Butchery at the Civic Centre as Labour closes playground and approves £54m cuts

Demonstrators held these signs up at the meeting

No 'rebellion' emerged at tonight's meetiong of Full Council and the cuts were voted through by the Labour majority.

I spoke to Stonebridge Adventure Playground before the meeting and they told me that they would not be attending. They had thrown themselves into a campaign gaining massive support from the community that they have served for almost 40 years, had been lied about by Cllr Margaret McLellan and had passionately put their case to the Cabinet last Monday.

They said that attending tonight would have been like going to their own execution.

They were right.

Now they have to make staff redundant and break the news to the children.

There was a demonstration outside the Civic Centre before the meeting protesting both at the Coalition's cuts and Brent Council's implementation of them.

The only real sign of revolt came from Cllr John Duffy who initially protested at the lack of democracy in the allocation of time to councillors in the debate. The administration and opposition leaders got 15 minutes and back benchers only 3 minutes.  He said this was not enough to deal with the complex issues involved in the budget.

Labour leader Muhammed Butt and his Deputy Michael Pavey basically made the same 'dented shield' speeches they had made at Cabinet. Butt said his heart was with the demonstrators outside but they council had to obey the law. Pavey said that he respected those Labour members who wanted a rise in Council Tax and this might be something to consider next year.

Conservatives proposed a Council Tax reduction of 2.5% but at the same time wanted to save Stonebridge Playground. Labour challenged their 'sums' which seemed to be based on raiding the reserves. It was hard for me to judge as the detailed Conservative budget was not available to the public. Public scrutiny is meaningless in such circumstances. Cllr Warren said that the budget consultation was more about scaring the people of Brent than really getting their views.

Cllr Nerva (Labour) quoted the Conservative leader of Buckinghamshire County Council who had said that there was no more room for deeper cuts without damaging services and claimed, 'we can;t go on cutting year after year. We face difficult decisions about how to protect Brent residents.'

One 'difficult decision' may be to raise Council Tax. Cllr John Duffy claimed that his Labour colleagues  were making  £2m more cuts than Eric Pickles required. He was referring to the £1.7m that would be yielded over 2 years by a 1.99% rise in Council Tax which would have saved some of the services being cut tonight including the Adventure Playground, Energy Resources and the Welsh Harp. He said that the Council had lied to local people by claiming that the consultation would make a difference.

On Stonebridge Cllr Duffy said that the Council was behaving like a bad landlord by mixing funding cuts up with development proposals, throwing the Playground out of its site to make way for housing.

However Duffy, to the disappointment of the public gallery, then said that nonetheless he was staying with Labour and would 'fight from inside the tent'.

Veteran Councillor Janice Long (Labour) warned that the Council's Scrutiny was inadequate. Backbenchers hadn't known when the meetings were and had no access to the papers.  She said, 'If we don't scrutinise properly the cuts will go wrong and we'll end up having to cut even more.'

Certainly the report the chair of Scrutiny presented was a mere echo of what the leader and deputy leader had said.

She called on the Council to set an example by making councillors pay to park at the Civic Centre and ending the provision of food at meetings.

This all seemed small beer compared with  the cuts that were then voted through by the Labour group as demonstrators staged a silent protest holding up the 'Only Butchers Make Cuts' posters.

Muhammed Butt, who had been barracked through by former Labour Councillor Graham Durham for doing the Coalition's dirty work and putting vulnerable children at risk, finished by listing all the services that had been 'saved' some of which will be farmed out to the voluntary sector.

Certainly his claim that the council had 'listened't o residents and was protecting the vulnerable  rang hollow when they had ignored 3,000 people who had signed the petition to save Stonebridge Adventure Playground.

He did not mention that the original list of cuts put out to consultation amounted to £60m over two years and that actually 'only' a  £54m  cutwas required. As mentioned on this biog before, there was always £6m to play for that could then be used as PR to give the impression that the Council had listened and thus put a gloss on the massive £54m cuts that had actually been made.

On the Stonebridge Adventure Playground Facebook Page, Glynis Lee posted the following message tonight:

At tonight's Council meeting Brent (Labour) voted NOT to save Stonebridge Adventure Playground...they all turned their backs on Bridge.....and will go ahead and sell the land to property developers, and give even more to Stonebridge school.....

So we must close at the end of this month.

So very sorry...we fought hard and long, and had tremendous support especially from the local paper and from the local community. I don't think we could have done any more.
We nearly made 40 years and thats an achievement in itself...

Opposition amendments for tonight's Brent Full Council Meeting

A Council with a huge majority needs an opposition, even if it a Tory one. Tonight the Brondesbury Park Tories will move a budget amendment which would reduce the Council Tax by 2.5% and that they claim would also protect front-line services.

Further details of how they think they would achieve this should be available at Full Council.

They are also tabling an amendment to Item 8 on Pay Policy:

Key Strategic  Aims of HR Strategy for 2015/2019.......

To add  "adopting a zero  tolerance approach to bullying, intimidation and harrassment of staff by fellow staff members."

In addition Cllr John Warren has submitted the following to the Mayor:

 Mr.Mayor, 

              I have been approached by Brent residents who are unable to make a deputation
tonight, as that is not an agenda item.

        The urgent business is as follows......" To allow the Leader of the Council the opportunity to reply to two urgent questions raised by the recent high profile Industrial* Tribunal case....

1.How can staff have confidence in the latest round of job cuts when it is presided over by senior officers responsible for staff victimisation,racial discrimination and failing to follow the Council's HR procedures......as per.the same Industrial Tribunal judgement?

2.Why is Cllr.Butt still " protecting " the officers in this case? "

 *Should be Employment Tribunal (MF)

Withdrawn Labour Kenton by-election leaflet contained racist slur

From Kilburn Times website

The Kilburn Times LINK is now covering the story about the row between Tories and Labour in the Kenton by-election which I alerted readers to yesterday LINK.

The leaflet purported to contain a copy of a survey filled in by Michael Maurice the Conservative candidate.

It is clear from the leaflet above that as well as the claim that the candidate himself would not be voting Conservative that the leaflet attributed racist views to the candidate including the claim that the Coalition's immigration failure was 'rapidly leading the United Kingdom towards inevitable Armageddon and ultimate destruction.'

An independent handwriting expert employed by Michael Maurice proved it was not the candidate's handwriting and he is reported to be taking up the matter with the police.

Cllr Reg Colwill, Maurice's election agent,  warned that in the event of a close result the Conservatives would call for a re-election.

Protest against Brent budget cuts Monday 6.30pm Brent Civic Centre

Brent Fightback will be demonstrating outside the Civic Centre on Monday at 6.30pm as councillors prepare to vote on a budget that will see the closure of the Stonebridge Adventure Playground, the beginning of the likely end of Energy Solutions, the closure of the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre (unless Careys come up with the goods) and the shifting of the cost of school crossing patrols from the Council to individual schools (if the schools agree to spend their money on them).

Last weekend Brent Fightback presented an invoice to the Liberal Democrat and Conservative offices in Brent for the money taken from Brent Council since the Coalition took office.

Kenton Tories force Labour to withdraw 'nasty leaflet' 'full of lies'

I met Cllr Reg Colwill while out campaigning in the Kenton by-election earlier today. He claimed that Labour had been forced to apologise for, and withdraw, a leaflet that they had put out attacking the Conservative Candidate Michael Maurice. The Tories alleged the 'nasty' leaflet was 'full of lies' about their candidate.

According to Colwill, Labour are printing an apology that the Tories will distribute.

Since being recognised as the official opposition by Labour the Kenton Conservatives have been quiescent in contrast to their Brondesbury Park Conservative counterparts.

The spat may change this.

The other candidates in the Kenton By-election, where voting takes place on Thursday, are:

Michaela Lichten GREEN
Vincent Lo LABOUR
Bob Wharton LIBERAL DEMOCRAT

Brent Labour slams down the shutters over Council Tax debate

My grandad, brought up in the Victorian era, had a rich collection of' 'naughty' sayings and rhymes.   Apparently innocuous when said slowly, they were rude when spoken quickly. He delighted in encouraging his grandchildren to utter them at speed and would then gleefully accuse us of swearing.

One was 'I chased a bug around the room, I'll have his blood, he knows I will.'

Another, which came to mind today after I heard about last night's meeting of the Brent Labour Group, was:

'She shuts the shutters and sits in the shop.'

Well the shutters have come down on last night's meeting as the hunt for the leakers intensifies and I expect some councillors have been accused of s*itting in the shop!

The meeting was called at short notice to discuss the controversial issue of the possibility of a Council Tax increase before Monday's Full Meeting of the Council.

Cllr John Duffy had challenged the decision of Michael Pavey and Muhammed Butt to ignore the Group's vote in favour of a council tax increase  at the previous group meeting and wrote a letter of complaint to  the Constitutional Officer of the Labour Party at this affront to democracy.

Whether the short notice group meeting was a result of a ruling by the Labour Party authorities or the Cabinet trying to head off a public revolt is not clear.

There was clearly a possibility that there would be a split when it came to voting on the Council tax rise and even the potential for an amendment to raise the tax. Elsewhere on this blog I have listed some of the services that could be saved even with the comparative small sum of £1.4m over two years. This could include Energy Solutions, School Crossing Patrols,  Stonebridge Adventure Playground and the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre.

Anyway, with a little bit of what used to be called Kremlinology in the old days of the Soviet Empire (when I worked at Reuters, TASS the Soviet Union's news agency was in the same building so I am used to interpreting nudges and cryptic silences about totalitarian regimes) I guess that a formal vote on a Council Tax rise was taken and that it reversed the previous vote in favour of a rise.

I would conjecture that this was the result of pressure from the leadership and a bigger turnout from the 56 strong group than the 30 or so who had attended the previous meeting. I also assume that the leadership offered no crumbs in return.

I could be wrong and that really the meeting was about whether to support the Lib Dem amendment to reduce Council Tax for cat owners and aroma therapists,  or the Brondesbury Park Conservative's motion to reduce  Council Tax by 2.5% to be paid for by closing the Civic Centre's Melting Pot restaurant and replacing it with a Super Casino.

All will be revealed on Monday - or, more likely - all will be concealed on Monday.

You can watch the live streaming of the meeting on Monday from 7pm HERE

Another Brent battle against forced academisation of a primary school

The impact of Coalition policies on education continues to be a major issue and I hope it will become more prominent as the General Election approaches. Fragmentation, incoherence and a lack of democratic accountability are major concerns.

The opportunistic  forced academisation of schools that get poor Ofsted reports continues depsite a lack of evidence that such a move actually helps schools improve.

In Brent this is now happening at St Andrew and St Francis Primary School.  The Teachers Panel of Brent, comprising the three main teacher unions, has issued this statement:

Teachers Panel Response to the consultation on whether St Andrew and St Francis Primary school should become an academy 

The teacher unions are against any school becoming an academy. We say it is part of the Government's plan to privatise state education just like they want to privatise the NHS. There is no evidence that turning a school into an academy improves the education of the children. The Education Parliamentary Select Committee has just published the findings of their year-long enquiry. Its Chairman, Conservative MP Graham Stuart, said, "Current evidence does not prove that academies raise standards overall or for disadvantaged children". He added that there are, “huge disparities within the academy sector and compared to other mainstream schools". This is a damning report on academies. There are also lots of issues over the financial management of academies and free schools as they are not overseen by the Local Authority. 

St Andrew and St Francis school is being forced to become an academy when there is no evidence that it will benefit the children's education. The school is already making very good progress with its action plan when it is not an academy, both the IEB and Brent Council sources have told us. The staff were given a promise that if they worked hard and improved the situation at the school then the school would not become an academy. For a Christian school to go directly against such a promise to the staff and unions find shocking. 

At the official meeting with staff and unions it became clear that the London Diocesan Board of Schools (LDBS) Academies Trust who is the proposed sponsor would continue to offer all the support they do now if the school was not an academy. Nothing basically would change if they became the sponsor except they would have financial control. So there is no benefit to the school becoming an academy. Though the staff and unions asked what the benefits were no answers could be given. It became clear that it is purely to follow what the DfE is dictating rather than for the good of the school. Even one of the members of the Interim Executive Board (IEB)  made it clear that her school had looked at whether they should become an academy and decided that they would not gain by doing so – it wasn't right for them. It is only the Government and DfE saying it is right for the school. 

Also at this meeting the IEB were informed of the increasing number of Headteachers and Governing bodies who are not allowing the DfE to dictate to their school and have managed to prevent their school becoming an academy even when they have been put in special measures. Turning a school into an academy should be decided democratically by a vote of parents as it was when schools went grant maintained not through force. The staff and unions believe that a new head should be appointed and then given a time-scale to show continued improvement before the question of whether to become an academy or not is considered. 

It became quite clear that the parents are also strongly against the school becoming an academy when Hank Roberts attended the parents meeting. The unions and staff had been banned from this meeting but the parents had asked him to come in. We would again ask why, but it is now clear that it is because there are no proper answers to the arguments being made against an academy. 

The IEB say they support parental choice so they should take account of the views of the parents at that meeting. Staff are totally against this move. Parents and staff should have a secret independently overseen ballot to properly seek their views, after they have heard arguments for and against. The unions have offered to pay for this. In this way the IEB would have the clear views of the staff and parents. If the IEB believe in democracy then they would act on this result.

A public meeting about the forced academisation will be held at St Andrew's Church, Willesden High Road on March 4th at 6.30pm
 

Disbelief as Brent Council choose Cara Davani to head up its Equalities Team!

There was disbelief today when the Kilburn Times LINK reported that Cara Davani, Head of Brent's Human resources and found by Watford Employment Tribunal to have racially discriminated against, victimised and constructively dismissed a black council worker will - wait for it - head up Brent Council's Equalities Team!

This is an insult to  Cara Davani's victim, Brent Council workers and Brent residents.

How on earth can anyone have any faith in our Council in the face of such an incredible decision?