Housing Quality, Anti-social Behaviour , Public Loos and Weeds

Chiswick Gunnersbury councillor Joanna Biddolph reports back

Cllr Jo Biddolph

August 17, 2024

Housing targets or housing quality?

Everyone knows we need more housing but, for me, it’s not only about the number of front doors, it’s what is behind those front doors. Numerous applications have been made for high-rise blocks of shoe-box flats in Chiswick but even the affordable aren’t affordable by the generation living with parents but wanting their own homes.

In social housing, overcrowding is an unacceptable fact with families of six in two-bedroom flats, the sitting room counted as a bedroom, and a kitchen so small that the family has never sat round a table to eat together. Then there’s quality, with too many homes with single pane windows that don’t fit, faulty/old lighting, grotty communal stairs and corridors.

Even though London mayor Sadiq Khan has failed to meet his own targets, and might fail to meet his own newly-revised-downwards targets, playing a simple numbers game is not enough. There is a desperate need for family homes into which families cramped in two-bedroomed flats could move, leaving their flats for those in one-bedroomed flats to move into, and so on. Let’s not forget the complexities of working from home, with everyone needing more space for that and for good mental health. The debate should be about what people need to live in, not just simple numbers.

Hello [insert name]

Which leads me to housing associations and the financial fear faced by many shared ownership residents who find their service charges have rocketed well beyond unaffordable and with no transparency about what the charges are for and how they were calculated.

One resident, frustrated by months of asking for a breakdown of massive service charges, told me: “They bamboozle people with information that isn’t pertinent to their questions, that means nothing – kicking the can down the road. They have got too big for their boots and the person they need to care about is at the bottom of the pile, while they pat each other on the back. It’s impossible to get through to someone who has power – and some capacity for shame. They are treating people with contempt.”

He continued, “ They are not providing me with a service. Why would I pay someone to do that? Why should I pay them for managing when they are mismanaging? They are not abiding by their own charter – but I am expected to abide by their rules and pay their charges: £5,000 extra with no questions answered. I want my money back and an apology for how woefully they have treated me over the years”.

These comments came after he received a letter, apparently personal to him, starting with the words in the heading above – the very personal “Hello [Insert name]”.

This impossibility of getting through to someone with power, and a genuine concern to do better, was raised direct with housing associations in the overview and scrutiny committee two years ago and was one of the reasons why it was put back on the agenda a year ago. Still, the council is hoodwinked into believing housing associations when they say they will act. At the scrutiny committee meeting held in May this year, one housing association rep took the name and number of one of the residents who had been invited to speak to the committee saying she would contact him as a priority. Two problems. First: I had met that rep six years ago specifically to talk about that specific resident’s concerns, that resident having raised the same problems with the housing association long before that. The rep already had the name, number and details and hadn’t acted. Second: the rep has not contacted the resident since May and nor has anyone else from that housing association.

WLQP : Hounslow council apologises

There is no inhibition in some who dislike a councillor for attacking that councillor when they speak out on behalf of others. After West London Queer Project (WLQP) applied to use the Chiswick High Road car park for a street party later this month, some on increasingly toxic Twitter suggested that my supposed response was homophobic – and they did this without knowing my response or what had happened. In fact, I had been sent incomplete information by the council – a blank application form, and no information about who had applied, just a statement that it was for a street party. It was sent again, again without the essential information, and I reported this second failing. When a claim was made that a) I had objected and b) I had done so because there is a working fire station in the car park, several of my detractors went into their usual overdrive. I moved here 20 years after the fire station moved to Heathfield Gardens; have been an occasional customer of the bar/restaurants No 197 Chiswick Fire Station and All Bar One before that; I know these premises are not a working fire station. No-one has admitted making the nonsensical claim that I said there was a working fire station in the car park.

I am always concerned about parking because I know how much it is valued by traders and people coming to Chiswick to spend their money here, so I asked if there was another location for this unattributed street party. The council apologised, to the applicant, WLQP which I support as its organiser knows very well, and to me, saying:

"Standard procedure for street party applications includes engaging with all stakeholders, including the ward councillors. In this case that included Cllr Biddolph who sought further information as per standard practice and made no formal objection to it. We have apologised to WLQP and Cllr Biddolph for any inconvenience or confusion caused in relation to the progress of the application."

What a mess, stirred up by personal animosity.

On homophobia, given my record as a councillor and other comments I’ve made from time to time, I shouldn’t have to justify myself again but here goes. When residents told me early in 2022 that they had experienced continuing homophobia from a neighbour, a case which was joined by another resident who had raised it with the council four years earlier and got nowhere, I took up their cases with rigour. This led to the Conservative group asking the council to deal decisively with cases of homophobic abuse by creating a dedicated multi-departmental team, with a named officer overseeing, and a stated published process including expectations of what will happen, who will be involved, timelines that must be met, and good communications throughout. You can read the group’s full statement here.

I deplore prejudice of any kind including misogyny. As I have often said, in the council chamber and elsewhere, we are all people. Trolls – they aren’t all anonymous and some of them are well-known in Chiswick – will claim anything if their aim is to damage someone’s reputation.

If you or anyone you know is experiencing homophobia or other prejudices, please don’t remain silent.

Anti-social behaviour (ASB)

 The cases of homophobia mentioned above, and others, and of anti-social behaviour generally, led to me digging into the council’s policy for dealing with ASB. I wasn’t signposted to that policy but I was assured that it was robust. It can’t have been that robust as it wasn’t working. Not long after, a new council officer contacted me wanting to discuss his recommendations for dealing with ASB. His remit was narrow – ASB as it affects the council’s own housing tenants – but it was a start.

I made sure he had all the examples that had come across my desk. We met a couple of times and had several discussions; he said he would show me the draft policy, emphasising the need for it to include clear actions by specific postholders with timelines – gratifyingly rather like our recommendations. When the policy was published for cabinet approval last month I was disappointed not to have seen it first – and disappointed by it. The covering document refers to “our existing practice and procedures for handling such cases and issues”. There are no timelines. It is not the decisive policy that is needed to tackle what residents of Chiswick Gunnersbury ward have experienced. Had the officer left before the job was done, I wondered? I sent it to some residents who had experienced ASB asking for their comments, and back they came making thoughtful and authoritative suggestions based on first-hand experience. I have sent those comments to the cabinet members and the lead officer responsible, hoping the policy will be revised. It’s here – scroll down to agenda item 11 and appendix one.

It's only wee

It’s Gunnersbury Park festival time again with the usual arguments between those who think ‘it’s only a weekend, for goodness sake, get a life’ and those who experience the reality over several weekends, a local park with a lot of land blocked off for months, thousands of people walking past their homes dropping litter and drug paraphernalia, relentless impactful noise and thudding, and the usual inadequate supply of public loos. In sunshine on a festival afternoon last weekend, I walked past one man weeing into a gap between a resident’s garden fence and her garage and, from a distance and of course averting my gaze, asked him not to. “For goodness sake, it’s only wee” he shouted, I imagined also adding a silent ‘get a life’. Others reported defecation in their front gardens.

There are, of course, mixed experiences and mixed views. There is also some denial. In the case of one road, where residents were very badly disturbed during one gig, I walked down to experience it as they do. With the stage facing south-west, and our prevailing westerly wind blowing, the noise was not only directed at their front doors, it was also bouncing off buildings behind. Residents were experiencing it magnified, in stereo. No wonder their complaints were so strong.

We need more loos

Back to wee and the need for loos, residents and businesses have lobbied me over several years about the need for public loos. The loo in the library remains a disgrace (and is locked, so anyone in need has to ask for the key); that loo and those in the town hall are only available when those buildings are open. Not everyone can last as long as it takes to travel to the shops, buy what they need, get home again and no-one wants to be told no by cafes/restaurants who, rightly, don’t want a stream of people going in and out spoiling the atmosphere and creating more cleaning (some pubs don’t mind but requests on festival days can be relentless). I raised this with officers nearly two years ago after Age Concern told councillors about its survey, tackling social isolation, that showed that 81 per cent of older Londoners would be more likely to visit shops, cafes and businesses if  public loo provision were better. Not letting go, a couple of weeks ago I met (virtually) three officers whose desks this now falls onto. Despite everything I’ve raised before, it felt like starting from scratch, making points made long ago and providing answers I’d given before. It has now turned into a whole-borough review, kicking it into the long grass again.

Meanwhile, at Brentford’s open-air cinema, this is what has been provided for film-goers (and passers-by … of course I gave them a test run; they were spotlessly clean and upmarket).

Weeds

Here we go again. Many pavements and gutters along our roads are, as before, a forest of weeds. As one resident pointed out, if the council wants to remain proud about not using glyphosate to kill weeds, it must compensate by having a team large enough to dig them out by hand. Last year, t he council told me that this hard work job leads to burn out, staff leaving, then recruitment which takes time not least because the pool of candidates includes people who have burned out removing weeds in other boroughs and don’t want to do it again. Conservative group leader Cllr Peter Thompson argued exactly two years ago that there are other methods including the Foamstream hot water/biodegradable organic foam method. Shouldn’t the council sign a contract to get the work done more easily, in a continuous year-round programme?

Last week I asked for the weeding programme on the Hounslow Highways website to be updated and a new list was added on Friday, with some gaps; you can check whether your road is due to be weeded soon and the overall policy is here.

California dreaming

Passports no longer provide a travel history so I can’t remember the last time I crossed the pond, but I know I was in Mozambique for work in December 2013, then, as I was so close, unexpectedly dropped down briefly to see family in South Africa, and a few days later and just into 2014 flew to family and friends in Australia and New Zealand. That was hugely exceptional so an invitation this year, 10 years later, to visit family in America was irresistible. I was there during the non-assassination of Donald Trump, arriving home hours before Joe Biden dropped out of the race. It was fascinating comparing US political commentary programmes with ours and gratifying to be reminded of just how staunchly Democratic my US family and friends are. I was struck by the lack of toxicity in the debate, compared with here.

Apologies for the long blog … it’s been a long time coming.

Councillor Joanna Biddolph

Chiswick Gunnersbury ward

joanna.biddolph@hounslow.gov.uk

07976 703446

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY 2024/25

Chiswick Area Forum is expected to be on Tuesday 24 September at 7.30pm
The Hogarth Hall, Chiswick Town Hall, Heathfield Terrace, Turnham Green W4 4JN

The Next Scrutiny Panel is expected to be on Thursday 19 September at 7.00pm Room 610. 6 th Floor, Hounslow House 7 Bath Road TW3 3EB

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

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

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