The livestream of Dawn Butler's meeting on the Article 50 debate did not work well but a recording is available on her Facebook site. (Note the camera falls down at one point but is restored and the recording fragments a little at the end).
WEMBLEY MATTERS News and views on local politics, the environment, climate change, culture and local history
Wednesday, 1 February 2017
Support builds for Indro Sen in CNWL dispute
The London Region of the UCU passed a motion of Indro Sen and the CNWL union branch at their meeting on Saturday. Indro Sen, UCU representative, is currently suspended by the College of North west London. A meeting to express solidarity will be held at Willesden Library at 6pm on February 24th with an open invitationto students, parents, trade unionists and community activists.
The resolution states:
Motion
to Support Sen and CNWL UCU – 28.1.17
London
Region sends it solidarity to Sen and the Branch in their campaign against
victimisation.
The
LR resolves to:
1)
Support the next strike day and join Sen and his colleagues on the picket
lines
2) Encourage
branches to support a day of action in support of Sen on the next day of strike
action. Eg taking solidarity selfies.
3)
Encourage members to attend the public meeting on 24 February in support of
Sen.
4)
Request that Sen’s campaign is publicised through UCU's national networks
including Campaign news.
Spurs planning application for Wembley Stadium now open for comments
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| Click on image to enlarge |
I was interested in the fact (see image above) that no local residents in the neighbourhood, nor residents' associations or other organisations, schools etc have been directly written to with a 'unique letter' about the plans. Consultation with them seems to be limited to a presentation at Wembley Connects, a poorly advertised and attended event at Chalkhill Community Centre on Monday, and an advertisement in the Kilburn Times.
The proposal in summary is:
Spurs set out their responses to concerns about the application in their 'Statement of Community Engagement' which addresses issues such as urinating in public, obscene and racist chants, congestion, pay back for residents. I have embedded it below for ease of reference. In particular see pages 5-9. The current 'standard' expiry date for consultation is February 23rd 2017.[Previously] the number of major sporting events held at the stadium in any one year was restricted to no more than 22 (to exclude European Cup and World Cup events where England/UK is the host nation), and the number of major non-sporting events to 15. After this, additional events over and above this were permitted subject to the number of spectators being limited to the capacity of the lower and middle tiers of the stadium.The proposal would allow for up to an additional 31 major sporting Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (THFC) events between 1 August 2017 and 31 July 2018. A major event (which may or may not include THFC) would be considered to be an event in the stadium bowl with a capacity in excess of 10,000 people.
There is an ongoing discussion about the application on the Streetlife website LINK
NHS Crisis Tracker informs you about health crisis in your area
38 Degrees has launched the NHS Crisis Tracker which shows by postcode the extent of the crisis in a particular area. It includes the percentage of people waiting for more than 4 hors for treatment at A&E, the local funding gap and personal experiences of the NHS in the area.
It is simple to use - just put in your postcode HERE
Tuesday, 31 January 2017
Duffy back on the attack over Kingdom contracts procurement
In a circular to fellow councillors Cllr John Duffy has raised further concerns over the awarding to Kingdom of Brent Council's fixed penalty notice littering contract and additional ones after the company was awarded a BHP security contract LINK.
He wrote:
He wrote:
Following on from the council meeting and my new role
as a member of the Scrutiny committee.I have further reviewed the Kingdom
Securities (KS) figures from 16 June 2016- 26 Jan 2007.The figures (see bottom
of the page) show that the council have received £227k in Fixed Penalty
notices (FPN). We have paid Kingdom Securities £201K leaving us with £26k to
paid all the on costs. It's likely after all on costs we will have less that
10k to invest in much needed environmental improvements, while KS have walked
away with over £100k profit.
Within that £201k we have already written off 388 FPNs
at a cost £18K .These 388 FPNs were written-off by the council because they
were not either legally issued or the person who dropped the fag-but gave a
wrong (Mickey Mouse ) name. However under the scheme introduced by Cllr
Southwood and the cabinet the council still has to pay £46 for every
Mickey Mouse ticket.
The figures will change the more people who will pay
and we have some awaiting court and no doubt we write off more tickets given to
Mr Mickey Mouse,but that is the position today. The issue is how was this
scheme allowed without either allowing a VFM assessment or an in-house bid.
This to me is a typical way that some companies have
in the past hoovered up local government contracts. When I was a senior officer,
companies would approach me all the time with schemes they wanted to by-pass
any legislation or Value For Money (VFM) comparisons. They did not want to
prove VFM or get involved in any competitive process. They would try and
persuade naive politicians that they should be given the contract without
looking at the service needs. In Brent there was never a great service need for
fag-butts fines , what we needed was a well trained mobile enforcement
team, dealing with dumped bags, fly-tips, paan spitting and other environmental
problems.
What really worries me is not the hundreds of
thousands of pounds of environmental investment the lead member and the cabinet
gave away.
What worries me is the fact that KS have just won a
service contract for BHP, if this contract was awarded on the piggy back of the
FPN contract which itself was awarded to them without any proper VFM assessment
or competition that is a concern. If that contract has officers from the
environment supporting their bid as a VFM bid and if there is a link I would
also be very concerned. However the main issue is that the Scrutiny Committee call
this report in to see if it's value for money and I understand from the
chair of scrutiny that meeting will take place in March, if environment
officers have given the green light to KS before the Scrutiny Committee, we as
Councillors are all wasting our time.
I believe there needs to be an investigation into how
the original contract was developed and if there has there been any link between both
the FPN and BHP contracts and ensure the council followed all the proper
guidelines to achieved VFM for the residents of Brent.
Below are the present figs for the FPN contract.
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