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About the Council
Like every local authority, Brent Council has to make economies. These economies are absolutely necessary if the country as a whole is to remain viable (think of Greece, Republic of Ireland and others!), so there is little point blaming central government or playing the political game of buck passing, these economies are needed, they are here and they are going to stay.
Where the choices come is how the limited amount of money available is spent. Brent Council has made some outrageously poor decisions in this area!
They have squandered nearly £8500, and this is truly WASTED money, on treating 27 Executive Council members and staff to not just one but two stays at luxury country hotels whilst they discussed budget cuts. No doubt the total sum involved is much higher, as 'hidden' costs like travel expenses would have been claimed as well. This sum of money would have covered the cost of keeping our Warden on for another year and probably longer!
Councilor Ann John OBE, leader of the Council, tried to justify this in the press with the following comments:
"I believe it was a good thing. In the current climate we don't want to spend any more than we need to. And it was actually cheaper to hold the conference outside Brent."
"We had huge decisions to make and it was important for everyone to bond and make the right decisions for the borough. If we had held it in Brent people would have been tempted to go home."
Quite unbelievable arrogance to treat residents as complete idiots!
The author has been a senior manager, a company director and a businessman during the past 35 years, and sat on numerous committees along the way, in the real world of industry these comments would never be made by anyone who wanted to be taken seriously! But they do give a good measure of the people that are running our Borough. They would rather pamper themselves at luxury hotels on expenses, than stay and do the job they are charged with!
The council has access to a number of it's own buildings within the borough, with suitable meeting rooms for less than 30 delegates! Even if outside facilities were necessary, a suitably sized luxury conference room in the borough cost in the region of £1000 per day, that's an awfully large saving over what was squandered! Their 'away day' was pure self indulgence and utter contempt for the tax paying residents! Perhaps this is just an indicator of generally how poorly these people handle the Boroughs finances!
Many statements are made to try and mislead the residents of Brent into thinking that the Council have our best interests at heart, but so much is utter hypocrisy.
On the future of Brent over the period 2010-2014, Councilor Ann John OBE, leader of the Council, spoke of "..... our absolute commitment to making the lives of local people better ......", "..... take bold and decisive action to improve and renew our service offer and effect major improvements to the physical environment.", " ..... improvement of what we do now and providing us with a secure platform for success when the financial circumstances improve."
How does letting a well used, much loved park fall into disrepair and become the haunt of gangs and criminals, and we all know that is what the future holds without the Warden, fit into this 'vision'.
Councilor Muhammed Butt, deputy leader of the Council, was asked for a comment by one of our campaigners, firstly he declined to sign our petition, saying " ... he wished he could ", then when questioned about the future of the park he said "... as soon as funds are available, Wardens would be back". When pushed further about how long that would be, 10, 20 years?, he replied "... I honestly don't know". Well, that's the Council's commitment to Brent River Park - none whatsoever!
For those of you that don't know, Councilor Butt's house backs onto the park, but despite being so close he rarely shows any interest in, or visits it, nor it seems, has much commitment to the people who do take an interest in it! People have tried contacting him, but he has been unavailable and has simply not bothered to reply!
Perhaps we shouldn't have expected any better, Cllr. Butt is the councilor for at least two of the campaigners and hundreds of our supporters many whom are known to him, but he has never sought them out to ask what he could do or even attempt to explain the necessity of the cuts.
Both the Council leader and the deputy leader have wards adjacent to the park, but they show little sign of representing their constituents who voted for them, maybe YOU might like to remember that at the next election!
The decision to cut budgets is one thing, but to cut services to the point where they effectively no longer exist is another. In the Parks Department, tiers of management remain in place to manage front line staff who have been cut to a bare minimum, and the favoured retained staff also just happen to have council provided housing that goes with the job. This doesn't look like the best use of minimal resources. Front line staff provide services, managers cost a great deal more than front line staff and are largely 'non productive', meaning they do not serve the public directly - WHY DO YOU NEED MANAGERIAL STAFF TO MANAGE A SERVICE YOU ARE NOT PROVIDING?
Currently, there are 10 static Wardens in the parks, ALL of these post will go in the cuts. They will be replaced by 5 mobile Wardens, who will serve ALL 75 parks and open spaces in the borough, and whose duties will be as key holders to lock and unlock park gates and doors to buildings, few of the traditional fixed Warden tasks will be catered for, occasional (weekly?) litter picking will be passed over to the gardeners, other roles ('policing' patrols, etc.) will simply be abandoned.
In the Council's own Parks Strategy 2010-2015 document (download a copy HERE), all the reasons for which we are fighting to keep our Warden are featured, the Council recognises that a static Warden makes parks more user friendly and therefore utilised, a fifth of the people surveyed felt that a park without a Warden was less safe, 'stranger danger' was repeatedly stated as a concern for parents and given as a reason for not letting children use parks. The list of benefits to the residents of having parks they can, and are willing to use, such as health and fitness, are extensive, but still with one very petty cut, the saving is quoted at a paltry £200,000 for the entire Parks Dept. out of a need to save £100 million overall, they are effectively denying the benefits to residents, because they are not places people feel safe in without a Warden.
The saving of only a few thousand pounds on the Brent River Park Warden is ill conceived when judged against the benefits he provides. They are not going to save his entire, rather paltry, salary, they are only going to save a small fraction of it, because of the additional cost in making the replacement Wardens mobile and transferring some duties to gardeners. In the end, it is doubtful there is any real cost saving at all, but there are certainly dramatic reductions in the service provided!
We could quote any number of inefficiencies within the Parks Department, which despite being brought to their attention are allowed to continue. If these were addressed by competent efficient management, then maybe running costs would be lower and front line staff wouldn't need to go.
- Does it really need 5 gardeners in a truck to ride around the park and empty litter bins twice a week, they don't do anything else on their visit, just the bins, they don't even empty all the bins on many occasions! This has been going on for years.
- The dog waste bins are emptied by a contractor, rather, they are frequently NOT emptied, often being full to overflowing! Why do we pay for contracted services that are not carried out?
- Despite many complaints, both from the public and fellow staff, the Warden who 'works' the two days a week that the regular Warden has off, does not do a single stroke of work, he NEVER litter picks and he NEVER patrols, and frequently 'disappears' part way through his shift! Why is he still employed when he hasn't done a stroke of work in years?
- Contractors working in the park leave jobs unfinished.
The cable laying contractors working for TFL absolutely wrecked the park, but never restored it completely afterwards as they were supposed to do, one path now floods and stays unusable for weeks at a time!
The contractor working on the paths by the new children's play area disappeared about a year ago, leaving the job unfinished, unsightly spoil heaps and abandoned equipment were left littering the park! (Miraculously, a few weeks after this was highlighted on our web site, the council removed the abandoned equipment, but the spoil heap remains!)
Why does no one ensure contractors meet their contractual obligations? - Despite it being pointed out (why is it necessary to point out the blindingly obvious!) to the Parks Area Manager on his infrequent visits that footpaths are blocked by overgrown trees and shrubs, they still don't get cut back even though he has had to avoid the obstructions himself! Again, gardeners who visit the park frequently are allowed to avoid doing their jobs.
- Money wasted on overcharging contractors. The Pavilion was partially
redecorated inside at a cost of £7000, for work and materials generally
reckoned to be worth only £5000 at the most!
Why was the job not costed correctly? Or should we be asking where did the 'extra' money go? - The list goes on .....
Clearly there are plenty of people who should be removed from employment within the Parks Department, many of them in senior posts, simply because they do not do their jobs, but these are the very people who are being retained after the cuts!
Despite the knowledge that huge cuts were necessary and imminent, the Council still went ahead with signing the contract to build the new Civic Centre, at a cost of £85m! That's in effect £85m paid for with cutting front line staff such as Wardens and closing Libraries etc. Yet again, self indulgence at the local tax payers expense, purely because they want a high status building for themselves. The alleged savings of £2m a year operating costs for the new building mean that even the younger ones amongst us are going to be long dead by the time it pays for itself! And there have been suggestions that even before the ink is dry on the contract that it is not big enough to house all Council departments, so will those £2m cost savings actually materialise at all? In the midst of huge cost savings, it was not the right time to spend such an unaffordable sum!
Democracy, WHAT DEMOCRACY!
We have good cause to doubt that any notion of democracy or accountability exists with our Councilors! As part of our campaign, on 17th February 2011 we emailed individually each of the six Councilors representing the two wards that bound the park asking them to comment about the cuts, we specifically asked them for their own opinion on the cost savings of removing the Warden, and the democratic rights of people affected by this cutback to be represented by their elected member of the council.
Further to that, we also asked Cllr. Ann John (Council leader) to her face on 19th Feb. to please respond to our email. On 19th March, Cllr. Ann John was yet again asked over the telephone to please respond to our email!
So far we have not had the courtesy of a single reply, we think this is indicative of the contempt with which the Councilors hold the 28,000 constituents of these two wards, and their attitude towards democracy!
Below is a running timer for each Councilor, showing how long our emails have been ignored!
Name |
Ward |
Time |
| Cllr. Ann John (Leader of the Council) | Stonebridge | |
| Cllr. Ann John (Leader of the Council) - since reminder! | Stonebridge | |
| Cllr. Ann John (Leader of the Council) - since SECOND reminder! | Stonebridge | |
| Cllr. Muhammed Butt (Deputy Leader of the Council) | Tokyngton | |
| Cllr. Joyce Bacchus | Tokyngton | |
| Cllr. Councilor Ketan Sheth | Tokyngton | |
| Cllr. Zaffar Van Kalwala | Stonebridge | |
| Cllr. Colum Moloney | Stonebridge |
Perhaps you as individuals, would care to remind your Councilors of their duty, for it seems they need reminding, you can find their contact details HERE