Weekly Update From Councillor Guy Lambert

Movember tache shows there has been little change since the seventies

Guy Lambert as he was in the seventies on the left and today on the right (?)

The leisure catch-up contained some disappointments. I have referred before to the problems with boilers which appeared not to have been adequately maintained before they transferred to Lampton Leisure. Some of them failed to fire up at all and others worked for a little while and then fell over and the net result was that by Thursday 11 of the 12 inherited boilers in leisure centres were inoperable. These are hefty, bespoke beasts (heating a swimming pool is not the same as your domestic shower) so where spares are needed you cannot get them in B&Q. The Public Halls begin to reopen today (3 rd December) with Isleworth with the rest all open by next Monday. Leisure starts opening with the Osterley running track next Tuesday, followed by Heston Leisure planned to open on Wednesday. It’s good to have these centres back under the council’s direct control at last, and I’m expecting a much improved service once everything is back running.

I had another diary SNAFU so I was the only person in the Brentford Towers Residents Association meeting. I phoned the Master of Diaries, Signor Melvinator, who informed me that I had my knickers in a twist and no such meeting was scheduled so I had a break before a session on Council Tax Support. This is the help we offer to people on low incomes who struggle to pay council tax.

We have had a generous approach to this discretionary assistance which was clear and simple when everyone was on the same system, but now we have half the population on a traditional Housing Benefits regime and half on Universal Credit and both halves utterly confused, even more than they were before all this was ‘simplified’ with Universal Credit. We have to meddle with our existing system which has become ever harder to understand and also unfair. A cynic might think that UC was never about simplicity , other than it makes it simpler for the government to introduce changes which make the already poor even poorer. Still, thanks to Marcus Rashford (and LBH) there are provisions to help prevent children going hungry during school holidays.

On Friday we had a Hounslow’s Promise Trustee meeting. We still have no bank account, which is a bit of a worry – most banks don’t seem to want customers – but making decent progress on two key initiatives – mentoring for school leavers (we are short of mentors so if anybody is up for helping a young person, let me know: apparently both existing mentors and mentees find it all very rewarding), and Connecting Kids @ Home – providing donated PCs etc (and subsidised broadband) to schoolchildren who don’t have them. If you have an old PC you no longer use do please donate it. Remove your data if you can, but don’t worry anything left will be removed before it’s passed on.

On Friday evening we had an all member briefing about Coronavirus, tiers and the continuing Joy of Six. Things are creeping in the right direction in Hounslow, but we’re still 11 th most infected borough in London and we need to be very far from complacent. Read and inwardly digest the new rules. You will be tested at the end and anybody who fails the test will have to self-isolate for 14 days.

On Monday we had a preview of the borough’s plans to participate in the London e-scooter rental trial. Nearly all the boroughs in West London will be participating in this initiative, which will be strictly regulated: you will have to have a driving licence to rent one, they will run at a limited speed and the will use ‘geo-fencing’ to disable them in defined areas (eg shopping centres) or limit them to an even lower speed in other places (for example shared use areas and perhaps some parks). There is a London-wide tender and they expect to appoint 3 operators. Councils will designate specific parking areas (if you park elsewhere the charges will continue). This is likely to happen in the middle of next year. I like this initiative, but my concern is that there is currently little or no enforcement against the existing illegal e-scooters and if the police (because only they have powers I think) don’t start enforcing against these there will be little incentive to use a hire one.

In the evening we had the Overview and Scrutiny call-in of our traffic schemes – a very long and excruciating meeting into whose details I will not delve. It has been widely reported elsewhere and we will respond to the recommendations at cabinet next week.

I was also able to shave off my silly moustache (see top of page), as Movember had become history. I was pleased to see I hadn’t aged at all since 1978, though I think I look just a touch less gormless. The stripy effect on my face is due to a dodgy camera. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I made £150 to help mens health charities – thanks to my generous donors!

On Tuesday morning, bright and early on a gorgeous day and with a newly-streamlined face I hied across to Kensington High Street, where the council are talking about ripping up the cycle lane they started to put in a few weeks ago. It’s particularly lame, especially as there are signs up everywhere saying ‘Cycle Lane junction improvements coming soon’. Bonkers. Cute doggies were on parade.

Later on Tuesday I attended the online launch of the e-scooter trial, hosted by London Councils (the collective body of all the London Boroughs) and TfL. This will be a year-long experiment and it was encouraging that the scheme designers have been learning carefully from experiences in similar trials in other parts of the UK and the world. If these things catch on they could make a serious dent in air pollution and congestion in London’s fair city. Course, it would be handy if they could go down Ken High Street without fighting it out with HGVs and taxis, but there you go.

On Wednesday morning I had my regular catch-up with the chair of Lampton. Inevitably we talked a bit about the challenges in the leisure centres, but that aside (and everything is going ‘swimmingly’ in Lampton Leisure apart from the darned boilers) all’s well in the state of Denmark.

On Thursday morning I was invited to Staveley Road in Chiswick to see Hounslow Highways plant some cherry trees to complete this beautiful avenue.

I was a touch late arriving so I didn’t have to get my feet too muddy, unlike the 55 th Mayor and his chums from Hounslow Highways and Abundance London etc.

In the afternoon I had the formal Lampton360 board, which unsurprisingly was largely focused on Leisure and our determination to provide a better service than the outgoing operator. Of course we have to get the ruddy boilers going to provide any service at all but fairly heroic efforts are going on in the background getting the centres spotlessly clean and COVID safe. The spirit in the team seems to be great and everyone’s just a bit frustrated that not everything can open immediately.

I had to duck out after an hour to join the Planning Committee. The main item, and the one that took all the time, was 50 London Road, the site of the Royal Mail sorting office whose lease runs out during next year and which they do not want to renew. We are not very happy about losing our sorting office, but Royal Mail (and the Post Office) don’t see the need to provide facilities in Brentford and we have no powers to force them. Neighbours are concerned about overlooking, parking and other issues and it’s easy to see that a change like this is unwelcome. I’m a bit uneasy about the development but in the end I come down in favour of it. There are only two other applications and they are uncontentious so we get through them very quickly.



Those cold December days are with us, bringing mist to Ferry Quays.

Cllr Guy Lambert

December 4, 2020