Councillor Matt Harmer

November news from Councillor Matt Harmer

2011-12-23T01:11:00.001Z

Welcome to the November email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer. You’re getting it because we have communicated on local issues. If you would prefer not to receive these bulletins then you will find a link below that will unsubscribe you.

Just a brief email this month to follow up a couple of things that have been of interest locally.

* Windmill Road *

Earlier this year I attended a meeting with residents of Windmill Road and adjacent roads regarding a potential development of homes and flats on the Reynards Mill site - that's the small industrial estate on Windmill Road. The application was subsequently withdrawn following concerns over scale. The applicant has revised the proposals and a new planning application has been submitted. The documents are all online at http://planning.hounslow.gov.uk/Planning_CaseNo.aspx?strCASENO=P/2011/3128 ; the single most useful document is the Design and Access Document at http://planning2.hounslow.gov.uk/AnitePublicDocs/00303961.pdf

The application documents are still being checked; when everything is found to be ok, consultation letters will be sent out by the council's planning department. I don't think any exhibition has been held; though it's important to point out that there is no compulsion to do this. Anyway, take a look and form a view.

* Parking, continued *

Last month I wrote about the research that had been done on Grove Road, Enfield Road, Avenue Road and Eastbourne Road – the streets around the Lord Nelson pub – into whether or not a controlled parking zone would assist residents who are looking to park. Thanks to all those who contacted me to get copies of this report and to those who sent their own thoughts.

The report concluded that the biggest demand for parking was overnight and that during the day there was some capacity, albeit featuring competition between residents and visitors for spaces. There’s more detail, of course, in the report and as before I’m happy to send a copy.

As a result of this, councillors will discuss a proposal to consult residents in those four streets on the principle of introducing parking controls. I expect plenty of angry emails in return but personally I think this is the right outcome. The research came about because of a petition that residents presented to the Council and if these are to mean anything it is right that the process is followed through (of course, there is nothing to stop people getting an anti-parking control petition together but we’ll deal with that if and when it happens).

The meeting is next Thursday the 17th November (not the 19th as I said before) at the Free Church near the library. It starts at 7.30 and the item is sixth on the agenda so hopefully there won’t be too much waiting around. There’s no opportunity to speak as far as I know and I don’t expect any surprises. To be clear, we won’t be deciding to introduce controls, just to ask if local residents think controls are a good idea.

Before we discuss this we will be talking about Layton Road’s parking scheme. We’ll discuss whether or not we should expand the controlled hours in Layton Road to 8pm Monday to Saturday. More information on the meeting and all the papers at http://democraticservices.hounslow.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=576&MId=6836

On a similar subject, the meeting will discuss proposals to put double yellow lines on various corners of Brook Road South where that road meets Grosvenor Road, Braemar Road, Hamilton Road, Clifden Road and New Road. No-one likes losing parking spaces (and I’ve probably parked on some of them, living as I do on Ealing Road) but it’s being proposed from a safety point of view. This wasn’t done basd solely on what someone behind a desk thought would happen – the Fire Brigade came down, in a fire engine, and tried to drive around the corners. They found them impassable when cars were parked there.

It’ll also keep the dropped kerbs clear – that’s where the pavement slopes down to the road. Talk to people who use motor scooters and wheelchairs about how important this is. And we do take notice of what people reply to us about these things – a lot of spaces were going to go at the bottom of Grosvenor Road, the road that leads to St Paul’s Rec but residents there said this wasn’t required and those proposals are now removed.

* Christmas Lights (1) *

Staying in this area, thanks to all of those who wrote about the longer traffic queues going south on Ealing Road following the introduction of the new junction. In short, it wasn’t done properly and we are pushing for the changes to be made. Drivers and 65 bus users have spoken of long waits to get across the junction whether turning left to Kew Bridge or right towards the High Street.

What there should be is a left turn filter light. Transport for London, who control these things, say that they will put one in. We will keep on at them to do so. One email said it would be done before Christmas, though it didn’t identify which year.

* Christmas Lights (2) *
I’ll leave you with a little bit of What’s On. We have Christmas lights and we will be turning them on next Friday 18th at 4.30pm. The location is different this year- the Market Place. Before then there’ll be an Italian Market so get down there for your seasonal pasta shapes. The Italian Market will also be there on Saturday, and there’ll be a French Market there on Friday and Saturday 9th and 10th December.
The St Faith’s Christmas Fair, sorry Fayre, is always a good event and this year it is on Tuesday 22nd November from 6pm to 9pm. Many local businesses will be there with each stallholder offering something special for Christmas ranging from food & drink, toys & games, jewellery, books and handmade cards & gifts...all your Christmas gifts under one roof! Local choirs including Lionel Primary School, Gumley House Convent School, Chiswick Pop School & Stage Academy, Brentford Belles and St Faith's own choir will be performing throughout the evening. Entrance is free and the Lord Nelson pub will be selling hot food and refreshments. In the past couple of years I’ve had to leave early to get to a council meeting; that’s not the case this year and so I intend to pay full attention to the mulled wine stall.

Check http://www.brentfordtw8.com/default.asp?section=info&page=calendar.htm for more local events.

* Court out *

The website set up by the potential developers of the High Street is now live – it’s at http://www.mybrentford.com/brentford2.0/ and is worth a look. Thanks to those who sent on comments – there does seem to be a consensus about what is and isn’t deliverable, which is good. I’ve had a few emails about the Magistrates Court, asking if the Council would buy it and turn it into a community centre/building of some kind. The honest answer to this is no, I’m afraid. I’ve been in the Court and the costs of converting it into that kind of use would be huge.

We all know that the reductions in central govt contribution to Hounslow Council mean that tough choices are being taken and, because of that, it’s not difficult to make a decision on the Magistrates Court. It’s unfortunate that our local MP is one of the people asking for the council to spend money – your money, of course – on this. As my colleague Ruth Cadbury has pointed out, what we do need to do is use the planning regime to get the car park in front of the building back into some kind of positive use. In the meantime, the last trial is on 9 December, and the building will be auctioned in 2012.

* Two wheels good *

From Monday, work will start on the construction of a cycle lane on the stretch of road between Morrison's and Albany Terrace. There'll be some work to widen the road in places and other improvements, concluding with a resurfacing of the stretch of road. For the next week or two Albany Parade will only be accessible by car from the High Street, so don't let that put you off using the excellent shops and cafes on the Parade.

* Can I help? *

Finally, please get in touch if you think I can help, preferably by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033. In the meantime, thanks for reading.

October news from Councillor Matt Harmer

2011-12-23T01:10:00.001Z

Welcome to the October email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer. You’re getting it because we have communicated on local issues. If you would prefer not to receive these bulletins then you will find a link below that will unsubscribe you.

* High Street Hopes *

Stop me if you’ve heard this before but there are signs of life in the possibility of Brentford getting a new town centre.

As you may know, a lot of the land south of the High Street was bought up by the Irish developer Ballymore. Before their proposals ever really saw the light of day the crisis that saw a number of developers across the Irish Sea go to the wall came along and put everything on hold.

Anyway, the developer started making more positive contact earlier this year. The fruits of their work so far will be on display in a shop called The Docking Centre on Brentford High Street later this month.
They’ll be there on Sat 29th October from 11am to 4pm. The Docking Station is about half way along the High Street on the same side as Nat West. I do hope you can go along. Whilst there’s a long way to go, I hope that we can all keep an open mind for as long as possible. Whilst we should have high aspirations we should also recognise some commercial reality – we are very unlikely to get a combination of world-class architecture, stunning facilities and a very low population density – the number of people that will be living on the site. It will be a balancing act between a number of competing claims: excellent housing including genuinely affordable housing, shops that can attract serious tenants, sufficient open space, whatever community and cultural facilities that can survive for the long term, the need/desire to retain any boatyards and other employment-generating space, there’s a lot to consider. There are a number of things that constrain what can be built, not least that it is opposite a World Heritage Site (Kew Gardens).

The application process is fairly long-winded. At present, we are in the pre-application phase, which should and, by the look of it will, include a good amount of pre-application consultation. They then submit a planning application to the council, after which the council seeks responses from various technical and statutory consultees (for example Thames Water, English Heritage etc) and also local residents. All these responses are considered by the council’s planning department before a decision is taken by councillors on Hounslow’s Sustainable Development Committee. That final part is a meeting in public where the votes of councillors for or against the proposals are noted for the public record.

That’s all a long way off, however. In the meantime please try and attend on the 29th. Oh, and there’s also a website www.mybrentford.com which goes live soon, apparently.

* Mind How You Go *

You’ll no doubt be overjoyed to hear that there’ll be an election next May for the Mayor of London. One of the things you’ll be hearing a lot about – assuming anyone’s listening, which I have to wonder – is Police numbers in London. There’ll be various claims about whether there are more police on the streets and better deployed police and so on and very interesting it will be. All I want to offer here is a local perspective.

As a ward councillor for Brentford ward I’m invited to observe the meetings of the Brentford Safer Neighbourhood Team (SNT) steering committee. The SNT are the local police, the steering committee are a group of local Neighbourhood Watch coordinators and the like who set their priorities.

When the SNT sysyem started in 2006 there were two Police Constables, three PoliceCommunity Support Officers and one Sergeant, who concentrated on street-level work. However we now have one PC, two PCSOs and a Sergeant that is shared between other wards. And rather than concentrate ojn intelligence and crime prevention they now need to work on the crimes that are reported on the Police’s non-urgent reporting number 101.

Does this reduction matter? I think it does. Whilst it plainly makes sense for police resources to be diverted during urgent operations – riotsk as an obvious example – we have lost something in taking the local police off the streets. It takes a long time to earn trust and in some places that trust is disappearing. Our Brentford SNT – Sgt Chris Jones etc etc – are all excellent and I hope that we can preserve and enhance the work that they do for us.

To contact the SNT call 020 8721 2533 or email Brentford.SNT@met.police.uk. They are not an emergency number – that remains 999. For reporting crimes and other non urgent and non local issues use the 101 service. Which is probably enough numbers.

* Parking report *

These emails aren’t complete without talking about parking schemes. Some months ago now we received a petition from Enfield Road residents who wanted a Controlled Parking Zone. To help make the decision, which will be made at the Area Committee meeting on the 19th November at the Free Church near the library, we commissioned a report to study the pattern of parking in Enfield Rd and neighbouring roads. I can’t attach it to this email but if you’d like a copy let me know.

I suspect there’ll be some disappointment amongst the people who worked hard to raise the petition that we aren’t just going ahead with one. I hope that they and others will understand why this is – making decisions by petition just wouldn’t be possible. However the petitions do get things discussed in public and that is the right way of doing things.

* Charity begins in the High Street *

We’ll begin where we started, at the High Street. The Brentford Toy Library will be opening their pop- up charity shop at Docking Station at 12pm on Friday 28th October. The shop will be open every Friday afternoon up until Christmas. They will be selling a mixture of new reasonably priced toys and donated children's clothing and equipment including baby ware and toys for all ages. They are looking for donations and volunteers. You can contact the organisers via www.brentfordtoylibrary.org.uk

* Can I help? *

Finally, please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033. If you’ve called recently and haven’t had a reply, please try again – BT seem to have been unable to sort out a proper answerphone service. In the meantime, thanks for reading.

July news from Councillor Matt Harmer

2011-12-23T01:09:00.000Z

April 2011 news from Councillor Matt Harmer

2011-12-23T01:07:00.000Z

Welcome to the newsletter from Brentford councillor Matt Harmer. If you haven’t received one before, then welcome, and if you have been wondering what has happened to these, then apologies. I haven’t been as well as I would have liked this year and they have fallen by the wayside. People have been complementary about these emails and I’m grateful for that. However busy we are as councillors, we shouldn’t forget to communicate as best we can.

As you probably know, there has been a great deal of discussion over what services have been reduced or cut entirely. I’ll try and deal by email with any particular enquiries that you may have, but one of the most talked-about proposals was the possibility that libraries, including Brentford’s, would be closed.

In the end, the money was found to keep Brentford library open for another year. Indeed, I was told by a couple of people that we never intended to close the libraries at all and that the whole thing was a smokescreen to make us look good when the ‘plans’ were scrapped. Well, I’m afraid to say that the plans were genuine and there are going to have to be many more tough decisions over the next three years. Without getting too bogged down, we have to find a similar amount of money to save this time next year, and then find a slightly smaller amount for each of the next two years.

So what will we do? For one thing, find ways of helping the staff at Hounslow Council do things better. They are good people and don’t deserve the criticism sometimes laid at their feet. I think we can speed up some of the work processes and do what we can to make sure that all staff members are used to the best of their abilities..

We also need to use the buildings we have better. Some buildings are in use from dawn to dusk most of the week, others tend to be empty more than they are in use. Things that the council does shouldn’t necessarily be wedded to one building. Frankly, we will need to sell some. And maybe there are services run by other organisations that we can use. Here’s one example for readers in Isleworth. West Thames College, near Isleworth station, has a really good library that was pretty much empty at 7.15 on the Thursday I visited. Of course there are problems – it doesn’t belong to the Council, are there security implications with non-students coming into the library and then getting access to other rooms – but we can’t avoid looking at these options.

We’ve also had approaches from voluntary groups wanting to run things, including libraries. It’s fantastic that they offer and we will take them all seriously. Again, there are questions – for one, how do we guarantee that the services will be properly run once the initial interest in taking over, say, a library has waned a little. But it’s our job as councillors not to hide from these options and these questions.

Finally on this, thoughts are with those members of staff who have had to leave the council’s employ. Good people, many of whom have helped readers of this email with problems that have been passed to me, have left the council. This email isn’t the right place to get into the rights ad wrongs of the coalition’s actions but I worry that the savings we have to make are being done a little too quickly and too deeply. My day job is in the private sector and I don’t see evidence that we can pick up the slack and I worry that we won’t get the growth that we need. My colleague Councillor Ruth Cadbury has started some excellent work on how we can improve the work we do for people in financial difficulty and it’s something that we will return to here.

* Some good news *

Sorry to drag us down a little. Some good news locally has been the good reaction to the new playground at St Pauls Park. This has been paid for by a government grant that wasn’t withdrawn (though other parts of the borough haven’t been so lucky). I’ve cycled past a few times now and the playground does seem very popular, which is really good to see.

One part that isn’t used much, however, seems to be the bike trail section. It’s got wooden ramps to cycle up and down but there is nothing obvious saying that the area is designed for cycling and is mostly used by young people doing sort of ‘free running’ up and down the ramps, which is fine of course. The last time I was there I was slightly tempted to take my bike up and down a couple of ramps to show the young people how it should be done, but I decided that the A and E department at West Mid were probably busy enough without having to stick me back together again. So if you have young children (or are a young child) and need a new place to cycle, away you go.

By the way, I know that a couple of the new pieces of equipment there have needed repairs and this should soon be complete. I also understand that more litterbins are needed and I’ll see what we can do about that.

* Parking! *

We couldn’t let one of these emails go by without talking about CPZs.

Last year, Hounslow Council, in common with other councils, introduced a new scheme which guarantees that petitions are acted upon rather than just left in the Mayor’s filing cabinet. Last month, we considered a petition to introduce controlled parking in Enfield Road, the road just north of the A4 that is home to the excellent Lord Nelson.

Now, we can’t just introduce controlled parking but we can consult on it. The trouble for me is that we have now done so twice and both times it has been rejected. That doesn’t mean to say that the same outcome would happen again, of course. Additionally, our controlled parking schemes (CPZs in council-speak) are fairly blunt tools.

So that’s why I am glad that it looks as though we will be able to study the situation in a rather more empirical way. WE plan to commission a study that will look at when pressure on spaces is at its highest and use data to see how long vehicles park and where these vehicles may be from. Hopefully, this will show that there are particular times when controls will be at their most effective.

Enfield Road is difficult because it’s narrow. Pavement parking happens and I get emails asking for a) this to be abolished so pedestrians get the pavement back and b) more pavement to be given over to cars. Again, previous parking proposals have tended to reduce the total space available for parking and we need to try and take a more imaginative approach here as well.

Oh, and if you are wondering who will pay for this, it will be our old friend s106, the funds that are available for this purpose, and this purpose only, following the development of the Glaxo and Paragon buildings.

And this doesn’t mean that we will definitely introduce a CPZ, only that we will consult on a better one. I imagine that residents of other streets will be interested in this (hallo, Hamilton Road!) and I’ll let you know how this turns out.

* Bidding up *

From parking to parks. Our bid for a significant sum of money (around £12,000,000) from the Heritage Lottery Fund for Gunnersbury Park is taking shape. A good team is being assembled and the early indications from the HLF are good, but we have a long way to go on this. It will probably involve making some difficult decisions on what we do with some of the 22 listed buildings in the park and the layout of some of the park, but it’s something we have to do.

The ownership of the park has hindered its development, owned as it is by both Hounslow and Ealing boroughs. Now that the weather is better, please do take a trip into the park – there’s plenty to see there but you’ll also see why we need to invest a considerable sum and do it quickly.

* What’s on *

Just one event for you; but it should be a good one. The team behind last year’s St Georges Day party in the High Street are back with a Royal Wedding party on, well, Royal Wedding Day, Friday April 29th. Starting at 2pm there’ll be stalls and music and all sorts of other good stuff. If you’ve a Brentford event I can help publicise, please let me know.

* Can I help? *

Finally, please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033.
In the meantime, thanks for reading.

Matt

January 2011 news from Councillor Matt Harmer

2011-01-12T00:41:00.000Z

January news from Councillor Matt Harmer

Welcome to the January email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer. You’re getting it because we have communicated on local issues. If you would prefer not to receive these bulletins then you will find a link below that will unsubscribe you.

* Cuts on the way *

These bulletins usually concentrate on completely local issues, and I think that’s how things should be. There are plenty of blogs, websites and so on for wider political discourse. But it would be wrong not to talk about the difficult financial decisions that all councillors will be forced to take shortly.

If you live in Hounslow, you should have received a budget consultation leaflet through your door. If you haven’t, let me know or go to http://tinyurl.com/HounslowBudget2011

You’ll see there some background into what is happening. Only about 15% of the money we spend comes from your council tax – most comes from central government (still from taxation, I appreciate, but not locally-derived). The autumn’s Comprehensive Spending Review reduced the funding to local authorities by fairly drastic amounts, in our case £60m over four years. In the next financial year, starting in April 2011, we have to spend around £20 million less.

Now, some of this can be done by cutting back costs and other efficiency savings. But we would not be telling the truth if we didn’t make it clear that there will be consequences on services. The consultation process is part of that. One of the things we need to decide is whether we want to concentrate on universal services or targeted services.

To explain what that means. There are some things that the council does that pretty much everyone benefits from. Rubbish and recycling services, say, or street lighting. And there are some that only a tiny number of people directly benefit from (I say directly and that’s something we’ll return to). An example of this would be services for, say, young people who have been taken into care because of abusive families.

What should we concentrate on? Some councils have gone to fortnightly rubbish collections and are turning street lights off at 1am in order to continue spending on those vulnerable teenagers I mentioned. Others have decided that the services to go should be the ones that directly benefit the fewest people. But we also have to ask what the cost could be of NOT helping those vulnerable people. If they are forced into continued chaotic lives then it’s highly likely that the costs to society will be higher if nothing is done for them. One resident writes with an example: the cost of keeping a young person in a Youth Offender's Institution is approximately £140,000 each year. If the lost of the Youth Service leads to more than six additional young people being imprisoned then the full saving assumed has been wiped out.

There’s no right answer to this conundrum, though it will often form the foundation of an individual’s political philosophy. There are 35 Labour councillors on Hounslow and as the majority group on the Council it falls on us to make these decisions. We will all make our cases and come to a decision, and I am determined to see that the responses we get inform this decision. The decisions we make will inevitably be unpopular; it’s our job to explain why we’ve made the decisions that we have. And please keep an eye on www.ruthcadbury.com for more updates – Ruth’s a much better blogger than I.

We’re also working hard to make the Council a better organisation. There are many excellent people working there but the structure of the organisation can be improved. This will reduce a little the impact of the cuts we have to make and will make the Council a much more responsive and proactive body.

So, please, get involved. And if you want to make a more detailed submission then please do so. You can email budgetconsultation@hounslow.gov.uk but please copy me in. The official deadline is 24th January – though for good ideas, there’s no deadline.

* Treetime *

Anyone like trees? Yes, I thought so. And I may be able to get you some in your road. I’ll explain.

Residents of Hamilton Road where surprised last month to see little pictures of trees sprayed on the pavement. It transpired that Hamilton Road had been selected by someone at the council to be a recipient of the Mayor of London’s Street Tree programme. Trouble is, no-one had properly asked the residents of that street how they felt about that. If you know Hamilton Road you’ll know that it already has trees – quite big ones, actually.

I emailed the 12 homes I have contact details for, and the response was mostly negative. And so there’ll be no new trees. Now, I can only assume that the budget for Trees remains – and I stress that this comes from a London-wide Mayoral budget and not Hounslow – and so, if you think that most people in your road would like some new trees then please let me know. They’ll be young and small for the time being, but they do grow, of course. I don’t know what species they are – surely not lime trees, which aren’t ideal to park under when they grow.

* You have mail? *

It’s plain that there was a gap in the consultation process there and we still have to improve on that. People living on and around Brook Road South who only had the notification of potential new double yellow lines from laminated letters on lampposts will agree with that (they’re all being rethought, if you live in that area).

I’m keen to find out if we can make better use of email. More and more people are making use of the internet to request council services and so we should be getting a good database of email addresses that relate to property addresses. So it should be possible to target emails to residents who may be affected by, say, a planning application or a change to recycling collections caused by bad weather. I know that no-one wants half a dozen email a day from the council but I think it’s an idea worth investigating. If you have an opinion on this, let me know (extra points for any hand-written replies to 153 Ealing Rd TW8 0LF).

* Greener and greener *

Anyone walking past my house will know that gardening is not really a priority. The trouble with it as a hobby is that it doesn’t stay done, it needs constant re-doing. But there’s some news of an interesting initiative for those who like the idea of shovels, trowels and manure.

Hounslow Homes, who manage our council homes, is working with a charity called ‘The Greening Campaign’ who help motivate people to reduce their energy consumption, lower their personal and community carbon footprint, and ultimately save money. They have provisionally selected the Haverfield community to be one of our four pilot communities and are looking at opportunities for finding spaces to grow food (and other things, I imagine) and also work at fostering a better community to help with problems like financial inclusion – helping people at risk from loan sharks and unable to work because they can’t open a bank account.

I’m expecting more information on this in the coming weeks and I’ll happily pass on any requests to get involved.

* Thames Water get together *

Many of us will remember the disturbance caused by the water main that sprung leaks last year, putting parts of the High Street under water.

Thames Water has started a six-month, £6m project to reline the major trunk main. This’ll mean working on and digging up parts of Twickenham Road, London Road, Half Acre, Boston Manor Road, Windmill Road, New Road, Ealing Road and Netley Road.

On Monday 10 January, Thames Water and the London Borough of Hounslow will be holding a drop-in session for people who were affected by the recent water bursts and who want to know more about what is happening. The drop-in will take place at the Holiday Inn, Brentford, and will run from 5pm until 8pm. I hope to make it along so maybe see you there. More importantly, Thames Water representatives will be there. No-one is enthusiastic about roadworks but if it’s necessary to prevent major bursts and leaks then we have to do it.

December News from Councillor Matt Harmer

2011-01-12T00:39:00.000Z

December greetings from Councillor Matt Harmer

This isn't a full bulletin (you'll be relieved to hear) but just an update on a couple of things.

Some readers wrote to me regarding the new playground proposed at St Paul's Recreation Ground, with some asking if any consultation had taken place or was planned. That was the first question I asked when I saw the plans about three weeks ago. I was told that the situation regarding the funding had made it necessary to get a move on.

That's fair enough but there are many users of the playground who will be able to offer suggestions. Some have, and thanks for that. I've arranged for one of the council's staff members with responsibility for the playground to come down to St Paul's Church Hall next Monday 6th December from 2pm to 3.30pm. If you are interested and able to come down then I look forward to seeing you there. If you are unable to come down then emailed contributions will all be passed on (if you've already done so then no need to do so again). Come down a little early, if you can, and have one of the excellent Open House lunches.

To be honest, we won't be able to start all over again but we will be able to refine the plans, which have, so far, been very well received.

Others wrote regarding a proposal to put double yellow lines at the corners of some of the roads off Brook Road South. The borough has never consulted on these proposals in the same way that it does with planning proposals and time pressures prevented us getting an info letter out, as we have elsewhere. However I have received plenty of emails on this subject. The final decision will be made by councillors at a future Area Committee meeting. I don't know the date yet but will let people know when I know. The proposals originated from the consultation that resulted in a 'No' vote for controlled parking and I'm very well aware of the irony of residents choosing to not have parking controls being followed by plans to, er, control the parking.

I can't send attachments on these mails but if you want to see a plan of the proposals reply to this mail and I'll send you a pdf.

Finally, you'll probably have heard about the awful events of last weekend, which ended in the murder of a local resident in New Road. Quite possibly like you, I've walked past the site too many times to count. Whilst we always need to be careful I hope that this won't lead to undue worry. Local police are stepping up patrols and are always available to speak with concerned residents at times like these. Let me know if you wish to put you in touch with them.

November News from Cllr Matt Harmer

2011-01-12T00:37:00.001Z

November news from Councillor Matt Harmer

Welcome to the November email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer. You’re getting it because we have communicated on local issues. If you would prefer not to receive these bulletins then you will find a link below that will unsubscribe you.
* Catching up *

Firstly, many thanks to everybody who has contacted me regarding the funds that are available as a result of recent planning applications. Lots of good ideas, as I expected, really. Some we unfortunately cannot help with because they cannot be connected in any way with developments that have taken place in the area. In those cases, I have put them onto a list of potential cases that we may be able to help in the future. For some, I have forwarded information on the Council’s own fundraising expert, available to help community groups do just that.

What might we be able to do in the area? Well, in collaboration with a local club we want to bring the storage/changing facility in Carville Park North back into use, we want to work with the Friends of Boston Manor Park to (finally) complete the work on the car park that will enable users to park rather than having it filled by GSK employees and visitors and, following a suggestion from Brentford’s Football in the Community Scheme, we are looking to improve the outdoor play area at Brentford Towers.

We’re also getting there with the A4 improvements. Transport for London will be returning to our Area Committee on Thurs 2 December to present their proposals for improving the status of the road crossings at Windmill Road and Clayponds Lane. It’s not been easy but there are some things it looks like we can do. We can also, I hope, make the crossing experience a little nicer for pedestrians by improving the lighting at the central reservations. At present, the only lighting is over the roadway. There are constraints – TfL won’t do anything to slow the traffic down, which I have to say disappoints me – but we will do what we can.

TfL have also come up with some improvements to the cycle path along the A4 between Syon Lane and Boston Manor Road. There’s nothing definite yet, but I’ve asked for them to present these too on the 2nd. So if you are interested in this area, please do come along to the Free Church at 7.30 on the 2nd December.

Talking of cycling, you may remember that we are still trying to improve the cycling experience in the area. There’s an interactive map allowing you to describe problems and potential solutions (or even good points) at http://visuals.sdgworld.net/temp/hounslowta/new/hubstudy/

* Playtime*

It looks like we can improve is the playground at St Pauls Recreation Ground. The playground here is very well used and it’s something we have wanted to do for a long time. Happily, the Government’s Playbuilder Grant for St Paul’s wasn’t a victim of the cuts and by the end of March we should have a new play area. A couple of the things there at the moment will stay, the Spider and a couple of swings, but lots of new things. I can’t send you to a link, unfortunately, but I have a pdf if you want to have a look – email me and I’ll send it over. It’s 4M so in case that’s not practical, here’s the blurb:

**St Paul’s Recreation Ground is a large existing play area, with some existing equipment and a lot of new equipment being adding so that it is suitable for all age groups. The Toddler Area is zoned off with a bold yellow outline. It has vibrantly coloured equipment and graphics, and also natural play features. The Junior Area is zoned off by a bold purple outline. Within this area there is a wide range of different equipment, from spinning, rocking, climbing, gliding, crawling and swinging! As well as this there is a fi tness area, a natural balancing trail and a Cyclo Gym area. Finally, the Teen Area is outlined with a bold red outline. This offers teenagers challenging, exciting, competitive equipment, like the Skate Grind Rails, the Altima and a Standard Goal end suitable for a broad range of ball sports. All areas have seating for both children and adults.**

If you could see the image in this email, that would make a bit more sense, of course, but hopefully it will give you an idea.

There’s a couple of things from previous bulletins to follow up. School places is something that we have talked about. I’ve been asked to provide details about a council consultation taking place that you may be interested in as it asks a specific question on local school places. The link you’ll need: https://eforms.hounslow.gov.uk/ufs/ufsmain?esessionid=1

You may also remember the articles about that ever fascinating article, dog mess. Well, we are about to start formal consultation on a trial of Dog Control Orders in Brentford ward. The Order will allow fines to be given for :
a) failing to remove dog faeces;
(b) not putting and keeping a dog on a lead when directed to do so by an authorised officer;
(c) taking more than a specified number of dogs onto land and
(d) permitting a dog to enter land from which dogs are excluded.
To read the full information, go to http://democraticservices.hounslow.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=54109

If you have any opinions, let me know and I’ll see that they are added to the consultation. It’s planned that Police and Police Community Support Officers will be the people supervising this. No word yet on when it will start, but positive comments will help us progress it.

We’ve talked about the moorings previously, and there’s been at least a little progress on this. A decision has been taken to do the following option (warning – council legalese coming up):

**This [chosen] option assumes that members wish to see an end to unlicensed moorings and also wish to see a step change in the management and appearance of the current moorings. This option envisages, perhaps in addition to dealing with the issues of sewerage, dealing with issues such as power supply, putting pontoons into the area and relaying out the format of the boats to maximise both the number of boats and financial return. It would also aim to improve the overall aesthetic appearance of the area and the links to the park.

The costs of undertaking a feasibility study under this option are difficult to accurately
estimate, but something in the order of up to £20,000 should be budgeted for to enable the procurement of specialist advice. This would be money at risk because it would not be guaranteed that a viable scheme would necessarily be forthcoming as a result of that study.

Once this feasibility work is completed, a report will be bought back to the Executive outlining the options for future development and management and a decision could be made whether the council itself formulates and manages an improved scheme or whether it seeks to involve a third party. Such decision can then be based on consideration of the various risks and rewards that may be involved.

If it does appear feasible, the council will also need to consider at that time how any new moorings are to be licensed and managed. Certainly if the council are to let directly then it would need to agree a set of initial lettings criteria which any person wishing to have a licence would have to meet. At that time the council could also decide whether or not to allow current boat owners who are at the site to take up a licence subject to them meeting the agreed criteria. If they do not meet the criteria, they would leave the site and if they refused to do so, legal action will have to be taken.**

You can read the full paper at http://democraticservices.hounslow.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=54361

* Layton trust *

We’re still on the lookout for Thomas Layton Trust trustees. Thomas Layton was an extraordinary Brentonian – more at http://www.thomaslayton.org.uk/ - and if you have a small amount of time to dedicate to helping the work of the Trust, please do get in touch.

* What’s on *
Couple of local events well worth supporting. The excellent Christmas Fair at St Faiths on Windmill Road takes place next Tuesday 23rd November. Two days later on Thursday 25th, it’s the fundraiser for the Brentford High Street Christmas Lights, 7.30 at the Holiday Inn. Tickets are £45 but it’s a top night so if you are interested in coming along let me know. On the next night we switch the lights on, 6pm at the Watermans. And to finish the week, St Paul’s Christmas Fair, at St Paul’s, on Saturday at midday. More details, and many more events, at BrentfordTW8’s excellent diary page at http://www.brentfordtw8.com/default.asp?section=info&page=calendar.htm

* Can I help? *
As a councillor, my first task is to try and assist residents with problems. Please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033.
In the meantime, thanks for reading.

2010-11-17T07:59:00.001Z

October news from Councillor Matt Harmer

Welcome to the October email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer. You’re getting it because we have communicated on local issues. If you would prefer not to receive these bulletins then you will find a link below that will unsubscribe you.

* Time to spend *

I’m hoping that you help us spend some money.
The money I’m talking about is money that is provided to the council by developers to help mitigate against the effects of what they build. Regular readers will know that these are called Section 106 payments, named after the relevant section of the Town and Country Planning Act (I really should get round to finding out what’s in the other Sections one day).

Anyway, it works like this. The council and develop negotiate a package of financial payments and other agreements. Some of them go into a central fund. An example of this is the compensation for the additional school places that new residential development would bring about or, possibly, transport improvements that a new office development would bring about.

Others are for local spending. In the past, the funds have been acquired but never spent. It’s been a continual frustration in my short time on the council and I’m now in a position to try and do something about.

I’ve requested an audit of uncommitted and unspent funds for the four wards that make up the Isleworth and Brentford area and have asked councillors for the four wards (Brentford, Syon, Osterley & Spring Grove and Isleworth) to consult with as many people as possible and gather ideas together on how these funds might be spent.
They are online at http://tinyurl.com/s106Spend - go down to Item 4 and look at the four documents beginning S106 Stocktake September 2010. Looking at the data for Brentford ward, the table shows that £997,551 is uncommitted to any project and that a similar amount is committed but has not been spent.

A couple of caveats. There are legal restrictions on what can be spent. Funds are specified as being for Highways improvements or Environmental improvements and we have to stick to theose restrictions. There are also geographical restrictions on where the money can be spent. Sometimes it can only be spent in the immediate neighbourhood of a development but for larger schemes the net can be cast wider. Generally, the money has to be spent on actually building something rather than the regular costs of running something. So we might be able to (for example) repair a community centre but not pay someone to provide services there.

And because spending is ongoing, some funds that might be shown as available may actually have been spent by now.

But putting all this to one side, there is money to be spent and your ideas on where it can go will be very welcome. Look at the ward data for the area you live or are interested in. (If you’re not sure which ward you live in http://gis.hounslow.gov.uk/hounslowexternal/Search.aspx?swd=wards will help you).
Ward councillors will be collecting all the suggestions and getting accurate costings on projects. The next meeting of what we call the Area Committee will discuss the suggestions and table as many proposals as possible. That meeting is on Thurs 2nd December and all members of the public are welcome. We can’t guarantee to be able to bring forward everybody’s proposal but we’ll do what we can and make sure that all the decisions are taken in an accountable way.

Given these deadlines, suggestions would be welcome as soon as possible. Good ideas are always welcome but getting suggestions by Oct 15th will really help. If you know who your ward councillors are, email them directly and if you don’t, email me and I’ll forward it on and copy you in.

* Pedalling jobs *

As a very amateur cyclist I was happy to be invited along with fellow councillors Ruth Cadbury and Mel Collins to the Brompton factory on the A4 adjacent to Carville Park. Bromptons are the folding bikes and it’s not widely known that they are made here in Brentford. And they are not just made but hand-made, with component parts crafted and put together in the factory. It’s good to know that skilled manufacturing still goes on today and the work that Brompton are doing in providing training is commendable.

Their order book continues to grow and they are beginning to outgrow their site. As a council, providing and maintaining jobs locally is a priority and Ruth, in her role as the councillor in charge of planning and regeneration, has since discussed how we can do everything we can to keep companies like Brompton in the area and ensure that the demand for sites for housing does not mean that we become just a dormitory borough for people to travel elsewhere to undertake skilled employment.

The visit was followed a few days later by an internal meeting that discussed future priorities for employment and regeneration. It seems to me that we can do more to involve the major companies that have sites in the borough. Are we doing enough to involve local schools and colleges with BSkyB, GlaxoSmithKline, IBM and so on?

There’ll soon be a planning application to turn the old Gilette factory into a hotel (permission was given for this around four years ago but is about to run out of time). Should we insist through, yes, a Section 106 agreement that the hotel operator take a certain number of school leavers on trainee programmes?

These kinds of initiatives will be necessary if we are to increase and retain local employment in these difficult times. Hounslow isn’t really a borough with severe employment difficulties – the airport sees to that – but the kinds of jobs are important too. And it helps build sustainable communities. At meetings with GSK I have been told that the desire internally is that as many people as possible can walk to work. This has been discussed in the context of getting better housing, so that employtees would be more inclined to move here. But it works just as well the other way round – employing as many local people as possible in the first place.

* High Street latest *

A couple of bits of High Street news to finish with. Last week, we met with Thames Water to learn some lessons from the recent floods. The pipes are 120 years old and plainly there was a failure in identifying potential faults. The local water mains will be repaired or replaced over the next year which will, in itself, cause some problems and we will be doing what we can to minimise these works. We also discussed compensation and Thames Water know that they are under the spotlight in this regard. If you believe that you have a claim that TW aren’t dealing properly with, please let me know and I will pass on the communication to the appropriate people.

You may have seen that the High Street won an award last month. A think-tank called the New Econimics Foundation have been working for a while on urban economic regeneration and how High Streets can improve and thrive. They have generally taken a position where what they call ‘Clone Towns’ are frowned upon, that is, High Streets with a number of Chain stores.

Well, it turns out that Brentford comes top of their list of non Clone Towns and thereby should be congratulated. Botton of the list is Richmond, which apparently is full of chains. I will leave it to you to decide if an independent tattoo parlour is preferable to a Next or a Pizza Express, but it’s nice to win something. The report itself is worth a read and can be downloaded free of charge at http://www.neweconomics.org/sites/neweconomics.org/files/Reimagining_the_high_street_0.pdf

* Can I help? *

As a councillor, my first task is to try and assist residents with problems. Please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033.

In the meantime, thanks for reading.

Sept 2010

2010-08-31T00:02:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the September email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer. You’re getting it because we have communicated on local issues. If you would prefer not to receive these bulletins then you will find a link below that will unsubscribe you.

* A4 again *

Readers with long memories will recall me writing about the desire to make it safer to cross the A4. That campaign may move a little closer to fruition this week, and you may be able to help.

It was in October last year that I received an email from the mother of pupils at a local primary school regarding the difficulties caused by traffic not driving carefully at the junction of the A4 and Windmill Road. After a mention in an earlier email, other emails arrived with similar stories, all with a general theme: the pedestrian crossings on the A4 don’t give very long to cross, and the layout of the junctions means that some drivers don’t take any notice of traffic lights.

Following this, I spent a morning with Council and Transport for London engineers. At the same time, we gathered together all the planning gain funds from nearby developments to see what money was available – and it came to quite a lot. So, Transport for London were asked to investigate what could be done and they will be present at a locally-held council meeting this Thursday evening 2nd September at 7.30 to let us know what they can do and what it will cost.

You can see the report by going to http://tinyurl.com/A4report and the agenda for the whole meeting at http://tinyurl.com/A4Meeting . My feeling is that there’s a little too much about traffic and too little on crossing times. Now, Transport for London manage the road and they are under the control of the Mayor of London, so there’s little we can actually *make* them do.

Which is maybe where you come in. It’s a meeting that’s open to the public and there’s scope for participation. So if you are able to come along and add some weight to this campaign it might be helpful. I’m chairing the meeting so it will be first on the Agenda. You’ll see that it’s a packed agenda so it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to spend more than 45 minutes on this issue and I can’t speak for what other councillors might want to happen, but hopefully we can make a step in the right direction.

• Park improvement *

Are you familiar with Carville Hall Park South? It doesn’t have the snappiest name in the world and it’s kind of hidden between the A4/M4 and the railway line, but it’s worth a visit as the upgrading work that’s been taking place for a while is now complete. The grass areas are much improved and there are a couple of new playgrounds, one complete with large sandpit and climbing material that shows that it’s alright to get a bit dirty and maybe even take a risk or two when playing.

The improvements are a result of our old friend planning gain, in this case the redevelopment of the old Beechams site into housing – the North Brentford Quarter, as we must learn to call it, I suppose.

It’s not always entirely clear where some of the funds go and I think we have a good result for the area here. The park is a short walk from the Haverfield Estate, which is short of play areas and it’s our job, I think, to try and promote this new play space and improved park as it’s not directly on a well-used public route. There’ve been fun days in Carville Park South in the past and perhaps there should be again. Try and take a look if you have young children (or even if you don’t) and let me know what you think. And if you have no idea where I am talking about, go to http://tinyurl.com/CarvillePark

Staying with parks, I hope that you’ll be able to visit the Brentford Festival this Sunday September 5th, midday to 5.30pm. It’s become a fixture in our calendars following the hard work of the Friends group and definitely worth a visit. One part of the Festival that I hope you can call at is the area introducing the consultation into ordering the priorities for the Park and the historic House. It’s a similar situation in some ways to Gunnersbury in that there is a hugely important building that needs severe amounts of maintenance and a large park that has a number of potential different uses. The survey is there to find out what parts of the Park and House are most popular and what areas of work we should prioritise.

There’s another stall that it would be nice if you could call at – the Labour Party stall. I’ll be on it with colleagues, please do come by and say hallo. More on the whole festival at http://www.brentfordfestival.org.uk/BF2010.htm

• Help wanted

Thanks to all of you who responded to the request for help for the Community Volunteer project last month. This month, I bring a request from the organisers of Brentford FC’s Community Sports Trust’s Extrerme Football Trust which is, I quote, “aiming to reduce crime and anti social behavior, create routes into education, training and employment, and to break down barriers between the police and young people. The programme delivers 13.5 hours of youth provision a week for 48 weeks of the year. These sessions will include sports based activities such as basketball, boxing, street dance, cricket, youth clubs, and educational workshops, however still keeping football as the main hook”.

There are three sites across the borough, in particular Brentford Towers and the Haverfield Estate. If you would like to get involved in helping this service get delivered, let me know and I will pass on your details. You’ll need to be prepared to put in time between 5pm and 9pm and have an interest in, though not necessarily experience in, coaching these kinds of sports. The Trust will organise any necessary criminal record checks.

I’m happy to pass on any similar requests for help, probably one per newsletter, so if you have a voluntary organisation that needs some assistance then please let me know.

* Can I help? *

As a councillor, my first task is to try and assist residents with problems. Please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033.

August 2010

2010-08-31T00:01:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the August email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer. You’re getting it because we have communicated on local issues. If you would prefer not to receive these bulletins then you will find a link below that will unsubscribe you.

Apologies for the lack of a bulletin last month and the short bulletin this month. The day job and a couple of health things have caught up with me – I’ll try and resume normal service soon! However there are a couple of things worth sharing, starting with football.

* New season here *

The football season started on Saturday and Brentford FC have their first home match tonight, Tuesday 9th August. Below you’ll find a list of fixtures to print out and stick on the fridge. Please be aware that cup ties, television and bad weather can alter fixture dates so please visit www.brentfordfc.co.uk if you need to be sure that there isn’t a game on a particular day.

Here are those fixtures:

Tuesday, 10 August 2010 Brentford v Cheltenham, 19:45
Saturday, 14 August 2010 Brentford v Walsall, 15:00
Saturday, 28 August 2010 Brentford v Rochdale, 15:00
Sunday, 5 September 2010 Brentford v Sheff Wed, 12:00
Saturday, 18 September 2010 Brentford v Hartlepool, 15:00
Saturday, 2 October 2010 Brentford v Charlton, 15:00
Saturday, 9 October 2010 Brentford v Oldham, 15:00
Saturday, 23 October 2010 Brentford v Peterborough, 15:00
Tuesday, 2 November 2010 Brentford v Bournemouth, 19:45
Saturday, 13 November 2010 Brentford v MK Dons, 15:00
Saturday, 4 December 2010 Brentford v Notts County, 15:00
Saturday, 18 December 2010 Brentford v Huddersfield, 15:00
Tuesday, 28 December 2010 Brentford v Tranmere, 15:00
Saturday, 1 January 2011 Brentford v Dag & Red, 15:00
Saturday, 15 January 2011 Brentford v Exeter, 15:00
Saturday, 29 January 2011 Brentford v Yeovil, 15:00
Saturday, 5 February 2011 Brentford v Plymouth, 15:00
Saturday, 26 February 2011 Brentford v Bristol Rovers, 15:00
Tuesday, 8 March 2011 Brentford v Brighton, 19:45
Saturday, 19 March 2011 Brentford v Leyton Orient, 15:00
Friday, 25 March 2011 Brentford v Carlisle, 19:45
Saturday, 9 April 2011 Brentford v Swindon, 15:00
Friday, 22 April 2011 Brentford v Colchester, 15:00
Saturday, 30 April 2011 Brentford v Southampton, 15:00

A couple of things that may be of interest to people living around the ground. Firstly parking: traffic engineers are working out the possibility of introducing a parking scheme around the ground for match days. There are some difficulties to overcome here, not least who pays for it, but it’s a study that needs to be done.

Secondly, a follow up to the very limited and isolated trouble that occurred around the recent friendly match with Fulham and, also, after the last couple of matches of last season.

Firstly, I don’t want anyone to think that this was a mass outbreak of hooliganism or anything like that. Yes, there were a couple of local incidents and that’s a couple too many. Anyway, I met with the police Safer Neighbourhood Team, the police officer in charge of match day policing, local residents and the Club a couple of weeks ago. There is no doubt that the Club are serious about nipping this problem in the bud, promising a zero tolerance policy.

One of the tools is an Exclusion Order, which prevents identified individuals from going within a mile and a half of Griffin Park on match days. The Club have also agreed to place prominent notices in the programme saying that trouble makers will be strongly dealt with, including bans from the ground. They are aware that a good reputation takes years to build and moments to lose.

If you do notice any trouble, please do report it. If it’s a crime happening in front of you, then it’s always 999. Other than that, feel free to pass any info to me and I will forward it to the relevant officer. It’s vital to know times and places, and bear in mind that young men on their way to and from football matches may be a little louder than commuters doing the same trip.

* What’s in a name? *

You may recall that planning permission was granted earlier this year for the site by Kew Bridge. I was contacted recently by the Council’s Parking and Developments Team, who co-ordinate the names for new buildings and roads, in regard to what the development should be called. They had some suggestions but I’m not sure about them and I would be interested to hear if you have better suggestions.

The developers prefer the name ‘Kew Bridge House/Court’ which will win few prizes for originality. The local library service advise on these matters and prefer Thomas Layton House. Thomas Layton was a famous Brentonian (check out www.ThomasLayton.org.uk) but we already have a Layton Road and I fear confusion, speaking as someone who still gets cabs and pizzas that should be being delivered to Ealing Roads as far away as Alperton (I make sure that the cabs are redirected properly).

Other notables are celebrated elsewhere in places like the Haverfield Estate and Tunstall Walk. So if you have a suggestion for a name and can send it to me along with a brief explanation by the end of this week, that would be excellent.

* Volunteers wanted *

I have been approached by the Brentford Community Resource Centre, the former GP surgery near Morrison’s, who are seeking new Trustees. The building houses a number of volunteer organisations and seeks people with an interest in community development activities and a small amount of time to spend. The minimum required is to attend a management meeting once a month. This is usually on Monday evening and lasts from 6:30 pm to approx 8:30 pm.

If you’d like more information or think you can help, please let me know and I will pass on details.

* A4 update *

Readers may recall previous items about our attempts to make the A4 a safer place to cross or walk alongside. I’m hoping that we will have some solid news on this at a public meeting to be held on Thursday 2nd September at the Free Church near the library. If the news is good I will send out an email a few days before, as I think it would be helpful to have a room full of concerned parents and other road users. Unfortunately, the work has taken longer than I was originally told it would take, but the will is still there to try and resolve this problem.

* A diary date *

Please put the Brentford Festival in your diaries – 5th September from midday. I’ll be on the Labour Councillors’ stall, please do come over and say hallo.

* Can I help? *

As a councillor, my first task is to try and assist residents with problems. Please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033.

In the meantime, thanks for reading and I hope that you are having a peaceful August.

June 2010

2010-06-20T11:54:00.001+01:00

Welcome to the June email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer. You’re getting it because we have communicated on local issues. If you would prefer not to receive these bulletins then you will find a link below that will unsubscribe you. For an archive of bulletins going back to January 2009 please visit www.mattharmer.com

This month – parking, boats, cricket, trees and play.

Hamilton Rd headache

Regular readers won’t be surprised to see that we are starting with parking and Controlled Parking Zones. Earlier this year, residents in roads around Griffin Park were asked if they were interested in being part of a CPZ. Some expressed an interest and further surveys were done. The results were released last week and a final decision made at Thursday’s Area Committee meeting. You can see the CPZ figures at http://tinyurl.com/CPZ2010 at page 2.

It wasn’t an easy decision. Residents of Hamilton Road and Westbury Place voted by a majority of 24 to 22 that they wanted a CPZ. Residents of the roads adjacent and nearby voted against (some had voted against on the previous round in Oct 2009 and therefore hadn’t been consulted in detail). Similarly, Layton Rd voted 19 – 11 in favour on a turnout of 41%.

So, what to do? Put a CPZ in one road, with the inevitable overspill into other roads, thereby disadvantaging them? Look at the area as a whole?

At this point, it’s worth pointing out a couple of things about councillors’ decision making. Firstly, we are often given a huge get-out clause on this – simply don’t turn up to the meeting where the decision has to be made and you can avoid being part of the decision making process. Try doing that at work or in your home life and see how far you get. Now, the meeting was last Thursday and I had to work. But even if I hadn’t, I would still have got out of the decision making process because I live adjacent to one of the roads being considered and therefore would have a greater interest in the outcome than most residents.

This means that it would have been fine to keep my head down. But that doesn’t seem right, so I wrote to members of the committee, and made the letter public, that I felt that on balance my preference would be to have no CPZ rather than bringing it into one road. I know that this decision is not popular and I will be out with fellow councillors Ruth Cadbury and Mel Collins knocking on some doors over the next few days to explain the reasons – mostly, that the decisions we take on one area have an effect on adjacent areas and we have to take those into consideration.

So whilst I know the decision isn’t universally popular - sometimes it is about upsetting the fewest number of people – I hope that one can accept that these decisions are made for understandable reasons and that we are prepared to stand up and defend them.

I should add that the Committee did decide to progress a football matchday CPZ, though there are some technical hurdles to overcome on that score (see what I did there?)

Moorings moving forward

There’s been local interest lately in Watermans Park. The Executive team of senior councillors who lead the borough have been presented with a report on the situation down there concerning the licensed and unlicensed boats and asked to come up with a plan. I’ve had some well-argued emails that the relevant report was biased in some way against the unlicensed boat owner/dwellers.

I don’t think that’s the case and I think that the important thing here is that we now must recognise that any further proposals must involve all parties – it’s the start of the process, not the end.

Ruth Cadbury will be leading on this and we’ll keep you informed on this.

Trees tested

A couple of bits of Gunnersbury Park news. On Monday I was at Lords attending a meeting hosted by former England test player Mike Gatting, who now runs a team looking to increase participation in cricket. There is a plan taking shape to put in a couple of artificial turf training wickets in the Park and allow local schools to use it. There’s some funding issues to sort out – as always – but I’m told these aren’t impossible to overcome and that we have a good chance of getting facilities that young people from local schools and clubs will be able to use. Given the state of our football team, perhaps it’s time to start building up the cricket talent.

I also had notification of some works to trees in the park. A team of arboriculturalists inspected 2,492 trees and 74 groups of trees in the part. The survey has identified 58 require removal as a matter of urgency as they were found to have significant levels of rot and decay, creating a hazard to residents and users of the park. This represents 2% of the trees in the park. In addition there are 213 trees that require remedial works, 8% of the tree population in the park.

Local residents have, I’m told, been informed and I pass this message out to reassure park users that this is not the start of a housing development or any other kind of development. I’ve been sent details of what’s wrong with these trees so anyone wanting more information can get in touch and I’ll send it on to you.

More play

Parents and carers of children from 0 to 5 will hopefully be aware of the excellent work of the Brentford Toy Library. The Toy Library have sessions at St Pauls Church Hall on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and Friday afternoons and will start a new session next week at Clayponds Community Centre on Wednesday mornings from 9.30 to 11.30. It’s an excellent facility and well worth going along to if you have children of that age – and it’s free. More info at http://www.brentfordtoylibrary.org.uk/page8.aspx

Parents and carers should also know about our local Children’s Centre – info at http://www.brentfordtw8.com/default.asp?section=info&page=evchildrenscentre005.htm

Help wanted

At the start of this email I mentioned the Area Committte that covers the four wards of Brentford, Syon, Isleworth and Osterley. I know Chair one part of those meetings and we are looking for interested residents to join us as co-optees. If you have an interest in the sort of things that get discussed in these mails and can give up some Thursday evenings then you might want to put yourself forward for selection as a co-optee. You can look at previous Agendas by going to http://tinyurl.com/AreaCtteCoOp and following the links.

I want to increase public participation in these meetings and I want to theme some of them. I can’t be certain yet but I hope that September’s meeting on Sept 2nd will discuss potential improvements to the A4 crossings. I’ll hopefully know more next month. If there is an issue that you think would be enlightened by an hour-long session, please let me know. It can’t go into individual cases but can cover things of interest to a wide number of residents.

Counted up and counted out

Finally, a last word on the election. Once again, sincere thanks for your support in re-electing me along with colleagues Ruth Cadbury and Mel Collins. Thanks also to all candidates in the local elections – I hope that you think we had a fair contest, and credit to the candidates who are still involved in community issues – where we can, we will continue to work in harmony.

As you may know, the Labour party are now leading the council. As a Labour ward councillor it remains my job to represent the ward in the council and I will continue to do so to the best of my ability. I know that you will let me know how I’m doing...

May 2010

2010-05-03T00:53:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the May email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer. You’re getting it because we have communicated on local issues. If you would prefer not to receive these bulletins then you will find a link below that will unsubscribe you. For an archive of bulletins going back to January 2009 please visit www.mattharmer.com

* Historic viewing *

It looks like Brentford is going to lose one of its most important historical collections, an archive of worldwide importance, and one which very people know is here.

For one ward, Brentford has a surprisingly large number of important heritage sites. There’s Gunnersbury and Boston Manor Parks and the important buildings within, the Musical Museum and the steam museum. All well-known and rightly so. Yet travellers on the E2 bus to Ealing are mostly unaware that, just before the bus turns the corner on Windmill Road into darkest Ealing, they are travelling past the BBC’s archive centre.

It’s home to thousands and thousands of hours of broadcast history on television and radio dating back to 1922 and the project now underway to digitise the archive and make it available online. It’s well known that lots has been lost, sometimes because of carelessness but also because of cost (and when one considers that a roll of videotape used to cost a small fortune it’s a bit more understandable) but we have had a collection of international importance under our noses for a log time without it being very well-known. This includes now-ancient videotape machines originally commissioned by the US military (and partially funded by Bing Crosby, who was fed up with doing his weekly radio show twice because of multiple time zones in the US).

Although there are no studios, it apparently it is possible to put archive items on the air direct from Windmill Rd. I was told by one former employee that this facility was upgraded in the 1980s because it was felt that, in those Protect and Survive days, Television Centre might not survive a nuclear attack but Windmill Rd might.

And it looks like it is off to a new building in Perivale. I don’t know if there would be any appetite for tours of the facility (and it’s hard to know how exciting it would be to look at boxes of old videotape and old cans of 16mm film) but we have many people in our community with a great depth of knowledge of historical resources and it would be a shame to let the passing of the archive in Brentford go un-noticed.

Oh, and there’s one piece of 1970s television I was told about recently that I’d like to see. It seems that Hounslow featured in 1976 in the domestic heats of It’s a Knockout (readers under thirty please ask an adult) competing against the boroughs of Lambeth and Kingston. I’m told by a participant that during the rehearsals Hounslow comfortably defeated the opposition during rehearsals but failed to make the grade once the cameras started rolling. It’s alleged that a celebratory visit to a pub near to the Feltham Arenas location may have been this fall in rankings but I couldn’t really comment.

* More history *

As this might be the last of these emails I send (see below) I thought an update on some of the things covered in the past might be appropriate.

>>St Paul’s Recreation Ground<< This has been frustrating to say the least. For as long as I can remember the sign at the entrance has been a disgrace – covered in graffiti and having no relevant information. Some time ago I identified some planning gain money and, happily, all other local councillors agreed that this was a suitable project. And still no new sign. On enquiring recently I was told that the funds to replace the signs were in this year’s parks budget and always had been, making the whole process of getting the planning gain money a waste of everybody’s time. At least that mony can be spent elsewhere, perhaps on replacement rides for the ones taken away last year.

>>Dog mess<< Perhaps my biggest ever postbag following one of these emails concerned my describing how an enquiry from a neighbourhood PCSO (Police Community Support Officer) as to how he could get books of tickets to fine repeat offenders revealed that the council had taken the decision not to use recent legislation to fine offenders as it was seen to be too ‘heavy-handed’. Happily, in my view, that looks like changing. One of the first jobs of the new council will be to sign off a trial of fines for repeat offenders. Brentford ward is being used to test how well it works, if it’s a success it will be rolled out across the rest of the borough.

>>Watermans Park<< Frustrated by years of inactivity and concerned by reports of less than perfect behaviour from some (not all, but some) of the occupiers of the unlicensed boats alongside Watermans Park I brought about something called a Councillor Call for Action. Designed for backbench councillors unhappy at how issues of local importance are being treated by the council leadership, it has resulted in, yes, another report, but one which could with good will and effort resolve the situation to the benefit of all concerned. Whether that means regularising the status of the boats there or putting in pontoons to support more boats remains to be seen but finally things are moving in the right direction.

>>Controlled Parking Zones<< After dog mess, it’s parking that gets a response. The roads near to Griffin Park that were consulted earlier this year will have to wait until our votes are counted before the votes of that consultation are revealed. For the roads north of the A4 (and Layton Road) who decided to have controlled parking last year, the sixth month review asked for by Cllr Cadbury is due. From various conversations I would say that the principle of the CPZ is agreed but that the hours of control need revising downwards, from all day to one or two during the daytime – thus preventing all day parking whilst making it easier and cheaper for visitors to park.

>>A4 safety<< The results of the survey into potential changes to crossing times on the A4 junctions should be known soon. For me, this started with emails from concerned parents at Our Lady Primary School and went on from there. I secured support from the Council to improve safety for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers and have been the local representative on meetings with Transport for London designed to see how the approx £700,000 funding from local developments (some of which we prevented from expiring) can best be spent. I get the impression that there may be some differences of opinion between the people in charge of the crossings and the people in charge of vehicle flow, but that is all for the future.

>>Housing increases<< Since I became a councillor, around 800 homes (mostly flats) have been given planning permission. That doesn’t include the development on the old Beecham’s site, which is now filling up, but was given permission before I was voted in. My only role in that development was to help secure some of the new affordable properties for families with a Brentford connection – that is, living or working in the area. I worried that a ‘them and us’ situation might develop between the new development and the affordable housing literally in this case on the other side of the tracks. Those properties are now being filled and the families moving in seem pleased, though we did have some problems when properties were handed over with bare concrete floors - happily all sorted now.

>>Schools<< The problems with secondary school allocations filled the intray in March. It was April 2009 that I told the councillor with responsibility for education that parents in TW8 were calling for a new mixed school to be provided in the area and asked for this to be examined. I was only given a loose assurance and ass we all know, little seems to have happened since. Since the last bulletin I’ve heard from three families who are moving away because of this very issue – the lack of activity is very concerning.

However, let’s not forget that we live in a great town. I was at Nick Lowe on Friday and he said that he loved living here and got a huge cheer – it’s hard to imagine that happening in many other places in the capital.

I’d like to put on record my thanks to all the council officers that have helped me over the past four years. It’s been my fortune to be helped by people with years of expertise and I’m truly grateful for their help. And huge thanks also to Ruth Cadbury for her help and counsel these past four years and to Mel Collins for his advice on tricky housing issues.

I’d like to go on sending these emails but the decision is yours if you live in Brentford ward. I’m down the bottom of the ballot paper at number 9, with Ruth and Mel at 3 and 4 respectively. The election date is….well, you know the rest. Perhaps most importantly of all, please do go and vote. It does make a difference.

Best regards

Matt

April 2010 newsletter

2010-04-08T01:12:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the April email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer. You’re getting it because we have communicated on local issues. If you would prefer not to receive these bulletins then you will find a link below that will unsubscribe you. To see some older issues take a look at www.mattharmer.com. This month – purdah, parking, pupil places and patron saints.

* St George's celebration *

I’ve been calling up a couple of old friends lately. Old friends who used to sell things at the Brentford Farmers Market, that is. On St Georges Day there will be a festival of things English in the High Street and it was felt that some home grown food might be of interest. Whilst I always enjoyed the Italian Cheese man I think that on this occasion we will have some meat, fish and apple juice. Alan the fish man asks me to ask you if there are any advance orders, and to say that he expects to have some dressed crabs, pickled cockles and other delicacies, plus some mushrooms that he grows. I won’t be certain until a few days before as it’s not always easy for stallholders to fit in an extra day, but regardless of this there will be some good stuff happening on the High Street.

Of course, I wish the Farmers Market had worked out. The first one that we did had most of Brentford there and one stall had sold out after 90 minutes (they even sold the home-made cheesecake they had promised me) but sadly it wasn’t sustainable in the long term. There are others locally, which is excellent news, and it will be interesting to see if a one-off works.

Anyway, the St George's Day celebration will be held between 3pm and 7pm on the High Street. There’ss be more information on www.brentfordTW8.com nearer the time. Come down and say hallo. (And as I’m sure you already know, St George's Day is April 23rd).

* At last *

Well, to no-one’s great surprise, there’s going to be an election. Whilst the general election has only just been confirmed, the local elections have been scheduled for May 6th pretty much for ever – certainly since the last local elections in 2006.

As you can imagine, it keeps us busy. We try not to purposefully knock on doors just as dinner’s ready/the football’s kicking off/the phone’s just rung, though it probably appears that way. At least the weather has improved, as it’s not really feasible to talk over the finer points of local government administration whilst the temperature inside someone’s house plummets thanks to an open door.

It also has an effect on casework. The Council is now in a condition called ‘purdah’ which means that it’s forbidden to make any announcements that could be seen to favour one candidate or group of candidates over another. It’s why we’re all having to do without HM magazine this month. Now, it’s arguable that this could cover every bit of casework. Should I be able to tell someone I’ve just helped them repair their window, for example? I’d argue that I should, because individual pieces of work like that aren’t really political, at least not with a capital P.

But it might stop some things, like finding out the results of a consultation exercise, such as the one carried out recently into whether or not there should be a controlled parking zone in certain streets near Griffin Park.

There’s no doubt that the letters C, P, and Z are enough to galvanise opinion like little else, and that’s fair enough. What’s been impressive about the survey recently completed (involving Lateward, Hamilton and New Roads and Westbury Place) is that a lot of thought has gone into the arguments for and against. Perhaps most important is whether or not the policy under which we decide these things is correct.

At present, we ask the question on a road by road basis. But there is an obvious knock-on effect and a good argument has been made for selecting a network of streets that relate to each other, drawing a line around those streets and looking at the answers provided by all respondents. This would be instead of the present scheme, which tends to ‘pick off’ roads that are positive and therefore potentially put added pressure onto roads that decided in the first instance that they were happy with existing arrangements.

At the very least, altering the decision-making process would, I imagine, reduce the perception held by some residents opposed to the principle of CPZs that as councillors we are obsessed with introducing them, because of financial rewards or a wish to control every element of residents’ lives. With these proposals it is impossible to please everyone – honestly, we are trying to find the best solution for the greatest number of people.

* Missing families *

The Schools saga continues. Many thanks to all who have emailed. There are two sad stories emerging. The first concerns young people heading to a secondary school some way away from home and some way away from friends they have made at Primary School as a result of not getting the first, or second, or fifth choice that they made. The raw data seems to suggest that having an older brother or sister at a school will get you in if you are a Brentford family, however no sibling means little chance. We’re still waiting for the entrance figures with siblings removed from the data, and indeed the purdah rules may prevent us getting it for another few weeks.

The other and just as worrying story is that reflected in emails I have received from readers of this email who used to live in the area but have relocated. And why have they done this? Schools.

My colleague Ruth Cadbury once remarked that her core ambitions were to try and improve the borough’s homes and schools because, that way, other things would follow on. Families would settle, employment would increase, a sensible level of development would be achieved.

This week, parents of TW8 primaries have contributed well over 300 signatures in a petition presented to the council’s leadership. If you have signed this, thanks for doing so. I hope it encourages the leadership to move forward with applications for securing funding for schools, applications which a year ago we were told would be in place by now.

Individual case studies still help, please feel free to email them to me or Ruth (Ruth@RuthCadbury.com) or call 07503 212 735

* Tide turning *

The potential to do something to smarten up the riverbank at Watermans park crept forward an inch or two last month. About a year ago I used a new and fairly obscure piece of local government procedure (fascinating stuff, I know) to get the state of the riverside tidied up and try and do something about some of the unsightly and unlicensed moorings there.

It’s been a useful process and we’ve all become semi-expert on whether or not the Council, the Queen or various organisations half way between the two have ownership and/or control over various bits of the riverbank. I can’t say we know the answers, but we’ve got a half-decent idea what questions we should be asking. Anyway, the leadership of the council (whoever that should turn out to be from May) are being asked to take charge with named councillors working to a definite timetable to achieve defined objectives. That may not sound like much but, believe me, it counts as progress compared to the. er, drifting that has gone on for years. The report can be read by going to http://tinyurl.com/yh35jes

* Get in touch *

Whatever else is going on, I'm still a councillor and still here to help. Reply to this email or phone 020 8560 7033. And apologies if I disturb you from doing something important over the next few weeks…...

March 2010 newsletter

2010-03-09T22:41:00.001Z

March news from Councillor Matt Harmer

Welcome to the March email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer.

This month – schools, dogs, music and miscellany.

* Lessons in schooling *

Secondary schools have been the main issue over the past few days, with a number of Brentford families very concerned to find that their child has been allocated a school a long way from home.

To explain the context, early March is when families find out if their choice of secondary school has been successful. Families are asked to choose six schools that they would like their child to attend and then the council applies the allocations policy to all the applicants. If there is a sibling at the school already, then that gives the first priority. Once the siblings are accounted for, the remaining places are decided on distance from the family home to the school via the shortest walkable distance. (There are other deciding factors but this email would be far too long if I covered them all).

This year there seems to be a serious problem in Brentford. Councillor Ruth Cadbury and I have had many calls from and held meetings with parents who have been told that none of their choices have been successful. We are at a disadvantage in that we don’t have a mixed secondary school in the area, and many families have been given a school two bus rides away.

Why has this happened? Local primary schools report that this year has a slightly higher number of leavers and it may be that there are fewer families opting for fee paying schools. In terms of population growth, the number on the electoral roll in Brentford ward in 2009 stood at 10,073, compared to 9,661 for 2008.

More importantly, what do we do? Well, in the long term we need to provide another mixed secondary school in the area. At present, there are government programs that will finance the building of a school. If the land is in the ownership of the local council then that can be used, otherwise there is the harder job of finding a site. My Brentford ward colleague Ruth Cadbury and I have met with the Director of Education to discuss this on various occasions. We are told that things are happening but (as seems to be the case too regularly) progress is slower than anticipated.

In the shorter term, we are looking to see if an extra class can be introduced to take account of the additional numbers. Logistically not easy, but surely not impossible. Before we move on with this it will be helpful to keep up with how the affected families are moving up the waiting lists. If you are affected by this then please do get in touch. Reply to this email or call me on 020 8560 7033. For latest information keep an eye on Ruth’s website.

One other thought. It could also be bad news for Brentford if the demand goes down. The last thing we want is for families to start considering the choice of secondary school, realise that there are none in the neighbourhood, and move on. To build a truly sustainable community we need to have excellent, available education. The demand for schooling is a good thing, the challenge is how to provide schooling to encourage families to move to and stay in Brentford.

* A fine for a mess *

One of the bigger postbags that this email received followed the story about dog mess last year. The story so far – a local policeman got in touch to ask where he could get fine tickets to give to people who persistently let their dogs foul parks and footpaths. It turned out that the police couldn’t just do this, they needed permission from the council, and that permission had never been given.

It’s fair to say that the response to this story indicated that dog owners of this kind – a small minority of dog owners, I hasten to add – were not thought of kindly by the readers of this email. So I’m glad to say that there’s been some progress.

Although it still needs to get signed off at a senior level, it looks likely that Brentford will host a trial of a scheme to help with this problem. There’ll be a £50 fine (going up to £80 if it’s not paid) for anyone not removing dog mess, persistently letting dogs off the lead where they are supposed to be on a lead and letting dogs onto places where they are not supposed to be. Local police will be the ones giving out the tickets, should it be necessary.

I know that some people will think this to be a bit draconian, but I think it will help prevent what people have reported to be a problem. Hopefully the possibility of getting a fine will do the trick and no tickets will be issues at all – for me that will show that the trial has been a success.

Given the glacially slow progress of local government it’s not clear when this will all start – I’ll let you know as soon as I hear. Thanks to everyone who got in contact and helped make the council aware that the problem was serious enough to deserve proper consideration.

* Muso corner *

I’m always happy to pass on information about local events, especially when they are as good as the ones I’m about to plug. On Friday 30th April, Nick Lowe will be playing at St Paul’s Church, supported by the estimable Phil Martin and the Brentford Belles.

Being a reader of this email you are undoubtedly a person of taste and distinction and won’t need me to tell you that Nick Lowe is one of the finest singer songwriters (and producers) of the last thirty years. Anyone who was at his concert in Stripes a few years ago won’t need me to tell them that the chance to see talent of this magnitude close-up is not to be missed.

Better still, it’s a fund raiser for the excellent Open House café, who serve up excellent lunches daily at St Paul’s.

For tickets, go here and follow the instructions. It’s not clear how many are left but as of two minutes ago it was possible to make purchases. Come and say hallo, I’ll be sitting near the front.

If you prefer the Canvey Island Scene then you must make your way to the Musical Museum on March 25th to see Julien Temple’s film about Dr Feelgood, Oil City Confidential, being presented as a fundraiser for our excellent Toy Library. If you need an excuse to see it, parts of it were apparently filmed in the area but this is less important than the chance to hear the finest pub rock ever produced. It'll be on the evening of Thursday 25th March in the theatre at the Musical Museum. For tickets go to this website.

Again, I’ll see you there.

For younger readers who are a little confused by all this, find a middle-aged man and they should be able to give you full details.

* News in brief *

I hope no-one will mind if a pass on some bits of local news that may be of interest. *** Lateward/New/Hamilton/Clifden Road residents should be aware that the second stage of consultation will be starting soon. Look for details coming through your door shortly *** Windmill Rd residents north of the A4, I’ve had a promise that the pavement in front of the new flats next to the Globe will be restored within the next four weeks – it’s been a mess for too long *** A4 cyclists, I’ve contacted Transport for London to ask that the cycle lane be restored on the A4 following the laying of a new pavement *** St Paul’s playground users, I’m still talking with the contractors over replacing the missing playground equipment in St Paul’s Recreation Ground – they’ll be replaced but I want to make sure that the new equipment is of the same kind as was taken out***

There you are, a quick guide to some of the things that come in. And no mention of the resident who’s received a water bill for £19,000…

* Can I help? *

As a councillor, my first task is to try and assist residents with problems. Please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033.

In the meantime, thanks for reading!

February 2010 email newsletter

2010-02-14T23:21:00.000Z

This month – an apology, trees and playgrounds, cycling, the return of another landmark and another apology.

* Staying in touch *

The first apology is for my tardiness in getting this email out to you. It’s mostly because I was away last week, and there were some time-consuming things to deal with before then. I remain grateful for the positive feedback that these emails have generated since the first in January 2009 (archived at www.mattharmer.com) and the number of replies that I get.

One reads a lot about how important new digital forms of communication are going to be in forthcoming elections. I’m doing the Twitter thing (though my live coverage of council meetings is failing to attract Lily Allen levels of followers) and the Facebook thing, and these emails. And they are all have their place, but old fashioned door knocking and generally being around is still out in front, though I’m unsure about the wisdom of door to door canvassing in this weather given how high fuel bills can be. In the last four years I think I’ve got to most roads in the borough at various intervals; if you think your road needs a visit then let me know. I’m hoping to go part time at work soon, which should give more time to get around as the evening light lengthens and the temperature rises.

* Planting trouble? *

I came back to quite a few emails about trees. Last week, residents of various roads in the borough found that they know had trees in their street and reactions were interesting. In Lateward Road there has been some unhappiness that the trees were being put in given the proximity to St Paul’s Recreation Ground and the narrowness of the pavement.

It demonstrated that we’ve still got some way to go on genuine and open consultation and the way that decisions of this kind are made. I’ve been speaking with colleagues elsewhere in London about how to improve this and have seen good examples of how communities can decide exactly how money gets spent. It doesn’t mean that people are bidding for money to do something but saying here’s the money, how should it be spent? So perhaps the choice could be between street trees, hanging flower baskets, extra leaf-sweeping patrols or any other ideas that you may come up with. Anyone who has ever thought ‘why are they spending money on that’ – in other words, all of us – could find this process useful.

In the meantime, let me know if you have been given trees that you don’t want or want trees but don’t have them.

And talking of St Paul’s Recreation Ground, I understand that another ride was removed from the playground last week. I still haven’t received a proper reply to my enquiry on when the items removed last year will be replaced or, indeed when the new signs will be put in. The money for the signs has been found so I don’t understand the delay, and the delay over the play equipment is, I’m afraid, something that I am encountering more and more. Just because I’m a councillor I don’t expect instant action on things I report but when weeks go by with no response, it’s frustrating.

More street trees or better play equipment? Wouldn’t you like to have a say in that decision?

* Gearing up for cycling *

Lots of interest in the cycling story in January’s email. Responses divided into ‘cyclists deserve priority wherever possible’ and ‘all they do is ride on the pavement and go through red lights’. Anyway, I spent a morning discussing how our area could become a Cycling Hub. As with most of these things there are lots of ambitious statements but fewer definite actions.

Personally speaking I’d like us to do more to encourage younger people to cycle to and from schools and make our roads easier to cycle on. The recent freezing weather has opened up potholes everywhere and these can be a real problem when cycling. To be fair, some of the worst of these have been fixed but of you have a bad one on your cycling route or outside your house, let me know. It also means that we put cycling higher up the list of considerations when deciding on things like CPZs.

* A new old sign *

It looks like the new Lucozade sign gets switched on formally on Monday. I know that there are strong feelings about the preponderance of large advertising hoardings along the A4 but personally I always liked the old one so am happy to have it back. It was usually a reminder for me of how late I was for work…

* New lines to take *

Just before Christmas I was at a council meeting that discussed potential changes and improvements to local public transport and I neglected to mention this in last month’s mail. Perhaps the most interesting was the discussion we had over the potential to join Brentford train station with what until recently was called the North London Line and is now branded London Overground. This would give a direct service to Willesden Junction, Highbury and Islington, Camden Rd, Stratford and all points in between.

Whilst the majority of commuters and travellers are heading to Clapham, Vauxhall and Waterloo it would be interesting to know how many then head out of town towards north and east London. A service around the edge of zone two could presumably reduce some of the pressure on services into London and provide a more pleasant journey than the very crowded rush hour tube services.

For a short while, there was a service on this route when Anglia Trains ran a service on the all-important Norwich to Basingstoke route. It sometimes stopped at Brentford and one or two other stations on the way around London, though not at any regular intervals. Apparently it was as much to do with the machinations of different rail franchises and disappeared fairly soon after it was introduced, but it shows it can be done.

It’s a long term ambition rather than something that will start any day now, but seemed to me to be a sensible addition to rail services. If you think you’d use a service like this, let me know.

* Stamping some authority *

One more apology before I go. In January I wrote to people who I’ve tried to help out or have been in contact with over the last couple of years. In total, I sent around 400 letters. Unfortunately, it seems I sent some out with no stamp, and so far four people have contacted me about this. I can only imagine the frustration, anger and, most of all, disappointment that the people must have felt having made it down to the Brentford sorting office and handed over £1.30 only to find out that the mysterious correspondent was me.

It’s entirely my fault. Having printed the letters and stuffed the envelopes I suppose I wasn’t fully engaged by the time it came to stick the stamps on. If you had a wasted trip to the post office to collect a letter from Yours Truly, please let me know so I can a) apologise profusely and b) refund any monies.

* Diary dates *

A couple of things to mention. There could be quite a bit of interest in the match taking place at Griffin Park at 7pm on Mon 15th when Chelsea Reserves host Arsenal Reserves. Parking around Griffin Park won’t be easy and it’s highly likely that parking wardens will be patrolling the area. Tickets are often issued for double parking and parking on dropped kerbs, so be careful. On the following day, Tues 16th, there are pancakes at St Paul’s Church between 11 and 2. See you there.

* Can I help? *

As a councillor, my first task is to try and assist residents with problems. Please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033.

In the meantime, thanks for reading.

January 2010

2010-01-09T10:48:00.001Z

January news from Councillor Matt Harmer

Welcome to the January email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer. You’re getting it because we have communicated on local issues. If you would prefer not to receive these bulletins then you will find a link below that will unsubscribe you.

This month – our new Children’s Centre, cycling news, some good news on the High Street and, of course, the weather.

* Cold comfort? *

I hope that you are surviving the cold weather without too many difficulties. It’s strange how some services seem to have got better since the bad weather started, whilst others have worsened. Brentford area schools seem to be getting back to normal, and the delays in rubbish/recycling collection are understandable, I suppose. As I write this on Saturday morning my recycling is being collected. SW Trains did well at first, with a special timetable, but seem to have got worse. The 65 bus seems to have done ok.

I’d be interested in hearing your stories about how services could be improved at times like this, and I’d also like to know where congratulations are due. My post seems to have turned up regularly, and it can’t be easy manoeuvring heavy postbags around in this weather.

* Good jobs well done *

The request for congratulations as well as condemnations was triggered by a mail I received last week. It followed from a very unfortunate event, a burglary, but take a look at the email (reproduced with permission):

Half and hour before we got in from holiday our place was burgled at 9:30 last night. The burglar got into our back garden and broke thro the kitchen window. He set off the alarm but still managed to get upstairs to take two cameras.

Anyway the good news is at least 4 neighbours turned out into the street and one called us to let us know about the alarm and let herself in to switch it off. I think this contributed to him leaving the house quickly. On top of that the police were brilliant. The 0300 number worked very well and within half an hour two female PCs arrived from Hounslow - they were professional and helpful and were followed a few minutes later by a crime scenes investigator from Chiswick who collected evidence from which they think they can get a lot of information. Today a crime prevention officer called. They were all exceptionally professional, understanding and speedy and made our experience much less frightening, lonely and intimidating that it might otherwise have been.

Anyway - thought you might like to hear this rather than the usual moans.

I’ve sent this onto local police. As councillors we hear a lot of examples of when things aren’t done properly – quite rightly as that’s what we are here for – but good news stories are always welcome.

* New Children’s Centre *

Parents and carers of pre-school children should take a look at the activities on offer at Brentford’s Children’s Centre. It’s offering a variety of activities including playgroups, messy play sessions, indoor sports (including football for two year old boys and girls) as well as advice sessions for new parents with information on nursery education grants, health etc. Sessions cost from just 50p per child. Take a look at http://tinyurl.com/ChildrensCentre for information, or email BrentfordCC@hounslow.gov.uk

The Children’s Centre will be alongside Green Dragon School when construction is complete but in the meantime is working out of Mission Hall on the Haverfield Estate. Mission Hall is just off Netley Road, for a map go to http://tinyurl.com/MissionHall

* Two wheels good *

I know that the thought uppermost in all readers’ minds at present is how you’re looking forward to jumping on your bikes for a nice ride somewhere. Or possibly not. Either way, I’d be interested to hear on how we can all get on our bikes a little more.

Earlier this week local councillors were invited to a meeting that will discuss how Hounslow can become something called a ‘Biking Borough’. Apparently it’s been decided that the Brentford and Isleworth areas are the best disposed to cycling and we may become some kind of guinea pig on how to increase cycling rates amongst people who live and work here.

Any comments on this welcome. I’m an occasional cyclist, Ealing Road to the station five days a week (though not this week for obvious reasons) and occasional trips to the Civic Centre in Hounslow. (You think the A4 is flat? Think again!). Now, cycling groups have been brilliantly helpful on improvements to the cycle path on the A4 and their views are always valuable. But as an overweight middle aged bloke who works behind a desk, I’d say I was a good example of a person who could benefit from a bit more cycling. What could help bring this about, I wonder?

Well, not feeling in danger of being run over would be a start. I try to stick close to the gutter but there are some big old holes there sometimes, forcing a trip out towards the middle of the road. At present, we spend some road mending money by picking a specific road and resurfacing it all. Maybe we should prioritise the parts of all roads were cyclists need to go. Giving priority to cyclists on cycle paths has to be examined, especially given the terrible accident on the A4 in 2008.

Having somewhere to lock the bike to somewhere it’s less likely to be stolen is always good. A couple of years ago I had one removed from the rack at Kew Bridge station, and looking around for a spare bit of railing when there are no racks is never much fun. And having somewhere to keep it at home is useful. Mine lives indoors when I’m at home but that’s not easy for people in flats. My colleague Ruth Cadbury has tried to increase cycle spaces in new developments (it’s usually one space per dwelling, often not enough when children are concerned).

Anyway, your suggestions are very welcome – reply to this email with them and I’ll let you know what we discussed next month.

* A4 again *

If you’re crossing the A4 next week, don’t be too alarmed if someone watches you. I’m told that the surveys that will inform any safety work on the A4 and the road that crosses it. I don’t know what day(s) the work will take place but if you are driving your children to school in the morning and you see the survey people at work, perhaps you could walk them home in the afternoon? Or at least park on the other side of the A4 and cross on foot…

For those who need to travel along the A4, some good news from next week. The H91 bus service that traverses the A4 goes double-decker from Monday. Apart from the obvious benefit of increasing capacity, it means that they’ll be easier to spot. Good for when you’re waiting for one and good to show that the bus exists – in my experience, it’s a bit of an unknown service.

It’s very unfortunate that the Mayor has seen fit to increase the fare on the H91 – and every other bus in London – by 20%, but the better service is welcome. In case you’re wondering how the new buses are being financed, it’s our old friend Section 106 – money stemming from new developments in the area.

Anyone crossing the A4 or on a bus near the Texaco garage will see that the site for the replacement Lucozade sign is presently being built. It’s going to be a replica of the old sign with all new components. I’m not sure of the switch-on date, keep an eye on www.brentfordTW8.com for news on this (and much else besides, of course).

* High Street latest *

Talking of planning gain money, it looks as though it will also pay for what is presently being called a ‘Town Centre Coordinator’. Fans of council budgets will recall that myself and other Labour colleagues tried to bring in funding for this in April last year. Anyway, it looks as though this might eventually happen. The wording is a little vague, it has to be said, talking as it does about funding Brentford and Hounslow West town centre but not being specific on hours, duties etc. Anyway, we will be keeping a close eye on this. The funding is from a mixture of developments including the Tesco store in Osterley and is intended to increase employment in the area, on the basis that it’s beneficial to find local employment opportunities (even when the trains aren’t iced up).

While we’re on the subject, you may, like me, have used the Somerfield/Morrison’s car park when doing business elsewhere on the High Street. Fair play to the two organisations who have never made a fuss about the car park being for shoppers only. Be warned, however. I’m told that there’s an automatic number plate recogniser in operation which will log your details and send you a ticket if you’re there for over two hours. Hasn’t happened to me but has, I’m told, to others. Best to stick to two hours.

* Shovelling for victory *

Griffin Park neighbours should avoid returning with heavy shopping next Tuesday evening, 12th January, as that night may see the rearranged FA Cup game with Doncaster Rovers, depending on the results of a pitch inspection. The Club are looking for volunteers to help clear the pitch in advance of the inspection on Monday. If that sounds fun, get to the club at 9am on Monday and there’s a hot cup of tea in it for you. Bring shovels if you have any. More details at www.brentfordfc.co.uk. The winners of the tie (whenever it’s played) travel to Derby or Millwall.

* Can I help? *

As a councillor, my first task is to try and assist residents with problems. Please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033.

In the meantime, thanks for reading and I hope that you can keep warm.

December 2009

2009-12-01T01:41:00.001Z

Welcome to the December email from Brentford councillor Matt Harmer. You are getting this because we have communicated on local issues - if you would prefer not to get these monthly emails, you can click to unsubscribe at the foot of this email.

*A4 update *

Some progress on the A4. On a particularly unpleasant Monday morning a couple of weeks ago I took another walk along the A4 with traffic officials from Hounslow Council and Transport for London.

Despite the bad weather we had a slight spring in our step because we knew that we had in the region of £600,000 available to try and spend on things that would make the A4 and the roads off it safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

(It sounds like a lot of money – indeed, it is. But one thing that I’ve learnt in the last three and a half years I that funds never go as far as you think they are going to go. A sign costs £6,500. How much for a zebra crossing? You’ll get a bit of change from £40,000, possibly, but not much.).

Anyway, it was a productive walk. The first stage is to do a survey on how many people, of all ages, cross the A4 and the roads that meet it. This will be done in the next couple of weeks – I was very clear that it had to be done in term time, as it’s the parents of children at local schools that first raised this issue with me. I’m hoping to be told when this will be as it would be and I will happily let people know – I’ll certainly let local schools know.

After this survey, the numbers get fed into a computer model that will help work out what can be done. The man from TfL in charge of signals is keen to get a system where crossing times can be extended so that it’s possible to get across the A4 in one go, without having to wait on the central reservation. There’s also a move to change how the crossing signals work, giving more ‘green man’ time.

There’s also a plan to better use the SCOOT system. This refers to hidden traffic sensors in the road that can extend the times available for road crossing depending on traffic levels.

AS for the roads that meet the A4, we’ll be told if it will be possible to get proper crossings on them. At the moment one takes a chance, which is obviously not right when the roads are used by children from our local primary schools.

I’d also like to do something about the state of the central reservations. What little lighting there is is there for drivers, not the people crossing the road. Because it would involve hanging things off the elevated section of the M4 it means dealing with the Dept of Transport and that won’t speed anything up, but we’ll keep on it.

I’m told that a report on what can be done will be available by early February. Please get in touch with any comments or suggestions, especially if you think there’s something I’ve forgotten.

* Gunnersbury indecision *

I’m not long back from the Gunnersbury Park Advisory Board meeting. A strange situation.

A you probably know, Hounslow and Ealing councils share ownership of and responsibility for the park. In August/September a consultation process sought public views on whether or not it was acceptable to look into selling around five acres of the park to a housing developer in return for funds sufficient to improve some of the 22 listed buildings in the park, provide a Sports Hub and generally improve the landscape.

After the process was complete, and before the results were made public, Ealing council’s leadership suddenly announced that they were opposed to building on the park. All very commendable, but couldn’t they have said this before passing £25,000 to pay for external consultants’ work on this project? The two councils will have to seek funding from external agencies like the National Lottery and English heritage and I can’t imagine that they will see the two councils as a particularly professional body given the changes in position.

As we’re called an Advisory Board, I offered some advice – that the leaders of the two councils locked themselves in a room and only emerged when they had a realistic plan that they could both agree on. However, I’m not holding my breath.

* Dog mess mess *

Less progress on dogs, I’m afraid. Or, rather, the owners who think it’s ok to let the dogs foul wherever they want and not clear it up.

To backtrack. In September, local police asked me if I could help them get the necessary paperwork from the council to enable them to fine dog owners who don’t do the right thing. It turned out that the council had to give the police power to do this, and that meant a report. A report which may or may not be finished and may or may not have been approved – no-one’s told me. I think I made it as easy as possible for this to happen – I even sent to our council the text used by another council to give police these powers. So the next time your five year old steps in the stuff, I’m sorry, I tried…

* Patience patience *

The amount of time it can take to get answers remains a frustration. The problem isn’t usually with staff members answering individual questions but with senior people taking vaguely strategic decisions. One example – I’ve been trying to help with sorting out the problem of the car park in Boston Manor Park since before becoming a councillor and have got nowhere. Just as something looks like it might be about to happen, a contractor changes or staff member leaves and we begin all over again. Plus, the reduction in staff members has had an obvious effect.

Anyone who has tried to call the council recently will understand how I feel, I think. Whilst it sometimes took a while for the call to be answered, at least there was a human on the other end of the line. Now, it’s two rounds of “press 3 for…” before maybe speaking to someone with a pulse.

* Parking consultation revisited *

Parking is back on the agenda (actually, it never really goes away).

In September, residents in roads around Griffin Park were asked if they were interested in the principle of having controlled parking. Three roads said yes – Clifden, Hamilton and Lateward Roads. The opinion of the paid officials at the council was that the first two should be consulted in greater detail whilst Lateward shouldn’t get a second, detailed round because they would be an ‘island’ in a sea of non-CPZ roads.

I’m not sure that is the right answer. Frustratingly, because I live in the area that was consulted, I can’t take part in the meeting that will decide this matter, but I’ve put my reservations to others. The meeting is on Thursday at Brentford Free Church and starts at 7.30.

If you want info on the decisions made, please reply to this mail and I’ll let you know what happened.

* Twitter failure *

Well, the Twitter thing hasn’t really worked out for me at the moment, but I’m going to give it another try. CllrHarmerTW8 is the name to follow for those who understand these things. My esteemed Brentford labour colleague Ruth Cadbury has started a blog which I’m sure she will do a better job of updating than I did at www.ruthcadbury.com – pop over there and take a look.

* Planning latest *

The council's planning committee gave the go ahead for the Alfa Lavel site last week. It sees the old Brentford Nylons building retained as a hotel with another new hotel at the Ealing Road end of the site and office space in between. Behind this, flats, houses and open spaces. Personally I think the decision was the right one. As people drive down the A4 through Brentford I want people to think that something is happening, and development here will help.

* Happy holidays *

All that remains is to wish all readers a peaceful holiday season. For many people these are worrying times and I hope that Christmas is a time of peace and freedom from fear.

Finally, please do not hesitate to get in touch if I may be able to help with anything. I look forward to hearing from you.

November 2009

2009-11-08T19:30:00.010Z

Welcome to the November email from Brentford councillor Matt Harmer. You are getting this because we have communicated on local issues - if you would prefer not to get these monthly emails, you can click to unsubscribe at the foot of this email.

* Worryingly wrong *

It’s been a busy month, and this email is overdue. I’m typing this on Sunday evening having just returned from seeing one of the more spectacular examples of incompetence it’s been my displeasure to see. It’s resulted in households in one of Brentford Towers losing their gas central heating and cooking facilities.

I’ll explain. After the Camberwell fire, the flats were examined to see that there were sufficient things in place to stop fire and smoke spreading from within flats to the central lobbies. It was noted that the way gas meters were set up was potentially a risk. Basically, the gas meters are in a cupboard and can be examined from outside the property – it means that meters can be read without going into the properties. From inside the property, the gas can be turned off at the meter, which you might do if going on holiday. Very sensible, but this meant that there was a space through which smoke or fire could pass through.

So, last week, Hounslow Homes contractors sealed up the cupboard. Safer from a fire/smoke point of view. But now, you can’t see the front of the meter. Not only can no-one read how much gas is being used but residents who need to re-charge the payment on the gas meter, using a pre-payment card, can’t get the card in the meter. So you can imagine how happy the tenants are about having no gas on a cold Sunday evening and no prospect of charging up the meter in order to get more gas.

Mistakes happen, and I’ll be calling the relevant people in the morning, but if this is the level of competence on a reasonably simple job, can we trust them to do the hard things properly?

* Keep it coming *

This is just one of the many areas that you have asked me to try and help with recently. Additionally, your emails and phone calls are really useful in keeping me up to date on what is going right, what could be better and how it could be fixed. One example – an increase in emails and calls from roads off Windmill Rd on the north side of the A4 has got an assurance that the refuse and recycling service will improve.

Whether it does, of course, remains to be seen, and again your help there is welcome. I live pretty much in the middle of the ward and try to get about as much as possible, but it’s your experiences that really help. After three and a half years of being a councillor I think that we probably spend longer than we need to in the Civic Centre and if there’s something you think we need to know about, please do get in touch.

On the subject of waste and recycling, there is a meeting (yes, in the Civic Centre) next week between councillors and the people responsible for the new service. I’m pleased that the amount sent to be recycled has increased but there are still unanswered questions about how our Hounslow Homes-managed estates seem to have been left out of the discussions on how to implement the new service, about how the service is monitored and whether or not complaints are being addressed in the most efficient manner.

* Help for vulnerable households *

I’ve congratulated local police before on these mails and I’m going to do so again, this time for their co-ordination of a scheme to help vulnerable households stay safer. We probably all know examples of homes that show, from the outside, that the resident or residents may be vulnerable. Broken fences, windows that don’t close properly and so on.

For people aged 65 and over, the disabled, single parents and other residents who are particularly vulnerable officers from the Metropolitan Police Brentford Safer Neighbourhoods Team will visit homes to discuss home security and if necessary arrange for the fitting of new door/window locks and install security chains to doors. All work undertaken would be carried out by a member of the Metropolitan Police Brentford Safer Neighbourhoods Team with no cost to resident(s).

In addition, under the ‘Justice Seen Justice Done - Community Payback Scheme’the Metropolitan Police Brentford Safer Neighbourhoods Team, working in partnership with The Probation Service and Local Government, will arrange for residents to have their garden fences repainted, attend to unmaintained and/or overgrown gardens and if necessary fit security spikes to the top of walls to deter unwelcome visitors. All work undertaken under the Community Pay Back Scheme is closely supervised, and again, there would be no cost to resident(s),

Should you wish to find out more about the schemes, or know a household that could benefit, please let me know and I will pass the details on.

* Inventive adverts *

Anyone who travels down Ealing Road, just south of the A4, will have noticed that some of the advertisement hoardings have been removed. At the same time, it looks as though the Lucozade site given planning permission in 2005 is going ahead. This is on one of the buildings near the Texaco garage and I’m told it will be up and running in the new year.

Another kind of advert appeared on the scene recently, and I think we have to give some credit to whoever thought of it. A couple of weeks ago my colleague Cllr Ruth Cadbury and I were coming out of a meeting with local residents at Our Lady and St Johns School when Ruth noticed a new and very large advert on the side of the new Paragon building (that’s the TVU teaching facility and student housing by the A4).

The strange thing was, it wasn’t a conventional advert but, rather, it was being projected. We looked around and saw the source – a transit van parked on the verge of the A4, with the side door open and a very powerful projector pointed at the Paragon. Some work had seemingly gone into this because the ad fitted the building perfectly. There are some very low-quality pictures at www.mattharmer.com

Wrong, of course, but inventive. And I’m not giving the company being advertised a free plug…

* Christmas is coming…*

A brief What’s On notice. St Faith’s Church will be holding a Christmas Fair on Tues 24th November from 6pm to 9pm. Mulled wine from The Lord Nelson pub, gifts from local suppliers, preparation of Christmas food, carols and lots of other good stuff. More details at http://www.parishofbrentford.org.uk/fayrestallholders.htm

St Faiths is on Windmill Rd on the northern side of the A4, just after The Globe pub. Unfortunately I have to go to a council meeting at 7 but if you’re there before that time, come over and say hallo.

* Keep drinking *

As you may have seen, the Magpie and Crown pub in the High Street has closed, at least for the time being. As a very occasional customer it’s bad news, as the pub always did the right thing in promoting beer from smaller, independent brewers. This may have part of the problem, as it seems to be the chain pubs with the mass-produced chemical concoctions that they pass off as beer making the money at the moment.

Pub fans – of which our area has quite a few – should try and get to the Six Bells in the next few days before it closes for its refit. It’s pretty much unchanged since about 1965 and worth a visit to see what a pub looked like before man walked on the moon. You’ll get a good welcome from Joyce, who has worked really hard in difficult times and deserves a peaceful retirement.

* Game on *

A quick football update. Because of their 2-2 FA Cup draw at Gateshead, there’ll be an extra game at Griffin Park on Tuesday 17th Nov at 7.45pm. If Brentford are successful they will pay Walsall at home on Saturday 28th November, making three home Saturday games in a row.

* Can I help? *

As a councillor, my first task is to try and assist residents with problems. Please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033.

In the meantime, thanks for reading.

October 2009

2009-10-06T01:19:00.003+01:00

Welcome to the October newsletter from Brentford councillor Matt Harmer. You're getting this because we have been in contact on local issues. If you prefer not to get these emails then please click the 'Unsubscribe' link at the foot of the mail.

* Towers fire concern *

Research by BBC London has revealed some very disturbing news about the fire and gas hazards in the six blocks that make up Brentford Towers.

In July, following the fire in Camberwell that killed six residents, I requested reassurance from Hounslow Council and Hounslow Homes, who manage the Towers, that the Towers had been recently inspected and everything was generally in order, that tenants would receive information on what to do in the event of a fire and that regular risk assessments were being carried out. (I've put the question I asked and the answer I received at the foot of this mail).

Those of you who watched the BBC London News on Monday evening or are able to go to the BBC London website will read that this is not quite the case. (If you are reading this before 1300 on Tuesday 6th, go to http://tinyurl.com/TowersNews and scroll down to 9.06 to see the BBC News TV bulletin). Award-wining journalist Kurt Barling took a surveyor around the Towers. The verdict? Not good. Some examples:

* Too many places where common areas and flats aren't separated properly (including many flats without proper fire doors, making it easy for a fire to spread from the lobby into a flat and from a flat into a lobby)
* Gaps between floors that can allow fire and smoke to spread from one flat to another - including where cables have been installed for digital TV.
* Poorly designed fire exits.
* No signage or emergency lighting on escape stairs
* Gas meters surrounded by timber framing, increasing the chance of fire reaching a gas meter or pipe, with obvious implications.
* A lack of information on what to do in the event of fire.
* Storage areas containing combustible materials.
* An absence of fire alarms.

Now, I don't want to start undue alarm. Fires are, thankfully, rare, and a lot of good work has been done to prevent fires happening in the first place. The use of gas is being phased out of the Towers. But our tenants and leaseholders deserve better. The Towers are high-risk buildings because of the manner of their construction and, it seems, they do not have up-to-date fire risk assessments.

I hope that Hounslow Homes will carry out a full programme of engagement with residents to demonstrate that
all procedures are being followed properly - something which doesn't appear to be the case at present.

* Parking survey underway *

Consultation is now under way on whether or not residents in the roads around Griffin Park are interested in having a Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ). A response form should be with all residents by now (mine arrived last Monday). If you haven’t had one or it’s gone astray please let me know and I’ll arrange for you to be sent one.

At the same time, the CPZ north of the A4 is going live and I would be very interested to hear the reactions of residents of those roads. Is it any easier to park? Are the hours that the scheme operates right? Please let me know as the information may help any decision we have to make on whether or not to progress with a scheme around Griffin Park.

* Still a mess *

Many thanks to all of you who wrote to me regarding the problem of dog owners who let their dogs foul our pavements and parks. I always thought that parking issues were the most likely to get a response, but I was wrong – the electronic postbag has been full as never before with emails on this subject.

As you may have come to expect, the council have yet to come to a decision on whether or not they will let the local police issue fines to owners who don’t behave responsibly. I’ve passed on details of how other boroughs do it, and hope to hear back soon. (Whilst other councillors at our party conference in Brighton were debating items of national and international importance, I found myself asking colleagues about this very subject. And you know what, they pretty much all feel the same as you do).

One thing. I have secured S106 planning gain money for new signs for St Pauls Recreation Ground. There’s only one sign, on Albany Road, and it’s in a terrible state. (Take a look at www.mattharmer.com if you want to see it). However it turns out that the time allowed to spend the money has elapsed. Happily our officials think that this won’t be a problem, but this issue of expired planning gain agreements is one that we are still struggling to overcome.

Also in St Pauls Rec Ground, there’s concern that some of the playground equipment has been removed. None of us want play equipment that is a potential danger but I’m concerned that queries over when the equipment will be replaced have gone unanswered. Watch this space.

* Thanks to local police *

I want to put a word of congratulation out to our local Safer Neighbourhood Team. As you may know, the SNT is a team of 6 officers who remain within our ward boundaries tackling things that residents have identified as problems.

One of those areas is drug use and sale on the Haverfield Estate. Now, the Haverfield is a good place to live but has had a problem with this for a number of years. Our SNT has spent time on and around the Estate to win the trust of residents and last week alone made three arrests for supplying controlled drugs on the Estate.

Of course, the individuals concerned have not been convicted. However their arrest will help send out a signal that the community will not accept this sort of activity. I say community because much useful information is received from residents. The intelligence remains anonymous and as a councillor I hope that more and more people are able to feel confident about passing on useful information to the local police team.

The SNT can be contacted on 07881723891 or brentford.snt@met.police.uk. In an emergency, always call 999.

* Look out Stephen Fry *

I’m very gratified by the number of replies I get to these emails – please feel free to let me have any information that might be useful or let me know if there’s anything I can try to help with. Equally, please feel free to forward it to friends or neighbours who may be interested.

I’m going to try another form of contact to see how it goes. As I’ve said in the past, I was a rubbish blogger (www.mattharmer.com now contains just an archive of these mails). For the next month, I’m going to try this Twitter thing. For those who understand any of that, you can, er, follow me on CllrHarmerTW8. So now you know.

*****************************************************************************************
Here’s the question I asked re fire safety in the Towers, as reported in Council minutes.

Councillor Matt Harmer asked Councillor Jon Hardy, Executive Member for Housing and Services Improvement the following question:

“Bearing in mind the awful tragedy in Camberwell, when a fire took the lives, and homes, of residents in a Council owned block of flats, how reassured can we be that a similar tragedy could not happen in Hounslow?”

In response, Councillor Hardy advised that the cause of the fire in Camberwell was currently unknown and so this compelled the Council to look at every possible cause and to try to counter any likely problems. All advise and actions were being undertaken in conjunction with the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. Some of the actions being carried out in the borough included:

• Improvement in communication and the circulation of a leaflet to all residents and posters in lifts and other highly visible places giving safety advice on what to do in a fire

• Maintenance of hardware

• Training for workers on the estate (such as estate managers, concierges and caretakers) on ways to prevent fire including spotting defects in fire doors, etc

• The continuation of the regular risk assessments being carried out.

Councillor Hardy advised that he had personally visited every tower block in the Brentford Area with officers in order to inspect them and in so doing a small number of deficiencies were found in fire doors which were now being rectified. He also advised that residents’ behaviour was a key factor and he was looking to ensure that they understood the need to be careful, and quoted examples where residents had set fire to items such as sofas near buildings, which he hoped to eradicated by re-education and training on fire prevention. He concluded by stating that the Council took the matter seriously and was happy to consider ideas from others on ways to improve the situation still further.

Councillor Harmer then asked a supplementary question, namely:

“The Public Decent Homes Standard requires the installation of fire alarms in tower blocks. Most of ours do have them but some do not so can we get this done?”

Councillor Hardy responded that there was at least one smoke alarm on every level and that the Council was speaking to the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority on advice on other alarms.
*******************************************************************************************

September 2009

2009-09-04T23:54:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the September email from Brentford councillor Matt Harmer. You are getting this because we have communicated on local issues - if you would prefer not to get these monthly emails, you can click to unsubscribe at the foot of this email.

* A foul subject *

Just to show that summer is over I wanted to bring us all down to earth by talking about dog mess.

Hope that got your attention. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I received an email from one of our excellent Safer Neighbourhood Team (our local police). They wanted to do something about people who let their dogs off the lead to foul in the parts of St Paul’s Recreation Ground where dogs are supposed to be kept on the leash. (That’s most of the park, for those who don’t know the Rec).

The SNT were contacting me regarding an administrative matter – basically, did I know where they could get the tickets they needed to hand out the Fixed Penalty Notices – fines, to you and I – for owners not taking responsibility and not taking away and disposing of their pets’ waste product. (£50 a time, I understand).

Now, I know that some readers will grimace at this, and say that here is another example of councils and councillors jumping at the chance to take more money out of people’s pockets. If you haven’t trodden in the stuff lately then you may think that way, too. If you’re still not sure, I’ll introduce you to the man who told me how he has to scrape the stuff out of the tyres of his motability scooter.

Anyway, it turned out to be a bit more complicated than just ordering up tickets. It seems that a decision had been taken to not fine people as this might be seen as ‘heavy handed’. Now, I can see that it might be difficult to identify who should give these fines out. We don’t have animal wardens, and we’ve all seen how angry people can get when they get a parking ticket, so I don’t think I’d want to be the one handing out fines to dog owners. But I think the Police can handle it.

So, the policy is being reviewed as we speak. I’d be keen to know what you think. Heavy handed punishment or just desserts for a really antisocial lack of responsibility?

One other thing. After discussing this in The Griffin we decided that more signage was needed to show where fouling was and wasn’t allowed. One idea was to encourage local primary schools to design signs that ask for their parks to be kept clean of dog mess. Will cost a bit, but if we’re fining people it would be good to spend the money on something relevant. Again, let me know what you think.

Finally, if you think that these fines could be handed out anywhere, not just in the park, I’d agree with you.

* See you at the Festival *

A quick reminder of a couple of local events worthy of support. This Sunday, the Brentford Festival in Boston Manor Park. All sorts of good things, including a labour party stall – we are near the putting green, I’m told, so please do stop by and say hallo if you get this mail in time. On Saturday 19th Sept at 10am the dedication ceremony for the St Lawrence Church memorial for those who died in the First World War. The memorial has now moved to the library, alongside other memorials. Afterwards, in the Inverness Club.

* In the money? *

The saga of the S106 payments understandably attracted a lot of attention last month. The good news is that negotiations have opened to extend the deadlines. No news for sure just yet but we are hopeful that our officers can extend the deadlines and not have to spend the money in a hurry rather than see it returned.
It’s been interesting to see the various ideas for where to spend these payments (I’m not sure we can satisfy the person who points out that Brentford FC need a centre-half). Plenty of good ideas to reflect on – new heritage street lamps for Kew Bridge, anyone?

* Planning for the future *

A couple of interesting planning things taking place at the moment. Next week, local councillors will be discussing the latest application for the Alfa Lavel site, which now involve retaining the tower. I was told that it would be very expensive to demolish as some of the building consists of lead, dating from when some of the rooms were used as laboratories.

It’s at this point that you might expect me to say what I thought of the proposals, which include two hotels and 206 homes. For all sorts of reasons we are discouraged from doing so, partly because we might end up having to sit on the committee that decides whether it should get permission. Anyway, the report we read in advance of our meetings is available for all to see at http://tinyurl.com/alfalavel. If nothing else, there’s a short history lesson at the start. I don’t think I knew the site used to be a cricket pitch.

There haven't been any major planning decisions taken in the area lately. St Georges Church, the former home of the Musical Museum, was given permission to be turned into flats last month, a decision which should ensure the future of the building, and the Kew Bridge site application will be determined later this month.

* Can I help? *

As a councillor, my first task is to try and assist residents with problems. Please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033. Happy to arrange a personal visit, unless my Charlton Athletic lose badly to Brentford, in which case I shall be spending some time indoors...

August 2009

2009-08-10T23:34:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the August email from Brentford councillor Matt Harmer. You are getting this because we have communicated on local issues - if you would prefer not to get these monthly emails, you can click to unsubscribe at the foot of this email.

* Money troubles *

I know it’s August and we are supposed to be taking it a little easier, but a potentially problematic issue has come up and I think it’s worth discussing. It starts a little drily, but stick with it if you can.

Here’s the background. When a developer has a major planning application approved, it makes an arrangement with the council and other interested parties in order to make financial amends for the impact that the building and its uses will have. If the development includes housing, there’ll be a need to pay some money to the council’s education department to pay for the costs of providing extra school places. If it’s a hotel, there may be road improvements to pay for.

These payments have a name – Section 106 payments, after the part of the relevant Act. They are quite targeted – they have to result directly from the building, and there’s a time limit to spend them. If the council don’t spend the money, the developer can say that the money isn’t/wasn’t needed and can ask for it back.

As local councillors, we’ve made an effort to make sure all this money is spent. For example, the new street lights in Boston Park Gardens came about after I identified some unspent funds from a nearby building and the zebra crossing in Windmill Rd came about by Ruth asking officers to add together contributions from around five different schemes.

To do this, we need to know that the money is available and this information has not always been forthcoming to us as councillors. There used to be a member of staff devoted to this task but he moved on and hasn’t been replaced. So you can imagine how surprised we were when we discovered, last week, about funding from the GSK development that hadn’t been spent - a little over £213,000 unspent.

The trouble is, the legal agreement says that the money needs to be spent by Sept 14th. Not allocated, but spent, with receipts. After this date, GSK can claim it back. So our job now is to ask council officials to renegotiate with GSK.

The importance of doing this becomes clear when we think what the money could be spent on. My first thought was that there was scope to do some work on the A4 crossings – make the crossings and central reservations safer and better-lit, for example. Other councillors have suggested other ideas – cycle lanes elsewhere in Brentford, for example.

In time, we need to find out why councillors didn’t know about these funds. But first, we need to pull together and try and renegotiate the deadline. I’m pleased to say that we have cross party agreement on this. I’ll let you know how we get on.

* Blogging rethink *

As you may know, I set up a blog site earlier this year at www.mattharmer.com. It’s taught me one thing. I’m rubbish at blogging. So I’ve changed the site into a place to store these bulletins.

I’m gratified by the response I get to these emails. Many readers reply and the views and questions make interesting reading. Please do continue to send them. However, it occurs to me that you can leave comments on the web site and other subscribers will also be able to read them. You don’t need to register and don’t have to leave your name.

To try this out, go to www.mattharmer.com and go to the foot of the copy of this email, click ‘Comments’ and away you go…

* Gunnersbury goings-on *

A couple of dates for your diary if I may. In reverse order, there’s the dedication ceremony for the war memorial formerly outside St Lawrences Church at its new home alongside other memorials outside Brentford Library on Saturday 19th Sept at 10am. Afterwards, join us in the Inverness Club.

Before that there’s the Brentford Festival in Boston Manor Park. If you’ve been before you won’t need me to tell you that this has become a top day out, with the added bonus of being able to meet Cllr Ruth Cadbury and I on our stall. Sunday 6th September from 12 noon. If you’d like to take a stall I’m sure the organisers would like to hear from you: http://www.brentfordfestival.org.uk for all the details.

This Sunday, it’s the Mela in Gunnersbury Park. I know that this view isn’t universally popular around the park but I’m a big fan of the Mela (http://www.londonmela.org) and I’m glad that we host it. Local residents have done well to bring to our attention problems in organisation and execution but on balance I’d say the event comes out on top. For one thing, it brings people into the park from across Hounslow and Ealing boroughs. All residents of both boroughs pay for this park’s upkeep and it’s right that there’s an event to bring people in.

But this is an important time for Gunnersbury Park. Built as a plaything for the Rothschild family it’s been run - many would say run-down - on a municipal budget for years and something has to give.

Earlier this year, consultants were engaged to look for a forward plan. They are now consulting on their suggested outcome. At the start of the process, claims that this would involve building housing on part of the park were decried as political mischief-making. Anyway, the plan now out to early consultation involves reviving the mansions, providing a sports hub and…building housing on part of the park.

All local councillors are awaiting the outcome of this process with interest. It’s still unclear exactly how the numbers will add up and we are a long way from any building taking place. But I really hope that all readers of this email can take a moment to look at the consultation document and answer the questionnaire. The final decision will be taken by the leadership of both councils and you can be sure that I will be looking for evidence that all other options have been examined.

For more details, go to www.hounslow.gov.uk/gunnersbury where you will find the link to the survey about half way down the page. It will take a few minutes but will send a clear signal to the two councils as to what the local community want to see.

* Still around *

It may be summer but if you have an issue that I may be able to help with, please do get in touch. I’m still getting calls about the recycling service and I’m told that some more bags and crates have arrived so let me know if that would help. I can’t promise to do everything but I do promise to try.

To catch up on a couple of things we’ve talked about previously:

*The 65s are still not good and we’re looking for improvements once Ealing Rd re-opens. A correspondant on www.brentfordTW8.com reports that the new 65s have what might be a design flaw – a gap between the seats that could be designed for pickpocketing opportunities. As ever, keep belongings secure.

*We had a very helpful initial meeting regarding Watermans park moorings. Still a long way to go but ‘calling it in’ got all parties around the table for the first time ever.

*There are tiny signs of life in the High Street development saga, with the developer beginning to talk in terms of getting something together. However, many shops are still struggling and we know that there is still a lot to do. It looks as though some Section 106 money that is still safe may be spent on providing a Town Centre Manager, who can help develop the area and work with the traders.

As ever, please do get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033. Thanks for reading!

July 2009 Newsletter

2009-08-02T21:38:00.001+01:00

Welcome to the July email from Brentford councillor Matt Harmer. You are getting this because we have communicated on local issues - if you would prefer not to get these monthly emails, you can click to unsubscribe at the foot of this email.

Apologies for the slightly late arrival of this bulletin – I’ve been on holiday.

* Permission to park *

I hope that nobody minds me starting with one of the subjects that always seems to get a big response – parking. Last week, it was agreed that all the roads in and around the Griffin Park area would be consulted on whether or not they wanted to be part of a Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ).

It wasn’t because councillors want to force one to be imposed – far from it. The emails and calls that were asking for a consultation came from meetings with residents and follow up leaflets. We’ll now see if the interest is widespread enough. This follows on a similar exercise last year when roads around Boston Manor Road, north of the A4, were consulted. Residents in 13 roads were consulted, four will become part of a CPZ once the lines and machines are installed, hopefully by September.

Inevitably there will be households who are unhappy, and one road in particular demonstrated that it’s just about impossible to find a solution that fits everyone. However I’m reassured that there is money in the budget to go back to residents a few months after the schemes go live. If we got it wrong, then we must put our hands up and modify or remove the CPZ.

* Transport tales *

Putting cars to one side, a couple of transport issues have arisen lately.

Firstly, the trains. I’m a regular SWT commuter. Usually the 8:09, always at the back of the train (come over and say hallo if you’re a fellow user). I think the service is generally good, but I’ve had some calls lately about the information (or lack of it) when something goes wrong. I think a number of people were delayed on two days a couple of weeks ago where trains pretty much stayed at other stations en route for a long time with very little, if any, information being given on the likely length of delays, alternative routes etc.

A good example of this happened when it snowed quite severely earlier this year. Understandably, services were delayed and cancelled. But it was very unfortunate that the SWT website could not cope with the extra number of people attempting to use it and went out of action for a few days.

I don’t want to over-exaggerate this and so I’d be interested to hear from other SWT users to see how you feel about services. I’ll contact SWT with any issues that seem to reoccur.

Buses have also been discussed. Residents who use the E2 will know that the service has become a double decker. Unfortunately no-one thought to tell residents along the route, who now have bigger noisier buses coming rather close to their upstairs windows. Councillors weren’t informed in advance so we couldn’t indicate where there might be problems. (I had a similar personal experience when the 65, which goes past my house, went all-night a couple of years ago).

Transport for London make decisions on buses and whilst they do a lot of good work, their accountability is far from perfect. Additionally, I’m unclear why the E2 has gone double decker before the H91, which in my experience is far busier.

The 65s are still suffering with the diversion down Boston Manor Road. A couple of weeks ago I spied 5 at various stages of Ealing Rd. I’ve asked if TfL are satisfied with the route’s performance lately. Let’s see if anything happens.

* Football time again *

Might be hard to believe but the football season is nearly upon us. We delivered around 1000 leaflets with the season’s home fixtures to local properties but if you didn’t get one, let me know and I cam email or post the fixtures to you.

The first friendly is Weds 15th July and the first ‘proper’ fixture is on Tues 11th August. High profile games include Millwall at Griffin Park on Sat 14th November, Leeds visiting on Sat 12th December and my own team Charlton Athletic on Mon 28th Dec. Well, the Charlton game is high profile to me, anyway. Strange to have an away game one minute’s walk away from the front door.

* Tower block safety *

The fire in Camberwell earlier this month was terrible news. With six tall local-authority owned towers in the ward, I’m reassured to hear that studies are taking place to see if there are any implications for similar properties in Hounslow. Cllr Cadbury and I will pass on any relevant information in a future leaflet to local residents. Any concerned residents are, of course, welcome to contact me in the meantime on matt@mattharmer.com.

* Crime figures *

Some readers responded to June’s email with questions about crime statistics for the area. I’m glad to say that the Met Police have resumed the ward breakdown for these figures on their website. It’s at http://www.met.police.uk/crimefigures/datatable.php?ward=00atfz&borough=tx&period=year

* Squatters rights and wrongs *

I wanted to write something about the issues raised by the occupation of the MPs’ house in Brook Road South. However, given the reports in the press in the weekend and subsequently I think a period of silence might be best – though please do get in touch if there is anything that you would like to discuss privately.

* Can I help? *

As a councillor, my first task is to try and assist residents with problems. Please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033.

In the meantime, thanks for reading.

June 2009 Newsletter

2009-08-02T21:37:00.002+01:00

Welcome to the June email from Brentford councillor Matt Harmer. You are getting this because we have communicated on local issues - if you would prefer not to get these monthly emails, you can click to unsubscribe at the foot of this email.

This month: return of the Lucozade sign?, concerns over crime, updates on the A4 and Watermans Park and info on changes to local buses.

*Lucozade sign*

Many readers will remember the old Lucozade advert along the A4. It disappeared when the building it was attached to was demolished to make way for the new Audi showroom. Even without this demolition its lifespan was limited because of the age of the technology tat made it work – hundreds of relays (ask your Dad) all clicking away.

Soon after, I joined a small working party to see if it could be reinstated somewhere else. In 2004, planning permission was given for an extension to a building near the Texaco garage. The extension would carry a new facsimile of the sign on one side and a standard advert on the other. However, the extension never happened and the permission has expired.

Earlier this year I was told that a new site had been found, very close to the Texaco garage, where a freestanding structure could be built. On one side, facing drivers heading to London on the M4 would be the Lucozade sign and drivers heading out of town would see whatever ad the hoarding’s owners wanted to display.

Since 2004, the number of advertising hoardings on the A4/M4 has increased and councillors and council officers have attempted to reduce the number of hoardings. Many go up without permission and are, frankly, eyesores. Because of this, Hounslow planning officers have recommended that the permission for the Lucozade hoarding be refused.

I have successfully requested that the matter be considered by councillors at Thursday 11th June’s Area Planning Committee. The old sign was a landmark which a number of people have said they would like to see returned. However the advertisement on the other side may not be as welcome. Either way, I think it’s a decision that elected members should make (though not me – my previous involvement means that I will declare an interest and take no part in the discussion or vote).

If you have any thoughts either way, I would be very interested to hear them. Reply to this mail and I will ensure that all replies are passed to the members of the committee.

*Updates: A4 and Watermans Park*

The petition calling for safer A4 crossings has successfully led to the junction with Windmill Road being added to the list of schemes being considered by Transport for London, so thanks to all who signed. There’s still a lot to do but we have support of all councillors and many residents and now we need to make that count. I hope to be meeting engineers on site again soon.

The scrutiny into the situation regarding unlicensed boats alongside Watermans Park has begun, and is gathering information from all the agencies involved. Too early to say what the process will recommend but it’s proving useful to get all the information onto the table.

*Crime concerns*

Readers may know that there have been two serious crimes in the ward in the past few days – an attack with a knife and a serious sexual assault. Whilst we shouldn’t allow fear of crime to take over, we need to ensure that our police are given the resources they need. I have written to the Borough Commander to ask his assurance that this is the case.

I have to say that the willingness of police locally to engage with councillors is first class. The introduction of Safer Neighbourhood Teams (SNTs) has helped very much and we are fortunate in Brentford ward to have an excellent team led by a Sergeant who is serious about making sure that he does all he can locally to tackle the issues that face the police.

If you see one of our PCs or PCSOs walking around, please say hallo. And please report any crime, no matter how low-level it may be, online at https://online.met.police.uk/ or by calling 0300 123 1212. The Safer Neighbourhood Teams can be contacted on 020 8721 2533 or 07881 723891. SNTs meet with a neighbourhood panel to decide priorities and if you have a local issue that you would like them to face please let me know.

*On the Buses*

Anyone using Route 65 may have to face a longer journey in June/July. Thames Water will be replacing the water mains on Ealing Road between the A4 and Popes Lane (north of the A4) and 65s from Ealing will be diverted via Swyncombe Av, Boston Manor Road and the A4 before rejoining Ealing Road.

*History Today*

Or, rather, this Saturday 6 June. There’ll be a Local History Day at Brentford library this Saturday between 11am and 4pm. The day will focus on the First World War and its impact locally, with particular reference to the war memorial outside St Lawrence’s Church on the High Street. We were pleased to hear that English Heritage has said that they have no objection to memorial being restored and relocated to join the other memorials outside the library.

If there are other local events that I can mention in future months, please let me know.

* Can I help? *

As a councillor, my first task is to try and assist residents with problems. Please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033.

In the meantime, thanks for reading and here’s hoping this good weather continues.

May 2009 Newsletter

2009-08-02T21:37:00.001+01:00

May news from Councillor Matt Harmer

Welcome to the May email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer. You’re getting it because we have communicated on local issues. If you would prefer not to receive these bulletins then you will find a link below that will unsubscribe you.

This month: a new school for Brentford, High Street update, come to the Brentford Fayre, more on the moorings at Watermans Park and congratulations to Brentford FC.

* New school? *

There’s been more interest in secondary education provision in Brentford. At a Green Dragon School governor’s meeting last week I was asked, jokingly, when I was going to provide a new school in the area. Well, I can’t do that single-handedly, but the night before at a council meeting I’d asked the same question of the councillor in charge of education.

Unfortunately, the answer was a lesson in being non-committal. There were loose plans to expand some existing schools but no guarantee that a new school would be built, despite earlier promises to the contrary.

What’s clearly needed is a mixed non-denominational school in Brentford. Too many children are travelling too far to go to school. We are told that, in the borough, 70% of families get the first choice but given that many parents don’t put the real first choice on the form because they know there’s no chance of getting it those sort of figures need to be treated with a great deal of caution.

Anyway, it’s something Councillor Ruth Cadbury and I intend to follow up. If it’s a campaign that you would like to be involved in, or have a story to tell about selection, please let me know.

* Brentford Town Centre *

So, Somerfield is gone and Morrison’s is on the way. In the meantime, I’m trying to do at least some of the shopping in the other shops in the High Street. Whilst the full redevelopment is plainly going to take some time (and I’m unconvinced that the council administration are doing all they can to move things along) it’s good to see that some of the shop units are to be re-let, as the hoarded shops send out an awful message.

I spent an interesting morning last week looking at some of the empty warehouses and offices just off the High Street. I was with another councillor, a letting agent and a very interesting man whose business is finding unused commercial property and renting the space at an affordable rate to artists. We looked at a couple of places that might have potential – it depends on what it will cost to make the spaces useable. When we were doing the Farmers Market we sold some art made by local residents at a couple of stalls and that went well so there may be scope to sell artwork on the High Street as well.

If this can be pulled off it’ll bring some life back to these empty spaces and get some interesting activities under way.

* Moorings Progress *

In March I wrote briefly about the unlicenced moorings on the Thames by Watermans park. Since then I’ve successfully sought a full report to be provided on this and gained multi-party support for as much progress as possible. Still a long way to go but I was getting tired of being told that things were moving along yet never seeing any progress.

* Diary Date *

If you’re in the area on Saturday 16th May, come down to St Paul’s Recreation Ground for the Brentford Fayre. All sorts of attractions including a beer tent, morris dancing and a cake competition, and we’ll be doing a Labour party stall, so drop by and say hallo. St Paul’s is on Lateward Road, behind Somerfield/Morrison’s, and the Fayre goes from midday to 4pm.

* Going Up *

Congratulations to Brentford FC for winning League Two. As a long-standing Charlton supporter I’m frequently told that ‘we’ll be playing you next season’. The first football match I ever attended was Charlton v Brentford in 1980 back in what used to be called Division Three, now League One.

It gives us a few issues to sort out in terms of how to manage some of the bigger crowds without disturbing residents and I’ll be meeting with the club in the next couple of weeks to discuss this. Please let me know if you live near the ground (as do I, on Ealing Road) and would like me to raise something at the meeting.

* Can I help? *

As a councillor, my first task is to try and assist residents with problems. Please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033.

In the meantime, thanks for reading and enjoy the (slightly) better weather.

March 2009 Newsletter

2009-08-02T21:35:00.000+01:00

March news from Cllr Matt Harmer

Welcome to the March email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer. You’re getting it because we have communicated on local issues. If you would prefer not to receive these bulletins then you will find a link below that will unsubscribe you.

This month: recycling, cuts to the Hounslow Language Service, the future of local parks and an A4 update.

Firstly, thanks to all of those who replied to my first email bulletin in January. It’s always useful to hear back from people about what is happening in our area.

* New recycling procedures *

Like me, you may have been surprised to find a number of new recycling containers left outside your front door. Whilst the new plastics service is welcome, I worry that the number of different containers, all for different products, may actually deter some people from recycling. Added to this is the need to remember which week it is – plastics week or garden waste week. And some roads, such as Mafeking Avenue, are telling me that they haven’t all received the various bags and containers.

The old ‘green box’ system worked because it was simple. The items to be recycled all went in the box and it was sorted by the kerb. The scheme became a victim of its own success sometimes, with collections delayed because the collecting van had to return to base because it was full.

Another problem has emerged for some Hounslow Homes properties, where the number of collections has fallen from twice weekly to once a week under a new contractual arrangement. This has led to overflowing bins and is absolutely unacceptable.

Your experiences of the new system will be very interesting – please let me know if it is working for you.

*Hounslow Language Service and the council budget*

Earlier this month the Labour group, of which I’m a member, put forward an alternative council budget that proposed a cut in council tax whilst avoiding cuts to various youth services including the Hounslow Language Service, a nationally-recognised service that provides English lessons and other support to children who don’t have English as a first language.

The budget cut to this service was announced with very little consultation and no assessment into its likely impact. I’m not sure that councillors have ever received the number of letters and petitions that we received in regard to this case. Cllr Ruth Cadbury and I received over 200 from Brentford ward alone.

We also suggested some new services. The council’s Money Advice Unit now can no longer guarantee personal interviews to people struggling with debt and so we proposed expanding the benefit/housing advice on offer. We know that our town centres are struggling and so we suggested that the council bring in a Town Centres manager to bring in more investment.

As many of you have emailed and called about increases in fly-tipping, we suggested a new team we called ‘Grotbusters’, a mobile team to clear dumped rubbish and large items from households. Finally, we proposed re-introducing Park Rangers to major parks.

We showed that all this could be done whilst still cutting council tax by 1%. However, the Conservatives weren’t interested, the cuts are going ahead and the benefits won’t happen. If any readers have ideas for services that should be introduced please do let me know – contact details are below. I also want to know if any of the cutbacks are affecting you, your family, neighbours and friends.

* A4 update *

Thanks to everyone who signed our paper or electronic petition regarding the campaign to improve the A4 crossings. I have now been told that Transport for London is including the Windmill Road junction in their plans for the next financial year. This is good news, though it will be some while before the effects are seen. I arranged a site visit for TfL engineers who were rather taken aback at how traffic behaves.

There are still some things that can be done in the near future. I am still speaking with council officers about increasing the parking spaces down Windmill Road. Parked cars slow traffic down (and help residents park their cars). I have also been asked to help with putting in yellow zig zag markings outside Our Lady and St John school to deal with some of the inconsiderate parking that happens there, and Hounslow traffic officers are progressing this.

* Boat moorings at Watermans Park *

Many of you will know that Watermans Park has been greatly improved over recent years. If you haven’t been down there, it’s worth a visit, especially now that the weather’s improving. Some of the unlicensed moorings are a bit of an eyesore and along with other local councillors I’m keen to see what we can do.

Properly managed waterside moorings are not only good to look at but they reduce the opportunity for bad behaviour in the park. There are a number of hurdles to overcome but the outcome is worth it.

* One ward, two parks, lots of work *

There can be few complaints about the quality of the parks in Brentford, with both Gunnersbury and Boston Manor parks having loads to offer. But when they both include historic listed buildings there are particular challenges. In the past fortnight I’ve attended presentations on how Gunnersbury can repair and renew the historic buildings and how those repairs can be paid for, and I’ve also helped progress a similar initiative that will examine how to deal with the challenges facing the Jacobean Boston Manor House and the park that sits behind it. The latter will be guided by the excellent work of the Friends of Boston Manor, who continue to impress us with their dedication.

Once again, your suggestions for Boston Manor and Gunnersbury Parks are very welcome.

* Can I help? *

As a councillor, my first task is to try and assist residents with problems. Please get in touch if you think I can help, either by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033. Many of you have contacted me concerning the new regime of service charges for Hounslow Homes tenants and I am continuing to investigate this.

In the meantime, thanks for reading!

January 2009 Newsletter

2009-08-02T21:34:00.000+01:00

Hallo from Councillor Matt Harmer

You are reading the first email bulletin from Brentford ward councillor Matt Harmer. You’re getting it because we have communicated on local issues. If you would prefer not to receive these bulletins – which I hope to send every few weeks – then you will find a link that below that will unsubscribe you.

*A4 Safety*
In the Autumn, residents alerted my colleague Cllr Ruth Cadbury and myself to the dangerous nature of the crossings over the A4 in Brentford. Parents at Lionel and Our Lady & St John’s Schools kindly helped compile a petition calling for action on this problem. The petitions contained nearly 500 signatures.

I presented the petition to the Mayor at December’s meeting of the borough council. I have had written assurance that council officers will assist where they can and I intend to insist that they do. The A4 itself is operated by Transport for London. I met with TfL engineers just before Christmas and they acknowledged that the crossings are far from ideal. They tell me that accident figures for Brentford junctions are lower than elsewhere in the Borough.

After the petitions were started, a fatal accident occurred on one of the A4 cycle paths. This tragic event demonstrates that work needs to be done to make the A4 safer.

I have been asked to set up an online petition for A4 improvements by cycle groups and it can be found at http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/24413.html. Please sign it if you have not already done so.

*Can I help?*
As a councillor, my first job is to do what I can to help residents. If you think that there is something I can assist with, let me know. Email me on matt@mattharmer.com or call 020 8560 7033. Please feel free to forward this to friends and neighbours who may need some help.

*Litter*
In November, a new contractor started collecting refuse and recycling. My colleague Ruth Cadbury and I have both had a number of complaints about the state of roads after the vehicles have visited. If you believe that the service has declined then let me know and, together, we can hold the council to account and ensure that residents get value for money for their council tax.

*Gunnersbury Park*
You may have read in the press about the possibility of building on parts of Gunnersbury Park. I sit on the Regeneration Board and am committed to ensuring that improvements to the Park do not come at the cost of destroying any of this vital resource.

*Brentford FC*
Plans for Brentford FC’s new community stadium at Lionel Road are progressing well. As a neighbour of Griffin Park I’ll miss having football on the doorstep but the club need a new home to keep them competitive. Things are going well this season and with family tickets (two adults and three children) for only £20, it’s a great time to follow BFC.

For ticket info call 0845 3456 442.

*Anything to report?*
I’m always keen to follow up any issues you may have. Let me know by replying to this mail or calling 020 8560 7033. You can also take a look at www.mattharmer.com. If you have a residents association or other society and would like me to pay a visit then please let me know.

*Thanks for reading!*
Email is a great way of staying in touch and I hope that this update has been interesting. Talk soon!

Matt

Councillor Matt Harmer
Brentford ward Labour councillor
London Borough of Hounslow