Finding Myself Up Some Creek Without a Saddle

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert reports back

Cllr Guy Lambert

March 1, 2024

On Friday morning I had my regular update with our Cabinet Assistant, the man who keeps us cabinet makers on task and make sure we don’t put up the cupboard doors upside down. Always a useful short meeting, and next on the list was a board meeting of Lampton Homes.

This is the unit of Lampton which is engaged in building and buying homes in the market for people on the housing list. Both of these have been very effective, though it has been somewhat Trussed and Sunakked with increased interest rates, increases in market rentals and no increase in what will be paid to those who rely in part on Universal Credit. It is not helped by fallout from recent national housing problems which have increased maintenance costs for rented properties, meaning we have to be very vigilant about damp and similar problems. Anyway, Homes keeps on building new homes and, where the numbers work, buying, improving and renting them off, mainly to people from the ‘list’.

After that, a call with a councillor from Ealing who is looking to learn from our experience with restricted access streets, in particularly Green Dragon Lane and Occupation Lane. For these two I never had the outcry I heard for other such changes – in fact many people have been very enthusiastic with one actually said she went into tears of joy at the prospect of getting home from her job much quicker than she used to manage.

By that time I had contracted quite a heavy cold. I checked for COVID (negative) which was good as I had agreed to take a friend of mine to hospital in darkest Epsom, So I was off early on Saturday and found a place to stop and take a stroll. I didn’t know Epsom (not impressed) but went up the downs just there and found myself by the racecourse (no Derby that day). I was delighted by the views which if eyes were still like they were when I was 20 I would probably been able to identify my flat. As far as I can see now, I was looking in the direction of Brentford. Or Kensington. Or Staines. If you’ve lost a scarf, you might find it by Epsom Horse track.

Monday was supposed to be an empty day and I nearly achieved it, interrupted only by a brief meeting with our excellent director of public health, preparing for a meeting about Health integration that I’ll report in a minute.

On Tuesday I had an early call from someone who was alerting me a tree was down on the A4, thanks to the wind.

Hounslow Highways had been out to tidy it up a bit but more work was needed from TfL who own the road and the tree. They were good as I hear as they came out same day and completed the clearing. As it happened, some idiot at about the same time had been messing with the traffic light so it was facing the wrong way, also fixed I believe,

Then I met with the two guys who run the day-to-day operations at the Hounslow Community FoodBox. They became part time employees after the volunteer who had been running operations for a long time, a local hero in my book, moved on to pursue other local volunteering. Anyway, we had decided one of us trustees should provide a link between these two and the trustee board, which role I have agreed to take on. A good meeting, between two excellent local people who have worked out a practical way of working together to provide organisation for the fantastic crew of volunteers.

Later I had my new monthly update with the exec director I mainly work with. Good to talk to him and we are developing a way of working together effectively in an organisation that has changed a lot recently. I spent most of the day in Hounslow House and later had a session with the people who organise the Junction2 festival which will take place in Boston Manor Park in July. Having lived with this for a number of years, last year was the first time it went with very little problems. At the first one there was a lot of ASB, but the organisers have greatly upped their game and I found little to complain about this week. They have plans to give donations to local charities. Last year they selected Spartans football and a Hounslow elderly charity. Any nominations to me please – I have some ideas but more welcome.

In the evening, it was the Council meeting where we present and agree the budget for 2024/25. The budget has got more difficult every year I’ve been a councillor and this year will be the worst of all, because inflation has caused great strains on our services. This combines with ever-dwindling finance support from central government and also an ageing population which puts greater stress on our most expensive (and rarely mentioned) services, social services for all, but especially the elderly and young.

For years we have husbanded our resources carefully, and every year our Conservative colleagues tell us to cut taxes and use our reserves to subsidise the daily demands. We have always avoided that but this year we will have to eat into the reserves for the first time. The broken record is brought out together with other nonsenses and a concentration on potholes, with one speech must have said this talismanic word (or are they 2 words) at least 20 times. I mistyped that as 320 times, and in any case that’s what it felt like! As I have pointed out many times, we are regularly independently assessed as having the best roads in London, though nobody believes me. Try going to Epsom as I did on Saturday if you want to know what potholed roads really look like.

Ron Mushiso, who is running rather incoherently to be our GLA member for South West London was banging on about the London Mayor and saying it was all wasting money. I was doing some back of the envelope calculation and wondering what the £15.6 billion spend on useless PPE affected Hounslow. I kept coming back to a sum of £64 million it had cost Hounslow, though I freely admit it might be anything between £50M and £80M. Whatever, it would fill a lot of potholes. It shocked me when I realised what wasting £15.6 Bbllion really means. It doesn’t sound much, but when you think of how it affects 300K residents out of nearly 70M in the country. £64M actually sounds more than 16 Billion!

Wednesday was two important sessions. The first was the meeting of the Integrated Care Partnership - 8 councils and the NHS. 3 main topics – inoculation, oral health, and access to primary care. Measles in particular is increasing very strongly, partly because of the discredited work of Dr Wakefield which every professional now thinks is nonsense, but which too many people put their children (and the rest of us) at risk by not getting people inoculated. There are frightening stories about dentistry in children, partly because there is a dearth of NHS dentists. Finally there has been a rumpus about access to GPs. It would be wrong to claim this is not a problem in Hounslow but it is not severe here – it seems it is much worse in some of our neighbouring boroughs,

The NHS – with cooperations from councils – has plans to address all these concerns and our own Public Health team is a prominent player, being a leading light in two of the three initiatives but fixing this is difficult and will take a while.

In the evening we had Cabinet Question Time at West Thames College in Isleworth. Thankfully there were not really any questions for me (phew) but I put my oar in on my current hot topic which is housing. Too many people in inadequate accommodation in Hounslow, but the problem affects all of London and I think much of the country.

Anyway a good session, though the number of tickets given out was restricted. It was nice to see quite a lot of younger people including college students.

Thursday was another busy day. I drove to Hounslow and for the second time I was annoyed by the shocking discipline shown by the developers in Boston Manor Road opposite the station. On Thursday (again) 3 huge lorries parked partly in the parking bays and partly in the middle of the road.

There was a bloke manfully trying to manage the traffic but on an A road and bus route, this really isn’t on. The authorities have been informed (again) but these things are hard to control and the piffling fines we can apply don’t provide much disincentive.

I was on my way to meet a local artist whom I had nominated for a small grant to encourage refugee artists to tell their story with pictures. We were finishing off the application, then going into a Mayor event celebrating local volunteers who have made a big difference.

I nominated Sara Ward, aka Hen Corner, who does a diverse activities locally and is a long-serving pillar of Brentford society. Lara’s was Bishop Havakim Manukyan, the primate of the Armenian church in the UK, now fully operational in the artist previously known as the Princess Royal and the old Brentford FC shop next door. He’s keen to contribute locally and it was good to see him talking to Sara, who amongst many things I understand is studying to take Holy Orders. It was great to chat to all the others there, from the Butts Society, the local artist behind the Creative Mile and the two women who have rejuvenated the Six Bells pub, which is beginning to build a great reputation.

Next week I am scheduled for a meeting with the Leader and other worthies to review progress with my various responsibilities. So yesterday we went through some material with the officers I mainly work in, to prepare.

Went home and prepared for the Area Forum in the evening. Two things annoyed me. First, Pump Alley is largely blocked by the developers of the Heidelberg site. I’m not sure they have permission to do this but yesterday they had created a van park for 2 vans for some outfit called Crangy, I suppose the good news is that it stopped them parking illegally but now it was a completely empty area. I

suppose they will eventually gig it up and I hope they make a better attempt to reinstate than they managed a few weeks ago on the High Street.

Quite tidy, but the Sherlock in me suspects that the concrete blocks have not been replaced with the same material.

But worse than all this was when I went to my bike to traverse to the Free Church for the Area Forum.

My bike had been denuded for the third time of its saddle. I’m not up to cycling bareback. I bumped into our lovely PCSO at the Area Forum and mentioned it, but I doubt I’ll bother to formally report it.

Anyway, the evening was in the Free Church, with a very good turnout (well done Dan, the chair and Lara, the vice chair). Usually lively Brentford people but I think it went well. Walking home via the Beehive we heard poor Lara had fallen off her bike near Watermans. Cut knee – must check up on her.

Today (Friday) I’m off to the library to meet some people from the community team. Oh, and I must go saddle-hunting. Not like this.

Councillor Guy Lambert