Employee Victimisation

All the comments Frances O'Grady applies to sexual bullying here, seem to me to apply to non-disclosure agreements in general.  I hope the debate widens to include other forms of employee victimisation.

Local Finance Incoherence

It appears that Brent Council are not the only ones to have an incoherent approach to local government finances.  The government is alleged to have knowingly put out misleading information. 

Council Tax Rises in Brent

Brent Council is now considering a 4.99% rise in Council Tax.  I can't find references to a 4.99% rise in Council Tax in the Council's own documentation, so I assume it has just been raised with Cllr Butt in a conversation with some one.  Previously, Cllr Butt has lurched from trying to promote a Council Tax freeze to going for a maximum increase, and has shown considerable disdain for the opinions of the Labour Group.  This is not a very coherent approach. 

More on Carillion and Public Libraries

The Guardian has an update on the Carillion library situation in Ealing and Harrow.  It might go out of date at any moment.  However, the figures given for an in house and an outsourced service strike me as rather dubious.  I wonder whether they are counting avoided business rates as part of the "cost"?  If so, I have argued before that is rather artificial. 

DIY Waste

The Times carried a story a few days ago about authorities having to accept DIY waste at their civic amenity sites without charge.  If ministers are going to issue such an instruction to the WLWA and others, they need to explain how to spot the difference between a commercial builder and a DIY enthusiast. 

Willesden Baptist Church

I see that last night's planning committee was considering an application to add some housing to the Baptist Church on Willesden High Road whilst preserving the facade.  Preserving the face, perhaps with some alteration, seems to have become something of a trend following the Spotted Dog and Willesden Library developments. 

Grayling Survives Carillion Mess

The more I think of the Carillion collapse, the more I think it needs an inquiry.  Even a very basic procurement exercise should have thrown up sufficient warning to ministers that this was an unreliable company to be given major contracts.  Yet Chris Grayling put taxpayers' money at risk anyway.  Following from the East Cost Main line debacle, his position really should be in question, but as Theresa May's former campaign manager and a hard brexiteer it probably won't be.  After all we have sen how even a total incompetent like David Davis has survived the impact assessment deception.

Railings on Furness Road

To answer Michael's comment of some time ago, Brent Council may have removed the railings at the junction of Furness and Wrottesley Roads to actually enhance safety. 

There are two ways this could be true.  There is evidence now that when a cyclist gets brushed by a vehicle, such railings are more likely to lead to a fatality since the cyclist gets squashed between the vehicle and the railing.  The lack of a railing would send the cyclist sprawling, but cause less damage.  The other possibility is that it causes pedestrians to walk into the middle of the road as they tend to prefer the most direct route, which is certainly my own experience of that junction.  This was the reason I campaigned for similar railings to be removed on Station Approach. 

Carillion and Public Library Privatisation

This morning's news that Carillion has gone into liquidation causes me to reflection what a close shave Brent has had with its library service.  Brent Council considered and rejected the option of privatising Brent Libraries when I was lead member.  The option came up again later, and was actually included provisionally in the budget only to be withdrawn.

Ealing and Harrow are now considering whether to carry on with the contract for another five years.  They are likely to do so, if only because they would have to pay the contractor off if they terminate the contract.  Incidentally, I wonder whether Hounslow had to give a pay out to Carillion when Hounslow libraries went back in house.

The Harrow and Ealing reports predate this morning's news, but I suspect because of the termination payment the contract will be renewed and then perhaps terminated by mutual agreement subsequently.  I say that as there is bound to be a huge restructuring at all the businesses that Carillion is involved in.  As libraries are fairly marginal, that activity may be terminated altogether and just handed back to the Councils.  That would at least be likely to safeguard those peoples' jobs.

I take it the government felt unable to do a bail out because of the controversy from Chris Grayling decision to waste vast amount of taxpayers' money on the East Coast Main line.   There was no longer sufficent political cover to nationalise losses and privatise profits.  Hopefully, this will lead to a further reflection over whether certain kinds of services can ever be operated privately without an implicit taxpayers' guarantee. 

Moving back to libraries, London is left with a series of mainly publicly run services.  The main exceptions are those run by Greenwich Leisure, and the one Borough (Redbridge) run by a mutual.  In other words, the once fashionable idea of privatising library services as a means of cost saving seems to have come to naught.  This doesn't bother me as the supposed benefits of libraries privation listed in the Harrow report (paragraph 2.6) strike me as similar to those already implement in Brent under its Libraries Transformation. 

That leaves community managed library services as the final form of library privatisation open to Brent Council.  This is such a slow motion and piecemeal affair that it may not strike many people as privatisation at all.  So far, the biggest dollop of taxpayers' money is apparently a "one off" grant of £75k to FKRL preceded  by a few smaller grants.  The "Preston Library" group is still hoping to hit the jackpot by being effectively given the building for nothing, although I think any councillors signing such a deal off would expose themselves charges of corruption. 

UPDATE 16.01.18
I see that Croydon has taken its libraries back in house leaving Carillion with just Harrow and Ealing.

Council Tax Rises and Brent

Central government has once again changed expectations around Council Tax by allowing bigger rises.  The maximum has now gone up to 5.99%, part of this is ringfenced to pay for social services which are now (after years of central government driven austerity) close to collapse.  It is effectively a way for the government to kick the can along the road a bit longer.  It doesn't really solve the long term problems of social services, the crisis in local government funding or the democratic deficit in local democracy.

I shall be interested in seeing how Brent Council responds.  From 2010, Council Tax was frozen, but that was at a time when central government offered Council Tax freezing councils a grant greater than the value of a rise.  This grant was then reduced over time to be worth worth less than a rise.  This led to the odd situation in the 2015 budget when the Labour Group favoured a rise, and the Executive refused to enact it.  In 2016, the Executive switched to a policy of having a maximum rise (which would now be just short of 6%).  This is also now in line with central government expectation which is effectively pressuring Councils to raise Council Tax as much as possible to offset the pressures created by other government cuts both past and present.  Altogether it is an incredibly messy and ineffective way for central government to meddle with local government.

The other question it raises is what are local councillors going to do in discussing all this?  The budget has to be set legally by the end of March, and ideally a bit before so that Council Tax bills can go out smoothly.  Given the forthcoming elections in May, the issue is even more politically sensitive than usual, although past evidence is that the public perceive the Council Tax as going up whether it does or not.  We are now in January, and any discussion will have to happen fairly soon.

Brent Council and Recycling

I see that Brent recycling performance is now about 37%, which is somewhat down from where it was a few years ago.  Improving even a few percent would save the Council a lot of money and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  The same report comments that the new Veolia contract is designed first and foremost to cut residual waste (now sent for electricity generation rather than landfill), but doesn't actually seem to have any figures on how much it might have been reduced by.  However, it is good to see a renewed focus on reducing food waste.  Finally, I am glad to see that the recycling service will be seeking to make better use of Brent libraries, which are a deeply under-appreciated communications tool. 

Brexit Border Dilemma

Flip Chart Fairy Tales has a good summary of the problems around the Northern Ireland border.  David Davis appears to be in denial, and his Tory colleagues are tolerating him because they know he is pro-Brexit no matter what.  What I always find bewildering about this sort of thing is do these people imagine that pretending something is true can continue forever?

Rare Example of Successful Community Asset Transfer

Lambeth seems to give a rare example of a successful community asset transfer, although the library itself appears to continue to be Council run.  It is probably significant that Upper Norwood Library had a long prehistory of running semi-independently.

Gesture Politics Reaches New Low

I have often been critical of gesture politics, but surely the latest motion from the City of Rome reaches a new low.  The City Council have revoked the exile of Ovid.  That makes the continuous effort to turn Brent Council into a platform for Middle Eastern politics look almost sensible by comparison. 

More on Community Managed Libraries

For those interested more information on community managed libraries can now be found through a Network.  The Network makes some effort to analyse performance by community managed libraries, but this is limited compared to the figures used at public libraries.  This may well be because some CML have no library management systems in the formal sense. 

More on the Biggest Libraries

Looking again  at CIFPA's list of the UK's five biggest libraries, I note that at least four of them appear to be (in some way quite new). 

The one I know best is of course Wembley Library, now the third most visited in the country with almost 1.4 million visits.  That is a stark contrast to the old Brent Town Hall library it replaced, which had about 200k visits at the time it closed.  Wembley Library was of course newly opened as a custom built facility in 2013. 

Birmingham Central Library was opened at vast expense in 2013.  Manchester underwent a major refurbishment prior to reopening in 2014.  Woolwich Library opened I am not sure when, but I think it was quite recently.  I believe they all attracted a lot of negative publicity until they actually opened. 

CILIP Calling for Greater Library Transparency

CILIP and the Labour Party are quite rightly calling for more transparency on library figures, alongside a more timely rate of publication.  As the libraries sector is becoming ever more dependent on the use of volunteers, it would also be a good idea if someone would actually make some attempt to monitor whether "community managed libraries" actually work.

At present, the only evidence is anecdotal, and (in my view) unreliable.  I think this is for a number of reasons:

a) Many volunteers don't really understand the scale or scope of what public libraries do, so they tend to overestimate what "their" library does in comparison.
b) Volunteers are normally trying desperately to fund raise and you raise funds by selling what a good job you can/are doing, not by a candid assessment of what is going well and what isn't.
c) Politicians and Councils don't want to get into fights with residents so they aren't completely candid in explaining that the volunteer run services are functioning at a much lower level than the previous Council services. 
d) Some of the costs of community run libraries can be quite hidden compared to local government figures.  For example, there can be ongoing managerial support from the Council, "grace and favour" arrangements for the use of buildings, use of Council IT systems with less than transparent charges and so on.
e) Some of the outcomes of community managed libraries can also be untested.  For instance, I don't think most such libraries formally measure loans and visits in the way CIPFA expects or have any equivalent to the PLUS surveys.  If they have monitoring systems, I suspect they are probably quite specific to each institution and therefore it is hard to draw comparisons.

The Usual Street Gritting Suspects

Picking up on the street gritting stories in the Kilburn Times, I see a lot of complaints.  This tends to happen every time there is even a limited amount of snow, so I would have thought by now all councillors would know that gritting most of the roads in Brent is a Borough responsibility not a TfL one.  Indeed, in the past it has been a source of controversy  as Brent has not bought enough street grit in the past.  Monday's weather seem to me to be handled quite well, with more major roads done first.  It really is unrealistic for people to expect all 480km of Brent roads simply to be covered in street grit as soon as snow starts falling.

I have gone through some of the practical obstacles to winter readiness before.  I was interested to read that only 840 tons of rock salt is in store, which is lower than in the past.  Possibly more is on order, although rock salt tends to be mined all year round, so you can't generally just hold of it when the weather is bad.  It has to be ordered well in advance.  It is also possible that since I wrote that piece in 2011, technology has improved so that more efficient use of forecasting reduces the need for gritting.  These days weather forecasts can be so exact that the different ground surface temperatures (GST) of different parts of London can be tracked.

Brent and UK Libraries

CIPFA have published new figures on public library provision, and on the whole they are pretty grim.  The Guardian tells us: "Visits [are] down  by 3% year on year, and by 14% over the last five years. The decline, according to the CIPFA figures, is almost across the board: book issues fell by 6.3% in the last year, and by 25.1% in the last five years. Book stock held is also down by 2.6%.

The Brent experience, in contrast, is shown here:



And the Brent experience on loans (NB the high base line) is here:



The improved performance in both visits and loans is attributable to seven day opening, the refurbishment of Kilburn Library (Pictures are available here), a new library at Willesden and a new library at Wembley.  These all formed part of the Brent Libraries Transformation Project. 

So just to repeat, over a period when national library visits declined by 14%, Brent's went up by 61%.  In the same period, loans went down 25.1% nationally, but rose by 8% in Brent.  

Affordable Housing in Wembley Reduced to Almost Nothing

My eye was caught by an extremely high tower block proposal coming up at the next Planning Committee.  The "East of Wembley Stadium" application provides for only 7% affordable housing on the pretext that the housing will be kept at a genuinely affordable rent level.  It is recommended to be granted

I have argued before that there are genuine trade offs around affordability, unit size and so on, but this becoming ridiculous.

Firstly the proportion is so tiny that almost nothing is being demanded of the developers at all.  7% does not even begin to meet the needs of Wembley, as the GLA has pointed out.  Secondly I don't see any reason to believe that the developer can be kept to the promised reduced rate.  It would not surprise me in the least if the properties are sold off as straight forward commercial units in future.  Thirdly, the blocking of views to the Stadium has a woeful impact on the Stadium's place as the centrepiece of Wembley's regeneration.

I doubt however, that the Committee will do more than rubberstamp what is put in front of them.  If it does it will be another sign that the Planning system in Brent has been thoroughly broken and (for whatever reason) councillors and officers are simply waiving through applications with simply no effort to scrutinise them properly. 

The report, and the subsequent report for more car parking, both seem to indicate that the GLA is becoming concerned at the ways in which the London Plan is being ignored, so that it is possible that Sadiq Khan will intervene, but why aren't Brent Councillors and officers doing a better job to stick up for the interests of Brent and Tokyngton?