Category: Ealing and Northfield

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Ealing and Northfield

Sharma in hot water over Mireskandari affair

Apparently Ealing Southall MP Virendra Sharma jointly signed the letter which fellow MP Keith Vaz wrote to a judge in June urging the High Court to delay proceedings involving solicitor Shahrokh Mireskandari. Mireskandair was challenging a court order to pay £400,000 in costs to the liquidator of an airline. Vaz and Sharma asked for the case to be suspended pending an outcome of a complaint about how the case had been previously handled.

The letter failed to mention Vaz’s relationship with Mireskandari, the solicitor at the heart of several high-profile discrimination cases against the Metropolitan Police. The pair have apparently often socialised together, and Vaz and his wife have accepted hospitality from the Iranian-born solicitor at Wembley Stadium and the 02 Arena. Vaz is reported also to have delivered the eulogy at the funeral of Mireskandari’s mother.

Rather pathetically Sharma says:

I am a new MP. I will be more questioning before I sign a letter in future.

It is not like Sharma is some babe in the woods. Sharma doesn’t mention that Vaz was on his selection panel when he became the Ealing Southall candidate last year so maybe he wasn’t in a position not to do the guy a favour in return.

The Observer has a relatively staid piece here. The Mail on Sunday goes at it hammer and tong here.

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Ealing and Northfield

Meet your councillor tonight

The Northfield councillors will be in the Plough pub at the south end of Northfield Avenue this evening from 7.30-9.30pm.

Some of you will only have attended our ward forum a few days ago so what’s this?

We are hoping to do a few of these in various corners of the ward over the next year or so. It is simply an opportunity to buttonhole your councillors in an informal setting.

Obviously we will not deal with any matters that should be discussed in private; our regular surgeries are the place where these should be brought up.

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Northfield Ward Forum

Northfield Ward Forum

We were really pleased with the turnout for the first ever ward forum in Northfield, indeed the borough. Over 100 people squeezed into the Log Cabin behind Northfield Library on Thursday evening and most people stayed for two hours of comments and questions.

There were various people from our residents associations EFRA and Boston Manor RA. Other came from NABTA and Ealing Civic Society and our SNT sergeant, Greg Fox, also introduced himself. Most importantly lots of regular people came to raise issues.

My fellow councillor David Millican wrote this report for the press:

If the measure of success is the number of residents who attended, then the first ever Ward Forum, held in Northfields on Thursday 4 September, was an enormous success. Over 100 local residents came. Compare that with the dozen or so who came to the Ealing Area Committee. And that covered six wards.

Many people spoke and shared their views on subjects as wide ranging as hanging baskets, dog fouling, blocking off back alleys, 20 MPH zones. The list goes on. They questioned the neighbourhood Police Sergeant on kids cycling on the pavement, police helicopters, youths on street corners. When one resident thanked the Council for improving the collection of rubbish, the cleaner streets, increasing the opportunity for re-cycling and elimination of graffiti, there was a spontaneous and deafening round of applause.

It is shame that the three Ealing Labour MPs have sniped from the sidelines, calling the new Ward Forums talking shops. Of course Ward Forums are talking shops. That is the whole idea. Residents talk and Councillors listen. The Northfields Councillors are committed to taking serious note of the views of the residents they represent on the Council. Roll on the next Northfield Ward Forum.

Alex Hayes from Ealing Times came and his report is here.

It was hard work standing up in front of more than 100 people for two hours but it was great to hear exactly what people think. One issue that really stood out is that people are keen to see enforcement of corners with double yellow lines to improve road safety. Noted.

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Ealing and Northfield Northfield Ward Forum

MPs on ward forums

The Gazette had a funny piece on Friday. It was our three local Labour MPs sounding off about the new ward forums. It might have been useful to hear their opinions once they had attended one or two of these new meetings themselves. As it was they pretty much spouted the local Labour party line.

The first ward forum ever in the borough happened in Virendra Sharma’s constituency, Northfield being one of the wards that make up the Ealing Southall constituency. It would have been nice to see him there but Sharma only likes to turn up to council meeting once every six months to qualify for his allowance. I reported his last appearance here. Sharma has until 3rd October to attend another council meeting otherwise he will cease to be a councillor.

Ealing North MP, Steve Pound, was quick to find fault:

I’m also a bit suspicious about the expensive glossy leaflets that are being produced with ratepayers’ money and distributed throughout the borough.

In Northfield our “glossy leaflet” was a pretty dry exposition of what the meeting was about, ward boundaries, etc. It is a bit pointless to have a meeting if you don’t invite anyone. The glossy leaflet succeeded in pulling in over a 100 residents to a productive meeting. The Northfield councillors are very grateful to those that came.

No doubt we will shortly be able to see how much of their new communications allowance our three local Labour MPs have spent over the last year. In March 2007 all three local Labour MPs voted in favour of giving themselves a £10,000 per annum communications allowance, see here. Maybe Pound was being ironic?

The points they all make about decisions being made centrally by the cabinet are kind of right but just wrong too. The old area committees effectively just made recommendations to cabinet, that were rarely overturned. I suspect that it will be even harder for cabinet to overturn any spending proposals made by ward forums unless they are technically infeasible.

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Customer Services Ealing and Northfield

Check your gullies

We are going to get a lot of rain down today and tomorrow so it is a good time to check that the gullies in your road work. Gullies are the road drains that have thick metal grates. Gullies are a council responsibility, most other water things are down to Thames Water. Gullies get cleaned out annually on main roads and bi-annually on side roads. Occasionally a gully can get blocked and the only time anyone can spot it is when it rains.

On Sunday I noticed the gully outside my office window was blocked and that a small lake had formed in front of my house after a short downpour on Sunday afternoon. I e-mailed the council as instructed on the council’s gully cleaning webpage. I got an e-mail acknowledgement at the end of Monday with a job number. This lunchtime I noticed a truck from McNicholas doing the work. The guy doing the job was very cheerful and explained what he did. They are busy right now as we have had lots of leaves down early and rain.

Ideally the gullies should be cleaned out within three working days so I might complain that the guys were a day and a half late but I accept that this is their busy time. If a blocked gully is causing “disruptive flooding” they reckon to be there in an hour.

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Customer Services

Mixed picture at Ealing’s Customer Services

I made another trip to Customer Services this morning to see how we are doing. It was the 1st of the month and it was a Monday, combine that with the fact that everyone has just got back from their holidays and you might expect the place to be busy – you would be right.

At first glance it looked like mayhem. There were 20-odd people waiting to get a ticket from the meeters and greeters. There were over 30 waiting for the cashiers. The Parking Services queue was 29 and the wait was almost 2 hours.

My own experience was good. I arrived at 11:37 and I only had to wait four minutes to talk to one of the meet and greet staff. They told me about the wait for Parking Services and at that point most people would give up and try another day.

I did a bit of further research on the cashiers’ queue. Most of the people were paying their Council Tax on a monthly basis with their paying in books. They do have lots of different paying in options so I am perhaps not too worried about this group. If they want to come in on the first of the month every month then it is up to them. There were three staff on and they worked through the queue pretty fast from what I could see.

The Parking Services queue was totally unaceptable. On making enquiries I found out that only 3 out of 5 of the Parking Services workstations were manned. I will be chasing this one up.

On the positive side the meeters and greeters and security staff all seemed to be good natured and handled themselves well on what must have been a stressful day.

Since I last wrote a piece on Customer Services the front door has been fixed and the littering problem has been solved. Since then the door seems to have broken again. There is still lots of sticky tape messing it up. More nagging required.

I would be very interested to hear your Ealing council customer service stories – good or bad.

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Ealing and Northfield

Old news from SEC

It seems that Ealing Times are falling for Save Ealing Centre’s trick of recycling old news.

They have two items posted today that refer to a report from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). The first piece quotes extensively from CABE’s report dated 4th July.

The CABE report is not terribly negative and one of the main differences in opinion is that CABE are in the anti-car camp whereas Ealing Council is keen to have some car parking in the town centre to ensure the continued success of the town centre. A lot of the arguments about car movements around the site and car use in general ignore the fact that the curent site IS A CAR PARK.

In the second piece the old CABE report is referred to again and SEC spokesperson Anthony Lewis says:

We believe the time has come for Ealing Council to reconsider its proposals to redevelop Dickens Yard in isolation, and instead to hold back on the Dickens Yard development until it has worked up and set in place an integrated master plan for the whole of the centre of Ealing.

This is SEC’s long grass strategy, see previous posting.

SEC are waging a media campaign, but that is what it is. That is all it is.

Apparently SEC is in the process of putting together its own plans for Ealing’s future. That is very nice. I guess if they had £500 million – £1 billion in the bank they could make them happen. Back in the real world the council is trying to do the doable.

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Northfield Ward Forum

Northfield leads with ward forums

The council announced today that Northfield is keeping ahead of the pack by holding the first official ward forum in the borough on 4th September.

Any and all Northfield residents are invited to the Northfield Ward Forum to be held on Thursday 4 September at 7:30 pm at the Log Cabin, 259 Northfield Avenue, W5 4UA. Entrance behind Northfield Library.

Whilst Northfield councillors have organised three informal ward forums over the past year the council has now formalised this for every ward. The new ward forums replace the old area committees. The purpose is to give residents more opportunities to participate in local democracy, interact with the council, influence services and help to improve their local areas.

Led by elected councillors, the new ward forums feature joint problem solving on local concerns, including round table discussions on issues such as community safety, traffic and transport schemes, parks and street improvements. Each ward will have the chance to influence an annual budget of £40,000 for local capital improvements for their neighbourhood.

We hope you can all come to this new-look Northfield Ward Forum.

Please note: The flyer that the council sent erroneously ave a staert time of 7pm. The start time is 7.30pm.

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Parking Services

Take your pick

On the front page of today’s Telegraph there was this piece titled (in my edition) “Drivers face big rise in the cost of parking”.

According to the Telegraph:

Local Government minister John Healey said that local councils should charge more for basic services such as off-street parking, despite people in many parts of the country experiencing inflation-busting council tax rises.

In a speech to the Local Government Association, he said: “Only one in five councils are using charging to the full potential. Not just to cover costs but to shape their area.”

In a clear sign that he believes motorists should be targeted, Mr Healey said that charging more would result in “reducing congestion, improving levels of health and exercise, encouraging the use of local shops”.

It seems that Labour intends to underfund local government and is signalling that councils can use parking charges to cover the gap. Healey is using phoney greenery to cover his tracks.

This time last week we made this announcement about parking charges in Ealing:

  • Pay and display parking charges that have been frozen for the past two years, will be frozen for a further two years.
  • Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) permit vouchers (priced at £25 and £45) will be frozen for a further two years. The cost of CPZ permits has not been increased for the past two years.
  • Residents in CPZ areas will also receive a book of free visitor parking vouchers to use from April 2009.
  • New facilities to renew parking permits online and an expanded over the phone parking payment service will also be introduced in early 2009.
  • The abolition of parking charges in council car parks after 6pm and on public holidays will remain. This was introduced two years ago and has been such a success that it will remain.
  • Following a review of box junctions in Southall, the box junction at South Road/Hamilton Road will be removed.
  • The opening hours of the Herbert Road Car Park are to be extended by 2 hours from 10pm to 12 midnight. This is being introduced following representations from Southall traders.

It seems that the government wants to make your life harder. Ealing council doesn’t.

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Ealing and Northfield

Ealing’s recycling rate hits 38%

Ealing’s recycling rate edged towards 38% in June, see details here. This is quite an achievement for the the people of Ealing. Although the council has heard people’s desire to recycle more and expanded the food re-cycling scheme trailed by the previous administration, introduced cardboard and plastics recycling and made garden waste recycling easier the council couldn’t have achieved anything without the clear message from people that this was what they wanted and the enthusiasm with which people have used the facilities provided. Well done Ealing.

Tonight I was sorting out our own rubbish and recycling. With a small baby we produce the best part of a bin bag of disposable nappies every week – sorry I’ve never been convinced by the terry nappy argument. But even with our very own baby environmental disaster I still reckon we send twice as much weight to recycling as we do to landfill.