'Shunned' Duffy: Labour will be haunted by cemetery asbestos issue

In a comment on this blog LINK last night Cllr John Duffy, said:

I have been, blacklisted, deselected, resigned and shunned by the some Labour Party members. However the issue of the asbestos in Paddington cemetery and how they treated the workforce will not go away and will haunt the Labour Party.

Quintain foresaw Carillion collapse last summer

On January 15th LINK I reported that Quintain had confirmed that Carillion were not active in its Wembley Park development and that the company had decided in September not to go ahead and award them the South West Lands contract which would have been worth £130m.

I remarked that Quintain  

--> appear to have been more canny than the government following Carillion's  profit warnings in July 2017. This has now been confirmed by Quintain's executive director of construction, Max Voyce, in a statement to Construction News LINK:
-->

Quintain take the financial strength of our contractors and wider supply chain very seriously and during negotiations for a build-to-rent development at Wembley Park, Carillion issued their first profit warning.

We were concerned that the level of loss declared, along with the huge pension deficit, would seriously impact Carillion’s ability to continue to trade and garner the support of the supply chain, increasing the likelihood that our cost and programme objectives would not be met.

We therefore took the view that we would not proceed into contract upon the completion of Carillion’s precontract commission and commenced discussions with McAleer & Rushe, whom we have now successfully contracted with.

Patients' Forum (London Ambulance Service) submits formal complaint to Brent CCG over withheld performance data

The Patients' Forum for the London Ambulance Service has submitted a formal complaint to Brent Clinical Commissioning Group over an alleged breach of its statutory duties.

The complaint claims that both the CCG and London Ambulance Service has stopped sending the Patients' Forum performance data since August 2017 and that their excuse that the data is 'unvalidated' and therefore not available is not reasonable and in breach of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

The CCG is thus failing in its statutory duty  to ensure public involvement and consultation in commissioning processes and decisions. (NHS Act 2006 S.14Z2)

Further the Patients' Forum claims that it received no documents for the Clinical Quality Review Group (CQRG) meeting in December 2017 and no papers or notification for the CQRG January 2018 meeting.

Anti-academisation strike action at The Village Special School escalates as Labour Chair of Governors refuses to half process while alternatives are investigated

Last week's picket line

Staff at The Village  Special School, Kingsbury will strike again on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of next week over plans, led by Brent Labour whip, Cllr Sandra Kabir, who is the school's Chair of Governors, to academise the school.

Over 100 staff staged another 2 days strike on 16^th and 17^th January and the school was closed to all pupils. The strikers said that they would have called off their strike if Cllr Kabir had agreed to halt the process for just 2 months while alternative models of partnership could be investigated with Brent Council. However the Chair has not agreed to what the strikers called a very reasonable request.

Lesley Gouldbourne (Joint Secretary of the National Education Union) said that Brent Council had expressed its opposition to the academisation of Brent schools and that The Leader of the Council Cllr Butt had said that he wanted The Village “to remain in the family of Brent Schools.” He has agreed to put his view to staff, parents and Governors.

There is a consultation meeting at the school tonight for parents and staff. It is not open to the public. 

Some parents have expressed their opposition to academisation and were on the picket line. They have started a Facebook group HERE .

The National Education Union National President Louise Regan attended last week's picket  and said that the fight against academies was a national priority for the National Education Union. 

Kevin Courtney, the national NEU Joint Secretary, also attended and said that in academies local accountability vanishes. Governing Bodies are replaced with Trustees with no staff, parent or local council representation. “Public voices are silenced and private voices get louder” he said.

Cllr Kabir has circulated her Labour colleagues with the arguments for academisation in the face of opposition from both Brent Central and Brent North Constituency Labour Parties and national Labour Party opposition to academisation.

Please make your views known regarding the Governing Body's proposal on academisation (Consultation closes February 9th) by filling in the questionaire HERE or emailing matconsultation@tvs.brent.sch.uk

NOTE: Green Party policy opposes academisation and free schools seeing them as a form of privatisation that removes democratic accountability of schools, worsens staff conditions of service, and enables schools to employ unqualified teachers. Greens favour the integration of academies and free schools into the local authority system with improved accountability and financing.

New report: Urgent action required to tackle London’s dangerous air quality

From the Institution of Mechanical Engineering
 

London’s nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels similar to Shanghai and Beijing

 

Dangerous levels of pollution in the capital are identified in a new report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, which calls for urgent action to prevent illness and death.

With NOx levels at Paddington station in breach of European limits regarding NO2 for outdoor air quality, the report calls on Government to work with Network Rail to deliver the complete electrification of the main rail lines between Britain’s principal cities and ports and in major urban rail networks. Currently up to 70% of trains passing through the station are powered by diesel engines that are exempt from regulations for modern diesel trains.

Other pollution hot spots include the Bakerloo and Victoria lines, which have the highest levels of airborne respirable dust levels. But currently the impact and level of poor air quality is not well understood, and the report calls for the introduction of a coherent national scheme to monitor emissions from different modes of transport so that informed targets can be set. 

London’s commuters are most at risk during the morning rush hour, with the concentration of pollutants 13% - 43% higher than during afternoon or evening peaks. Another of the report’s recommendations is that incentives should be introduced to encourage freight deliveries outside of peak hours.

Philippa Oldham, lead author of the report and Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, said:

“London is currently ranked as 15^th out of 36 major global cities in terms of overall air quality, lagging behind other European cities such as Berlin and Vienna. The capital needs to prioritise this issue and create a modern Clean Air Act that takes a holistic approach; it must not just target individual sectors, but encourage everyone to play a role in reducing emissions.”

The A breath of fresh air: new solutions to reducetransport emissions report recommends that Government and industry work together to:

1.     Introduce a national monitoring system, across the different types of transport, recording all types of pollution, to create a coherent picture against which national targets can be set.

2.     Develop incentives for cleaner technologies and encourage the phase-out of legacy vehicles with poor emissions record across the network (for example diesel cars and trains).

3.     Consider incentivising freight and logistic operators to make deliveries outside peak hours.

4.     Conduct a series of trials on existing diesel railway rolling stock, new bi-mode trains and in major stations, to understand the level and effect of exposure to pollutants has on commuters and railway workers.

5.     Conduct a series of trials to understand the impact on the individual of exposure to pollutants in overground and underground railway stations, ports, airports and bus stations.

6.     Create a positive and dynamic campaign that informs the public of the health benefits of switching to lower-emission modes of transport.

7.     Government to work with Network Rail to deliver the complete electrification of the main rail lines between Britain’s principal cities and ports and in major urban rail networks.

8.     Fund research through the Clean Air Fund and Innovate UK to create programmes to clean up various transport modes.

Free Community English Classes in Brent

Big Garden Birdwatch - a Kingsbury garden perspective

Guest post from a Kingsbury resident
 

If, like me, you are lucky enough to have a garden, one of the pleasures of life is to watch the birds that come to enjoy it with you. Next weekend, Saturday 27^th and Sunday 28^th January, sees the RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch LINK . On a good year, I can see 8 to 10 different species of birds in my garden in the course of an hour, but if the weather is bad, perhaps only 3 or 4. 

There are some birds which we only see a few times each year. Our garden backs on to the Jubilee Line, and most of our occasional visitors fly in from the railway bank. I suspect that many of them live in Fryent Country Park, which shows the great value of this local nature reserve, and of the wildlife corridors which link it to gardens in the residential areas of Brent.

Yesterday our garden was visited by a Green Woodpecker, which stayed for over 15 minutes and allowed me to take some photographs. I have put three of these together, to illustrate its interesting feeding behaviour:

Although it nests in holes in trees, the Green Woodpecker uses its long beak mainly for eating its favourite food, ants. It can sense where there is an ants’ nest under the ground, then pecks to make a funnel-shaped hole directly above the nest. It seems to know that the ants prefer a site beside our garden path, so that they can easily excavate safe chambers for their eggs out of the sand that the paving blocks rest on. 

Once it has made the hole, the woodpecker puts its beak down, and flicks out its tongue to gather ants. Then it throws back its head, while pulling in its tongue, so that the ants go straight into its throat. It does this a few times, then hops a short distance before making another hole, or looking for another nest to harvest.

It will often be two or three months before we see a Green Woodpecker in our garden again, so the chances are that it will not appear in our Big Garden Birdwatch results. The bird seems to know that it must give the ants’ nests it has raided time to recover before visiting them again, a sensible and sustainable approach to managing its food resources. As well as being a beautiful bird, this woodpecker certainly has “Green” credentials!

Cllr Duffy resigns from Brent Labour Group in protest over asbestos issue

Cllr Duffy's new seating position between Tory front bench and Cllr Carr

Cllr Duffy (Kilburn) resigned from Brent Labour Group  at the beginning of tonight's Full Council Meeting over the lack of support from the Group over the Paddington Cemetery asbestos issue (covered below).

Despite support for Duffy from Cllr John Warren (Conservative Group leader) the Mayor refused to allow discussion of the issue.

Cllr Tom Miller, a member of the Labour Group, tweeted:  'Frustrating at #BrentLive to have people trying to wedge in serious issue of asbestos without sorting out an agenda item or using the correct process generally. Gah.'

Later in the evening the Chair of the Audit Committee appeared to believe that a lengthy private discussion of a report on the asbestos dump and the participation of two independent members of the committee, made an independent inquiry unnecessary as they were satisfied  with the officer's report.