Labour's Not Listening (No. 1 in a series)

On Tuesday, the government announced how much money it would give to local councils in 2007/2008 to run their services.

Firstly, we'll give the government some credit: Westminster's grant will increase by 4.6% next year. That might at least partially offset the ever-increasing burden which Labour steathily places on local councils in an effort to avoid raising income tax.

Despite the increase, however, Westminster remains desperately short-changed by the Labour government. Over the next few days we'll highlight a number of areas where you - local council tax payers - are having to pay for Blair's incompetent and inefficient nanny state.

Lee

Wednesday's Weekly Water Column

Dear Thames Water,

On 1 November, your pipework in Maida Vale seemed to have a collective fit, roll over and refuse to work. The ensuing FIVE waterbursts meant no water for many residents, the fencing off of a number of roads for several days and, overall, one hell of a mess.

We've requested an explanation several times now. It would be really nice if you might be able to supply us with a proper one.

Looking forward to hearing from you (soon),

Alastair, Jan and Lee

PS Another reminder sent to Thames today. Fingers crossed they'll actually do what they say and get back to us properly this time.

Jan's Surgery on Saturday

Jan will be holding her surgery this Saturday, 2 December, between 10am and 11am in the Pavilion at Paddington Rec.

If you have any problems or issues we can help you with, please do come along.

Jan

Maida Vale: In the News

The BBC is reporting that the man convicted of killing Philip Lawrence will have to serve the remainder of his prison term in a closed prison.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6180968.stm

Alastair

Gastro No-Go

According to the papers today, the refit of the Warrington Hotel is scheduled to start in the new year. Oh, and we can't call it a gastropub.

Click here for more information.

Alastair

Another five years for 3* CityWest

A month after achieving the maximum 3* rating in an Audit Commission review, Westminster Council announced yesterday that CityWest Homes will continue to manage its housing stock for a further five years.

CityWest, which was formed almost five years ago and was one of the first arms-length management organisations in the country, manages 22,000 houses in our borough on behalf of the Council. This includes over 1,000 properties in Maida Vale.

By the end of the year, all CityWest properties will have been brought up to the government's Decent Homes standard, 3 years ahead of schedule.

Lee

(Photo of Thurso House courtesy of CityWest Homes)

Blame it on the weatherman

"Isolated showers and strong winds likely in the south-east tonight, with a chance of large gaping holes appearing in many roads by morning"

ddd

The last few weeks haven't been the greatest of triumphs for Thames Water in Maida Vale: local residents without water, four large holes in roads as a result of pipe bursts, a general refusal to sort out another burst in Dibdin House etc. So how have Thames explained this textbook example in public relations? Simple: it was the weather's fault.

Thames have decreed that the bursts were caused by a sudden cold spell three weeks ago. Funny that, as we thought that pipes were supposed to be able to cope with minor issues like, for example, temperature.

Far be it from us to be sceptical, but we think that's a pretty poor excuse. We also think it's pretty poor form that we had to ask to receive an explanation, rather than one being provided with one immediately.

Bottom line: not good enough. We've told this to Thames and they have agreed to come back with a better answer. We'll let you know.

Lee

Joanne Cash: our next MP

Last night local resident Joanne Cash was selected as the Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman for our constituency, Westminster North.

Joanne has lived in the Paddington area for many years and is dedicated to fighting on behalf of our community. She is very much looking forward to taking on Karen Buck and the discredited, failing government that she props up.

Lee

Working to reduce homelessness

Last week, Jan and I were privileged to attend a major fundraiser for one of Westminster's leading charities, The Passage, based in Victoria.

The Passage runs London's largest day centre for homeless people, along with an emergency night shelter and transition centre to help people come off the streets. Westminster Council is exceptionally proud to support The Passage and the tremendous work it is doing to addressing the root causes of homeless, as well as providing real, practical and crucial help for homeless people.

The fundraiser was an excellent opportunity to raise the profile of the fantastic work going on in this area, and to support the hardwork and dedication shown by Sister Ellen and The Passage.

To find out more about the work of The Passage, click here.

Jan and Lee

What would you like to talk about?

Preparations are already underway for the next Maida Vale Area Forum, which is due to be held on 27 March 2007.

The Council is currently asking local residents what they would like to talk about at the next meeting. If you have any ideas, please let us know before a week on Tuesday (28 November).

Jan

Help Us Recycle More

We're committed to increasing the amount of rubbish that is recycled around Maida Vale.

Often we find that residents don't have enough recycling boxes and bags to allow them to recycle more of their refuse. If you need either, please don't hesitate to get in touch (maidavale@maidavaleconservatives.com) and we'll make sure that the Council delivers you one.

Alastair

Maida Vale Area Forum - Tomorrow (Wednesday)

The Maida Vale Area Forum will take place tomorrow (Wednesday 15th) at The Beethoven Centre (next to 174k) on Third Avenue, W10, between 6.30 and 8.30pm.

Between 6.30 and 7pm an informal surgery will be held where Councillors and council officers will be available to speak to. A representative from Brent Council will also be available to discuss the Queen's Park Tower redevelopment.

From 7pm onwards, residents can participate in two interactive workshops:

• Phone Parking - paying by phone
• Thames Water - proposed works going forward
• Improvements to the Harrow Road and Prince of Wales junction
• St. Mary's Hospital merger proposals

Further information is available from the Westminster Council website (click here)

Lee

CityWest Homes Meeting

CityWest's North Area Board met last Thursday evening, bringing together tenants, residents, independent members and councillors to discuss current issues and monitor housing performance for all of CityWest's estates north of Bayswater.

At the beginning of the meeting we questioned a representative of the Housing Benefits team from the Council, who reported that the team had made up lost ground after difficulties last year and that the average time taken for claims to be processed continues to decrease. He was subject to a number of fairly rigorous questions about future plans for improvement and about the difficulties of processing complex cases.

We also discussed the current performance of CityWest, which continues to hold steady in most target areas. The Board highlighted a number of areas where it hoped additional work would be done to improve performance in the next three months.

Finally, the board also received a presentation from the lift department at CityWest. In recent months, CityWest have made real attempts to address the lift problems within Maida Vale and have partially upgraded machinery in Atholl, Braemar and Dundee. This should improve performance in the next quarter. The refurbishment of Falkirk House's lift continues to be a top priority for CityWest.

Lee

Alastair's Surgery This Tuesday

Alastair will be holding his surgery this Tuesday, 14 November, between 7pm and 8pm at the Maida Centre, Lanark Road.

If you have any problems or issues we can help you with, please do come along.

Alastair

Full Council Meeting

A full Council meeting was held last night at the Council House in Marylebone.

Jan, who was near the top of the list to ask a question, was able to ask about the recent problems with the Parking Suspensions service, which she described at times as "patchy and unacceptable". The Cabinet Member for Transport accepted the need to continuously monitor and improve.

Our colleague in Little Venice ward, Melvyn also questioned the Executive on the continuing inconvenience caused by Thames Water around Maida Vale, particularly their sloppy attitude to parking suspensions. The Cabinet Member for Street Environment indicated that improvements should now be visible following the Statutory Improvement Notice which the Council served on them earlier in the year. He will continue to raise the issue in his regular meetings with Thames.

Jan also led a debate on the new 'Go-Green' board set up by Westminster Council to reduce the Council's impact on the environment.

Lee

InTouch with Maida Vale - Winter 2006

We are currently distributing our latest InTouch newsletter around Maida Vale highlighting the resurfacing of Elgin Avenue, the redevelopment of the Rec, Westminster's green agenda and our victory several months ago (how time flies!)

You can access a pdf copy here.

Lee

Lobbying for Randolph, Elgin and Kilburn Park Road

Last week we took the Director of Transport on a ward visit around Maida Vale to discuss the continue problems with parking and road surfaces.

The meeting was arranged for the evening so we could, first hand, present the continuing double parking problem on Randolph Avenue. We have been lobbying strongly to introduce some kind of echelon parking on Randolph for a number of years now, and undertook a wide ranging consultation with local residents earlier in the year. The results of this consultation showed overwhelming support to reduce the problem of double parking in the street. The Director has promised to continue to work towards a solution.

We also brought up the need for resurfacing the southern part of Elgin Avenue and Kilburn Park Road. The surface of Elgin has been independently assessed and the part between Morshead Road and Shirland Road is not considered to require resurfacing currently. We don't agree and we'll continue to lobby hard on this.

Kilburn Park Road remains less straightforward, given the fact that Brent is responsible for half of the street (and, unfortunately the part with most of the potholes). The Transportation Department continues to work with Brent towards a solution. We, as local Councillors, have also made contact with the Councillors representing the other side of the street and will be holding a meeting with them shortly to see if we can move things forward.

Lee

(Some of) the leaks are plugged ...

Still a lot of disruption around the ward as a result of the four burst water mains last Thursday. Walking around each of the leaks on Saturday morning, Thames seemed to have made some progress in working towards re-opening some of the roads:

• near the shops in Elgin Avenue, the leak had been fixed and new tarmac had already been laid (see picture above)
• shockingly, workmen actually turned up and started work on the Elgin Avenue-Biddulph Road junction (on a Saturday!)

We'll keep you posted as the roads come back online.

Lee

Complain to Thames Water

If you would like to let Thames Water know what you think about yesterday's leak fiasco, you can e-mail here:

customer.feedback@thameswater.co.uk

Alternatively, you can also write:

Thames Water Utilities Ltd
PO Box 436
Swindon, SN38 1TU

Lee

Water, water everywhere

Another triumph for Thames Water this morning, as four water mains burst simultaneously around Maida Vale. This has meant that residents around the ward either are suffering from low pressure or don't have any water at all.

The four bursts are:

• on Elgin, next to the tube station
• on the Elgin Avenue-Biddulph Road junction
• on the Elgin Avenue-Randolph Avenue junction
• and just over the border in Brent (Malvern Road)

Jan has spent most of the morning out in the ward speaking to residents about the bursts, particularly in Dibdin House where Thames have mumbled platitudes about private property as an excuse for not attending. Not good enough.

Westminster Council has people on site currently to ensure that Thames are doing all they can to sort out the problem. Road diversions are in place where needed. Thames has said that it will supply bottled water to residents if the outages continue.

We will be requesting a full explanation from Thames once everything has been repaired.

Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you need us on this: 07757 174647.

Lee

Maida Vale Residents Panel

The Maida Vale Residents Panel was held on Monday night at the Maida Centre, allowing residents from CityWest villages to get involved with management of their estates.

It was great to see residents from all of the villages - Torridon, Carlton Vale, Tollgate and the Scottish Towers - and we had a good discussion about a number of topics.

On Tollgate Gardens, there remains concern about the drug taking in the bin areas of Godwin House. The Safer Neighbourhoods Team have been made aware and have moved several people on in recent weeks. Further work to discourage this is in the pipeline. There is some also concern regarding drug taking on 40 Tree Green, next to Thurso House and opposite Torridon. The police team are also aware and are making regular patrols.

In the Scottish Towers, there were reports of a number of items thrown out of windows. This is a bit worrying and potentially dangerous given the items being thrown (a hoover, for example). The Estate Office have threatened to start finger-printing any items that descend from the sky - and thankfully the silliness seems to have stopped.

We also discussed satellite dishes and subletting, and went through the Maida Vale Compact - where residents have the opportunity to rate whether or not the Estate Office is delivering on its promises. Residents gave a strong thumbs up for the work done by Laura and her team.

Maida Vale Residents Panels are held quarterly. You can find out more information from the Estate Office (7641 4853).

Lee

(Photograph of the Scottish Towers courtesy of CityWest Homes)