Brent Campaign Against Cuts - Meeting August 25th 2010

 Gary Barker from Channel 4 competition

The extent of the cuts is clearly set out by the TUC in the post below. This is a message from Sarah Cox (Brent Trades Council) on a local meeting to organise against the cuts.

The first organising meeting of the Brent Campaign against the cuts launched from Brent Trades Council's July public meeting will be at 7.30 pm on Wednesday August 25th in Brent Trades Hall. This meeting is open to everyone who wants to organise against the cuts - Phil O'Reilly from Brent Unison told us that one in ten Council jobs will go, Brent Council is considering closing children's centres, moving to fortnightly rubbish collection, cutting school staff. Councillors and council officers will be spending another weekend at a country spa hotel to plan further cuts. The proposed cap on housing benefit will have devastating effects in the South of the borough where private rents are consistently higher than the cap. Families made homeless by these measures will have to be housed by the Council. The "Welfare to Work" disability assessments are harming people already. Please come to the meeting. The time to organise against the cuts is NOW.

The Trades Hall/Apollo Club is at 375 High Road, Willesden, NW10 2JR  (Dollis Hill tube - Jubilee line)

Coalition's 100 days: Poor and vulnerable hit by cuts, says TUC

Given the high number of unemployed people and the record number on the housing list Brent is going to be badly hit by the coalition cuts and benefit changes. The TUC has today set out the implications of decisions made in the Coalition's first 100 days:

Some of the UK's poorest families have been hit by more than 100 unfair spending cuts during the first 100 days of the new Government, a TUC analysis of departmental spending reveals today
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The TUC research, published in advance of the 100 day anniversary of the coalition Government tomorrow (Thursday), shows that cuts which impact more on the poorest families in the UK have been made across the board in services including education, health, housing, welfare and social care.
Examples of cuts the TUC believes are unfair include:

• Free school meals - The cancelled measure would have extended entitlement to free school meals to about 500,000 families in work on low pay from September this year. Cost £125m.
• Every child a reader - This programme to provide early support to children with literacy difficulties (focussed on inner-city schools) will be cut by at least £5m and its future is not guaranteed.
• City Challenge Fund - This programme aimed to provide extra support to under-performing children in the most deprived areas, but has been cut by £8m this year.
• Building Schools for the Future - This scrapped programme was the biggest-ever school buildings investment plan. The aim was to rebuild or renew nearly every secondary school in England. Cost £7.5bn.
• Housing benefit - Nearly a million (936,960) households will lose around £624 a year as a result of changes to housing benefit. Londoners will be worst hit.
• Homes and Communities Agency - Cuts to programmes including Kickstart (for restarting stalled house building programmes), affordable housing, gypsy and traveller support and Housing Market Renewal (improvements to housing in deprived areas). Cost £450m.
• Young Person's Guarantee - £450m has been cut from the Guarantee, which will be abolished in April 2011. This Guarantee promised unemployed young people access to a job, training or work after six months of unemployment.
• Working Neighbourhood Fund - This fund, which aimed to help unemployed people in deprived areas to move into work, has been cut by £49.9m.
• Domestic Violence Protection Orders - Scheme to create two-week banning orders so that victims of domestic abuse can look for protection in the safety of their own house.

The TUC is calling on the Government to reconsider its plan of swingeing spending cuts to public services, and focus instead on other ways to reduce the deficit, such as a Robin Hood Tax on financial transactions that could raise up to £20bn a year.

The TUC is also a member of a coalition, which includes Barnardo's, Oxfam and Save the Children, who want the Government to guarantee that any future budget cuts will be put through rigorous fairness testing - or a Fairness Test - by the Treasury, to ensure that vulnerable people, low-paid workers, women and children are not left to bear the brunt of spending cuts.

It's YOUR Wembley - Have your YOUR say

Trees on the famous  processional Olympic Way may be removed

By the time I visited on the afternoon of the last day only 120-150 people had visited last month's exhibition about the next phase of the Wembley Regeneration. This is a very small number when you think that this is the most important regeneration project taking place in Wembley and one of the biggest and most expensive in whole of London. However it was enough for Quintain, the developers, to conclude that 'a good number of people visited the exhibition over the course of six days and that the overwhelming majority of people welcomed the plans'. They will be submitting a planning application to Brent Council later this summer.

Quintain have recovered from a shaky period in  2008 when they reduced their Wembley project staff from 28 to 13. They recently agreed the sale of Pier Walk, the Transport for London building on the Greenwich Peninsula for £97m.

The exhibition was full of the pastel/line drawing artist's impressions we have seen before and it was hard to really envisage what is intended.  However I did dig out a few facts:

• Section 106 (funds from the developer to Brent Council ) trigger points in the development have not yet been reached despite the fact that Wembley City is up and running
• £9m towards schools in Wembley is listed as a future commitment - with a school places shortage we need the money now . £3.5m for road and junction improvements, £2.5m for education and training and nearly £2m for improved bus services are also some time in the 'future'
• The mature trees along Olympic Way on the Curry's Superstore side will have to be removed as the new buildings will abut the roadway. Quintain said said they would be replaced by trees of similar size in Arena Square.
• There are plans to run buses along the currently mainly pedestrian Olympic Way for the first time
• Despite earlier emphasis on a relatively traffic free development there are plans for 800 parking spaces in a multi-storey car park for the new shopping street and another 500 for the new homes
• The much heralded 'London Designer Outlet' will, according to staff at the exhibition, specialise in end of range and end of season bargains - not quite the high quality shopping experience first mooted
• Quintain did not take into account, and appeared to know little about, the proposed North West London Light Railway  which suggest a link to Wembley Stadium

To be fair there are plans for affordable new homes and  they will be built to Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4. Completed commercial properties will be built to BREEAM Excellent standard and Combined Heat and Power is 'planned in linked clusters with the ability to link into a district wide energy centre in the future'. Policy on renewables even vaguer, 'Solar panels or other renewables could be included on some buildings and green and brown roofs will encourage diversity'. Quintain argue that local people will use Wembley shops in the new development and this will reduce car use as presently drive outside the area to shop. They claim that their designs will favour pedestrians over cars.

Throughout Quintain and Brent Council have argued that the redevelopment will bring benefits to local people and that the stadium area will become a local resources as well as something for visitors. The low numbers attending the exhibition doesn't suggest crowds of Brent citizens are leaping around with enthusiasm. So let's ask, "What's in it for Brent?'

Quintain would argue:

• 2,500 new jobs in the new hotels, shops and restaurants and 400 during construction
• Up to(my emphasis) 1,300 new private and affordable homes with a range of 1,2 and 3 bedroom apartments (we will need details of the proportion that will be 'affordable')
• A new Civic Centre (Brent Greens remain sceptical of its benefits)
• A new local open space around the Civic Centre 'green, accessible for all, and planted with trees..'
• A new shopping street with around 30 new shops with a large 'anchor' store
• A range of new cafes, coffee shops and restaurants
• Affordable work spaces, including some suitable for the creative industries
• Nine Screen cinema to be opened by September 2013
• A new community pool and leisure facility on the site of Dexion House

Quintain's planning  application to Brent Council will be an 'Outline' application which will establish uses, layouts, heights and access principles, with 'Reserved Matters' applications to follow with the detailed designs before construction begins. There will be consultation on this and it is important that residents respond.  Too often the public respond on general principles at the detail stage, only to be told 'that has already been dealt within the 'Outline' application'.

Quintain will be circulating 60,000 homes and businesses with a Newsletter about the scheme.You can see an on-line version of the exhibition and booklet HERE and you can e-mail your view to info@yourwembley.com or ring Quintain's Wembley team on 020 7478 9277

Brent may be losing its BRAIN but the community can still have one!

Brent Brain, to be closed down in September, is still advertised

above the O2 shop at the junction of Park Lane and Wembley High Road

The library service is still looking for expressions of interest from community organisations interested in training that will enable participants to set up the their own community websites when Brent Brain is closed down.

If you think that it is important that the community should continue to have a forum for information, mutual help, volunteering and discussion of local issues then register your interest by using this LINK for training sessions.

Vulnerable road users to be safeguarded in traffic signal removals

Brent Council have said that they will only undertake any traffic signal removals in the borough suggested by Transport for London if  "it can be undertaken in a safe, practical and cost effective manner without undue negative impact on more vulnerable road users or more sustainable modes of transport." The Transportation Unit were responding to my enquiry following the publication of a list of traffic signals that Boris Johnson wanted to see considered for removal. DETAILS HERE

The council said: 

Brent have only recently been informed by TfL of its proposals to look at reducing delays caused by inefficient or unnecessary traffic signals, at which time we were made aware of a list of potential traffic signal removal site including the Neasden Lane/Quainton St/Braemar Avenue junction. We will shortly be holding our first meeting with TfL to discuss the details of the project after which we will hopefully be in a better position to understand how it will be taken forward. 

I am therefore currently unable to provide you any specific information regarding the Neasden Lane/Quainton St/Braemar Avenue junction. I can however say that Brent shares TfL’s desire to reduce congestion on our network, but only where it can be undertaken in a safe, practical and cost effective manner without undue negative impact on more vulnerable road users or more sustainable modes of transport.

We will need to be vigilant to ensure that the council's criteria for removal are rigorously applied.

Tory Councillor: Armed police raiding my house behaved 'superbly'

Early yesterday morning armed police raided Cllr Reg Colwill's home in Kenton as part of four drugs raids according the the Harrow Times.  Two men staying at the house were arrested by the Herfordshire police who siezd a quantity of cash from the house.

Cllr Colwill said the two men were staying at his house and were not family members. He said the raid was nothing to do with him or his family. He commented that the police were absolutely superb and did very little damaage.

"Conservative-Lib Dem cuts will hit the poorer people in society”, says Lucas

Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green Party and MP for Brighton Pavilion, has warned that the coalition government's cuts to housing benefit could result in increasing social problems with serious debt and homelessness. Crisis estimates that Brent is one of the most seriously impacted areas in the country with 9,650 households affected.

The report also warns that cuts to housing benefit could have hidden costs in the future, in order to deal with the social problems of homelessness, including health problems and providing accommodation.

Housing benefit cut is equivalent to big increase in income tax for poorer people

Caroline Lucas MP said:

“Consider someone earning £16,000 (after tax-free allowance) and receiving housing benefit. If they lose £728 that would be the equivalent of paying an income tax rise of over 4.5 per cent.

“These particular Tory-Lib Dem cuts will leave more people struggling to pay the rent, more people falling into serious debt and ultimately more people becoming homeless.

“This is very unfair, coming at a time when many of these people are facing economic uncertainty or even redundancy.

“Once again we see the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition’s cuts hitting the poorer people in society. The government could avoid these cuts by properly tackling tax avoidance and tax evasion perpetrated by some of the wealthiest, which could raise billions of pounds a year.”

Teather must stand up for Brent children

 

Brent children were involved in the Playbuilder consultation on playground improvements

Coalition cuts have again hit Brent children with Michael Gove's announcement of a stop on Playbuilder schemes for new and improved playgrounds. Sarah Teather, MP for Brent Central, will be under renewed pressure as Gove's cuts have already stopped building improvements in four Brent secondary schools, although articulating the Coalition's bias towards academies, he has announced that the Crest Academies building works will go ahead. Teather as 'Children's Minister' is having to defend the indefensible.

I declare an interest here.  I am passionately committed to enhancing children's opportunities for play.  Only one third of 7-14 year olds now play outside compared with 90% of their parents in their own childhoods. In our local election manifesto Brent Greens pledged a 'good local school and safe play facilities a for every child'. Play is vitally important for children's psychological, emotional, social and physical development.  I am a trustee of the Brent Play Association, a member of Play England, a governor of a primary school and run Brent School Without Walls which provides activities for children in Fryent Country Park.  I was one of the facilitators for the children's consultation which took children around Brent's play areas to put together ideas for the implementation of the government's Playbuilder scheme.  The enthusiasm of the children and the range of their ideas was absolutely amazing and inspiring.

All that is now threatened with the Department for Education's bland statement: "The coalition inherited unrealistic spending commitments for 2010-11. Play is important - but investment has to be affordable."

The council's Park Strategy makes it clear that the priority is to provide play facilities in areas where there are deficiences but one of the first areas to be hit is Harlesden and the Bramshill Road site. Two weeks ago I attended another consultation, this time at the Chalkhill Community Centre, where local residents put forward their ideas on play equipment for the new Chalkhill Park which is due toe be built on the old Chalkhill Health Centre site. Local people have already lost the Wembley Park  playing fields now occupied by the ARK Academy, will these cuts mean that they will lose their promised new park?