Digging for Victory!

Well digging, scraping, sweeping, chopping, litter-picking and painting to be precise.

During the last seven days it has been my privilege to attend not one but two community clean-ups in Isleworth as part of the 100-day Capital Clean-Up campaign.

Last Saturday (May 3rd) Councillor Paul Fisher and I joined the Isleworth Safer Neighbourhood Team, Hounslow Homes, Community Payback and the indefatigable young people's co-ordinator on the Worton estate, Kim Dobson, with her team of Duke of Edinburgh Award hopefuls in what was the start of a challenging project which will go on for several weeks, clearing the labyrinthine maze of back alleyways on the estate of graffiti, weeds, overgrowth, litter and flytipped materials.

Kim's achievement in launching the first estate-based D of E scheme in the United Kingdom received a deserved mention at a meeting of Borough Council last month, and last week she and the other members of the team were successful in securing a £500 grant from the Isleworth & Brentford Area Committee to purchase materials for the clean-up.

Then on Tuesday and Wednesday the Syon SNT team joined LBH Community Safety, Community Payback, and representatives from St. John's Residents' Association and The Isleworth Society (TIS) in a similar operation around the St. John's Road area. Tuesday being my twins' eleventh birthday and the afternoon of our monthly Worton estate councillors' surgery, I left the work to others. But on Wednesday I went along, as did Caroline (my wife, and one of three community councillors for Syon ward), and helped apply a coat of paint to the heavily vandalised play equipment in St. John's Gardens (as well as to my car seat, jeans and hair).

These initiatives, hard work though they are, set a fabulous example of stakeholders from within the community coming together and leading from the front in the work of making our local neighbourhood a better, safer and more attractive place in which to live.