Heritage Harbour Makes Progress and Visit The Brewery Tap

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert reports back

Cllr Guy Lambert (second left) on visit to local allotments

June 7, 2024

Well this week I think this will be small, because normal service has been interrupted by two things. First, I am no longer a cabinet member and simply a ward councillor, which cuts out chunks of my traditional role. Secondly, we have an election on, which means different tasks for councillors (political engagement, canvassing etc) and for officers (arranging the preparation and distribution of information about polling matters and voting papers etc). There are also restrictions on certain things we do to avoid any danger of doing anything which interferes with democracy. Apparently the Area Forum, previously scheduled for next Monday, falls into this definition and has been cancelled. Not convinced but I’m not a lawyer.

Back to the diary. Thursday evening I met the Heritage Harbour crew and we moved the idea forward, with some plans developing about how to structure things, We are looking to start either a charity of a non-profit company to have an entity to lead the efforts and perhaps attract some funding. Quite excited about this.

Then a beer with the Hounslow Cycling Club, talking about various things cycling, About 20 of us upstairs in the Express Tavern. Not much to report mainly because I can’t really remember what we talked about in any detail – the Ride London which happened last weekend, updates on Cycleway 9 and plans TfL will be hatching about Hogarth roundabout, though consultation will stop during the ‘purdah’ period.

On Friday I was off to Chiswick to meet the secretary of the allotments committee, Kourosh.

I learn there are no less than six allotment sites in Chiswick and they have identified a substantial plot to be turned over to the FoodBox. They work with Good Gym to clear this very overgrown plot and the picture above showing the Gym volunteers working like Trojans getting it ready to grow fresh food for the FoodBox users, which will make a huge contribution. There I am with Sunny, the FoodBox ops manager, Martha, who tends the FoodBox’s current growing facility and Kourosh. Reminded me I needed a haircut, now done!

Good Gym volunteers working on an allotment

In the evening, my first session on the doorsteps alerting people to the election. This time we have agreed to treat Brentford W and E together and it was a special pleasure to be up one of the Brentford Towers. It’s a very nice estate now and there are fabulous views over the river etc. Nice people and a lot of support for Labour and Ruth Cadbury.

On Saturday I managed to get to my birthday celebration at the Brewery Tap. My birthday is in May but it is usually impossible to do anything in the month because of canvassing, elections, council AGM, weather etc but at least I managed to get this to the 1st of June. A nice blend of politicos, local friends and more widely based people and we had a mellow few drinks topped off with the always good food at Albany Spice (though I went one stop more spicy than I should – it’s the beer, officer).

When I was a callow youth we frequented the Himalaya in Birkenhead, apparently reborn as a Balti House, boasted as ‘one of the best Indians in Birkenhead’ – now that’s a very gallant claim – but now seems to be one of the best closed down Indians in Birkenhead. Being young chaps with motorcycles, it was essential that we bought Vindaloo to prove how tough we were, which led to a lot of food not being finished because our mouths were not as tough as we pretended our bodies were.

The Himalaya Birkenhead

It's a difficult time down at the Brewery Tap as demolition is going on all around them, but it actually made our event rather cosy. The Factory, where I had my 70th birthday, is gone, and the Rye is no longer By the Water but the pub, its welcoming landlady, John the Piano and the very Brentford atmosphere survive and the pub will have a rebirth soon enough, still by the water and it will remain a lovely place to meet. Support it through the development period.

Building site round the Brewery Tap

As one of my favourites Joni Mitchell pointed out , Don’t it always seem to go, That you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone? They paved paradise, put up a parking lot. We already have the parking lot.

A quiet Sunday and on Monday, with Katherine Dunne we had an update from the people charged with SUDS – Sustainable Urban Draining Systems. They have various bits of money from the like of Thames Water (TW) and they can only be used for a limited set of needs. Mostly as far as I can see it is focused on creating tanks and permeable surfaces to help rain water to be diverted from the main drains to avoid flooding. Main drains also share infrastructure with sewers so the result can be less than pretty if overloaded. The flooding problems I have encountered are different: in Whitestile Road area, where there were horrible floods a couple of years ago, are now linked with some genius having tipped concrete into the drains. It requires serious road works to fix it and the last time I asked TW were trying to get their hands on a bigger digger.

Somebody told me that a couple of roads in Brentford are vulnerable to flooding but apart from Whitestile and Windmill north of the A4 this has not happened (yet!). I have looked at serious and repeating floods in Chiswick – Fishers Lane where a whole terrace of houses need wellies to go home and a couple of places on Chiswick Mall near the river where floods (which are probably inevitable) won’t drain because there are problems in the drains. We used to have the same problem by the NW corner of Kew Bridge but that is now just a short term big puddle, where previously it was 5 times as big and could last for a week. It was fixed (mostly) as part of the junction remodel for the cycle lane.

Here's a SUDS solution which has been done.

Lovely, but as it’s in Derby, not much use in Brentford. One day, my children…

After Monday I have had a stunningly relaxed week. I had a farewell meal with the head of the team who looks after Hounslow Highways and the head of the company, at the Siracusa. That has been a very challenging contract but one on which I had put in a lot of effort. All three of us are quite proud of the progress we’ve made, despite the challenges of a very rigid PFI contract and latterly unwillingness of the top management of the council to provide the support and funding to address the things that don’t work so well. Of course, that is mainly down to an atmosphere of austerity starting at central government – there is only so much that a council can do to ameliorate it. I have assured the two of them that a large part of my plan remains to give them both a hard time. I actually started my community voluntary work as a lay assessor with Hounslow Highways before it had never occurred to me to become a councillor!

That aside, I have been doing the normal local casework which keeps me occupied and today I found time to watch the USA beat Pakistan at cricket. Normally I would be strongly on Pakistan’s side but I generally prefer the underdog and in cricket, Pakistan is definitely the top dog.

At the weekend I passed through Hammersmith on the bike and noticed this beastie. It is very like the bubble cars that were briefly in fashion in the 1950s. My sister’s boyfriend had one and parked it very suavely front on to a wall. He had forgotten it had no capability to go backwards, and the door was at the front. They had to persuade a passer by to push it backwards so they could get out. The boyfriend did not last long, whatever his other charms were. Cycling down there, I had noticed that a large proportion of the cars in Chiswick were wider than the parking spaces. This one is not really trouble even if front on. I hear they are coming here next year officially and cost up to about £20K in Europe. They will probably be £30K + here, thanks to Brexit (my estimate/prejudice).

Bubble car

I’ve also been working on Brentford mess:

Outside the cop shop

In Whitestile Rd (and that was taken on a good day)

And at Watermans. I had a call from Emma who had seen something on Facebook so I zoomed up there on Wednesday morning. Fire engines (and men) there and it was all depressing, though could have been much worse. Well done fire service.

The investigator thought it was probably down to someone who hangs about in the alley between the little meeting room and the main building, and started a fire by accident with a cigarette.

All a bit horrible.

Today I went to Feltham to support volunteers who make Feltham so much nicer by their hard voluntary work, but I got my lines crossed and missed them. Pity.

Anyway, I decided I needed a bit of France so I am off early on Friday for a long weekend in Dijon, where there will be old cars going round in circles, my special fetish. Report next week.

Councillor Guy Lambert