High Speed Rail 2

Please find below a copy of the text of my speech to the January 2012 council meeting regarding the HS2 project:-

Thank you, Mr Mayor. It is quite clear from the demonstration outside the town hall and full public gallery this evening that there is a great deal of public concern in this borough about the impact of HS2 on residents living along the proposed route as it currently stands.

We in the Lib Dem group sympathise with those concerns and we support the council in defending the interests of its residents and raising those concerns with the Government.

However, members should remember that at this stage in the process, the Government has only given approval to move forward with the design of the scheme and there will be further consultation with local authorities like Ealing over the coming months to find ways to reduce the impacts and maximize the benefits of the scheme.

Indeed, our proposed motion 11.3 calls for the council to work constructively with the Government to help mitigate any adverse effects on local residents and businesses that are affected by the proposed route. In particular, we welcome the changes to the proposals since the initial consultation began, which include a new 2.75 mile tunnel along the Northolt corridor as a sign that the Government is already listening to concerns and has shown willingness to reduce the impact of the scheme on local communities along the route.

However, as anyone who may have read our leader’s article in this Ealing Gazette this month, we in the Lib Dem group have taken a longer term view about the overall benefits of this project and have welcomed the recent announcement by the Transport Secretary to move forward with plans for High Speed 2.

Nationally all three main parties in Parliament have come out in favour of HS2 with Labour’s shadow rail minister John Woodcock arguing that HS2 was “a vital lifeline of economic growth”. “We will be failing future generations if we pass up the opportunity to employ the most advanced technology available,” The Prime Minister has pointed out the growth of high speed rail in countries like China and the fact that there was opposition prior to building the M40, and has publicly backed the scheme saying “If you really want… rebalancing the British economy, spreading growth out from the South East, linking up our biggest cities with high-speed rail, it’s an agenda you simply can’t ignore.” 

Ealing Lib Dems believe that investment in our antiquated rail network is long overdue. Britain’s railways are struggling to cope with the huge increases in passenger numbers we’ve seen in recent years with passenger miles rising from 18 million in 1994 to almost 32 billion miles in 2009. Overcrowding is already a problem on many lines in the capital, limiting both the city’s economic potential and quality of life for many Londoners. Without significant investment many of the rail routes in London will not be able to meet forecasted passenger demand over the coming decades.

The long suffering rail passenger will therefore enjoy the benefits of high speed rail in improved connectivity, reduced journey times, and greater access to employment opportunities. We also believe that the government’s proposals offer an opportunity to bring investment, regeneration and jobs to London, particularly at Old Oak Common where up to 20,000 new jobs are expected which will bring economic benefits to a deprived area. We also believe that high speed rail offers an alternative to airport expansion at Heathrow or a new airport on the Thames Estuary. High speed rail also has the significant benefit of reductions in noise and air quality when compared with air travel. There is clear evidence that a large majority of passengers switch from trains to planes where high speed trains are available and Eurostar now carries around 80 per cent of combined air and rail travel between London and Paris.

London Councils which is in favour of HS2 believes that, on balance, investment in a high speed network is the best option available and we agree with them. We therefore call on Ealing Council to support High Speed Two to ensure it takes place to bring the benefits to our transport system envisaged by both the Coalition government and Labour Party opposition in Parliament.

The Future of Ealing Hospital

Here is the text of a speech I made at full council in December 2011, in response to a Labour petition on the proposed merger between Ealing Hospital Trust and North West London Hospital Trust

I welcome the opportunity for this debate not least because the Lib Dem group tried to submit a motion on this subject following the decision  by Ealing Hospital Trust to approve its Outline Business Case for merger with North West London Hospital Trust at its board meeting in November.

The Trust’s case for the merger as outlined in the report “Stronger Together” presents 4 potential scenarios for the future of Ealing Hospital. The first is to maintain a District General Hospital at Ealing, the second retains a District General Hospital at Ealing but involves the loss of emergency surgery. However, the third scenario involves the downgrading of Ealing to an Urgent Care Centre with acute medicine and community care, while the fourth scenario results in the downgrading of Ealing to an Urgent Care Centre with only community care.

Under these proposals, residents would have to travel longer, and potentially life threatening distances on congested roads in an emergency,  if the A&E at Ealing Hospital were to close as a result of this merger and there is a lack of public transport between Ealing and Northwick Park which would greatly inconvenience patients attending appointments or their visitors in the event of a stay in hospital. Furthermore, following the recent announcement about overnight closures of the A&E at Central Middlesex, there is undoubtedly concern over the ability of North West London Hospital Trust  to cope with additional patients if Ealing closed.

We in the Lib Dem group would therefore rule out Options 3 and 4 which would down grade Ealing Hospital to an urgent care centre. 

We would also criticise Ealing Hospital Trust over its planned lack of communication with residents. Ealing Hospital Trust need to engage and involve the public in any proposed changes. At the moment, formal consultation is only planned on service changes not on the merger itself. However, the merger will almost inevitably lead to service changes given that Ealing Hospital does not currently meet Foundation Trust status and there is a threat overhanging A&E, Maternity and other services which do not currently meet government clinical best practice guidelines.

As we heard at the Health & Social Services Scrutiny Panel, the clinical commissioning strategy is also not likely to be consulted upon until June and the current proposal in the Outline Business Case is for the merger to go ahead in July. We would therefore urge Ealing Hospital Trust to put the planned merger on hold until the commissioning strategy has been developed and we know what their intentions are towards commissioning of services from Ealing Hospital as well as clear clinical evidence how any service changes will benefit health outcomes for patients.

We would also suggest Ealing Hospital Trust should re-consider other potential options for merger such as a merger with Hillingdon or even a merger for all 3 trusts. There may be, for example, greater back office savings than the £7 million which the Outline Business Case envisages between the merger of 2 trusts. Speaking for myself and those living on or near the Uxbridge Road, I think it would also be much more convenient for patients to hop on a 427 or 607 bus to attend hospital appointments in Hillingdon than try to go to Northwick Park.

Despite the obviously political nature of this petition, we would  urge all sides in this chamber to put our political differences aside over this issue. I would therefore like to propose that all 3 party leaders write a joint letter to the Chief Executive of Ealing Hospital trust expressing their concern over the proposed merger and its potential impact on the future of Ealing Hospital. And we should work together in a cross-party campaign on behalf of all residents in the borough to oppose service changes at Ealing Hospital.

Welcoming the news of a council u-turn on the future of Hanwell and other public libraries

Here is the text of my speech at the Ealing Council meeting in June following the council’s announcement that Hanwell and other public libraries would not be closed.

On behalf of the Liberal Democrat council group, I would like to thank the Portfolio holder Cllr Dheer for his announcement today that the libraries at Hanwell, Northfields, Northolt Leisure centre and Perivale will be saved. The “devil is in the detail”, and we wait to see the council’s proposals for the future of the library service, in particular how volunteers will help to run the library service and how the mobile library service will be managed.

The Liberal Democrats were opposed to closing libraries and the number of signatures on the petitions handed in today clearly shows the strength of public feeling towards saving public libraries, but given that it is in my ward and the fact that I signed their petition, I would especially like to congratulate Carolyn Brown and the Hanwell Community Forum Library Action Group for their fantastic efforts in organising their petition and their campaign to save Hanwell library.  It is thanks to the pressure you have put on the council that they have made this announcement today, and we will keep working to make sure that libraries are genuinely saved in Ealing.

Saving Public Libraries

I have enclosed a copy of the text of my speech below to the April 2011 council meeting on the future of public libraries in Ealing:-

Mr Mayor, as the ward councillor for Elthorne where Hanwell Library is situated, I rise to second the Lib Dem amendment to this motion. While we accept that the council needs to make significant savings over the next 3 years, the Lib Dem proposed amendment to last month’s council budget showed that the council could refurbish Hanwell and Perivale Libraries if there was the political will to keep these libraries open instead of borrowing £5.5 million to build a car park in Southall. However, at the time Cllr Johnson and the Labour group accused us of scaremongering that these libraries were under threat.

One month on, the Council has now released its consultation for the future of the library service, and not only were we right about Hanwell and Perivale libraries but this council proposes to go even further. Northolt Leisure Centre library, Northfields Library and the Mobile Library service are also under threat. Rather than a meaningful consultation about the future of the library service in the 21st century, we have a loaded sham of a consultation designed by a short-sighted council’s desire to cut costs or to make a quick buck from selling these prized community assets to developers.

The consultation is designed to lead residents participating in the survey to believe that the only option is to close libraries, end the mobile library service or for libraries to be run by volunteers. Almost every question begins: “Given the need to make significant savings to Ealing’s library service” do you agree to consider closing those libraries?

The council has made significant investment on its libraries with almost £1 million spent on Northolt Leisure centre Library only re-opened last January, £610k on Northfields, and it would be a tragedy for that investment to go to waste. However, Hanwell and Perivale libraries are under threat because they have not had the same kind of investment. Hanwell Library which I know well has been seriously under-funded in terms of maintenance of the building, staffing and service provided, by successive Councils over many years. Poor maintenance has led to the upper floor being closed to the public on health and safety grounds for some years which is a waste of a community space that could easily be used to bring in additional services and more potential users to the library.

The need for local libraries is vital for improving literacy rates of all ages. The UK Literacy rate among children leaving primary school must be improved: nationally around one in five children do not reach the required standard of reading and writing at 11 yrs old (Key Stage 2) and around one third families of younger children do not have access to Internet. Hanwell Library is within easy walking distance of five Primary Schools, four Preschool Nurseries, and three High Schools. The Preschool Nurseries and Primary Schools arrange outings for their pupils to Hanwell Library, a practice which breeds an early familiarity with books. Easy access to libraries is essential to encourage children to develop a life long interest in reading.

Furthermore, adult literacy is also a problem for one in six people in the UK. Men and women with poor literacy are least likely to be in full-time employment at the age of thirty. 92% of the British public say literacy is vital to the economy and essential for getting a good job – and as the local economy recovers it will be important to have a highly skilled and educated workforce.

Mr Mayor, I would like to conclude by urging residents and ward councillors where libraries are threatened to do their utmost to campaign against these closures, to fill in the consultation and tell the council what they think of these proposals, and to tell them in no uncertain terms that we the people of Ealing value libraries over car parks.

Planning Committee – 3-7 Uxbridge Road

Here is the text of my speech to the Planning committee in March 2011 in opposition to the proposed development of 3-7 Uxbridge Road which was refused due to overdevelopment, inadequate provision of amenity space, lack of car parking,unsuitable design/massing, and undesirable relationship with neighbouring properties:

Chair, I would like to raise a number of concerns with this proposed development both as a ward councillor and local resident. First of all, while I accept that these properties are not locally listed or in a conservation area, I question the principle of this development given that this application involves the demolition of three Victorian terrace buildings rather than refurbishment.  I believe this is contrary to the spirit of UDP policy 2.1 on promoting Sustainable development that says: “This council will take decisions on developments based on the whole range of sustainability…including the desirability of retaining and renovating buildings. As it states in the UDP many of the Borough’s older buildings still have many years of useful life and, despite the justification from the applicant we have heard tonight, I do not see why the existing buildings cannot be refurbished to provide a similar number of new affordable homes. I also take issue with the opinion of the planning officer that this new development will add local character to the area, as I believe these proposals will significantly impact on the streetscape by salami slicing a historical period feature of the area to be replaced by another modern block of flats.

I also cannot understand why the officer is recommending this development for approval given that this application contravenes so many of our UDP policies. Firstly, there is a distinct lack of amenity/garden space, below our UDP guidelines. Unit 1 = 20 sqm under provision, Unit 2 = 13 sqm under provision, Unit 3 is deemed unusable due to location at front of building and the likely problems of noise & air quality. Units 4-11 Communal space of 64 sqm instead of 120 sqm. Then, there is a lack of child play space. The London Plan SPD states that there should be 10 sqm play space per child – 64 sqm total space required but none has been provided. The Landscape and Tree officer has even recommended for refusal “due to a significant lack of amenity and child play space in this area of severe park deficiency”. However, this advice has not been heeded. I note the amended recommendation to remove the reference to Dean Gardens in the S106 proposals, but the fact remains there is no play space on site and the development is not in close proximity to park or play space. Then there are questions to be raised about the accommodation being provided in this development. The proposal only includes 1 and 2 bed accommodation – when SPD1 says that 42% should be 3+ bedrooms. I would argue that there is a dire need for family accommodation in the area and that overcrowding is an issue on GML estate where the new tenants will come from. The living space, although a minor infraction, is under provision for units 5 & 9 based on SPG 14. There is also the impact of the development on the privacy and feeling of overlooking of the neighbouring residents of Shirley Court which is only 17.7metres away – less than the 21m guidance between habitable rooms set out in the UDP.

The application also provides 10 car parking spaces less than UDP requirement. The Council recently undertook a CPZ consultation in Shirley Gardens due to parking pressure – (77% capacity already on Saturday mornings) and car club permits will not prevent new residents parking in Shirley Gardens and adding to the parking congestion. To quote UDP Policy 9.8 on Low Car Housing; “In all situations, the critical issue is how to ensure that residents moving into a low-car development, do not merely park their cars in what may already be a congested area. This can be done in areas where there is on-street parking control” Yes, it goes on to mention that the developer can show commitment to minimise car use by buying permits to a car club, but I would argue that the low car housing policy works best in those areas where it is enforceable with a legal agreement preventing new residents from purchasing CPZ permits.

Finally, the report states that the council housing department welcome this opportunity to provide decant housing for GML redevelopment. I agree with this in principle but the development should not be if accommodation is less than council standards in terms of living/amenity space or at the expense of the neighbouring residents of Shirley Gardens. I therefore urge the committee to REFUSE this application.
 

Park Rangers and Envirocrime Prevention Officers

Please find below the text of my speech to the Ealing Council meeting in February 2011 regarding the proposed cuts in numbers of Park Ranger and Envirocrime Prevention officers.

Mr Mayor. I would like to second Cllr Malcolm’s amendment.

Like many of my constituents who represented local groups such as the Brent River and Canal Society, Hanwell Community Forum and Ealing Friends of the Earth at the Cabinet meeting in December, I am extremely concerned about the proposed cuts to the numbers of Park rangers and Envirocrime Prevention officers.

Ealing’s parks and open spaces are one of its greatest assets.

However, the Park Ranger is treated like a Cinderella service in the council and both its budget and staff numbers have been cut by successive councils –let us not forget the last Tory administration are not without blame for reducing staffing levels and closing ranger bases.

The introduction of a specialist biodiversity team is welcome. However, the proposed reduction in park ranger numbers will potentially have a damaging effect on our parks and on the public’s perception as well as usage.  By reducing the number of rangers patrolling our open spaces from 20 to 6 it will undoubtedly lead to more litter, more dog fouling, and more anti-social behaviour.

The recent Cabinet decision to ‘reinstate’ two rangers is welcome but inadequate. The proposed cuts to the rangers is still far greater than cuts across the council as a whole and, front phased so their impact is almost immediate,

At the same time I am concerned about plans to reduce the number of Envirocrime Prevention officers who deal with issues like fly tipping and Illegal Street trading in the borough.

As a result of these changes, the number of ward based Envirocrime officers will be reduced from 20 down to 11 which will mean that going forward most will have to cover two wards instead of one.  The Council’s reasoning is that on average each officer received just one customer enquiry or service request per day so the council feels the need to add to their workloads.

However, a recent report on the work undertaken by the Envirocrime Prevention officer in my ward of Elthorne ward over the last three months shows their value in dealing with environmental issues in the local area.

Just as a sample of the work, the officer conducted 37 Waste/ Refuse Investigations including a successful prosecution for fly-tipping, and took action on 7 abandoned vehicles, 12 untaxed vehicles and dealt with 8 Street Trading issues.

My concern is that our Envirocrime officer in Elthorne is not only currently dealing with more requests than the Council claims, but that it will be difficult to maintain his excellent success rate in clearing up these issues if he or his replacement is covering two wards which will only result in more fly tipping and environmental issues.

We all accept the need for budget savings in the current economic climate but we call on the portfolio holder to rethink his decision to slash the numbers of Envirocrime officers and Park Rangers.

Hanwell Community Centre

Please find below the text of my speech at the December 2010 meeting of Ealing Council on the subject of a petition on Hanwell Community Centre.

A glance at the petition shows the depth of support for the HCC amongst its users and amongst the people of Hanwell with many signatories from my ward of Elthorne as well as from Hobbayne and the Cuckoo estate. This is an important building in Hanwell’s history, most notably as Charlie Chaplin’s school and the scene from the film ‘Billy Elliot’. However, it is imperative that Hanwell Community Centre is also very much part of Hanwell’s future. There are very few community facilities in the borough and we cannot afford to allow the Hanwell Community Centre to continue to be under-utilised. With so many empty rooms and, despite the number of different groups using HCC, at times there are relatively few bookings for a building of its size.

At the last meeting of the Elthorne ward forum, members of the board of HCC offered local councillors from Elthorne and Hobbayne a place on their board and that offer has been made again this evening. I am willing to accept that position and play whatever part I can to help bridge the gap between the Council and HCC. For the sake of the people of Hanwell, I urge the Leader of the Council and officers to work with the board of HCC to secure the future of this important facility for all the community.

I would also like the Leader to clarify whether the Council’s position with regard to the future of HCC is likely to be affected by yesterday’s announcement about the Localism Bill which will give civic societies and other local groups a legal right to come forward with a funded business plan to take on community assets like the Hanwell Community Centre.

Thank you Mr Mayor and I would also like to thank Mr Sear and the members of the board of Hanwell Community Centre for their petition. I am sure Mr Sear and Cllr Ray Wall who was on the Hanwell Area committee at the time will remember that I conducted a similar petition 6 years ago as Chair of the Hanwell Steering Group when the community centre was almost put up for sale at auction. Many of us might have been forgiven for thinking that the future of HCC was secured especially when in 2007 the Conservatives, to their credit, agreed to invest £2.2 million for Phases 1 & 2 of a 4 part renovation of the building.  However, six years on since my petition, very little else has changed. Phases 3 and 4 have been cancelled, and plans to relocate the council’s training abandoned. The HCC lease has been allowed to expire and issues over the future of the building remain.

Government Housing Policy

Please find below the text of my speech to October 2010 meeting of Ealing Council on the subject of the Government’s Housing policy:-

Thank you Mr Mayor. While we support the aims of the first line of this motion that everyone is entitled to a safe, secure, affordable and decent home. The fact is that this motion is a smokescreen to hide the previous Labour Government’s failure to tackle the chronic shortage in social housing.
Let’s look at the facts. Housing waiting lists doubled under Labour. Five million people -almost 2 million families- on housing waiting lists after 13 years in office. 11,000 in this borough alone.

Planned increases in social house building by the last government were welcome, but unfortunately too little, too late. That is why I welcome the expected announcement from the coalition government to set a target of building 150,000 new social homes to increase the supply of housing available.

Lib Dems believe in decentralisation and one of the key drivers in the Coaltion Government’s housing reform is to put more power in the hands of local authorities – we believe that local councils are best placed to know housing demand in their area and to make decisions on how they plan to meet local needs rather than the centralised bureaucratic top down approach from Labour.

That is why the Coalition Government is planning to free councils up by scrapping the Housing Revenue Subsidy which takes funds away to central government, or to subsidise other local authorities. Instead councils will have the ability to retain all the money they receive from rents and sales to invest in repairing and building new social housing.

But building new homes alone won’t house all the people on the waiting lists. We also need to repair existing housing stock, bring more empty homes back into use, and we need to consider ways at increasing social mobility so people who can afford to are encouraged to move into private accommodation or shared ownership to free up homes for those on waiting lists. 

The Coalition Government has to make tough decisions in tough times. By attacking the Government’s housing policies, once again the Labour Group fails to acknowledge economic reality and the huge fiscal deficit they left behind. In this tough financial climate, cuts to the £6 billion social housing budget are unavoidable. But that is the price we have to pay for clearing Labour’s debts.

I don’t remember Housing being one of the areas which Labour planned to protect if re-elected so no doubt Labour would be planning similar measures themselves in the unlikely event that Gordon Brown was returned as PM.

Rather than carping from the sidelines, we call on the Labour group to face up to their responsibility for the fiscal deficit and to take advantage of the freedoms offered by the Coalition Government for improving the supply of social housing in the borough.

Corporate Plan

Please find below details of my maiden speech to the July 2010 Council meeting on the subject of the new corporate plan.

Thank you Mr Mayor. I welcome the opportunity to speak about the glamorously titled new corporate plan for Ealing – “Making the best better” which lays out the vision of the council for the next 4 years – and while there is very little that anyone could disagree with in many of the objectives unfortunately this plan resembles a carbon copy of the last one with a few extra priorities thrown in just in case there were any subjects that weren’t covered by Making Ealing Safer, Cleaner Streets or Delivering Value for Money.  

 Not only does the new Labour group include three of the priorities from the previous Conservative administration but it seems they have even tried to remove any reference to the work of their predecessors. I have to say I found it particularly helpful, not to say amusing that a draft version has been loaded on the council website with the deletions clearly marked – so we can see in the section Making Ealing Cleaner that “climate change will continue to remain at the heart of the council’s activities” was changed to “will be at the heart of the council’s activities” just in case anyone mistakenly got the impression that tackling climate change began before May.

 While we all no doubt support the regeneration of our town centres, delivering more affordable and social housing and everything else that is entailed in the section Securing Jobs and Homes, the title itself has a negative overtone of clinging on to what we have rather than being ambitious for Ealing’s future, and apart from a line about working with business there is nothing in the plan for trying to attract inward investment in the borough and encouraging new businesses to start up in Ealing which is likely to create new private sector jobs in the future. Or is it that the Labour group believes that only the council and central government can create jobs or homes in the borough?

 The other new theme Securing Public Services is wide ranging enough to cover virtually any subject that the council delivers – in this case it is used to cover Adult and Children’s Services, Education but also for some reason Parking – probably because that didn’t fit neatly into any other section of the plan.

 For me, the telling point in the corporate plan is not what is written in this report, but what is missing. In order to meet the objective of freezing council tax over the next four years, the council will have to make savings in the order of £50 million, and there is no meat on the bones in this plan as to how this will be delivered. My fear is that this corporate plan is just a wish list that makes every council service a priority and adds new additional un-costed spending commitments like the 24 hour Grime busters line.

 With new themes added which are likely to dilute the council priorities there is no evidence as to how the council is going to decide which service or what spending is going to be cut. On Making Ealing Safer, for example, unless I missed it there doesn’t appear to be any commitment to continue funding the PCSO team which is due to end next March so where is the money going to come from to fund the new priorities?

 While we in the Lib Dem group all bask in the wisdom of the borough’s foremost trained economist, given Labour’s previous economic record both locally and nationally, our job as a responsible opposition is to question how the Labour group is going to square the circle of delivering on this plan and turning Ealing into a world class council while trying to make savings and cutting services. That is why, although we support this corporate plan, we as a Lib Dem group are united in our endeavour to hold you to account on delivery of all these 5 key priorities as well as your pledge to keep council tax low over the next four years.