Category: Ealing and Northfield

I have been meaning to take these photos for a while. They show two adjacent roads in neighbouring Walpole ward. Both photos have been taken at the same time with the same camera settings. The first shows what the lighting level is like looking south down Waldemar Avenue. It is rather gloomy although the jaundiced look of the old sodium lamps does not really come across. The second photo is Lyncroft Gardens looking west. It is striking how well the road is lit with our new for old lamp colums. The Heritage Quarter is going to look really stunning when it is finished. The second picture is slightly blury because I did not rest my camera on something.

Waldemar Avenue

Lyncroft Gardens

Hope you have someone to curl up with tonight. Must go!

The LibDems have been busy little bees with their shouty orange leaflets again this weekend.

The leaflet I saw quoted LibDem leader Harvey Rose as saying:

Last year the council made a number of cuts. This resulted in a worsening Parking Services department and a record level of official ‘Ombudsman’ complaints.

The LibDems always confuse inputs with outputs so when we try to to do more for less they always cry “cuts”. That is why LibDem run Richmond and Kingston have the highest council taxes in London. The average Band D council tax in London is about £1,000. It costs you about £250 a year more to live in Richmond or Kingston, see the figures here.

I run parking so I can tell you we inherited a service that is not good enough which is taking a long time to get right. It is a big job. Harvey and I will just have to disagree on the direction of travel.

His last claim is where you get to test his objectivity. On complaints to the Local Government Ombudsman Rose is quite simply talking crap. You can see the Ombudsman’s report or letter as it is called for the last year here.

The figures are quite clear. The year before the Conservatives came to power, 2005/6, the Ombudsman received 254 complaints about Ealing. The next year, most of which we were in power, the number went down to 222. In 2007/8 it was 206. So Rose says black is white.

These number do sound quite high but of the 230 complaints against Ealing that were dealt with last year they found 51 were premature, ie the complainant had gone straight to the Ombudsman and not raised the complaint with Ealing, no maladministration was found in 43 complaints, they exercised discretion to close a further 30 without requiring action by the Council and they found 46 were outside their jurisdiction. This meant that only 60 complaints were substantial. Still too many. Worryingly of these 60 three were what they call “formal reports”. These are the worst offences and three is an unacceptably high number. You might want to know when these happened: April 2001, September 2003 and February 2006. Rose might want the Tory group to atone for these historical offences but really he should have a go at the Labour group.

The LibDems are notorious for printing porkies in the expectation that people will take what they say at face value. Harvey’s not the youngest LibDem. I would have thought that some of the younger ones might have pointed out that the internet kind of means it is harder to lie nowadays. You’ve been found out mate.

I noticed on Friday that the Gazette had picked up the previous week’s “research” paper from the TaxPayers’ Alliance that looks at people earning more than £50K in local government.

Would it be too much for the Gazette to do a bit of elementary fact checking before they just swallow the TPA’s press release wholesale? 154 of these “fat cats” are in the Borough’s schools. Now some people might say that paying £50K-plus to 154 heads, deputy heads and other senior staff in our 65 primary schools, 12 secondary schools and 6 special schools is a misallocation of resources. Please do say if you think so.

Now we have reduced the number of council fat cats from 326 to 172 perhaps we can heave a sigh of relief? If we take the TPA’s figures at face value, which would be a mistake, Ealing is ranked 21 out of 33 London authorities (ie 21st lowest) in terms of spending on highly paid staff per head of population. So we are probably not horribly out of order.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the TaxPayers’ Alliance. I was involved with them in their very early days. I helped them with their initial fund raising and organising but I got disillusioned because their first publication, The Bumper Book of Government Waste, mixed up capital and revenue and different years and wasn’t really a serious analysis of waste – at least not one that was any use to anyone.

The headline of their press release was:

COUNCIL SPENDING UNCOVERED: COUNCILS EMPLOY 22% MORE MIDDLE MANAGERS THAN LAST YEAR

This is utter nonsense. They make no effort whatsoever to put any of this in any context or to compare like for like. I had a look at their figures for London boroughs. They had the Brent population figure wrong (71,600 instead of 270,000). They haven’t tried to work out whether or not teachers are included. Most boroughs include them and are roughly comparable. At least six don’t include them so look better than they otherwise would – Ealing is probably better than 21st. The City of London is an exception as it has a tiny population but loads of businesses to deal with.

The TPA could be really useful if they upped their game somewhat. Much of what they do though is to pull out facts and figures from published sources without understanding them. Ealing’s own figures for people paid over £50K are published on page 23 of our Statement of Accounts and anyone can pull them off our website here. All public bodies publish these tables. At least when I do this stuff to my friends at Transport for London I explain my workings!

I see that West Ealing Neighbours have picked up on the old fat cats story too. Eric Leach and David Highton seem to be unhappy:

Yet, WEN senses, anecdotally and from some of our own dealings, that there is growing frustration with some aspects of the Council’s practices and a feeling that our local democratic dealings are becoming increasingly confrontational. It’s as if you have to shout louder and louder just to be heard let alone to see any action.

They seem to want quick replies to letters and emails and to have questions or problems speedily and efficiently dealt with and resolved but don’t seem to want to will the means. They are perhaps being unrealistic.

Take for instance their pay comparisons. The place to go to for earnings information is the National Statistics Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings here. Eric and David are right to point out that “the national average wage is around £24,000”. The 2008 survey says that average (mean) gross weekly pay is £471.90 per week or £24,538.80 per annum. It isn’t much use trying to pay national average pay rates in Ealing. The average also includes part-timers which is not a typical characteristic of senior staff like head teachers and other senior managers. If you look further in this data you will find information by place of work by local authority. Average (mean) gross weekly pay for full-timers resident in Ealing is £670.20 per week or £34,850.40 per annum. It is not hard to see how we end up with 172 £50K plus people running the council.

How much do the guys think some of the senior social workers get paid? They can’t praise the children’s services and then look askance when we pay people reasonable money to take responsibility for keeping children safe. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

West Ealing Neighbours needs to sort itself out. It needs to work out whether it wants to be a grown up organisation or be seen as a bunch of maverick activists howling in anger, unwilling to deal with the world as it is. The following comments today about last night’s SEC meeting from Eric Leach published on the WEN website are out of order:

The content, tone and approach of this public forum was sharply in contrast to the two recent hugely unpleasant Council Planning Committee Panel meetings concerning Dickens Yard and Arcadia and the recent Northfields, Ealing Broadway and Elthorne Council Ward Forums. These latter forums were all poorly researched; badly run; and significantly contributed to alienating local residents – especially those who generously give of their time trying to improve their local environments and communities.

Does WEN refuse to acknowledge that current planning law is framed as it is? Does WEN think we can run planning committees the same way as an informal public meeting? Does WEN want to pick up the bills when our decisions get overturned on appeal because we have not observed the law? Planning committees have a quasi-judicial decision making role which is apolitical. This role is hosted by the council and involves councillors of all parties to ensure that planning decisions are made by accountable local politicians.

I can’t comment on the Ealing Broadway and Elthorne meetings but I take exception to Leach’s characteristion of the Northfield ward forum as “alienating local residents”. Leach attended the Northfield ward forum so his comments about it are perplexing to say the least. The meeting was not tightly chaired and was perhaps overlong but it is hard to let people have their say any other way. The ideas presented were modified as a result of the feedback recieved from residents and the final decision confirmed by a show of hands. It was messy but that is democracy: sometimes chaotic, feeling your way forward, trying to please most of the people, most of the time whilst trying to do the right thing.

On the night Gazette journalist Paloma Kubiak told me how “positive” she thought the meeting was. Tonight at a follow up session with stakeholders to discuss our allocation of £30K for Blondin Park one of the other residents’ association representatives told us how pleased she was with the “enthusiasm” that the ward forum had evinced.

Leach’s characteristion of the Northfield ward forum is just plain wrong. Does WEN want to repudiate it?

I have just been on the Westside Radio 89.6 FM Community Show to promote the two Ealing parks that have been shortlisted for Boris’ Help a London Park scheme. I showed what a parochial local councillor I am when Matthew asked me who are we competing with. I knew that our parks were competing with 7 other parks in north west London but not the names of the other borough’s parks. Doh! The list is below. Two Ealing parks made the short list: Brent River Park and Southall Manor House Grounds.

If enough people vote for our parks then they will get up to £400K each for improvements. We already spend £8.8 million a year maintaining our parks but this boost will allow us to make them even better. If we don’t vote, we won’t get.

In case you haven’t seen the SEC flyer for tonight’s meeting here it is above. The Save Ealing’s Centre meeting tonight at the Town Hall (from 7.30pm) will probably be a long session. Ostensibly it is called to launch SEC’s vision document, see here. Judging by the flyer’s “mugged by developers” line the meeting will also be an opportunity for people to comment again on the Dickens Yard and Arcadia developments in the town centre.

I have been through the document in detail and will comment on the “Arts, Culture, Entertainment and Leisure” and “Community” sections which raise various issues I am responsible for later in the week.

In the meantime I thought it would be constructive to say what I like about it:

• Firstly, it is great that SEC are joining in the debate. The council has been undertaking a large project since September 2007 to produce our Local Development Framework (LDF) to replace the Unitary Development Plan (UDP). This work is the Ealing masterplan that SEC has been calling for. The project included commissioning the Tibbalds work which is referenced repeatedly by SEC.
• Secondly, the idea of using existing facilities in the town centre for cultural and leisure purposes, in particular the Town Hall, is very attractive. I for one think that the Town Hall is underused. The related idea of a cultural quarter should be developed to link together and enhance our cultural assets.
• Finally, the document is right to point up the inadequacy of the access arrangements at Ealing Police Station. This was one of the first things I blogged about in February 2006

You may say I have missed rather a lot of the good points off my list. That was either because I didn’t think they were good points because they are just plain wrong, or they are easily fixable, or it is a case of no amount of saying you want lots of free loveliness will get it for you. For today, I will restrict my criticism of the document to one key point, it is too much of an uncosted wish list – I will return to this later in the week.

I have a meeting already booked for tonight but will try to pop along later. Hopefully local LibDem party chairman and joint author of the vision document, Tony Miller, won’t hiss at me like he did when I started to speak at the Arcadia planning meeting.

One of the local LibDem activists was boasting on Saturday that he had roused himself to do some leafleting. Toran Shaw hopes to be a LibDem councillor for Walpole ward one day.

On Saturday a group of us Tories were knocking on doors in neighbouring Elthorne ward asking people what the issues were in their street. We got a warm reception from residents who have noticed a profound change for the better in their local environment. One woman gave me a rare old roasting about some of the many things that are still wrong with the Borough. As I walked off wondering why I had bothered she shouted after me: “You’ll get my vote!” I don’t think she was being ironic, especially as we had only talked about the issues and not talked about parties and voting.

Tor, Leaflets are fine but you need talk to people not just push your shouty orange leaflets through their doors.

Interestingly Tor reports that:

The aim of today was to deliver the latest Focus, as well as a leaflet for a Save Ealing’s Centre meeting taking place on 20 January.

If Save Ealing’s Centre want to be seen as an independent pressure group rather than just a LibDem campaign vehicle they need to keep some separation from the LibDems. I notice that SEC’s vision paper, all 32 pages of it, was printed by the HELP Press Ltd, Rickmansworth which is an in-house LibDem printing operation. Local LibDem leaflets, and indeed LibDem leaflets the length and breadth of the country, are printed by HELP.

I wrote to SEC at the start of September to ask for copies of its constitution and minutes. As a fully paid up member of one of the residents associations it purports to represent I figured I was entitled to see this material. I haven’t heard from SEC so I guess they don’t think public life should be transparent and open. We have evidence that they are a LibDem front. Do they want to furnish some evidence to the contrary?