Phil Taylor

I have blogged about Nick Grant, the branch secretary for the Ealing branch of the teachers’ union NUT, before here.

In a surprising unforced error (see answer to question below) the council has admitted that at a time when every penny counts it has given the NUT an extra £10K worth of Ealing residents’ cash. It seems that when Nick Grant got elected to the NUT’s governing national executive (supported by the Socialist Worker’s Party (SWP) of which he is also a member of its national executive) the council gave him another day a week off for union business. I don’t suppose that it costs much less than £50K to “employ” Mr Grant. So one day a week is the equivalent of a £10K a year bung to the NUT which has absolutely nothing to do with providing services to Ealing residents. On the contrary Grant is in the vanguard of organising strikes in Ealing’s schools.

Mr Grant is not only one of 10, yes 10, SWP supported people on the NUT national executive he is also co-founder of the Anti Academies Alliance. Unaccountably, at a time of high stress, the council is giving this man another £10K to be an extreme left-wing activist.

This unforced error on the part of the administration is yet another illustration of the laziness and lack of attention to detail exhibited by the councillors who are supposed to be in charge. It is customary for such answers, which are formally the answers of the portfolio holders themselves, to be passed to the portfolio holder for approval. In practice the answers are written by officers but if I had seen this answer going over my desk I would simply have asked that the additional information, which was not asked for, was omitted. Their laziness at least allows you to get a glimpse of what is really going on.

When the full council signed off the budget in February 2011 it contained a promise to cut union facility time, paid time to allow union reps to do union business, by 20% in 2012/13 (see page 178 of the budget signed off at full council on 22nd March 2012 here).

The same budget cut a number of frontline services, such as envirocrime officers and park rangers, in half in 2011/12. The one year delay compared to the cuts in frontline services was justified in terms of the union reps having a role in managing the process of re-organisation from the staff side.

In answering the question, see below, I asked at the last council meeting (question number 12, here) the council has revealed that the facility time budget will remain flat in the current financial year. There is no explanation of why the Labour administration has quietly changed its mind. Is the Labour administration frightened to take on the unions? Has it already agreed to back off? Will Labour tell us what it proposes to do about the £250,000 per annum a year that the council spends on union reps doing union business?

Question 12:

Could the portfolio holder state:
Facility time budget in 2011/12. Also breakdown teaching/non-teaching.
Facility time spend in 2011/12. Also breakdown teaching/non-teaching.
Facility time budget in 2012/13. Also breakdown teaching/non-teaching.
Names of staff and union along with % of their time spent on facility time during 2011/12.

Answer 12:

Teaching:

The total facility time awarded to teacher union reps in 2010-11 was
2.5 fte. That equates to 15 days per week split among the teacher unions and professional associations. This figure would normally be 2.3 fte (or 13 days per week) but an additional 0.2 fte (or 1 day) was granted to the NUT as their local secretary was elected onto the NUT national executive.
The cost of this for the year was £146,700.

Non-Teaching:

UNISON = 10 Days split between 2 people
GMB= 5 Days split between 3 people
The cost of this for the year was £105,000
It is anticipated that this arrangement will remain as in for 2012/2013.
The council is currently discussing reductions in facilities time with the trade unions. Reductions in trade union facility time form part of the administrations saving plans.

Ealing Council has failed to make any progress over the last year in cutting the cost of its senior management team. In fact it has gone up by 2.2%. The Labour council has tried to dramatise the magnitude of the cuts it is facing by exaggerating them and repeating the mantra that the government is going to far and too fast but here is a case of Labour going not very far, slowly. Compared to the 50% hit taken by some frontline services the council’s senior management team has got off lightly and it looks like the process has run its course.

For the last three years the Conservatives have asked the same carefully worded question to keep track of this. Last year there was modest fall of 7.7% in total costs and the management headcount fell by 8. This year the headcount has crept up by 1 and the bill by 2.2%. Most of this rise is accounted for by National Insurance changes as pay has been frozen for this group and there seems to have been little or no grade inflation, but it is noteworthy that one new manager has been added to the numbers.

In October 2010 the former council leader asked a series of 3 questions (40-42, here) asking how many and how much the senior management team at Ealing council cost. In October 2011 I repeated the questions (15,17 and 18, here) to see how much Labour has saved on the senior management team in the course of a year. I repeated the process this April (questions 15, 16 and 18, here). The answers are tabulated below.

For previous blogs on this subject see here and here.

Today the Tory group on Ealing council has written to the Mayor demanding an extraordinary council meeting to examine the waste and re-cycling contract which has blown up so spectacularly in the council’s face over the course of April. It is likely that this meeting will take place on Tuesday 8th May at 7pm.

Over the last two weeks or so thousands of Ealing residents have been inconvenienced by this botched contract. Between the council and their new contractor there has been a massive failure. Yet again the leader of the council has had to take over and involve himself in the detailed working of another part of the council.

Hopefully the waste service will regain its equilibrium quickly. I fear that long term damage will have been done though to our re-cycling rates after people have seen their carefully sorted re-cycling shoved into what looks like a regular garbage truck or one of those cage trucks. The council says that this mixed, dry re-cycling is all going to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF or Murf).

We all hope that is true but a MRF is not magic. Man or machine has to sort the waste that Ealing residents have already put a huge effort into sorting. This costs money, reduces the value of the waste stream and ensures that more goes to landfill. It will be hard for the council to insist that residents resume this work once they have seen the council’s contractor just chuck it all in the back of a lorry. Even harder to persuade new people to take up re-cycling.

The council relies on the massive goodwill of Ealing’s residents to achieve high re-cycling rates, achieve high prices for its waste streams and minimise landfill and rising landfill taxes. Many of us spend at least half an hour a week sorting it all out to say nothing of the large amount of space that this cottage industry takes up in our kitchens, garages, sheds and/or gardens. The last few weeks will made many question why they bother. I hope that they will bother but the council must demonstrate that it values the contribution of residents. Seeing staff insolently flinging residents’ containers back at their front gates doesn’t help.

Last night the Labour administration had the opportunity to get on the front foot and apologise to a full council meeting for the unfolding waste and re-cycling disaster that is sweeping across the borough. They chose not to take it and instead stuck their collective head firmly in the sand.

Ealing’s waste system moves from the south east to the north west over the course of the working week. For it to fall over so badly across Southfield, Ealing Common, Acton, Northfield and Hanwell on Monday bodes ill for the rest of the week. Problems are likely to multiply through the week and then be redoubled again by the Easter bank holiday.

It seems that the new contractor has hired the wrong vehicles to get the contract underway and is asking crews to take on beats that are much larger than the old ones. Many of the Borough’s roads are very narrow and the previous contractor had learned through hard experience that smaller vehicles were required to service some of our roads. To cope with the emergency the new contractor is grabbing people’s carefully sorted recycling and mixing it in the back of a range of vehicles. The council claim that this mixed waste will go to a Materials Recycling Facility (or “Murf”) for recycling but in doing so much of the value of the waste stream will be lost and more will go to landfill than would otherwise have been the case.

The great improvement in recycling rates in this borough have been achieved by the hard work of its residents. Seeing their hard work taken for granted will cause people to think twice about their role in the system. Labour had other things to talk about at the full council meeting last night so failed to take the opportunity to apologise. Today the leader of the council, Labour’s Cllr Julian Bell, wants to talk about Olympic loveliness in his Gazette column.

The council bureaucracy has issued an apology by making a statement on its website. The portfolio holder, who is ultimately responsible, Cllr Bassam Mahfouz, showed cowardice under fire and pushed his executive director, into the line of fire to take the bullet:

Keith Townsend, executive director of environment and customer services, said: “I would like to apologise to anyone whose collection has been missed. We are doing our utmost to ensure refuse and recycling collections continue to run smoothly but we would ask for residents’ patience as the new contractor takes over.”

I wonder how long that press release will stay on the council’s website?

Local councillors are getting lots of reports of failed rubbish and re-cycling collections across Northfield yesterday.

We heard that the new joint collection of green boxes and plastics failed at Claygate Road, Raymond Avenue, Boston Road and the North/South Road estate. Also food waste failed on Trent Avenue.

This morning I have had black sacks left behind at my house. Have heard reports of failures from South Acton, Elthorne and Southfield wards too.

You might expect some teething problems with the handover from old to new contractors but this does seem rather large scale.

If there is a problem in your road then click here to report quickly without hanging on phone (which seems to be backed up too right now).