Weekly Update From Councillor Guy Lambert

Breaking a solemn pledge and using the car on Clean Air Day

River Thames at high tide from Putney Bridge

Thursday afternoon didn’t actually get squelchy but I managed a diary malfunction. So I had a nice bike ride and logged into the hour long Economic Recovery meeting 59 minutes late, just in time to ask for them to send me the presentations. Idiot. I made the leisure services update on time but in truth there wasn’t a whole lot of news. It’s all moving forward, still plenty of challenges, officers confident they will get it all done without serious glitches.

On Friday morning I attended a London Cycling webinar, starring my cycling guru Chris Boardman and the co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on walking and cycling – none other than our very own Ruth Cadbury. This was about the ‘step change’ in how the government is dealing with walking and cycling and its implications both long and short term.

Short term all councils across the capital and across the country are bringing in schemes as an emergency step to try to encourage people to get out of cars and into more sustainable forms of transport.

Longer term, the Department for Transport are saying to highways authorities “if you want money to support road improvements you need to demonstrate real progress on walking and cycling infrastructure”. Of course these schemes, introduced in a hurry and with little or no prior consultation, are controversial – apparently according to Cllr Biddolph Chiswick is like Belfast during the Troubles, though my memories of Belfast at that time were not much like Chiswick - but the strong message is to stick with them, engage with the public but in general allow the schemes to settle down before making any changes. The evidence is people get to appreciate them once they’ve been around for a bit (though of course that doesn’t mean that every scheme should stay, unchanged – they are experimental).

It was a day of road related activity, both me chuntering around on my bike and a few things coming up in my mailbox. I chuntered down the river to Putney Bridge and it happened to be high tide, which I love. You wouldn’t believe the picture above was taken in London .

Of course, there’s a downside – soggy feet and trousers at Chiswick Mall.

And delighted to see my old home road, Grove Park Terrace (and its neighbour Grove Park Gardens) finally getting its pothole pledge fix.

A fence had blown down on Layton Road and I was on to Hounslow Highways to get it away from the pavement and road, and to get the landowner to fix it properly. They’ve achieved the first (not in this ‘before’ picture) – haven’t checked the second as yet.

On Monday afternoon I had a phone conversation with someone who is working with the council on the skills agenda, specifically green skills to assist in the recovery from the pandemic and also to make the borough more environmentally friendly. It’s not obvious which skills we should be prioritising, because clearly there is no point developing the skills unless there is gainful employment at the end. The most obvious skills are around construction, where we know we already have some shortages and particularly in the area of retrofitting different kinds of heating systems, insulation etc, but we have a wide-ranging discussion and he will be talking to a lot of others to help us focus.

In the evening a cabinet briefing meeting, where we discuss various things that will be coming to formal cabinet shortly. The key things we talk about are the emerging recovery plan, the Streetspace programme and a report about race inequalities. This last is very topical with Black Lives Matter and the stark realities of the pandemic, which has been particularly cruel to BAME communities. We also preview the Medium term Financial Strategy, but that’s a bit of a challenge as if the government knows what the financial arrangements for grants, council tax and business rates are, they’re not telling. Apparently they might tell us in December (Christmas Eve, quipped someone who shall be nameless) but no doubt the settlement will be World Beating like everything else the government does. Allegedly.

Tuesday morning is a West London Waste meeting. Operationally everything is chugging along in the 6 boroughs, so our main conversation is about strategy. Across West London we are expected to double recycling by 2030, helped by some planned government initiatives such as ‘Extended Producer Responsibility’ where manufacturers and retailers have to take more of a role (as they must now with batteries). But we won’t know how this will work until 2022 and we’ll have to adapt and perhaps harmonise practices and infrastructure – a big challenge.

On Wednesday we have a briefing on homelessness. The pandemic has put major additional demands on an already very stretched housing service. Their calls have tripled to 1500 per month, rough sleepers have gone up more than fivefold and a lot of them have been taken in to various forms of temporary accommodation, sometimes flats or bedsits, sometimes hotels and B&Bs. Part of this has been driven by people in shared houses getting scared to share because of COVID, though actually they are at much bigger risk if they leave their homes. Dealing with this is extremely challenging both financially and in terms of demands on officers who will have problems of their own – maybe looking after children or elderly relatives. I am very grateful that they have kept the service going and doing an outstanding job. The elephant in this particular room is the more than 55000 people (more than 20% of our residents and I guess more like 30 or 40% of those in jobs) in the borough who have been furloughed. As furlough comes to an end, too many of them will lose their jobs with all the financial, emotional and mental stress that will cause. As you will have seen in the news, we have had a major tragedy in the ward with two parents and a 3 year old losing their lives. I don’t know why this happened, but I do know that stress leads to deperate measures sometimes and stresses are unlikely to diminish over the coming few months.

In the evening we have an equality workshop for councillors. This again is linked to the pandemic, where it is clear that inequality has been a huge factor in where the effects are felt, with the poor and ethnic minoroties disproportionately affected. The workshop reminds us of the prejudices we all display, often unconsciously, and the impact it can have. Hounslow is far from the worst in gender and ethnic balance but the fact is that far too many of our senior management are white males, and it’s important to focus on picking the best people irrespective of sex, ethnicity, age, sexuality etc and this is not as straightforward as it seems.

On my Tuesday bike ride I became aware of a wobbly pedal whilst I was in Dukes Meadows. I gave the Elephant’s left paw (foot? hoof? trotter?) a bit of a kicking and tried to tighten it, but it didn’t work so I ended up wheeling him home from Hartington Road. On Wednesday morning, armed with my not very comprehensive toolkit and far from comprehensive knowledge, I tried and failed to fix it.

Time to try out our new bike repair place brentfordbicycleworks.co.uk , who are located down the Blue Road within Duke of London. A very friendly and helpful gent investigates and tightens up with a big wrench and I go on my way, but by the time I get to Syon Park it’s falling off again. Helpful gent makes further investigations and discovers that the pedal crank itself is jiggered, to put it politely, so I leave him the dismembered limb and repair homewards. One-legged Elephants are not much good, though you can ride them downhill OK.

So this left me in a big dilemma for Thursday, Clean Air Day where I had pledged very publicly to give my car a day off. In fact it would have had 15 days off except for a trip up to the A4 for my recent litter pick, but today I had to get to the Lampton Depot in Southall Lane in a hurry, which I could have done on the Elephant but which would be too challenging on My Little Pony and would have cost an arm and a leg on a Lime bike. So I broke my solemn pledge ☹

In fact today was rather packed, as I had a scheduled Lampton 360 call first thing, then a Zoom about our wish to build a Brentford skatepark, then a summit with Steve Curran and Julian Bell the leader of Ealing Council (or Chief Sitting Bell as I call him) and other councillors and officers. This was about the impact of Ealing’s low traffic neighbourhood schemes on our very own Swyncombe Avenue (very severe) and our plans to repond to the problem. This sadly was inconclusive but we will meet again next Friday to get a conclusion – traffic officers away and working on it.

Then the ridiculous (and extra scurrilous today) car took me to Southall Lane. Back at the start of the pandemic I had suggested going to Southall Lane at 6am one morning and unfurling a banner thanking the waste crews for their dedication as they left the depot. In the way of things, it is now October, 6 months on, and time for a photo opp in the depot with His Worshipful Holiness the 55th and longest serving Mayor of Hounslow Louki attended by a selection of the waste and recycling crews, plus some Greenspace boys (no girls, sadly – the scheduled one works in cemeteries and it was a busy day ☹ ). I would share a picture but the photographer is probably still trying to make me (and Louki) look beautiful and the pics are not to hand yet. Actually beautifying could take several years hard labour. The crews (and Greenspacers and Hounslow Highways) have given fantastic service throughout – truly risking their health and lives, particularly in the early days when we were much more unsure of how COVID spread – and they should be very proud. Very few other councils could keep up a full service, and our recycling rates are actually up and our quality scores holding up which is actually amazing.

Then back home for a zoom meeting about supporting some initiatives in Feltham, and un update from officers about the leisure transfer. All progressing on both fronts. Another busy day tomorrow unterviewing for the new MD for Coalo. Hope a new paw arrives for the weekend – I can’t bear not having my luvverly bike.

Cllr Guy Lambert

October 9, 2020