South Kilburn Chase House defects persist 6 years after completion

This tweet caught my eye this morning . It refers to Chase House on Hansel Road, South Kilburn.

How could UK Defence Policy better protect us? Monday May 13th with Lucy Roberts

Support Palestine! Two events on Saturday May 11th

From Brent and Harrow Palestine Soldiarity Campaign and Brent Friends of Palestine

The Palestinian people need our solidarity more than ever, and are calling for global protests to protect their collective rights. As Israel continues to flout international law and violate human rights, there is a responsibility on the global community to hold it to account and push for an end to the oppression of the Palestinian people.

No new Nakba! - End the Siege! - Defend the Right of Return!

Organised by: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Friends of Al- Aqsa, Muslim Association of Britain

Plus in the evening this event organised locally:

Ticket Reservations HERE

Get Mapping Brent - Thursday May 2nd, Willesden Green Library

From Philip Grant

Brent Museum and Archives at Willesden Green Library are hosting a very interesting event on Thursday 2nd May, to help anyone interested in our local heritage get involved with the "Layers of London" project ( http://www.LayersofLondon.org ). 

This project aims to get details about the local history of every corner of the capital onto an interactive online map, so that anyone can discover the stories behind the place where they live. I think it is a fantastic idea, but currently there is hardly anything about Wembley on the website!

I am attaching the poster for this workshop event, from 5.30 to 7.30pm, and hope that anyone who is interested and can attend will come along to this session, so that we can help to put Wembley's history "on the map". 

 

For more details contact karina.flynn@sas.ac.uk; booking is not necessary but would be helpful: www.history.ac.uk/events/event/19670

 

Residents must not pay for Grenfell-style cladding removal, FBU union says

From the Fire Brigades Union

The cost of removing dangerous flammable must not fall onto building residents, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has said. The government must fund residents’ removal costs until those responsible can be held accountable.

Nearly two years on from the Grenfell Tower fire, the same flammable cladding covers a total of 434 residential buildings. Dangerous cladding has been removed from just 29% of social housing blocks and 6% of private residential blocks.[1]

Combustible cladding has been removed from just 10 of the 176 private blocks found to be at risk., with  The FBU is backing the #EndOurCladdingScandal campaign, launched today by Inside Housing and UK Cladding Action Group, to address an overlooked risk to residents.
Across local authority and private housing, the government should take a risk-based approach to removing cladding and improving fire safety, rather than waiting for blame to be attributed, the FBU believes.

Andy Dark, FBU assistant general secretary, said:

It’s a scandal that residents who are living in tower blocks covered in flammable cladding and where basic fire safety is substandard have no certainty whatsoever that their homes will be made safe.

Whether publicly or privately owned the remedial work needs to be completed quickly and the government must take responsibility for getting the job done.

Grenfell Tower’s flammable Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) cladding was one of the key factors that caused the fire to spread so rapidly, alongside the failure of “compartmentalisation”, where each flat is built as a fireproof unit.

The next phase of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry will focus on conditions that led to the fire, including those in business and government who did not act on warnings about unsafe building practices
The FBU is a core participant in the ongoing inquiry and has been a strong advocate for improving tenants’ rights. The union has repeatedly criticised the government for its complacency on Grenfell, cladding, and wider fire safety issues.

[1]Ministry for Housing Communities and Local Government, 31 March 2019, Building Safety Programme: Monthly Data Release. Available from: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/793799/Building_Safety_Data_Release_March_2019.pdf

SAFER KIDS: Brent parents launch petition to local politicans calling for immediate action on 'daily threats' their children face

Local people have launched a petition demanding that Brent's three MPs  and local councillors  act quickly to ensure that

We demand immediate solutions to the daily threat our children face through:

·      More police/security details patrolling the Kensal Green, Kensal Rise, Queens Park and Harlesden area, especially at key points in the day

·      More CCTV in key locations

·      The creation of a positive action network consisting of schools, residents and local businesses that raises awareness and encourages positive, social behaviour within the community.

We also demand long-term solutions such as investment in local youth centres and helping the youth committing these crimes to become part of the community, rather than fighting against it.

Why is this important?

We the undersigned residents of Brent demand our streets be made safe for our children. We are writing to you to demand you immediately address the radical increase in muggings and assaults on children in our local area. Lawlessness is rampant and impunity is now rife in our neighbourhood. Our streets feel like the Wild West - anything goes, and no one can do a thing about it.

Muggings and assaults on children are now occurring daily, often between 2pm and 7pm on the peripheries of schools, in parks and around the Chamberlayne Rd area. These crimes are committed by youth, at times in balaclavas, often using knives, sometimes using steel bars as a threat, other times using direct violent assault - and all this in broad daylight.

In the cases where adults have tried to intervene, they too have been violently assaulted. One parent was recently punched in the head in Roundwood Park numerous times in front of his son, and another parent had a plank of wood smashed into his face, loosing several teeth in the Queens Park area - also in front of his children.

Sadly, many cases go unreported as the victims are fearful if they tell, they could be putting themselves in more danger. Moreover, parents at times fear nothing will be done as the police rarely turn up, or if they do it’s 30 minutes late, when the perpetrators are long gone.

At an age when our children should be cherishing a newfound independence, they now have to fear for their safety. They must ask themselves: Will I be attacked on the way home from school today? Is it safe to take my phone? Do I have to walk in a big group to be safe? What should I do if I get assaulted? Will they knife me?

No child should have to ask him or herself these questions. We want our children to:

- be able to walk to school and home from it
- go the the park/skatepark
- walk to a friend’s house
- go to the corner shop
- catch a bus/ the tube etc...

without having to worry that they will be assaulted or mugged.

The effect of daily fear in these young minds, if not addressed, is likely to lead to a dramatic increase in anxiety, depression and isolation in our local community.

May we remind you, in 1991 the UK signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child, one of the nine core UN human rights treaties. The CRC protects the rights of children in all areas of their life, including their rights to “freedom from violence, abuse and neglect”.

It is tragic that almost three decades later, in this supposedly civilised society, our children are not protected from violence or abuse in their very own neighbourhood.

It is tragic, that due to austerity, our society is now one in which crime is rampant, impunity rife and our children - our future - are the ones having to suffer the devastating consequences.

It is tragic that they must now live in fear in their own community.

We demand you make our streets safe for our children. We demand action and we demand it now.

Yours sincerely,
AC Collet on behalf of Safer Kids

LINK TO PETITION

UPDATE: Responding to a request for a comment by Wembley Matters, Cllr Tom Miller, lead member for community safety said:

We are broadly sympathetic to the aims of the petition and I've offered to meet with the organisers and anybody they would like to join with them.

UPDATE: PROPOSED ‘FREE’ SCHOOL CALLED IN BY BRENT COUNCILLORS - BRENT NEU 'APPALLED BY PROPOSED PRIVATISATION'

From the Brent branch of the National Education Union (NEU)

UPDATE: The Call-In will be heard by the Scrutiny Committee on Thursday May 9th 

Brent NEU Officers have written in the strongest terms to Cllr Muhammed Butt, Leader of the Council, after the Labour Cabinet voted to support a ‘Free’ School on the Roundwood Youth Centre site. ‘Free’ schools are academies and part of this Government’s privatisation of state education programme.

Brent NEU had been repeatedly assured that there were no plans for any more ‘Free’ Schools. Cllr Butt had also publicly assured the local Labour Party of this when the idea was first mooted. Yet that is exactly what is happening – with Brent actually being the ‘sponsor’. It is to be run by Brent Special Academies Trust. 

Now the decision has been called in by a group of councillors led by Cllr Jumbo Chan stating that the Cabinet has not fully explored options for a Local Authority controlled school to provide alternative provision at the site of the Roundwood Centre or other potential school sites in the borough such as the Roe Green Strathcona site.

Brent NEU understands that local Headteachers are opposed to a ‘Free’ School, and that some of them had initially been approached to take on Roundwood as an extension of their own school. We have been told that these approaches had not been taken up. We have formally requested, under FoI, copies of any correspondence relating to this as we do not believe this was fully pursued by the Local Authority.

Brent NEU fully understand and support the need for more provision for students who are temporarily excluded from school, but strongly maintain that such provision should be under LA control and not as a ‘Free’ School run by a Labour council and an academy trust. 
It has been national Labour Party policy since last year not to support any new academies or ‘Free’ Schools and, when in power, to allow academies to return to the Local Authority. Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, reinforced this message when he spoke to the NEU annual conference in Liverpool on 16^th April. A motion was also passed at the Brent 
Central Labour Party meeting on 18^tht April condemning this latest move by Brent Council. 

Hank Roberts, Brent NEU President and National Executive member said:

Has no-one at the top of the Council watched the Panorama programmes exposing the iniquitous practices of academies? I am sure they have, yet Cllr Butt and Cllr Sandra Kabir, who led the privatisation of The Village school, continue to support the privatisation of our schools supported by Gail Tolley, Strategic Director, Children and Young People. Instead they should follow the lead of other Labour Councils who are promoting the party line such as Newham, Barking and Dagenham, Camden and Redbridge to name but a few.

Editor’s Note: At the last Cabinet meeting when the free school proposal was approved local Labour Party member Graham Durham interrupted the proceedings to condemn the Labour Council’s move to invite potential sponsors to set up an alternative provision free school at the Roundwood Centre:

-->

Big changes ahead for cash-strapped Brent Clinical Commissioning Group

Brent Clinical Commissioning Group (Brent CCG) which has an £11.2   deficit, is to move from Wembley Centre for Health and Care in Chaplin Road, Wembley to the Brent Civic Centre. In turn the social work team will be moved from the Civic Centre to the Willesden Centre for Health and Care.

Other nearby Clinical Commissioning Groups are also in deficit and so they, along with Brent will be moved into a ‘super’ CCG covering the whole of North West London to save costs.

The way each proposal interacts with the other is as yet not entirely clear. 

The Brent CCG move to the Civic Centre is premised both on saving money and improving working conditions and there is an additional justification based on the benefit  joint work with Brent council departments, although it is not clear why that does not also apply to the social work team.

One key element is the role of NHS Property Services (NHS PS). As covered previously on Wembley Matters as part of the gradual marketisation of the NHS they seek market rates for their properties and charge for ‘void’ (unused) spaces. Brent CCG will save on these charges but there is a risk that NHS PS will not accept the ‘hand back’ of the current space they occupy.

The Brent CCG is required to adopt the North West London ‘Agile Working Policy’ which doesn’t mean that they combine office work with yoga - it just means that they have no fixed personal desk and that there are more staff than there are seats available. I guess the agility comes in when they all leap over each other to try and bag a seat in the morning:

In addition to the rent  for accommodation on the 5^th and 6^th floor of the Civic Centre Brent CCG will have to pay Brent Council an additional, discounted, charge for use of the Boardrooms and Conference Hall. Staff will have to pay to park their cars at the Civic Centre if they wish to drive to work.

The rent paid by Brent CCG to Brent Council will be £299,000 annually, Brent Council will pay £180,000 annually for the Willesden Centre, but this will be reduced to £80,000 over the 10 year lease period because Brent will have to spend £800,000 to ‘kit out’ Willesden because at present it is a ‘shell.’

While all this is going on the move towards a single CCG to cover North West London has accelerated. This extract from yesterday’s Health and Wellbeing Board explains:

Single CCG Across North West London 

1.     The 10 Year Plan requires that there will be a shift to a CCG for every ICS area – in Brent’s case this would be a North West London CCG. This would mean a consolidation of existing CCGs, which will become leaner, more strategic organisations that support providers to partner with local government and other community organisations on population health, service redesign and long-term plan implementation. 

2.     The movement towards a single CCG may take place either via changes to the constitutions of the 8 individual CCGs in North West London or via a formal merger application to NHS England. In the latter scenario this would mean that Brent CCG would cease to exist as a legal entity and that commissioning responsibilities would be merged into a new organisation – North West London CCG. 

3.     A working group has been set up at North West London level to design the structure of the single CCG. Since North West London collaboration is currently in a significant deficit position, the movement towards a single CCG is being accelerated in order to achieve administration cost savings. Current plans are to finalise the new structure by the end of April 2019 and to approve a case for change in May 2019, with staff consultation progressing in June 2019. The plan is to have completed the move to a single CCG structure by April 2020. At the time of writing, it is anticipated that there will be a local ‘branch’ of the CCG that will be based locally within the borough. This local arm will be focused primarily upon primary and community care, and the development of the local ICP.

Will this mean that the super CCG will take up the accommodation at the Civic Centre or will it be allocated to a 'local branch'? 

What will be the extent of redundancies across the eight CCGs and how will those in the 'top jobs' be affected? 

What independent powers will a 'local branch' have?

How will both the 'super CCG' and the 'local branch; be democratically accountable to local residents?

Meanwhile a small but vital organisation, Brent Advocacy Concern, that has served disabled Brent residents for 30 years, have been caught up  in the new market rents policy and will have to find £16,000 in December for the annual payment for their space in the  Willesden Centre. A sum that they cannot afford and so they are faced with finding a cheaper alternative or closing down...