Category: Ealing and Northfield

The answers to written questions tabled at the last council meeting last Tuesday have just been published.

At council meetings only 7 questions are taken orally by the cabinet. If there are any further questions then members, ie councillors, are allowed to ask as many written questions as they like. These questions are often used, quite rightly, by opposition councillors to probe the administration and to pursue issues on behalf of their wards. With a by-election looming in Cleveland the LibDems are using questions to try to find issues to raise. In fact of ten written questions tabled all were asked by the tiny 3-man LibDem group.

This time round they haven’t found any smoking guns. Not surprising really as their leader, Harvey Rose, has pretty much been reduced to acknowledging that the Tory run council is doing a good job at the last couple of council meetings.

But, with this question to Will Brooks, Cabinet Member for Environment and Street Services, Councillor Ball is in danger of attempting to misuse public resources to sustain the LibDem election campaign:

When will the street lighting be replaced in the following Ealing roads: High View, Rosemount, Rutland Gardens, Kingsley Avenue, Cavendish Avenue and Royle Crescent?

All becomes clear in Will Brooks’ answer:

Rutland Road is currently included as part of the Year 3 lamp column replacement programme that commences in September 2007 and will be completed by August 2008. Unfortunately at this stage I cannot be more precise with the exact date when the lamp columns will be replaced on this road.

The rest of the roads listed currently contain heritage lighting. Following representations from a number of residents the Council is currently looking as to whether this heritage lighting can be retained or replaced with new heritage style lighting. A final decision will be made in due course.

Whatever the outcome, the renewal of these lamp columns will take place between August 2008 and September 2009.

Finally, I note all the roads listed are in Cleveland Ward. Considering there are no Liberal Democrat Councillors in this ward, I am puzzled why Councillor Ball would target these roads and not some in similar ones own ward of Ealing Common. I am sure Councillor Ball would not use Council officer’s time and money for political purposes!

Verdict: Must try harder.

The councillors and residents’ association representatives who attended tonight’s Ealing Area Committee had to endure another three hour meeting.

The item that caused the most debate was the Ealing Dean CPZ. Unfortunately I had to sit this item out due to a “prejudicial interest”. In other words I live in the roads being discussed so under the councillors’ code of conduct I could not even be in the room whilst the matter was discussed. I spent 40 minutes sitting on the naughty step. I found out afterwards that I now live in a CPZ.

The funniest part of the evening was when various representatives of the public raised issues. Paul Mathieu representing residents of Marlborough Road and Richmond Road near St Mary’s Church asked that their roads have their CPZ rules changed to accommodate the fact that TVU now has an extensive summer and Saturday programme. Two items later Chris Veasey asked that Church Gardens be made a separate CPZ from the roads where Paul Mathieu lived because some lazy people in the same CPZ have a habit of driving down to the end of Church Gardens to get as near as possible to South Ealing tube, sometimes abandoning their cars for weeks at a time. Veasey pointed out that he was disappointed that Mathieu had already left the meeting as he was a prime offender.

Under the same item Ealing Fields Residents Association complained about the advertising hoardings that have sprung up at the Windmill Lane/Northfield Avenue Junction to block the sightlines of the expensive new pedestrian crossing. They are miserable that they have not been consulted about this change. So are their councillors. Apparently the planners just forgot. Council officers are now trying to get the toothpaste back in the tube.

The idea of having a skating ring on Haven Green next Christmas got a step nearer to reality. Subject to ensuring that residents are consulted and happy the portfolio holder will be able to take this proposal forward.

The LibDem candidate for Cleveland appears on the Ealing Times website this morning.

He says:

Living in the area, I know that many residents are disappointed that the Conservatives have not made the improvements they promised since they gained control of Ealing Council more than a year ago.

Obviously he has not been reading the cleaner streets stats that Jason Stacey sent round to all councillors on Tuesday and which appeared in this Friday’s Gazette. Cleveland ward had 73% grade A streets in November 2006. This went up to 86% in May 2007. With council tax held down to a 1.9% rise and 50 new PCSOs on the way it is hard to see how Fruzza can maintain this line.

Verdict: Must try harder.

I have just got back from a weekend in Paris with my wife to find Gordon Brown being acclaimed as the new leader of the Labour party with Harriet Harman as deputy leader. The Labour Party will be very different over the next few months and in the short term the Tories are going to be slightly on the back foot as shown by this weekend’s poll which showed the Tories behind Labour for the first time in months.

There will be some real polls in the next few weeks in our part of West London. Cllr Brian Castle’s funeral took place on Friday and there will be a by-election on 19th July, less than four weeks away. Ealing Southall’s MP, Piara Khabra died last Tuesday and campaigning will start in that election as soon as his funeral is over on Wednesday – although there have been rumours of Labour doing telephone canvassing for some weeks now.

In Cleveland Labour should be nowhere, see last year’s results. The Lib-Dem’s candidate Francesco Fruzza (see Lib-Dem press release) got within 100 votes of the worst performing Tory then. Francesco has a long-standing interest in local politics, he turned up to the Ealing North Conservative primary which selected Ian Gibb as the Conservative’s candidate and lost Cleveland in 2006 and 2002. I would expect that the new Conservative administration’s effective and focussed concentration on voter’s issues, such as the environment, community safety and council tax, will be translated into votes for the Tory candidate.

Ealing Southall will be altogether more interesting. The 2005 results are here. Although Labour dominated with 23,000 votes there were big votes too for the Lib-Dems with 11,500 votes with the Conservatives with 10,000. I fail to see why Southall’s Asian community should always be natural Labour voters and in any case Southall, and more importantly the constituency which includes a large part of west Ealing, is changing fast. None of the three major parties have selected candidates for this seat yet. Although this looks like a safe Labour seat and the Lib-Dems try to present themselves as the second party I suspect that there will be significant change in Ealing Southall over the next couple of months.

Jason Stacey pretty much called Councillors Greenhead and Mahfouz liars at last night’s council meeting and has referred the matter to the Council’s Head of Legal Services. Here is the full story from Ealing Conservatives press release:

STEVE POUND LEAFLET IS REFERRED TO LEGAL SERVICES FOR DAMAGING LIES AGAINST COUNCIL

A Labour party leaflet circulated in Hobbayne ward under the banner of Steve Pound MP has been referred to the Council’s Head of Legal Services for telling lies which may do damage to Ealing Council’s reputation. The leaflet which was printed and promoted by Labour councillor, Bassam Mahfouz, claims that a local police officer “announced the likely imminent demolition of much loved Hanwell Community Centre” at a recent public meeting.

The reality is that there is no possibility of demolition of the Community Centre and neither the Council nor the policeman quoted have ever suggested there was. Sgt Dave Williams of Hobbayne Safer Neighbourhood team yesterday emailed Council Leader, Jason Stacey, saying: “Any references that are being made to the Hanwell Community Centre being demolished within a year are to my knowledge incorrect and if I gave that impression at the Hanwell Area Committee meeting then I apologise…”

The leaflet is particularly ironic in that just three years ago the previous Labour Council tried to sell the Community Centre. As the Benham Road and Hale Walk Residents Association said in an e-mail to Cllr Stacey earlier this week: “With regard to the Hanwell Community Centre, this is extremely upsetting that the MP Steve Pound, Phil Greenhead and her past associate no longer a councillor, find it in their interest to say they support the centre when they gave no support… It is useful to remember that the centre was in an auction for sale three years ago and was pulled out with public opposition.”

Leader of the Council, Cllr Jason Stacey said the leaflet crossed the line in what as acceptable in party leaflets and questions the probity of officers of the Council:

“All parties put out leaflets which try to spin the truth and put their best possible case forward, but this one crosses the line by telling outright lies. Steve Pound and Bassam Mahfouz have put their names to an outrageous sheet of slurs that unfairly embroils a police officer for political gain. The allegations are very serious but they are completely false. The undertone questions not only politicians but also the probity of the relevant officers of this Council. I am therefore referring the leaflet to the Head of Legal Services to ask her to investigate potential impact upon the image and reputation of the Council as a whole.”

MPs usually like to keep their reputations in good order. By being associated with Greenhead and Mahfouz’s lying leaflet Pound is in danger of squandering his.

I see that Eric Leach of West Ealing Neighbours is trying to connect the recent Northfield Ward Forum (see previous posting) with ideas that have been promoted by by the Neighbourhood Governance specialist scrutiny panel.

Eric is just plain wrong. In Northfield I think that we have gone some way in proving that councillors can just get on with talking (engaging in the jargon) with residents without the paraphernalia of ward budgets and officer support.

Recently (see previous posting) Brian Castle came to West Ealing to talk to West Ealing Neighbours about regeneration. It is a shock therefore to learn that he died of a heart attack on Sunday at only 51. Brian was the Cabinet Member for Regeneration and Economic Development and a ward councillor in Cleveland.

I had not had the chance to get to know Brian that well but he always came across as being intelligent and capable and the kind of person you would be glad to have on your side.