A Cold But Busy Start to 2025
Chiswick Homefields councillor Jack Emsley reports back
Cllr Jack Emsley
January 11, 2025
Is it still early enough in January to say Happy New Year? We’re less than a fortnight into 2025, but it feels as though there’s been a huge amount going on locally in that time - never let it be said that Chiswick’s Conservative Councillors aren’t being kept busy! From councillor surgeries to local finances and police ward meetings, here’s what I’ve been up to over the past week…
A Frosty Start to the Year
Saturday morning was an early and very cold start for me as I headed over to Chiswick Library for our weekly councillor surgery. Chiswick is the only area in the borough where your councillors (well, the 8 Conservative councillors) hold a weekly in-person surgery. Whilst it’s fair to say the bulk of our casework still comes from emails and phone calls, it’s so important that the local community has an opportunity to speak to local representatives face to face, for whatever reason.
Chiswick Library is a fantastic community asset, not just as a base for councilor surgeries or the more traditional roles of a library, but also, over the winter months, as a designated “warm space”. These spaces are buildings which are open to the public and offer a heated place to stay during the day in order to keep warm. This is particularly important in the face of rising energy bills and the inexplicable decision by the government to withdraw the universal Winter Fuel Allowance.
Age UK estimated last year that 2.5 million of the pensioners who had the Winter Fuel Allowance taken away were in need of it to pay their bills, including those on small occupational pensions, those with unavoidably high energy bills due to a disability or illness, and the 1 million pensioners who are eligible for pension credit but don’t receive it.
Our local MP has stayed disappointingly quiet on this issue, so it fell to Chiswick’s Conservative councillors to force the council to act last year - so far the jury is out on just how much the council was able to keep the promises made on working with community groups to support vulnerable elderly residents through the colder months. In the meantime, warm spaces like Chiswick Library are an invaluable asset whilst the weather remains so cold.
Hounslow’s Financial Woes Continue
On Tuesday I was up at Hounslow House for an opposition group meeting on the council’s budget. I’ve written at length in previous blogs about the council’s £30 million overspend and the proposals for drastic cuts to services, hiking council tax and raiding local financial reserves (not exactly a trio of measures that scream sound financial management).
There are a number of national issues facing the council’s finances (the government’s crippling National Insurance hike which won’t be fully offset, plus the emerging UK debt crisis keeping borrowing costs high), but also a big council-owned financial white elephant in the shape of the Lampton Group. For those who don’t know, Lampton is the company, wholly owned by Hounslow Council, which delivers services in the borough ranging from housing maintenance to recycling and leisure facilities management.
For those who keenly follow the state of the borough’s services, you’ll know that the Lampton Group has been providing a very poor service in key areas over the last few years. The housing maintenance backlog was up by 2000% in 2023, whilst recycling and waste management remains poor compared to other boroughs. This year, the council is being forced to bailout the Lampton Group to the tune of £11 million, which coincidentally is nearly exactly the amount of money they propose to cut from council services - streetlights dimmed, council tax through the roof and street maintenance slashed all to bailout a company that doesn’t even deliver a baseline service for our area? That surely can’t be right.
Councillor John Todd has rightly pointed out that the Lampton Group should be held accountable by the council administration. The leader, deputy leader and head of housing are all members of the Lampton Shareholder Committee, a group that is tasked with ensuring Lampton delivers good value to our borough. Councillor Todd couldn’t quite believe a company facing effective scrutiny could still need an £11 million bailout, so did some digging - it turns out the shareholder committee has met just once, for less than an hour, in the current financial year. Even Balraj Sarai, the Labour Councillor in Brentford literally about to forfeit his seat for continuous non-attendance, has attended more meetings since the start of the financial year than that…
This council has been asleep at the wheel when it comes to our local finances, and now we’re all about to be forced to pay the price in higher council tax and worse services.
Local Policing
On Thursday I attended our regular police ward panel for Chiswick Homefields, which brings together our local police team and residents from across the ward to discuss issues. We’re lucky in Homefields to have the brilliant PC Allo, PC Yonta, and PCSO Sally Bell looking after our patch, who were all in attendance at the meeting.
I was particularly pleased to hear that the team has been working with the council to tackle the prolific shoplifting at the Co-Op in Grove Park. An arrest has been made and, they hope, incidences of shoplifting at that site should now see a dramatic drop. The other good news story, again on shoplifting, was the recent discovery of £6,000 worth of stolen goods following a raid on a house in Chiswick. The raid was part of an ongoing effort to tackle shoplifting and other retail crime in our area.
The bad news, though, is that the local police team will no longer have a patrol car after a decision by the Met to cut vehicle fleets by 25%. I was astounded to learn that the car won’t be repurposed elsewhere in the force, and will instead be scrapped along with hundreds of other police vehicles. With the ongoing need for a visible deterrence, and the increasing importance of police mobility, is this really the right move? I’m not convinced.
Anyway, we’re approaching the thousand word mark so I’d better leave it there! Another busy start to the year for Chiswick’s Conservative Councillors, and things are only getting busier as we head into the next few weeks of debate over the local budget.
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 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
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. |