A Wake for Steve Curran But Hopefully Not for the Watermans

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert reports back

Cllr Guy Lambert

April 12, 2024

I succeeded in having a meeting-free day on Friday other than attending the wake for my old leader Steve Curran in the evening. I worked with and under Steve for 7 years, as well as a couple of years working with him as an activist before I was elected. We didn’t always agree, but I had a deep respect for him and his ambitions for Hounslow in general, and Brentford in particular.

As I’ve said before, we had robust conversations about different matters but never fell out, even if we voted different ways. There were one or two people who really fell out with Steve, one of whom is trying to come back via a by-election as an independent. He can never stand for Labour again, and I don’t think I will ever forgive him for what he said about Steve after he was dropped from the cabinet and became largely invisible in the council.

Enough of that. The wake we attended at the Grasshoppers Rugby place had lovely speeches from Steve’s son Sam, and a couple of Steve’s old pals from rugby and football. It was a pleasure to be there. Quite a few old colleagues such as leading officers of the council (and current ones). I can’t say there was no dry eye in the house, but most of us were reflecting on our lost friend. Sad, and life goes on. Steve as I remember him. A tough and determined man, always trying to do the right thing, friendly by nature and always with a twinkle in his eyes.

Saturday morning, I was with people from Brentford Voice and some other community leaders to work on the proposals for the Watermans site. Lovely to work with practical and committed people who care about my town. We are making a lot of progress and a proposal has gone to the council. However it is quite complex and with a lot of moving parts. I am every day pushing people in the council and outside to make rapid progress. It hurts me to see Watermans under this threat, so I am doing everything in my power (such as it is) and my experience (lots, but doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing) to support this initiative.

This meant I missed the fun down by Eastbourne Road but there was an impressive turn out of Labourites from all over the borough, including a cadet who cheated a bit by getting others to wheel him (or her) around,

From our canvassing so far, we have met quite a few people who have been Tories, are not any more. A few have some local beefs, mostly about parking or Watermans but they appreciate that we do listen and try to fix the things that concern them. There’s no doubt, the prevailing weather shows an awful lot of people are just fed up with the Conservatives. I feel sorry for my friend Mike Denniss, who has a difficult task in Brentford West and having the added difficulties of (I presume) defending the clowns in the national government and defending some of his natural supporters defecting to Theo Dennison, inspired by his client George Galloway. Haven’t seen this amongst our supporters, I’m pleased to report.

Later I dropped in to the Mission Hall, where a community event was running.

This was mainly for children but in the world we live in now it is regarded very dodgy to take pics of children so I have to restrict you to a couple of council officers. A pity because the officers are lovely but not as much fun as the children by a long chalk. Nice to see the Mission Hall, which is a very good building, being used more regularly in the heart of the Haverfield Estate.

On Sunday I cycled up to the Flower Market in Chiswick. Always a nice place to go, and I chatted with a few friends there. Only trouble recently has been the winds. I can cope happily enough with rain on my bike, but wind really annoys me! Also had a shock when I renewed my car insurance and found it had rocketed by about £400, because I got caught doing 46mph at 7am on a Sunday morning in a 40mph zone on the A316 (grrr) after I had been let down by British Airways (grrr, my legal claim continues). To be fair, my mileage was up to a heady 2000 miles last year so I can look forward for insurance costs of about 50p per mile. Still, not much petrol 😊

On Monday evening I was at the Kings Arms, to meet some locals about (you guessed it) parking. We have been trying to improve the parking after the car park on Windmill was replaced by rather splendid council houses, but we haven’t succeeded with this yet. The residents are grumpy about it – don’t blame them because things that look simple turn out to be anything but and take ages, especially when that awful word ‘lawyers’ enters the discussion. Still working at it but locals are threatening a formal complaint – can’t say I blame them.

Tuesday we had an informal cabinet meeting. Latest news about the integration of NHS and social care, one of my responsibilities. This is beginning to gain momentum, and our top priority is to help people who are frail to carry on with an enjoyable (and I hope long) life. This involves flow of funding, probably away from the NHS into councils (though not necessarily) because it can likely be done more economically. But it is tricky, because nobody has abundant funding (I’m being polite) and there will need to be some negotiating and discussion so we can achieve better outcomes for less cost. The council CEOs are working on it as well as NHS leaders and political types like me.

We also talked about Watermans, and agreed that we should be doing our utmost to keep it going in some way (probably quite different) led by community groups or more likely reopen it just as soon as we can get over some niceties and difficulties, financial, legal and practical.

On Wednesday I had a good meeting with Emma, who I hope will soon be my new ward colleague after 2 May, in Café Capri, Brentford’s answer to Claridge’s - Lovely people, lovely coffee and that’s just me and Emma. The meeting later embraced Dan and his very suave son Max, who has just has his hair stylishly cut next door. I asked him when he was going to get a boy-bun but I think he was more interested in a jam bun. You forget as a councillor that you know the ward really intimately, and these days I have 9 years of being closely engaged with the ward and its residents. Emma knows her way round Brentford very well, but it will take a few sessions to get her completely up to speed with the local quirks. And no, I am not talking about Dan.

In the afternoon we knock doors in York Road and Windmill, but I had to sneak off early as I was going to a birthday party at the Black Dog.

So now it is Thursday, and I had to put a few miles on that insurance by taking a friend of mine to have her cataract worked upon in a private clinic in Epsom contracted by the NHS. I dropped her off early and had to hang around for a couple of hours to wait until she was ready to go home. Very fetching with a kind of perforated Perspex thingy on top of her eye, but apparently it didn’t hurt much and hopefully will have the required effect, before she goes in to have the other one done.

Then back to Brentford and I go out soon after to join the protest meeting at Watermans. I am on record as saying the protest was a waste of time, because my focus has always been on fixing the future rather than spending time lamenting what has changed. Of course, people like to, and have a right to protest. It was infested by Tories – at least 3 councillors (one of them admittedly now an ‘independent Conservative’) plus a parliamentary candidate and an activist who has been making vain efforts to raise their profile and usually making them less popular for at least 20 years. Good luck with that. There were also a few local Greens and one from Richmond – much more sympatico to my views and people I always enjoy talking to, sometimes with some lighthearted banter.

I spoke to a lot of people and most – I think all of them – applauded what we are doing to try and bring a new Watermans back. But people have been going there for many years – I remembered chasing frantically around it when my daughter was perhaps 5 and she had left the dance floor that used to be there to play hide and seek with a new friend. Having scoured the place and wondered whether she had fallen in the river we found her hiding behind an advertisement board. Somebody I knew remembered her daughter starting her working life there when a schoolgirl. Ah, memories. I hope we can make some new ones, both here and in the new centre when it’s built.

A bit about water: a resident alerted me about a leak outside where Firestone used to be on the A4

First call is Hounslow Highways but this is a TfL road, and it turns out the leak is inside the private industrial state there. IT goes back to our constant friend Thames Water and both parties are being harassed by the ever-attentive Cllr Tony Louki – it’s in his Osterley ward. Thursday when the tide was in we had a bit of river breaking its banks near where our own Brent joins the more collectively owned Thames. If any of Thames Water’s most famous added ingredient was included, I can’t identify it and I have heard of no outbreak of E-Coli in Brentford. When I was a child we went on holiday in the South of France where there was often a “drains smell” and we were told not to drink the water. Since we privatized water (and sewerage) here we have now comfortably left France’s weaknesses well behind. I’m so proud to be British.

On Thursday evening, I had spotted that the Guru restaurant was providing a buffet meal to mark their last day serving there (I hope they will be back soon - see above) so I went with a few friends for an impromptu meal there. I’m afraid you missed it, but watch this space and I hope there’ll be something good to see soon.

Councillor Guy Lambert