Box-Ticking Overriding Ambition on Community Engagement

Cllr Gabriella Giles not impressed with Hounslow Council's budget proposals

Councillor Gabriella Giles, Conservative spokesman on environment and climate emergency, notes that box-ticking overrides ambition

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how the plans laid out by the council need to be scalable and sustainable and now I would like add another word to that list – ambitious. This week's borough council meeting agenda included the budget for the next financial year. This is the second time I have been present as a councillor for this annual meeting and I must say I am not impressed.

Were you watching?

I won't go into great detail about who said what and who didn't speak during the debate (the vast majority of the Labour administration); if you are interested, the full show is available on YouTube as the meeting was live streamed from the chamber for the three-plus hours it took to go through the proceedings. When I checked to see if anybody was watching, I was surprised to see that 14 people were still online. Did anybody know that after 10 years of no broadcasts this meeting was going to be live-streamed? I found out a couple of hours before the meeting but I hadn't seen anything about this earlier. Perhaps there was a Tweet sent somewhere, at some point.

Hardly ambitious – more like a box-ticking exercise – but perhaps it will happen again and, if it does, I invite you to watch these meetings (we include the dates at the end of our blogs). You don't have to watch the whole thing but a brief dip in might give you an insight into the proceedings. The full calendar diary of council meetings is available online too. Tough luck if you don't have access to a computer but it's the cheapest form of disseminating information. Or so we are told.

So, what does this mean? It means that whenever there is a consultation, or a planning application, or official communication, you have to be connected and following the correct channels to be made aware of it. This does seem to be a recurring issue, and my dismay at initially hearing that a response rate of 25 per cent was high, is simply reinforced by seeing first hand how information between the council and its residents is shared.

To take just one example, along with my fellow ward councillors, we have been involved in the consultation on the Liveable Neighbourhoods Project and continue communications with the officers involved. The latest update is that although this is a Transport for London funded project, the timeframes will primarily be set by the Borough. Officers are currently reviewing the large number of comments and submissions made via the consultation, in conjunction with the traffic data received. This is all in advance of the publication of the consultation report which should comprehensively explain the data, provide a response to any questions raised, and set out the priorities and timeline for the project. There is a provisional timeline: the aim is to have an idea of the main headlines by March, the main report in May, then there will be another series of public drop-in sessions where residents will be able to see and help develop the details of the proposals.

We must engage with the under 35s

All in all, a very clear plan, with feasibility studies and a costing exercise for the Barnes Bridge walkway in March. The updates so far have been promising. However, despite the large number of responses from residents, there has been practically zero input from residents under the age of 30. To get over this hurdle a specialist consultant (another consultant!) will be contracted to help shape a plan (another plan!) on how the council will best engage with the under 35s in the borough. At the moment, the plan is to target Chiswick School which is all well and good but it misses a huge chunk of the local population and it is vital that we include the opinions of all those who will benefit most from the future developments.

To that note, I also attended the first consultation on the council’s climate emergency action plan where, apart from council employees, and one member of our Youth Parliament, I was one of the youngest people there. Admittedly it was held during the day, and I have a vested interest to take time out of work to attend, but I find it disappointing that, at every level of our democracy, it seems to be people who will least benefit from any of our long-term initiatives who have the biggest say. To that point, there will be another consultation on Monday evening at 6.30pm at Hounslow House to brainstorm on how the objectives of the climate emergency action plan could be put into action.

As for people wanting to have their say, I understand that some people have been trying to contact me by telephone. For various reasons, I have been issued with a new telephone number and this is listed below.

DATES FOR DIARIES

NEXT BOROUGH COUNCIL
• Borough Council: Tuesday, 31st March at 7.30pm at Hounslow House.
• Chiswick Area Forum: Tuesday, 28th April at 7.00pm at Chiswick Town Hall

SURGERIES

• Chiswick surgeries: Every Saturday from 9.30am to 10.30am at Chiswick library, upstairs in the private room.
• Gunnersbury surgeries: First Saturday of the month from 10am to 11am at The Triangle Club, The Ridgeway, W3 8LN, usually a group discussion but privacy can be arranged.

Councillor Gabriella Giles
Chiswick Riverside ward
Email: gabriella.giles@hounslow.gov.uk
Phone: 07966 270823
Twitter: @GabriellaSGG

March 1, 2020