@CollegeRoadRA: TOMORROW (Thursday) - Kensal Rise Residents' Association Public Meeting to discuss #KensalRiseLibrary planning proposal. Thurs 7:30pm Constitutional Club next to Lexi. All welcome.
Wednesday 23 April 2014
Brent Executive approves Copland land deal and landlord licensing
An unusually garralous Brent Council Executive last night approved the land deal which will see the Copland Community School site and neighouring land handed over to Ark Academy for 125 years. A new secondary school with an additional form of entry will be built away from the High Road (exact position not yet fixed) and nearby Elsley Primary School will double in size.
The Executive set aside issues around development restrictions on the site (although a restrictive covenant caused considerable problems for the Preston Manor expansion) and shrugged off threats of a judicial review from teacher unions.
Jean Roberts, speaking for the tecaher orgabisations, said that they had spoken to local residents in nearby streets who were overwhelmingly against the scheme and concerned about the impact on them as well as rights of way on the school grounds. Local children were playing on the grounds as they spoke to residents who told her that they were starting a petition against the scheme.
Although at pains to stress that this was about a land deal and nothing to do with forced academisation and an Ark takeover of state schools, Executive members nonetheless took the opportunity to attack the former management of the school and the quality of teachers - forgetting perhaps that they had oversight of the school at the time.
The Executive went on to approve an 'Additional' licensing scheme for landlords in Brent but deferred a decision on 'Selective Licensing' in Wembley Central, Harlesden and Willesden Green.
There will be further consulation over a two month period about what other wards, namely Dudden Hill and Mapesbury, should be included in the Additional Licensing scheme.
The Additional Licensing scheme charge will be set at £550 for the 5 year licensing period. Challenged that this would be passed on to tenants, Muhammed Butt said that landlords would be able to claim it back as part of their business costs.
Margaret McLennan said that the scheme was not about gentrification but bringing private rented properties up to the bare minimum regarding matters like gas safety checks. She said that the scheme would also protect good landlords from bad tenants.
Enforcement will begin in January 2015. The Executive did not discuss the vexed question of potential unintended consequences if landlords evict tenants in order to deal with overcrowding or unsafe premises.
The Executive set aside issues around development restrictions on the site (although a restrictive covenant caused considerable problems for the Preston Manor expansion) and shrugged off threats of a judicial review from teacher unions.
Jean Roberts, speaking for the tecaher orgabisations, said that they had spoken to local residents in nearby streets who were overwhelmingly against the scheme and concerned about the impact on them as well as rights of way on the school grounds. Local children were playing on the grounds as they spoke to residents who told her that they were starting a petition against the scheme.
Although at pains to stress that this was about a land deal and nothing to do with forced academisation and an Ark takeover of state schools, Executive members nonetheless took the opportunity to attack the former management of the school and the quality of teachers - forgetting perhaps that they had oversight of the school at the time.
The Executive went on to approve an 'Additional' licensing scheme for landlords in Brent but deferred a decision on 'Selective Licensing' in Wembley Central, Harlesden and Willesden Green.
There will be further consulation over a two month period about what other wards, namely Dudden Hill and Mapesbury, should be included in the Additional Licensing scheme.
The Additional Licensing scheme charge will be set at £550 for the 5 year licensing period. Challenged that this would be passed on to tenants, Muhammed Butt said that landlords would be able to claim it back as part of their business costs.
Margaret McLennan said that the scheme was not about gentrification but bringing private rented properties up to the bare minimum regarding matters like gas safety checks. She said that the scheme would also protect good landlords from bad tenants.
Enforcement will begin in January 2015. The Executive did not discuss the vexed question of potential unintended consequences if landlords evict tenants in order to deal with overcrowding or unsafe premises.
Labels:
academisation,
ARK Academy,
Brent Executive,
Copland,
land deal,
landlord licensing,
Muhammed Butt
Copland’s Green Left Reds are Over the Moon
...But celebrations marred by
Unsporting Conduct from the Managers
Guest blog by ‘Shankly’s Pony’
Green Left Reds may be a political niche too far, but all
Wembley Matters readers can take some pleasure in the success this season of
local lad and ex Copland student Raheem Sterling. In addition to helping to
guide Liverpool FC to League success and being selected for England’s World Cup
campaign in Brazil, last weekend
Raheem achieved the ultimate
accolade: starring in Paul Trevillion’s
cult comic strip ’You Are The Ref’ in Sunday’s Observer (above).
At the footballing star’s old school, however,
foul play is the norm. Fourteen more compulsory redundancies are among
the fixtures for this term, despite the IEB’s promise that there would be none.
Copland’s athletics and football fields
will be flogged off for housing or offices just as soon as they can figure out
who actually owns the land and how the little matter of the title restriction
can be fixed. Strangely enough, events
at the school seem more and more to be influenced by the world of professional
football.
Having early on adopted the
Millwall fans’ slogan of ‘Nobody likes us, We don’t care’ (accepting reality
rather than out of choice) the management
handed Copland over to a bunch of dodgy millionaires (as at Chelsea,Fulham
FC, Manchester City, Cardiff et al). To
find the new school’s new ‘manager’ these shysters plumped for the ‘Chosen One’ method which they
presumably judged had been so successful in selecting David Moyes for Man United. The drafted-in owners are now trying to
impose a new name on the school (as at
Hull City) and are about to completely
change the school strip (see Cardiff).
Soon the ground will be moved (not quite as far as Milton Keynes, see
Wimbledon FC) and most of the ground staff have already been ‘let go’.
If, in September, the school actually is taken over by the ‘Chosen One’ Ms Bates,
(no relation to Leeds United’s Ken, hopefully) , Copland will have had more
managers in recent times than the notoriously profligate Blackburn Rovers (six since you ask). This is not to mention
the Delia Smith connection (Ark Wembley head, TV cook and Norwich City majority
shareholder) or the remarkable similarities between the organisational prowess demonstrated by
respectively Ark’s attempt at a consultation and Torquay United’s attempt at a
defence.
But as we enter the
end-of-season ‘run-in’, the mythmakers of Ofsted are about to show
that it’s all been worthwhile. At the end of the summer term the final
prewritten chapter of the prewritten narrative journey will be taken down off
the shelf and added to last autumn’s
Prewritten Ofsted Inspection
Report 1 ( ‘It’s going to be a
struggle but if we all pull together, and with 58 redundancies, Copland might
just make it’) which was followed by last month’s release of Prewritten Ofsted
Inspection Report 2 ( ‘Following tough
DfE policies, honest and objective
Ofsted verification, and 75
redundancies, Everything at
Copland is Getting Better and Better ’).
Leaks from the government department which writes these things confirmed
last October that the final chapter,
due in July, declares: ‘Mission
Accomplished!: After 119 redundancies and with the new leaner and fitter
curriculum offer of only 2 subjects (Malaysian Maths and Singaporean
Maths) Copland is now Fit For Purpose!
The management and both remaining members of the teaching staff are to be
congratulated on their achievement.’
By then, of course, Raheem Sterling’s form might well have
continued on its current trajectory and brought England a hat full of goals in Brazil. Let’s hope
so. It’s just a pity that
the only ones celebrating at what remains of his old school will be a
bunch of hedge fund billionaires, the spineless guardians of local democracy at
Brent Council (or those who survived the May 22 play-offs), a couple of hapless Future Leaders: and Michael Gove.
Never mind, you can be confident that, with Ofsted providing
the facts and figures to support their ‘evidence-based’ bullshit (and nobody
around anymore to remember what life was actually like before the Pigs took over) , it will inevitably go down in history as
the greatest season Copland ever had.
Labels:
Academy Status,
ARK Academy,
Copland Community High School,
Elvin,
Ofsted,
Raheem Sterling,
teachers
Comments closed on Kensal Rise Library debate
There has been extensive debate about the Kensal Rise Library development on this blog which at times has been heated and even vixperous. I have decided to close comments now and instead will post on any new developments ahead of the May planning committee meeting.
Martin Francis
Martin Francis
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