Decision details

(1)      Having been put to a vote, in accordance with Standing Order 42(l), the Motion submitted by the Conservative Group “Don’t Punish Brent’s Drivers” was withdrawn from consideration at the meeting.

 

(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:

 

“Protecting, preserving and promoting Parks and Open Spaces in Brent

 

This Council notes:

 

Our borough is home to many wonderful green, open spaces and parks that are enjoyed by residents of all ages and backgrounds. From smaller parks like Mount Pleasant Open Space in Alperton, King Edward VII in Wembley, to historical parks like Barham Park and Gladstone Park, larger country parks in Fryent, and thriving open spaces in the Welsh Harp and Northwick Park, to name but a few.

 

These vital spaces must be protected, particularly if they are threatened by development that does not meet local need.

 

In recent years we have become even more aware of how important green spaces are for local people. During the Covid-19 pandemic and periods of lockdown, they became a sanctuary for so many who were able to spend time in them, benefiting both mental and physical health.

 

With the promise of much needed homes in Brent it is crucial that new residents are able to access open spaces in the areas they move to. Brent Council continues to work with partners to bring forward new developments to ensure they incorporate adequate large green space which is maintained by Housing Associations/ Managing Companies.  In Wembley Park, for example, a new seven-acre Union Park will feature a bandstand, children’s play areas, sport zones and urban meadow.  It replaces a former 1,000 space care and coach park and is one of the first new large public parks in London for decades and is Wembley’s first new mayor park in 150 years.

 

Achieving Climate Emergency targets relies heavily on safeguarding open spaces, protecting mature trees and important habitats for local wildlife. Without doing so, we risk missing these targets in or borough.

 

The decision by the Planning Committee to allow the building of houses located along the north-west corner ofBarham Park is in accordance with Brent Council’s long established Core Strategy of protecting Brent parks and open spaces from unwelcome development. The disposal of the properties at 776 and 778 Harrow Road was first taken by the Executive in December 2009. The decision made by the Planning Committee was on the basis of officer recommendation and discussion at the meeting, including the consideration of the Local Neighbourhood Plan. The Planning Committee decision does not result in the loss of any local green space from the redevelopment of the buildings and does not impact upon the ability to experience the area of the original historic landscape park.

 

The Barham Park decision does not result in the loss of any local green space and therefore re-affirms the existing precedent of maintaining the protection of parks and open spaces from developmentin keeping with the strength of feeling from local residents on this important issue.

 

Therefore, this Council believes:

 

1.     That all of Brent’s parks and open spaces should be valued and celebrated as vital assets in our community.

 

2.     Parks and open spaces must all be protected from the potential of development, particularly of development that does not meet local need or that is clearly not for genuine community use.

 

3.     The value of parks and open spaces cannot be understated; even more so as increasing numbers of local people have little to no access to their own gardens or green space.

 

4.     The Cabinet should reassure all residents that within its responsibilities it will always prioritise the preservation of our parks and open spaces and promote these assets.

 

This Council resolves:

 

(1)    To confirm its longstanding strategic position that it will recognise the value of open spaces and parks in the borough and seek to protect them.

 

(2)    To call on the Cabinet to ensure within its responsibilities there will be no new buildings and no expansion of buildings in parks other than for legitimate community use.

 

(3)    To reaffirm its Planning Policies on protecting public parks and open spaces

 

(3)    To incorporate in all Planning reports the potential environmental impact applications will have on our area, and how they might impact Climate Emergency targets, utilising our newly approved Sustainable Environment & Development Supplementary Planning Document.

 

(4)    To work with partners across the city, from the Corporation of London, other Local Authorities and City Hall to protect, preserve and promote vital green, open spaces in London.”

 

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

 

“Celebrating 75 years of the NHS in Brent

 

This council notes:

 

§    5 July 2023 marked 75 years of the National Health Service - it is the beating heart of Britain and the Labour Party’s proudest achievement.

 

§    Treating over a million people a day in England, the NHS touches all our lives. It is also the biggest employer in Europe and the world's largest employer of highly skilled professionals, with over 1.3m members of staff from over 200 different nationalities.

 

§    When it was founded by Nye Bevan in 1948, the NHS was the first universal health system to be available to all, founded on the simple principle of care based on people’s need, not their ability to pay.

 

§    Today, nine in 10 people agree that healthcare should be free of charge, more than four in five agree that care should be available to everyone, and that the NHS makes them most proud to be British.

 

§    The NHS has delivered huge medical advances, including the world’s first liver, heart and lung transplant in 1987, pioneering new treatments, such as bionic eyes and, in more recent times, the world’s first rapid whole genome sequencing service for seriously ill babies and children.

 

§    This year also marks another very important 75^th anniversary – the arrival of the HMT Empire Windrush in Britain with more than 800 passengers from the Caribbean, ready to embark on their new lives. The Windrush Generation helped to build the National Health Services and we stand on the shoulders of their legacy.

 

§    More recently the NHS and social care organisations have also benefitted from EU and other overseas staff.

 

§    Throughout Covid-19, doctors, nurses, health and social care workers and NHS staff put their lives at risk to protect us all.

 

This council further notes:

 

§    Our NHS colleagues are integral to the work of Brent Council.

 

§    Since its creation, NHS spending has increased by an average of 3.7 per cent per year in real terms. But from 2010/11 to 2018/19, NHS funding growth slowed to 1.4 per cent per year. Spiralling inflation has reduced the value of the NHS budget, with NHS Confederation analysis showing that the NHS is facing real terms cut in funding of between £4 billion and £9.4 billion.

 

§    Over the last ten years, the foundations of the NHS have been eroded through outsourcing to private companies and insufficient investment in both staff and infrastructure. Pay for health practitioners is now less than it was in 2010, 40 per cent of doctors in the NHS are looking to leave the NHS for work abroad; and of Boris Johnson’s promised 40 new hospitals, less than a quarter are yet to gain planning permission.

 

§    There are currently more patients waiting for treatment than ever in the history of the NHS. Furthermore, every month, tens of thousands of patients are spending entire days waiting in A&E with hospitals overwhelmed with patients who are fit to leave or wouldn’t need to be there in the first place if they could access healthcare earlier.

 

§    Ahead of the NHS’s 75th birthday, a report by the NHS Assembly has set out the growing consensus that the NHS should now focus on three key areas for long term development: better preventing ill health, personalising care and delivering more co-ordinated care closer to home.

 

§    The disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) communities highlighted the deep health inequalities faced by so many of our residents, as well as the inequalities faced by BAME staff in the NHS, which the NHS also needs to urgently address.

 

This Council believes:

 

§    The infrastructure of the NHS at both the community and national level requires wholesale renewal to meet the demands of an ageing population.

 

§    Brent Council has a strong track record of working with the NHS for the benefit of all our residents, to ensure a borough where we can all feel safe, secure, happy and healthy. In partnership with the NHS we have:

 

o      Launched 8 Family Wellbeing Centers, bringing together health, nursing, and parental support for children.

o      Held Prostate Cancer Awareness events in Stonebridge and Harlesden.

o      Won the Nursing Times Award for the Public Health Nursing category and been shortlisted for the unique initiative of the oral health mobile bus, which looked to improve education for parents across Brent about healthy eating and dental health.

 

§    Despite these achievements, there is so much more that could be done to improve the NHS in Brent – and that only with a Labour Government will the necessary change be delivered.

 

§    That the time is now, to seize the historic moment of the NHS’s 75th anniversary to unite behind a shared vision of its next and best era.

 

This Council resolves to:

 

(1)      Request the Cabinet Member for Public Health and Adult Social Care write to the Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, outlining support for the Labour Party plan for the biggest expansions of doctor and health practitioner numbers in the history of the NHS, committing to:

 

o     Doubling the number of medical school places to 15,000 a year

o     Doubling the number of district nurses qualifying each year

o     Training 5,000 new health visitors a year

o     Creating 10,000 more nursing and midwifery clinical placements each year

o     A long-term workforce plan for the NHS, with independent workforce projections, new career paths into the NHS, and new types of health and care professionals.

o     Supporting the expansion by reintroducing the 45p additional rate of income tax paid by those earning more than £150,000 a year.

 

(2)      Work with the North West London Integrated Care System to promote measures that maximise opportunities at a local level to improve life for local residents by:

 

o     Promoting prevention and reducing the number of people with long term conditions.

o     Promoting the best deployment of resources to address identified  need.

o     Work with other statutory partners but also co-produce solutions with our communities and Voluntary Sector that will improve the lives of our most deprived communities in Brent.

o     Working with our diverse communities to ensure equality of experience in accessing health care services.”

 

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

 

“Keeping Brent on the move: renewing our roads and pavements

 

This council notes:

 

§    Providing a transport network which supports economic development and works to improve safety, accessibility and inclusivity is fundamental to keeping our borough on the move in the coming years.

 

§    Whether you walk, drive, cycle or take a bus or taxi; maintaining Brent’s roads, pavements and infrastructure is vital part in creating a safe place to call home.

 

§    In Brent, in the last Administration our teams repaired or maintained over 128 Kilometres of roads and pavements, enough to get you from the Civic Centre to Dover.

 

§    In this year alone, as part of Brent’s “winter resilience” programme of injecting patching of potholes, we have undertaken 2,568 repairs across the borough.

 

§    In London more broadly, as the effects of austerity have compounded, so too has the effect on our public realm. London Councils have stated that our infrastructure is in “managed decline” thanks to years of real terms budget cuts, exacerbated by high inflation. For example, over 80 bridges in London are currently substandard and subject to restrictions owing to a backlog in repairs.

 

§    With the effects of climate change increasing the severity of storms and flooding, our roads, pavements and drainage systems will be overwhelmed more frequently and require greater investment than ever before.

 

§    In the last London Councils “State of the City” report a total backlog for maintenance repairs across all forms of infrastructure in the capital is said to be c. £1.6bn. In Brent, repairing every effected part of our pavements was estimated at the time to be over £60m.

 

§    Brent Council has recently launched a new “Fix my Street” tool which will make it quicker for residents to report roads and pavements in need of repair. At time of submitting this motion 36k reports have been submitted, with 5k fixed in just the last month alone.

 

 

This council further notes:

 

§    That the situation has deteriorated further when, in 2018, the government withdrew highway maintenance funding to Transport for London (TfL). This funding had been ring-fenced to resurfacing TfL’s Red Routes and the 32 boroughs’ principal roads (with Brent Council formerly receiving approximately £900k annually).

 

§    If Brent Council was not in London, adjusted for inflation, we could have expected to receive up to £7 million of funding for our roads from TfL during the intervening period.

 

§    As a result of the significantly reduced funding for our principal road network, the overall condition of these routes has suffered. To address the decline Brent Council has allocated £4m for a Principal Roads programme with £1m of the investment being spent in 2022/23 and a further £2m programmed for 2023/24.

 

§    That unlike the whole of the rest of England, the government provides no funding for the maintenance of highways and pavements in London.

 

§    By way of comparison, the government has committed over £2.7 billion of local highways maintenance outside of London between 2022 and 2025.

 

§    Recent announcements of funding worth £200m from Active Travel England are also unavailable to London boroughs.

 

§    The government has since announced a £380m cut (by more than 50% of its current budget) to the active travel budget in the current spending review, which the Labour Party has estimated could cost more than £2bn in the long term through the impact on public health and wider economy.

 

§    This follows a long line of broken promises from this government on infrastructure, from the Northern Powerhouse Rail to HS2 – now all curtailed.

 

This Council resolves to:

 

(1)    Request that the Cabinet Member for Environment, Infrastructure and Climate Action, write to the Secretary of State for Transport demanding that London is treated in the same way as the rest of England when funding the maintenance of our roads, pavements, and infrastructure.

 

(2)    Request that the Cabinet Member for Environment, Infrastructure and Climate Action, bring forward a report to Cabinet, setting out Brent Council’s future capital investment into our roads, pavements, and improvements in our public realm – as part of our manifesto commitment to invest £15 million into a programme of repairs and renewal.”