Weekly Update From Councillor Guy Lambert

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Planning and politics both make for lively debates

On Friday I’m free until the evening, where we have a Labour party meeting about the process for selecting candidates for next year’s elections. Our timetable was disrupted by someone respecting the Fixed Term Parliament act and not calling an election just because they were ahead in the polls and expected to marmalise Labour. Oh. Anyway having come in at a byelection I had no idea of the tortuous multi-stage democratic process by which the Labour party chooses council candidates. I’m hoping to stand for Brentford again and only two stages of the selection process and one election to go.

Saturday is the AGM of the small but perfectly-formed local Cooperative party. I am really sold on cooperative principles – after all, I’m chair of a co-op, thamesbank.org -  and made a bit of noise in the AGM about how the Coop party should make a bit more noise. Watch (or listen) to this space.

Sunday was our remembrance service in the library grounds. This year’s remembrance season has been distinguished by the lamp post poppies. I believe the initiative was started by the British Legion out in Feltham but that force of nature known as Mayor Sue Sampson put her energy behind it, got some sponsorship from Hounslow Highways and volunteers marked a route between all the war memorials in the borough. Most people seem to really like this, though I have had a couple of disgruntled residents asking how much it cost council tax payers (nice round sum, £0) and saying it glorifies war. Well, mildly rebellious types from my generation (such as moi) were often resistant to the whole poppy thing back then for that very reason but it’s lovely to see, now, that nearly all of us are pleased to honour those who served, no matter what we thought of the wars. Anyway, a very good turnout at Brentford library and I got to lay the Labour party’s wreath. A drink afterwards in the Inverness Club (why Inverness?) set me up for a bit of door knocking in the afternoon with the lovely people in Grosvenor Road and Mafeking Avenue.

On Monday evening I make an appearance at the Brentford Community Council. I like to go when I can but it very often clashes with some council or credit union event. Anyway, we gather in the back room of the Griffin for what can be described as a full and frank exchange of views on a number of topics! The BCC are concerned about a few things going on locally and we had a very good debate about a lot of them. The first was the potential extension of the St Paul’s Conservation area. The council conservation officers have come down in favour of not extending it and I was inclined to go with their judgment but a very passionate young man with the BCC persuaded me otherwise and I have written to the conservation team to advocate that it is extended to take in the whole area bounded by Ealing, Windmill, Albany Roads and the railway line. There was a great deal of discussion about the Great West Corridor plan. I am less concerned by most of it than the BCC are but I was taken by the argument that we really need to secure funding for the improvements to the rail network before allowing major development. The BCC point to other examples where there has been strong pressure to over develop to fund the transport infrastructure, and that’s a pitfall we really should avoid.

But the big debate was about Watermans. The core BCC members seemed to unanimously want to redevelop Watermans where it is, whereas the Watermans trustees, councillors and planners unanimously want it in the town centre. This is because we believe that it will help both the viability of the Watermans itself and the vibrancy of the town centre to have it at the centre of things, quite apart from the fact that no other solution is financially viable (and even the relocation to the town centre is hugely financially challenging, unless somebody has a few spare millions to donate to the cause). Our planning officers are working with Kew Gardens, Royal palaces and the Mayor of London, trying to come up with a solution that can be put to the planning committee, perhaps in January.

Tuesday afternoon I met with a resident who had his plastics recycling rejected and didn’t understand why. I took one look and did understand why – the council’s facilities do not recycle ‘soft’ plastics such as carrier bags and the film on top of trays of meat etc – they should go into the wheelie bins. The plastic recycling is plastic bottles, trays etc. I’ve suggested that the council should put more effort into explaining this to people both face to face and on the website, because too much plastic is getting rejected at present, which annoys people and doesn’t support our recycling targets. I will happily attend anybody who has fallen foul of this and explain how to get their plastics  recycled!

In the evening, a Labour party quiz event in Chiswick. Another abject failure by your friendly neighbourhood councillor, though ‘my’ team did not come last.

Wednesday afternoon we have a scrutiny meeting over at the Civic Centre. Only the three Labour councillors on this supposedly cross-party sub-committee about performance management turned up, but we had what I thought was a very constructive discussion with officers, all aimed at supporting cabinet members to ensure commitments are delivered (though to be fair, the performance has been pretty good despite the lack of my pearls of wisdom hitherto).

After that, one of those Labour party internal democracy events that I love so much, with their ‘exhaustive’ – and exhausting – ballots to decide who we are going to nominate for something or other.

Thursday morning I have a long telephone conversation with our local housing manager. It’s great to talk to her because she’s always positive and trying to make a difference and we agreed various actions to try and improve our local estates. The rest of the morning I am blogging my way towards a liquid lunch at the Ealing Park Tavern – acceptable because I can survey how the Clayponds estate looks from across the road in another country. Better be modest in my beer consumption, though, because this evening us three have a meeting with the Brentford Towers Residents Association.

Councillor Guy Lambert

September 15, 2017