Phil Taylor

Interesting interview with new GLA member for Ealing and Hillingdon Onkar Sahota on the Londonist blog today.

Sahota is quite happy to speak utter nonsense. He likes to make out that he is a regular GP: “I was a full-time GP. I trained as a doctor at Sheffield medical school but have spent most of my life in Hayes and Ealing. I did my post graduate medical training at St Mary’s in Paddington and joined my first partnership in 1989 in Hanwell.”

Of course he isn’t quite your avuncular family doctor. He is a very successful, large scale medical entrepreneur. I don’t criticize him for that. I criticize him for talking nonsense. He says: “I’ve always worked in the NHS, never in private practice.”

Of course GPs have always wanted to have their cake and eat it. To be get a predictable income from the state but to own and run their own businesses and play all those lovely tax games. The dividends. The family on the payroll. The tax free air fares to medical conferences in Switzerland that make your skiing holidays rather cheaper than regular people’s even though you earn six, eight or ten times the average wage.

Sahota talks about being his own boss and having “three sites with 12,000 patients in Ealing”. Sure he does. He is the sole owner of Healthcare 360 Limited which operates these three surgeries. You can’t work out his income from his Companies House filings but he has personally received an average of £100K a year for rent for the last four years from this company as he owns two of the buildings the company operates from.

Interestingly for all of his claims to be a Southall lad he has been telling Companies House that he lives in Cranford, Hounslow since 2003. He is either lying to Companies House or lying to Ealing voters.

The council has just started publishing data about PCNs issued in the Borough, see April here. This is something that I started when I was in charge of parking and after much kicking and screaming stats were published from January 2009 for two years. When the council’s website was redesigned recently the stats disappeared during the course of 2011. After more persuasion from me the stats have restarted.

Previously there was a webpage that highlighted danger zones where the council was giving out too many tickets. This was an attempt to give people some information about the actively policed features so that they had a chance to avoid them – and also to keep the council itself honest. This was all part of my transparency agenda when I was in charge of parking. We also gave out two different guides to parking in the borough and started an annual report. Unfortunately this second bit hasn’t been reinstated so I will attempt to do this myself.

For comparison the council gave out 197,302 tickets in the 2011/12 financial year (see Annual Report here). I have multiplied the monthly totals by 12 to give the equivalent yearly rate and divided that by last year’s total number of tickets issued to give an idea of the proportion that one road feature or offence represents compared to the whole borough.

During April there were 12 road features or offences in one place that accumulated over 200 tickets in the month. Over one quarter of all tickets issued in our borough were issued on these sites (26.7%). Interestingly all of the high volume sites are policed with CCTV (the J code indicates a ticket policed by CCTV). The top 12 were:

Last night’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting was quite illuminating. Three representatives of the contractor Enterprise were there along with council officers and the Labour councillor in charge, Bassam Mahfouz.

The Enterprise representatives at the meeting confirmed that as of today only 5 out of 10 of the required, custom-built “kerbside” vehicles (used to perform kerbside re-cycling of dry recycling from green boxes) have been delivered so far and that the whole fleet will not be in place until the end of July, some four months after the start of the main part of the contract.

It became clear from the answers that the temporary kerbside vehicles hired to fill this ordering gap proved to be inadequate for their task and full kerbside sorting of re-cycling was abandoned at the end of the second week of the contract and will not be resumed in full until the end of July resulting in the largest part of the borough’s residents’ sorting effort being wasted for four months.

The story doesn’t end there. I am told that due to the California bond conditions, the contractor will then have to refine and complete the work of getting the cleaning rounds right and it will be well into August before the service has any chance of being back to normal.

The positive outcome from the meeting is that Enterprise agreed to return in August to give an update on progress with the contract.

Tonight at the Overview and Scrutiny Committee councillors will be discussing the widespread failure of the rubbish and re-cycling contract. The Ealing rubbish fiasco has been going on for 12 weeks now since the start of April and full service is unlikely to be resumed until August. The Tories attempted to table this issue at the last council meeting last Tuesday but the Labour administration used its voting power to suppress the motion twice.

Only this week posters were complaining about the mixing of dry re-cycling on the chiswickw4 forum and on Tuesday I say re-cycling being mixed in my own road as recorded in the photo above taken outside my house. As an aside the bin men forgot my food waste bin this week. It was left out with everything else but in their haste they forgot it. When I called the council’s customer services I asked the polite-if-a-little-strained operator if things were getting better. She said: “Yes, things are getting better, but not much.”

Later today we will get answers to questions raised at council and we will be able to see if things did improve much in May. The only way we get proper data out of this administration is by formally asking questions. I wonder if they will arrive in time to be used at the meeting tonight? The deadline in the constitution is the end of the working day today.

Anyone can attend the meeting tonight. The rubbish bit will start at or soon after 8.15pm. Committee Room 3 at the Town Hall. Agenda here.

Haven Green has been defaced for four months now whilst Ealing Council builds a “Cycle Hub” near the station. This is essentially a rather nice bicycle shed. I am all for bicycle sheds but I am not sure why such a large part of Haven Green has to to deal with specialists from fence installation overland park, Kansas, since February, but at least it will be more beautiful.

Cllr Mahfouz, Labour’s Transport and Environment lead, and leader Julian Bell love to twitter on about their own cycling exploits and have announced this facility at least three times. Every time they re-announce it the delivery date gets later and later (here, here and here). They are now talking about the Autumn. It was originally proposed to be ready in May. It is typical of the council’s approach to project management that a small project like this takes up half the park for half the year.

The project is running so late that some wag has defaced the sign so that it now reads: “COMPLETION SUMMER 2013ISH”.

Mahfouz is less keen to talk about the source of funds for this project. It all comes from the London Mayor. The money comes from Boris, the incompetence is home grown Labour incompetence.

We discussed the Labour’s approach to cycling policy at the last cabinet meeting.

The Finance section of these reports is always worth reading:

3.1 Funding for most cycling schemes in the Borough is via the Local Implementation Plan (LIP) allocation from Transport for London (TfL). There have also been ad hoc funding sources made available such as the Biking Borough funding for the Ealing Cycle Hub and S106 money such as that used to fund the planned Brompton Cycle Hire scheme at Ealing Broadway.
3.2 The Council does not however at the moment receive the level of funding from either TfL or the Department of Transport required to deliver a significant improvement in cycling infrastructure.
3.3 Any schemes taken forward would need to consider impacts on other modes and would be subject to appropriate levels of consultation, including consideration of any financial implications.

So no money from Ealing’s own mainstream revenue or capital funds then. The only money will come from the Mayor or maybe some Section 106 from developers when they apply for planning permission. Labour hope that you will be impressed with their fine words but they will not put up money into cycling. Their spending priority is the Southall car park.

The Labour administration announced at Council last night that the Enterprise contract manager who had been responsible for Ealing’s contract has been replaced following the Ealing rubbish fiasco.

It seems odd to me that whilst the private sector contractor has taken responsibility for their part in the failure by removing a senior employee, the portfolio holder, Cllr Mahfouz continues to hide from his responsibilities.

When residents hear that pretty much all of their effort in separating recycling has been wasted across April and May, they will be very angry that only the contractor has taken responsibility for the rubbish service they have received. Council officers and Cllr Mahfouz also need to accept their part in the failure of this service.

Official figures show that in April 1,062 Tonnes of dry recycling was sent to the Ideal MRF in Kent. The figure of 1,373 Tonnes for May was released on Tuesday. The average amount of dry recycling that the Borough handles is 1,200 Tonnes. Therefore across April and May pretty much all the Borough’s dry recycling was sent to Kent and pretty much any effort made to separate recycling has been wasted for two whole months.

The council meeting last night was pretty grim. The Conservatives put forward a motion to discuss compensation for residents following the continuing Ealing rubbish fiasco, which has seen streets in Ealing left uncollected for weeks, recycling mixed together by the contractor and taken to Kent for sorting and streets wastefully swept before collections. Labour refused to discuss it. They used their voting power in the chamber to change the order of the business so that the Conservative motion was heard after a discussion on the council’s corporate plan. This was titled “Making the best better”. Clearly it was written by a comedian.

Half way through that debate the Conservatives asked a second time for their motion to be heard and Labour voted against it. In a naked filibuster they put up 20 speakers to ensure that the Conservative motion was talked out.

Labour are busily trying to minimise the extent of the Ealing rubbish fiasco. Yesterday I talked to a lady in Windmill Road whose row of four houses has not had a regular collection for 11 weeks. For 11 weeks they have put in a call and someone has picked it all up and chucked it in the back of a van. 11 missed collections. 11 calls to customer services. 11 emergency collections. 11 weeks.

The average household in Ealing pays £1,500 in council tax. It is most households’ biggest bill after paying the rent or the mortgage. As a Council we exist to provide a service to our residents and if Labour can’t even get this basic service right, then the very least they can do is compensate residents. Every other industry does this, be it your bank, airline or train operator. Why does this Labour administration think they should be any different?

Tonight I will be leading for the opposition on our debate on the continuing Ealing rubbish fiasco at full council. The numbers make pretty damning evidence, see April’s below.

I have asked for May’s in writing at tonight’s council and we will get those in seven working days.

Our motion reads:

This Council notes the continued breakdown in the borough refuse, street cleaning and recycling services as evidenced at Cabinet on the 29th May. This Council demands that the residents of the borough are compensated properly for the continued loss of service.

Please come along if you have time. From 7pm at the Town Hall. Anyone can wander up to the public gallery and watch. It is a public meeting.

Update: Tonight the Labour administration used its voting power in the council chamber to stop the Conservative opposition talking about the Ealing rubbish fiasco twice.

By convention we talk about the corporate plan at the June council meeting. As a rule the first piece of business done at any council meeting is opposition business. In the light of the continuing problems that residents are having with their rubbish and recycling services we felt that this should be talked about tonight. Labour used their voting power at the start of the meeting to force the corporate plan above the opposition business in the agenda and then tabled 20 speakers in the debate to ensure that the opposition business was talked out. Half way through the debate the Conservatives requested that we move on and again Labour voted us down.

Labour will not be held to account for its failures.