni

Brent Council wields its cudgels over Harlesden incinerator

A Harley Road back garden - sitting out amongst waste smells soon?

 Brent Council has told Ealing Council that if they go ahead with  the plans for an energy from waste facility ('Harlesden incinerator') on its border at Willesden Junction  it will 'object strongly to the proposals until satisfactory information has been provided to enable an accurate assessment of the implications of the proposal on the Borough of Brent and its residents'.

The plans are due to go to Ealing Planning Committee this month but have recently been modified to increase the volume of waste processed at the site from 148,000 tonnes per annum to 195,000. Brent's comments relate to the original proposal and so they have requested that 'an additional re-consultation exercise be undertaken to notify all local residents of the changes and to allow for additional time to review and comment on the implications of the increase'.

One of Brent's key objections is that the proposals don't comply with the West London Waste Plan which set out potential sites a year ago LINK . The proposed site was not listed then and Brent argue that the Willesden Junction site should  be refused planning permission as it has not been demonstrated that the other approved sites are unsuitable.

Brent argue that residential properties in Harley Road, Harlesden are down wind from the site under prevailing weather conditions and thus the  plans would have an impact on residents in terms of air quality, odours, operational noise and site traffic.

A full copy of Brent Council's response can be found on the excellent Harleden Town blog HERE

Residents meet on Thursday on Willesden Green Library Plans

Labour Brent's public realm privatisation too high risk for Tory Barnet

Barnet Today LINK is reporting that Barnet Council has decided that the proposed four borough waste, recycling, street cleaning and parks maintenance super contract was 'too high risk' and will approve having the services in-house.

So Labour Brent Council has turned out to be more of a privatiser than right-wing Conservative Barnet Council!  Barnet is presently in turmoil after Cllr Brian Coleman and former London Assembly member was suspended from the national Conservative Party. Coleman is in trouble over alleged racist slurs and an assault.

The Barnet Today report states:

 The council had been exploring the possibility of procuring its waste management services in partnership with Brent Council. But while the neighbouring borough agreed to pursue that avenue earlier this month, Barnet’s council officers ruled that it was too high-risk.

The decision will be seen as a departure from the council’s controversial One Barnet model, which will see a raft services, including planning and customer services contracted to private companies via two outsourcing projects worth around £1billion.

Council leader Richard Cornelius said providing the services in-house represented the best option for driving down costs and improving services.

“The One Barnet programme has always been pragmatic and this was the pragmatic way to go,” he said. “The rubbish collection in this borough is well done. It can be improved but we don’t want to muck it up.”

Brent Council press office today refused to answer my request about the future of the contract on the grounds that I was not an accredited journalist.