Housing, Hedgehogs and Dukes Meadows
Chiswick Homefields councillor Jack Emsley reports back
Cllr Ranjit Gill
June 8, 2024
My colleague, Councillor Gill, started his blog last Sunday by saying that a week can be a long time in politics. I feel that, during a General Election, this is amplified. Whilst the council has had to cancel most meetings during the pre-election period (although similarly to Brentford councillor Guy Lambert, I’m not convinced Area Forums needed to be chopped!), our day-to-day role representing our community as councillors continues as normal (with the added bonus of scheduling in various campaign events in-between!).
Hedgehogs
Regular readers of my blogs will probably be sick of me talking about hedgehogs, but we really are lucky in Chiswick to be one of the country’s prime locations for our little prickly friends. Unfortunately, even here in West London, they’re under threat and require a real push for conservation. To help protect our hedgehog population, a new survey is being run by the National Hedgehog Preservation Society to better understand how we can look after local populations: in Chiswick, these efforts are being led once again by the team at WildChiswick, who are working alongside national efforts to monitor a 1km area of our local community around Grove Park through the installation of special hedgehog monitoring cameras. Thirty sites have been chosen at random, and I’m eagerly awaiting the results. More information about the project and how to volunteer to look after our local wildlife can be found here.
In Chiswick, and particularly if you’re based in Grove Park, you can also take practical steps to look after our population of hedgehogs by creating a small “hedgehog hole” in your back gardens (see picture below for one I made earlier this year – if you’re lucky, I might even be the one installing it for you!). I’ve written at length about the benefits of these before, but if you do want more details about how to get involved in local conservation efforts, get in touch with the WildChiswick team here.
Cllr Jack Emsley making a hedgehog hole
Dukes Meadows Trust
On Wednesday I joined one of my regular meetings with other trustees at the Dukes Meadows Trust for an update on the area. In addition to some good news on the Trust’s plans to improve Promenade Approach (more details shortly!), we also discussed plans to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Dukes Meadows Food Market. The market is a small community run enterprise that can be found just outside the Masonian Bowls Club every Sunday 10am – 2pm. The market directly contributes to funding improvements within the local community in Dukes Meadows, and is in my opinion one of our greatest community assets in Chiswick. Last weekend the market kicked off celebrations for it’s 25th year with a visit by Ark Farm, and further celebrations are planned across summer, culminating in a big birthday celebration on Sunday 1st September. More details to follow, but be sure to mark the date in your diaries!
Housing Issues
Since being elected in 2022, a large chunk of my case work and work holding the council to account has focussed on housing. Regular readers will remember the work I and other members of the Housing Scrutiny Panel did to shine a light on the council’s excessively high rate of empty council homes (now, thanks to our intervention, starting to slowly come down).
Maintenance issues are also a growing concern, with the team responsible for looking after council houses in the borough recently revealing that the backlog of housing repairs in Hounslow saw a 2000% (two-thousand, not a typo!) increase in the last financial year, with over 1,000 households waiting for maintenance work to be carried out. Just before writing this blog on Saturday, I visited a council tenant in Grove Park whose house has been left in the most appalling condition with damp and mould simply painted over. It’s a case I’ve been dealing with now for over three months, and could take even longer before it is fully resolved. How can it be right that we spend so much money on the council’s housing company, but still allow local residents to live in conditions that are so obviously bad for their health?
My colleague Councillor John Todd has, as usual, done a fantastic job in digging into the various council cabinet reports to uncover some of the statistics around the company responsible for housing repairs, and ChiswickW4.com readers will note that the council has recently had to earmark £100,000 for an external inquiry into that company’s finances. We await the findings of that report, but the combination of a growing financial black hole and hundreds of families left in housing limbo suggests things really need to change.
This year, I’ll be part of the main Overview and Scrutiny committee, which is tasked with oversight of exactly this sort of issue in the borough at a policy level. Despite our first meeting of the year being cancelled due to the pre-election period (again, not sure this was super necessary but I defer to better legal minds), we were able to have a short preliminary meeting on Thursday to discuss the year’s work programme. I note that Labour’s new councillor in Feltham North, who was potentially days away from being deselected by the Conservative Party before he jumped ship, was one of the only members of the committee absent from the meeting – I’ll leave readers to make up their own minds about Kuldeep’s motivations for defecting, but clearly it wasn’t to contribute to scrutinising the council on behalf of residents…
Bedford Park Festival
Finally, a quick plug for one of the best fortnights in the Chiswick calendar, the Bedford Park festival, which kicked off on Friday. Tickets for a few exciting events are still available to buy here – hopefully see some of you there!
Cllr Jack Emsley
07977 396017
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 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 Gabriella Giles gabriella.giles@hounslow.gov.uk 07966 270823
Cllr Peter Thompson peter.thompson@hounslow.gov.uk 07977 395810
Like Reading Articles Like This? Help Us Produce More This site remains committed to providing local community news and public interest journalism. Articles such as the one above are integral to what we do. We aim to feature as much as possible on local societies, charities based in the area, fundraising efforts by residents, community-based initiatives and even helping people find missing pets. We've always done that and won't be changing, in fact we'd like to do more. However, the readership that these stories generates is often below that needed to cover the cost of producing them. Our financial resources are limited and the local media environment is intensely competitive so there is a constraint on what we can do. We are therefore asking our readers to consider offering financial support to these efforts. Any money given will help support community and public interest news and the expansion of our coverage in this area. A suggested monthly payment is £8 but we would be grateful for any amount for instance if you think this site offers the equivalent value of a subscription to a daily printed newspaper you may wish to consider £20 per month. If neither of these amounts is suitable for you then contact info@neighbournet.com and we can set up an alternative. All payments are made through a secure web site. One-off donations are also appreciated. Choose The Amount You Wish To Contribute. If you do support us in this way we'd be interested to hear what kind of articles you would like to see more of on the site – send your suggestions to the editor. For businesses we offer the chance to be a corporate sponsor of community content on the site. For £30 plus VAT per month you will be the designated sponsor of at least one article a month with your logo appearing if supplied. If there is a specific community group or initiative you'd like to support we can make sure your sponsorship is featured on related content for a one off payment of £50 plus VAT. All payments are made through a secure web site. |