Weekly Update From Councillor Guy Lambert

Reflects on the year after spending Christmas with Crisis

Normally I do this blog by referring to my diary but in truth there’s very little over the past two weeks that’s fit to print.

I’ll just touch on my time at Crisis, where I was persuaded to work in their central warehouse. The first shift was on Christmas Day morning from 7am supposedly until 2pm. Essentially, we spent our time loading vans with consignments of food (mainly) destined for about 8 centres Crisis run around London. This is actually a day in advance, so what we were loading was going to make the meals on Boxing Day. My second shift was a couple of days later and this was preparing the last consignment to go out of the warehouse, and tidying it up so it could accept all the stuff back from the centres. I hadn’t really thought about the scale of the operation. Apparently they use 10,000 volunteers over the Christmas period so it needs to be (and is) highly professional. The pitfalls of being a charitable organisation were highlighted by the last job I did. Somebody had kindly donated a trillion bottles of flavoured mineral water. It was only in the warehouse that somebody noticed that these were past their use-by date. So they couldn’t be used and it was decided to empty them and recycle the bottles. But flavoured water is just a little sticky when it dries. Anyway a team of 20 of us spent a couple of hours putting sticky plastic bottles into recycling sacks – Crisis take recycling seriously (Hurrah).

One of the staff told me about a little problem they had on Christmas Day. (At least) one of the centres is in a school and there they were with a ton of food in the kitchen when someone turns the cooker on. No gas. Turns out somebody (very responsibly) had turned off the gas for the Christmas holidays. Where’s the tap? On the other side of the door that somebody had (very sensibly) locked to keep Crisis out of other parts of the school. Contact refuses to allow them access to turn the gas on. Talk moves to the prospect of breaking the door down as hundreds of hungry people actually need stuff cooked. Contact allows them access to turn the gas on.

Anyway, in the absence of much in the diary – normal service is resuming later today – a brief reflection of the year just passed and the year to come.

The main milestone in the year passed was (for those of us involved!) the council election. We put a lot of effort in in Brentford and were rewarded with a decent majority for all 3 Labour and Cooperative Party candidates, with The Melvinator topping the poll. I also put some time into campaigning in Osterley and Spring Grove (success, Conservative infestation eradicated) and the three Chiswick wards (next time…).

Across the council we held on to all of our seats quite comfortably and with the two extras in Osterley we now have 51 of the 60 seats on the council. Waking up the morning after, we realise we have a very ambitious manifesto with no less than 140 pledges to deliver against the continuing challenge of enormous cuts to our funding from central government. But we’ve managed to deliver pledges in  the past and must not shrink from delivering this time round.

I had let it be known that I fancied taking on the particular fun and games posed by the street scene – recycling and waste, and Hounslow Highways – and I was pleased to be appointed as lead member looking after this. I have been on a voyage of discovery for the last 6 months, and I’m also learning about how to be a lead member: all too easy to get too involved in detail. For example, there are about 70,000 households in the Borough so around 100,000 bin or recycling collections every week. If ½ of 1% of those go wrong that is potentially an awful lot of emails!

Also important to recognise how to work with council chief officers, most of whom are both extremely talented and committed: just have to persuade a reset of priorities from time to time without interfering too much with the day job.

Anyway, I think we’re beginning to make some decent progress on a number of fronts. It doesn’t stop people moaning, and nor should it, but I hope and believe by the end of 2019 we’ll be able to see some real improvements.

Moving to more local matters, there are big things going on in the ward and in the wider town of Brentford. The new housing estate on Reynard Mills is more or less complete (must go and knock on some doors there) and the new stadium begins to tower over Lionel Road South. The building opposite

Morrisons is no more (need to understand what’s happening about archaeology) and we expect work to start on rebuilding in the spring – pressing our friends Ballymore to communicate more speedily!

All bar one of the unauthorised residents of boats outside Waterman’s Park have departed and we expect work on the new marina (for houseboats, not superyachts) to start in March/April.

Morrisons have lost their Judicial review of the planning decision related to their site but it remains to be seen what happens next, meanwhile the Secretary of State is still mulling over the proposals for the Watermans, Police Station, and Citroen garage sites. We have lost, or are about to lose, NatWest, the Post Office and the Cathja community hub and charity shop but there is investment in Brentford too, with the Black Dog opening, new restaurants and (don’t shoot me) estate agents.

On the housing estates, work is well on the way with refurbishment of the Brentford Towers and work is about to start on improvements to the Haverfield estate. We’re also planning to bring the underground garages, which have largely been redundant for many years, back into use as HQ for the borough enforcement team and as commercial car storage space for our many local car dealers.

Gunnersbury Park Museum and new café are open (do visit!) and the new sports hub and improved sports facilities well under construction. It’s been a challenging year for the park with the transfer of control to an independent Community company (jointly owned by Hounslow and Ealing Boroughs), lots of construction and some controversial events brought in to help make ends meet. The ‘heritage’ bit of the park looks really wonderful and as far as I’m concerned the rest of it is pretty stunning too but people are nervous about change and some are negatively affected by the events. We must strive to have them better run in future. Oh, and works to Boston Manor start shortly, meaning the house will be closed for some time, but all in a good cause.

That’ll do for this boring list of things going on in Brentford. Over the next couple of years we will see big changes, mainly, I think, for the better though not everyone will agree. I’m hoping and believing we’ll end up with a revived town centre, well connected to the river and preserving a lot of Brentford’s quirky charm. Now, back to the grindstone.

Cllr Guy Lambert

January 3, 2019