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.

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.

New Isleworth and Syon councillors "at the top table"

If I have read this article correctly it would appear that new Labour councillors Theo Dennison and Ed Mayne, who represent Syon and Isleworth wards respectively, have been appointed to serve on the London Borough of Hounslow's new Executive.

Whilst I criticised the last Labour administration for nominating first-time councillors with no experience to the local authority's most senior committee, responsible as it is for most of its decision making, the selection of two local members will at least hopefully ensure that our wards are not forgotten. I believe both of them have what it takes to stand up to their colleagues where necessary and to ensure that Syon and Isleworth receive their fair share of services and resources. I was particularly impressed by Ed's intelligence, humility and enthusiasm when I chatted with him at the election count last week. He is a decent young man and deserves the chance that he has been given.

It is also good to see that Councillor Jagdish Sharma has been given the opportunity to lead the Labour Group and the Council after having been in a position of responsibility for such a very long time. With the re-election of John Chatt and Colin Ellar many feared there would be an unseemly scramble for the top job, which doesn't appear to have materialised.

In the Tory camp Councillor Peter Thompson has "retired from frontline politics" and has stood down as Leader of the Conservative Group. I like to believe I enjoyed a good relationship with Peter based both on personal chemistry and mutual respect and I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his support during the last administration and for the frank and honest discussions and also one or two laughs that we had along the way. He is replaced by Councillor Mark Bowen, who was sadly unsuccessful in his efforts to topple Alan Keen in Feltham & Heston at the general election and whom I consider a good friend.

If I haven't found myself a proper job by then I might look in from time to time when all the new and not so new players are exchanging banter across the floor of the Council Chamber.

ICG raises the game on Community Engagement

A lot has been happening politically in the ten days or so since I last blogged, but probably nothing so significant as the Report carried through Executive by Councillor Paul Fisher on Tuesday which put the meat on the bones of the successful Motion on Community Empowerment put to Borough Council by the Community Group back in July.

The Report introduced the findings of the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) who had been commissioned towards the end of 2008 to look into Hounslow's general approach to the subject of Community Engagement. Engagement is, of course, one of those all-embracing buzz words that is used by councils of all political complexions but actually understood in its proper sense by few. To many it is an unnecessary and unwelcome distraction in which boxes have to be ticked before a piece of work can be done. What it actually is in its true sense however is a recognition that as members and officers our role is to offer the services to local people that they actually require from us.

Not wishing to cramp Paul's style I watched the meeting at home on the webcast and was amused by the tempered protests of one Executive member who complained that the Report had undertones of New Labour. Those of us who came together in an Isleworth pub in 1994 and who have been fighting ever since for our community to be elevated to its rightful place in the collective mindset of the local authority machine would not associate this project with New Labour, of all people, in a million years. Empowerment is about taking elitism and control-freakery out of our local politics.

There is a discussion still to be had about the developing role of Area Committees, which was lifted from the Report as it was felt it was a subject deserving of a separate discussion in its own right, however with this Report having been given the nod the dynamic is clearly for more local democracy, not less.

Paul's excellent Report was just the lastest manifestation of the Community Group's determination to have all the most significant aspects of its political programme incorporated into the process before the May 2010 local elections. Its passing was a massive development in the relentless onward march towards a people-focused council in Hounslow.

Persisting to apply common sense

Although I am no longer a member of the London Borough of Hounslow's Executive, as Leader of the Community Group I naturally keep a keen eye on the recommendations that come forward for approval. One which caught my eye prior to last night's meeting was proposed by the Deputy Leader of the Council and Executive Member for Complaints Mark Bowen and was entitled Dealing with Abusive, Vexatious or Persistent Complainants.

Now it hopefully goes without saying that if a member of the public is abusive towards officers of the local authority, or makes complaints which are clearly vexatious, there must be a point at which we can reasonably terminate our dealings with such a complainant. Our officers should not be expected to put up with abuse, insults or obscenities, and we make no apology for protecting them from such. Most large organisations have a policy of this kind, and much of the report which was brought to Executive concentrated on ratifying what was essentially the obvious and the indisputable.

However my attention was drawn to the reference to "Persistent Complainants", as this as a concept is not so easy to define. A complainant might, for instance, make the same complaint repeatedly despite it being self-evidently unreasonable or not upheld following a proper investigation. It is right that at some point we as organisation need to be able to say that enough is enough and discontinue a conversation that has clearly run its course.

On the other hand a persistent complainant could of course be someone who makes a series of different but nonetheless valid complaints, possibly acting on behalf of a residents' group or civic society. Or a person who, having not received a proper answer to a first complaint, pursues the matter in the hope of achieving appropriate closure.

One fairly recent example of the latter was a correspondent from the Mogden Residents' Action Group (MRAG), who had to ask a question of a senior officer thirteen times before he would provide a substantive answer. Even after councillor intervention the officer continued either to evade the question or, on other occasions, to ignore it completely. Under such circumstances the MRAG representative could not in all good sense be labelled a persistent complainant and cut adrift from the process - indeed the officer should have been disciplined by his seniors, who had been copied in to most of the correspondence.

Councillor Bowen, probably more than any other elected member, is a tenacious advocate of the member-led council. Nevertheless even the most competent batsman can be bowled out as a result of a momentary lapse in concentration, and so my ICG colleague Councillor Jon Hardy proposed an amendment to the recommendation which ensured that the relevant ward councillors, together with the Lead Member himself, would be given prior notice before the extreme and, I would hope, exceptional step of discontinuing communication with a complainant would be taken. The amendment was accepted.

To make doubly sure - and I hope I am not breaching any confidences by sharing this - I contacted Councillor Bowen this afternoon and he agreed with me that this power would not be allowed to be misused to silence genuine complainants, even those whose correspondence is frequent or challenging.

So, anybody within the organisation who might have had ideas about using the approval of this report against community activists and representatives of such groups as MRAG or The Isleworth Society (TIS) would do well to disavow themselves of them right now. To do so would effectively be a declaration of non co-operation with the Community Group and as such an unacceptable challenge to the authority of the coalition administration.

This recommendation was a sensible one, but requires sensible implementation. My colleagues in the community can be assured that for at least as long as we have anything to do with it this principle will be applied at all times.

Brave Alison reminds us all, it's People who are the real celebrities

There have been a few events over the last week or so that ordinarily I would have blogged about. The superb and well-attended event hosted at All Saints' Church by The Isleworth Society (TIS) to launch a new panoramic web feature about the Isleworth riverside. A council Executive meeting on Tuesday at which, amongst other things, Councillor Paul Fisher was able to bring some long awaited relief to some of our small traders who are suffering the effects of recession by reducing parking charges on vulnerable shopping parades. Some ongoing issues surrounding Mogden, including the provision of funding by the Executive for 24-hour monitoring and confirmation by the Leader of the Council that the residents have his full support in their battles with Thames Water and the reverberations that that unambiguous announcement undoubtedly had in the corridors and offices of Hounslow Civic Centre, where unhelpful power games have been played out in recent weeks.

For whatever reason none of these events, although milestones in their own right, made it to these pages. This was very possibly a consequence of me being emotionally distracted by the untimely passing of my friend and former next-door neighbour Alison Cole (above) at the tragically young age of 39.

Alison was the youngest daughter of Pat Cole, who as a child was my mother's closest friend and who many years later, until very recently, held the post of Deputy Chair of the ICG for some years. In recent months Pat and the leadership of the Group had become slightly estranged, a thing which was entirely our fault but never intentional as we all wrestled with the incredible demands on our time and energy of being so few involved closely - and disproportionately - in the everyday business of running a local authority, but she has remained a friend and colleague and we are all passionately determined to make up for past omissions.

When Alison was born in 1969 her family lived next door to us in Chestnut Grove, where they stayed for many years before moving to a slightly larger property around the corner in Worple Road. Even as a very small child she exhibited that lovable cheekiness which was to stay with her and become her trademark in later life. I recall one evening enjoying a pint at the Victoria Tavern with her older brother Ian and a few other local guys when Alison, then probably about fifteen, came into the pub and stood defiantly with us. Ian, very much a youngster himself at the time, did not want his kid sister with him, cramping his style. "I know you want me to leave," announced Alison, sensing his discomfort. "It's going to cost you a pound."

Alison left the pub very shortly afterwards, a pound richer.

Despite knowing of her illness (she was diagnosed in her twenties with cardiomyopathy - an enlarged heart), Alison was always chirpy and invariably raised the spirits of all those in her company. She could be as blunt and impudent as she liked without any fear that anybody would take offence. The style of delivery was perfected in such a way that anything she said was accepted with good humour, and raised a laugh.

It is always, naturally, done to say nice things about somebody who has passed and to comment upon how unique and special they were. This to some extent makes it more difficult for me stress convincingly how unique and special Alison really was. And yet, reflecting upon those all around who are still with us (as one invariably does at such times), I can think of nobody around me who replicates or replaces Alison's own unique qualities.

Any who would challenge this only have to consider the size of the crowd that turned out at Mortlake Crematorium for Alison's funeral. Several hundred people lined the route to the chapel. Only the lucky ones actually got in, many more took part in the proceedings as best they could from outside. Friends from around Isleworth, people I knew but had no idea that Alison was close to also, people from my old primary school and elsewhere from my dim and distant past, old neighbours and current neighbours, even one of my cousins - from Hanworth - was there. It seems that Alison was a part of almost everybody's life in this community.

I doubt whether there is a single politician or "face" who graces the pages of our local newspapers from one week to the next whose passing would be marked by so many people. We will always remember Alison with fondness, but beyond that it would pay us to remember that this world is made what is by people, often unsung, and not just those of us more given to singing our own praises.