Now this Party knows how to react to unaffordable luxury housing!

As luxury flats, marked to foreign residents and investors, go up across London, including here in Brent at Willesden Green Library and in nearby Barnet at West Hendon, renters are taking action as local people are priced out of the market:

Pavey paves the way for privatisation

At last night's full Brent Council Meeting Cllr Michael  Pavey, lead member for children and families, moved even further towards a pro-academy stance, even though his Labour colleague Krupesh Hirani shortly afterwards castigated the privatisation of the health service.

Pavey read from Ofsted reports on Copland Community High School and Wembley Ark Academy, contrasting the dire nature of the former with the glowing remarks of the latter. What he didn't tell the councillors was that the Copland report was very recent and that Ark's last full Ofsted was in 2010.

He also didn't tell them at the time of the 2010 report Ark Academy only had a few year groups in the primary school and was only just admitting the first cohort of Year 7s in the secondary school. Ark Academy was inspected under the old Ofsted framework and Copland under the new stricter framework.

Brent Council wants to leave Council Tax Support unchanged despite summonsing 3,300

The demonstration outside Willesden Magistrates Court

Some Brent Council consultations get more publicity than others. This one on the Council Tax Support Scheme seems a little hidden away so I thought I would bring it to your attention. The present system resulted in 3,300 people being summonsed to Willesden Magistrates Court by the Council for non-payment and a demonstration outside the court which received wide publicity. Some of those summonsed incurred extra court charges of £90 or more on top of the amount owed.

This consultation started without fanfare on November 11th and ends on December 12th.

Now believe it or not the Council, with minor changes, wants to keep essentially the same scheme despite Muhammed Butt vowing that Labour would protect the vulnerbale at last night's Council Meeting.

Below is an extract from the Council website. You can see the full consultation portal and submit your views HERE

Budget cuts, Veolia, Copland, racist letting agents and violence against women on Council agenda tonight

The most important item on tonight's Brent Council Agenda is probably the first reading of the budget which includes the cuts already listed on this blog LINK

Executive members will give reports as follows:

1. The opening of the LDO and update on appointmentof Ben Spinks (Cllr Butt)

2. New Public Realm contract (Cllr Mashari)

3. The future of Copland school (Cllr Pavey)

4. Integrated Care Pioneer bid and conference on adult safeguarding (Cllr Hirani)

5. Action taken on racial discrimination by local letting agents and private rented

 sector licensing (Cllr McLennan)

6. The live-streaming of Council meetings (Cllr Denselow)

7. Conference on khat (Cllr Choudry)

8. An update on parking (Cllr J Moher)

9. Regeneration tour of the borough by Deputy Mayors of London (CllrCrane)

10. Visit from the Mayor of Johannesburg (Cllr R Moher) 

Each party group has tabled a motion for this evening.  They are:

LABOUR

Tackling violence against women

This Council commends the work of the members’ task group on Tackling Violence against Women and Girls in Brent. This task group is committed to ending harmful practices by raising public awareness of issues such as female genital mutilation (FGM), forced marriages and honour-based violence. These practices, and all instances of violence against women, constitute illegal, intolerable acts and human rights violations.

This Council notes the positive influence members can wield within communities by encouraging individuals and groups to speak out against harmful practices, which impact on the wellbeing of women and girls in Brent. To ensure that members are fully informed on all these harmful practices and how to deal with them effectively, there will be a member development event held on Thursday 21 November 2013. Sessions will be led by the expert organisations FORWARD and the Asian Women’s Resource Centre.

Members also note the work of the White Ribbon Campaign day- a charitable organisation started by men which seeks to end violence against women. Members whole-heartedly support this cause and will sign the White Ribbon pledge to affirm that they will never condone or remain silent about violent acts against women. A Brent Council event marking White Ribbon Day – the internationally recognised day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women – will be held in the Civic Centre on November 25.

We call on all members to unite in the fight against these harmful practices, and resolve to end all practices which cause physical or emotional distress to women and girls in Brent within the 5-year target set by the Government earlier this year.

Councillor John

LIBERAL DEMOCRAT 

Cleaner streets in Brent

Council notes that Labour councillors have targeted street cleaning and waste collection for service reductions by:

        i.            Reducing the frequency of street cleaning in many residential streets from three times a week to once a week

      ii.            Reducing weekend street cleaning in High Streets

    iii.            Reducing refuse collections, even in areas with poor storage facilities for residual waste

     iv.            Introducing curtilage collections

       v.            Axing the streetwatcher scheme

Council further notes:

        i.            It is two years since Brent Council hit its target for tonnes of waste sent to landfill

     vi.            In five out of the last six quarters Brent Council failed to hit its target for the percentage of waste sent for recycling

   vii.            Brent Council has never (since the target was adopted as a KPI) met its target for Flytipping Enforcement: number of inspections and investigations

 viii.            Reported fly-tipping increased after Labour's street cleaning cuts, as dirty streets encouraged more people to dump waste

     ix.            There is considerable public concern about the cleanliness of our streets and the amount of fly-tipping in Brent

       x.            The failure to meet recycling targets has significant financial consequences

Council calls on the Executive to:

        i.            Improve Brent Council's recycling performance

      ii.            Step up enforcement in order to target more effectively those who disfigure our streets with litter and fly-tipping

    iii.            Use the resulting additional finance to increase street cleaning where it is most needed and work intensively with residents and managers of blocks of flats to address litter, fly-tipping and waste collection issues.

Councillors Lorber, Brown and Hopkins

CONSERVATIVE

Parking

This Council notes that the parking policy of this Labour administration is hurting Brent's economy as high parking charges on the local high streets and the abolition of visitor parking scratch cards continue to drive visitors away.

This Council also notes that as a result of these ill-thought out policies, shoppers are deserting Brent in favour of the cheap, easy and free parking that is on offer at Brent Cross and in neighbouring borough’s. 

This Council resolves to:

-          Introduce half an hour free parking on our High Streets

-          Ensure that event day parking restrictions only apply for 1hour before the event at Wembley Stadium

-          Continue the use of visitor scratch cards indefinitely,

Councillor Kansagra

You can watch a live feed of the meeting on computer, tablet or smart phone from 7pm HERE and tweet #brentlive

Give Brent Council the power and finance to build new schools for those without a school place

The Kilburn Times LINK this weekend headlined the news that more than 600 Brent primary school children are without a school place. I recently obtained figures from Brent Council under a Freedom of Information request that sheds a little more light on the situation.

There are in fact vacancies in some Brent primary schools but these may not be geographically convenient for parents of children out of school, especially when they involve children in a family attending several different primary schools.

This is the snapshot of  vacancies and children out of school on November 8th. Brent Managed and School Managed refers to the administration of admission applications. You can see that there is a slight surplus of school places in Years 3, 5 and 6.

The schools with several Reception vacancies at the time of the snapshot were Ark Franklin Primary Academy (the academy converted former Kensal Rise Primary), Brentfield Primary, Fryent Primary (recently expanded) and St Mary's RC Primary. The position changes rapidly so it is likely that these places will have been filled by now.

The fact that many children attend schools which are not their first choice or the most convenient means that many are on waiting lists for one or more other schools. With the current movement of families due to benefit reforms this produces 'churn' - high mobility as children change schools.

Despite a common National Curriculum across local authority schools this still produces disruption for children as they get used to a new school,  new teacher and new classmates, and is disruption for teachers as they cater for an ever changing class population.

Research indicates that such mobility has an initial impact on standards of achievement of the children who change schools.

The exceptional nature of the place shortage in Reception means that in total there are almost 2,500 on waiting lists in Brent. On the day of the snapshot five schools had more than 100 on the Reception waiting list: Anson 118, Ark 264, Islamia 104, Malorees Infants 102 and Wembley Primary 100.

I have asked for further information on how many of these are pupils on several waiting lists.

Things become much more settled at Year 1 with Barham the longest waiting list at 30, with a more equal distribution across schools, totalling 546. By Year 6 the total is 360.

The schools

I requested figures on the number of children out of school by planning area in order to get a picture of the geographical distribution. Brent Council said these figures were not available and instead provided distribution maps which are not exact. The blue figures on the map below indicate groups of children needing a Reception school place.

The demand for Reception places reinforces the need for planned construction of new primary schools by local councils rather than reliance on the vagaries of free school providers popping up in areas of need. The Council presently has a statutory duty to provide education for these children without having the powers to do so apart from expanding schools which are already often on crowded sites.

The Government needs to give local authorities back the power to plan and build new schools as well as the finance to do so. Instead they are wasting money of unwanted free school vanity projects.

Full documentation on my Freedom of Information Request can be found HERE

‘I’m an Ark Academy apologist. Get me out of here!’

Copland staff  and parents underwhelmed by  ‘consultation’ process.  

Guest blog by 'Participatory Democracy'

Copland staff have always been a little sceptical about ‘consultation’, possibly since ex-Head Davies once announced to a full staff meeting (on applying for Trust status) : ‘the consultation period is over’, having omitted to do anything to indicate that it had ever actually begun. So when various Ark representatives, including the Ark Academy Head, Dame Delia Smith OBE, and IEB members fronted a ‘consultation’ meeting for Copland staff last Thursday, no one was expecting them to get a warm reception. And that’s exactly what they didn’t get. Still, as almost all the staff had only ever seen one member of the IEB before, it was, if nothing else,  a chance for them to get a glimpse of this year’s latest  new bosses. Or, as one ‘deleted’ teacher put it: ‘it’s always nice to be able to put a face to your redundancy notice’.

Five to go on to Labour's Brent Central ballot

Labour's Brent Central Parliamentary Selection Committee has chosen five candidates to go on to the ballot of members after today's interviews, according to my sources.

The selected contestants are said to be the four candidates who got most nominations from wards and affiliates: Dawn Butler, Sabina Khan, Zaffar van Kalwala and Parmijit Dhanda plus Dr Sundar Thava who as I reported via Twitter this morning has had a late surge of support.

This information has not been officially confirmed.

The ballot outcome will not be known until December.

Meanwhile Dawn Butler has tweeted her congratulations to Uma Kumaran followed her selection as Labour PPC for Harrow East.

Dinosaur and developer join protest against loss of Cricklewood green space

Demonstrators protesting against the possible loss of the green space outside B&Q in Cricklewood Lane in a deal between Barnet Council and the Brent Cross developers, coped quite well when they were joined by a dinosaur.

They were rather more surprised when they were joined by Jonathan Joseph, of Brent Cross Cricklewood Development Partners, and the man they have been battling since at least 2009.