Category: Ealing and Northfield

This tweet from the Ealing Labour party shows that the Ealing Labour party has a vivid fantasy life.

Ealing Labour ain’t doing nothing. The council is spending residents’ money on a worthwhile project that was conceived and pushed forward by the previous Conservative administration after extensive consultation with young people to find out what they wanted in the way of recreational facilities. The choice to spend your money on this project was a Tory choice, not a Labour one. Indeed Labour politicians went into bat against the original scheme in Elthorne Park in spite of 61.9% of local people being in favour of the scheme. As a result of Labour’s machinations the scheme has been delayed by 18 months.

Labour’s press release says:

Ealing Labour is delivering on its promise to deliver a new skate park in the borough. Work has begun to build the borough’s first ‘state of the art’ skate park and play area alongside Gurnell Leisure Centre. The outdoor play area will be ready in time for the school summer holidays.

Labour Leader of the council, Councillor Julian Bell said: “This is an exciting project and the new development will give children of all ages an opportunity to get involved in all types of outdoor sports and activities. We hope the new park will give local people and visitors a lot of pleasure and the chance to try something new. It shows that when the Labour party makes a promise we stick to it.”

Bell is yet again trying to rebrand Tory choices to spend your money on well researched projects that benefit residents as Labour projects. Compare and contrast with the unwanted, unresearched and unecessary £5.5 million Southall car park project.

It is interesting to contrast the approach of three of our local news outlets to reporting the council’s Recycling Rewards scheme.

On the Ealing Today website Annamarie Flanagan really did just regurgitate the council’s press release verbatim. It was quick at least, it came out the same day.

In the Gazette Michael Russell took six days to merely re-arrange the words in the council’s press release and add his name to his work.

In contrast at the Ealing Times reporter Shane Murray took nine days to do a proper job. He called me up and another Conservative councillor, Colm Costello. Having gathered some contrary views Shane then went back to the Labour spokesman to give him the chance to rebut what was said. Shane’s article is an interesting piece of journalism which presents opposing views and brings out new facts. Well done Ealing Times. I am pleased that they have decided to invest in covering Ealing again, if only online for now.

Amusingly Cllr Mahfouz accuses me of sour grapes “because Northfield’s participation rates had fallen”. I thought that my comments were pretty measured considering what a silly piece of spin this turned out to be. According to Mahfouz’s stats the recycling participation rate in Northfield fell from 71.9% to 70.4%. I would be surprised if this was even statistically significant let alone a cause for “sour grapes”.

Northfield is consistently amongst the top wards for cleanliness and re-cycling thanks to its considerate residents. All smiles here Cllr Mahfouz.

Labour council leader Julian Bell has sent the boys round to have a word with the headmaster and chairman of govenors at Featherstone High School. Apparently they are thinking unclean thoughts about running their own affairs and the leader needs for them to be re-educated.

I am being generous and suggesting that Cllr Bassam Mahfouz’s Recycling Rewards scheme only wasted its £30K communications budget. The £80K given in incentives to the winning wards will be reasonably well spent I am sure but I don’t see this scheme being repeated. Maybe we should praise the Labour administration for trying something new. Whilst the £80K will not be entirely wasted it might have been better spent on directly tackling participation in recycling in the weakest wards in the borough. The number are in the cabinet report here.

The council has spent £30K advertising this scheme and seen the average participation rate across the borough drop slightly from 58.37% to 58.30%. I am sure that that the margin for error is much bigger than this so we should probably just agree that the £30K has been spent to no effect.

If you look at the council’s table there are some shocking disparities across the borough. Southall Green ward participates at fully half the rate of Hobbayne. And don’t let anyone tell you that Hobbayne is some chichi middle class area which you might expect to do well.

The nine lowest performing wards, which all fail to get over the 55% mark, are strong Labour areas. Southall Green is noticeably weaker than anywhere else. I would rather that the £110K had been allocated to a small team going door-to-door around Southall Green to try to change behaviour there.

Labour would rather puff themselves up with comms spending than actually engage with their own communities. Cllr Mahfouz’s reputation for dissimulation is underlined by his quote in the press release:

This competition has shown that it is possible to improve recycling rates and a special mention must go to South Acton, which improved by such a staggering amount.

Black is white. Both Cllrs Bell and Mahfouz believe in Lenin’s dictum “A lie told often enough becomes truth”. Mahfouz lauds South Acton increasing by 6.1% whilst failing to mention that Dormers Wells dropped 6.2% and that 9 out of 23 wards went backwards and 7 stood still (less than 1% change) and only 7 showed progress.

Having been in charge of parking in the last two years of the Tory administration I have been keeping a close eye on the Parking Services function within the council over the last year, indeed I was asked to chair a scrutiny panel on CPZs in the municipal year just ended. At the last council meeting I asked the following question:

Question 37:

How many penalty charge notices were issued in the last financial year?

Answer 37:

202,255

Over the last six years the picture looks like this:

You can look up the historical data for yourself here.

On the face of it, it looks like Labour have learnt their lesson from their appalling behaviour just before they were thrown out of office in 2006 when they issued over 380,000 tickets. By the time I had finished the council was issuing only half of what Labour did in its last year. Under Labour’s Bassam Mahfouz the numbers have gone up by 4%. Mahfouz needs to ensure that this does not get out of control again.

Under the Conservatives we got the parking officers under control and stopped them from simply milking their more lucrative sites. Judging by the couple of stories in the press this week on parking it may be that Labour have let things go again, see here and here.

One of the things I did when I was in charge was that I made the council publish the data showing what tickets it had issued for each offence in each location, see here. The idea was that the council would know that it was being watched and as a side effect FOI inquiries might be reduced. It seems that this data has not been updated since December so I am anxious that the council has decided to stop being transparent in this very controversial area. I have asked officers to tell me what is going on.

I will be coming back to this area over the next couple of days.

Sorry to return to my theme of yesterday but Labour council leader Julian Bell has been having fun this week opening a couple of projects that I got onto the council’s capital budget when I was the portfolio holder. Note the common theme here: spending people’s money on things that people use. After he has run out of Tory projects to open Cllr Bell will be reduced to opening new council offices, computer systems and a car park in Southall. Ooops.

This tweet yesterday from Labour council leader Julian Bell is wrong on a number of levels.

Labour are not investing and Bell betrays himself with his sloppy language. The council maybe doing the investing but it is taxpayers’ money they are spending.

What is happening at Oldfield Circus is that your money is being spent as a result of a choice made by a politician. In fact this was not Julian Bell’s choice but his predecessor Jason Stacey’s. Bell is merely trying to get the credit. By their choices you shall know them.

Most of Jason Stacey’s Conservative choices were around improving the immediate environment of the people paying the bills. More road re-surfacing. Cleaner streets. Better parks. Refurbished libraries. The list goes on.

Councillor Bell’s Labour choices are about looking after his own. After schools Bell’s biggest allocation of capital is to spend £16.3 million on the council itself. After that its £5.5 million for a car park for Southall. Under Labour regeneration is limited to Southall, the council gets shiny new offices and there is no cash for libraries.

It’s all about choices. The people choose the politicians. The politicians decide. The people pay.

In his haste to claim credit for Elthorne ward winning Cllr Mahfouz’s recycling competition, Bakhai got the number wrong and had to correct himself. You have got to hit that delete button faster councillor. Full announcement here:

RECYCLING REWARDS – THE RESULTS ARE IN

Five wards in Ealing walk away with big cash prizes for being the best and most improved recyclers.

Elthorne and Hobbayne are the joint winners for best recycling ward, splitting £20,000 for their communities after participation rates in both wards reached an impressive 72.7%.

South Acton takes the top spot for most improved recycling ward, bagging £20,000 to be spent on local improvements. Participation rates improved by 6.1% taking them up to a participation rate of 54.5% as they leap-frogged six places in the results table. Southfields and Northolt Mandeville wards also each pick up a £20,000 cash prize for improving their participation rates by 4.1%.

In addition, Acton Central, Cleveland, Greenford Green, Hanger Hill, Northolt West End, Norwood Green, Perivale and Walpole all improved their recycling participation rates.

The tonnage of waste sent for recycling increased compared with last year thanks to the recycling incentive competition, which was the first of its kind in London.

In the period the competition was running, an extra 370.32 tonnes –of kerbside recycling was collected. This is the equivalent to the weight of 370 classic minis. In total, 2607.72 less tonnes of waste were sent to landfill over the same time period, which equates to savings of
£231,148 in landfill tax. This is down to an increase in recycling and a reduction in the amount households are throwing away.

Councillor Bassam Mahfouz, cabinet member for Transport and Environment, said:
“A huge congratulations to all of the winning wards. This competition has shown that it is possible to improve recycling rates and a special mention must go to South Acton, which improved by such a staggering amount. Recycling is so important, not only for the environment but also to save the council money in landfill tax.

“Thank you to everyone who took up recycling and helped reduce the amount of rubbish sent to landfill. The money saved can be spent on providing valuable services across the borough. I urge all residents to continue taking advantage of the council’s excellent recycling services to recycle as much waste as possible.”

I quite admire Ealing’s Labour group for setting up their new housing commission. Sounds interesting. It is good to see Labour being imaginative rather than just managing things as they are. I would like to know though if it is a private Labour party venture or an official council initiative that will cost the council money. Up until now there has been a formal scrutiny panel that looked at housing. Labour abolished this in the budget process, cutting scrutiny by 44%, see here. Have Labour abolished official scrutiny committees with opposition representation and replaced them with a Labour only “commission”?

Labour’s commission comprises three Labour politicians, including Newham’s mayor plus a researcher, James Gregory, from the keeper of Labour’s flame, the Fabian Society. They are like the Jesuits of Labour. Another participant is “leading public policy expert” Adrian Harvey. Is he a freelancer? Being paid? Is he also the ex-Deputy General Secretary of Fabian Society Adrian Harvey? All other participants seem to have a kosher housing background.

I was interested to see David Lunts, Executive Director, London Homes & Communities Agency included in the list. I think he is now an employee of the GLA again nowadays. Strange to see a (regional government) civil servant/local government officer taking part in such a politically unbalanced exercise. Lunts has an interesting background. His career seems to have started as a Labour councillor in Manchester where he chaired the Manchester City Council housing committee from 1988 to 1995. Then he worked as an advisor to Labour’s John Prescott at the ODPM before joining Ken Livingstone’s GLA. Looks like a bit of a Labour insider, and he has clearly made a good living at it too. He is doing another housing commission for another Labour borough – Lambeth.

Labour’s commission seems to include no representatives of other parties. Either it is official council business and it should be more balanced or it is a private Labour venture and should be strictly separate from the council.