I Won't Say I Told You So

That's how the song goes anyway.

It could, of course, have been written by the ICG for those mugs who voted in support of an application by Thames Water to expand its stinky Mogden operation back in 2009 on the grounds that (a) it would "reduce smell" and that (b) the London Borough of Hounslow would be able to exercise "more control" over the selfish, relentlessly profit-driven activities of the water utlity through the watered-down and thoroughly useless Section 106 agreement that Thames condescended to sign as part of the approval process.

The ICG told the sorry shower that comprised the Sustainable Development Committee that the grounds were flawed on two counts. Namely (a) it wouldn't reduce the smell but would increase it, and (b) the London Borough of Hounslow has never had any intention of exercising any kind of control or restraint whatsoever over Thames Water, which imposes its odours on the surrounding community with absolute impunity.

Guess what happened?

The following is an excerpt from a letter written by the resident-led Mogden Residents' Action Group (MRAG) to Isleworth councillor Ed Mayne on June 10th:

"Residents are thus astounded to learn that, without any consultation with MRAG or community groups, the Council elected of its own volition, to remove the out of hours call centre for victims to ring so that Environment Officers can take 24/7 H2S readings and thus build a case to enforce Abatement Notices. Residents were led to believe that this call centre and the associated costs for Council Officers to investigate complaints is funded 100% by Thames Water as a pre-condition of the S106 agreement and it was agreed that this would remain in place until 2013 when the upgrade of Mogden is completed. Why then, and on whose authority was this vital function removed just before the summer months when odour escaping the Mogden premises is at its most severe?

"You will also be aware that residents requested, and were granted GBP 150,000, within the S106 agreement to enhance and beautify the environment around Mogden in residential areas most affected by Mogden's mismanagement and negligence over the last 14 years. We have repeatedly requested information on when consultation with residents will commence in order to define how the £150K will be spent, but we have received no response."

So there you have it, so supportive is the Head of Environment at LBH of the residents who pay his not unsubstantial salary that he has withdrawn an important facility that was provided as a condition of acceptance for the expansion project at no cost at all to the borough!

And what have the elected members, who are supposed to be running the council, done about it?

Well, Councillor Mayne has offered to facilitate a meeting between residents and the new Lead Member for Environment, Councillor Colin Ellar, and this offer is in the process of being responded to.

We can only hope that Councillor Ellar and his administration will take the necessary measures that we would have taken had our coalition partners backed us post-2009 to sort out the utter disgrace that is Hounslow's Environment department for once and for all.

Another Isleworth Councillor on the LBH Executive

At the Annual Meeting of Borough Council on Tuesday (it's to all intents and purposes a kind of AGM but doesn't appear to have an official title) another Isleworth councillor was promoted to the Council Executive.

Councillor Sue Sampson is now the Council's Lead Member for Performance and Customer Care, joining fellow Isleworth member Ed Mayne who remains Lead Member for Community Safety and Regulatory Services (the former half of that portfolio having been held by yours truly between 2006 and 2009).

Meanwhile Syon councillor Steve Curran holds what appears to be a rather large portfolio as Lead Member for Education, Housing and Human Resources and his ward colleague Theo Dennison has the influential task of chairing the Sustainable Development Committee (with Councillor Curran as his Vice Chair).

It is pleasing to see our own local representatives having such an input and playing such an important role. I am particularly pleased for Sue as I feel she is suited by temperament for the post for which she has been chosen, and I say this notwithstanding some of the disagreements we've had over the negative electioneering methods with which she has been associated in the past, a thing which to be fair was to some extent a cultural trait inherited from some of her predecessors.

I am sure she will make a success of her new appointment and I wish her all the very best.

The full list of appointments can be viewed at the London Borough of Hounslow website.

Community voices in the wilderness

I was very disappointed by the response Councillor Jon Hardy's motion to Sustainable Development Committee (SDC) on the failure of Hounslow's Environment Department to address community concerns over its Electronic Data Management System (EDMS) received from fellow members this evening.

We are blessed in Isleworth and Brentford to have so many community groups that are familiar with the planning process and able to offer advice and constructive criticism when things aren't running perfectly. As a local authority that is publicly committed to Community Engagement one might have thought there would be a willingness to engage with members of the public on a matter of some importance, and on which it is in everybody's interests to get right, but rather the attitude from the Department has been defensive and antagonistic.

A planning expert who sits as a co-optee on Central Hounslow Area Committee, Brentford Community Council, Campion Concerns, The Isleworth Society, the Four Roads Residents' Association and the St. John's Residents' Association - all of these, as well as obviously the ICG, have been involved in the work. But tonight the two Labour members of the SDC who were present, both of them awkward and I would say a tad sheepish in disposition as they delivered their comments, sought to have the community motion struck out on technical grounds (one of them referred to it as "political"!), and most other members of the Committee, to me, gave off an impression that they hadn't really grasped what was going on.

Other than Jon and I only Brentford Lib Dem councillor Andrew Dakers supported the motion, and more precious time was stalled for as we head rapidly towards the local elections and the possibility, if we are not re-elected and back in office, of it being lost for good.

We must accept of course the democratic verdict of the Committee, and consider other ways of getting the problem resolved. At the moment we as a community feel we are being challenged to do our worst rather than co-operated with, but there are signs that the mindset is changing gradually.

Thames Water to fight Mogden abatement notices

Reproduced from his blog with acknowledgements to Councillor Andrew Dakers.


Just before Christmas the battle for a fair deal for residents over Mogden entered its latest phase as three Abatement notices were finally issued. This was a key milestone in the battle for better treatment of local residents by Thames Water. MRAG and Cllr Jon Hardy are to be congratulated in their persistence. It was good to see Jon get the recognition he deserves in the Hounslow & Brentford Times as Thames Water, unsurprisingly announce they will be appealing against the Abatement notices. In my view the Leader of the Council was unduly credited for Jon's work in the local media before Christmas.

Along with my colleague Vince Cable MP I have argued that alongside the expansion of the plant approved last year it is essential the six storm water tanks are covered.

For residents that witnessed the Mogden expansion S106 agreement coming back to the Sustainable Development Committee it would have been a depressing experience. Some days after the meeting I am pleased to say that one of the concerns that Cllr Hardy and I pressed on was addressed with the agreement text being revised to read: "......which will be undertaken by an external INDEPENDENT specialist consultancy TO BE JOINTLY AGREED BETWEEN THAMES WATER AND THE LONDON BOROUGH OF HOUNSLOW."

This revised text seems like a good step forward. In implementing this clause though it is vital is that the procurement process is open and transparent and that a cross section of local councillors are involved. I wonder how quickly the Terms of Reference will be drafted?

Cllr Hardy is rightly - at times against the odds - trying to get the different stakeholders to work together to control the blight that is the Mogden stench. It is tough, but thank goodness someone with his tenacity is ensuring residents concerns are heard within the council.

Thames Water tells councillors: "We won't speak to residents until we get our way over Section 106!"

Wednesday, 23rd September 2009 is a date that will be remembered for a long time to come in Isleworth activist circles. It was the date on which local politicians of varying hues, as well as not a few officers from the London Borough of Hounslow, were finally able to see for themselves what we in Isleworth have had to put up with for years in our dealings with the unrepentant pollutant that is Thames Water. Those who may have laboured under the polite misapprehension that we are perhaps a tad too militant, and distrusting, in our dealings with our neighbour from hell were at last given cause to understand it is why we and our residents adopt the stance we do.

Councillors Andrew Dakers, Ruth Cadbury, Barbara Reid and Brad Fisher joined their ICG counterparts Jon Hardy, Paul Fisher and myself at a meeting of the Thames-led Mogden Residents' Liaison Committee (the holding of which is a legal requirement under the terms of the Legal Agreement between Thames and the local authority following earlier court action) and witnessed for themselves the spin, the persistent sleight of hand manoeuvring and obfuscation of this wealthy public utility which prefers to fight its neighbours in court than dip even furtively into its own rather vast pockets to honour its legal and moral obligations.

Sadly Ruth and Andrew had moved on to other engagements before the piece de la resistance was delivered shortly before the close of the meeting. The Section 106 terms which were laid out by the council's Sustainable Development Committee on that night of shame in March have yet to be agreed to by Thames, and yet astounded members and officers heard Thames deliver its ultimatum - that until we signed off the agreement, on its terms rather than the ones approved by SDC, they would not send out any information to residents about what was happening at the site.

Meanwhile members of the press who had been asked by the Mogden Residents' Action Group (MRAG) to attend the meeting and witness events were refused entrance at the gate.

Despite the tight grip which Thames maintained over the conduct of the meeting, the councillors and members of MRAG were able to ask probing questions about the management of the site. As is so often the case, "new guy" was in the hot seat and his response to most questions, as was doubtless his brief, was that he couldn't answer them because they referred to matters and incidents which predated his arrival at the plant.

One could be ungracious and point out, as is certainly true, that some of the councillors who quite clearly took the residents' part at the MRLC meeting would have served those residents a whole lot better by not having capitulated to Thames at SDC in the first place. Nonetheless there was a definite sense about the place that the game was finally up. No amount of private briefing of senior figures on the council, as one member of the Thames party let slip at the meeting had taken place very recently, will change the fact that the residents are increasingly in control of the situation, and that in the long term resistance is futile.

An ICG perspective on THAT article

It is not under normal circumstances the done thing to be discussing in public the internal business of the coalition which manages the London Borough of Hounslow. However when a magazine arrives through the letter-boxes of scores of thousands of residents that contains a story of major import with which this coalition partner would take fundamental issue it is rather too late to be having the discussion behind closed doors.

The article to which I refer was, of course, the full-page apologia in the local authority's house magazine Hounslow Matters for the policy of our coalition partners towards the proposed expansion by Thames Water of Mogden Sewage Works in Isleworth. That policy, as we know, is to give Thames Water carte blanche to turn an already mismanaged site into a larger mismanaged site, with all the potential for increased mismanagement which that must inevitably entail. Despite a lot of unconvincing and frankly half-hearted twaddle about the approval giving the local authority "more control" over Thames Water's activities (control which it already had, but has hitherto declined to use), the primary rationale for permission being granted was clearly a cost-driven reluctance to take on Thames Water at any possible appeal hearing. Having been unprepared to incur the displeasure of Thames Water, the resultant displeasure of the residents who are to be the victims of the decision then had also to be addressed. Hence the article.

As Leader of the Community Group, the problem with the article for me is that attempting to sell residents our partners' side of the story can only possibly be done by implying that our own take on the subject, which is completely different, must ipso facto be in some way or another erroneous. That the local authority's Communications team was willing to do this has effectively served notice on us that it considers itself to be working for one party to the coalition only.

Worse still, the article quite deviously attempted to associate the Community Group itself with the decision to grant approval to the expansion plans by only quoting the (ICG) Lead Member, and in such a way as to imply that he supported this quite appalling decision.

As a consequence of this latest development Community Group postholders will henceforth increasingly be liaising with the local media through our own channels of communication. And on the particular subject of Mogden we will be liaising with residents in the way that we have always done best.

It is my personal view that we in the Community Group have enjoyed a good relationship with our coalition partners and one which has flourished in an atmosphere of goodwill and trust. I see no reason why this should not continue. However we are increasingly of the view that there are some within the organisation who are taking us for fools and who feel they are doing our partners some kind of service by provoking us in an ever more brazen and obvious way as we head towards next year's local elections. Like everyone who has crossed our paths over the years, they will have cause to reconsider.

Now Ann cuts Mogden community adrift

Sorry to keep banging on about the Keens, but an extraordinary development yesterday left me wondering just what kind of advice our Member of Parliament is receiving.

Users of the BrentfordTW8.com and ChiswickW4.com community forums will be aware that a spokesperson for Ann Keen recently threatened that his party would "work around" the resident-led Mogden Residents' Action Group (MRAG), which for many years has served as the voice of the organised community living in the vicinity of the plant and whose authority to do so derives from public meetings attended by hundreds, a petition signed by several thousand and a group action involving some 1,400 litigants.

To understand the thinking behind this one has to look back into the history of the conflict in and around Isleworth between the residents' movement and New Labour. This conflict is essentially one between two broad schools of thought. One (theirs) has it that only a small, select group of people who are essentially "in the know" and have the requisite intelligence, guile and expertise (them) are truly capable of representing the people's interests and that the role of the wider community is to elect them to positions of office - not just strictly political office but also within residents' associations, amenity groups and suchlike - and then stand back and leave it to them to do what needs to be done on our behalf.

The other (ours) has it that the community itself should aspire to take the lead on local issues and that the role of their elected political leadership is simply to provide guidance, advice and assistance where asked for.

It would have been as a direct follow-up to her spokesperson's threat that, on August 22nd (a Saturday?), Mrs. Keen allegedly met privately with an unnamed Director of Thames Water without any prior consultation with the residents. The Director, we are told, regaled her with the usual empty spiel about how concerned the company is for the plight of long-suffering residents, advised her of a meeting of the Mogden Residents' Liaison Committee to take place in September of which the rest of us have already long been aware, and informed her (and from the wording of her Press Statement it came as news) that nearly six months ago the local authority had granted permission for a 40% expansion of the plant's capacity.

According to Mrs. Keen she was "delighted" by news of the plant's expansion, and following publication of the Press Statement her spokesperson raced onto the local internet forums to announce "Ann Keen Speaks Up For Local Residents"!

And yet, of course, what she has done is added her own name to the already long list of politicians who have consigned residents already suffering the excesses of Mogden to even more misery as Thames sets about making a case for reneging on its promise not to increase intake, which anybody who is familiar with its track record knows it inevitably will.

By her actions Mrs. Keen has without question kissed goodbye to almost any remaining support she might have had within a two-mile radius of Mogden. That they consider her betrayal something to gloat about would suggest that Camp Keen is either woefully ignorant of local issues and has given her the worst possible advice or, more likely, that they have already given up and that the remainder of her campaign is to be a mere "spoiling" exercise in which she intends to wreak as much "revenge" as possible upon her ungrateful constituents.

Whichever is the case she's bought it, but on a parliamentary level at least the question remains - who will speak up for the residents living around Mogden?

Thames Water and its not-quite-so-urgent planning application - five months on

Those who are familiar with the workings of council planning committees - and I speak as Chair of the local one in Isleworth and Brentford - will know pretty much how they work.

An application is made, consultation takes place amongst those concerned and an officer will produce a report which will conclude with a recommendation either for Approval or Refusal depending on his or her expert opinion based upon the available facts.

At the planning meeting elected members will discuss the report and form their own opinions on the strength of the information presented to them on the night. In doing so they will place much import on the expert opinion of the officer but will, on occasions, see things differently and vote accordingly.

I would like people reading this article, particularly those familiar with the planning process, to consider a completely fictitious scenario. Mr. Bloggs wishes to build an extension to the rear of his house. The proposed extension is hideous, too tall, out of sync with the street scene and will block out all of his neighbour's sunlight. He discusses his application with officers who feel that stringent conditions should be imposed before approval can be recommended. But Mr. Bloggs doesn't accept any of the conditions. He is in a hurry to build his extension because he wants to sell his house.

So when the application comes to Area Committee officers inform members that they should approve this clearly inappropriate development subject to the few conditions that Mr. Bloggs is prepared to accept. They acknowledge that the proposed extension will be the cause of great anxiety to his neighbours, but urge members to approve it and approve it quickly all the same because Mr. Bloggs wants to sell his house. He needs the money.

Anybody who has witnessed a debate at IBAC or any other Area Committee will know that such a conversation would never take place. Our officers, professionals to their fingertips, would urge the Committee to reject the application on the grounds that it was inappropriate, and that the actions of the applicant in refusing to accept conditions were unreasonable. The importance of the development to the applicant would not be a consideration. It would be a dereliction of duty to the neighbouring community were the officers or the members to proceed in any other way under such circumstances.

Now, imagine the applicant is called Thames Water. The date is 4th March 2009. The planning body is the Sustainable Development Committee. The full debate can be witnessed on the webcast by clicking here (you will need to download Real Player from the site if you don't already have it). The applicant, Thames Water, has refused to accept conditions suggested by our officers to protect the quality of life of those residents who will be affected by the proposed expansion of Mogden Sewage Treatment Works. And yet those same officers plead with elected members to approve the application and to do it now on the grounds that the applicant needs to get on with it "urgently".

As we know, after a few fine words had been uttered the majority on SDC cravenly kowtowed to Thames Water and to the officer recommendation to approve. The applicant, uniquely, had been allowed to dictate its own conditions and could now progress with its "urgent" expansion project and make lots more money for its shareholders at the expense of long-suffering residents of Isleworth and Hounslow South.

Odd then that, more than five months down the line, the same applicant has yet to put pen to paper and agree terms!

The reason? Because, emboldened by the unconditional co-operation of the local bureaucracy and the cowardice/gross stupidity of most of the members who took the decision to approve, it now feels confident enough to challenge even the feeble conditions which it had earlier condescended to accept. Comfortable in the belief that the officers will bend over backwards not to bring the application back to SDC for a third time, and that even if they do the members will gratefully adopt doormat status again, Thames is quite shamelessly trying to extract every last buck from a situation in which it probably still can't quite believe its luck.

So it would appear the "urgent" decision taken in March was not really quite so urgent after all. Culture change? Oh yes - believe me - it's coming!

Groundhog Day

On March 4th Hounslow Council's Sustainable Development Committee infamously gave planning permission to the water giant Thames Water to expand its foul-smelling Mogden sewage plant, allowing for a massive increase in capacity.

At that meeting, officers of the London Borough of Hounslow recommended approval of the application on the grounds that to so do would give the local authority more "control" over Thames Water's operation and in particular would enable us to challenge the company's notoriously dismissive attitude towards the protests of long-suffering local residents. Whilst doing so they omitted to explain to Committee members that the local authority already had all the power it needed to exercise such control as a result of Abatement Notices which it had secured previously, but lacked the will or desire to enforce.

There followed a presentation by the officers and some slick patter from Thames, who misled the Committee by quite falsely claiming that it could not agree to residents' requests to cover its storm tanks - a necessary precondition of meaningful odour reduction - because it required permission to do so from the water regulator OfWAT. Despite knowing this to be completely untrue, officers at the meeting chose not to point out to members that Thames was not telling them the truth.

When the officers and Thames were done a well-briefed duo of New Labour councillors rushed forward to respectively propose and second approval of the officer recommendation. At first other councillors resisted, even at one stage voting for refusal, but after being subjected to a relentless and unprecedented barrage from Thames, the Labour duo and council officers the majority, with the honourable exception of ICG councillor Jon Hardy, cravenly relented and gave the Thames Water bullies everything they had asked for.

Reassured by Hounslow's moral cowardice Thames' next move, rather than thanking their luck and getting on with the job, was typically to stall for even further concessions. But, having procrastinated over even the useless conditions attached to the permission given to them on March 4th, they created a problem for themselves by so doing because they had effectively talked themselves out of the deal, and consequently the whole application came back to SDC yesterday evening.

During the intervening period we in the ICG have done much to try to raise the profile of this whole disgraceful episode. Following idiotic comments to the effect that as the Mogden Residents' Action Group (MRAG) had only send one speaker to SDC on March 4th the wider public were therefore not bothered by the proposed expansion, MRAG and the ICG called a Day of Action on April 1st during which thousands of leaflets were distributed in Isleworth, Hounslow South and Whitton and close to 100 protestors came out at a few hours' notice to demonstrate the public's disgust over the conduct of the SDC.

Perhaps more significantly, we forced the appointment of Councillor Jon Hardy to the specific portfolio area of liaison with Thames Water.

Traditionally, dealings with Thames Water had fallen within the general remit of Environment. Aware that we had been getting nowhere back in 2008, we informed the Leader of the Council at the time that we would like Mogden to become a specific responsibility under the leadership of an ICG councillor, and Councillor Paul Fisher was duly appointed to the role. Within hours of hearing the news, officers had lobbied the Borough Solicitor who pointed out, perhaps not unreasonably, that as a participant in the residents' litigation against Thames Water Paul could be perceived to have a conflict of interest, and was thus effectively neutered. The indecent haste with which Paul's appointment was scuppered however gives some indication as to how relatively protected senior officers had felt under the previous set-up.

This year things were different. Jon is not a litigant and as such his appointment to the portfolio cannot be challenged. Nevertheless, there was the small matter of the planning application which was now being brought back to SDC, giving those who had been played for mugs at the previous meeting an unusual second opportunity to get up off their knees and strike a blow for the residents of Isleworth and neighbouring areas.

Sadly it was not to be. Deja vu all over again - officers recommending approval, New Labour members of the Committee proposing it and the Muppet Show giving a virtuoso repeat performance after a few worthless token words of disapproval about the excesses of the plant's operation. Thames Water must be laughing hysterically, but the residents are unlikely to see the funny side.

Residents of Isleworth, and their delegates in the form of the ICG, have once again been served notice that we stand alone. Increasingly cocky officers who think they only have a few months longer to put up with us find common cause with "allies" whose interest in Isleworth wanes with every day closer we get to the end of our term of office and opponents who, just as they did when they held sway in Isleworth, simply seem to derive some kind of perverted pleasure from making our residents suffer.

Councillor Hardy, who has already proved to be a fearsome campaigner for the rights of the Mogden residents, takes a very gentlemanly approach to fighting these battles. At the end of yesterday's meeting he even thanked the Chair of the Committee for giving him a fair hearing. Our civility and manners cannot be held against us, and our response now and in the future to the hammering that we continue to receive from friend and foe alike over Mogden should not be taken personally by anybody concerned.

But anybody who doubts that that response will be a very, very vigorous one indeed had better open their coffee jar and take a deep, deep sniff sometime extremely soon.


LATEST - Today's Hounslow Chronicle (12th June 2009) has wrongly reported Councillor Paul Fisher as having voted in support of the expansion of Mogden. This is completely untrue. Paul is no longer even a member of the SDC, and has made it clear he would have supported the residents by opposing the recommendation had he been in a position to do so.

The Chronicle has agreed to print a retraction in its next issue.

Can you believe THIS?????

It just HAD to happen, didn't it? Ann K££n, alleged Member of Parliament for Brentford & Isleworth and her Hounslow Labour Party are now the champions of the residents who are suffering the effects of the Mogden Pong!

On her website, Ann calls upon Thames Water "to look again at the possibility of covering the controversial Mogden storm tanks as the Brentford sewer treatment works looks set to expand."

It would seem almost churlish under the circumstances to point out to her and her colleagues that the Mogden plant is actually in Isleworth!

She continues: "A lot of people are very unhappy about the plans to expand Mogden but, by increasing capacity, this might be one way to help reduce the smells." Which she HAS to say really, considering it was her New Labour colleagues who drove the expansion proposal through the meeting of the Sustainable Development Committee at which it was passed!

Also interesting is her inference that she persuaded OFWAT to release "£60m" for works already undertaken. Which begs me to ask, as only £40m was ever spent, what happened to the rest?

People in my part of the world are used to this shameless, breathtaking opportunism as it has manifested itself so many times before in the run-up to elections, but how must those other, non-Labour members on SDC who allowed themselves to be talked around by Councillors Cadbury and Cooper in concert with officers from the Environment Department be feeling after reading this?

Yet another lesson in New Labour political chicanery ("We apply our own ethics") learned the hard way!

Thames Water conned LBH's planning committee - but WE'RE no April Fools!

April Fools' Day in Isleworth saw nearly 100 local residents come out at short notice to register their disgust at the decision by Hounslow's Sustainable Development Committee to approve an application by Thames Water to expand capacity at its Mogden plant by over 50%.

The demonstration, organised the same morning, took Thames bosses completely by surprise as they hosted a meeting of the "Mogden Residents' Liaison Committee", a talking shop organised by the water company at which council officers from Hounslow and Richmond along with a small, select group of actual residents are given the opportunity to marvel at Thames' commitment to eradicating the odour and mosquito nuisance that it has inflicted upon the neighbouring community for decades and to watch slick slideshow presentations over sandwiches and fruit juice.

Richard Aylard, Thames' Environment and External Affairs Director, left the meeting to come to the gates and engage residents. During our brief conversation he invited me to walk around the site with him (something I've already done countless times before) and see for myself the good work the company is doing. If I did so, I asked him, would he try to tell me that OFWAT would not permit Thames to cover the storm tanks, which are the source of most of the odour, using its own funds?


"Of course I wouldn't," he responded indignantly, "that would be completely untrue".

Why then, I asked him, did he make this same claim to members of the Sustainable Devlopment Committee at the meeting at which this application was approved?

Earlier in the day volunteers from the Mogden Residents' Action Group (MRAG) and the ICG had leafleted 6,000 local properties alerting them to the decision and its consequences.

When engaged by angry residents, Mr. Aylard gave them the "official line" - that the increase in capacity was to treat existing sewage flows which would result in a reduction in the use of the storm tanks and hence less odour. As he knows, as the residents know, and as the majority on SDC will know when they finally catch up with the rest of us, a few months along the line there will be "unforeseen circumstances" which will necessitate the importation of sewage from outside the current catchment area and odour levels, along with Thames Water's profits, will be up. Thames bosses will already have figured, probably correctly, that on the evidence of past performance no action is likely to be forthcoming from officers at the London Borough of Hounslow's Environment Department to prevent this from happening. Remember - you read it hear first!

There will be more activities by Isleworth residents and their Hounslow and Twickenham neighbours over coming months to draw attention to the scandal that is the expansion of Mogden. We will leave no stone unturned in our fight to protect the rights of our local residents. Isleworth will NOT be the sacrifice!

Vince Cable MP demands talks with Thames Water over Mogden expansion plans

Dr. Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Twickenham, has asked for talks with Thames Water amid claims that residents of the London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames were not consulted over the planning application to expand the plant, humiliatingly approved by Hounslow's Sustainable Development Committee recently after vital information about funding options was withheld by officers.

Dr. Cable told the Hounslow Chronicle: "After the big environmental improvements at Mogden we have been less seriously affected in the last year or so.

"I am now concerned that the good work could be undone by a massive expansion programme on which there has been minimal consultation with local residents. This is a predominantly a Hounslow issue as it is Isleworth residents which are worst affected, but there is nonetheless some anxiety in our borough."

Marianne Welsh, a resident of Whitton and a member of the Mogden Residents' Action Group (MRAG), added: "I can't understand why they want to forge ahead with this expansion without finishing what they were suppose to do, such as covering the storm tanks.

"Thames Water say there will be an odour, but it will be odourless. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?"

Meanwhile ICG and MRAG activists are preparing for a major campaign on the Mogden issue in the very near future. Contacts are advised to keep their eyes on their mobile and e-mail Inboxes for imminent further information.

SORRY!

On Wednesday evening the Sustainable Development Committee passed a recommendation, proposed and seconded by New Labour councillors John Cooper and Ruth Cadbury, who appeared exceptionally motivated and well-briefed, to permit the expansion of Thames Water's operation at Mogden in the face of protests from residents. Sadly it is extremely likely that this will result in increased odour problems for the already long-suffering residents of Isleworth and Hounslow South.

There is not a word in the English language to describe the way I feel right now. Officers, at best, were remiss in failing to share crucial information with the Committee regarding possible funding options for the covering of the storm tanks, but frankly I don't envisage that any action will be taken nor even any questions asked.

There is much that I would like to say right now but will not do so, for reasons of discretion and (possibly misplaced) loyalty. I am awaiting a response to an e-mail.

But in the meantime I would like to sincerely apologise to my constituents and to ask them to bear with us, for I promise that whatever happens over the coming weeks and months Isleworth residents will not be the sacrifice.