Agenda item
Reports from the Leader and Cabinet
To receive reports from the Leader and Cabinet in accordance with Standing Order 38.
Minutes:
In accordance with Standing Order 38, the Council received reports from the Leader of the Council and Cabinet Members, as follows:
(i) Councillor Butt (Leader of the Council)
Councillor Butt said that the New Year brought many challenges for the Council, particularly around schools, the National Health Service and looking after elderly residents. He said that the Council needed to be focussing on these issues and needed to make sure that every child did have the best start in life. He added that the Council would be making sure that it stood up and protected the National Health Service from the Government and that the Council needed to make sure that its residents, especially the older generation, lived dignified lives in the future.
Councillor Butt welcomed Councillors Shama Tatler and Mili Patel to the Cabinet. In conclusion, Councillor Butt said that, as the Council moved forward, it still had to deal with the challenges of what might happen with regards to Brexit.
(ii) Councillor McLennan (Deputy Leader of the Council)
Councillor McLennan said that January and February would focus largely around the Council’s Budget and that she, the Leader and senior officers had been attending all meetings of the Brent Connect Forums and had undertaken a “supermarket sweep” where Councillors and senior officers had been talking to residents in supermarkets to gauge their views on the proposals for budget cuts that were required to be made, which in essence, had been positive and there had been an understanding of the reasons behind why the Council had to make cuts. She said there had been support of the fact that Brent’s Council Tax had to rise and the proposed increase for social care precept was something that the Council would need to do because the public agreed that looking after the most vulnerable was one of the key things that the local authority should be taking forward. Despite the challenges, Councillor McLennan said that, as an authority, the Council was still delivering services in different ways in order to release savings. Part of this strategy, she said, was looking at shared services. Councillor McLennan said that Brent’s IT Services was leading the way by managing IT provision at two very large London boroughs and was looking to expand this service other boroughs also. In conclusion, Councillor McLennan said that her vision was for Brent to become a digital hub, something digital and something for the future but, for now, the priority was the Budget.
(iii) Councillor Southwood (Cabinet Member for the Environment)
Councillor Southwood said that everyone would be aware that Transport For London (TFL) was renewing its business plan, which had been published towards the end of last year . She said that this included how TFL was to allocate the LIP for this year, which was the Council’s main source of funding for doing all the things its residents wanted, and needed the Council to do in terms of traffic management in the Borough. Councillor Southwood went on to say that whilst it was not all good news for the Council, one very exciting piece of news was that TFL had identified 12 clean bus corridors and that Edgware Road, the whole length along the A5, was to be one of those corridors, which meant that every bus would be of Euro 6 standard. She said that other roads were benefitting too and referred to Chamberlain Road in her own ward, which now benefitted from buses going along it which were other clean air bus corridors. Councillor Southwood thanked all residents and Brent Councillors who had been very supportive so far and she hoped that this would be the beginning of lots of other very concrete measures from TFL that would benefit Brent and its residents.
Councillor Southwood also updated Members on the current position with regard to the Council’s zero tolerance approach to illegal dumping within the Borough. She said that the first six months of the pilot with Kingdom Securities had now passed and the data had been collected. She said that over 3,200 Fixed Penalty Notices had been issued and the Council had sent out the first 50 court summons for ones that were, so far, unpaid. Councillor Southwood went on to say that the Council was reducing the proportion, which were allocated for cigarette butts, to move towards occasions such as bird feeding, which was a big issue for the Council’s residents. In conclusion, Councillor Southwood said that the data told a really encouraging story so far in that the fines were working and the Council hoped to be able to take that forward in a way that it would be able to respond even better to what residents wanted.
(iv) Councillor Tatler (Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Growth, Employment and Skills)
Councillor Tatler began by paying tribute to her predecessor, Councillor Mashari for her work in the Cabinet over the last few years. Councillor Tatler said that she was looking forward to the challenge of working in the Cabinet for Brent residents in an exciting portfolio. She also thanked the senior officers within the Regeneration, Growth, Employment and Skills brief for bringing her up-to-speed with developments in those areas.
Councillor Tatler congratulated Richard Barrett, the Council’s Head of Estates Regeneration, who had won the Alan Cherry Award for Place-Making. She said that the award had been established to give recognition to the significant contributions that leading figures in the public sector made to the quality of place-making within their communities.
Councillor Tatler said that Wood House Urban Park, which was part of the South Kilburn Regeneration Programme, had one both the regional and national landscape awards in the category “Principal Award for Regeneration” and invited Members to visit the park as it was a brilliant example of how officers and the Council had worked with the community to build a park that was actually wanted by everyone living around the estates there.
Councillor Tatler announced that the Council had allocated another £100,000 to secure additional outcomes to St Raphael’s and that she was working with CRISIS in Harlesden to support residents into work over the coming year.
In conclusion, Councillor Tatler said that she was looking forward to meeting with key stakeholders in all of the Council’s developments and projects and ensuring that the community was central to the vision the Council had of creating a Brent that was sustainable, vibrant, prosperous and one that could meet the challenges of the 21st Century but, above all else, be inclusive of all.
(v) Councillor Hirani (Cabinet Member for Community Wellbeing)
Councillor Hirani began by thanking everyone who worked in the health and social care sector today in what was a very challenging time and said that the Council was truly grateful for the work that they did.
Councillor Hirani said that the Council had, this winter, developed its integrated “rehab and reablement” service where the Council had step down beds based at the Willesden Centre for helping with the discharge process. He said that the Council was also working with Northwick Park, along with other Councils across West London where the hospitals had experienced difficulties discharging patients over the last few years because they were discharging patients to Ealing to Harrow and to Brent so between the partner local authorities it was decided that Brent Council be the designated link to Northwick Park Hospital dealing with discharges from that hospital.
Councillor Hirani was proud to announce that, in February, following a successful pilot in Barnet, the “Trailblazer Programme”, where the Council had been working with the West London Alliance, would start in Brent and that this was a specific programme to support people experiencing mental ill-health to get into work.
In conclusion, Councillor Hirani said that, sadly, within the announcements to local government from Central Government, it was apparent that a further £0.5m cut had been made to the Council’s public health grant, which was on top of the £2m which had already been announced. Councillor Hirani said that this was just a clear shambles of how a government could not actually connect prevention and public health to the crisis that had been happening in the NHS. He said that the public health grant that the Council used could be supported to help people stop people drinking alcohol excessively or to help them stop smoking and instead the Government wanted to plough money into the higher-end problems so that hospitals were dealing with alcohol-related admissions at hospital and cancer treatment as well.
(vi) Councillor Miller (Cabinet Member for Stronger Communities)
Councillor Miller began by thanking those Members who had attended the Council’s “Time to Talk” event on gangs, which he had chaired last week. He said that, at the last meeting of the Full Council, he had made it clear that tackling gang violence, drug dealing and exploitation would be some of his key priorities within his portfolio. Councillor Miller was very pleased to say that this was being followed-up and that this made dialogue and partnerships with the communities effected absolutely essential. Councillor Miller said that the event had been attended by just short of 200 people and a range of perspectives and organisations were represented to discuss what could be an enormously complex and sometimes emotionally challenging topic. He said that this would not be a listening event which led to nowhere and that the valuable input the Council had gained from the Panel and from those who had attended would form part of the Council’s new Stronger Communities Strategy, which would be presented later in the year. Councillor Miller went on to say that organising work was still ongoing around this and that he would be working very closely with staff to make sure that intervening on gangs was key to what went into this strategy.
Councillor Miller announced that it had been a good time for Brent’s Libraries and he congratulated Wembley Library staff on its performance against national statistics and benchmarking methods. He said that Wembley Library was now the third most visited library nationally after the Central Libraries in Birmingham and Manchester and that the task now would be to drill down into data, which could inform the Council about people’s levels of engagement with libraries
Councillor Miller also thanked staff at Willesden Green for what had been an excellent event, in partnership with the Romanian and Cultural Institute and the National Library for Romania, who would be donating some curated materials to the Library in Brent. He said that Brent had a very large Romanian population in Brent – one of the largest in the country - and that this would be very important at a difficult time for these communities post Brexit. Councillor Miller said that work like this, on behalf of the Council, sent a very clear message and that Brent’s message was that if someone was an EU worker in this country, then Brent was right behind them and would make sure that they were a full part of Brent’s community.
In conclusion, Councillor Miller advised Members that the Council was currently working closely with community libraries to draft a memorandum of understanding, although the title of this might change, about how the Council could best support their activities and work in partnership with them. He said that the Council had, at times, had a difficult relationship with community libraries in the past and one of the things that he wanted to make sure the Council got out of this was a good relationship of trust and support between community libraries and the Council. Councillor Miller said he would be returning with more information about how this policy was developing in the coming months because the Council was currently taking feedback from the community libraries.
(vii) Councillor Patel (Cabinet Member for Children and Young People)
Councillor Patel said that she was very pleased to have been appointed as Cabinet Member for Children and Young People and that it was a personal appointment since she had attended school in Brent. She said that she was really looking forward to meeting the team and officers and continuing the work of her predecessor, Councillor W Mitchell Murray.
(viii) Councillor Farah (Cabinet Member for Housing and Welfare Reform)
Councillor Farah advised Members that there would be approximately £2m identified to tackle single homelessness in Brent. He said that the current housing and planning appeal would mean local authorities would have to provide advice and guidance to single homelessness when it became law. Councillor Farah said that, following the Council’s successful application for just under £1m from the Government, the Cabinet had approved to match-fund that amongst local voluntary sector organisations to deliver homelessness prevention and relieve outcomes for hundreds of homelessness single people who currently had not had the help that they needed. He said that this new programme would make Brent one of the leading Councils in the country in dealing with this issue and it would test an approach where the voluntary sector partners were paid according to how successful they had been in both tackling homelessness and helping people sustain their accommodation afterwards.
Councillor Farah also updated Members on the Brent Housing Partnership consultation which was now underway. He said that the 12 weeks of consultation with tenants and leaseholders to inform the Council’s final decision on future housing management, was running until 17 March 2017 and he asked that Members engage with their residents, leaseholders and other interested parties to encourage them to take part in this important consultation. Councillor Farah said that the Council was seeking views on the preferred option to bring the service back in house. He said that the consultation set out how the Council planned to tie in housing with other Council services such as antisocial behaviour and streets and estate management to address residents key concerns and aspirations that they had raised before. Councillor Farah confirmed that the Council would consult in parallel with Council Staff, Brent Housing Partnership and colleagues too.