One Down, Three To Go

I watched the webcast of the all-important meeting of Borough Council on Tuesday night, where the annual budget for the London Borough of Hounslow for the financial year 2011/12 was set.

Actually I watched most of the meeting. Having planned to watch the whole thing I initially forgot about it, perhaps betraying my declining interest in some of these things, and tuned in at about 8.15. My guess is that the substantive debate would have begun about fifteen minutes or so before that time.

My first sense was one of amusement not only at how seamlessly the poachers had apparently morphed into the gamekeepers, but at how equally untroubled the former gamekeepers seemed to be in playing the role of poachers.

During the Conservative/ICG administration of 2006-2010 (the last eighteen months or so of which could more accurately have been described as the Conservative/Chief Officer administration due to the fact that unelected employees were quite shamefully permitted to engage in open warfare with the junior partner in the coalition) the Labour opposition criticised the administration for making cuts to services, and the administration would defend its savings on the grounds of necessity. Now the roles were reversed, and the Conservative opposition lobbied passionately for the retention of essential frontline services such as the Chiswick Day Centre whilst the Labour leadership flitted between making light of the closure of such facilities for the vulnerable and blaming the government for making them do it.

Some of the faces were familiar. Councillor Adrian Lee, now Deputy Leader of the Conservative Group, can be relied upon to amuse and entertain whilst delivering his damning verdict about the shortcomings of "the party opposite". Councillor Gerald McGregor always does angry and indignant very well. Some references to the shameful closure of John Aird House in Brentford during the previous Labour administration of 2002-2006 had Labour reeling for a while, and the Deputy Leader of the Council Ruth Cadbury made a brave but wholly unconvincing defence of this particularly callous decision. For all their protestations about being there for the poor and needy the record in Hounslow shows quite clearly that said poor and needy are more likely to be picked off by a Labour administration that takes advantage of their vulnerability and relative defencelessness than by any other.

But I also sensed that not only had Labour regrouped and taken back "control" of the local authority, but also that the Group had much more about it than it had during its days in opposition. It had more professionalism, more competence, and exuded more of an authority than it had done during those (for them) lean and chaotic times.

More than this, to me it exuded more of a sense of responsibility. It was visibly less arrogant than it had been during those bad old days, when it had seemed to preen itself with its belief that it was in opposition solely because the electorate had lacked the sophistication, wit and intelligence to recognise the party's higher being and its general wonderfulness.

The Mayor handled the meeting very well, and fairly too, giving the opposition every chance to engage. The Leader of the Council, Jagdish Sharma, is always gentlemanly and magnanimous in his delivery. As I have said elsewhere, I was particularly impressed by Isleworth ward councillor Ed Mayne, whose frequent contributions were made with a confidence and coolness that belied his age and inexperience as he accepted and generally fended off the challenge from some quite senior Conservatives. I don't know if it sounds perverse of me to say this in the light of the fact that he won one of "our" seats in Isleworth, but I felt a strange sense of pride in the fact that an Isleworth councillor was performing so well. It is my view that Ed may well be leading the Labour Group in the not too distant future, that is if he doesn't go onto higher things before he gets the opportunity.

Comfortable in Opposition

My endearing memory though is of how comfortable, some would say natural, the Conservatives looked in opposition. They are invariably a good opposition, always challenging and probing, some of them making their case with eloquence and finesse. I have been taken to task for saying it before but I repeat my belief that many of them would appear happier being the minority party on a council comprising only "proper" councillors than they were when having to share power with a group of interlopers from the community who had dared to gatecrash the cosy set-up that had existed before the ICG kicked its way onto the scene. In this outlook they and Labour actually have a lot in common.

In a strictly local context the Labour councillors seem to understand already that the secret to their continued success lies in engaging and trying to win around the hardcore active community that abandoned their predecessors for the ICG, not without good reason I should add, in most cases probably a decade or so ago. Meanwhile said predecessors continue to try to undermine their efforts via the local internet forums, betraying a bitterness towards Labour's new kids on the block that almost equals their bitterness towards us.

These are interesting times. I don't envy the task of the current administration as it looks to find the £42m that it still needs to chop from the budget over the next three years in order to meet the shortfall from central government funding.

Far from being the irritant that some of our politicians would seem to consider it, the community has a more important role than ever to play in ensuring that the administration resists the temptation to look to our libraries and community facilities for some of that saving. If our new crop of politicians want to work with us, rather than against us, in that endeavour then the imperative for us to want to take their seats and do the job ourselves diminishes.

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.

Doing what we do best

Hounslow's six community councillors spend a tremendous amount of their time attending meetings and working for residents of the borough in ways which might not always be understood or recognised.

Amongst our number we have a Mayor, a Deputy Mayor, two Executive members, a Hounslow Homes Board Member, an Area Committee Chair, an Area Committee Vice Chair, Scrutiny Panel Chair and four Trustees of a local housing charity (yes, that does entail some doubling-up!).

It is not unknown for me to attend five, six, sometimes even seven meetings back-to-back with nary a break in-between for a bite to eat.

But none of this would be to any avail if we failed to remember why it was that the good people of Isleworth and Syon wards elected us to office in the first place.

The ICG has a proud history of militant activity on behalf of local residents. From the Worton Green campaign to Geco, the fight against Post Office closures, our campaigning on the Woodlands, the Holiday Inn demo, the successful work we did to improve the 267 bus service, the protests against New Labour's callous closure of the John Aird House residential care home and of course our ongoing work with residents over the odour and mosquito problems inflicted on us by Thames Water's Mogden plant, the ICG has consistently led the way.

So when Councillor Caroline Andrews (above left), my wife and one of the three elected members for Syon ward, called a meeting of residents from Smallberry Avenue to try to get some action over the ongoing issue of the fencing (or lack of it) at the rear of their properties, some of us felt a warming sense of deja vu.

Rather than book a hall, Caroline figured that with the nice weather we could probably get away with calling residents out into the cul-de-sac for a street meeting. The police were advised lest we be confronted by hordes of angry demonstrators. The offending developer, Bellway Homes, was also invited, as was a planning officer from the London Borough of Hounslow. Neither attended, but more on that at a later date.

The meeting had been called for 6.30 pm. At 6.32, Caroline and I were standing like two spare parts on the corner of the street, watching doors and windows for any sign of life. Then two residents' representatives from Primrose Place arrived to join us, and the four of us embarked upon another five minutes or so of nervous curtain-watching. Was this really such a big issue to local residents? Had we been wasting our time?

And then the weirdest thing happened. About half a dozen front doors opened more or less simultaneously, and the residents who had evidently been lurking behind them emerged as one onto the street. Then another half dozen, then more. The residents instinctively walked in small groups of two, three and four down towards to alley at the bottom of the road. What had looked like a ghost town only two or three minutes earlier now resembled a march. In all, nearly thirty residents from this small street gathered under the watchful eye of three local police officers, who joined in with the banter and fun.

Those present quickly agreed on a proposed solution to their problems, and an ad-hoc committee of representatives was formed to engage with local councillors and the developer. We assured residents that a more proactive and supportive attitude from our planners would be forthcoming, and that we were confident of achieving our objectives through one means or through another. Everybody went home relatively happy, and Caroline and I politely declined more than one invitation to join residents at their homes for a cup of tea or something stronger, although on another occasion I'm sure we'll have more time.

This little activity, for me, served to remind me of why I decided to involve myself in local community politics in the first place. Street activism, working constructively and as one with our people at the grass roots. It's what we've always done best.