Nigel Bakhai's Newsletter
The new Elthorne ward Lib Dem councillor writes
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Elections, Meetings and Briefings
My new life as a Councillor for Elthorne ward began at around 9pm on Friday 7th May when counting finally finished for the local elections. Ealing Council is usually one of the slowest to declare election results, but with a General Election and local elections on the same day, this year was particularly grueling for those people like me who were waiting for both sets of results. The make up of the new council is 40 Labour, 24 Tory and 5 Lib Dems as a high turnout for the General Election seemed to help Labour to gain council seats off the Tories including the five Southall seats they lost to defections. The good news for the Lib Dems was that we went up from three to five seats this time. Andrew Steed picked up the third seat in Southfield ward from the Conservatives and I gained my seat in Elthorne ward. Elthorne was already a split ward going into the election represented as it was by two Conservatives and one Labour councillor, but with all the previous councillors standing down, all three major parties thought they stood a chance to win this time. The closeness of the contest and the fact that all three parties campaigned hard in the area was reflected in the result with one Labour, one Lib Dem and one Tory councillor elected. My joy at finally being elected onto Ealing Council at the third attempt (the previous two in 2002 and 2006 were both in Ealing Common) was therefore unfortunately somewhat tempered by the fact that my Lib Dem colleagues Dave Randles and Peter Hutchison were not successful as I really believe they were brilliant candidates and would have made great councillors.
On Saturday 8th, new councillors like myself went to Percival House to have our photos taken for the council website and ID passes, and sign official forms to take up office. We had our first meeting of the new Lib Dem council group on Monday 10th where Gary Malcolm was elected as our new council leader, Harvey Rose was made deputy leader, and Jon Ball was elected as our chief whip.
Since the election, I have had lots to learn about my new role and we have had a number of briefings about the council's services so we know who does what and to find out who is the best person to contact about any problem in your ward. This council training began on Tuesday 11th, Wednesday 12th, and Thursday 13th where I was briefed on the major strategic issues facing the council, the decision-making process and local government finance. One of the biggest areas of concern facing Ealing Council is the likely need to prepare for reductions in central government grants over the next four years as the new Lib Dem-Conservative Coalition Government tackles the national budget deficit. Given that the Labour Party campaigned locally on maintaining a council tax freeze, it is likely that there will have to be cuts to services to reduce spending and it will be our responsibility in opposition to monitor the council's performance and raise any concerns we may have about the effect of cuts on the provision of front line services. The Labour group also seem to be positioning themselves to blame their Tory predecessors for wasting £6 million on the £50 cashback scheme at the end of last year, even though they supported it at the time and only the Lib Dem councillors opposed it!
The evening of Tuesday 18th was my first full council meeting and, after despite rushing back to London after working in the Netherlands over the previous two days, unfortunately I ended up being about 45 minutes late. The only subject for the meeting was the future of Ealing Homes with a Labour motion to bring it back in-house. The Labour Party had made a manifesto commitment in the local elections to bring Ealing Homes back under council control even though it had been a Labour Government which had proposed setting up Arms Length Management companies (ALMOs) like Ealing Homes in the first place. The Lib Dem group proposed an amendment which called for greater involvement of tenants in the management of their estates, while the Tories proposed an amendment freezing the council rents or keeping the increases below inflation for the next four years. We ended up supporting both amendments and then, when they were both defeated, supporting the original Labour motion.
On Wednesday 19th I attended a briefing on environment and customer services including ward forums where I met Tan Afzal who will look after the Elthorne ward forum going forward. The next day I attended a briefing on children's services and found out about plans to expand St. Marks Primary School in my ward to cope with the growing demand for primary school places in the area. After that briefing finished, we were given our first training session on planning which is one of the committees that I am going to serve on.
At the weekend, I attended two events in my ward. On Saturday 22nd I went to the West London Islamic Centre in Brownlow Road where they were having a fun day to raise funds for a new expanded mosque and community centre. On Sunday evening, I attended a Global Day of Prayer held in the garden of St.Mellitus Church and organised locally by Churches Together in Hanwell. Steve Pound was also present, along with Councillors Ray and Lauren Wall and Colm Costello.
On Monday 24th the Lib Dem council group met and we agreed our portfolios and committees for the year. Given that we are a small group, we each have to take on responsibility for a number of different subjects and my portfolios will be Safer Communities, Equality, Diversity, Transport and Regeneration (although Jon Ball will be the lead for Regeneration in Ealing and Andrew Steed will be responsible for Acton and Chiswick). With regard to membership of committees, as mentioned before, I will replace Harvey Rose in alternating with Jon Ball as the Lib Dem representative on the planning committee, but it was also agreed that I will serve on the Crime and Community Safety Scrutiny Panel.
Tuesday 25th saw the Mayor-making meeting of Ealing Council. Councillor Rajinder Mann was appointed as the new Mayor and was immediately put on the spot when Councillor Young questioned the legitimacy of appointing places to standing panels which were not approved by the council before the meeting. After thanks were given by all sides to the outgoing Mayor Barbara Yerolemou and praise for the new Mayor - the Lib Dem contributions led by Gary Malcolm and Harvey Rose who made an amusing rhyme- we went to dinner in the Victoria Hall. More speeches followed the dinner and the Tory group Leader Jason Stacey made us all laugh when he revealed that he had received a personal letter from Labour leadership hopeful David Milliband MP congratulating him on Labour's success locally!
On Wednesday 26th, I attended the Planning committee to speak as a ward councillor on behalf of the Hanwell Community Forum against a planning application to develop No.74 Half Acre Road which borders on the Brent River Park. The development was recommended for approval by officers even though its neighbours, the William Hobbayne Trust, disputed the boundaries and it was passed by the committee with an additional condition that it should not break the UDP requirement for a five metres buffer with Metropolitan Open Land after I raised the issue in my speech.
In the evening of Thursday 27th, I attended the Scrutiny Conference where we began scoping the work of the Crime and Community Safety Scrutiny Panel. The Chair of the committee will be Councillor Padda and we were joined by Councillor Kausar - unfortunately the other members of the committee were either on other committees or did not turn up for the meeting. There are five meetings of the committee in the year and we have provisionally agreed to focus on the subjects of anti-social behaviour, burglary, youth offending, knife crime, crime prevention and hate crimes. My contribution was to suggest that we focus on anti-social behaviour in our parks and open spaces as the subject of our first meeting given the timing of the meeting and so we hit the ground running when the committee first meets. As the weather improves, anti-social behaviour becomes a bigger issue in my ward especially in Connolly Dell and King George's Field where there can be a problem with groups of drinkers disturbing the peace for other park users, so I thought it would be good to understand what actions the Police and the Council are planning to take to regularly monitor these areas around the borough. I hope the panel can make some good recommendations and a positive contribution to improve community safety in Ealing.
Councillor Nigel Bakhai
Elthorne ward Lib Dem councillor
London Borough of Ealing
contact: 51 Azalea Court
Hanwell, W7 3QA
telephone: 020 8579 8299
June 10, 2010
