Endings and Beginnings Including Heart-break and Small Victories

Chiswick Gunnersbury Councillor Joanna Biddolph reports on her week

Cllr Jo Biddolph on Chiswick High Road

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January 8, 2023

It’s been a week of lasts and firsts. I took the last councillors’ Chiswick surgery of the year – on the morning of Saturday, 31st December 2022; the first councillors’ Gunnersbury surgery of the year – on Saturday, 7th January; and now write the first blog in 2023. With a bank holiday during the week, I hadn’t expected to have much to write about but life is never quiet or slow in Chiswick Gunnersbury ward.

Heart-breaking housing policies

Hounslow House closes between Christmas and New Year but life goes on for residents. In amongst heart-warming good wish phone calls and messages was a heart-breaking discussion with the mother of a family in wholly inadequate accommodation, with a lease ending shortly after the new year. This continued throughout the Christmas/New Year break including discussions with the lettings agent, the landlord and the residents with me urging swift action so the family could get some enjoyment during the break. It was because of the injustices of this case that I had a moment of clarity about how housing policy works in reality in Hounslow.

In a damp and mouldy flat, this family should already have been rehoused or the landlord forced to fix the cause. With a failing boiler, which delivered either heating or hot water but not both, this family should already have been rehoused or the landlord forced to fix the cause. To give him some due, the landlord commissioned work to fix the boiler but repeated attempts at fixing didn’t work; replacement was the obvious need but seemed to be off the agenda. I wondered if this was because the lease was soon to end though, as the problem would have to be fixed before new tenants could move in, why it hadn’t it be done for the current tenants was unfathomable. The most recent attempt to fix the boiler, between Christmas and new year, left the family with no water – not hot, not cold – in the kitchen and only a trickle of cold water (and no hot water) in the bathroom. What a way to expect people to live. Then clarity.

As soon as Hounslow House re-opened, I contacted the person I had understood to be in charge of this case. It wasn’t her but she said she would ask the case officer to contact the family that day. She told me that I should tell the family not to move out at the end of their lease but to wait to be evicted; when the bailiffs were at the door, the family would be rehoused. Yes, you read that right. This was the clarity I needed. (And, by the way, the case officer did not ring the family that day as pledged; I was their sole source of information.)

I’ve been worried for some time about what seems to be a lack of humanity in the council’s approach to housing. The focus is on legal process, not life as it is lived. This family needs to be rehoused. There is no doubt of that. But for reasons best known to housing officers, need is not the driver. Getting to the very end of a legal process is. The ending of a tenancy isn’t the beginning of a new home; the last possible moment – eviction on to the streets – is the first step towards a new home. This family is condemned to live in a damp, mouldy flat without water until the eviction process has ended. I just do not get it.

I said soon after the May elections, to my Conservative councillor colleagues, I thought the housing department was about to fall apart. It seems I was right. It needs drastic overhaul (despite several recent restructures, that clearly haven’t worked) with residents’ needs, not process, at its heart. I am deeply concerned about this family which has not only had to struggle through what should have been a joyful time, but which now faces more months of mould, damp and no hot or cold water at home simply because the council won’t budge from following process, rather than acting on human need.

Planning applications

If inadequate housing is the most heart-breaking aspect of being a councillor (which it is for me), planning is the most frustrating. As Chiswick Gunnersbury ward includes the beating heart of Chiswick – the longest stretch of Chiswick High Road – and most of the significant plots of land in Chiswick, it tends to attract the most and the most controversial planning applications, or at least that’s how it feels to me. Planning officers work closely with developers; they do not work closely with residents. At next week’s planning committee, two significant applications are on the agenda: TfL’s application to turn a green open space, in the Gunnersbury Park Garden Estate (GPGE) conservation area, into a car park; and the land at Chiswick roundabout that has been in planning limbo for at least a decade but seems now to be destined to be the site of Holly House.

TfL and the Gunnersbury Park Garden Estate

I won’t go into detail about what I plan to say at the planning committee (if allowed to speak for five minutes, as the local councillor) about TfL’s car park plan but, walking round the plot this morning, I heard my head saying, “TfL’s done its best to make it look like neglected land, as if to prove it would be better as a car park”. There’s now a heap of rubble along one side, with other dumped stuff in the middle, with no effort made to look after the area which residents know is full of wildlife and, as even TfL acknowledges, bat flights across and around it. Local residents are deeply concerned, setting up and joining in enthusiastically with a local campaign. I’ve frequently been stopped when walking along roads in the GPGE (I live here, though at the other side so am not directly impacted by the proposals) and asked what the latest is with the campaign. I’ve worked closely with the residents’ association to guide residents through the process, advise on actions, encourage and support initiatives and give reality-checks such as the mighty influence TfL has in Hounslow. If the committee approves the application, it won’t be because GPGE residents didn’t fight as hard as they could to prove the need for and importance of green space and wildlife habitats. Not to mention the hypocrisy of TfL telling Londoners not to drive and making it very difficult for them to do so, while wanting to make it easy for themselves.

Holly House and Chiswick roundabout

In a brief back-and-forth email exchange with the developer of Holly House, I referred to drawings and CGIs that give favourable impressions of height and particularly the magic of the tilt shift lens. I’d learned about this trick when speaking during the public inquiry into the Chiswick Curve, this developer’s proposal before it turned into Holly House. The tilt shift lens shows how tall buildings look from a worm’s eye view – if you lie flat on the ground and look up, the perspective makes tall buildings look much shorter, much less impactful, indeed much more acceptable. For me, the image that conveys this most is below – giving the impression that Holly House will be twice the height of a modest tree. They must think we are as thick as tree trunks. My other bugbear is the reference to the number of storeys, rather than metres, especially as it’s never clear whether the ground floor is included, and if the top levels are excluded if they are for maintenance rather than homes, never mind how high each storey is.

Responding to my point about trick photography and images, the developer said he was following national standards. I’m really not bothered about that. Nationally-set or otherwise, the impression they give is illusionary.

Making inroads?

Changes to the cycle lane continue with roads off Chiswick High Road being closed in whole or part and re-routes put in place. Or not. The turn into Devonshire Road is now so narrow that HGVs and larger lorries or trucks, cannot turn in from the High Road then turn right into the car park. There isn’t enough space for the required turning circle. Several businesses have been unable to receive or make deliveries, some of them having to pay more for suppliers and deliverers to make more journeys in smaller lorries (surely defeating the aim of reducing the number of journeys and consequent pollution). I reported this, asking for urgent action, and was told that the bollard that restricts the turn into the car park was supposed to have been removed permanently but wasn’t. I was promised it would be removed but it is still in place. I’m chasing this up.

This week, with the top of Duke Road closed, Bourne Place was supposed to become two-way; it wasn’t. This was an admin error that has been corrected though not without some lack of success – parking in Bourne Place was supposed to have been suspended but drivers are still parking there making it very narrow to navigate. I’ll see what I can do. Duke Road residents have been struggling with increased traffic from drivers diverting from the A4 during roadworks. They do not need more complications.  

Small victories, large impact

Invited to an impromptu Boxing Day supper round the corner with a friend, I was delighted to be served proper home-made mushy peas. I adore them. Mushy leaves, no thanks. As my councillor colleague Gabriella Giles said when we were talking last night, every road has them currently. Indeed, they do. But some are in a much worse state than others. It has taken well over four months to persuade Hounslow Highways to sweep Elliott Road; it is now bringing forward the deep clean that was scheduled for the week of 20th February. A pincer movement with a resident, both of us using determined persuasion, and photos that tell the story far more effectively than words, and we got there. It will be cleared this week.

Another resident and I are now attacking Grange Road with the same fervour and hope for a similarly positive outcome.

Mushy leaves and detritus on Elliott Road

If your road needs to be swept, do first read the leaf clearance policy. To find out when your road is due to be swept, this is the leaf clearing schedule until the end of February 2023.

If you have tried and failed to have your road swept, do contact one of your local councillors in case we can add weight to your arguments.

I’d like to thank Hounslow Highways for clearing a heap of fly tipping, from a residential road, on Christmas Eve so we didn’t have to live with it over Christmas. I do like to draw the distinction between Hounslow Highways and Hounslow Council. The former is a private company contracted to the council, defined and confined by a contract with the council (the contract needs a wholesale review, in my view). That contract states that it will remove fly tipping within 24 hours and I do not recall it missing this target.

Pavements are another huge concern. The problem is, as cabinet member Cllr Guy Lambert recently acknowledged, that residents do not agree with the intervention levels (as the jargon goes) that determine action. Find them here. In The Ridgeway, two sections of paving slabs have been out of true by a level lower than that which requires action. One section, right outside the front gate of the home of an older couple, both of them well into their 90s and inevitably less firm on their feet, was of particular concern. At first sight, none of the slabs individually met the intervention levels but with one that wobbled next to another that wobbled and was also was out of true, the risks were clear. Further along was a similar patch of trip hazards. I reported the former in early September and the latter later that month, adding photos and strong reasoning in both cases. White lines appeared round the slabs, indicating that action was needed (a result in itself) and raising expectations of action. We waited. Three months plus later, outcome achieved.

When I’m asked if I enjoy being a councillor, my response is always, “if I can achieve better for residents or business ratepayers, yes”. Now to tackle housing …

Councillor Joanna Biddolph

Chiswick Gunnersbury ward

joanna.biddolph@hounslow.gov.uk

07976 703446

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY  

Thursday 12 January at 7:00 pm: Planning committee

Tuesday, 17th January at 7:00pm: Cabinet

Tuesday, 31 January at 7:30pm: Borough council

CONSERVATIVE COUNCILLOR SURGERIES

Chiswick: Every Saturday from 9.30am to 10.30am at Chiswick Library (the eight Conservative councillors take this surgery in turn).

Gunnersbury: First Saturday of the month from 10am to 11am at The Gunnersbury Triangle Club, Triangle Way, off The Ridgeway, W3 8LU (at least one of the Chiswick Gunnersbury ward councillors takes this surgery). 

CONSERVATIVE COUNCILLORS and CONTACTS

Chiswick Gunnersbury (was Turnham Green) ward

Cllr Joanna Biddolph joanna.biddolph@hounslow.gov.uk 07976 703446

Cllr Ranjit Gill ranjit.gill@hounslow.gov.uk 07976 702956

Cllr Ron Mushiso ron.mushiso@hounslow.gov.uk 07976 702887

Chiswick Homefields ward

Cllr Jack Emsley jack.emsley@hounslow.gov.uk 07977 396017

Cllr Gerald McGregor gerald.mcgregor@hounslow.gov.uk 07866 784821

Cllr John Todd john.todd@hounslow.gov.uk 07866 784651

Chiswick Riverside ward

Cllr Peter Thompson peter.thompson@hounslow.gov.uk 07977 395810  

Cllr Gabriella Giles gabriella.giles@hounslow.gov.uk 07966 270823