Phil Taylor

Recently a lot of people have been asking why the Council does not grit residential roads and pavements. There are a number of reasons, the foremost being cost. A couple of days ago the council leader, Jason Stacey, explained that we grit 250Kms of main roads. Residential roads and pavements would run into many hundreds of kilometres and be prohibitively expensive even if we could find enough plant and/or day labourers to do the job at very short notice. Obviously there is a limit to how much expensive plant and storage space we want to have idle in case we have a once in ten years snow event.

There also comes a point where putting even more salt on the roads is going to play havoc with trees and gardens – they don’t like salt water. In parts of the world where they have more regular snow events they don’t recommend common salt (sodium chloride) as a snow melting agent. They go for calcium or potassium chloride as less environmentally damaging agents.

If this cold snap goes on much longer we will be glad we did not use all our grit on pavements – hopefully we will have enough left to allow us to keep food getting to shops.

I have visited Massachusetts in the winter and there most counties have local ordinances that demand that home owners keep the footpaths adjacent to their properties clear. Indeed it snows so often that people often have snow blowers for this job. Most of the work is done by homeowners with shovels. As a visitor I set to work to help my host meet her obligations. Unfortunately she had a corner house so it was double the work.

I did a quick scout around on Google and found this page from the Cambridge, MA’s Department of Public Works. It is their summary of owner responsibilities above, click to enlarge. If we decided to follow this model we could, as a community, deal with the problem for ourselves. It would take some culture change I suspect.

As we all struggle to get around today here is an update from the Council Leader, Jason Stacey, on where we are at with grit:

I thought it might be helpful to let you know about the issue of grit, where the Council grits, etc during this cold spell.

The Council will grit all primary and secondary roads – a primary road would be for example the Uxbridge Road or Mandeville Road and a secondary road something like Greenford Avenue or Castlebar Hill. The primary and secondary roads equate to a network of around 250 kms of road. It is not unusual for gritters to need to cover this distance twice during a night – especially when there has been snowfall. To put this into some sort of context – if our gritters are required to do two rounds during a night this comes to 500 kms of road being gritted – about the same distance from the Town Hall to the Eiffel Tower in Paris!

In addition to the gritting process, footpaths in major footfall areas will be gritted – so for example all of our town centres, areas around major transport hubs, shopping parades, etc. To achieve this we effectively suspend ‘zone 1’ cleansing operations and these crews are directed on to footpath gritting. Yesterday there were 29 teams out in the borough.

Our priority for the time being has to be to work on these priority areas. As you will be aware, this is not a simple do it once job and then it is done, but rather we have to keep continually doing them to ensure the priority areas keep clear.

In terms of grit levels, the Council currently has around 2,000 tonnes of the stuff. The Council has actually been gritting pretty regularly since before Christmas when stocks were at 3,000 tonnes and each gritting round uses around 100 tonnes. We therefore consider our levels at present to be pretty sound though it is quite high compared to many other London boroughs.

This morning I went to the Conservatives’ NHS draft manifesto launch event. It felt very like the Boris events in the run up to the 2008 London elections. It was very well done and the Tory team came across well.

Having been distracted with looking after baby and travelling up to town this morning I had missed the Chancellor’s black hole document.

The Chancellor’s document has been an effective spoiling tactic although it demonstrates some chutzpah after Brown’s expanding public expenditure claim on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday. It seems that it has somewhat put the Tories on the back foot having to defend themselves, although Osborne has been quick to rebut the Labour claims.

It seems to me that the Tories are pursuing a strategy whilst Labour have had some luck with a tactic. It is always a mistake to talk about what your opponents are doing. The Tory message is not as clear or as simple as some would like but at least they are devoting their energies to their own agenda. Labour isn’t.

This was one reason this morning’s event felt like a Boris one – Livingstone made the same mistake. Boris was sunny and people liked him whilst Livingstone spent his time talking about Boris. Another reason was that I sat next to a new party member – an older Welsh bloke – an experience I had more than once attending Boris events. I am not sure that Darling was talking to many new members this morning. Boris’s step-by-step roll out of his manifesto was an impressive feature of his campaign which also seems to be being repeated now.

The big local news today is that the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, has called in the Southall gasworks development. Under new powers he is able to overturn local planning decisions which have a wider impact. He has done this once already this year at the Columbus Tower in Canary Wharf.

In many ways this is a very exciting project. It puts 3,750 homes on derelict land right on top of Southall station which will become a Crossrail station. Obviously people worry that an already busy area will become way too crowded.

You can see the Mayor’s press release here and coverage in Uxbridge Gazette here.

Local MP Virendra Sharma will be hopping mad. Here’s what he had to say about Ealing planning committee’s decision to refuse.

This afternoon I recorded an interview with Sunrise radio on Ealing’s venture into sports sponsorship, called Team Ealing Ambassadors. This is a really exciting project to provide some much needed support to local Olympic hopefuls.

Having been involved in the sport of rowing at a level that was well down from the elite level I have a small idea of what it takes to be an elite athlete. Apart from all of the time and dedication layered onto innate talent it also takes a lot of cash: kit, physios, diet supplements, travel to events, travel to out of season testing, match fees, the list goes on. This programme will support a small number of elite athletes by giving them up to £10K each between now and the Olympics. Many of these people will be being supported by their parents and trying to train whilst holding down a job.

The criteria are pretty strict and the scheme is only targeted at the elite. No apologies for that.

The scheme will support athletes, within the London Borough of Ealing, who can answer “yes” to
the following criteria questions:

• Are you aged 12 upwards or are of an age, which allows you to compete at the London 2012 Games?
• Has your relevant National Governing Body of Sport at a national level identified you as a potential athlete who will compete for Great Britain in the London 2012 Games?
• Are you a current member of a national training squad or team at the date of the application?
• Do you live in the London Borough of Ealing?

The scheme is not a free ride. In return for the support the athletes will be required to undertake some ambassadorial duties to promote sport and celebrate the Borough’s sporting achievements.

For more details and an application form go to the press release and follow links here.

This is only a small scheme, offering £125K between now and the Olympics, but for a handful of elite athletes it will make all of the difference. Details in Cabinet report here.