Weekly Update From Councillor Guy Lambert

Brentford Together offers local activities to bring locals together

Well, that up and at ’em in the morning proved optimistic, so I had to leave the Green Dragon Lane landscaping walkabout in the capable hands of Le Melvinateur. By Saturday I was picking up about 100 bags of leaflets from the Labour party office and on Sunday, delivering them to our ward organiser prior to a planned afternoon canvass.

As it turned out, Storm Ciara was still around and only he and I were at the delightful Rada Café in Great West Quarter and we made a joint executive decision that soggy half-filled canvass sheets blowing around the ward would constitute an environmental crime, so we just shared a cup of coffee.

I had a Storm Pass on Monday morning too: our planned repeat of environmental crime hunting in Kingsley Road was postponed on weather grounds, so I had a more leisurely morning before meeting with our new Assistant Chief Executive after lunch. She has come from Richmond and Wandsworth, where the two councils share various things including Assistant CEOs, and will lead on HR, Customer Service, Communications, Policy and the #OneHounslow transformation programme which is gathering pace. She has an impressive track record and I’m delighted to welcome her. Whatever people think of Hounslow Council, her appointment is further evidence of our ambition to improve, which is very apparent when you work with the leadership team.

In the late afternoon we had a strategy meeting amongst the Watermans Trustees, thinking about what to do if various futures unfold, particularly if the public enquiry coming up soon puts the kybosh on the proposed relocation into the heart of Brentford. Lots of challenges but a lot of talent and commitment amongst the Trustees. We reminded ourselves that Watermans (technically the Hounslow Arts Trust) is much more than just a building (and definitely more than just a car park :D) although the building is a central part of how the Trust engages with its public. I was supposed to go for a meal and social afterwards but, brave as I am, obviously, my man flu was catching up and I was flagging so I skipped the fun bit.

Tuesday I attended Walnut Tree Road in Heston, a road which has multiple problems that we are working jointly with council officers and Hounslow Highways to ameliorate. Last year we did a full resurface of the road, which helps, but the real problem is that this is a small residential cul-de-sac which has a large builder’s merchants at the end of it. Naturally this is served by huge lorries and of course those huge lorries are apt to spill sand, drive over pavements, create noise and pollution, block the road etc. It’s really an accident of history – if someone applied for planning permission today you’d laugh it out of court – but they have a right to carry on trade and we have to try and balance interests as best we can.

Then into Hounslow House for the Cabinet meeting. Quite a long agenda, with the budget at the heart of it. I’m getting sick of the sight of this having discussed it at informal cabinet, Chiswick Area Forum, Isleworth and Brentford Area Forum etc. Anyway there will be more fun, no doubt, when it comes before Borough Council on the 25th. I introduce a paper about commissioning intentions for two of our companies – Recycle360 where I wear both the ‘commissioner’ and ‘shareholder’ hat and Greenspace360 where I’m only the shareholder. Our relationship between the council and the companies is getting better defined as time goes by and this is an important step forward.

Wednesday afternoon I meet Alice Vodden, who is leading the Brentford Together initiative. This is an initiative run by an outfit called Global Action Plan (no lack of ambition there) which has taken over from the previous London Sustainability Exchange and is funded largely from the Lottery. Partners are our lovely local players – Hen Corner, Cultivate London and Friends of Cathja. The idea is to engage with local people who are isolated or in danger of becoming so, and it’s aimed at all ages, sexes, ethnicities etc. A lot of their activities are set out on the flyer pictured below and it all kicks off at the end of February. They are really short of people to help out, so if you have a bit of time on your hands let them know – alice.vodden@globalactionplan.org.uk. Alice tells me they have attracted a lot of different age groups, which is good, but many more women than men. Any ideas of activities which would enthuse the menfolk welcome. I suggested drinking and gambling, but Alice didn’t feel this really fitted the remit.

After that, into Hounslow House again for a meeting of the cabinet with the Senior Leadership Team, for a no holds barred discussion of where we are against the corporate plan, things we need to reinforce or improve etc. A very lively debate, and more evidence of Hounslow’s ambition and what seems to me to be ever-improving capability in the council.

I am able to indulge in a bit of mutual appreciation society with the Environment Director. The rather neat flytip we spotted last week has been investigated and cleared by Hounslow Highways and resulted in a £400 fine being issued. It seems a business had dumped a load of neatly tied up black bags with their address repeated many times within them. To be fair, neat rather overstates it but you know what I mean.

After that we indulge in one of those exotic Labour Party rituals. The Nomination Of The Candidate. Part of Labour Party democracy is that constituency parties get the right to nominate a candidate for leader, deputy leader, NEC roles etc, and this is our big chance. Much debate takes place, ending with us nominating Keir Starmer for Leader and Angela Rayner for Deputy, which would be an excellent outcome, although I like Dr Rosena Allin-Khan for Deputy as well.  Of course, both Keir and Angela already have far more nominations than they need so you could argue that the process is a bit pointless. You might argue that, but obviously I couldn’t possibly comment. This process takes a long time and I’m glad to have been able to grab a couple of left-over stale sandwiches between meetings. Being a councillor is living the glamorous life. Fly tips, stale egg sarneys, interminable speeches: who needs super-yachts and sun-kissed beaches?

On Thursday morning I’m out with Ruth and some of her team to meet people who live in the Paragon – the development at the bottom of Boston Manor Road behind the Co-Op which has been plagued with a succession of building issues including dodgy cladding, windows blocked off for months with protective sheeting, allegedly toxic chemicals, scaffolding providing a handy leg-up for burglars, badly designed fire alarms, you name it. We were expecting a mild dose of Melvinator, but he rang Ruth this morning to say he had a mild dose of something or other so she told him to go back to bed, to which he responded he was already there. All the news that’s fit (or unfit) to print here folks. How to fix the Paragon problems is not obvious, already involving the Ombudsman and quite likely to involve lawyers at some stage. Before the meeting, we hear that Esther McVey has been sacked as Housing Minister. Ruth comments that Esther put on a particularly vacuous performance in a debate yesterday but I would caution that Boris Trumpson or his boss Dominic Cummings will probably find someone even more useless.

So that was my week. I’m off shortly to an event at West Thames College to celebrate LGBT history month, and later we have the Police ward panel.

Cllr Guy Lambert

February 13, 2020