No Litter, No Weeds and Well-maintained Roads. Oh La La!

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert reports back

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert

March 21, 2025

As I said, not much happened this week. I was still in Brentford on Friday and Saturday but the only excitement (mild) was meeting with the publisher of the Chiswick Calendar. She is interested in my recent events and asked me if I would like to do an occasional column for her weekly newsletter. I agreed to look at doing that perhaps once a month - something different than my regular blog. Generally I enjoy writing and it will be interesting to write for a different audience, though I won't do anything that interferes with my weekly updates to Brentford.

I forgot to mention last week that when I met with the Heston Action Group one of the thing we discussed was an initiative by the London National Park City initiative to sign up some volunteer rangers to try to improve the local environment (as the HAGs already do, as quite a lot of people in different ways). Despite what some people think, this is not a council initiative but one from a separate charity which happens to have a Heston resident and an important player in the HAGs team as its chair.

The point of National Park Rangers is simple - people who want to improve their local area Mar who I met last week is the Hounslow coordinator and has a winning smile and is an all round good person who works hard in Heston. If you're interested, do it yourself. It is not a Machiavellian plan by the council!

On Sunday early I was down to Newhaven to take the ferry to Dieppe. Despite the weather gradually looking up there was actually quite a swell in the channel, but all was well. I was heading for Saint Malo, when I was joining a couple of friends. Lovely old town with the important part within medieval walls. Well in fact a lot of it was built in the 1940s because most of the wall and the buildings within were destroyed by bombing in August 1944. It was rebuilt over several years and finished in 1960. I'd be challenged to see the join. They did a marvellous job.

The interesting thing I notice in France is how much better they do visible public services. On my first morning seeking breakfast there were at least half a dozen street cleaners, with motorised mini sweeping trucks and bigger ones all patrolling the street in the centre. I was struck by a man with a petrol powered leaf blower blowing a single leaf (there was only one) off the footway into the centre of the street where the mechanical sweeper ate it up. There was no litter at all in St Malo, no weeds, no leaves virtually no graffiti and virtually no street bins. As far as I can see we gave up on that in the UK decades ago. I tried my very best as a Cabinet member but in truth, we never had anything like the resource we would need to replicate the standards there. And I think because the way we do this in Britain is so much less committed, this discouraged citizens from taking the same care. I do, and many do, but we need to ramp that up! To be fair, St Malo is a tourist place so it's I suppose both easier and more important to be pristine. But our shoddy approach is a bad idea.

Apparently St Malo was a haunt of Privateers - basically government sponsored pirates. The apartment where my friends were staying has some evidence..

Not exactly my taste but I'll let that pass.

Driving back to Dieppe I noticed a few things that are feed for thought. First, on the D-road I drove a lot of the way on, roundabouts are very much in fashion. At each deserted crossroads in the middle of nowhere, there is either a roundabout recently built or under construction. I reckon that is a bit unnecessary, but the state of the roads would put any I could think of in Britain to shame (even in Hounslow!)

The other thing is they are keen on impressive and very individual bridges. These 2 are about a mile apart, one of them over the estuary of the Seine near Le Havre, the other over what I suppose is the French equivalent of the Manchester ship canal.

They are also capable of doing lane closures.

Back in Brentford heaven - on a day when you could suddenly go about in shirtsleeves (won't last) I had a date at the Sanderson former factory in Chiswick and the renovated Voysey building - very handsome and quite unique. I had an invite from the Brentford and Chiswick History Society and it was not one to miss.

There were some restrictions on photography but I think the ones I have are allowed. It is fantastic outside and inside and these I hope give the flavour.

Through the window is the wall of the old factory, which was severely damaged by fire in 1928. They gave Chiswick their house as a library and moved the factory to Perivale. Well it has been beautifully restored and there is a fantastic treasure grove of history in the Voysey building.

That's it for this week. More next!

Councillor Guy Lambert