The Community Forum That Never Was

I had an interesting meeting last week with the pastor of a local church, who was keen to hear of any ideas that I and/or the ICG may have had with regard to the role that organisations such as his own could play in community-building.

It was a poignant reminder, if any were needed, of the sheer depth of involvement and potential participation that exists within our local environment. It is when we step into a church, a temple or a mosque - or indeed into a tenants' meeting or a social club, or see a self-help group or a local charity in action - that we come to really appreciate the strength in depth of what a real community actually has to offer.

Then we visit the local Area Forum and see half a dozen or so politicians, mostly from the same group, huddled together nodding sagely in recognition of perceived mutual wisdom, and we so naturally despair for what could be.

Amongst many other things I told the pastor that during the administration of 2006-2010 a serious proposal had been mooted, and discussed with a number of local residents' groups, to establish a local "community forum" to shadow the "official" Council body that was at the time called the Isleworth and Brentford Area Committee. It had been our intention to subordinate IBAC to the power of such a body, either by adapting the constitution of the Council to enable it to happen or, in the event of us being unable to do that, by the simple expedient of an Area Committee majority (which, with the support of the Lib Dem member, we had) voluntarily relinquishing its authority in recognition of the primacy of the community body.

The outcome of this would have been to transfer true decision-making powers to the real community rather than a bunch of politicians – albeit that that power may not have had any formal legal status.

As well as being morally the right thing to do, this would have had the added advantage of circumventing the numerical stalemate which would have existed on IBAC should our Lib Dem ally have lost his seat in 2010 and we been left with a 6-6 split between the ICG councillors of Isleworth and Syon and the Con-Lab establishment councillors of Osterley and Brentford, who throughout the 2006-2010 period had tended to band together to oppose most of our more ambitious projects.

For whatever reason, this project never came to fruition during the 2006-2010 administration and any idea of introducing it during the following one was dashed when we lost all six of our seats and IBAC was returned to a Labour majority. The rest, as they so often say, is history.

There is still, of course, a role for faith groups and for all other stakeholders and that role will be forever present. The pastor and I bounced some useful ideas around and hopefully one or two will be set in motion. But it was a spiritually useful, if practically pointless exercise considering for a moment how things might have developed had the maths been different.

The idea is out there in the ether, who knows it may happen someday somewhere?

Hounslow Labour's All-Out Assault on Community

"In for a penny, in for a pound," goes the old saying. The concept is that if one has decided to commit to a particular outcome in any given situation then one should focus entirely and unrelentingly upon that outcome and not dither along the way.

Hounslow's ruling Labour Group would appear to be embracing this concept with gusto as we approach the local elections of 2014. Not unreasonably confident of a rout in its traditional quarrel with the Tories, Labour has quite clearly decided that the time is right to try to face down what it considers to be its real enemies - the organised community and residents' groups around the borough amongst which the Independent Community Group (ICG) almost certainly enjoys pride of place at the very summit of the hate list.

I have related elsewhere how Hounslow Council's Planning Committee, now safely returned in one piece to the Stone Age under the stewardship of Councillor Ruth Cadbury, eagerly endorsed the decision of the former Lead Member (Councillor Ruth Cadbury) to reject a series of amendments to the statutory Statement of Community Involvement (SCI) which had been drawn up by residents under the auspices of the expanding Group of 15+ and which would have given the SCI real meaning. The amendments had previously been adopted by the Planning Committee when it operated under the leadership of the unusually forward-thinking Labour councillor Theo Dennison.

Following on from this decision we have news that the current Lead Member for Planning, Regeneration, Housing, Celebrity Come Dancing and Virtually Everything Else is seeking to put an end to all formal contact between officers of the Council and G15+ and to replace it with a "forum", chaired by and with terms of reference drawn up by the local authority as opposed to the residents themselves as is presently the case. In other words a classic manifestation of the old "control or destroy" approach that has informed local Labour's relationship with community groups for at least a quarter of a century.

Meanwhile here in Isleworth the message we in the ICG are picking up amounts, essentially, to the old football supporters' invocation to "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough". In particular the threat to Isleworth Public Hall has begun once again to loom large, with sham consultations announced to coincide with the busy holiday period and timed to conclude after a decision has already been taken.

Council turns its guns on tenants

One area in which the gauntlet really has been thrown down is in respect of the 24,000 rented and leasehold properties which are owned by the local authority and managed by Hounslow Homes. Here the various resident groups come together under the umbrella of the Hounslow Federation of Tenants' and Residents' Associations (HFTRA), which has historically received and is entitled to expect funding from within the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) - the account to which rents and leaseholder charges are paid.

It was recently announced by the seemingly all-powerful Lead Member that funding to HFTRA had been withdrawn under what would appear, at least from the outside, to be highly dubious circumstances. A proposed meeting between HFTRA and the Lead Member to discuss the matter was cancelled by the latter as a punishment for HFTRA having the audacity to speak to the local press, although this publicity-shyness did not prevent the Lead Member from exploiting his advantage of office by widely circulating a £12,000+ propaganda mailout attacking HFTRA at the expense of the very tenants it represents.

Battle lines

Shocked and angered though we as a community may be we should at least be grateful that this most authoritarian of Labour administrations is setting out its stall in a more or less honest fashion, leaving absolutely no room for doubt as to where it stands on the question of community empowerment and in so doing clearly defining the battle lines for the forthcoming local elections in those areas in which the community is sufficiently well-organised to be able to make a challenge.

Activists should not fear a "trap" as such, this is simply about Labour trying to deal with its potentially more dangerous enemies in the organised community at a time when its conventional adversaries are at their weakest.

From their perspective it makes sense, but that does not mean it is a challenge we should walk away from. A handful of community, other independent and small party councillors, even operating in opposition to a large Labour majority administration, would set us up nicely for the much more favourable situation that 2018 is likely to present.

Why Does Labour Want the ICG to Contest the 2014 Local Elections?

It might seem an odd proposition on the surface of it. After all, in every local election since 1998 in Isleworth, and since 2002 in Syon, the Independent Community Group (ICG) has been Labour’s closest competitor, either winning the seats or running Labour a close second. Both wards being safely Labour in terms of the conventional Labour-Tory dichotomy, the logic of the situation might suggest that we are an opponent they could do without.

But logic in politics can be more convoluted than it is in other areas of life and sometimes, like in the Guinness advert, things aren’t always as they seem.

I have never considered myself to be naïve, but in respect of the 2010 local elections I made two simplistic assumptions – one just prior to the contest and one immediately after – the clumsiness of which taught me that my talents for reading and interpreting political events are nowhere close to being as flawless as I had hitherto liked to believe.

The first, which I have already documented elsewhere, was my costly miscalculation that the Conservatives, having been our partners in what to begin with at least had been an easy coalition, would see the benefit in not stepping on our toes in our two target wards (which from their own perspective were unwinnable). Whilst we all naturally understood their preference for an all-out Conservative administration we figured they would view the continuation of the coalition as a next-best option should they fail to achieve that.

What actually happened was that the Conservatives were so convinced they were on the cusp of an historic all-out victory that they consciously sought to oust the community councillors in Isleworth and Syon and to replace them with Labour ones, figuring that by so doing they would be creating for themselves a softer opposition for the four years of overall Conservative control that were to follow. This didn’t necessitate any kind of formal alliance with Labour. The coincidence of a natural convergence of interests was quite enough to do the trick.

The second miscalculation came in the immediate aftermath of our election defeat. Mindful of the fact that the ICG had commanded the votes of some 4000 people over three wards even in defeat, and aware that a new wave of Labour councillors in Isleworth would be looking to make their own mark, in their own style, on the communities they had been entrusted to serve, I simply assumed that they would be keen to engage with those thousands of people who had supported and voted for us, and that an opportunity had arisen, albeit in circumstances that we would have preferred not to have existed, for some kind of reappraisal of the relationship between Labour and the local community movement.

This assumption was made especially in consideration of the fact that our defeat and their victory made it reasonable for Labour to expect that they would be “in charge” as it were. Exhausted and drained after four years of very hard work, punching above our weight as the minority group in a coalition administration, and still if I am honest reeling from the demoralising effects of the Conservative betrayal, I do not believe the ICG’s price would have been a high one. Speaking strictly for myself, at that time I would have settled for more or less any arrangement that would have allowed me to walk away from the whole thing with my honour intact.

So I’ll admit it shocked me a tad to discover that Labour had other ideas. “Why should they (the new councillors) want to work with you?” they asked us on a local online forum, and to emphasise the point they hand-delivered a limited number of uniquely unpleasant leaflets to local residents containing little other than personal attacks on myself and other ICG personnel.

In the meantime we came under attack from a former Labour councillor who had clearly assumed, for reasons which were not explained, that the ICG would simply disappear following our defeat, and who seemed to take offence from the fact that members of a community group should continue to attend meetings and events in the community!

This, it would appear, was to be the basis of Labour’s continued problem with the situation as it had turned out, and the reason why our assumption – my assumption – that the party would want to reach an accommodation with our supporters turned out to be unsound. To put it quite simply and bluntly, they didn’t want any organised community activity on “their” patch. Fortified, no doubt, by tales of how things were in the good old days, they wanted complete control of our community life and expected it as the spoils of their victory. Such an outcome, of course, would have required the ICG to have vanished completely from the face of the Earth.

This then explains the spluttering anger of the former councillor as it eventually dawned on her that, election victory notwithstanding, things would never be permitted to revert to how they had been in her day, with every single “community” initiative having to be either dominated, or smothered, by members of her party. The new councillors, by contrast, were going to have to operate within a liberated environment.

It would seem to me that such is Labour’s determination to wield absolute power over our community that it is prepared to take the risk of losing the seats it gained in 2010 rather than continue to suffer the indignity of having to treat with civic leaders and free residents’ groups on anything approaching equal terms. The assumption being made now, just as it was in 2010, is that if the ICG fights the next election and loses we will all just mysteriously go away.

I have not mentioned outside influences, as I have in other articles, and there is a reason for this. Although in spite of Labour’s smirking protestations they certainly do exist, they could surely not be decisive in determining Labour’s local strategy without a good deal of willingness on the part of the local party.

I believe that if the ICG contests the local elections next year it will have a very good chance of recapturing the seats it lost. But if it doesn’t, let me be clear – we will be in the exact same situation that we are today. The ICG is here to stay, and those who care for the dignity and the well-being of our community will never roll over and die.

Community - Just How Far Has Hounslow Moved?

Today I was asked by two very prominent and influential members of the active community in Isleworth whether the Independent Community Group (ICG) would once again be fielding candidates at the next local elections in May 2014.

It’s not the first time that I have been asked this question in recent weeks, but the answer I gave them was the same as I have given to others who have inquired from a less favourable perspective. That answer is that it is not my decision to make and, to the best of my knowledge, those whose decision it will be have yet to make it. And that it is the very truth.

It was a useful and constructive meeting over coffee and cakes. For the most part we discussed the wider question of community involvement, the differing attitudes towards it between various individual councillors, and between councillors in general and officers. I would like to stress that it was noted in particular that one councillor – Theo Dennison (Syon) – has quite consistently demonstrated what we all believe to be a really sincere commitment to the cause of our community’s emancipation and would appear to have paid the price within his own party for doing so.

Theo was one of three local councillors whom I got the opportunity to speak to last Sunday after the fantastically well-supported Remembrance Day Parade in Isleworth. The others were Ed Mayne and, more briefly, Sue Sampson. Both Ed and Sue have been very supportive of the Isleworth Royal British Legion and of the efforts of the local Branch to raise funds for the Poppy Appeal each year. I understand that the third Isleworth ward councillor, Mindu Bains, was representing the Mayor at another parade on the same day.

I have been disappointed that in spite of the obvious goodwill that exists amongst all concerned our efforts to heal old wounds and eradicate any lingering divisions remain hampered by the self-centred activities of an outsider to the ward (and to the borough) about whom I have written previously. In spite of Theo’s optimistic pleas to the contrary, this man retains the ear of some of our elected members, and has clearly been the driving force behind some of the negative activity, at least in Isleworth ward, which has taken place since the 2010 local elections and which is quite obviously designed to scupper any attempt by us to try to find an honourable consensus with our current elected members. In the words of one councillor with whom I spoke a few weeks back, “we can’t let him go”.

As I have said before, it is not this ridiculous man that is important but the relationship and the reaction of others to him. Isleworth councillors may have binned a particularly poisonous and defamatory post-election leaflet after having second thoughts once a relatively small number had gone out, but by whose authority is an outsider producing such material in the name of our local Labour Party and what were councillors thinking of by even venturing to deliver them in the first place? How can the strategic direction of a group of intelligent and enthusiastic new councillors reasonably be influenced, in whole or even in part, by the consistently ill-informed and irrational prejudices of an unelected individual from another borough who shows serious signs of mental and emotional imbalance?

But when all is said and done it would be wrong to base our whole approach on the self-serving activities of one obscure individual. We need to take a wider view. We need, above everything else, to consider how the current administration at the London Borough of Hounslow is dealing with the question of Community Engagement, and to do so in recognition of the fact that past election defeats at the hands of the organised community and the “threat” of an ICG electoral resurgence is likely if anything to artificially distort the Labour regime’s current approach to the subject in a more pro-community direction than might otherwise have been the case.

Or to put it another way – if they are not “doing it” now, what chance is there that they will be doing it when and if, to adopt an Irish analogy, the ICG has decommissioned its electoral weapons?

I have already related how long-time Brentford councillor Ruth Cadbury, still a hugely influential figure within the Labour Group, quite shamelessly attempted to take the credit for her party for a commitment of funds to the St. John’s Community Centre in Isleworth which had been made by the ICG when we were in office and which she and her party had actually voted against.

This morning (Tuesday) I am advised that Councillor Colin Ellar, now once again Deputy Leader of Hounslow Council, regaled amused residents’ leaders at a community event with his account of how the current council leadership is supporting them (whilst trying to corral them under his party’s strategic leadership of course) and the previous administration wasn’t. There can surely be nothing more perverse than a Hounslow Labour politician pleading that an administration in which the ICG took the lead on Communities was less of a friend to organised residents than one in which he and the likes of Councillor Cadbury are involved!

Overall, Councillor Dennison excepted, I have to say I do not see an administration champing at the bit to relinquish its power to the residents’ associations and amenity groups, to the voluntary organisations and the civic societies. Its continued coolness towards the ICG even after we had offered the hand of friendship is in itself testimony to this. I don’t think I am assuming too much of a sense of our own importance when I aver that an administration that truly wanted to embrace the community ideal would have reacted to the new reality that followed the 2010 local elections by seeking to incorporate our knowledge and experience – if only to neutralise a potential rival – rather than by circulating scurrilous leaflets commenting on the private financial affairs of individual ICG members and making wholly false claims about alleged holiday homes. By these actions they simply made it clear that it was the whole community concept, rather than just our organisation, with which they felt they had an issue.

I must confess I feel my scepticism became apparent to the two community champions as I sipped my medium Americano with a small dash of milk. We regretted the abolition of the Area Committees and the reclamation of planning powers by officers. We shared a sense of dismay over the loss of the Brentford Festival to the borough, and over the administration’s instinctive response to the news by trying to blame their predecessors rather than dedicating their efforts towards reversing this sorry and quite unacceptable situation.

This evening I received a document from a community leader in another part of the borough referring to the local authority’s “Statement of Community Exclusion” (it is supposed to read “Involvement”). I know what he meant.

I recognise, of course, that if the ICG is involved in the 2014 local elections it is compelled to contest those areas in which it has a reasonable chance of success, and that in so doing the councillors we will be trying to knock out will not necessarily be those with whom we have much of a quarrel. This is regrettable, even a tad ironic, but sadly unavoidable. With a bit of luck they will be able to find safer seats elsewhere, as others have done rather than face us in the past.

Nevertheless I feel that unless an unambiguous sign is forthcoming shortly from Labour (and it has to be Labour, as they are in office) that real Community Empowerment and not more inane political gamesmanship is on the agenda the ICG’s committee should take the plunge and commit to continued involvement in the electoral process in a once and for all conclusion of sadly unfinished business.

Only Two Cheers for Community Politics

By David Boyle

I wasn’t there to hear the Birmingham conference back the community politics motion. I had meant to be but had to go back to London early.

It was one of those pieces of sacred Liberalism that you daren’t speak against, but I would have done. I’m not sorry it was passed but the party must also understand that there is another side to it.

Community politics may be a revolutionary doctrine, but BAD community politics – and we have practised some of that occasionally, let’s face it – damages the party and damages the political process.

I know I’m on sacred ground. Criticising community politics at a Liberal Democrat conference is like criticising the Pope in St Peter’s Square. But there are four very good reasons why we must go into this with our eyes open:

First, because we’ve long since abandoned real community politics in favour of its outward manifestation – a blizzard of leaflets with no obvious ideology. Which have been copied by every political opponent for a generation.

Sometimes there is no ideology beyond the demand to stuff paper. Sometimes even worse, there is a kind of off-putting and desperate campaigning on empty.

Second, because community politics has become muddled with New Labour’s rhetoric about ‘empowerment’.

Empowerment is a nonsense for Liberal Democrats. People already have the power. Even Tony Blair, even Ed Miliband, can’t distribute it. It isn’t theirs to give. The point is to encourage people to use their power, and to teach them how.

The third reason is that the intellectual underpinnings of community politics are now riddled with dry rot and need to be renewed. We know so much more now about what works than we did in 1970. We have concepts like social capital and co-production.

There are radical ideas out there about the power shifts in public services when users work alongside professionals. There are techniques about revitalising local economics. By comparison, community politics is almost as vague as the Big Society, which basically means: ‘wouldn’t it be nice if everyone had lunch together’.

The party could not even bring itself to write a radical new localism policy this year. We ran out of intellectual puff.

The fourth reason may be very naive. But it seems to me that community politics has became infected with the corrosive language of the political classes. Some of our leaflets – like our opponents’ leaflets – are so disconnected from real life, so unpleasant in their accusations as they drop through the letter box, that many people find them repulsive. That is hard but true.

So this is what I believe. When our tone of voice alienates people – not just from one political party but from them all – then we’re not practising community politics.

Unless community politics is capable of rescuing politics itself, unless it is generous enough to embrace everyone in the community, unless it is based firmly on an ideology which includes working in public services, and economic action too – unless it does all that, then it won’t revitalise our party and it won’t work.

There needs to be the same generosity of spirit that was there in the original community politics, so that the prime purpose is to spread power – no matter which political party benefits to start with.

Don’t forget that the political crisis isn’t just ours. The total membership of all political parties is less than the circulation of a small magazine in Smiths. So the new community politics has to be different. It has to be about training everyone in political, economic and social change, locally and face to face.

Did the motion say that? No it didn’t.

David Boyle is a member of the Federal Policy Committee, a fellow of the New Economics Foundation and his new book The Human Element is published next month.  This article appeared in Liberal Democrat Voice.

The Axeman Cometh

We are fast approaching that time when the London Borough of Hounslow delivers its budget for the coming year. In early March 2011 Borough Council will debate and vote upon a series of proposals that will, it hopes, enable it to reduce the local authority's annual spending by £18m. Inevitably valuable provision will be cut and the public will see a reduction in the services it receives.

The Axeman is an avowedly non-party political being. Up until 2006 he slashed services under a Labour administration, causing much angst as he closed John Aird House (a residential care home in Brentford), threatened to privatise vital health care services and hacked £1m in a single blow from the Education budget at a time when monies provided by the government for that very purpose were not ring-fenced. I attended more than one demonstration against what appeared to me to be acts of almost gratuitous inhumanity.

Then in 2006 a new administration took office of which the Independent Community Group (ICG) was a part. Almost immediately our Conservative coalition partners announced the launch of a drastic cost-cutting initiative called the Performance Improvement Programme (PIP) and declared its intention to freeze Council Tax levels, which we generally supported and between us actually managed to do for four years in a row. But there were casualties, not least the Hounslow Language Service, and from opposition Labour opposed many of the savings made by the coalition Axeman, campaigning against cuts in public services as we ourselves had done in opposition.

Now Labour is back in office, and the Axeman is once again playing for the team in red. Granted the impetus for the drastic programme of cuts upon which Hounslow is about to embark comes from central government and its savage Comprehensive Spending Review, but nonetheless the Labour administration has to deal with the same reality as the coalition administration before it and the old Labour administration before that. That reality is that the level of central government support for local councils declines year upon year no matter who is in charge at the Exchequer.

What happens at the stage we are at now is that Lead Members will have asked Chief Officers to identify potential savings in their own departments. Some of those suggested savings are included in this document, which will be discussed by the Executive next week.

The flaw in this process, and which has always been the case, is that Chief Officers will invariably identify those savings that they themselves are comfortable with, and omit those that they are not. For instance, rarely if at all will Lead Members be presented with a proposal to reduce Chief Officer salaries, or to merge departments so as to reduce their number. Unless the Lead Member is unusually hands-on, he or she will almost always accept the options presented as being the only ones realistically available.

The ICG has not had the opportunity to formally discuss these proposals as yet, but what I imagine will concern my colleagues in particular are the various implied assaults on local democracy. In particular the suggestion that Area Committees could be abolished or curtailed. My guess is that these were probably amongst the first proposals to have been mooted by certain of our Chief Officers and I would be surprised if much sleep was lost as they found their way onto the list.

It would be tempting, of course, to consider Area Committees as a luxury by comparison with frontline services to the really needy such as Older People or Children's Services. By that logic we might just as well do away with elections to the council as well - the potential saving involved would be considerable.

But the whole rationale of local government is that it enjoys a democratic mandate. This is precisely why elected members, as opposed to the more "expert" officers, are ultimately responsible for making decisions. Once that principle has been compromised we are embarked upon a journey down a very slippery slope with no handbrake. One cannot put a price on democracy.

I am also concerned by the suggestion that local community centres may be cut adrift. Sure, I do note from the document that the need for local community groups to be given time to build the capacity to take them over is acknowledged, but knowing as I do the complete lack of interest in resident involvement or even opinion that exists in certain departments there is little doubt in my mind that, were such a proposal to be taken up, our community centres would be abandoned with indecent haste and indeed closed down as soon as it was felt it could be got away with.

This is not about empowering communities, this is about certain senior officers seizing a perceived opportunity to remove themselves forever from meaningful public scrutiny.

These are difficult times, and I am reluctant to try to score points by blaming the current administration for the predicament it finds itself in (although it has to be said, under the circumstances, that some of the ruling party's election promises were reckless to say the least - everyone knew there would be cuts whoever triumphed at the general election). However I do believe that the organised community must lobby hard to protect itself from any attempt to use government cuts as a convenient excuse for curtailing its freedoms and its ability to organise.

Some boom amid the gloom

Andrew Stunell: "The Localism Bill presents a lot of positive news for local government. We are devolving power back to local authorities, communities, and individual people up and down the country. Lib Dems have long campaigned for power to flow from the bottom-up not top-down. The “Man in Whitehall” doesn’t know best, and the publication of the Localism Bill marks the end of Labour’s top-down presumption they know more than local people about how their area should be run."

Andrew Stunell is the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Communities and Local Government. The above is reproduced with acknowledgements to Liberal Democrat Voice.

Community at the ready

Well, we now know for certain what everybody had already assumed - that the general election will be held on the same day as this year's local elections, on Thursday, 6th May.

Naturally this will complicate things a little, not only because it is likely to induce a higher turnout in the locals as those attending the polling station are likely, once they are there, to use their other vote, but also because voters will by May 6th have been inundated by the national media with big party politics and the challenge for us therefore is to keep them thinking local.

The ICG will not be taking part in the general election. Our leadership has made it clear that we would like to see the back of the incumbent MP Ann Keen as we feel it is important that borough residents have Members of Parliament who are prepared to work with the local authority regardless of which party or parties happen to be in office at the Civic Centre. However now it is upon us my view is that we will not be devoting too much attention to the shortcomings of our MP, but rather will be concentrating our efforts on getting our own people elected onto the council.

The ICG is fielding a total of nine candidates - Councillor Phil Andrews, Councillor Paul Fisher and Andy Sibley in Isleworth; Councillor Caroline Andrews, Councillor Shirley Fisher and Councillor Jon Hardy in Syon; and Tricia Doran, Cheryl-Ann Khan and Martin Murphy in Hounslow South.

Our policy platform is fairly simple - we wish to empower our community. Whilst recognising that the local authority has an obligation to provide for those who cannot speak out for themselves and who need help and assistance we will not use this as an excuse, as the previous Labour administration did, for exercising political control over the rest of the community. We want to see active, vibrant and independent civic societies, associations and amenity groups operating throughout the community, even if sometimes it means them challenging us as elected members. The Community Group does not consider it has anything to fear from an engaged community.

Whilst our Conservative coalition partners supported our Empowerment aspirations throughout the last four years, we feel their primary interest is low tax and that in the event of an all-out Conservative administration the community agenda is likely to be sidelined. Whilst we support the drive for low tax, we in the ICG see it as a means to an end rather than the end itself. Thus it is our view that the best result for our community at the local elections on May 6th would be once again for the ICG to hold the balance of power on an authority that is under No Overall Control.

ICG councillors will continue to put their own constituents and wards first and will fight for any resources that become available. We will not relent in identifying Section 106 and other funding for local projects, cohesion initiatives and general improvements for those we represent.

We are not satisfied that the new administration which assumed office in 2006 and of which we have been part has completely succeeded in changing the culture within the council bureaucracy. We believe the PIP process, whilst very welcome, was primarily cost driven and that the co-operation of chief officers with this project and with general budget setting has led our partners to look away while our own Empowerment agenda has been frustrated and obstructed by elements within the senior management. Some substantial rectification of this situation is likely for us to be an essential precondition of any future coalition agreement.

Lastly (for the time being) we will continue to provide a voice for the community on such vitally important local issues as Mogden. The campaign against the nefarious activities of Thames Water has demonstrated the value of elected members throwing their weight behind a successful organic initiative by residents.

At the time of writing we have less than thirty days to underscore all the valuable work that we have currently done to open up the process of our local government still further. ICG activists will be unrelenting in our efforts to secure four more years in which to implement our objectives.

Would David Cameron's "Neighbourhood Army" build Community Power or stifle it?

Conservative leader David Cameron has announced his intention to set up a "Neighbourhood Army" of 5,000 government trainees whose job would be to set up community groups. The full story can be read on the BBC Politics site here.

Obviously any initiative that would have the effect of helping to empower our communities is to be encouraged, and I guess it would probably be too vain for me to even consider the possibility that he may have picked up the idea from one of his visits to the London Borough of Hounslow, where he will have heard that his party has shared power for the past four years with the Community Group, which was flying the flag for localism before either of the major parties had even coined the word.

But would the recruitment of 5,000 government-trained community organisers who would then be sent into our cities, towns and villages to engender some form of Community Empowerment not be a contradiction in terms?

In short, can Community Power be imposed by government initiative, or must it necessarily be organic and rise unassisted out of the efforts of the people themselves?

Would the organisers withdraw once local people had been trained, and would there be strings attached to the continued support of the "experts" as there always is under Labour?

An interesting debate to be had.

Regenerating our community centres by working positively with our residents

It was probably due to the earlier Committee meeting that around 25 people turned out to the ICG Social Drink at the Isleworth Royal British Legion, despite the absence of a number of regulars. I couldn't help but be struck by the real sense of purpose that pervaded both meeting and social event, with the contributions of the usual vociferous few being placed into perspective by the eager interventions of the many.

For the record Councillor Jon Hardy was confirmed as Chair with Ian Speed (above) taking on the role of Vice Chair for the first time. Councillor Shirley Fisher is Treasurer once again, with Councillor Caroline Andrews and Tricia Doran sharing the joint Secretary/Fundraiser post and Maggie Hardy taking ownership of Media & Communications. I remain as Organiser but have asked that the position be reviewed in six months' time.

This morning a few of us, including the three Syon ward councillors, visited St. John's Community Centre where residents are bidding for a substantial share of the £250,000 community fund that we successfully negotiated a part of the budget making process earlier in the month to repair the building's seriously damaged roof. We were joined by representatives from St. John's Residents' Association (SJRA), The Isleworth Society (TIS) and from the Community Centre itself. Needless to say we are eager to get the project underway as soon as is reasonably possible.

Why we held out for change on Budget night

Council meeting anoraks plus anybody who may have been apprehensive about the outcome of last night's great Council Tax debate, whether through fear of cuts in services or of increases in taxes, will be aware by now that the proposed Budget for 2010/11, incorporating this administration's fourth 0% tax increase in four years, was eventually approved last night.

The reason it was "eventually approved", rather than being approved straight away, was because two members of the Community Group abstained on the first reading. I was one of those two.

I am proud to have served as part of the coalition that has managed the London Borough for Hounslow. I believe we have achieved many good things. I support the low tax agenda, subject to frontline services not being cut, and as I have said before it is to the great credit of the Leader of the Council, Peter Thompson, that he has overseen a team that has made this all possible.

So why did I and one of my colleagues abstain?

To understand our reasons fully one has to have some background knowledge about the way the coalition has developed over probably the last year or so. And when I speak about the development of the coalition I refer not just to the relationship between the two Groups, but also to how the respective partners have been served by the council organisation in general.

That period of time has been for us one long struggle. The first major indication that something was amiss was probably the Mogden expansion application by Thames Water, where officers even at the very highest level of the local authority engaged in unprecedented lobbying of elected members and on the night of the decision, having read reports and heard presentations from which important information was omitted, councillors from the big parties united to approve the application and leave the ICG, and the long-suffering residents of Isleworth and Hounslow South, high and dry.

But there was more, as Frank Carson might have put it. Section 106 money effectively stolen from the residents of Syon ward and relocated not only into another ward but into another Area Committee's domain also became a political battle which saw the ICG isolated as the mutual political interests of the big parties converged. The defiant organisational resistance to attempts by residents to help improve the Electronic Data Management System (EDMS), obstruction to individual initiatives to empower sections of the Voluntary Sector, intervention by those responsible for managing Communications to misrepresent the Mogden situation in a way that showed the ICG Lead Member and by association the whole Group in an unfavourable light and the Chief Executive's unwillingness to deal with our complaints about same in any meaningful way, and further Chief Officer obstruction over Mogden until the Leader eventually intervened all combined to create a situation in which Community Group priorities were quite demonstrably being dealt with in an entirely different manner than were Conservative Group priorities.

Apart from, in some areas, a blind and unhelpful departmental defensiveness on the part of certain Lead Members, the fault for this situation did not lie with our coalition partners. Except - and it is a very big "except" - that it was allowed to continue. Some Chief Officers became increasingly confident, in cases arrogant almost to the point of openly mocking us, while the low-tax bandwagon rolled smoothly through the year with devoted Chief Officer co-operation, and those whose wet dream the 0% Budget is were happy to remain oblivious, and possibly genuinely knew nothing about what was going on around them.

Added to that there was an element of political insensitivity. At the November 2009 Borough Council meeting the Lead Member for Finance forgot the name of the Group he was in coalition with, but was able to declare confidently last night (presumably in response to my plea for an "aspirational" budget), that the coalition's "aspiration" (i.e. not just his own or his Group's) was not to increase the Council Tax. Just that, nothing more.

I have to say it came as quite a shock to realise that, for sixteen years, I had put my family on the breadline and any other ambition I may have had in life on hold, so that some bloke in W4 would not have to endure the intolerable burden of having to pay the finance installments on his Bentley and another 10p each month on his Council Tax bill.

When all that is said however I still did want to support last night's Budget at the first time of asking. The councillor who suggested that I was electioneering could not have been more mistaken. As some Conservative councillors quite rightly argue, it is the relative poor just outside the benefit threshold who suffer disproportionately when their Council Tax bill goes up. The Leader, and the Lead Member for Finance, had drawn up a Budget which had quite skillfully avoided any incursion into frontline services. It did also include, it has to be said, a £300k package for the Voluntary Sector.

However, during my discussions with the Leader during the day, when I asked whether Community Group priorities could be given just that little bit more emphasis, it was clear that somebody - someone behind him - was playing hardball. Whom I don't know. What I did know is that the disrespect and indifference with which we had been treated by much of the corporate management over the past year or so was manifesting itself defiantly again, even as we approached the fourth and possibly most important Budget of the administration.

My pride would not accept that. I e-mailed my colleagues to tell them that as far as I was concerned it was a free vote (although we don't operate a whip, ordinarily we try our best to reach agreement before votes), and that they should vote as their consciences guided them.

A head count and an impromptu straw poll told me that, if two of us abstained, the Budget was going down by 28 votes to 27. That is what subsequently happened. Many of our partners, I believe, understood and sympathised with what we had done and our reasons for having done it. One certainly didn't, telling one of my colleagues (who had voted in support of the Budget) that we were "only a tiny part of the coalition" and that I'd had "no right to say the things (I had) said". Ironically, it was for the benefit of people who think like this that I had said them. Had it been said to me I would have replied that, right now, we would seem to be rather an important part of the coalition!

When I spoke to the Leader during the ensuing break in proceedings I made it clear to him again that all we wanted was a bit of respect and acknowledgement, and that those who had been advising him had let him down badly. He agreed - not only due to the necessity of the situation but also, I believe, as a matter of principle - and we secured another £250k for community projects (an Empowerment provision predictably described by New Labour as "a waste of money"). The meeting sat once again and the slightly amended Budget was approved by 29 votes to 28.

Needless to say I am not clairvoyant and I've absolutely no idea whether the Community Group will be involved in the next administration in any way, shape or form. As a rule of thumb we hope for the best and try to prepare for the worst. There have been mumblings that a coalition might be sought with individual members of my Group but not myself, but whether there is any truth in them or not I believe I know my colleagues better than that. But if we as a Group are involved we will seek to set out our stall more clearly at the beginning - in an honest, proportionate and reasonable way - and ensure that the organisation is structured in such a way as to respond with equal enthusiasm to the priorities of both or all the parties involved. That would avoid such a situation ever arising again.

I'm glad we've agreed a Budget that incorporates both a 0% tax increase and a substantial contribution to community projects and to the Voluntary Sector. All's well that ends well. Right now I guess we'll all be getting down to our respective election campaigns and let us see what comes out in the mix.

Approaching the budget for 2010/11

This week the Community Group on the London Borough of Hounslow put out the following statement to various local news media:

Community Group seeks
"aspirational" budget next week

X
"THE Community Group on the London Borough of Hounslow wants to deliver an “aspirational” budget that combines low tax with opportunities for increased engagement with residents.

"This week the Leader of the Council Peter Thompson announced his intention of delivering a fourth consecutive Council Tax freeze for the year 2010/11. The Community Group, which runs the local authority in coalition with the Conservatives, expressed its delight at being able to present another low tax budget but called upon the administration to be 'bold and imaginative' in using available funds to strengthen local democracy and empower communities.

"Community Group Leader Phil Andrews commented: 'The Leader of the Council deserves a lot of credit for spearheading this administration’s successful efforts to produce a zero increase budget under such difficult circumstances, and it is to his credit that he has taken on board concerns about some of the proposals that were floated in December, and which following discussions have now been withdrawn.

“'We are proud to be associated with such an achievement and it is our hope that it will be accompanied by some bold and imaginative measures to direct resources towards empowering our community.

“'We want to see an aspirational budget that does something tangible to demonstrate our commitment to strengthening local democracy rather than just cutting tax. We are still discussing a few options and are likely to support the proposals if we can incorporate some of our objectives into the end product.'”


We mean everything we said in the statement. We have supported 0% budgets for the past three years and are happy to do so again. We recognise that, particularly in times of recession, even a small increase in Council Tax can penalise those on low incomes disproportionately.

But when all is said and done I personally do not find myself getting all excited about tax cuts. Some seem to derive an almost sexual relief from making savings and seeing a lower figure at the foot of a balance sheet. Such people have probably got a lot more money than I have, and it's not difficult to see why.

What I as a community advocate want to see is a budget that uses itself as a good excuse for rolling out the Community Empowerment agenda further. It needn't cost much, or even anything, to do but it sends our constituents - the people who elected us in preference to the politicians in the hope and expectation that we would effect positive change in our communities - the message that we are doing what we promised local people when they entrusted us with their votes. Without this aspect forming part of the budget proposals, I would be inclined to stay at home and watch telly.

The feeling I have is that our case is being heard. After all, at the end of the day those whose interest in the budget proposals begins and ends with a series of digits after a pound sign are unlikely to be fazed by a shopping list which doesn't involve shelling out a lot of money. Everything we bring to the process has a Buy One, Get One Free label affixed to it.

Monday's Group Meeting will be when we finally decide what we are going to do. But I am hoping my community gets a double result on Tuesday night - more say and less tax.

Happy New Year 2010

It wasn't my intention to go all Gordon Brown on the relatively small but loyal readership of this blog, but the temptation to deliver a New Year's message of sorts, especially to my own colleagues in the Independent Community Group and to other like-minded individuals, turned out to be too much.

Last night four of Hounslow's six community councillors and several other ICG members saw in the New Year at a party at Isleworth's Royal British Legion. There were about 150 people there and a really fun time was had by all. There was a lot of dancing, a lot of socialising and, when the clock struck twelve, a lot of sincere affection being exchanged all around.

Although "politics", thankfully, formed no part of the occasion I was struck once again by the real spirit of togetherness that exists these days in our community. There was, for me, an unspoken sense of purpose about the whole gathering. As always we activists were all made to feel extremely welcome by everybody there and there was for us a very tangible feeling of belonging, and of generally being at the centre of the whole experience.

Now, as the music fades and the drinks wear off, the realisation kicks in that we have now arrived at 2010, or it with us, and May 6th is standing there before us like a wall as we hurtle relentlessly towards it.

As I indicated on this blog almost a year ago the outcome of that contest is probably less clear to us than others had been on previous occasions. In 1998, 2002, 2006 the dynamic was simple - win as many seats as we can, and wait for New Labour's consistently diminishing majority to slump into deficit. Then - hopefully - coalition.

This time there are a number of possible scenarios to consider. The unlikely, but technically possible, return of an overall New Labour majority. Or, the emergence of an overall Conservative majority. In a sense both these scenarios are easy ones for us in that, other than winning the wards we contest, there is really little we can do to prevent either. Any overall majority means that we are out of office.

In Labour's case it will almost inevitably mean a return to the bad old ways as, other than for the party's probably reluctant support for our Community Empowerment motion in July 2009, there is little to suggest that the essential mindset has changed. In the case of an all-out Conservative majority I would guess we would have an administration which single-mindedly prioritised low tax, with a structure fairly much like the one we have today with the possible exception of some budget-driven reductions in personnel.

I hope I don't need to spell out, therefore, why it necessary for voters throughout Hounslow to think more cleverly and more strategically than ever before. The great irony of the current administration is that it has been stronger, and more purposeful, than previous ones in spite of the fact that it has been managed by a minority coalition. Every councillor's vote is at times important and on occasions Groups of three or even two have had a recognisable role to play in shaping events.

In May 2006 the ICG emerged as part of the coalition that assumed office in Hounslow. I still believe that to have been the correct decision for us to take. Having campaigned in our localities for change it would have been a shameful betrayal of our constituents, when offered an opportunity to help make that change, not to have done whatever we could to bring it about.

When we entered into coalition we formed a partnership with an organisation which was vastly bigger than ours, even locally in a borough-wide sense and which, although the individuals involved were new to running a local authority as we were, could call upon the vast reservoir of knowledge and expertise that existed within its own organisation in the persons of those that had been there before.

When one bears that in mind we did not play our negotiating hand too badly. We achieved political if not organisational buy-in for our Empowerment agenda. The changes we introduced in the once heavily politicised arena of our Housing operation received the total backing of our partners. We were even able to secure support for a limited programme of New Build. We have had a more or less free hand to implement a powerful community-driven agenda in the wards we represent, and where there has been resistance our numerical superiority on the local Area Committee has seen it off.

Where in my role as Leader I may have let people down is by not tying the coalition down to timescales. There has without any question been a twin-track approach to the respective programmes of the two coalition partners with the low-tax, cost-cutting agenda racing full-throttle from day one and the empowering agenda being sometimes humoured, sometimes frustrated - but always operating in first gear. Some will call me naive, but I honestly do not believe that our coalition partners were actively complicit in this. I am of the firm view that the goodwill was there, and that it was by a sin of omission rather than commission that the corporate council was allowed - at first furtively but now very blatantly - to resist the culture change that we had been mandated by our electors to make.

Our own hope is obviously that, once the votes have been counted, we will once again be in a position in which the coalition option will be available to us. Whether or not other Groups will be prepared to go into coalition with us is of course a question that only they can answer, but a successful coalition can only ever be built upon mutual respect and respect is only ever given to those who stand up for themselves and politely but firmly defend their corner.

There have been some unhelpful mumblings about this or that Group being prepared to enter into coalition with some community councillors (whom for whatever reason they deem to be malleable) but not with their colleagues. Talks with any Group which attempts this stunt will terminate very abruptly indeed.

But we ought not to get ahead of ourselves. Before we even consider what our role may be after May there are elections to be fought. We don't fear any of our opponents but neither must we take them or, more importantly, the voters for granted. We need to fight if we are to win.

From what I saw at the election meeting in Isleworth a couple of weeks back there need be no worries about our appetite for the fight, nor about our ability to win it. We are considerably bigger, stronger and more sophisticated than we were when we won six seats in 2006 and the political climate is more favourable to us. But we still have to do the work and there must be no slacking.

Happy New Year.

People Getting Ready

The community movement in Hounslow received another significant boost last week with the emergence of a new popular movement - the Cranford Heston Alliance (CHA).

ICG councillors Paul and Shirley Fisher were the guest speakers at a very well-attended launch meeting which was supported by local residents, traders and even political figures and dignitaries from the Indian sub-continent.

The new organisation is spearheaded by former Labour councillors Sarbjit Gill and Parmod Kad MBE. Its aim is to sweep away the party political domination of community life in Cranford and Heston and to give the community a real voice in local affairs.

Resident Amar Singh Dhaliwal (front, right) said: "Local residents are fed up with not being able to get anything done around here and have even had to resort to contacting councillors from the opposite end of the borough with their complaints. What we need is real local representation which puts the people first".

The CHA has indicated its intention to field candidates in the 2010 local elections, and its campaign will receive active and practical support from the ICG.

Now we're all community councillors!

There's an old quote by somebody or other - possibly G.K. Chesterton - which has it that the essence of democracy is simple. First the people ask for something, and then they get it.

My colleague, ICG Chair Councillor Jon Hardy captured this principle to perfection when seconding my Motion on Community Engagement to Borough Council yesterday. Empowering communities need not entail the pure but impractical concept of the classic Grecian democracy, in which citizens partake in endless referenda about what time the local tavern should cease dispensing alcoholic beverages or how much one should be expected to pay for a tin of beans. Instead, it is simply a case of identifying what it is that people want and then delivering it with the minimum of fuss.

My Motion was quite deliberately basic. It read:

"This Council calls to expand upon the Motion passed on 4^th March 2008, which sought to improve Community Engagement and to develop relations with residents’ organisations and civic groups around the Borough.

"This Council now requires that timelines be set in place for the full and final implementation of a radical and robust Community Engagement strategy, which will necessitate the buy-in and full co-operation of all employees of the organisation.

"This Council therefore authorises the Lead Member for Community Engagement to draw up a six-month programme for the incorporation of an unambiguous empowerment strategy into all work undertaken by the local authority, and asserts that the programme will come into operation no later than six months from the passing of this Motion”.

The purpose of the Motion was, self-evidently, to put an end to the dichotomy which exists at present in which the administration expresses its desire to engage in a genuine and meaningful way with our communities, and yet the bureaucracy continues to act as a barrier to such engagement, often treating our residents and their organisations as a problem without which the business of running a local authority would be so much easier, and forever finding reasons why anything remotely inspirational, imaginative or different cannot be done.

Jon emphasised the point quite brilliantly. We want Section 106 money spent on improving the fabric of our communities when they are affected by development - so why is it so difficult to quantify and access? We want clean air for our residents living within sniffing distance of Mogden Sewage Treatment Works - so why are we no further down the line than we were when we assumed power three years ago, with the bureaucracy constantly battling with and fobbing off residents who have the temerity to ask what we are doing to support them? Why does the organisation seem constructed in such a way as to provide built-in, knee-jerk obstacles to more or less everything positive that we aspire to achieve?

What was particularly significant about this Motion - and the importance of this cannot be overstated - was that it received unanimous, cross-party support. When I began the debate on this topic back in March 2008 the Labour Group abstained and my earlier Motion was described by Hounslow Independent Alliance councillor John Connelly as "meaningless" (i.e not about money). This time every hand went up, and I was even taken to task by Andrew Dakers for the Liberal Democrats and Labour's Matt Harmer for not having gone far enough - a bit of politicking, maybe, but a significant indication of the direction in which things are moving.

The London Borough of Hounslow now has six months to do what it has not done up till now, either under this administration or the previous one, and transform itself into an outward-facing, people-focused facilitator of real community participation. The unanimity of the vote means there is no question any more of waiting for a change of administration in the hope that members will revert to bickering about budgets and forget about the more aspirational side of a local authority's work.

The message to the naysayers from last night's vote was that henceforth whoever is in office, the call for a New Way will still be heard.

Our Time has Come - the Empowered Community is here to stay!

I've been intending to blog for over a week following the successful series of meetings organised by Liberal Democrat PPC and councillor Andrew Dakers to discuss parliamentary reform and the implications of the Sustainable Communities Act for the Community Empowerment agenda.

Sadly (if predictably) the meetings were boycotted by New Labour, but the participation of the Conservatives, the Greens and John Connelly from the Hounslow Independent Alliance, as well of course as the Community Group and Lib Dems, made for a good amount of cross-party discussion, and sometimes disagreement.

I sat on the Panel at the first of the four meetings, held at Isleworth Public Hall, where I was joined by Conservative councillor Adrian Lee, Green Party PPC John Hunt and Councillor Dakers, as well as the Chair David Pavett from the residents' group Campion Concerns.

Isleworth residents are obviously familiar with the empowerment idea, having elected Community councillors at the last three local elections, and the discussion started with the premise that giving more power to the grass roots was in principle the right thing to do. Whilst the sulky absence of a counter argument did unquestionably detract from the wholeness of the debate, the other members of the Panel all gave good accounts of themselves (I'll let others be the judges of my performance) and I think it would not be unreasonable for me to say that there was a feeling of general acceptance, and largely of enthusiasm, that the community agenda was in the ascendancy.

Meetings also took place in Hounslow, Brentford and Chiswick. I attended the Brentford one, albeit arriving late after trying unsuccessfully to purchase a car (needed for the ensuing weekend), but in time to witness a very impressive performance by my ICG colleague Jon Hardy. Several commentators on the TW8.com community forum later delivered themselves of the view that Jon had been the pick of the bunch, despite the presence of three Prospective Parliamentary Candidates on the platform.

These fairly well-attended but (in my view) unnecessarily expensive meetings will, I hope, prove to be the herald of a new era in the progress of the community agenda. Those who compliment us on the physical progress of the ICG over the past decade and a half - whilst their compliments are of course gratefully received - are, in fact, only half appreciating the magnitude of what has happened over that period of time and what is going on in our local politics. And what has happened is not only that the ICG has built itself up to six councillors and a working majority on the local Area Committee, but also that its political platform has begun to find favour in the most unlikely of places - in the thoughts of some of the political parties themselves!

Of course the ICG cannot in all good sense claim all the credit for the "new localism" which is being embraced with varying degrees of enthusiasm by politicians of all hues on the national as well as the local scene. However, how gratifying the realisation is that the half-dozen disenfranchised and slightly angry members of the hoi polloi who sat around a beer-sodden table in the Harlequin back in '93 deliberating over how the community could kick its way back into local community life were so thoroughly ahead of their time.

At the Isleworth meeting I publicly confessed that the culture at the heart of Hounslow Civic Centre had not in my view been changed as thoroughly as I'd have hoped by now in spite of the new administration having been in place for over three years. I also resolved that I would make up for lost time in rectifying that situation. Next week a Motion will go before Borough Council pledging total sign-up at all levels of the organisation within six months.

Community Empowerment is happening. We look forward to working with all those who welcome it. Those who don't can carry on sulking, but it is happening all the same.

On St. George's Day and Every Day, Together is Better!

I have not long returned home from one of the most successful, innovative and ambitious events that I have yet attended in my capacity as Lead Member for Housing & Community Safety.

For me personally, the Better Together event jointly organised by Hounslow Homes and the Hounslow Federation of Tenants' and Residents' Associations (HFTRA) did not get off to a particularly good start. Despite me being Lead Member not only did I have no input into the organisation of the event, but somebody also forgot to invite me. It transpired, I have to add, that this had been a genuine oversight and as it turned out every councillor had been sent a last-minute "reminder" of an event which they knew nothing about, but I would not be human if memories of the Bad Old Days in which excluding ICG councillors was turned almost into an art form did not come flickering back at least momentarily.

But any lingering doubts were quickly dispelled as soon as I walked into the Paul Robeson Theatre in Hounslow Treaty Centre, where a hugely impressive crowd that included my friends and colleagues Councillors Jon Hardy and Paul Fisher was already gathering.

The afternoon event had been masterminded jointly by the Tenant Participation Officers at Hounslow Homes and by HFTRA (chaired by Julie Brooker, pictured above). Its purpose was to bolster participation in the lives of our communities by hard-to-reach groups who, for whatever reason, often find themselves left out of the business of the established tenants' and residents' associations on our estates.

It has to be said that in almost every instance the exclusion of these hard-to-reach groups, in particular newly-arrived communities, is entirely unintentional. People new to our estates, to Hounslow and to the country may understandably feel overawed and a little reticent about joining their local tenants' group, which usually tends to comprise a relatively small number of people who know and have been working with each other for many years. For their part those established groups may desire to reach out and embrace those who are new to their communities, but are unfamiliar with the cultures concerned and sometimes do not know how. If this stalemate is not broken, the association soon becomes unrepresentative of the people it serves and seriously negative implications for Community Cohesion begin to develop.

So the purpose of Better Together was to try to break through those barriers by bringing established tenants' leaders and representatives from hard-to-reach communities together, to introduce one to the other, and to celebrate - appropriately, on St. George's Day - our common citizenship and those things that unite us as tenants and indeed as human beings (please click here for some earlier thoughts of mine on this particular concept).

As Lead Member I have long argued that a powerful tenants' movement on our estates and in our communities is singularly the best vehicle there is for improving Community Cohesion. People and groups of people who are unfamiliar with each other and possibly even a little fearful suddenly discover that the problems which concern them in their everyday lives are the same problems which concern their new neighbours. When residents are brought together to discuss these problems, barriers just disintegrate before everybody's eyes.

By some this message was never completely grasped. To others it represented a threat, because it meant that improved Community Cohesion came about only by virtue of an empowered tenants' movement, which has a propensity to ask awkward questions and to make demands that are sometimes incompatible with the path of least resistance and a quiet life, and always incompatible with the control agenda favoured by some.

What inspired, enthused and excited me about Better Together wasn't just the massive turnout (250-300 people), the excellent food or the wonderful dancing. It was the fact that here was a really radical initiative to empower tenants by aggressively promoting cohesion that had been organised by Hounslow Homes and HFTRA, not only without any pressure from me but even without my knowledge! It wasn't simply like receiving a surprise birthday present, it was the pair of socks that I'd always wanted.

I cannot describe my feeling of sheer satisfaction at having witnessed such an event being driven by Hounslow Homes and HFTRA, two groups of people who had fought me tenaciously thoughout every minute of the Hounslow Homes Management Review in 2006 as I ploughed on stubbornly with my plans to improve and democratise the process of Tenant Participation in our borough. Back then some harsh words were spoken. I hope and believe that much of the innocent mistrust that had inspired the opposition to me back then has since melted away, but in the overall scheme of things that is not really that important. What is most important that even those who would still probably like to see the back of me next year are now singing from the same democratic hymnsheet. I feel I can declare with supreme confidence at long last that it is now official - working together really is better!

An engaging day at the office

One meeting either side of lunch had me effectively marooned at the Civic Centre for most of the working day today, and both of them impacted greatly on the Community Group's drive to engage the communities we serve.

Before lunch I accompanied the indefatigable Christine Diwell, Secretary of The Isleworth Society (TIS), at a lengthy meeting with a senior officer of the council to discuss a matter of serious import to the Isleworth & Brentford Area Committee (IBAC), of which she is a co-opted member.

It is by no means unknown to me that there are still officers who resent having to interact with and explain themselves to "ordinary" members of the community - be it TIS, MRAG or whoever - but at a council which takes Community Empowerment seriously this mindset is shortly to change, drastically and for the better. Following a long discussion Christine and I were able to gain a better understanding of the issue at hand, and at the same time were able to express some valid concerns about process.

Then after lunch I had the pleasure of a frank hour-long discussion with two ladies who were part of a team provided by the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) to help assess our approach to Community Engagement as a local authority. The team will be interviewing councillors from across the political spectrum who volunteer to take part in the project, and its findings will be published in a few weeks' time.

It will be interesting to have an outside perspective on what we already do to consult and include the people who elected us to office in the process of local government, and how we can improve things in this respect. Any advice received will be fed into what already looks to be shaping up as an exciting and innovative programme under the portfolio of my Community Group colleague Councillor Paul Fisher.

I am very much looking forward to the year ahead and to the opportunities which at last seem to be falling into place to change the culture of our local authority and engage with our communities in a way that we've never done before.

Community Empowerment - a National Conversation

On Wednesday I attended an event at the RFU Stadium in Twickenham in the company of Eileen Gladwell from Tenant Participation at Hounslow Homes, and Julie Brooker, Chair of the Hounslow Federation of Tenants' and Leaseholders Associations (HFTRA).

The event had been organised by the government-owned Tenant Services Authority (TSA), and was part of a roadshow organised by same under the title The National Conversation.

This particular conversation, it would seem, is about raising standards of service for tenants, be they with a local authority, an ALMO, a co-op or a housing association. So far so good, but what is particularly appealing about the project is that the TSA appears to recognise that delivering service improvements must necessarily run alongside a far more deep and meaningful engagement with tenants than is currently the case in most areas.

To this end the two-hour session concentrated largely on discussing what community engagement and participation actually mean.

Many of those present were themselves representatives of tenants' organisations, and I have to say that what really struck me was what little understanding many of these people actually had of the core principle of tenant participation. I formed the view that whilst many of them had achieved a good working relationship with their own landlords, the extent of the relationship that many of them retained with the very people they were supposed to be representing was often questionable.

It is too easy to conclude that a landlord has a good understanding of the needs of its tenant base because it enjoys a good relationship with a handful of individuals who have climbed to the top of the tree (itself often planted by the landlord) of the local tenants' movement. But in this modern day and age, there are a raft of alternative mechanisms available through which closer contact can be maintained by the landlord with the tenants themselves, whilst retaining the traditional structures through which the tenants' elected representatives can negotiate with them. We need to be thinking intelligently about complimenting, not replacing, existing channels of engagement.

Am I suspicious that such a forward-looking initiative could have emanated from a New Labour government? Of course I am. But let us accept this apparently excellent initiative at face value until it proves to be otherwise.

Reflections on the seamless rise of a community movement

One thought that obviously taxes me from time to time is where the ICG goes from here.

Perhaps as a statement that sounds more pessimistic than I had intended it to. But let us take stock of the situation as it stands, and visitors will perhaps form a better idea of where I’m coming from. Much of what I’m about to say has been said before, in different situations and sometimes to different audiences. But if the topic is to be considered fully, it is necessary at times to revisit it all the same.

The history of the ICG since its formation in 1994 has been one of unrelenting progress. Membership and public support has continually improved, to the point now where in the town of Isleworth at least practically everyone who is interested in building a strong and united community is already on board. The four statutory local elections which we have contested have seen us develop from unsuccessful protest vote (unsuccessful because nobody listened to the protest, hence our continued electoral involvement), to one councillor elected to "pariah" status (thanks, Pat!) by a two-vote margin, to three councillors elected into opposition with large majorities, to six councillors also with large majorities becoming partners in a coalition administration.

We took the Executive posts we had wanted, and drove changes through in accordance with our commitment to empowering communities. Councillor Paul Fisher, as Lead Member for Community Engagement, has been a revelation. Work is underway which will drastically alter the way in which we engage with residents and their associations, and reprogram the mindset that has been allowed to prevail for so long.

Under the auspices of my Housing portfolio I have set a similar process in motion on our social housing estates after having spent my first year spelling out to a horrified political establishment in Housing how it was going to be through the vehicle of the Hounslow Homes Management Review. I have also now established a helpful channel of communication with our Registered Social Landlords with a view to encouraging them to work more closely with their tenants and to improving tenant involvement.

With my Community Safety hat on I have worked closely with both Paul and with the Leader, Councillor Peter Thompson, to help drive a robust and respected Community Cohesion program which has, I think, finally grasped the paradox that is diversities and equalities. In this work I have been blessed with an absolutely superb driven and enthusiastic team of officers who for so long had to pay mere lip service to a cause about which they clearly feel passionately.

But for the first time our future may now lie outside our own hands. The next local elections fall in May 2010, and as I see it there are any one of three possible outcomes – a return to a New Labour administration, the election of a Conservative administration or the return of another coalition in which we may or may not have a role to play.

I feel with the benefit of hindsight that I at least, and maybe some of my colleagues also, underestimated the amount of time it would take to change the culture of the borough. Four years is a long time when it is ahead of you, it is but the blinking of an eye when it has passed.

Let me not overstate the severity of the dilemma. The ICG has achieved a million times more than any of us had imagined possible in 1994, when we’d almost certainly have settled for a private acknowledgement from the local political establishment at the time that the community would be allowed to become more engaged than had previously been the case, and even then I’m speaking only about the community in our humble little village rather than the borough. Events since that time have catapulted us into a position we never envisaged being in. But we are here now, and we want to use it to the maximum benefit of our wider community.

For me we need another four years – at least – to cement the changes that we are making in a way that they could never be reversed. Our preference, of course, would be to convince all concerned that better community engagement is a good thing and not something to be frightened of, so that a future Labour administration (and there will probably be one some day) would not even want to move things back to the bad old ways. But that is still for the future – there are sadly no signs at all of it happening yet.

Would an administration in which we weren’t involved continue to drive this process through to where it needs to be? Obviously New Labour wouldn’t. That much was made clear when they opposed our plan to give our tenants a say in how £4m of their own money should be spent. Would the Conservatives? I like to think they would, they have after all been supportive of our aims as partners in coalition. But would they prioritise it? Maybe, maybe not. They have, after all, a program of their own to deliver.

Assuming that the ICG is involved again, I hope the voters of Isleworth and of Syon give us the opportunity to finish the job. But, for the first time, our ability to do so now also depends on the voters in other wards, in which we have no influence.

For their part, the Labour Party have made it clear that they would prefer an all-out Conservative administration to a coalition that included the ICG. A strange position to take for a party that has its historical roots in socialism, some would argue. But those residents on our estates who have been the victims of local Labour's obsessive meddling and control-freakery in the past would not be among them.