Lewinson Centre Library Mural

Although I have featured a picture of the Willesden Green Mural at the old Library, I haven't pictured its counterpart at the Lewinson Centre (above).  I think it is pretty eye catching and should help draw people in off Willesden High Road.  Certainly, it is infinitely preferable to the blank wall that was there before.

Some pictures of the creation of the mural can be found here.

Street Tree Schemes

I have had a lot of queries about street trees following my post on trees in Kilburn.  Street tree planting is more complicated than it might seem, as I suggested here.

The scheme I was referring to was ward working, which gives local councillors a small budget to deal with local community needs.  The simplest way to raise this as an issue is probably a direct approach to your local councillors.  Their details are here.  They can then liaise with their local ward working officer to see if there are areas in the ward that they want to plant more trees in.  The actual decision whether or not to do so rests with the ward councillors.

Possible sources of funding include ward working funds, TfL funds and planning gain.

Further Photos of the Willesden Library Mural

I see that Positive Arts have provided some photos of the creation of the mural on the site of the former Willesden Library (now being rebuilt) that I blogged on previously. They can be found here.

Brent's Unsung Sports Centres

A consultation has been launched into possible future options for the Bridge Park Sports Centre in Stonebridge.  Nothing can be guaranteed for this site, but it reminds me of all the good work that is proceeding in Brent's Sports Centres despite the collossal financial challenges.  Let's just go through them:

A) Moberly Sports Centre is going through a major expansion and rebuild.  Although this is a Westminster facility, Brent residents will have access at the same concessionary rates as at any other Brent sports centre.
B) The contract for Vale Farm Sports Centre has been relet at a greatly reduced running cost, and with capital investment of almost £2 million to improve it.
C) The Charteris Sports Centre remains in use as a sports centre with community access outside school hours.
D) There remains the possibility of a privately financed swimming pool in the Wembley area, if the private sector pushes the project forward.  Such a centre in Tokyngton would be available to Brent residents at the same rates as other Brent Sports Centres.
E) The Willesden Sports Centre continues to thrive having been completely rebuilt under a PFI scheme by the previous Labour administration in 2006.

This is on top of a number of smaller projects around Brent parks.

Altogether it seems to me a pretty impressive record of progress despite the biggest financial cut backs ever seen in the history of Brent.

Library Management Models

The ongoing controversy over Lincolnshire's library plans causes me to reflect on the various models of fulfilling the statutory library duty that are now available.  As I see these fall into the following options:

1) The Lincolnshire approach of minimalist provision.  As far as I know, Lincolnshire is the only authority that is aiming for the absolute minimum that they can get away with, although it is quite a logical approach if you adhere to a Tory ideology of minimal government.

2) Hollowing out.  I argued before that this is the main alternative to the Brent model.  It has been adopted by a number of authorities, although I expect largely by default rather than conscious reasoning.  One example is in the Wirral, where it appears to have been the default option after the famous Charteris Enquiry, a fact not often pointed out by campaigners.

3) A third option is the Suffolk model, which is unique to that county as far as I can see, and which in my opinion exposes that authority to potential liabilities.

4) Similar to this is the creation of an independent trust.  I first came across this idea in Falkirk, but it has been widely adopted elsewhere.  The main financial saving you get from this approach is avoiding business rates.  I am not sure what the situation is in Scotland, but business rates in England are now localised so an authority that takes this route will cut expenditure in paying business rates, but then lose the equivalent amount in revenue, so I would imagine fewer authorities will be taking it up in future.

5) Trusts can be a vehicle for privatisation.  They don't have to be, as they can effectively be publicly owned, rather like a housing ALMO.  However, this is a route being taken in Harrow and Ealing.  Privatisation obviously makes things less flexible for the future as management is determined by the terms of the contract, and it may be possible to vary a contract by agreement.  I don't see that the private sector are really likely to be more efficient than public sector managers per se, although they may be less subject to political control.

6) There is the Big Society approach, which many people suspect is just a slow motion closure programme.  Certainly, I am not convinced that this generates substantial savings, and it may generate further demands for money and other forms of support from the supposedly independent partners.

Finally, there is the Brent model of concentrating on high quality services from a smaller number of buildings, which I prefer.

Misleading the Public

Paul Krugman cites some data that many Americans who benefit from Medicare simply don't realise that it is a government programme.  It is common for the British to adopt superior airs when hearing such stories, but I suspect we have a similar blind spot.

Much of the Tory Party's success in demonising people who take benefits comes from their success in portraying such people as an unsavoury underclass who take benefits as a way of living and never contribute.  In fact, most people who depend on benefits are people on low pay or pensioners, not the semi-criminals that the Daily Mail would have us all believe.  I have spoken to people who are themselves on benefits who very much want benefits to be cut, because they believe that are not on benefits and never will be.  It is similar, but perhaps even more striking than, the similar myth that income tax is the only form of tax that counts, and that people who do not pay income tax are not taxpayers.

Street Trees in Kilburn

The comment on my recent post on regenerating Kilburn High Road pleads for more street trees in Kilburn.  There is a scheme that might provide these, and I have passed the comment on to the Kilburn councillors.  The same scheme can be used for providing street trees any where in the Borough.  Last year it contributed to the seventy street trees planted in Kensal Green, for example.

I have long been an advocate of street trees.  Charles is absolutely right in pointing out the advantages in terms of shade, slowing down water flow, improving air quality, making streets look better and mitigating the heat island effect.

Specifically in Kilburn, I know that BEST (Brent Eleven Streets) has been effective in promoting street trees at the southern end of Willesden Lane, and some of the streets off Kilburn High Road, such as Brondesbury Road have historically had a lot of street trees.  The dearth in Kilburn has always struck me as being more at the South Kilburn end.  Hopefully, the number of trees will be increased as South Kilburn regenerates.

Entry to Harlesden Town Centre

The improvements to Station Approach mean that we now have a route into Harlesden Town Centre, where you can walk over the improved Station Approach, the improved bridge and up the improved Station Road to Harlesden Town Centre where improvement work is still being done.

It has taken a lot of effort, but I think that is quite a lot of improvement.

Living Walls

The completion of London's biggest living wall was recently announced.  The publicity surrounding such projects is often about how "green" and sustainable they are, but I do wonder how true this is.  Moving a large amount of soil in and putting it in a vertical framework, presumably with some sort of artificial irrigation system does not strike me as an especially sustainable approach.  I am sure it must reduce surface water flooding in the immediate area, but it seems an immensely elaborate way to do so.

More Progress on Car Clubs

A German company appears to be driving further progress in car clubs.  Car2go offer minute by minute rental, unlike the hourly rental currently prevalent?  You also supposed to be able to park them anywhere in a home zone, and use them without pre-booking.  I can certainly imagine the greater flexibility being attractive to many people.

It surprises me therefore that they claim London is actually quite difficult to break into.  Brent, following Labour's election in 2010, has (I thought) an extremely pro car club policy.  We encourage the use of car club cars by Brent employees.  More strikingly, we allow car club cars to park anywhere within a CPZ.  This seemed such a huge advantage when we introduced it along with emission based permits in 2011, that I was worried it would lead to enormous congestion.  That does not appear to have happened however,

The advantages of car clubs are enormous.  They cut congestion by reducing the numbers of vehicles.    They reduce pollution by encouraging forms of transport other than the car.  They cut the cost to the car user enormously.

I am convinced that they will be seen as a major part of London's transport solutions in a few years time.

The Importance of Air Quality Monitoring

The Guardian gives an example of central government running down public services gradually, in the proposal to remove requirements for air quality monitoring.  It is worth going through the steps that bit by bit damage and eventually destroy the public good in this case, as it is fairly typical.

1) Demonise public services as red tape and bureaucracy.  This can be done by a number of often spurious or misleading stories of waste or extravagance presented as typical of local democracy.  As anyone familiar with the pronouncements of Eric Pickles knows, they can be highly misleading or even totally untrue.  The end result is that public spending start to be seen as automatically bad.
2) Remove the need for "non essential" services that actually underpin wider services.  In this case, any effective measures against polluters will become impossible because there will be no legal evidence to back it up, and tackling air quality in general will become more difficult as there will be less evidence to make a business/political case for intervention.
3) Create a financial crisis in institutions so that make short term cuts even at the expense of longer term goals.

The short term effects in Brent of cuts to air quality monitoring will be to make it even more difficult to take action on Neasden Goods Yard, one of the worst air pollution sites in London.  The Environment Agency tends to drag its feet on enforcement on this site anyway.  Without a record of air quality measurements maintained over time, there would not be a basis for legal action.

The longer term effect of not monitoring the high level pollution of parts of Brent would be to reduce the pressure for measures to improve air quality, particularly regarding transport emissions.

Another job well done for Eric Pickles.

More Government Housing Failure

More evidence of the government's failures on housing comes from the Liberal Democrat comments on housing standards.  The shrinking size of UK housing (and the long term shrinkage quoted in the Guardian report is truly shocking) is now being driven by the lack of supply.  This also leads to the beds in sheds phenomenon and overcrowding in legitimate housing.  In turn, pushing far too many people in to sub standard housing has awful knock on effects in health, economic productivity, quality of life, pressures on public services and even crime.

Meanwhile George Osborne's help to buy simply pushes up prices without increasing housing supply.   The "help to buy" phrase really applies to him buying the next election.

Regeneration and Kilburn High Road

A while ago I did a post on regeneration of Willesden High Road.  I think that even some fairly modest improvements could bring it up to a much better standard, but an even more obvious candidate is Kilburn High Road.

Kilburn High Road is supposed to be one of Brent's two district shopping centres, but it has no real plans to do anything with it at present.  This is a shame as it has three potential draws to bring people in from a wide area.  They are the Tricycle Theatre, the church in the old cinema and the market near the Cock Tavern.  The Tricycle I think is very successful and really going places in renewing itself.  The church I think has potential to draw lots of people to the area, but there is a real danger that they will go away again without really engaging.  The market seems to me to need to rethink what it's USP is, as the current range of stalls strikes me as quite limited.

In terms of what Brent Council can do, I think there are two main things.  One would be to set up a proper relationship with Camden.  There is occasional LP service to this idea, but it needs a more permanent arrangement, perhaps like the joint Welsh Harp Committee Brent shares with Barnet.

The second is a big improvement in the public realm to reduce congestion and improve the walk ability of the area for pedestrians.  I don't see any prospect of the kind of major scheme underway in Harlesden Town Centre, but more modest and incremental improvements should be possible.

UPDATE

Always good to meet another street tree supporter.  I have put some more details here.

Eric Pickles and the Disappearing Weekly Collections

I saw a press report on Saturday making more claims about rubbish collections.  It struck me as the latest stage in Eric Pickles mendacious campaign on the subject.  Before we get to it, let's do a quick reminder about alternate weekly collections.

Councils like alternate weekly collections because they greatly increase the amount of recycling collections.  This helps reduce the amount sent to landfill, which is hideously expensive and becoming more so.  Landfill waste is also a big producer of methane, a leading greenhouse gas, since it has a high proportion of food waste which rots in the ground.  Recycling waste, by contrast, can actually generate money as under some deals, companies are willing to pay for such raw materials.

Alternate weekly collections are therefore widely used by Councils of all political colours, including (since 2011) Brent.

Eric Pickles was going to change all that.  Despite austerity, he found £250 million to try to pay Councils to reintroduce weekly collections and therefore send more waste to landfill.  Here is the Daily Mail spin at the time.

Since it cost far more to take Eric Pickles' bribe than refuse it, most Councils refused.

 A furious Eric Pickles threatened to force councils to adopt his favoured vanity project.  So much for localism.  Of course, many of these authorities are Tory run.

Which brings me back to the Saturday article.  It looks like the Eric Pickles lie machine has finally realised that real life is going to win.  Alternate weekly collections are just a far more effective form of rubbish collection, a much better deal for the taxpayer, and much better for the environment.  Rather than plead mea culpa, what does he do?

Blame Europe.

Instead of admitting that he has been scaremongering and misleading all this time, he is now pretending it is all down to the EU, which is now said to be forcing alternate weekly collections.

How typically dishonest.

Presumably the latest remarks on bin housing are a further distraction technique.  Since it is well known that adequate rubbish disposal is part of the planning process already.

Shanice at the Civic Centre

One of the more surprising technological innovations in Brent's civic centre is here.   She is part of Brent's registration and nationality service.

UPDATE

I note that this has become subject to a typically ill informed and ill thought out comment by the Liberal Democrats via Cllr Alison Hopkins.  Aside from the knee jerk opposition to new technology, she characteristically ignores the coatings.  The one off cost of a hologram is £12k; an "apprentice" would need not only to be trained but presumably even the Liberal Democrats would expect s/he to be given an ongoing salary.

Barnet And Parking Case

Barnet recently had a case awarded against it for excessive parking charges in CPZs.  I am still thinking about how this might impact on Brent.  There seems to be a case that Barnet was nakedly pursuing money raising in a way Brent has not, but the reporting does not differentiate between penalty notices and general fees.

Improved Road Surface at Willesden Junction Station Approach

My final before and after photo of Station Approach shows the worn out road surface that buses passed over.  The new surface, which is to a much higher standard is below.  Altering the camber of the road has also reduced the ponding issues.

George Monbiot on Street Trees

George Monbiot has been writing about street trees.  Whilst I am glad he is raising the profile of the subject, I am struck that he seems to ignore some issues that many local authorities regard as central.

Chief among them is insurance.  For Councils like Brent this is one of the major factors in street tree management.  Species like London Plane can grow to a huge size, and their roots start to undermine people's houses.  Insurance companies then have a valid claim against the tree owner, the Council in the case of a street tree.  Once a successful claim is made for one tree in a street, it is frequently followed by a cluster of similar claims in the same area.  Avoiding the expense of such claims is a major factor for Councils.

A second issue he seems to underestimate is the difficulty of planting trees sustainably.  Urban environments are distinctly unfriendly to trees with paved areas depriving them of water, pollution especially from traffic, high temperatures in Summer and so on.  Finding tree species robust enough to cope needs specialist knowledge.  I don't know whether the species list used by our own contractor Gristwood and Toms is the best one, but the point is that you need an arboriculturalist to make a judgement.

The third issue that occurs to me is the practical one of uniformity.  As well as encouraging biodiversity, a variety of different species should make the tree stock less vulnerable to particular diseases such as ash tree dieback.  Those are obviously important advantages. However, Councils also have to look after very large numbers of trees.  In Brent's case we have about 27,000 street trees spread over about 480km of streets.  Treating each tree as an individual sounds lovely but entails great expense.  For such a large number of trees, you realistically need a more standardised approach for cost reasons.

The Guardian version of his article also carries a lot of comments lamenting the supposed negative effects of budget reductions on biodiversity.  I actually think the opposite is true.  Brent has systematically changed its planting regime in parks in the past three years.  I have been advised that this is better for biodiversity overall.  I must admit that aesthetically I preferred the kind of flowerbeds you used to have at the entrance to Roundwood Park, but in terms of biodiversity those flowerbeds were not especially rich.  They were also expensive to plant and maintain, and very water thirsty.

Harlesden Incinerator Decision Deferred

Last night, Ealing deferred making a decision on the Harlesden Incinerator proposal, largely because of fear relating to air quality.  I would regard this as a minor victory in what may well turn out to be a long war.

UPDATE

As I have pointed out before, the proposed West London waste facility is not situated in the immediate neighbourhood of residential housing.  It is sited on an old chemicals works.

One Barnet Propaganda

The Guardian seem to have fallen for a propaganda line being out out in support of the One Barnet privatisation.  The original article was followed up by another from one of the leading consultant firms in the contract.

All this looks way too smart for the hapless Barnet Tories.  It looks as if the powerful corporate interests involved have decided they need to popularise the idea of large scale privatisation.  The main problems with the One Barnet approach are:

1) It locks the Council into a relationship with one supplier for a vast range of services for a long period.  Whoever wins the Council in 2014 will be bound by the contracts just signed.  Unless Capita have been very foolish, they will have all sorts of provisions to protect their profit margins.  Any new administration will find it hard to more than tinker with the arrangements.  For example, if a future Labour administration wanted to introduce a Living Wage arrangement, I imagine Capita could simply say no.

2). The contract covers such a broad range of services that it will be very hard to relet it in a competitive market.  Very few companies can take on such size and complexity, which means that Capita has an effective monopoly for the foreseeable future.  The difficulty of winning any future procurement will probably put off any other companies from even attempting it.

3). As there are commercial arrangements involved, it is likely that access to information will be severely restricted in comparison to conventional public sector arrangements.  Commercial confidentiality is a recognised reason for refusing FoI requests.