Category: Ealing and Northfield

Labour’s Bassam Mahfouz is evidently pleased with his appearance on the Sunday Politics TV programme in Sunday, click here and move the slider to 44:20.

Cllr Mafouz mentioned LED lighting.

But on top of that we are looking at moving forward by installing energy efficient LED lighting right across all of the streetlights that we have in the Borough.

As it happens we were discussing this programme with council officers last night at the Conservative group meeting. If you look at the Budget Strategy Report 2012/13, Appendix 4, page 3, row 14 you will see that the council is planning to spend £6.8 million on this apparently commendable venture. When officers were challenged on the payback period for this “investment” the answer was 12 years. The lights are only due to last 15 years so they will only be “above water” or “in the money” for the last three years of their lives.

There is no way that a business would expend scarce capital on a project with such a long payback period. Although the council’s cost of finance is lower than most if not all businesses it is very strange that the council wants to take on £6.8 million of debt on such a shaky project. Apparently officers are trying to model future energy prices to make the payback period look better. Sounds like post justification of a poor decision and warped priorities to me. No business would speculate on far distant energy prices to justify such a decision. On a philosophical note examples like this show how government “crowds out” businesses – people would rather lend to governments to do stupid things than companies that would potentially invest in more useful things for the economy.

Once such LED streetlights become more common their price will plunge. We should not be an early adopter. When the payback period gets down to 2 or 3 years at current energy prices we should jump in. In the meantime there are better things to do with the money – even if only to leave it in the hands of residents. They could certainly find some projects with better payback than 12 years.

It has been a disappointing few days with regard to the cinema. Last Tuesday I drove past the cinema first thing. It appeared that some work was going on but it was only men taking scaffolding down. This caused a bit of a stir of excitement that something was happening with the cinema. It wasn’t. They were merely making sure that no-one could access the site.

On Thursday we had Overview and Scrutiny Committee (OSC). We had invited the chief executive of Empire cinemas, Justin Ribbons, to come and give us an update on progress with Ealing cinema after his appearance in the summer. Ribbons did not turn up but sent the e-mail apology below to the OSC officer Keith Fraser at lunchtime on the day of the meeting.

OSC recommended that the council’s cabinet press ahead with its compulsory purchase order of the cinema site. This will not make Empire quake in their boots but hopefully it helps keep up the pressure on them.

After so long residents will be disappointed and cynical about another delay. Ealing Central and Acton MP Angie Bray has written to Justin Ribbons today to take him to task, see below, click to enlarge.

Empire are not covering themselves in glory here in Ealing. I am not quite sure why Ribbons is so unwilling to communicate clearly. We all know these are hard times for businesses as well as individuals. We might have some sympathy if problems were explained. The silence from Empire makes us think the worst of it.

I do think that Labour’s top councillor, council leader Julian Bell, is to be admired for his hard work and tenacity in the face of a highly challenging environment. On top of dealing with truly unprecedented post war cuts to local government grants and the August riots Bell has an incredibly weak team behind him and visibly has to do most of the work himself. Labour are too quick to accuse Tories of enjoying the retrenchment that local government is currently undergoing. Before the May 2010 local elections the Conservative group in Ealing were truly in awe of the challenges that faced us in the years to come if we were to be re-elected (whoever came into power nationally). Bell is doing a tough job and is due some measure of respect for keeping the wheels on.

Bell is aided in his task by the officer group within the council who are naturally very conservative (in the sense of being risk averse). Like most bureaucracies they prioritise the preservation of the machine that they work for. This can be seen in the council’s response to the cuts in government grant. The grant cuts total some £56 million or 12.5% of total council spending. By the time that this has passed through the council’s system of financial padding this becomes £85 million – an extra £30 million added in the process. In the last financial year the council underspent its budget by £9 million and budget papers reveal that it intends to continue to underspend budgets in the process of taking £85 million out of them.

On the one hand the council suggests that it is being cut by 30% (a lie as the true figure is in fact 12.5%) on the other it keeps unearmarked (unallocated) reserves of £30 million. You could take 30% out of these if you really were 30% smaller! This financial conservatism is bad for current residents and service users but ensures that the council will remain a financially strong organisation into the future.

The officer team have their own priorities, which include themselves, their directly employed labour and the environment that they work in. Hence, in the absence of vision, leadership bandwidth and organisational experience on the part of the Labour political leadership, the officers’ priorities have become Labour’s priorities. The top officer team have been hardly touched by cuts, see here. Directly employed staff have not suffered extensive redundancies and overall staff spending is largely untouched as reorganisations allow the council to avoid a pay freeze by extensive upgrading of staff. The vast bulk of the council’s non-schools capital spending is being spent on the council’s own stock of buildings.

Labour’s main weakness as an administration is the lack of skills amongst their councillors. Even the small cabinet (8 out of 40 councillors) only has four really capable people in it. Bell is a hard worker and prepared to be out there taking the knocks. He had to personally lead the council’s humiliating libraries consultation in April this year and does by far the most speaking on all issues including finance. Labour’s finance chief, Cllr Yvonne Johnson, is a witty and engaging council chamber performer but shows little evidence of being anything more than a safe pair of hands. Johnson is not notably available leaving more weight for Bell to carry. Cllr Bassam Mahfouz in the Transport and Environment portfolio is a capable public face when he remembers not to get into fights with residents. Chief whip, Cllr Brian Reeves, is a schoolmasterly bear of a man who one imagines is quiet capable of keeping internal order. As an insider he is another who doesn’t project himself much. Beyond these four the rest of the cabinet are clearly out of their depth. Outside the cabinet there is a stunning lack of ability or even visibility amongst the Labour councillors.

Cllr Bell is having to work incredibly hard but he is keeping the wheels on at least.

One of the things that I would praise the Labour administration in Ealing for is keeping on top of the street cleaning. Sure it is not perfect. It never has been. But, it was truly atrocious. By 2004 Ealing was the dirtiest borough in London with 49% of streets significantly dirty. Not only that but Ealing paid amongst the most for its terrible service, see here.

Earlier this year Labour Cllr Bassam Mahfouz was happy to boast of a 1% improvement in the National Indicator of Cleanliness (NI 195a). This performance indicator has gone through various identities (BVPI 199, BVPI 199a, now NI 195a (discontinued)). I can’t tell you how much the Tories sweated to get this number down from 35%. It was one of the major focuses of our administration and the previous council leader Jason Stacey pulled all kinds of stunts to keep the council officers and our contractor focused on cleaning up Ealing. The numbers tell their own story.

This graph shows the percentage of littered streets year by year.

I am very pleased that Cllr Mahfouz knows he has to perform well in this area.

Right now the people behind the new high school in the north of the borough are consulting on what the school should look like, see here. It has been clear for some years that a new high school was needed in the borough and it has been obvious that it should be in the north of the borough. It is good to see the council pushing ahead with this programme.

One of the big achievements of previous council leader Jason Stacey was to secure the Glaxo sports and social site in Greenford for a new school in 2008. He was especially pleased to secure a site within his own ward of Greenford Green. In June 2009, the previous administration authorised the purchase land at the former GSK Sports Ground, Oldfield Lane North to accommodate the new high school.

Just before Christmas, on 20th December, the council signed off the next stage of the project made possible by a £18 million grant from Michael Gove’s Department for Education.

The working name for the new Church of England high school being developed in partnership with the popular Twyford School in Acton is North Ealing Church of England Academy (NECEA). This is a truly awful name. Especially as the school won’t be in Ealing but in Greenford. The school will be within the ancient Greenford Magna parish boundary. Greenford Magna Church of England High School sounds good to me.

Ealing council will facilitate the provision of the site for this school after that it is down to the Twyford team to make it happen. Well done to the council again.

On the evening of Monday August 8th Ealing’s police were overwhelmed by some 300 rioters. The interim report of the Riots Communities and Victims Panel, led by ex-Ealing chief executive Darra Singh, ranked Ealing the sixth worst affected area in the whole country, see here. Click to enlarge.

It was something of a shock to Ealing and to the country more widely. Residents know what a cosmopolitan place the borough of Ealing is. The locals were surprised that the civility and order that they are used to was destroyed for one terrible evening when Richard Mannington Bowes died. People from further afield who associate the name Ealing with the relatively wealthy and suburban town centre were perhaps more shocked than the locals even and we all had texts and e-mails from friends and relatives from all over asking us if we were OK. Many hundreds, if not thousands, of us were literally frightened in our beds and some had to deal with intruders and being burnt out of their homes. It was a terrible night.

Although the police lost control of the streets that Monday they got it back the next day and their follow up has been very good. A stiff response from the criminal justice system has gone a long way to reassuring people and ensuring that there will be no repeat of August 8th anytime soon.

The council performed well and was well led. The council had 45 men out at 5.30 am cleaning up. Burnt out vehicles were off the road by 11am. Riot hit small businesses were given £1,200 to tide them over. I have heard shopkeepers praising council officers for their kindness and efficiency. Both chief executive Martin Smith and executive director for Environment and Customer Services Keith Townsend clearly did well. The political leadership of the council, especially council leader Julian Bell, also did their bit. Labour’s Cllr Bell was a visible presence on the night of the riots and led the council’s response. An awful night demonstrated that there is a lot more that unites us than divides us.

I have had a couple of weeks off from the blog in the run up to Christmas. There are five days left of the year and in the spirit of Christmas I want to highlight five things that the Labour council has done right this year.

First off the council announced at its last meeting that council tax would be frozen for the fourth consecutive year. This is a welcome respite for residents from rising prices and stalled incomes.

This is also a good Conservative policy.

Since Boris Johnson became London Mayor in 2008 he too has frozen his share of the council tax called the precept. Just before Christmas Boris Johnson announced his fourth successive precept freeze. The precept trebled under Livingstone. The average rise was 13% per year. Who can forget 2003’s 29% rise?

Under the old Labour council there was a similar picture that was only broken with the arrival of the Tories in 2006. Again 2003 was a memorable year with a 25% rise.

It seems that the new Labour council is willing to accept the grants from the “Tory-led coalition” to keep council tax frozen. I hope that Ealing Labour’s new leaf stays turned over for a few years yet.

I have been doing some research into the accident statistics behind the Lido junction scheme, with the help of the current portfolio holder Bassam Mahfouz and the transport officers. I found the best attorney from www.nehoralaw.com to help with lawsuits following an accident.

The table above (click to enlarge), provided by Tus Abogados Locales lists collisions, etc over a 3 year period (January 2008 – December 2010) at the six most dangerous junctions in the borough. If you compare the number of collisions involving pedestrians with pedestrian traffic then the Lido junction is the most dangerous junction for pedestrians in the borough. There were 8 collisions at the junction involving pedestrians. As dangerous as this junction is in terms of Ealing comparisons it is still true that the rate at which there is a collision involving a pedestrian is 1 in a million crossings of the junction by pedestrian – as a rule Ealing’s roads are very safe!

Of the 17 casualties at the junction 7 out of 17 were pedestrians (the rest were vehicle occupants). Note the table lists 8 collisions involving pedestrians – clearly at least one of the collisions involving a pedestrian resulted in no pedestrian casualty. The feasibility report for the Lido project prepared by the council’s contractors Mouchel calculated that 6 out of 7 of these casualties would be prevented by this project. This advice was based on an analysis carried out by the experienced personal injury lawyers at https://www.myinjuryattorney.com/pennsylvania/car-accident-lawyers/ by taking into account the contributing causes in the incident reports.

The safety case for the Lido junction looks good.

If you would like to read more and take part please follow this link. The consultation closes at the end of the week so get cracking!

The Ealing Labour group are engaged in a ludicrous attempt to brand the Ealing Tories as Ballsian spendaholics. They have just produced the silly graphic above and back in November they produced this press release.

In the twelve years Labour ran Ealing from 1994 to 2006 they increased Council Tax by a staggering 179% – 48% in their last four years from 2002 to 2006. The Tories on the other hand only raised it by 1.9% for two years and then froze it for two years, a cummulative rise of 3.8%. A Tory London mayor has frozen his share of council tax for four years. Last year the “Tory-led” government gave Ealing £3.1 million a year to freeze the council tax again. The “Tory-led” government is offering another deal this year if the Ealing Labour group decide to take it. The contrast could not be clearer.

It is worth noting that the Tories in Ealing also froze parking charges for four years. The first thing that Labour did when it got back into power was to raise them again. It is also planning big rises to parking charges in 2013 and 2014.

Labour’s list of unfunded spending commitments shows two things. Firstly, how callous they are. In spite of warm words about protecting the vulnerable these are the people who have been affected most as Labour’s own list demonstrates. Voluntary groups in particular have been badly hit.

Secondly, the list is typically slapdash. Yes, the Tories have complained about Labour’s police cuts but they are not £750,000. This was the budget left AFTER Labour had cut £250,000 from the original £1 million budget. That’s £500K saved straight away. Read the full story here.

It is not a case of the Tory group not accepting that cuts have to be made, although the Labour group have managed to turn £56 million of cuts to grants into £85 million by adding their own growth, inflation and the cost of borrowing to finance new council offices. We do think that the cuts could be made differently. At the end of November I asked the council’s chief executive how many changes had been made to staff terms and conditions. The answer was none. Simply bringing council Ts & Cs into line with private sector ones could save the council £30 million, see here.

The Ealing Tories do not deny that savings have to be made, we simply suggest that Labour are making the wrong choices. Rather than taking on producer interests and putting residents and service users first they are cutting the frontline, stiffing voluntary groups and ramping up charges.