Decision details

(1)        Following the approval of an amendment moved by the Labour Group in relation to the original Motion submitted by the Conservative Group, the following Motion (as amended) was AGREED:

 

“Pollution of the Wealdstone Brook

 

The Wealdstone Brook, which runs in open water, starts in Harrow, runs through Woodcock Park in Kenton and then into Wembley past all the new developments around the stadium before reaching the River Brent, has been heavily polluted with untreated human sewage and toxic chemicals for some considerable time.

 

The Wealdstone Brook has nothing living in it – it is effectively a dead river.  The toxic smells which have come from liquids evaporating at low temperatures from the Brook water are nauseating and residents who live close to the Brook or have been walking close to the Brook in Woodcock Park, have been feeling physically sick as a result of these noxious odours.

 

Thames Water, who have been investigating the sources of the pollution, have admitted liability for cleaning up the pollution.  They have agreed that the pollution of the Wealdstone Brook is one of the worst they have come across but as a result of the shared responsibility for the maintenance of the Brook as it passes through Brent, Brent Council and the Environment Agency must also share some of the responsibility.

 

As a result the residents living nearby have expressed their disgust at the state of the Brook and this council considers that Thames Water should have acted with greater urgency once it had reports of untreated human sewage, toxic gases and smells vaporising from the water of the Wealdstone Brook.

 

This council notes that almost £19bn was paid out in dividends to shareholders in the nine major water companies operating in England between 2010 and 2021.

 

This Council therefore resolves:

 

To do whatever is necessary and within the Council’s power to ensure that the water in Wealdstone Brook is cleaned up.

 

To ask the Leader of the Council and the Leaders of the Opposition Groups to write to the Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, to call for additional support for Brent Council to respond to the pollution in Wealdstone Brook and enforce the principle of the ‘polluter pays’.

 

To support the Labour Party pledge of common ownership of water services to unlock the desperately needed investment in water infrastructure and create services that are run on behalf of consumers, not shareholders profit.

 

To do what the Council can toensure that the agencies concerned take the necessary steps to detect and rectify all wrongly connected foul sewers which run into the Brook and to put them right at no cost to Council tax payers, in Brent.

 

To seek legal opinion as to whether legal action can be taken against the agencies that have responsibility for ensuring that the Wealdstone Brook is free of pollution if there is no immediate rectification of the problem.

 

To ensure in light of a serious risk to public health and as a matter of urgency the necessary actions are taken as soon as possible to put the foregoing into practice.”

 

(2)        Following the approval of an amendment moved by the Labour Group in relation to the original Motion submitted by the Liberal Democrats Group, the following Motion (as amended) was AGREED:

 

“Support for Refugees and Asylum Seekers

 

This Council notes:

 

That refugees and asylum seekers are human beings who deserve our full respect and support. 

 

The way in which Boris Johnson’s government talks about and presents refugees, who face their plight through no fault of their own, is deeply un-British, offensive and shameful.

 

Our own borough is home to people from all corners of the world and all wish to make a valuable contribution to our international community.

 

Brent is welcoming of refugees and asylum seekers.  The collective leadership of every councillor is essential in ensuring that refugees who arrive in our community have access to needed support and are given the basic opportunities afforded to all in order that they can contribute to society.

 

Organisations like Care 4 Calais, English for Action, Salusbury World, Young Roots, amongst others, are doing crucial work in our community to help settle refugees and offer basic support, whether through English classes that they run or by seeking to address the immense mental trauma many refugees have and are experiencing.

 

The Brent Labour Manifesto promised that under Labour leadership, Brent Council will stand “ready to support refugees fleeing war in any way we can”.  With the help of our outstanding voluntary sector and local residents, Brent has already given sanctuary to 154 people under the Homes for Ukrainians Scheme.

 

This Council believes:

 

In the UN Refugee Convention statutes that give right to any individuals seeking asylum.  We believe that Brent has a moral duty to help those fleeing war and persecution.  We continue to support the Alf Dubs amendment to the 2016 Immigration Act to allow unaccompanied child refugees in Europe to reunite with family members here in the UK after Brexit.

 

This Council therefore calls on the government to:

 

1.          Drop its shameful, un-British Rwanda policy.  The Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has set out the Labour Party position that “it is not a long term plan; it is a short term stunt and government gimmick.”

 

2.     End the hostile environment pursued by successive Conservative Governments that seeks to criminalise people who have been forced to flee their homelands through no fault of their own.

 

3.     Reverse the cuts to legal aid that have disproportionately affected those on lower incomes, BAME groups and women as well as refugees.  The legal aid and family reunion system requires urgent reassessment and significant reform, with refugees denied justice due to drastic legal aid cuts.

 

4.     Acknowledge asylum seekers are making dangerous, tragically, all too often, fatal journeys across Europe to seek sanctuary and safety and therefore must allow asylum seekers the legal right of passage into the UK.

 

5.     Give refugees and asylum seekers the ability to play a full part in our society and economy by giving those who arrive in the UK a right to work quickly under defined and reasonable terms.

 

This Council also resolves to:

 

1.     Immediately establish and publish a directory of ESOL provision within our borough on the Council website and also provide easy access benefit and other advice to those who need it.

 

2.     Continue the award winning work of Brent Start which provides affordable training, including ESOL and English Language courses to over 8,000 learners a year.  This Council continues its commitment to investing £43m into creating a new state of the art adult education centre at Morland Gardens – enabling many more ESOL learners to benefit from the Brent Start service.

 

3.     Make representations to London Council as the body responsible for the Freedom Pass, to consider extending free bus travel to asylum seekers through the existing payment card system.

 

3.     Organise a Brent Refugee Summit by the end of this year (2022), bringing together organisations, mainly in the voluntary sector, who are currently working to support refugees and asylum seekers locally. This will show a united and concerted effort from this Council that people who arrive locally are welcome here and that Brent will play our part in helping to settle people who given the tools will make hugely valuable contributions to our borough - as those who came before them always have.”

 

(3)    The following Motion submitted by the Labour Group was AGREED:

 

“A Food Justice Strategy for Brent

 

Full Council notes that:

 

We are seeing a national food poverty emergency borne out of political choices and systemic failings from successive governments since austerity began in 2010. Recent Food Foundation data has recorded 7.3 million adults and 2.6 million children in UK households going without food or physically unable to get food in the past month

 

a)          Food poverty should never be seen as inevitable: from 1997 to 2010 poverty reduced significantly,[1] showing that with sufficient political willpower these issues can be tackled.

 

b)          The UK is in the midst of an economic recession, compounded by a cost-of-living crisis as energy bills soar, and the end of the £20 uplift to benefit payments.  Food aid organisations are already far busier than before the pandemic, and they are braced for a steep rise in demand in the months ahead.

 

c)          The result is an increasingly institutionalised food aid infrastructure, effectively now part of the welfare system.  This system is subsidised by the public to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds in Brent alone.  Food aid organisations act as a critical safety net for anyone unable to make ends meet – including those receiving all the benefits they are entitled to and many who are in work and still experiencing crisis.

 

d)          The long-delayed Government Food Strategy was lauded as the plan to help address this growing crisis.  It was supposed to lay out a vision for how we create, enhance, and protect sustainable food supplies. However, even the government’s own lead advisor Henry Dimbleby, whose review of Britain’s food system formed the basis for the document, said the White Paper did not amount to a strategy and could mean even more children going hungry.

 

e)          The pandemic disproportionately impacted Black and racially minoritised communities in Brent.  It underscored the injustice of food poverty for thousands of residents across the borough who were dependent on food banks and other forms of charitable food aid (including food parcels and vouchers from the council) for their day-to-day survival.  As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a mushrooming of newly established food banks, and other forms of food support for vulnerable people provided by mutual aid groups, businesses and faith groups many of which still remain active.

 

f)            Brent Labour stood on a local election manifesto to develop a ‘Right to Food’ pledge to confront spiralling food poverty by bringing together existing food aid organisations, growers, and other stakeholders to address rampant inequalities in accessing affordable, culturally appropriate, nutritious food in Brent.

 

g)          A Brent Right to Food Summit was held in March 2022 at Cardinal Newman Catholic College with the participation of multiple Borough stakeholders, including Sufra NW London, Granville Community Kitchen, Brent Growers and Brent CVS.  The Summit clearly reflected widespread concern over the urgency of tackling the ongoing food emergency, both nationally and locally in Brent.

 

Full Council also notes the work that is already being done to address food insecurity across Bent, including:

 

a)          The appointment of Brent Council’s Food Justice Cabinet Champion.

 

b)          The commitment in Brent Council’s recent Health and Wellbeing Strategy to ‘work with partners on a food strategy’ for our Borough.

 

c)          The identification in the Health and Wellbeing Strategy of potentially positive food-related initiatives, ranging from healthier catering commitment to rolling out Incredible Edible schemes; diabetes prevention programmes, and guaranteeing a fair job for a fair wage across the food sector.

 

d)          The publication in July 2020 of the Brent Poverty Commission’s Report which included sections on food poverty, recommending that the Council ‘supports the future sustainability of food aid agencies in the borough including by further developing community garden schemes’.

 

e)          The continuing efforts by local mutual aid groups, the Brent Food Aid Network, Growing Brent, among countless others to mitigate food insecurity across our Borough.

 

f)            The celebration in March 2022 of a Brent Food Summit aimed at identifying the various solutions and coordinating effective responses to the food injustices in the Borough.

 

Full Council therefore resolves to:

 

a)          Declare Brent a Right to Food Borough, joining other local authorities across the country calling for the Right to Food to be enshrined into national law.

 

b)          Request the inclusion within a Cabinet Member portfolio of responsibilityfor co-developing a Brent Food Justice Strategy with representatives of local food security stakeholders, aimed at addressing the structural causes of food poverty and inequality in Brent.

 

c)          Strive toward a Brent without food banks, where food aid is drastically reduced to an emergency response to crises through ‘cash first’ solutions such as the scaling up of welfare advice services across the borough, as well as improved access to welfare assistance grants, school meals and supermarket vouchers for anyone in need.  We want an end to normalising emergency food aid as a routine form of addressing food insecurity.

 

d)          Support existing food aid providers through the allocation of land and suitable premises to establish or improve access to urban agriculture, community food gardens, social supermarkets and community kitchens among other initiatives; and ensure market space is available – especially in or near areas of deprivation – to distribute nutritious, affordable and culturally-appropriate food to local residents

 

e)          Work towards a ‘Right to Food’ dimension when formulating policy so that food becomes part of the Council’sdecision-making equation.”

 

(4)    The following Motion submitted by the Labour Group was AGREED:

 

“Zero Hours Justice Campaign

 

Full Council notes:

 

1.          The use of zero-hour contracts has risen over the last decade, meaning there are an increasing number of workers who do not have a guaranteed number of working hours each week.

 

2.          In Brent, it is estimated that of our residents in employment, nearly 30% are in roles which are low-paying and earn less than a living wage.

 

3.          There are very few roles in which zero hours contracts suit the worker. For the majority, such contracts nearly always provide one-sided flexibility in favour of the employer.

 

4.          Workers on zero-hour contracts face financial insecurity as a result of:

 

a.           the insecurity of not knowing how many hours they are working from week-to-week and, sometimes, from day-to-day;

 

b.           getting too few hours to financially make ends meet;

 

c.           spending money to be able to work and then being out-of-pocket when hours are cancelled (travel costs, childcare costs etc.);

 

d.           getting hours at the last minute and having to make urgent arrangements for childcare or other caring responsibilities, or cancel social plans; and

 

e.           the fear of refusing hours lest it results in fewer hours being offered, or bullying and harassment from the employer.

 

5.          Brent Labour stood on an election manifesto pledge to campaign for a new deal for workers’ rights, including the cessation of fire and rehire and the right to regular hours of work.

 

6.          Brent Council uses the commissioning process to ensure that providers never need to make use of exploitative zero hour contracts. Like most local authorities though we make use of time limited contracts to bring in specialists or agency workers with specific skills when we need to boost our workforce.

 

Full Council believes:

 

That despite the government promising on numerous occasion new legislation to provide better security for workers on zero-hour contracts, it has failed to do so. At present, the council is unable to legally enforce against such working practises.

 

That good work should equal good pay and the right to regular hours of work. As an anchor institution Brent Council is proud to be a local employer that does not and will not use zero-hour contracts.

 

That this Council should support the work of Zero Hours Justice, an organisation which seeks to end exploitative zero-hours contracts by providing help for workers on such contracts, and supporting businesses and other organisations that either do not use zero-hours contracts or only do so in accordance to minimal criteria.

 

Full Council therefore resolves:

 

(1)    To lead by example, reaffirming our commitment to our workforce to provide security, prosperity and respect in our employment; and work towards a zero-hours Justice Accreditation.

 

(2)    Never to unilaterally impose any zero-hour contracts on our directly employed staff.

 

(3)    To continue working with our suppliers and providers to ensure employment rights are followed; and discourage any indirect zero-hour contracts via agency or third-party contractor.”