Category: Ealing and Northfield

In 2003 both Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors in Ealing voted for a 26% rise in council tax in one year. The minutes of the meeting record the names of the guilty. The current leader of the LibDem group on the council and Southfield councillor Gary Malcolm was amongst them. In the 2002-2006 period council tax went up 47% and by 26% in one year in 2003.

The LibDems are unapologetic for their record as tax hikers and the record of the LibDems in power in local government is that they are worse than Labour.

In 2003 both Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors in Ealing voted for a 26% rise in council tax in one year. The minutes of the meeting record the names of the guilty. In the 2002-2006 period council tax went up 47% and by 26% in one year in 2003.

Labour say they have learnt their lesson but the truth is that Labour can’t be trusted with money and the record of the LibDems in power in local government is that they are worse.

Good to see some straightforward communication from Ealing Council. This graphic makes it clear that the Ealing council tax freeze started back in 2009 when the Conservatives were running the show. We froze council tax in 2009 and 2010.

Since then the Labour council has frozen it for four years. Great. This is really good. Council tax is typically people’s 2nd largest bill after their rent or their mortgage. For the last four years the council tax freeze has been paid for by £20 million of council tax freeze grant from the “Tory-led Coalition”. Yes! Good leadership! Shame that the council only makes passing mention this grant its press release. When the Conservatives were freezing there was no council tax freeze grant, but that is another story.

Ealing Labour is promising to freeze the council tax again in 2015/16 if it gets back into power again. Good again. The Ealing Labour group doesn’t mention the additional £5 million of council tax freeze grant that makes that possible.

After 2015/16 Labour are silent. After 2015/16 the government runs out, as does the grant (the “Tory-led Coalition” will have given the council £25.2 million in council tax freeze grant by then).

Ealing Conservatives say that council tax should be frozen for the full four years of the next council.

Labour says it reserves the right to hike the council tax as it pleases as soon as the council tax freeze grant runs out.

It is worth remembering that Labour hiked council tax by 47% in 2002-2006. In 2003 they hiked it by 26% in one year. You can’t trust Labour with money.

There was a muted little piece on the council’s website last Wednesday about subletting, accompanied by the unadvertised video above made by the council which had had 14 views when I looked at it.

The council is giving council tenants who are subletting their council houses until the end of March to come clean and give up their tenancies. There is too much of this going on. The council has already caught 56 people doing this since July 2011 without the threat of legal sanctions. Since October of last year it has been a criminal offence (potentially resulting in 2 years in prison) to sublet a council home as a result of new government legislation.

It is good to see the council acting on this. Maybe it could have done so 6 months earlier?

It has been suggested that potentially up to a fifth of Ealing’s 18,000 council houses may be fraudulently sublet – that is potentially 3,600 homes, a good proportion of the council’s 10,000 waiting list. The numbers put into context Labour’s modest manifesto pledge to build 500 council houses in four years.

As is too often the case the council doesn’t mention in its press release that it has received £200,000 from the government to pursue subletters as part of a £19 million government programme.

A couple of years ago the Labour administration appointed some of its Labour friends to take part in a £25,000 Housing Commission. You will search the final report in vain for the words “fraud” or “sublet”.

I suspect what we are seeing here is the officers trying to do their job whilst their political masters are unwilling to face this issue.

It has taken the government legislation to galvanise the council on this issue. There is a great prize to grasped for people in housing need if the council chooses to do so.

Currently across the whole borough 30% of our streets are not clean enough after the first clean. That is 30% on average for the last 22 months since the contract started in April 2012. There are also something like 4,000 missed collections a month. Every month for 22 months across the whole borough.

On Saturday I was canvassing in Willcott Road in Acton. A lady at the top end complained about repeated missed collections. A young man at the other end had the same complaint. I told them both the same thing. Obviously I would report it but it is only when the council gets a few complaints from residents that they do anything about it. No complaint, no problem.

Last week I enjoyed this piece from Sue Bourne on the actonw3.com website. She said:

The one thing that does annoy me is that when the bin men come round our street – or actually any of the local streets – they leave it looking filthy.. like the third world. So because the bin men patently dont give a stuff about our rubbish and leave it strewn everywhere I don’t think it encourages anyone else to care about keeping the streets clean .. it such a shame.

Again. If no-one reports it, nothing will happen.

If your road is not cleaned to a high standard. If a collection is missed. If recycling containers are thrown around. If the binmen leave a spillage and don’t clean it up. Complain. Call 020 8825 6000 and report it. It is slightly painful and long winded but a supervisor really will talk to the crew and they will most likely improve.

Just make the call.

In his customary first person way Labour’s Cllr Bassam Mahfouz has been trying to take credit for the continuing progress that the Borough is making in improving our roads. Of course none of this would be possible without the work of the previous Conservative administration in Ealing nor the finance provided by TfL as directed by Conservative London Mayor, Boris Johnson.

All of the big road projects in Ealing, outside straightforward road resurfacing, are paid for by Transport for London (TfL) Local Implementation Plan (LIP) funding. London Mayor, Boris Johnson, was elected in 2008 on a platform of “Getting Londoners Moving”. Part of Boris’s vision was to get traffic moving by sweeping away unnecessary traffic lights. Johnson decreed that the boroughs should be given much more flexibility in how they spent this LIP funding. No borough was more enthusiastic about taking up this offer than Ealing under the then transport spokesman, David Millican (now Tory group leader). He led an extensive consultation exercise that led to a raft of proposals that included the roundabout outside Acton Town tube station and the one at the top of Argyle Road. This work was kicked off in early 2009.

Not every scheme was taken forward but the experience gained and the LIP flexibility offered by the Mayor has ensured that the current wave of new roundabouts, at Church Road, at Atlas Road and on Acton High Street, can go ahead.

Before 2008 in London and 2006 in Ealing the transport authorities were locked in an anti-car dogma that not only slowed traffic down but did nothing for safety. Conservatives in City Hall and the Town Hall have made big improvements in our borough’s roads. It is good to see that Cllr Mahfouz is taking them forward temporarily. We will be happy to take up the baton again in May.

It seems that a shady far left group has hoodwinked ITV star Adrian Chiles into chairing their West London Question Time this coming Wednesday in Hammersmith. Chiles is billed as a “local parent”.

The event organisers say “Everyone is welcome especially parents,
governors and students”. In reality it will be a stage managed event, strictly for the left only. Note you can only ask questions in advance to @NCE2014. Who? More on that later.

The panellists don’t look too extreme – a children’s author, a council leader and a teaching union rep. But look more closely.

The children’s author is Michael Rosen who is a self-confessed fellow traveller with the Socialist Workers Party.

It’s no secret that for many years I was personally and politically close to the SWP and its forerunner the International Socialists. This meant that I read and sometimes wrote for your journals, I supported many of the campaigns you supported or initiated and over the years, I have been personally friendly with several of your prominent members.

The council leader is Ealing’s own Julian Bell who worked with the Ealing Southall MP (who employs him) to try to persuade a Southall school not to become an academy. They failed luckily.

Christine Blower of NUT is known to be a left-wing extremist.

The organiser of this event seems to be an anonymous front organisation called Towards a National Campaign for Education. Their website doesn’t identify any officers, members, etc.

A clue to who is behind all of this can be found on the event poster. The contact details give all away.

Nick Grant is a full-time employee of Ealing Council* who is paid the best part of £80K a year to be a full-time NUT union rep. He uses his time for activities such as co-founding the Anti Academies Alliance, “convening” the Ealing Alliance for Public Services, writing articles for the The Socialist Worker and organising strikes in Ealing’s schools.

So it seems clear to me that this will be a totally stage managed, extreme left wing event. If Adrian Chiles goes through with chairing it all he will do is lend legitimacy to Nick Grant and his SWP clique.

*The council officers have written to me to point out that Grant isn’t employed by the council directly. Technically he is employed by one school. The way the cost of his employment is divided between the Borough’s schools was not explained to me. The effect is the same. I will ask for clarification. I wonder how transparent and subject to scrutiny it is? Grant recently went down 50% time. Again the officers didn’t care to explain what proportion of this was a free gift to the NUT so that he could be a NUT NEC member.

Last night at Overview and Scrutiny Committee I tried to have a grown up discussion with Labour’s Bassam Mahfouz about the Recycling Rewards scheme, more about that later.

Mahfouz was his usual huffy self. His parting shot was to tell the meeting what a champion of food waste recycling he was. As we had been discussing participation in recycling we had the numbers in front of us from officers. I can only think he wasn’t that familiar with them or he wouldn’t have been quite so full of hubris. Whilst Cllr Mahfouz has been in charge of recycling in Ealing participation in food waste recycling has gone down. With champions like these, we don’t need …

Over Christmas (yes, I know!) there has been a consultation running on the plans for the Crossrail station at Ealing Broadway. In an exercise of appalling expectation management these plans are two years late and are now presented as a fait accompli. The Crossrail Act 2008 effectively makes Crossrail its own planning authority so the current exercise doesn’t really have teeth I am afraid.

In theory the consultation closes today but the council will still record people’s comments and they will be included in the report that is considered by the planning committee in the next few weeks.

Local Conservatives very much welcome that the Government has pressed ahead with the Crossrail scheme in spite of harsh economic conditions. Now it is up to our local Council to make the most of it. In a number of ways the scheme now proposed by Crossrail for Ealing Broadway station is not good enough.

On the positive side the scheme provides twice as much space in its concourse as the existing station and will provide step free access from the street down to the platforms via lifts, primarily for the use of mobility impaired passengers.

On the negative side there will no escalators, as originally envisaged, so most people will still be using stairs to get down to the platforms unless they want to wait some time for the lifts. Also the new eastern access proposed for emergency purposes will not be available for day-to-day use which will be a lost opportunity for many Ealing residents who approach the station from the south east on foot.

This proposal does not specifically show us how the new station forecourt at Ealing Broadway will be laid out. In particular many residents will be keen to see how facilities for cars to drop off passengers are provided. It is appropriate to prioritise pedestrians and bus passengers immediately adjacent to the station entrance. It is not appropriate to banish people who are dropped by cars.

The thing that Ealing residents will notice most is the stark entrance proposed to the building. The modern, upward tilting canopy bears no relation to its surroundings. It may well succeed in signposting the Crossrail station and but it will devalue Ealing’s town centre.

To me the proposed canopy sticks out like a sore thumb. Ealing town centre’s predominantly Edwardian architecture and Haven Green require a more sympathetic solution. The station should welcome people to Ealing rather screaming “CROSSRAIL” at the top of its voice across Haven Green.

The Labour party is delivering this leaflet in Acton right now.

Most of what is written on the left of this card are statutory education duties that a Conservative administration would have been doing anyway. Nice of Labour to take credit for the Acton High School 6th Form which was kicked off on 2nd December 2008 by a Tory cabinet I was sitting on. The primary school expansion programme was also kicked off by the Conservatives and it was our group that decided that the primary school expansion programme should go forward with high quality buildings and no Portakabins in playgrounds. Most of the money for this programme has come from the government, not the council. We are pleased that Labour has carried on with this programme where we left off but it is pretty tacky to take credit for the whole thing.

Much of what happens in local government is uncontroversial. This kind of dividing lines nonsense is just another big Labour lie.

Looking at the right hand box, the local Tories also wholeheartedly approve of the Labour group freezing council tax for four years (like just about every other council in the country). It might be nice if Labour acknowledged the £20 million of council tax freeze grant it has pocketed from the government to pay for it in large part (which is why most other councils also did the same thing). We might have gone further but I am certain that we would not have put up the council tax at all at the very least.

The “Tories attack Acton families” logo shows you just who is the nasty, name calling party in this borough at least.

Actonians might wish to consider:

• it was the Tories who kicked of the South Acton Estate regeneration
• it was the Tories who kicked off the Town Hall and swimming baths refurbishment
• it is the Tories who are supporting the Acton Arts Centre Project
• it was the Tories (Boris Johnson) who put the Oak Tree mural on the Vale
• it was the Tories (Boris Johnson) who put the ACTON sign on the railway bridge
• it was the Tories (Angie Bray) who have taken the lead on getting the pollution associated with the Horn Lane good yard under control
• it is the current Tory-led Coalition (as Labour loves to call it) that is getting on with Crossrail which will keep Acton linked in to a prosperous London.

On the other hand it was the Labour councillors on the planning committee, including East Acton’s very own Kate Crawford, who voted en bloc to push through the Oaks scheme in spite of the well argued planning points raised by the Conservative councillors.

It is a Labour council that is skimping on Acton’s roads and leaving them looking broken and dirty.

No-one is “attacking Acton families” although Actonians might rightfully conclude that they have 9 pretty useless Labour councillors who don’t seem to fight very hard for Acton and are led by a leader who lives in Acton but keeps dumping on it.