Category: Ealing and Northfield

This piece in Ealing Times on Saturday morning reminded me about the Sri Kanaga Thurkkai Amman Hindu Temple procession this morning. They parade a chariot carrying their goddess around a circular route that goes clockwise out of their front door in Chapel Road in West Ealing, down the Uxbridge Road, right again into Culmington Road and right again into Mattock Lane.

People were starting to arrive at 7am this morning around my house for the 9:45am kick off. Apparently last year there were 10,000 people. This year there were maybe fewer people although it was pretty busy.

I guess there were about 400 people taking part in the procession, there were three parties of 50 or so leading the way. Two waves of guys impersonating horses with silver bits in their mouths and hooks in their backs pulling along “riders”. Then another group accompanied by drummers dancing with urns on their heads.

There were about 100 women walking backwards with pots on their heads. The chariot itself was pulled by 50 or so people and from the chariot priests were blessing bowls of food which people bought up. Finally, some 50 or so guys were rolling behind the chariot. It would be interesting to hear more about what the various parts of the parade mean.

The organisers were twice refused a Traffic Management Order by the council to close roads because they couldn’t get their act together. Talking to both council officers and police officers present both are pretty unhappy about the way the organisers are not playing the game. The crowd are obviously family groups observing their religion and enjoying their culture. One of the organisers told me that the vast majority of people are Sri Lankan Tamils. There were a lot of stewards on duty and on the whole things looked well organised. Last year it took a while to clean up. If the temple is going to keep the goodwill of local people they need to make sure that the area gets cleaned up quickly and they comply with the requirements of the council and the police. Nothing will wind up the neighbours more than the feeling that the temple isn’t playing by the rules.

I would be interested to hear what the neighbours think – and also to hear from the participants.

This week the Ealing & Acton Gazette published a letter from an Ann Pavett. In it she essentially challenges Councillor Mark Reen that he will face the wrath of voters for having the temerity to speak in favour of the Dickens Yard scheme. She says:

Councillor Mark Reen should indeed be feeling uncomfortable that his views are not in accord with a great many residents on the issue of the Dicken’s Yard Development.

I believe in democracy and as far as I am concerned we elect people to office and award them money to broadly represent our wishes.

If it becomes apparent that they are not representing our wishes we vote them out of office.

She is quite right to point out that councillors are accountable to their electorates. Pavett herself fails to point out that she has a role in Save Ealing’s Centre (SEC).

SEC are a group of unaccountable activists who refuse to identify themselves on their website and refuse to publish minutes of their meeting or even publish notices of meetings or invite public participation. It seems the council organises public participation and unaccountable SEC throws rocks from the sides. Until SEC identify themselves it is too easy to write them off as a small group of people with big houses in the centre of Ealing who represent a very narrow interest.

This morning Ealing Times has caught up with an issue that was raised at the council meeting last Tuesday. Ian Gibb, who is the portfolio holder for children’s services, pointed out that at the last Youth Provision Specialist Scrutiny Panel, see minutes here, no Labour members managed to turn up. There are meant to be three sitting Labour members. It is hard for councillors to do everything they should. But for all three to no-show and fail to get subs is a bit crap.

In their defence Labour whip Brian Reeves says:

There was a meeting in Southall which our councillors were told started at 5.30pm about the regeneration there. However, when they turned up they were told it would not be starting until 7pm, and there was not enough time in between to make the substitutions for the youth panel.

It’s unfair to say we do not care about the youth in Ealing, as we have our deputy leader Ranjit Dheer on the committee, and Patricia Walker has done a lot of work on this already. If you look at our spending record compared with that of the Conservative council you will see that actually we care a lot more than them.

Reeves is bullshitting. The Southall regeneration meeting he referred to happened as published. If Cllr Dheer can’t decipher an agenda that is his problem. It is also pretty incredible that Cllrs Gallagher (South Acton) and Walker (North Greenford) had any interest in a Southall regeneration meeting. It is stranger still that Walker, shadow cabinet member for children’s services, prioritised a Southall regeneration meeting over a meeting that is so clearly at the centre of her portfolio.

Beyond the Reeves bullshit the really telling line is this one: “If you look at our spending record compared with that of the Conservative council you will see that actually we care a lot more than them.” This is factually wrong but more importantly the focus on inputs rather than outputs is key to the failure of the Blair/Brown project and the failure of Labour in Ealing. You can’t drive outcomes if you don’t turn up.

I was given a preview of the new library yesterday and it looks great. The place was full of library staff filling shelves and getting ready for next Tuesday’s opening. A lot of thought has gone into the new library and it has been transformed into a much brighter and more usable facility. The study facilities are wonderful and I am sure that they will be well used.

There is an RFI tag based system for managing the library books. This means users just scan their books and walk out. If they walk out without scanning an alarm goes off. This will eliminate queues and allow the staff to concentrate on helping people rather than stamping books in and out.

Compared to the old library it is an uplifting place to be. I know the staff have worked hard to turn this project around after earlier technical problems delayed it. Having refurbished a building myself I know how hard it is. The result looks like the effort and £2 million bill were well worth it. See it for yourself from 9am on Tuesday 29th July.

Last night’s full council meeting was typically rumbustuous. See agenda and list of motions here. After some argy-bargy about box junctions, more on that later, the main business of the evening was Council Tax. The following Tory motion was debated for the largest part of the evening, the Labour group withdrawing their motion:

This Council notes that in the twelve years to 2006 Council Tax in Ealing rose by 178.5%, a rate of increase greater than 31 of the 32 other London Councils. Council resolves to continue this administration’s policy of easing the financial burden on residents by keeping any Council Tax increases to below the rate of inflation.

Amazingly, after a tortuous defence of their past records both the Labour group and the Lib-Dems voted in favour of this motion. Some of the Labour councillors were looking a little green around the gills and only kind of half put their hands up. Councillor Liz Brookes looked particularly sheepish and Councillor Patricia Walker kept her hand firmly down. It just shows how quickly the zeitgeist has turned that this open-ended commitment to keep Council Tax below inflation indefinitely has been supported by both of the tax raising parties. Only a few months ago it is clear that the tax raising parties would have voted against. Now it is a no-brainer.

I cycled over to the Brilliant restaurant in Southall this morning to take part in the launch do for this year’s Mela. Council leader Jason Stacey introduced the Mayor who recounted his limited experience of Bhangra style dancing at a cousin’s wedding in Delhi.

According to Boris it goes: “lightbulb, lightbulb, motorbike, motorbike”.

There were quite a view press people there, including the Evening Standard, who did this small piece, and the BBC Asian Network. The picture above is nicked from the Standard (fair use and all that). Our assembly member, Richard Barnes, was there as you might expect and also the Mayor’s comms guru, Guto Hari, who is Welsh if you are wondering where the name comes from. LibDem councillors Harvey Rose and Jon Ball made an appearance along with Labour assembly member Murad Qureshi.

An authentic Punjabi breakfast was promised but I had to get on with my day with just a glass of passion fruit juice to keep me going. Now I know where the Brilliant is I’ll have to go there for a proper meal soon and find out if it lives up to the hype.

This week we will all be getting more plastic sacks – white this time for our plastics to stop them blowing around. Hopefully this will make the recycling system even more efficient and help keep our streets tidier.

Ealing’s residents are working really hard at their recycling – they recycled 45 per cent more of their waste in May, compared to the same time last year. In total more than 4,000 tonnes was recycled, composted or turned into organic fertiliser and electricity in May.

Apparently you should get a sack this week in time for next weeks’ collection. If you don’t call the council’s help desk on 020 8825 6000. This number is also the main number you dial for any street related issue. It really does work so if there is any kind of problem in your street please phone it in. We can’t fix problems if no-one tells us they exist. I typically phone this number 2 or 3 times a week. It is sometimes a little irritating to have to spell out the name of your road to an operator that doesn’t know your end of the borough but it really is worth the effort.

There is much room for improvement in the parking/parking enforcement area in Ealing and I am certain that my biggest task over the next year or so is to show some progress here. I am not responsible for the implementation of CPZs. I am responsible for the people that do enforcement (Parking Services) once a CPZ has been implemented.

It does not help the council to improve its services if the papers print parking stories which are just utter rubbish, which I am afraid they often do. Yesterday’s in Ealing Times is a case in point and reporter Alex Hayes should be ashamed of himself. He widely quotes an individual called Tim Ponting who lives in Princes Road and has clearly got a bad case of sour grapes:

We had a consultation almost a year ago, and people voted overwhelmingly to reject the zone, but now the council has decided to go ahead with it without telling us.

I guess Ponting didn’t notice the public notices that have been littering the area for weeks. I live in the area and got a letter informing me when the scheme was due to start.

Ponting claims that not many permits have been issued but I am told by officers that they have issued 400.

There was indeed a majority against the scheme across the whole area consulted but the core area which gave rise to the consultation in the first place voted in favour. In fact the council received a petition in favour of a CPZ from residents of Princes Road and Princes Road was 11 to 7 in favour of the scheme. The minimum possible scheme was discussed and voted on at Ealing Area Committee, see minutes here. The consultation results are here.

The Ealing Times story notes that Ponting is by profession a PR. Maybe journalist Alex Hayes should know better than just to swallow a PR’s line wholesale.

Update: On my way to the shops this afternoon I made a detour down Princes Road. 9 cars parked in the road. 5 with permits, one with a voucher, one with a dispensation (displayed wrongly as it happens) and two without anything. On my way home I talked to a parking attendant who was giving out warning notices to anyone parked in the zone without the right permit, dispensation, voucher, etc.

Alongside the vision thing the detractors of Arcadia and Dickens Yard lament the lack of a masterplan or strategy for Ealing town centre. I have already outlined how the council is moving to fill this gap but let’s look at what they have to say anyway.

Save Ealing’s Centre says:

Until Ealing Council puts together an integrated development plan, that combines residential, retail, transport, infrastructure and community facilities, Ealing Town Centre will continue to decline and remain under seige[sic] from property developers that propose massive residential ghettos that are labelled ‘regeneration’ and ‘retail’.

The same night as last week’s council meeting Ealing residents enjoyed a lecture from Peter Hall, a eminent academic rather than a practitioner. According to the admirable WEN’s write up of the lecture:

Sir Peter felt strongly that what Ealing centre desperately needed was an over-arching strategic plan. It also needed an enlightened planning department.

Apparently the last line evoked laughter from the audience. Ridiculously SEC says:

The Council’s responsibility is to create an environment that meets all stakeholders needs.

That would be tough one even for God. We might settle for pleasing most of the people most of the time.

Strategy formation is poorly understood by most people and it is not about airily waving your hand around and opining about the way things should be in the best of all possible worlds. Strategy must always take into account the facts on the ground. The facts on the ground in Ealing are:

• we don’t use our own town centre enough, either there are not enough of us or we go elsewhere to shop
• Crossrail is coming
• Glenkerrin owns a large site
• the council owns a large site – and nakedly seeks to get the largest possible gain for the community as a whole
• there are two other large sites owned by property investors south of the Broadway.

Any strategy for Ealing must accommodate these facts on the ground. It must also be implementable. There are essentially four large development sites in central Ealing, two north of the Broadway and two south of the Broadway. Clearly these sites and their owners/developers need to be mindful of the relationships between them and the Tibbalds report does highlight how these should interrelate. Both the Arcadia and DY plans have been mindful of the permeability of their sites. But, the four large sites are separated by trunk roads which are unlikely to move and an implementable strategy for Ealing would be unlikely to make these developments directly contingent on each other.

A strategy for Ealing would allow Ealing Broadway station to be redeveloped along with Crossrail and would allow easy interchange with Crossrail for all other modes of transport. There is no reason to put rows of buses in a bus station in the centre of Ealing. By all means let the buses go through Ealing but I would be really glad if they weren’t all sitting idle in our town centre, that would quite literally be a waste of space.

It seems to me that the anti-development camp sees strategy as a convenient excuse for kicking any development of Ealing’s town centre into the long grass. It is also clear to me that their strategic analysis is unsound.

One of the big issues raised over the Leaf and Dickens Yard planning applications is vision. Where is the vision for Ealing?

In planning terms this has to be in the current Unitary Development Plan which the current Tory administration inherited from the previous administration. It was adopted in October 2004 and you can see it here.

This is currently being re-worked and will be called the Local Development Framework (LDF). The consultation meeting on Thursday was a part of the process of creating and getting consensus for the LDF. Sure this is a long-winded process that has been underway since the 2006 elections but it would be surprising if it wasn’t. Those asking for vision need to accept that the current process is all about informing that vision.

I have been looking hard at Crossrail, see here, and it is clear to me that Crossrail will have a big impact on the LDF. It is inconceivable that the State would spend £16 billion on building a high speed railway connection between the World’s busiest international airport at Heathrow and the World’s foremost financial centre in the City and allow Ealing’s centre half way between the two to remain a relatively low density area. We might argue over the level of density but dense it will be. Why wouldn’t you want to surround Crossrail nodes with high density developments?

Those with a knowledge of Ealing’s history know that the centre of Ealing was half way down South Ealing Road around St Mary’s church before the railway came. The current Broadway and its hinterland of residential streets is a product of 19th century railway development. Now the railway is coming again and Ealing’s centre needs to respond to it. We might lament the loss of the country houses and market gardens that comprised this area before the railway came but the railway is coming again and we need to work out whether we want to make it work for us or whether we want to stick our heads in the sand.

Many of the objectors to these schemes seem to have a clear vision. That of an exclusive, upmarket suburb like Chiswick, Hampstead or Richmond. That might suit a few of the borough’s residents but I suspect it will not resonate with the majority.