Category: Ealing and Northfield

The dreadful Acton Afghan mansion story is back in the Mail today.

Typically for the Mail they fail to convey who is to blame here. This story is excruciating for Ealing Council as we have a peripheral role in the administration of this stupid scheme, called the Local Housing Allowance Scheme.

The article is not as clear as it could be. This is a Labour government scheme which means that central government cash is being spent on this family. Ealing Council cannot stop this situation the way the law and the scheme are currently drafted.

If you want to blame someone, blame the government that has lost control of immigration and then uses our taxes in such a stupid way.

At last the results from the Gunnersbury Park consultation are up on the Hounslow website for all to see, see here. I will reserve any comments I have for the meeting of the Joint Advisory Panel (details here). It is a shame the results have taken so long to emerge. The consultation was open until the end of September and the decision was taken to analyse and try to understand the many comments that were submitted with the responses. Something like two thirds of people made comments so it was thought to be important to analyse them and get a sense of them. It was hoped to get the Advisory Board together in October but the earliest they all, or at least most of them, could get together was Monday next week, hence the delay. We can now stop speculating and start discussing the actual figures. Enjoy.

Comments by Friends of Gunnersbury Park and Museum Chairman, James Wisdom, on the Ealing Today website on Tuesday have not been very helpful. One is tempted to say “With friends like this …” Nine tenths of what Wisdom says is nonsense. He is wrong to say that Hounslow have not been kept informed and he is wrong to say that Ealing has changed its mind.

Ealing’s Conservative administration has always had problems with the idea of building on the park. It is not what we got into power to do. There are many, including officers of both authorities, English Heritage and the Hounslow administration who might see this idea as a “Get out of jail free” card. This was not the view of Ealing Council. To underline this we issued the following statement to the press on April 8th before this whole process kicked off:

The concept of enabling development is extremely unattractive to our borough to the point of being unacceptable.

Back in June West Ealing Neighbours (WEN) Vice Chair, Eric Leach, told us through the comments on this blog that he intended to stand as an independent candidate at the local elections due in May. At the same time he promised to announce where he was standing in September. I haven’t heard where he is standing so I guess that is his first broken promise up on the board. WEN seem quite happy to give Eric a platform on their newsletters and website. For how long I wonder?

Since the summer Eric’s public pronouncements have got more and more mean-minded. He seems particularly venomous about the Council’s plans to improve social housing in West Ealing. He opens the November newsletter from WEN with this diatribe:

Fiddling While Rome Burns?

‘National Debt stands at an unprecedented £824.8 billion (ONS*).
National Government borrowings for the first six months of this financial year to the end of September 2009 were £77.8 billion – the highest mid-year deficit in UK history (ONS*).
1 million UK homes are empty (TEHA**)
Green Man Lane Estate redevelopment by A2Dominion will cost £137 million (www.greenmanlane.co.uk).
A2Dominion is funded by National Government to the tune of £150 million/year.

HOW CAN WE ALL AFFORD TO BORROW THE MONEY TO BUILD THESE 738 NEW HOMES AND BUILD SUPPORTING SCHOOLS, HEALTH CENTRE AND POLICE STATION?

When Eric has done his homework he will find that the council is not allowed to have a current account deficit and is strictly limited by what borrowing it can do. Although the Council is heavily constrained both by the law and by its finances we don’t despair. We are actively working with social landlords to improve the social housing in West Ealing. Apparently Eric doesn’t like it. Talking about the Ealing Dean Estate on Wednesday Eric said:

Ealing Council Cabinet on 10th November 2009 agreed another chapter in its social cleansing of parts of the borough. Sherwood Close housing estate (known by the Council as Dean Gardens Estate) is to be demolished and the public land sold off to a property developer. The 209 flats (68% one bedroom) will be replaced by an increased number of bigger flats, some of which will be commercial for-sale properties. 49 of the existing flats are owned (leasehold) by residents.

Consultation so far had been very low key and confined to the existing estate tenants. The Council’s press release states that it will start consulting with local stakeholders in December 2009.

A bit of political advice for Eric: you usually ask the people affected directly first before you talk to other people about their futures. Eric’s phrase “social cleansing” seems rather unpleasant. It is hard to tie down what Eric means by it but I don’t think it conveys respect for his neighbours.

The Council is working hard to bring 1,000 high quality new homes to West Ealing, the majority of which will be socially rented, many of which will be larger family homes, and Eric is giving us earache. I can’t imagine that this is a good basis on which to stand in the West Ealing area – you need these people to vote for you. Doh!

Yesterday I popped up to Greenwood Primary School in Northolt to see the temporary pool we have been enjoying this term and welcome Boris. As a part of a London Mayor sponsored scheme called Make a Splash Greenwood primary school has been hosting a small temporary swimming pool in one of their halls. This is the first temporary pool delivered by this scheme and hopefully we will have another one back in the borough soon. This scheme is genius as it uses a tiny pool with the kind of plant you get in a home pool to get kids swimming. Something like 1,000 kids have already used the Greenwood pool so we can be sure that the new Northolt pool will have lots of new customers when it opens in January.

Thanks to MWB Business Exchange, the contemporary, serviced and flexible office space people, who have sponsored this programme. I chatted to their CEO, John Spencer, who was really enjoying seeing the programme in action. Commissioner for Sport Kate Hoey came across very well when we had a chance to say hello. Boris remembered me as a blogger but called me Paul. I am terrible with names so I don’t hold it against him. Local MP Steven Pound was there trying to look cheerful surrounded by lots of Tories and giving out his communications allowance pens.

Hats off to head Jim Britzman without whom nothing would have happened. Back in May I went with a group of officers from Active Ealing and the guys from Ealing Swimming Club to look at a similar pool at a primary school in Barnet. Again there the willingness of the headteacher and staff is what made the scheme fly. Once we saw what could be achieved we were determined to elbow our way to the front of the queue to get one of the first of these pools for Ealing. Thanks to Jim and Greenwood we succeeded.

Ealing Conservatives issued the following press release on Tuesday but true to form none of the local papers or websites want to publish the very boring story that Ealing Conservatives have always said we will not build on Gunnersbury Park. They didn’t want to mention this in April. They didn’t want to mention this in September. They don’t want to mention it now.

There is always a tendency to want to avoid responding to people stirring it lest you fan the flames. But, it seems that Labour, the LibDems and the Greens think that this is a good stick to beat the Tories with and don’t want to let the record get in the way of a good leaflet either.

CONSERVATIVES PLEDGE NO DEVELOPMENT ON GUNNERSBURY PARK

Ealing Conservatives this week welcomed the proposals for Gunnersbury Park that are outlined in the recent options appraisal and consultation. The same document proposed using the sale of land along Lionel Road as a means to fund these proposals. Such a sale is against previously stated Council policy, and Ealing Conservatives are happy to restate that any such residential development in Gunnersbury Park or any other Ealing park is not acceptable to this administration.

Councillor Phil Taylor, Portfolio holder for Customer and Community Services, said:

“Our Council has consistently said that it would not support residential development in Gunnersbury Park, or any other park in the Borough.

“Although it has caused some upset it was essential that the question was raised in the recent consultation questionnaire. The kind of enabling development outlined would be acceptable to funding bodies such as English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund. We can now negotiate with these bodies with the clear understanding that such enabling development is unacceptable to the public as well as this council.

“This administration has worked hard to fix Gunnersbury Park since it was elected. Very soon after we came into power we set up the Gunnersbury regeneration board jointly with Hounslow which has moved at a good pace to produce a conservation management plan and an options appraisal for the park. The recent consultation will allow us to gauge the public’s response to proposals for the park.”

ENDS

Notes to editors:

1. Statement of Phil Taylor in council press release 1471 issued 11th April 2009:

“The concept of enabling development is extremely unattractive to our borough to the point of being unacceptable.”

http://www.ealing.gov.uk/press_releases/2009/april/pr1417.html

2. The following statement was issued to the Ealing & Acton Gazette on 8th September:

“As we have previously made clear there are no plans to develop the Gunnersbury Park and it is not the Council’s policy to allow development there.”

3. In the same month the following statement was issued to the Ealing & Acton Gazette on behalf of Phil Taylor:

“It is not the Council’s policy to allow development on Gunnersbury Park. The regeneration board is entitled to look at and discuss various options about how to regenerate the park but it will be the Council, in conjunction with our counterparts in Hounslow, who will make the final decisions on these issues.”

At tonight’s Council meeting (see agenda here) Tory transport spokesman David Millican has tabled the following motion for debate.

This Council affirms its support for Crossrail and notes the myriad of benefits it will bring both to Ealing and to London as a whole. Council welcomes the continued support of the Mayor of London and urges politicians of all parties to maintain Crossrail as a priority during these difficult economic times.

This is part of a wide ranging campaign by Ealing Tories to support the Crossrail project and to make sure that this borough really benefits from the project.

At the start of October Ealing Central & Acton PPC Angie Bray and council leader Jason Stacey met with London Mayor Boris Johnson at Ealing Broadway station to press the case for improvements at the station as a part of the Crossrail project, see Gazette article here.

At the Tory conference the next week David Millican was able to use TfL’s fringe event to ask Peter Hendy, Commissioner for Transport for London, what he was doing about interchange issues around Crossrail. At the end of the meeting both David and I were able to buttonhole the chairman of the Crossrail company, Terry Morgan, and make clear the public’s demand for “kiss and drop” at our Crossrail stations. The next day David Millican was able to press for Crossrail during the transport session with Teresa Villiers (see photo above) and again raised the interchange issue with her at a fringe meeting later in the week.

I am disappointed that the skate park “bitter enders” are still trying to undermine the council’s proposals to put a skate park in Elthorne Park. Jill Evans, of Coldershaw Road, wrote in last week’s Gazette to say:

Mr Taylor’s letter, typically selective on facts, alleges his consultation produced a favourable response for a skatepark to be placed in Elthorne Park. It did not. As usual this council’s consultation results were predetermined by the careful selection of questions asked and not asked.

Ms Evans does not like democracy it seems. The results are clear and were published by the council here. She and others believe that they can win their argument by rubbishing our consultation exercise. It merely demonstrates that they have lost the argument. It is clear that Ms Evans thinks that the residents of Townholme Crescent should have a veto about what goes on in the park. I am sorry but this is unrealistic. The majority of Ms Evans’s neighbours want the park to go ahead. It is a shame she can’t accept their opinion.

Ms Evans laughably tries to create dividing lines between people who live side by side. According to her she is a “have not” but if you go to the end of her road where it turns into Midhurst Road and enters the Northfield ward I represent suddenly people become “haves” and live in the “privileged Ealing area”. The map below shows that Northfield ward actually abuts Elthorne park, see full version here.

It is worth noting that we have made a decision to go ahead. But, the next step for the project to go through planning. It is up to the planners and Ealing’s parks people to come up with a workable, credible solution that addresses the concerns that have been raised in the consultation process. The public will have a proper opportunity to contribute and I am sure that we will end up with a successful project which most people are happy with, most of the time.

According to the Ealing Southall Labour party website the lamentable Cllr Sharma won’t be standing again as a councillor. They don’t actually say that but his name does not appear in the list of candidates for Southall they are putting forward for next year.

Last year Cllr Sharma had the worst attendance record of any of Ealing’s 69 councillors, attending only one third of the meetings he was supposed to, see records here. That did not of course stop Cllr Sharma claiming his full allowance of £9,480 on top of his MP’s salary.

I don’t suppose that we shall see much more of Cllr Sharma. The last time he appeared at a council meeting he was roundly humiliated and made a total fool of himself supporting the cause of Ghurkha settlement in our council chamber and then voting against it in Parliament.

Hopefully he will be neither MP nor councillor next May.