Weekly Update From Councillor Guy Lambert

Knocking down to start as Ballymore CPO approved

Thursday afternoon we have the final meeting of the Air Quality Task Group. Excellent work by the officer who is really running this group and certainly doing all the hard work and very disappointing that it is only the Melvinator and me who turn up despite all the hot air which blows across into Brentford from the East of the Borough. The big concern I have is that this does not end up as so many like it have done in the past as a worthy document whose only function hereafter is to gather in a bit of the dust from the atmosphere whilst languishing on a shelf. Given the timing, all we can do is commend a clear action plan to officers and the next administration, and we will.

Friday morning I wend my way down to Brent Way, where await Syon councillors including the leader, sundry officers, sundry Ballymore types a Melvinator and a large digger. Ballymore are getting ready to start some serious knocking down in anticipation of the right answer from the public enquiry on the Compulsory Purchase Order and some of us believe (quite wrongly) that hard hats will suit us.

It seems they will first have to deal with asbestos in the building shown and then with an accumulation of pigeon poo in some of the other buildings so Melvinator is a bit indignant that they wont let him wield his sledgehammer Rambo-like. And they call these Hi-vis jackets Extra-Large…

By one of those happy coincidences (it really was) we learn the same day that the Secretary of State has approved the Compulsory Purchase Order so Ballymore can go full speed ahead. Given the complexities remaining, it’s unlikely they will start actually building until about 12 months hence.

Then Mel and I whizz into the Civic to talk to the director of Housing about plans to change the organisation of housing services and reunite the ‘responsive’ repairs team with the ‘planned’ maintenance team under Lampton360. Some of us bite our tongues and then can’t resist asking why this wasn’t done in the first place as we suggested at the time. Sometimes one’s genius is only recognised in retrospect.

In the afternoon there are doors to knock upon, up Lionel Road North with its looong front gardens but Corinna and I manage to do the whole of the West side. There are too many uphill drives on the east side and we’re tuckered out so we’ll be back another day. Sunday morning I repeat the exercise, this time in the far reaches of Chiswick where it feels more like Hammersmith. I come upon more than one household of lifelong Tories who have discovered that they’re not. Lifelong. One says he voted Lib Dem in the GE and I point out he’ll do better voting for us as we have a good chance of winning. You can hear the cogs turning before he says – you’ll have three people voting Labour in this household. In the afternoon, back to civilisation in the form of Challis and Eastbourne Roads after which I retire to bed with sore feet!

Monday I spend the day in the Labour office. Doing a bit of proof reading, helping people use the Labour Party’s superbly intuitive systems (!) and getting on with casework etc in the interludes. A lively www.thamesbank.org board meeting in the evening. Our new board members really getting the bit between their teeth.

Tuesday I go into the Civic centre in the afternoon for a meeting on the proposed new Customer Relationship Management system for members which will help people like me (spirit willing, flesh unreliable) to keep a proper track of casework and other issues. But it seems the meeting has been cancelled without anybody telling me. Back in the evening for the annual budget-setting meeting. Our Tory chums turn up and put forward what seems to us a rather preposterous plan to raid our meagre reserves and spend them covering up the shortfall in central government grant so as to avoid a rise in council tax which will anyway yield far, far less than is being taken away by cuts in grant. Theo Dennison caps the absurdity of this by pointing out that, apart from anything else, their sums don’t even add up and they are proposing an illegal budget. Good to have such a strong and stable opposition.

Wednesday, further refinement of the members' induction programme being proposed to support both the new intake of councillors in May and the old lags who are hoping to survive the wrath of the electorate.

Thursday morning, Myra and I meet the Chief Executive of the new(ish) Community Interest Company which is taking over the running of Gunnersbury Park. We discuss the events being planned for the summer, some of which I believe will be warmly welcomed and others which will meet mixed reviews. They are working hard to avoid disruption as far as possible to park users and local residents but he points out that they really need to have commercial income streams to ensure the park and its stately homes are hereafter maintained in the manner to which they have not heretofore been accustomed. Joint owners, London Boroughs of Hounslow and Ealing, simply can’t afford to pay all the running costs. We also learn about the rather byzantine governance structures of the Park and grizzle about not enough information flow either to us as ward councillors or to the general public, particularly the park’s neighbours and users. We leave the meeting somewhat reassured, and with ideas about how we want things to change in future.

This afternoon I’m off to the House Of Commons to meet Seema Malhotra MP in my role as Credit Union chair. Seema is keen on the role of the Credit Union in helping out the financially excluded and we’re working on ways to extend effectiveness as part of her ‘Hounslow’s Promise’ initiative. Then in the evening I have Audit Committee, so I’ll have to put on my Boring Accountant clothes.

A day off tomorrow going to ‘Race Retro’ – an annual pilgrimage to look at old racing cars (and drivers) sitting still in the National Agricultural Centre in the midlands. So if your door is knocked by a wild-eyed politician you’re safe – not me, guv.

Councillor Guy Lambert

February 23, 2018