Author Archives: hmgupdated

The council chose to rollout the Straight’s 7 litre kitchen caddy and kerbside caddy (food waste bin) to Harrow properties. Residents use their kitchen caddy to collect food waste in the kitchen and transfer collected waste into their outside kerbside caddy, collected every week. Cllr Henson, responsible for environment, said that everyone in the householdContinue reading “So they have arrived!”

Being neighbouring boroughs with similar population profile and inter community links, Brent and Harrow have opportunities to learn from each other, especially in the field of education. Therefore, an interest whether Harrow could learn from Brent once again, this time from the Brent’s education action plan (2014) based on the recommendations of the Brent EducationContinue reading “Tale of two boroughs!”

Interesting that the twenty six Tory opposition councillors are almost visibly invisible as far as the Harrow council work is concerned, while enjoying the councillor’s allowance. Occasionally Cllr Marilyn Ashton leads the way to come out of such a state of rigor mortis by noteworthy and planning specific letters in a local newspaper, showing herContinue reading “Why Cllr Ashton is not on the planning committee?”

Harrow council has made first appointment under its redone senior management structure. Tom McCourt, Hackney Council’s assistant director of public realm, has been appointed corporate director community. The directorate has responsibility for commissioning services, housing as well as environment, community and culture. Mr McCourt has progressed from a traffic engineer to head of traffic andContinue reading “Council’s new management structure shaping”

A motion before the next Council highlights how the government welfare cuts ‘will detrimentally affect Harrow’s residents’ (Harrow Council for Justice and Harrow Monitoring Group focussed on some of this months ago). Summary: Making 18 – 21 year olds exempt from housing benefit will further hit young people who are struggling to get on theContinue reading “A Council motion that could be argued well”

In responding to an opposition question today, David Cameron, who knows Harrow well, said, “We do need to see more affordable houses – much more needs to be done – encouraging the building industry to come up with innovative schemes”. This should be educational for Harrow East MP Bob Blackman who is opposing the plansContinue reading “Was Blackman at the PM’s question time?”

In February 2015, we asked the NHS England (NHSE), Harrow Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Care Quality Commission (CQC) to come clean and explain how effectively Harrow CCG is managing conflicts of interest and ensuring transparency. They failed to convince. The CCGs can choose to co-commission primary care services from GPs which is likely toContinue reading “Shaky confidence in Harrow CCG transparency!”

Jeremy Corbyn and Sadiq Khan success indicates the end of New Labour/ Blair era that systematically damaged the Labour and social justice ideology over the years! The popularity of Jeremy Corbyn campaign for Labour leadership, which troubled the New Labour gurus like Tony Blair and his followers like those in Harrow West, reached Harrow asContinue reading “End of New Labour era?”

A council report informs that the Black/African/Caribbean/Black British group has been consistently over represented in youth offending services over the years. For example, 32.4% in 2014/15 while making up only 12.9% of Harrow’s 10-17 population. Compared with this, the Asian youth offending population was 24.5% for the same period while making up 41.1% of theContinue reading “Black youth offenders over represented”

The leader of the opposition Tory group is seemingly trying to discredit the council’s restructuring of its senior management structure which is to make the services more efficient and effective. In an open letter to the leader of the council, Cllr Hall whinges about the shadow members of her group not being able to attendContinue reading “Choking on sour grapes!”