GP says NW London hospitals under 'unbearable pressure' as A&E waiting times are longest in the country

 

Campaigning Against the Closures

 The BBC are reporting the longest A&E waits are in North West London. Brent Fightback and Save Our NHS, along with Ealing and Hammersmith hospital campaigners warned against the closure of Accident and emergency wards, including Central Middlesex.  LINK

Our concerns have been vindicated.

Patients requiring emergency treatment in north-west London had the longest waits in the country.

London North West Hospital Trust failed to see 32.2% of its patients within four hours during the week ending 19 October, and 26.7% the following week.

Labour London Assembly member Dr Onkar Sahota said the two "dangerous" results could be connected to the closure of two local A&E departments.

The Trust said it understood "where change is required".

The figures obtained by the Labour Party show the trust performing below the national average, which stood at 11.2% and 9.4% respectively during the two weeks highlighted. 

They revealed 827 and 628 patients had to wait more than four hours for emergency treatment.
In a statement the trust said: "We are working with our healthcare partners... to address specific issues relating to capacity, attendances and delays in discharging patients from hospital.

"Agreed actions are in place to improve performance which includes plans for 70 additional beds at Northwick Park Hospital."

Dr Sahota, a practising GP, said the closure of Central Middlesex and Hammersmith A&E departments in September had put west London hospitals under "unbearable pressure".

The GP said: "Despite consistent warnings, the mayor and government have refused to recognise the dangerous impact these closures have had.

"We can only hope that with the message now devastatingly clear, they will take urgent action to help get A&E services in North West London back on track."

In August the health watchdog the Care Quality Commission said staff across the trust "were found to be caring and compassionate" but that some patients at Northwick Park Hospital were being discharged too early because of the patient flow through its A&E department.

Brent Cabinet considers part privatisation of Children's Centres

Mikey Pavey launches Labour Friends of Sure Start

When lead member for Brent Children and Families, Cllr Michael Pavey launched Labour friends of Sure Start aimed at campaigning for and championing Children's Centres.

Now as Deputy Leader he and Cabinet colleagues are discussing plans to part-privatise Children's Centres in order to save money.

In Phase One of the scheme to make Children's Centres 'sustainable' a tier of local management was removed. Phase Two brought in private and voluntary providers for some Centres:

.    Phase Two comprises the reconfiguration of Barham Library Children’s Centre, St Raphael’s Intergenerational Centre and Treetops Children’s Centre to provide children’s centre nursery places via private and voluntary providers. This change was approved by Cabinet in July and the early years team is working with Property Services and Legal Services to develop suitable agreements and get the new provision in place. 


Now Phase Three proposes to out-source day to day management of and governance of other Centres:

3.19  Phase Three proposal. The proposed third phase of change is to develop a new model of delivery. It is proposed to consult service users, staff and other stakeholders on a proposal to tender the management and day to day governance of the children’s centres to an experienced provider with that provider taking on the running of the buildings, the employment and management of staff and the responsibility for service delivery to meet the core offer requirements. 


 3.20  Under this model the selected provider will resource and develop the required universal services and the Local Authority will fund the targeted Early Intervention services for the most vulnerable families. Under this model the strategic role for the Early Years Service will be to secure good quality children’s centres, challenge practice and performance management, supporting good Ofsted outcomes and focusing resources on the targeted households and other families with additional needs. 


3.21  Essentially this model attempts to deliver a similar level of service to the current model (or potentially better) for a reduced level of resourcing from the local authority. It looks to future sustainability, since external service providers will have the ability to leverage in additional funds from their own contacts for example the National Lottery, European funding, etc which the current service, as a council service, cannot access. 


 This excludes Curzon, Fawood and Challenge House who already have a partnership.

The proposals, following DfE rules, have to go to formal consultation taking 3 - 4 months and the Council would have to devise an appropriate procurement process which may prove complex.

Eventually, unless the proposals are successfully challenged, Centre staff, and some office staff, would be TUPEd over to the new provider.

It will be argued, as often with cuts and privatisation, that new efficiencies will reduce costs without detriment to the quality of service, and further that this is the only way to enable Children's Centres to survive in the Council's dire financial situation. Councillors will point to other local authorities where such arrangements exist as well as those that have closed their Centres.

Some Wembley Park power may not be restored until after 7pm

Households in the Wembley Park area  (HA9 9**) woke up (except for those who have electronic alarm clocks) to a power cut this morning which began just after 7am. There was a partial restoration just after 11am but UK Power Networks then said  some homes may not get power back until approximately 3.15pm. That has now been changed to 7pm as 'pinpointing the fault location is taking longer than anticipated'.

To get text updates text Power and your mobile number to 80876.

The fault is in an underground cable which seems to be a repeat of previous power cuts in the area. UK Power by mid-morning reported that the cable repair is 'more complex than we first anticiapted'.

UK Power ask customers to call them on 03332  022 021 if they have a vulnerable person at home and heating is off due to the power failure.

Teachers surge to the Greens as Tristram Hunt does it again

DfE: High Risk Michaela Free School will impact on Crest Academy Boys and Ark Elvin

The Department for Education has just published Impact Assessment for free schools in terms of their impact on neighbouring schools.

The full document is HERE. The assessment is for Copland before it became Ark Elvin. The Gateway Secondary Free School is also planned in the area and is recruiting pupils despite having no premises as yet.


Extract:

Michaela Community School will provide an equal chance admission to prospective applicants living within a 5 mile radius of the school through a lottery. The trust want to ensure that all local pupils have an equal chance of attending the school regardless of exactly how close to the school they live. However, it is thought that any impact on secondary schools beyond 2.5 miles from the school will be minimal and likely to be highly dispersed so the impact on individual schools is likely to be very small. The free school is therefore unlikely to affect the long term viability of any secondary school further than 2.5 miles from the free school’s site. 

Based on the assessment above, opening Michaela Community School has the potential to have a high impact on the following two secondary schools: 

Copland Community School  has a substantial surplus (99 surplus places from a capacity of 1,585). The school has a below average level of attainment and has an inadequate Ofsted rating. Given it is less than a mile from Michaela Community School, it is possible that a significant number of parents may be attracted to the new alternative provider. Lower pupil numbers would reduce the school’s income and may make it harder to secure improvements.

However, the growing level of basic need for secondary places in the area (basic need in Brent is expected to rise to a 986 place shortfall by 2018/19) makes it likely that the school will remain viable in the long term.

The Crest Boys’ Academy(sponsored by E-ACT) has a substantial surplus (78 surplus places from a capacity of 698). The school has a below average level of attainment and only has a satisfactory Ofsted rating. Given it is less than a two miles from Michaela Community School, it is possible that some may be attracted to the new alternative provider. However, this may be mitigated by the appeal of a single-sex education for boys which will be attractive for some parents. Lower pupil numbers would reduce the school’s income and may make it harder to secure improvements. However, the growing level of basic need for secondary places in the area makes it likely that the school will remain viable in the long term.

Blood on the carpet at Brent Civic Centre as senior management jobs slashed-but what about the new jobs created?

I am now able to publish the details of the senior management restructuring that Brent Council are about to consult on. The proposals are aimed at cutting £1.4m from the Council's budget.

In addition to to the posts in red, above the Head of Sports and Parks, Libraries and Heritage and Partnership and Engagement are proposed to be deleted along with the Head of Business Intelligence.

Unusually there are no authors cited on the report (which is available below) but the process will be managed by Interim Chief Executive Christina Gilbert and Human Resources Director Cara Davani.

One high profile casualty could be Fiona Ledden, Director of Legal and Procurement. Ben Spinks, Assistant Chief Executive, has only been in post a short time - since the last restructuring...

As well as the deletion of posts, new posts are to be created. Sharp-eyed insiders have pointed out that a new post of Chief Legal Officer has been ring-fenced to three Hay graded lawyers, which includes Cara Davani's partner, Andy Potts.

None of the other new posts have been ring-fenced. The two Operational Directors in Finance will have to compete for the remaining post.

The abolition of the Environment Department follows the privatisation of most of its service through the controversial  Veolia Public Realm contract.

Insiders suggest that a new job, Chief Operating Officer, at Hay 2 (the lower the number the higher the salary)will be extremely sought after - perhaps by Cara Davani herself.

Other jobs created are Operational Director (Strategic Commissioing), Head of Procurement, Operational Director (Community Services), Head of Performance and Programme Management, Chief Legal Officer (see above), Head of Partnerships and Transformation, Head of Culture, Head of Digital Services, Head of Brent Customer Services.

As readers will know one of the regular allegations made by Brent Council workers in comments on this blog  is that people are being eased out of their jobs by a variety of methods, often accompanied by gagging clauses, in order to make way for people who formerly worked at Ofsted and Tower Hamlets Council.

Some are asking if this is the most audacious move yet in that strategy.

Mahatma Gandhi House converted to flats?

Prior approval is being sought by IDM (Invest Develop Manage) East London  to convert Mahatma Gandhi House, formerly Brent Council's housing office, to flats. LINK
 

The proposal is for 83 apartments in a mix of unit sizes. The apartments will be all internal alterations to the existing building with no external alteration. 

The accommodation proposed is:

Ground floor 6 apartments

1st floor to 7^th floor  11 apartments each

Total 83 apartments with 33 off street parking spaces

There were rumours some time ago that the building had been ear-marked for the Gateway Free School but was turned down. 

Cheese defection to Labour no surprise

Barry Cheese (blue lapels) with Lib Dem comrades

I am not surprised by former Lib Dem councillor Barry Cheese's defection to Labour.

He was one of those, who also included former councillor Ann Hunter, who joined the Lib Dems in disgust at Blair's war-mongering and was impressed by the Lib Dem, and particularly Sarah Teather's opposition.

He still had many 'Old Labour' and trade unionist views and was vociferous on the closure of Central Middlesex A&E and the impact of the bedroom tax. He loudly applauded the SWP's Sarah Cox on the former and spoke out on the bedroom tax when speaking with a visiting group of Swedish councillors.

In June 2013 he surprised many by voting with Labour to give Christine Gilbert an extension as Chief Executive until after the May 2014 local elections, despite the opposition of the then Liberal Democrat leader. Paul Lorber's opposition to the extension. LINK

He was defeated in his ward in the May election and told me a few months ago he had left the Lib Dems.

I think he will find himself on the left of Brent Labour Party on many issues and I hope he will galvanise his new comrades to act on the current Human Resources scandal at Brent Council.