Category: Ealing and Northfield

Another public service message:

Ealing Council is reminding residents that refuse and recycling collections will take place a day later than usual following the Easter holidays.

Changes to collections are as follows:

Usual collection day Revised collection day

Friday 10 April (Good Friday) Saturday 11 April
Monday 13 April (Easter Monday) Tuesday 14 April
Tuesday 14 April Wednesday 15 April
Wednesday 15 April Thursday 16 April
Thursday 16 April Friday 17 April
Friday 17 April Saturday 18 April
Saturday 18 April Saturday 18 April (as usual)

Collections will return to normal on Monday 20 April.

This is a bit of a public service announcement. If you are interested in the Council’s alley gating scheme you need to get an application in before the end of this month.

To make an application, residents need to get consent from every neighbour who either jointly owns, or has a right to access the alleyway. Following approval the gates will be installed and residents who are meant to have access to the alleyway will be given keys to gain entry. The closing date for 2009/10 applications is 31st March. There are usually more applications than there are funds available so the Council will prioritise the schemes that serve the most people.

Last year the Council spent £445,000 on alley-gating to protect more than 400 homes.

The Council’s dedicated alley gating officer can be contacted on 020 8825 7757 or click here for more information.

It seems that two local websites have been gleefully jumping on some old statistics about street cleaning in Ealing. They look bad because they are two years old and reflect Ealing how it was – which is why the Tories were elected in May 2006.

This posting is stupidly long but stick with it if you are interested in the way that truth gets mangled by laziness. David Highton at West Ealing Neighbours published a piece on Monday titled “EALING ONE OF WORST BOROUGHS FOR STREET LITTERING”. His opening line is:

According to a new report from the Council for the Protection of Rural England the borough of Ealing is one of the worst in the country for people dropping litter in the streets.

Although he goes on to repeat a few lines from the report his intent is clear. He wants to communicate the message that Ealing is bad at keeping its streets clean.

On Sunday March 15th the Acton W3 site had a piece titled “Low Down and Dirty” and sub-titled “Local authorities come bottom of the heap with dealing with street litter”. Their opening line is:

Both Ealing and Hounslow boroughs are considered to be amongst the dirtiest in Britain according to a report published by Campaign to Protect Rural England. Hounslow is ranked fourth filthiest whilst Ealing fare slightly better ranking seventh out of the worst offenders.

They do though have the good grace to include a comment from Ealing council:

Ealing Council Cabinet Member for Environment and Street Services, Councillor Sue Emment, said: “Unfortunately the Campaign to Protect Rural England has published a report using figures which are now two years out of date. Since then we have made massive improvements and last year’s league table showed our streets were the cleanest of any west London borough.

In fact at the last independent inspection, in January 2009, auditors found 94 per cent of streets were free from litter, which is the cleanest they’ve ever been.

Of course very few people read that far past the headline and initial paragraph so this is small consolation.

I guess WEN just lifted their story from Acton W3 without doing any of their own research. It fitted in with their rather down on Ealing point of view. Similarly with Acton W3 – local media very rarely think there is much mileage in good news from the council – could that be why Ealing keeps Around Ealing?

Today the Audit Commission, the government body that rates councils, awarded Ealing its top rating. Only this Tuesday we finalised a standstill budget after two successive years of a 1.9%, below inflation rise. This award proves that you can control costs and still deliver too. You can see what the Audit Commission has to say here.

Council Leader Jason Stacey said:

The most important measure of our success is resident satisfaction with services, and the good news is real progress is being made. Some 78% of people say the Council is doing a good job, and 72% feel we are efficient and well run. The Government assessment is a tremendous endorsement of the progress that we’ve made.

The numbers that Jason is quoting come from the council’s own residents survey (see here). It’s nice to get the nod from the civil servants at the Audit Commission. It is more important that the 3,030 real people whose opinion we ask in the residents’ survey give us the nod.

Brent River Park is one of ten London parks to win a £400,000 makeover from the GLA. Results were announced today, see voting here. Thanks to everyone who voted. Southall Manor House and grounds was also in the running but only recieved 1,083 votes compared to Brent River Park’s 4,648.

Ealing’s Conservative administration announced today a freeze in Council Tax for the 2009/10 financial year. Cabinet Member for Finance and Performance, Cllr David Scott explained:

We recognise that the economic downturn is affecting the money in people’s pockets and residents are looking to make savings in their own budgets. It is only right that the Council does the same thing and does not add to the pressures households are facing.

I am pleased we have been able to deliver a zero increase this year. We face major hurdles with falling Government grants – below average settlements for the fourth year running – and increased demand from residents who are facing difficulties and are in need of our services.

Yet we have still achieved the zero increase by finding nearly £9M in efficiency savings which will protect front line services and deliver better value for money.

When elected in 2006, the Conservative administration promised to keep any Council tax increases to below inflation. After two successive years of below inflation increases, the real level of Council tax has actually fallen since 2006 and gone down from 23rd to 18th lowest out of London’s 33 Boroughs. In the four years to 2006, the previous Labour administration increased Council Tax by 48% – the second highest increase in London. Over their twelve year period leading Ealing Council (1994-2006) Labour increased Council Tax by more than all but one of London’s 33 Councils. Labour’s huge increases in Council Tax came despite the fact that prior to 2006 Ealing enjoyed above average increases in Government grant, a trend that has since reversed.

Next Tuesday the Cabinet will decide on some 20 issues. One of the most important for residents will be the amount of money we spend next year on road and pavement renewal, see report here. This was an area that was sorely neglected through 12 years of Labour administration. The graph below shows how this capital budget has changed over the ten years to-date plus next year’s proposed budget.

We did not set the 2006/7 capital budget but we managed to boost the paltry £1 million committed by Labour in its last budget by 50%. In our first three capital budgets we will have committed £3.5 million, £8.5 million and £6.5 million respectively. In three years we will have spent more on our roads than Labour did in three four year terms. Note that Labour spent no Ealing money on the roads in 1999/2000. Maybe Labour thought the world would end with the Millennium?

Whatever your views on climate change and transport, roads are a basic bit of infrastructure that we all rely on. Taking a 12 year holiday on this kind of basic housekeeping is pretty rubbish government.