What will Happen to Brent Street Cleaning?

As far as I can see the budget option of ceasing to clean most of Brent's streets remains on the table.  I still find this rather amazing.  Aside from the dubious lawfulness of the idea, I don't think the public would stand it.  If it is passed in the budget in March, I suspect that Brent Council will recoil from actually doing it, and scrabble around for some alternative savings.  If the proposal is actually implemented, I suspect the public outcry will force a u-turn, which might well cost a lot more than the proposed saving.

Harlesden Jubilee Clock

Harlesden Town Web site reminds us that the Harlesden Jubilee Clock will have its official opening ceremony on 14 February, marking the completion of the Harlesden Town Centre refurbishment. 

Transport Test for Libraries

I notice that Barnet libraries have decided that a 30 minute public transport journey is a reasonable distance to go to reach your nearest library.  Lincolnshire, in their libraries consultation which was overturned by judicial review, argued that a 30 minute car journey was a reasonable test.  Both of these seem less generous than the standard adopted in Brent 's Libraries Transformation Project which saw 97% of the population within 1.5 miles of a Brent library.  Even just walking that would take an able bodied person not more than 30 minutes.  By either public transport, cycling or car it would take rather less.

Of course distance and journey time are not the only relevant tests of accessibility, but it seems to me that Brent's six library network is probably one of the most accessible in the UK.

Evidence on Community Managed Libraries

I have remarked before that community managed libraries have been widely adopted as a strategy without any real evidence that they work.  A little more has come out about the Manchester experience.  It makes gloomy reading for volunteer library advocates. 

What Happened to Make Willesden Green?

Thinking recently about the group Make Willesden Green, I decided to check their web site to see what they were up to.  The most recent entry was dated 23 October 2014.  It consists of a number of complaints about Willesden Green Library Centre.  Since the Centre is due to open soon, I presume the group will then have no more activity. 

Query on Barham Park Trust

After yesterday's post, I thought about the report at the next Barham Park Trust agenda on changing the governance structure.  It goes through a lot of reasoning about how the current peculiar Trust structure might be changed only to recommend no change.  At a time when the Council is under increasing pressure for resources, what is the reason for generating that report?

UPDATE

Martin Francis has noticed the same report and commented on it here.   He seems to hope that the structure (which is itself only two or three years old) will be changed.  I certainly hope not as it sounds like another attempt by the likes of Paul Lorber to pursue their own agendas rather than a useful innovation.  It was his successful bamboozling of the Planning Committee to refuse change of use that caused the needless expense of a planning appeal.  I don't think any more of his captious objections should be accommodated. 

Barham Park Trust Developments

Further details about the buildings of the Barham Park Trust have been published. 

• ACAVA now has a formal 15 year lease (starting from September), and hope to start a community arts project in March.  
• The "Card room" is proposed to be let out as a cafe, as the earlier public consultation suggested.  From the report, it is clear that the Card room is only in a sufficiently good state of repair for leasing with substantial investment. This is why it was set aside when the decision to rent to ACAVA was made.  Park cafes work well elsewhere, in Gladstone Park or Roundwood Park for example, so I hope the Barham proposal comes off.
• The Committee is also asked to approve a regularization of the occupation by the Veterans Club in the Snooker Room. 
• There is also a proposal to put the Lounge area out to a permanent occupation, rather than the current ad hoc arrangements.

It strikes me as extraordinary that it should take so long to sort out these buildings.  Of course a lot of the reason is the misguided decision of the Planning Committee to refuse change of use.

Incidentally, capital funding has also been provided for outdoor gym equipment in the park.  This is the kind of incremental improvement thatis possible now that the Park has a long term strategy.

South Kilburn District Heating

It looks like Brent Council's Executive on Monday will be asked to approve the start of a procurement process to create a district heating scheme in South Kilburn.  This is the second area where a district heating scheme might come forward (the other being Wembley), and has been a long time in the coming.  It is good to see the prospect of greater environmental benefits. 

Brent Council HR Review Likely to Disappoint

Those hoping that the HR review announced after the Rosemary Clarke employment tribunal verdict would deal with the obvious problems in Brent Council's Human Resources Department are likely to be disappointed.  The review has now been published, and it fails to address any of the issues that I believe are seriously undermining Brent Council.  Until these underlying issues are addressed the problems will continue.

UPDATE

It has been pointed out that the report has yet to be published.  This is true, but the whole inquiry is designed not to answer what I would regard as the key questions.

Brent Museum and Archive Strategy Published

I was puzzled by the long delay in producing a Brent Museum and Archives strategy.  It is finally going before the next Brent Council Cabinet meeting on Monday. 

These sort of heritage services are non-statutory and therefore particularly subject to threat in the financial climate caused by central government cuts.  Brent is doing much better than many Boroughs, in opening its new facility the Willesden Green Cultural Centre.  This reproduces the museum and improves the archives (particularly in document storage).  It is therefore a welcome area where the Council has a good story.  There is also plenty of innovative stuff in the report, for instance relating to digitization and outreach. 

I note that one of the weaknesses of the current museum service is on marketing and communications.  This is an area that could be shared with the library service, which also has long had a need for better marketing.  I wanted to address this as part of the Libraries Transformation Project, but was stymied by lack of funding.  Perhaps a joint approach across Libraries, Arts & Heritage might be better. 

One great unmentioned in the report is the future financing, with just some vague stuff about "options" being considered.  I speculate that this may have been the cause of the delay in publishing, as finance is likely to be a thorny issue in this as so many other areas. 

Brent Council's Welfare Assistance Scheme

The next Cabinet papers for Brent Council have a report on Brent's local welfare assistance scheme.  As I have explained before, this is being threatened by further government cutbacks.  The recommendations involve a number of changes.

Some of these are prompted by having seen the scheme in operation for about one and a half years.  When Brent was first forced to design its own scheme, the demographic information made available by the DWP was extremely limited.  There is a case for saying the original scheme design was too strict, as Brent has only spent a small proportion of the budget.  It also appears not to be reached certain parts of the population e.g. pensioners.

Essentially the Council is proposing a holding operation whilst it waits to see if central government will cut funding altogether, which I fear is all too likely.

Brent Bulky Item Collections

Looking again at the Brent Budget proposals, I thought I would return to the proposed charge for bulky item collection.  I can see some logic to this, in that the Council is increasingly seeking to charge service users as close as possible to the cost of the service provided.  The free service can therefore be seen as something of an anomaly.

Nonetheless I have repeatedly argued that the free service is better preserved.  My key argument in this is that the items are likely to be otherwise dumped on the street.  Under the L:iberal Democrats, the introduction of the £25 charge for collecting bulky items led to a huge fall in collections.  I never got a satisfactory answer to where these items went once the Council stopped collecting them for free.

It also illustrates the difficulties behind some of the figures in budget proposals.  The charge never yielded anything like the income expected, because the number of collections had dropped so much.  This is important to bear in mind when thinking about all the officer proposals.

Confusion over Brent Library Privatisation

There appears to be confusion as to the nature of Brent's proposed library privatisation.  The three interviewees quoted in the Kilburn Times piece all have rather odd comments.  The FKRL campaigner is critical of the concept of privatisation, which seems odd for someone who has spent years campaigning in favour of privatisation.  Former councillor Paul Lorber claims that the library service has been "decimated" when in fact it is considerably better than when it had more buildings.  Cllr James Denselow's comment seems ambiguous as to what the proposed arrangements are.  I have posted before that there are various possibilities.  These could range from a technical arrangement, a company where the Council is the sole shareholder in the same way as an ALMO or a commerical provider like Greenwich Leisure Ltd.  Some of the possibilities of Trusts are covered here. 

It would be helpful if all this could be made clearer.

UPDATE

Responding to the comment below, by "privatisation" I mean the transfer of a public asset to a private organisation and/or continuing public subsidy for the same.  By that definition, which I think most people use, all volunteer libraries are privatised.

Brent Council Tax Support Scheme

Brent's Council Tax Support scheme is getting its annual review tonight.  The first Full Council meeting on this subject attracted little comment despite the controversial nature of the proposals.  The following year saw a small number of protesters disrupt the meeting.  We shall see if they follow similar tactics this year.

Local Welfare Funds Unspent

More data has emerged on local welfare schemes.  There is clearly a big underspend problem in many authorities, including Brent, which has spent only 19.9% of its allocation.  I am sure Tory ministers will try to blame this on local government ineffectiveness, when it is really caused by Central government creating uncertainty.  As local authorities cannot rely on secure funding, many are taking an excessively stringent approach to gatekeeping, so that many deserving applicants are put off.  This was predictable a long time ago. 

New Bookshop in Kilburn

I am glad to see a new bookshop, Offside Books, has opened on 92 Willesden Lane in Kilburn.  It follows the sad demise of the Kilburn Bookshop in 2010.  I hope they do as well as the nearby Queens Park Books on Salusbury Road and West End Lane Books in West Hampstead. 

Eric Pickles Bin Humilation

Eric Pickles can now proudly claim that literally no Councils are using his £250 million fund to commit to weekly bin collections.  No Councils have taken the policy up because it simply does not make sense for them to do so.  Perhaps Eric Pickles (and others) should look at the workability of polici4es before going ahead with them. 

Stickability of Budget Proposals

Talking to people about the Brent Council Budget, I find one of the most worrying things is the assumption that whatever proposals are put in the budget will just happen and the savings be achieved.  In fact I doubt very much that this is the case.

One quite senior councillor I spoke to said he was worried that not all the projects could achieve their savings within the financial year.  I had to tell him that I would be surprised if any of the schemes will achive full savings within a year.  Firstly, the decision making process (including consultation and so on) is fairly lengthy.  Implementation, depending on the project can similarly lengthy, particularly if it involves investing in new equipment, training people and/or changing behaviour.

There can also be risks from unforeseen factors, such as legal action, unexpected costs, project delays and so on that may wipe out savings entirely.  Anything that involves predicting or suppressing demand is inherently risky.  Furthermore, there are one off costs such as staff redundancy that are virtually guarenteed to push at least part of the full year saving into the following year.

As I look at the proposed savings, I cannot help but suspect that many of these proposals look half baked.  Just because you put a line in a budget document does not mean it actually comes to pass. 

What Form Might Brent Library Privatisation Take?

One of the lines in the Brent Council Budget Proposals reads: "Transfer management of libraries to an established library trust resulting in business rates savings."  Given the controversy that has often surrounded Brent Libraries, I am surprised that this has not drawn more attention.  It could easily be a form of privatisation.  The possibilities that occur to me are:

a) It is a largely technical and legalistic proposal to maximise business rate savings.  This would be a minimalist position.  The Council would probably have to pay attention to how far libraries would continue to work with the rest of the Council (Would they still host Brent Dance Month for example?  Would co-located libraries like Wembley Library continue to interact with the rest of the building?).  In an era where the "culture" parts of the Council are expected to work together more and more, it would be a shame to erect arificial barriers to such co-operation.

b) The phrase "transfer management" suggests something more ambitious.  Not just founding a Trust but having the management taken over by a private company as in Greenwich or Hounslow.  This would be a lot more complicated.  A full procurement would need specification of a contract and a full tendering exercise for what would be a sizable contract.  In itself that would be a substantial one-off cost.  The Localism Act appears to have made this whole issue even more complicated than it was before.  The redundancy of senior management is likely to make the whole process even more difficult.  

c) The phrase "established library trust" suggests an existing body, and obvious one is the Trust that runs Harrow and Ealing libraries.  This option was discussed when I was on the Executive, and rejected.  THe business rate saving was largely a piece of accountancy smoke and mirrors (I understand that the rules may have been partly changed since then), and it seemed to me that all the things a private firm could do to cut costs could also be done by the Council.  Of course, having direct employees also gives you more control and we wanted to ensure the success of the Libraries Transformation Project by having hands on management.  Therefore we only went for the Sports Centre part of the project.  

d) Another interesting question is where this leaves the proposed community managed libraries that are seeking to take over various buildings in Brent.  These all seem to have largely stalled.  FKRL are waiting to get into the building, which the owner is trying to sell.  The group at the former Preston Library are running up against numerous difficulties.  The group in the former Cricklewood building seem to have moved more to a community centre type solution, and the Barham group are attempting to bid for the cardroom (which has been assessed as uninhabitable and to expensive to upgrade).  How these groups might be affected by the Localism Act and a new procurement exercise for library services I don't know.  

As with many of the proposals in the Budget papers, the actual shape of the proposed changes is not terribly clear.

Parks, Planning and Building

I see that some people believe that Brent is keen to sell off, or build on parks. This idea seems to crop up every so often, but has very little substance.  There are occasional attempts to build on parks, but they tend to meet fierce resistance.  Such resistance lay behind the failure to prevent the demolition of Dollis Hill House, the rejection of the Greenhouse application in the Welsh Harp, the demise of a proposed land swap deal at Furness Pocket Park, the development of a free school in Gladstone Park and probably others I have forgotten about.

The only example I can think of of any development being allowed in a Brent park was the Sea Cadet building in Welsh Harp.  I don't think that really comes into this category.  As it happens I was on the Planning Committee that considered it, and I believe I swung the Committee round to reject the officers' recommendation to refuse.  The permission actually decreased the footprint of the building slightly although it had an extra storey.  In the context, I don't think there was any negative impact on park users.

In fact, building on parks is incredibly hard.  The public resist.  The political parties are similarly hostile.  Brent Labour Party has a long standing opposition to building on green spaces.  Above all, planning policy is highly resistant to building on a public park, regarding it as equivalent to green belt.  The proposal in King Eddy's for the London Welsh School will therefore be up against some very tough planning considerations.