Dr. Who Fun Day on Worton - Community Spirit Alive and Well

It was at 12.10 this afternoon when I rolled up at the ROWE Community Centre on Isleworth's Worton estate, straight from Church. Usually ten minutes after the start of an event like this little would be going on beyond a few late arrivals hastily setting up their stalls.

And yet the ROWE Fun Day, with its Doctor Who theme, was already in full swing, with many kids outside enjoying the rides and others having their photos taken inside the Community Centre. Teas, coffees, cold drinks and hot dogs were being sold and members of the Committee were walking around the site selling raffle tickets (I was later to win a meal for two but I can assure everyone it was kosher - I'd left by the time the raffle was drawn!).

MC Andrews announces the raffle
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ICG Committee members Tricia Doran and Cheryl-Ann Khan had set up a stall selling clothes, a tombola and a "prize every time" duck-fishing thing. Another few quid for the group's coffers, always welcome.

Back inside the building I made a new friend (photo to follow as soon as my daughter gets time to show me how to transfer it across).

Even cybermen were welcome at the event
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Organising a vibrant residents' organisation has always been something of a challenge for the Committee of ROWE (Residents of Worton Estate). There have always been good people there to do the work, but usually just enough of them to achieve critical mass. However, possibly as a defensive reaction to the local political situation, ROWE seems to becoming more proactive and determined than ever before. The dozen or so people who were circulating around the event selling raffle tickets, providing food and drinks and generally marshaling events worked hard, and the very reasonable turnout was just reward for their efforts.

One of the many stalls at the Fun Day

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Although I don't actually live on Worton I have a long historical association with the estate. My father was raised in Octavia Road, opposite the Green, and my aunt, uncle and cousins lived there until the middle of the 1990s. As a teenager I would encounter many of the youths from the estate, not always on friendly terms, at the youth club that was held every Monday night in the Hall at Isleworth Congregational, which I now once again attend.

Great food and drinks were on sale in the Community Centre
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I feel honoured to have been asked to continue my association with ROWE after ceasing to be a ward councillor in May, and was pleased to have the opportunity to help out around the place today.

Events like this reassure me that the spirit of the community in Isleworth will survive whatever short-term challenges are thrown our way.

New ROWE Committee will safeguard estate funding

Tonight I had the honour once again of chairing the Annual General Meeting of Residents of Worton Estate (ROWE).

Despite the fact that on the association so much work has throughout the ages tended to be done by so few, my frequent canvassing forays onto the estate suggest to me that it is well supported and respected amongst residents, and those who are able to lend it their time have always managed to do a darned good job.

At this evening's meeting Kim Dobson (above left), who took over recently as Chair, was re-elected to the post and will be ably supported at the top table by Anita Churchill (Secretary) and John Williams (Treasurer), as well as by several other volunteers who between them comprise the new team for the coming year.

One of the decisions that the new Committee will need to take is how to spend the £419,000 that was made available to the estate as part of the agreement to develop Worton Green some years back.

This money belongs to the residents and it is vitally important that it remains in their hands.

A month flies by

I've done it again, haven't I?

This time virtually a month has flown by since I last got around to updating this blog. Again this has been purely down to pressures of work, not just in my councillor role but also the need to make a living and keep the kids in food, pocket money and everything else they seem to have become expert in demanding at strategic times when they know my resistance is not at its best.

Since I last posted I have had the honour of attending the annual Remembrance Day parade in Isleworth, which in terms of public support was certainly the most popular that I have ever witnessed. Councillor Paul Fisher laid the wreath at Isleworth War Memorial on behalf of the community of Isleworth whilst Councillor Shirley Fisher represented the Mayor in the absence of Councillor Dr. Genevieve Hibbs, who was unwell (Councillor Jon Hardy meanwhile laid the wreath on behalf of the Mayor at Brentford War Memorial). It is was a pleasure to see the Mayor, Councillor Paul Lynch, arrive at the Isleworth Royal British Legion after the event and spend some time speaking to ex-service people, councillors and other members of the public, and he made a return visit some days later to present the Poppy Organiser Ron Andrews ("Dad" to some!) with a badge of recognition for all his hard work at a special event for those of us who had assisted with poppy selling, which this year saw yet another record collection (an achievement repeated over the last several occasions), this time in excess of £21,000.

One activity which I took part in later in November and which is worth mentioning was a canvassing exercise on the Worton estate. Not canvassing for votes (this time), but calling on locals on behalf of the residents' association - Residents of Worton Estate (ROWE) - seeking their views on what improvements they would like to see at the Community Centre. I found people by and large surprisingly receptive and positive. Whilst as a seasoned canvasser the patter tends to come naturally in any event, I was ably assisted by the indefatigable Kim Dobson, who first asked if she could stick with me because she was nervous and then barely let me get a word in once the doors had been opened!

Kim is a truly dynamic example of the kind of community activist who has been let off the leash by the election of community councillors and the emergence of a local Area Committee dominated by a community leadership ethos. I'm biased of course, but I really do believe it would be a tragedy to throw all this energy and positivity away by reversing these exciting advancements when we go to the polls in May 2010.

On the 24th it was Borough Council, and I felt compelled to make what had probably been the most difficult speech that I'd ever given there when the time arrived to discuss a raft of budget proposals which had been submitted for consultation. It is to the credit of the Leader of the Council and the Lead Member of Finance that these proposals were being presented early in the process for consideration - under the old Labour administrations they usually came to us on the night in March that the decision was to be taken! Nonetheless due to a combination of what I believe to have been the understandable over-zealousness of our Conservative coalition partners in wanting to publicly promote their low-tax agenda in the run up to both the national and local elections and, I suspect, a certain amount of mischief-making on the part of some senior officers and chief officers of the council, the process had bypassed the Community Group entirely and thus I argued that, under the circumstances, it would be unreasonable to expect us to take joint ownership of it.

Bizarrely the opposition Labour Party would appear to have stepped up its attacks on us since I delivered my speech, suggesting that they would probably prefer the Conservative budget to pass through unhindered, I suspect both for propaganda purposes and also because they fear the challenge of having to present a credible alternative budget which somehow manages to reconcile their expressed concern for the well-being of our public services with their own new, imposed low-tax position. With the demographics at the council chamber being as they are it will be interesting to see how this all pans out.

At the Annual Meeting of my Church the following evening I was re-elected as a Deacon, for which I really am grateful as with my various duties I have not been as active with the Church in recent times as I would have liked to have been in. It truly was humbling to be reassured by my fellow members that they still considered my contribution to be worthy of acknowledgement in this very important way.

On Tuesday this week Councillor Paul Fisher and I were with a gathering of residents from Heron's Place as well as representatives of various local civic and amenity groups discussing the proposed extension of a footpath along the river with planning officers from the council. Many of the same residents and activists were also present at the meeting of the Isleworth & Brentford Area Committee (IBAC) two days later at which a frank and vigorous debate took place on the local authority's plans to move towards electronic-only access to planning documents, a laudable objective in an environmental sense but one which has sold residents short by being so clearly money-driven.

Last night a goodly number of us met at the recently reopened Magpie & Crown in Brentford to take stock of where we stand with friends and enemies, opponents and colleagues as we drift closer to the confused scramble that will be the May 2010 local elections. Judging from the mood of colleagues - old faces and new recruits, several of them former adversaries - I believe we will be ready for whatever is thrown at us and will emerge from the contest stronger, more knowledgeable, better organised and more streetwise than we have ever been before.

Working together on Worton

This afternoon I spent a very productive hour or two on a walkabout on Isleworth's Worton estate in the company of two new but very keen officers from Hounslow Homes, Residents of Worton Estate (ROWE) Chair George Langridge, the indefatigable young peoples' champion Kim Dobson, and fellow ward councillors Paul Fisher and Dr. Genevieve Hibbs.

One of the issues we were keen to resolve was the apparent lack of communication that persists between Community Payback and Hounslow Homes, which has resulted in young people gathering up waste and dumped material from the alleyways and storing it into piles, only for it to be redistributed about the place again when it goes uncollected. It isn't actually as straightforward as it sounds - Hounslow Homes not unreasonably require notice whilst the nature of Payback's activity can vary at short notice according to weather and other conditions. With goodwill and determination we will get there.

The alleyways behind the houses have long been a bone of contention. Flytippers routinely use them as a venue for dumping their wares. Gating them off and issuing keys to neighbouring residents does not seem to stop them - at least one household would appear to be making its key available to the tippers. Closure could be an option but residents who have bought their homes also purchased the right of access from the rear and for us to remove that could lead to a compensation claim.

Some highways matters were also discussed at some length, with problems still following on from the introduction a few years back of the one-way system.

On my way around I picked up two items of casework from residents - one of them, by a curious coincidence, by telephone from somebody on that very estate.

The ROWE Community Centre itself is starting to look good. The toilets, which had been in such a state of disrepair that the Association has had to turn down potentially lucrative hall bookings, had now been brought up to spec thanks to some grant funding from the Isleworth & Brentford Area Committee (IBAC). More money is expected from the Rainbow Project to renovate the building still further.

It is in everybody's interests for residents, councillors and officers to pool their thoughts and ideas and to work together to improve the living environment on our estates. Things seem to be really looking up in places.

Worton youngsters scoop prestigious community safety award

Young residents of Isleworth's Worton estate (see picture, acknowledgements to the Hounslow Chronicle) have won the Metropolitan Police Commissioner's Community Safety Peace Award for their work under the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme.

They were presented with the award on Thursday at a London hotel (see below) by the Commissioner Sir Ian Blair and the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith MP.

The work undertaken by youngsters from the estate includes a massive and ongoing clean-up campaign, clearing mountains of debris, overgrowth and graffiti from the estate's maze of alleyways.

The intitative has been actively supported by the Metropolitan Police and its Safer Neighbourhood Team, community payback, the residents' association (ROWE), ward councillors, LBH Street Management and (after a bit of a misunderstanding) Hounslow Homes.

The success of this project boils down to an excellent joint effort between so many people and the amount of goodwill which has been poured into it by so many local agencies. Special mention must go to Kim Dobson - the estate's terrifyingly dynamic youth organiser, PS Kirsty Hayes, PC Mike James, PC Phil Beal, Bridget Klempner from London Probation and Councillor Paul Fisher, whose performance as a ward councillor and leader of his community quite simply becomes more awesome by the day.

It is difficult to overstate the contrast between the commitment of Paul and other community councillors (if I might say so myself) to empowering good local communities like that on the Worton estate, and the attitude of our New Labour predecessors (one of whom described the same residents as "whingers" during her row with her own constituents over the development on the green, providing them with a useful reminder of what would be in store for them should she or any of her successors ever be re-elected by the voters of Isleworth ward).

I would have loved to have been at the event on Thursday to give my support to these wonderful people who work so hard for their community and for our local environment but unfortunately couldn't due to a few, hopefully temporary personal difficulties. Nonetheless I would like to say a big well done to them all. I am so proud of my community and what, when allowed the chance, it is capable of achieving.

From left to right: Councillor Paul Fisher (Isleworth ward), Sir Ian Blair (Commissioner, Metropolitan Police), PC Phil Beal, Kim Dobson, PC Mike James, Councillor Shirley Fisher (Syon ward, Deputy Mayor of Hounslow), Councillor Dr. Genevieve Hibbs (Isleworth ward, Mayor of Hounslow).

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.