Dukes Meadows, Jewish Living Exhibition, Scrutiny and the Constitution
Chiswick Homefields councillor Jack Emsley reports back
Cllr Jack Emsley
June 22, 2024
They say that my ChiswickW4 blogs are a lot like buses – you wait ages (8 weeks) for one, and then two come along at the same time (a fortnight apart). I’m not sure if that’s strictly true anymore given all of Sadiq Khan’s bus cuts, but the phrase is an apt one because, by a quirk of scheduling, it’s my turn again to write about my week as a Chiswick Councillor. Less than two weeks since my last one. I’ll let you decide whether readers are lucky or unlucky…
Luckily for the content of this blog, I rarely have a quiet week as a councillor in Chiswick Homefields. So, once again, here’s what I’ve been up to over the past seven or so days.
Dukes Meadows
I know, I know… I wrote about Dukes Meadows in my last blog! Well I was down at The Pavilion again on Monday with Kathleen Healy, who does an incredible job running the Trust, to meet with an officer from the council about a new grant for £400,000 to improve the local area.
As the local councillor for the area, but also as a trustee and a regular user of the food market there, I’m so excited about some of the upcoming projects we discussed, from some much needed improvements on promenade approach to general TLC for the riverside path. It’s set to be yet another brilliant evolution of the area following the recent restoration of the Dukes Meadows gates, and I can’t wait to see the final results!
Jewish Living Experience
After the meeting at Dukes Meadows I jumped on the E3 and headed over to the Town Hall for the opening of the Jewish Living Experience exhibition. As my colleague Cllr Peter Thompson wrote last week, The Jewish Living Experience exhibition has been run by the Board of Deputies for 40 years, and at the opening event we were taken around 15 banners explaining different parts of Jewish life and exhibiting everything from a shofar horn to traditional Jewish food.
The exhibition was rearranged following Hounslow Council’s decision to cancel (later changed to postpone) the event last year due to the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Far from cancelling it, this event is crucial to improve understanding of Jewish culture against a backdrop of one of the most horrifying rises in antisemitism our city has ever seen. I’m so pleased that this event has finally been able to go ahead, running for the next two weeks and welcoming classes of schoolchildren and groups of adults at specific times to view the exhibition and talk to volunteers from the Board of Deputies.
Scrutinising the Council
On Tuesday evening, those of us who are members of the council’s Overview and Scrutiny committee were treated to a mandatory two and a half hour training and planning session at Hounslow House. We learned about the laws surrounding local government scrutiny, the constitutional need for scrutiny and some best practice examples of how scrutiny works. We were also talked through high-profile failures of scrutiny, with the accompanying slide containing an unfortunately placed Hounslow Council logo in the bottom right – I’ll leave readers to work out if this was a Freudian Slip or just unfortunate slide design…
The planning session which immediately followed helped the committee to set its work programme for the coming municipal year. I’m currently the only Conservative councillor currently on the new committee for this year, but am looking forward to working cross party with Labour councillors to properly scrutinise decisions made by Hounslow Council. The work programme is absolutely packed, with only five official meetings between now and the publication of our annual scrutiny report. Details of each meeting are still being ironed out but will be available on the council website shortly, along with the relevant papers and policy document we’ll be looking at before each meeting.
Updating Hounslow’s Constitution
I’m also part of Hounslow’s constitutional working group, a small but perfectly formed group of councillors from both parties working together to update Hounslow Council’s constitution. The first tranche of changes to the constitution were approved by borough council last month; these were fairly straightforward and ensured that the council was compliant with updated to national legislation.
I attended one of our regular meetings on Wednesday, where we discussed a number of additional sections where we might make changes, either through necessity due to national legislation or to follow best practice of other local authorities. Ultimately, keeping the constitution up to date ensures the council is both compliant, but also that it can be held properly accountable for decision making across the borough. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed once again being able to work cross-party to improve the way our local government works, and look forward to the proposals being published and sharing further updates.
So that’s it – another full week as your councillor in Chiswick Homefields!
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
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