Why we await Brent's Annual CIL Report with more than a little interest

Brent Council is required to publish an Annual Report on how it has spent the Community Infrastructure Levy each year. The report for 2017-18 noted:

To ensure that the levy is open and transparent, Brent is required to prepare a short report on the levy to be published on our website by 31 December each year, for the previous financial year. This includes the details of Neighbourhood CIL.

I have been asking Brent Council why the report for 2018-19 has not yet been published. The Council website says it is now due in mid-January 2020.

The extracts below from 2017-18 show why I am interested and why scrutiny by non-Labour councillors is so important. Have a look at the overall underspend figures and the carry forwards from 2017-18 and ask yourselves why these monies have not been spent.  If we are elected Green councillors will be asking searching questions about the figures due to be reported shortly for 2018-19.

There is a consultation currently on Neighbourhood CIL priorities. You can comment HERE 

EXTRACTS FROM 2017-18 BELOW (FULL REPORT IS HERE)

Green Party candidate calls for Labour to withdraw support from their Alperton by-election candidate over anti-Muslim views

The website Order-Order.com has today published more extracts from Tweets allegedly written by the Labour Party candidate in the Alperton by-election, Chetan Harpale,

Andrew Linnie, Green Party candidate for Alperton said:

I am shocked and disgusted by the racist, islamophobic views aired by Labour's candidate in the Alperton by-election. I think it is important, given the hostility of the language used, that Labour leader Cllr Butt not only condemns these views but withdraws support from this inappropriate candidate from the election while there's still time. Mr Harpale has no place representing anyone, let alone representing an area as culturally diverse as Alperton.

Hashi Mohamed on "What it takes to make it in modern Britain" - February 11th

An event organised by Salusbury World

Hashi Mohamed, arrived in the UK as a child refugee from Somalia at the age of 9. He was raised on benefits in Harlesden and is now a successful barrister. LINK He knows a great deal about social mobility in the UK.

In his new book, People Like Us, he looks at the many barriers to social mobility in the UK where the best indicator of what your job will be is the job of your parents, where power and privilege is concentrated in the 7% who are privately educated, where is your name sounds black or Asian you will have to send twice as many job applications as a white person.

Hashi will look at the stark statistics that reveal the depth of the problem and the failures of education, imagination and confidence that compound it.

What can be done to address this seemingly intractable problem?

Tuesday February 11th 7-9pm

Queens Park Community School
Aylestone Avenue
London
NW6 7BQ

FREE but register HERE

Harlesden Climate Action - Friday January 10th

From Love Harlesden Residents Forum Facebook Group - a very welcome move.

Amandine Alexandre-Hughes

Happy New Year!

In 2020 fighting climate change is not an option anymore.

So let's roll up our sleeves and do as much as we can here in #Harlesden to cut greenhouse gas emissions and build resilience in the community in the face of a warming planet.

Brent council has started working on a new sustainability plan that will be adopted in the spring. There is also an opportunity to get some community funding via the The National Lottery Climate Action fund.

Things are moving in the right direction at borough level

- although it's not always obvious, granted! - but we need to make sure that change goes as far as possible and as fast as possible.

I want a greener, healthier Harlesden for everyone with fewer cars, lots of solar panels, less waste and lots of community orchards and growing spaces.

The more people get involved, the more things we can achieve this year and the years following.
Are you in?

Fresh air, healthy activity and useful work at Welsh Harp Centre on January 18th

You are invited to join me for our next Friends event on:
Saturday 18th January, 10.00am – 12.30pm

Each month a great group of individuals come together to do extremely useful conservation and maintenance work around the Centre using basic gardening tools, to gain skills and meet new people. This work supports the activities of the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre including over 3000 school children that attend the Centre each year and improves the biodiversity of the woodland habitat.

What will be the tasks at the next event?

• Rehabilitating a model river teaching space
• Other tasks as they come up

What else do you need to know?

• All welcome! Young people aged 17 years and under need to be accompanied by a responsible adult, each individual child under 11 years old will need an adult with them at all times as we are using sharp tools. 
• Tasks can be adapted or alternative tasks available for all levels of involvement.
• Tea, coffee and snacks, steel toe cap wellington boots, tools and gloves are all provided. 
• Wear comfortable outdoor clothing suitable for gardening.
• Please meet inside the Education Centre.

If you would like further information about the group, please email me:
Deb Frankiewicz
welshharpcentre@thames21.org.uk.
  
The Centre is on Birchen Grove, off Blackbird Hill, NW9

The Green Party's by-election candidates are standing to end Brent Council's democratic deficit

To borrow from Shakespeare, 'There is something rotten in the state of Brent', a fact confirmed to residents and campaign groups when they encounter the reality of the Labour Council's intractability whether on the closure of Strathcona school, regeneration projects , bulk waste chargesor the cutting down of street trees.

The Council is well entrenched with a massive majority which is reinforced by a structure that centralises power in a small group of councillors in the Cabinet and General Purposes Committee. The personnel are almost identical:

CABINET

 GENERAL PURPOSES COMMITTEE

The Cabinet are all Labour and there is just one opposition member on the General Purposes Committee. Similarly there is only one Conservative member on the Planning Committee. Membership of committees reflects the proportion of seats won by the parties in the Council elections but I would argue that the Conservatives have failed to offer any rigorous challenge in their diminished role as the official opposition.

So what about some rigorous scrutiny of the Cabinet cabal's decisions by Labour backbenchers (up until the recent resignations there were 52 non-Cabinet members)? Well many have positions on various committees which attracts additional allowances and that may limit any public criticism, but those who do raise their voices find themselves at the mercy of the Labour Whip and the ire of Cllr Butt, the Labour leader.

Wembley Matters has covered Duffy's raising of issues such as asbestos in Paddington Cemetery, deficiencies in the Veolia waste contract and the Kingdom littering contract. He had the Labour whip removed and was not selected for the last Council election. LINK LINK

Cllr Zaffar van Kalwala fell out with Cllr Butt over personal issues but also over his championing of Stonebridge Adventure Playground which Butt succeeded in closing to the lasting detriment of the local community. There were allegations that Butt engineered the moving of a Full Council meeting  date to trap Kalwala via the non-attendance rules. Kalwala did not stand at the last Council election. LINK

Cllr Abdi Abdirazak fought back, without success, when Cllr Butt allegedly removed him from the Planning Committee for not voting for the planning application for a new Ark primary academy on the York House site in Wembley LINK

Cllr Sarah Marquis announced she would not stand again as  chair of Planning Committee after she had exercised her independence on several applications including voting against the Twin Towers on the Chesterfield House site and rigorously questioned planners over affordable housing. LINK
Marquis has resigned from the Council citing family reasons.

Cllr Michael Pavey eventually resigned from the Brent Cabinet saying he did not share Butt's approach to running the Council but had angered the leader over his support for a rise in Council Tax and the sanitising of his report into racism in Brent's Human Relations department. LINK LINK He has also resigned for family reasons.

Cllr Jumbo Chan currently stands out as a Labour councillor willing to question Council policy, most notably over academisation and the Strathcona closure but also more recently over street tree policy. Veteran councillor Janice Long also has her moments but has lost influence with the subsuming of what had been a separate Housing Scrutiny Committee, which she chaired, into a main Scrutiny Committee.

The two Scrutiny Committees do some useful working, particularly in task groups, but are handicapped when it comes to Cabinet decisions. They have the power to call-in such decisions and can make recommendations but these go back to the Cabinet which decides whether to accept them or not.

The Cabinet system centralises power in the hands of just 10 councillors, gives considerable power via appointments to the leader; diminishes the role of the backbencher in questioning decisions via the whipping system and limits them to mainly dealing with casework as the go-between between residents and council departments.  Councillors who disagree with decisions are reduced to deliberately  missing Full Council meetings or popping to the lavatory when key votes are taken so as not to be on record as defying the whip.

Something 'rotten'  indeed. In the absence of an effective opposition this blog has attempted to inform the public on some of the issues including fake consultations, too close relationship between the leader of the Council and developers and the scandalous decision to, in essence, return £15.8m Community Infrastructure Levy monies back to  Quintain for 'improvements' to Olympic Way including the cosmetic replacement of the Pedway by steps.

Some councils are rejecting the Cabinet system as undemocratic and returning to a modified form of the Committee system, often maintaining one or more Scrutiny Committees, which actively involves many more councillors in local government and this could be a medium term aim for Brent. Some form of proportional representation in local government in the longer term would ensure a wider spread of councillors and a broader democratic representation.

Meanwhile for an effective opposition unhampered by a whipping system and the leader's patronage I urge you to vote Green if you happen to be in one of the affected wards:

Alperton: Andrew Linnie
Barnhill: Martin Francis and Peter Murry
Wembley Central: William Relton

Your chance to see the Wembley Park Tile Murals in LBOC 2020

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

  Rugby League players tile mural, Olympic Way (courtesy of Brent Archives)

In a guest blog last November, I asked whether we would be allowed to see the Bobby Moore Bridge tile murals during Brent’s year as London Borough of Culture LINK .

I had written to Josh McNorton (the Cultural Director of Wembley Park Arts, appointed by Quintain to co-ordinate their arts input to LBOC 2020) on 9 November, with copy to Brent’s Chief Executive and others at the Council and LBOC 2020 on 13 November, to suggest ways in which they could work together to put at least some of the murals back on public display during 2020.

I have received no response from the Civic Centre, despite a sympathetic councillor “chasing up” the matter, but on 16 December I did hear back from Josh McNorton (with copy to Carolyn Downs at Brent]. He gave me the good news that four tile mural scenes on the walls of Olympic Way, outside the subway, currently covered by vinyl sheets advertising the Boxpark, will be on public display between 17 January and 25 February 2020.

These scenes show a Rock Drummer (part of a larger mural celebrating stadium concerts), and American Football, Rugby League and Ice Hockey players.

Part of the Ice Hockey tile mural in Olympic Way

The timing of the "reveal" of these mural scenes is to coincide with the LBOC 2020 launch event, RISE, which is taking place in Olympic Way on Saturday 18 January LINK . Because the subway with the murals was named after one of England’s great footballers, the mural scenes will stay on display until after the anniversary of Bobby Moore’s death (on 24 February 1993).

I understand that plans for other possible showings of the tile murals during 2020 are still under consideration. In case these do not come to anything, I hope that as many people as possible will come to see them (and the England Footballers / Twin Towers Stadium mural scene in the subway itself, which Quintain put back on display earlier this year, in response to pressure from Wembley History Society) between 17 January and 25 February 2020.

 The Footballers tile mural scene, now on display in the Bobby Moore Bridge subway

If you do go to see these murals at Wembley Park, please use the chance to take photographs of them. If you are on social media (Instagram, Facebook or Twitter), please share your best photos with your friends and followers, copying them to the London Borough of Culture sites at: @lboc2020, #Brent2020, or @LBOC2020, and Wembley Park sites at: @wembley_park,   #WembleyPark, or @WembleyParkOfficial

The Bobby Moore Bridge tile murals are a Council-owned public work of art, specially commissioned for the subway between Wembley Park Station and Olympic Way in 1993. They are a heritage asset, colourfully celebrating a wide range of sports and entertainment events held at the Stadium and Arena over nearly 100 years. We should not let them be forgotten, and I will continue to do my best to get them put back on permanent public display.

Philip Grant

Did Labour's candidate for the Alperton by-election tweet admiration for Bob Blackman?

There may be more than one person with the name Chetan Harpale but if this is the same person who is standing for Labour in the Alperton by-election I am rather perplexed.

Expressing admiration for Bob Blackman, a right-wing pro-Modi Conservative (and ex leader of Brent Conservatives), who local Labour activists mobilised to unseat at the General Election may be one thing - but calling Jeremy Corbyn 'ProJihadis'...?

There is of course the possibility that the Twitter account was hacked and I will be happy to publish any clarification from the Labour Party.

The Twitter account @HarpaleChetan is now locked.

Harpale is standing to replace ex-Cllr James Allie who resigned under a cloud.