More questions than answers at Brent Council on school expansions and Bridge Park

I drew attention recently to the blackout on the apparent problems with some current Brent school expansion projects that the public have not been allowed to hear about. LINK

Information was withheld at the Cabinet meeting and the decision made in private session and now councillors have been told that the public will have to be excluded if the issue is raised at Full Council on January 23rd.

The issue is possibly about three current expansion projects at Byron Court Primary,  Stonebridge Primary and Elsley Primary schools. It is likely that the price agreed on the projects with contractors has not been viable and the Council is either left with having to pay out more or downgrading the designs.

The accountability issue is whether there was any fault by either side on the procurement of these works and at what financial or quality cost.

Item 9 is about decisions taken by the Leader and/or Cabinet because of their urgency before before Full Council.

Apart from the IT items clearly the Bridge Park Conditional Land Sale Agreement is important.  This involves Brent Council working with development companies registered in off-shore as covered on Wembley Matters LINK.

It is not entirely clear whether Full Council will be able to discuss this as the note above states, 'The matters before the Council are merely for reporting by the Leader of the Council.' Will the public me excluded from any discussion on this as well?

Lorraine King announces her departure from the Brent and Kilburn Times

Lorraine King

Lorraine King announced on Twitter over the weekend that she will be leaving the Brent and Kilburn Times at the end of this month:

Sad to say I'll be leaving the @bktimes on January 31 after many, many years. I'm really sad to go but as they  say onwards and upwards

Lorraine has been reporter, news editor and digital editor at the Kilburn Times and will be moving elsewhere in Archant.  Her tweet immediately drew tributes from Brent residents' associations, councillors and many  Kilburn Times readers.

Fans will still be able to hear her DJing on Colourful Radio on Saturday mornings. http://www.colourfulradio.com/

Lorraine's strength as a reporter and editor is that she is a Brent local with strong roots in the community and cares deeply about  what goes on in the area.

There have been times when her passion to fight for the community through campaigning articles has not made her popular with the local council (of whatever political hue) but the role of a local newspaper is to help hold politicians to account and that she did well.

These are difficult times for local newspapers and Archant is going through a second round of  restructuring and has reduced reporting staff with more pooled stories and a move towards 'digital first'.  The Brent and Kilburn Times has become thinner and distribution is sometimes patchy but I believe that it is essential that it survives for the sake of local democracy and part of the glue that holds a community together.

Here are some memorable front pages fom the Kilburn Times:

PS Lorraine, I resisted mentioning the shoes.

Oliver Goldsmith will be open as usual tomorrow

The replacement part (from Twitter)

Oliver Goldsmith Primary School, Kingsbury, has announced that it will be open as usual tomorrow, Monday  January 16th, following a repair to its boiler.

The school had to close on Friday 13th when the boiler broke down and the school was without heating or hot water.

Congratulations to all concerned for a speedy repair.

Cllr Miller sets out Brent Council's gang strategy ahead of Tuesday's meeting

Ahead of Tuesday's 'It's time to talk about gangs' at the Roundwood Centre (5.30-8.30pm) LINK I though it worth blogging this question and response on gangs from the next Council Meeting agenda LINK:

Question from Cllr J Mitchell Murray to Cllr Miller, Lead Member for Stronger Communities:

Can the Cabinet Member explain: what is being done in Brent to protect children and young people from being drawn into or exploited by gangs; what we are doing to better understand what draws young people towards gangs; what can be done to help those who want to escape; and, what more we can do to pursue, catch and prosecute those who are wilfully engaged in gang-related crime? 

Response: 

Based on the Metropolitan Polices gangs matrix there are currently 21 gangs in Brent. Gangs and gang related offending continues to remain a concern and a priority for Brent, with links between Child Sexual Exploitation and County Lines emerging. There are estimated to be over 1,000 individuals involved with gang criminality in Brent, whilst the current Metropolitan Police Gangs matrix for Brent has 282 identified gang members. The Brent gangs’ cohort is over 90% male, 80% black, and has an average age of 24 years old. The long standing gang issues in Brent have created a cohort which is older than most London boroughs. Currently only 6% of the cohort are 17 years old or under, compared to the London average of 20%. 

The current rise in knife injury victims (under 25 year’s old - non domestic abuse), with 16 year old victims and 23 year old victims overrepresented, suggests gangs are a continuing issue in Brent’s youth population. The figures contradict the below average number of youths on the gangs matrix. Multi agency Work is currently being developed to better identify our youth gang associates, including our enhanced partnership intelligence meetings and focused deterrence forums. Police operations continue to enforce ongoing gang activity, with Dedicated Ward Officers still very much having focus on any gang hotspot areas and targeted intelligence gathering to aid enforcement. Other partners also feed into this intelligence gathering exercise. 

Such partnership interventions are coordinated by the council Community Protection service, to focus on certain gang hotspot areas, as well as certain gang associates including Young People on the fringes of gang activity in terms of preventative and deterrent interventions; as well as any possible links to child exploitation. All partnership interventions link in with missing and child sexual exploitation panels to ensure all intelligence links to create a clear valid picture of the issues we face. 

Unfortunately there has not been the same amount of resources made available across London to aid this prevention work as previous years have seen, therefore the partnership have been working with what resources they have to make the biggest difference possible. Our focused work is largely set by progressive analytical capabilities through detailed analytical work to ensure wider focused work, via our Focused Gang Deterrent Group meetings and the fortnightly partnership gang intelligence meetings. All partners feed into this analysis, including Police, children’s services, Youth offending, family solutions, specialist CSE workers and voluntary sector organisations. 

The community protection service commission external voluntary sector organisations to complete gang mentoring schemes, and many referrals for this mentoring come from Brent Social workers, Police Safer School Officers and other education placements. We advocate, through our partnership forums, that information sharing is key to help prevent gang recruitment, as well as ensuring we make an offer of support and exit options for anyone wishing to exit gang life. We have also utilised some MOPAC grant funding to fund a specialist gang mentor within the Youth Offending Service to offer more immediate focused support for those young people a little more entrenched in offending and gang life. In the first six months of 2015/16, 31 young people assessed as being significantly less gang affected after engaging with this specific intervention. 

Other interventions which we offer to young people identified as having possible gang affiliation include mentoring through sports interventions and music programmes, all of which are commissioned by the council with resources available. The Safer Neighbourhood Board have also commissioned some specific mentoring and education programmes to aid better awareness of gang issues in Brent for individuals in our PRUs. Police are key to these interventions and forums and information sharing between all statutory and non-statutory partners to ensure focused intervention takes place for any young person identified or refereed. 

Moving forward, we know that we need to continue our focused work, and especially more so on identifying young people associated with gang activity. Current partnership structures will aid this and although we don’t currently have a deployable resource available for emergency cases or enough resource to tackle the current scale of the issue we fact, thankfully the MOPAC London Crime Prevention Fund reallocated funds for Brent 2017-2019 projects, which resulted in a slight uplift of allocated funds. In December 2016 we put a proposal forward requesting to utilise some of these additional funds to help us better respond to our gang issue in Brent. 

The proposal included two gang mentors, one mentor will be a specialist young person’s mentor. Each mentor will support 20-30 gang affected people in Brent through targeted referral routes, as well as linking in with the wider partnership offender management programme proposed which will commission further sports mentoring and housing support. A third gang mentor will also be located within the Civic Centre with specialist onsite support for Youth Offending Service, Children’s Social Care including Early Help. As part of this new approach, we hope these posts will better align itself with those teams supporting Brent’s wider gang nominals, and work across all age groups in order to secure the best possible outcomes for young people. The programme will also provide a minimum of five education projects throughout the year in targeted schools, totalling to 10 as well as look to provide peer training for those who have engaged significantly. 

Aims for the new proposed programmes include:

1. Target number of referrals per quarter (specific number set for each programme). 2. 70% of those referrals that engaged will take positive action to address primary pathway/need.
3. 15% reduction in re-offending committed by the cohort in 6 months following engagement with programme, in comparison to offending rate 6 months prior to the programme.
4. 70% of those referrals that engaged will significantly be less gang affected (Gang programmes)
5. 70% Improved understanding and awareness of the impact of gangs and gang offending (education sessions). 

We also see the huge importance of involving our communities to help tackle these community based issues facing our young people of Brent. Last year we had a community led conference to ensure we involved as many partners from all sectors, as well as community members, as possible. We have seen however that community members including young people are sometimes reluctant to come forward and speak out against gangs. 

We have scheduled a further community event with our Partnership colleagues in January 2017  Janiary 17th Roundwood Centre) as a follow up platform, namely the ‘It’s Time to Talk about Gangs’ event. The event will take the form of 'Question Time' where all members of Brent's community are invited to come along and take part in a panel discussion followed by workshops to develop real, community-led solutions to the issues raised. 

Brent Youth Offending Service (YOS) also provides a range of specific support and interventions which I have provided some examples of below: 

• The Youth Support Programme is a Brent Youth Offending Service intervention programme that works with gang affected young people. Since its establishment in 2013 the 1.0 FTE Youth Support Worker has supported young people to exit gangs, develop greater empathy, access mentoring provision and diversionary activities, and obtain formally accredited achievements. Twenty one gang affected young people were referred to the programme from the Youth Offending Service, and a further 15 accessed services from multi-agency panels and the community between July and September 2016. In the first six months of 2015/16, 31 young people were assessed as being significantly less gang affected.
• Young people subject to court orders supervised by the YOS, who have been assessed using the YOS statutory Asset Plus assessment as being at risk of gang affectedness, are offered support and advice during supervision sessions, and are where appropriate required to attend interventions that will help them to desist from gang related activities. This includes attending the YOS delivered Weapons Awareness group work programme.
• Young people are also referred to other statutory and community services including Family Solutions, Plias mentoring, business mentoring, Safer London Pan London Gangs Provision, and the St. Giles Trust.
• As a regular contributor, Brent YOS shares and acts upon information gathered at the Brent Gangs Intelligence Hub. This includes the provision of information such as Court Order details and conditions, compliance, and gang associations.

Call for independent review of Brent planning decisions after 'damning' PcW report

Following on the revelations of 'fraud and errors risks'  in Brent Council Planning Department's processes LINK the Brent Conservative Group have submitted a motion calling for an independent review of planning application decisions made in the Price Waterhouse Cooper's report period:

PLANNING SHAMBLES 

“This Council notes the damning report by Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) into the workings of the Brent planning department......the report highlighted:

1. "Significant weaknesses in the planning application review and assessment process."
   
2. "The Council may not be able to demonstrate that it has taken steps to prevent bribery resulting in non- compliance with the Bribery Act 2010."
   
3. "Anti - bribery awareness training has not been provided to planning staff."
   
4. "Audit trail is susceptible to manipulation .This could result in planning applications being approved inappropriately due to fraud or error."
   
5. "No code of conduct for officers. No requirement for officers to make formal declaration of interest."
   

PWC concluded that it could only give the Brent planning service "limited assurance." 

This Council believes that only "limited assurance” is simply unacceptable, and believes that it is essential that all our residents have confidence in the integrity of the planning process. 

In the light of the PWC report, this Council instructs the Chief Executive to initiate an independent review into planning applications submitted in the report period - 01/01/16 to 31/07/16 - and to report back to Full Council with the results of her findings.”

The motion will be heard at the Full Council meeting at Brent Civic Centre on January 23rd LINK

Join conservation work at the Welsh Harp on January 22nd

Friends of Welsh Harp support the activities of the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre where  you will learn how to manage the habitats in the area. Almost all of the activities we do focus on improving the natural habitat of the 5 acre woodland for biodiversity, or make sure the outdoor space  is safe for the 30 plus schools Thames21 works with in the area.

All welcome. Under 16’s need to be accompanied by a responsible adult.   Please bring a packed lunch. Tea and Coffee will be provided.  Exact Meeting location will be at the education centre.

The paragraph immediately below describes one of the previous activities. The exact activity of the day will be selected and emailed out to everyone on the mailing list the week leading up to the event.

We are going to be continuing forming glades as we did during the first successful event. Thank you to all of those who made that event a success! A glade is an open area within a woodland. A lot of the glades around the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre are choked with Ivy, as a consequence, biodiversity is not as high as it could be at ground level within the woodland.

Since July 2016 volunteers have:

1.       Formed glades around the woodland area removing ivy to make way for grassland. This increases biodiversity dramatically;
2.       Created educational circles in the woodland  for the schools using the Education Centre;
3.       Cutting back vegetation along the main road creating a path off the road so children don’t have to walk on the road;
4.       Maintaining the ponds so grass species do not take over where the water should be;
5.       Removing small trees from the wild meadow so the wild meadow habitat, which we don’t have much of at the environmental centre, is not reduced.

If you are not on the mailing list and you wish to be, please email billy.coburn@thames21.org.uk to know exactly what we are going to be doing on the day.

Greens to stand in Copeland on an anti-nuclear and anti-poverty platform

After the controversy over the Green Party's decision not to stand in the Richmond Park by-election there has been an ongoing debate in the party about the pros and cons of a progressive alliance. Local parties are autonomous and it is their decision on whether to stand a candidate.

The Green Party will contest the Copeland by-election on an anti-nuclear and anti-poverty campaign.

Members of Allerdale and Copeland Green Party made the decision to stand last night (January 12th) at the local party’s AGM and a candidate will be selected on January 24th.

Clare Brown, chair of Allerdale and Copeland Greens, said:

We feel it’s vitally important to offer a vote to those people who want to see a fair and sustainable future for the area.
 

There are clear differences between us and the other parties and we welcome this opportunity to campaign on our priorities, which include sustainable energy and standing against nuclear power, as well as anti-poverty measures and exposing the lie of austerity.

With Labour looking set to select a pro-nuclear candidate the Greens will campaign for clean power in Copeland.

Jonathan Bartley, co-leader of the Green Party, said:

The Greens are the only party in Copeland campaigning against nuclear power, to defend the NHS and for a close relationship with Europe.

Voting Green is a vote for a renewable energy revolution which would create thousands of jobs in Copeland.

Allerdale and Copeland Greens are dedicated to ending poverty and inequality in their local community and creating a fairer society by putting forward the bold policies we so desperately need.

Brent CCG takes another step towards endorsing STP this afternoon after Brent Council gives its approval to strategy

Brent Clinical Commissioning Group is set to move forward on the the controversial Sustainability and Transformation Plan this afternoon at a meeting starting at 2pm at the Chaplin Road Centre.

The public can attend. Tickets HERE

The Governing Body will receive this statement from the Brent Health and Wellbeing Board:

Statement from the Brent Health and Wellbeing Board

The Brent Health and Wellbeing Board supports the priorities set out in Brent CCG’s Commissioning Intentions 2016/17 especially their linkages with the Sustainability and Transformation Plan and their ability to address the real health needs of Brent residents. The Board will support the CCG in ensuring the delivery of these priorities results in high standards of care and enhanced access and that integrated care offers the best possible outcomes for Brent. 

Cllr Krupesh Hirani, Chair of Brent Health and Wellbeing Board

Meanwile, perhaps rather late in the day, Brent Central Constituency Labour Party is holding the following meeting:

The Future of Local NHS Services

Dear Brent Central Labour Party member,

Happy new Year!

You are invited to attend our first Brent Central Labour Party General Committee meeting of 2017.

All members are encouraged to attend, although only delegates to the General Committee will be entitled to vote. 

Date:   Thursday 19th January
Time:   7.30 - 9.30pm
Venue: Christchurch Nursery, St Albans Road, Harlesden NW10 8UG