Cameron abandons Tories to stand for UKIP in election

Barry Cameron, the recently announced UKIP candidate for Queensbury ward is a former Tory and member of the Tory's Barnhill Action Team.

His choice of ward is interesting because several Brent Conservatives are unhappy with the current Conservative Action Team in Queensbury who have been actively trying to build up support in the local elections by actvely backing Narendra Modi in the current Indian election.

Details HERE

Housing inequality bus tour in Brent today

Every Brent voter will have a chance to vote Green on May 22nd

The full list of candidates for the May 22nd local elections has now been published. There is a Green candidate standing in every ward in Brent with two in Willesden Green.

Brent Green Party firmly believe that every voter should be given the chance to vote Green.  This is particularly important now that the public are disenchanted with the three main parties and when there is, in reality, little difference in their policies.

The full list of candidates for each Brent ward is available HERE

What's the WHIF over West Hampstead?

As free schools become an issue in Brent, Anne Clarke writes a Guest Blog on the West Hampstead International School on our borders

Campaigners for the West Hampstead International Free School (WHIFS), an all-through (ages 4-19) free school hoping to open in 2015 or 2016, say that West Hampstead is a black hole when it comes to secondary school provision and the available local schools are not good enough. According to Dr. Clare Craig, the group's lead petitioner:

There are no good schools just over the borough borders and children end up travelling a long way to attend Barnet grammar schools or church schools elsewhere. 

In fact, NW6 is home to St. Augustine's Cof E School which OFSTED deems to be "outstanding" and Queen's Park Community School which is a solidly "good" school. The local comprehensive, Hampstead School, in Camden and just outside the NW6 postcode is "good with some outstanding features" according to OFSTED and is now in the top 2% of the country for A-level results.

Dr. Craig repeatedly claims that there simply are not enough secondary places for an incoming population boom. She has all sorts of graphs and charts with data modelled herself based on GP birth records in Camden, Brent and the NW6 post code. Predicting student numbers is very difficult and the GLA and Camden spend a lot of time and money hiring people to do this work on their behalf.

Camden insist there will be sufficient secondary places until 2022/2023, their numbers can be found HERE. 

Schools are funded on a per head basis so undersubscribed schools suffer from funding shortfalls. To build schools 8 years before they are needed would be catastrophic for all local schools, including new ones.

 

The addition of the primary offer from WHIFS came after Camden identified Liddell Road as the site where they plan to expand Kingsgate School. Camden does face a current shortfall of primary places and they need to add more places urgently. Regulation from the current government means Camden cannot simply open a new community school but are restricted to free schools or academies. However, they can expand an "outstanding" school such as Kingsgate. Camden's plans to expand Kingsgate School on Liddell Road will provide an additional 420 primary places.

Camden's own plan is not without controversy as in order to pay for the new school, they will need to raise the money themselves as central government will not fund a community school expansion. They plan to build flats and the additional Kingsgate School building on Liddell Road which is currently an industrial estate. This will mean the loss of 250 jobs according to the Save Liddell Road campaign. 

If the free school builds on Liddell Road, they will also lose the same businesses and jobs because of the larger school buildings they would require. The total area of the Liddell Road site is just over 3 acres, by contrast, Hampstead School sits on just over 4. To put this in local perspective, WHIFS would like to squeeze the student population of Emmanuel and Hampstead schools onto a site only 3 times that of Beckford School. The facilities needed for both a primary and secondary are extensive. WHIFS has said they expect theirs will be a tall building in order to accommodate their needs.

It is hard to imagine that the WHIFS campaign is just about numbers as it would be Camden's legal obligation to address any shortfall of places. Dr. Craig is quoted in the Ham and High on 5/9/13 that Hampstead School is simply too big. "One of the problems people have with Hampstead School is that it is a massive school. It has 210 children in each year group.That is not much bigger than your average Camden school but a lot of people want a smaller, community school for their children. Part of going to school is being part of a community, but if your community is 1,500 people, it’s hard to feel like you belong.”

It is interesting that the school Dr. Craig now proposes is a two form primary (60 per year)  with a 6 form secondary (180 per year) plus a sixth form. WHIFS would be the largest school in Camden and her secondary would only be one form short of Hampstead School. Dr. Craig has her numbers wrong again, the actual number of pupils in Hampstead School is 1,280, WHIFS would total 1,570.

As Brent residents have seen, all 3 of the free secondary schools due to open in September 2014 are still advertising for applicants. Only one has a confirmed site which is not looking in good shape. In an unusual twist, the College of North West London building on Priory Park Road, Kilburn will host Marylebone Boys School for two years whilst they build their permanent site on their secret Marylebone location. 

Currently Camden has 170 unfilled Year 7 places and neighbouring Brent and Barnet have around 200 each. The addition of 3 new free schools in Brent and an academy in Barnet opening this September, on top of the free school added in Barnet in September 2013, add a total of over 700 additional secondary places per year group from September 2014.

The DfE final sign off on free schools is unpredictable. Many free schools have failed to open after being given initial funding to proceed, including the Institute of Education bid south of the Euston Road in Camden. Jeopardising the expansion of an outstanding primary school in order to make way for an all-through free school will deepen the primary place crisis.

Ultimately, the quality of education WHIFS would provide is unknown. What we do know is that Camden has an excellent record of running schools, with 95% rated as "good" or "outstanding" by OFSTED. The one school requiring improvement is nowhere near West Hampstead and Camden is working very hard to improve that school.

By contrast, one of WHIFS partner schools is an academy in Hertfordshire requiring improvement.

Public meeting on Kensal Rise Library plans Thursday

@CollegeRoadRA: TOMORROW (Thursday)  - Kensal Rise Residents' Association Public Meeting to discuss #KensalRiseLibrary planning proposal. Thurs 7:30pm Constitutional Club next to Lexi. All welcome.

Brent Executive approves Copland land deal and landlord licensing

An unusually garralous Brent Council Executive last night approved the land deal which will see the Copland Community School site and neighouring land handed over to Ark Academy for 125 years. A new secondary school with an additional form of entry will be built away from the High Road (exact position not yet fixed) and nearby Elsley Primary School will double in size.

The Executive set aside issues around development restrictions on the site (although a restrictive covenant caused considerable problems for the Preston Manor expansion) and shrugged off threats of a judicial review from teacher unions.

Jean Roberts, speaking for the tecaher orgabisations, said that they had spoken to local residents in nearby streets who were overwhelmingly against the scheme and concerned about the impact on them as well as rights of way on the school grounds. Local children were playing on the grounds as they spoke to residents who told her that they were starting a petition against the scheme.

Although at pains to stress that this was about a land deal and nothing to do with forced academisation and an Ark takeover of state schools, Executive members nonetheless took the opportunity to attack the former management of the school and the quality of teachers - forgetting perhaps that they had oversight of the school at the time.

The Executive went on to approve an 'Additional'  licensing scheme for landlords in Brent but deferred a decision on 'Selective Licensing' in Wembley Central, Harlesden and Willesden Green.

There will be further consulation over a two month period about what other wards, namely Dudden Hill and Mapesbury, should be included in the Additional Licensing scheme.

The Additional Licensing scheme charge will be set at £550 for the 5 year licensing period. Challenged that this would be passed on to tenants, Muhammed Butt said that landlords would be able to claim it back as part of their business costs.

Margaret McLennan said that the scheme was not about gentrification but bringing private rented properties up to the bare minimum regarding matters like gas safety checks. She said that the scheme would also protect good landlords from bad tenants.

Enforcement will begin in January 2015. The Executive did not discuss the vexed question of potential unintended consequences if landlords evict tenants in order to deal with overcrowding or unsafe premises.

Copland’s Green Left Reds are Over the Moon

...But celebrations marred by Unsporting Conduct from the Managers

Guest blog by ‘Shankly’s  Pony’ 

Green Left Reds may be a political niche too far, but all Wembley Matters readers can take some pleasure in the success this season of local lad and ex Copland student Raheem Sterling. In addition to helping to guide Liverpool FC to League success and being selected for England’s World Cup campaign in Brazil, last weekend  Raheem  achieved the ultimate accolade: starring in Paul Trevillion’s  cult comic strip ’You Are The Ref’ in Sunday’s Observer (above). 

At the footballing star’s old school, however,  foul play is the norm. Fourteen more compulsory redundancies are among the fixtures for this term, despite the IEB’s promise that there would be none. Copland’s athletics and football  fields will be flogged off for housing or offices just as soon as they can figure out who actually owns the land and how the little matter of the title restriction can be fixed.  Strangely enough, events at the school seem more and more to be influenced by the world of professional football. 

Having early on adopted the Millwall fans’ slogan of ‘Nobody likes us, We don’t care’ (accepting reality rather than out of choice) the management  handed Copland over to a bunch of dodgy millionaires (as at Chelsea,Fulham FC, Manchester City, Cardiff et al).  To find  the new school’s new  ‘manager’ these shysters plumped for  the ‘Chosen One’ method which they presumably  judged had been so  successful in selecting  David Moyes for Man United. The  drafted-in owners are now trying to impose  a new name on the school (as at Hull City) and are about to completely  change the school strip (see Cardiff).  Soon the ground will be moved (not quite as far as Milton Keynes, see Wimbledon FC) and most of the ground staff have already been ‘let go’.   

If, in September,  the school actually is taken over by the ‘Chosen One’   Ms Bates, (no relation to Leeds United’s Ken, hopefully) , Copland will have had more managers in recent times than the notoriously profligate Blackburn Rovers  (six since you ask). This is not to mention the Delia Smith connection (Ark Wembley head, TV cook and Norwich City majority shareholder) or the remarkable similarities between the  organisational prowess demonstrated by respectively Ark’s attempt at a consultation and Torquay United’s attempt at a defence. 

But as we enter the end-of-season  ‘run-in’,  the mythmakers of Ofsted are about to show that it’s all been worthwhile. At the end of the summer term the final prewritten chapter of the prewritten narrative journey will be taken down off the shelf and added to last autumn’s  Prewritten Ofsted Inspection  Report 1    ( ‘It’s going to be a struggle but if we all pull together, and with 58 redundancies, Copland might just make it’) which was followed by last month’s release of Prewritten Ofsted Inspection Report 2  ( ‘Following tough DfE  policies, honest and objective Ofsted verification, and 75 redundancies, Everything at Copland is Getting Better and Better ’).   

Leaks from the government department which writes these things confirmed last October  that the final chapter, due in July,  declares: ‘Mission Accomplished!: After 119 redundancies and with the new leaner and fitter curriculum offer of only 2 subjects (Malaysian Maths and Singaporean Maths)  Copland is now Fit For Purpose! The management and both remaining members of the teaching staff are to be congratulated on their achievement.’ 

By then, of course, Raheem Sterling’s form might well have continued on its current trajectory and brought England  a hat full of goals in Brazil. Let’s hope so.  It’s just a  pity that  the only ones celebrating at what remains of his old school will be a bunch of hedge fund billionaires, the spineless guardians of local democracy at Brent Council (or those who survived the May 22 play-offs),  a couple of hapless Future Leaders:  and Michael Gove. 

Never mind, you can be confident that, with Ofsted providing the facts and figures to support their ‘evidence-based’ bullshit (and nobody around anymore to remember what life was actually like before the Pigs took over) , it will inevitably go down in history as the greatest season Copland ever had.

Comments closed on Kensal Rise Library debate

There has been extensive debate about the Kensal Rise Library development on this blog which at times has been heated and even vixperous. I have decided to close comments now and instead will post on any new developments ahead of the May planning committee meeting.

Martin Francis