Phil Taylor

One of the things that I would praise the Labour administration in Ealing for is keeping on top of the street cleaning. Sure it is not perfect. It never has been. But, it was truly atrocious. By 2004 Ealing was the dirtiest borough in London with 49% of streets significantly dirty. Not only that but Ealing paid amongst the most for its terrible service, see here.

Earlier this year Labour Cllr Bassam Mahfouz was happy to boast of a 1% improvement in the National Indicator of Cleanliness (NI 195a). This performance indicator has gone through various identities (BVPI 199, BVPI 199a, now NI 195a (discontinued)). I can’t tell you how much the Tories sweated to get this number down from 35%. It was one of the major focuses of our administration and the previous council leader Jason Stacey pulled all kinds of stunts to keep the council officers and our contractor focused on cleaning up Ealing. The numbers tell their own story.

This graph shows the percentage of littered streets year by year.

I am very pleased that Cllr Mahfouz knows he has to perform well in this area.

Right now the people behind the new high school in the north of the borough are consulting on what the school should look like, see here. It has been clear for some years that a new high school was needed in the borough and it has been obvious that it should be in the north of the borough. It is good to see the council pushing ahead with this programme.

One of the big achievements of previous council leader Jason Stacey was to secure the Glaxo sports and social site in Greenford for a new school in 2008. He was especially pleased to secure a site within his own ward of Greenford Green. In June 2009, the previous administration authorised the purchase land at the former GSK Sports Ground, Oldfield Lane North to accommodate the new high school.

Just before Christmas, on 20th December, the council signed off the next stage of the project made possible by a £18 million grant from Michael Gove’s Department for Education.

The working name for the new Church of England high school being developed in partnership with the popular Twyford School in Acton is North Ealing Church of England Academy (NECEA). This is a truly awful name. Especially as the school won’t be in Ealing but in Greenford. The school will be within the ancient Greenford Magna parish boundary. Greenford Magna Church of England High School sounds good to me.

Ealing council will facilitate the provision of the site for this school after that it is down to the Twyford team to make it happen. Well done to the council again.

On the evening of Monday August 8th Ealing’s police were overwhelmed by some 300 rioters. The interim report of the Riots Communities and Victims Panel, led by ex-Ealing chief executive Darra Singh, ranked Ealing the sixth worst affected area in the whole country, see here. Click to enlarge.

It was something of a shock to Ealing and to the country more widely. Residents know what a cosmopolitan place the borough of Ealing is. The locals were surprised that the civility and order that they are used to was destroyed for one terrible evening when Richard Mannington Bowes died. People from further afield who associate the name Ealing with the relatively wealthy and suburban town centre were perhaps more shocked than the locals even and we all had texts and e-mails from friends and relatives from all over asking us if we were OK. Many hundreds, if not thousands, of us were literally frightened in our beds and some had to deal with intruders and being burnt out of their homes. It was a terrible night.

Although the police lost control of the streets that Monday they got it back the next day and their follow up has been very good. A stiff response from the criminal justice system has gone a long way to reassuring people and ensuring that there will be no repeat of August 8th anytime soon.

The council performed well and was well led. The council had 45 men out at 5.30 am cleaning up. Burnt out vehicles were off the road by 11am. Riot hit small businesses were given £1,200 to tide them over. I have heard shopkeepers praising council officers for their kindness and efficiency. Both chief executive Martin Smith and executive director for Environment and Customer Services Keith Townsend clearly did well. The political leadership of the council, especially council leader Julian Bell, also did their bit. Labour’s Cllr Bell was a visible presence on the night of the riots and led the council’s response. An awful night demonstrated that there is a lot more that unites us than divides us.

I have had a couple of weeks off from the blog in the run up to Christmas. There are five days left of the year and in the spirit of Christmas I want to highlight five things that the Labour council has done right this year.

First off the council announced at its last meeting that council tax would be frozen for the fourth consecutive year. This is a welcome respite for residents from rising prices and stalled incomes.

This is also a good Conservative policy.

Since Boris Johnson became London Mayor in 2008 he too has frozen his share of the council tax called the precept. Just before Christmas Boris Johnson announced his fourth successive precept freeze. The precept trebled under Livingstone. The average rise was 13% per year. Who can forget 2003’s 29% rise?

Under the old Labour council there was a similar picture that was only broken with the arrival of the Tories in 2006. Again 2003 was a memorable year with a 25% rise.

It seems that the new Labour council is willing to accept the grants from the “Tory-led coalition” to keep council tax frozen. I hope that Ealing Labour’s new leaf stays turned over for a few years yet.

I have been doing some research into the accident statistics behind the Lido junction scheme, with the help of the current portfolio holder Bassam Mahfouz and the transport officers. I found the best attorney from www.nehoralaw.com to help with lawsuits following an accident.

The table above (click to enlarge), provided by Tus Abogados Locales lists collisions, etc over a 3 year period (January 2008 – December 2010) at the six most dangerous junctions in the borough. If you compare the number of collisions involving pedestrians with pedestrian traffic then the Lido junction is the most dangerous junction for pedestrians in the borough. There were 8 collisions at the junction involving pedestrians. As dangerous as this junction is in terms of Ealing comparisons it is still true that the rate at which there is a collision involving a pedestrian is 1 in a million crossings of the junction by pedestrian – as a rule Ealing’s roads are very safe!

Of the 17 casualties at the junction 7 out of 17 were pedestrians (the rest were vehicle occupants). Note the table lists 8 collisions involving pedestrians – clearly at least one of the collisions involving a pedestrian resulted in no pedestrian casualty. The feasibility report for the Lido project prepared by the council’s contractors Mouchel calculated that 6 out of 7 of these casualties would be prevented by this project. This advice was based on an analysis carried out by the experienced personal injury lawyers at https://www.myinjuryattorney.com/pennsylvania/car-accident-lawyers/ by taking into account the contributing causes in the incident reports.

The safety case for the Lido junction looks good.

If you would like to read more and take part please follow this link. The consultation closes at the end of the week so get cracking!

The Ealing Labour group are engaged in a ludicrous attempt to brand the Ealing Tories as Ballsian spendaholics. They have just produced the silly graphic above and back in November they produced this press release.

In the twelve years Labour ran Ealing from 1994 to 2006 they increased Council Tax by a staggering 179% – 48% in their last four years from 2002 to 2006. The Tories on the other hand only raised it by 1.9% for two years and then froze it for two years, a cummulative rise of 3.8%. A Tory London mayor has frozen his share of council tax for four years. Last year the “Tory-led” government gave Ealing £3.1 million a year to freeze the council tax again. The “Tory-led” government is offering another deal this year if the Ealing Labour group decide to take it. The contrast could not be clearer.

It is worth noting that the Tories in Ealing also froze parking charges for four years. The first thing that Labour did when it got back into power was to raise them again. It is also planning big rises to parking charges in 2013 and 2014.

Labour’s list of unfunded spending commitments shows two things. Firstly, how callous they are. In spite of warm words about protecting the vulnerable these are the people who have been affected most as Labour’s own list demonstrates. Voluntary groups in particular have been badly hit.

Secondly, the list is typically slapdash. Yes, the Tories have complained about Labour’s police cuts but they are not £750,000. This was the budget left AFTER Labour had cut £250,000 from the original £1 million budget. That’s £500K saved straight away. Read the full story here.

It is not a case of the Tory group not accepting that cuts have to be made, although the Labour group have managed to turn £56 million of cuts to grants into £85 million by adding their own growth, inflation and the cost of borrowing to finance new council offices. We do think that the cuts could be made differently. At the end of November I asked the council’s chief executive how many changes had been made to staff terms and conditions. The answer was none. Simply bringing council Ts & Cs into line with private sector ones could save the council £30 million, see here.

The Ealing Tories do not deny that savings have to be made, we simply suggest that Labour are making the wrong choices. Rather than taking on producer interests and putting residents and service users first they are cutting the frontline, stiffing voluntary groups and ramping up charges.

Ealing Southall MP Virendra Sharma gave us the benefit of his economic wisdom in the Gazette this week. Of course it is just a rehashed Ed Balls press release. If you follow this link to what equally useless Labour MP for Midlothian, David Hamilton, passed off as his own work and published on his website on 5th December they are the same except Sharma has changed “This week” to “Last week” and added another paragraph on the end.

Then again it probably wasn’t Sharma who did the cutting and pasting. No doubt it was his researcher, Ealing council leader Cllr Julian Bell, who is paid to work for Sharma two days a week but still draws a full-time allowance from the council. You pay twice over for Cllr Bell but all you get is a lazy cut and paste job.

Tonight, along with many residents and a number of local councillors, I attended the meeting held by West Ealing Neighbours (WEN) to discuss the Lido junction project being proposed by the council. WEN are to be congratulated for pushing for this project over many years. The meeting was chaired by David Highton (left) from WEN and the portfolio holder, Cllr Bassam Mahfouz (right), was there to answer questions.

Local councillors very much welcome this scheme and the safety benefits that it will bring. They wrote to the Gazette on 25th November to say as much. We are anxious though that this scheme will have a big impact on journey times north to south through the junction. Don’t misunderstand me. We do not think that this is more important than the potential safety benefit. It is not. But, we are keen though that residents across the borough are aware of it.

Once the scheme is in the people that benefit from it will accept the benefits of the scheme without a second thought. The people queuing southbound to get over the junction will curse the council and the “idiots” who changed the lights. Of course WEN, the residents who demanded this scheme, the council transport people, the councillors, etc are not idiots. They have weighed the safety benefits of this scheme against the increased delays and quite rightly chosen one over the other. We need to remember that!

For this reason the local councillors are keen that this consultation reaches as many people as possible. A paper consultation document has been delivered to 2,639 homes immediately adjacent to the junction. This is a large number but it still only covers a very small area. We strenuously requested that the council do a consultation event at Waitrose but this was refused on the grounds that it would set a precedent. If you would like to read more and take part please follow this link.