In a quiet Harrow, public protests and demonstrations have been rare.
But the increasing gap between what residents feel and what their elected or potentially elected representative do regarding the matters like what has been happening in Israel and Palestine, has led to public protests and social media expressions.
November 4 – protestors who feel for a ceasefire outside the office of Labour MP for Harrow West, Gareth Thomas.

November 18: protestors for ceasefire outside the office of Harrow East MP Bob Blackman.

December 6: protest outside the parliamentary candidate Primesh Patel’s fundraising activity.

A judicial review, to overturn the acquittal of two protesters who called Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith “Tory scum” outside the Conservative party conference in 2021, has been unsuccessful.
The high court ruled that the protesters were “reasonable” as the use of Tory scum was to highlight the policies of the MP and was relevant to the “reasonableness of the conduct” in relation to the rights of freedom of expression and assembly. The director of public prosecutions asked for the review.
Sometime before, another judicial review failed, this time in a bid to resist the expansion of the Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) in London.
Tory run five London councils, including Harrow, launched a judicial review in February against Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s plans to extend the ULEZ to outer London boroughs.
The high court ruled in July that the mayor’s plan was “within his powers”. The judicial review failed.
The court action cost taxpayers £150,000 in each of five local authorities.
Harrow council administration never apologised to residents for wasting their £150,000.
Many big cities have ULEZ, including Birmingham and Glasgow, but of course they had no political reason for a revolt against such an air clear up initiative.
The Tory revolt against the ULEZ, London Mayor initiative, was apparently instigated by the Harrow councillor Susan Hall, who at the time led the GLA Conservatives group and is in the habit of calling Mayor Khan “a disgrace”.
Later, she stepped down from the post and is now the Tory candidate for the London Mayor election next year, heavily exploiting the ULEZ for political gain.

Given the increased stabbings in Harrow and the probing question ‘why’, Harrow council Harrow Community Safety Strategy (2023 – 2026) becomes of specific interest.
The strategy informs that from December 2021 to December 2022, the number of notifiable offences in Harrow increased by 2.6% including knife crime increased by 24.1%  (cases reported in 2023 might show a further increase).
Violence against the person is greater within the Greenhill ward, which includes the town centre and transport hubs, with a rate of 51 incidents per 1,000 residents in this ward, compared with the borough average of 21 incidents per 1,000 for the same period.
Parts of the Greenhill ward are now in Marlborough ward.
The strategy acknowledges the importance of addressing the issue of violence in the borough, including the knife crime, which encompasses all criminal offences committed using a knife or a bladed article as a weapon and can often to be linked with other issues such as drugs, gang involvement, organised crime and exploitation.
Intent to supply drugs has risen by over a third in 2022 in Harrow.
To address drugs and knife crime situations in the borough, the strategy does not seem to be drawing on the experiences of inadequacies in the previous strategies like in Wealdstone or the Harrow Substance Misuse Strategy 2015-2020 and Harrow Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2020‐2025.
Moreover, the council priorities – ‘tackling and reducing offences’ and ‘harm caused by drugs or reducing the number of violent incidents in the borough’ – have no outright focus on engaging with the diverse local communities to tackle the drug dealing and drug taking problems, despite the report highlights the Harrow Borough Context as ‘64% of our population come from a Black, Asian and Multi-ethnic background’.
No single service nor intervention can address these problems alone. Preventing and reducing the harm caused by drugs requires a whole system approach that focuses on addressing the ’cause and effect’, the drugs pushing and root causes of substance misuse, rather than treating the effects in isolation.

Good to see that the Harrow council is working on a Climate And Nature Strategy, though somewhat behind many other councils, to comply with the government’s 2030 Strategic Framework that sets out how the UK will deliver internationally on its climate and nature goals in this critical decade.
The strategy provides a framework of key action areas which could help the council and the communities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
The GLA reported that Harrow’s total carbon emissions in 2015, were around 770 kt CO2e, which represented 2.4% of London’s total emissions. For Harrow to help deliver London’s zero carbon ambitions, it will need to reduce carbon emissions by over 30% from the 2015 level by 2025 and nearly 90% reduction by 2050.
Harrow has a Climate Change Strategy 2019-2024, but its implementation presents a mixed picture.
In May 2020, ‘The Student View’ charity Freedom of Information request revealed that “the issue of budget and additional resources for delivering the council’s pledge to be carbon-neutral by 2030 hasn’t yet been discussed in detail through the Council’s Climate Change steering group meetings with the Cabinet members.”
There have been Environmental Services staffing cuts:  the service is responsible for a multitude of areas, including our parks, open spaces and nature reserves, street trees, allotments, verge maintenance, street cleaning, fly tipping and general waste management.
The fly tipping remains a challenge and the verges in some parts of the borough are poorly maintained.
Harrow was one of the four Conservative held London councils that had gone for but lost a judicial review challenging the London mayor’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) expansion programme, including Harrow, to clear up London’s air.
In view of such a lack of seriousness in addressing the climate change, the council should take on board the key message emerging from the residents survey, which like many other boroughs is likely to be ‘Go Faster, Go Further’.
We have suggested the following:
Publicise climate emergency and promote a greater awareness of the truth of climate change amongst the local population, aiming for a net-zero by 2050.
To ensure that future developments in the borough prioritise environmental sustainability, urgently upgrade the council’s Sustainable Building Design Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) 2009 to sharply focus on the council’s climate and nature action policies and practices in deciding the planning applications.
Facilitate more Solar PV Schemes, actively upgrade street lighting to LEDs and provide electric vehicle charge points in the council car parks.
Develop carbon emission data monitoring processes – use the data to raise public awareness and inform planning for more and better climate and nature action.
Ensure that carbon reduction ambitions that underpin the sustainable development principle are integrated within procurement practice as appropriate.

Gareth Thomas MP has welcomed the announcement that Northwick Park Hospital will get a new ward providing 23 new beds as a result of a government investment of £22.6 million.
“I am delighted to hear that our campaign for more investment at Northwick Park Hospital has had a success! This new 32 bed ward will make a difference, but more investment is still essential if we’re to get our local healthcare services back to where they should be” he said.
Residents and NHS worker had signed a petition and supported the Labour campaign to improve the hospital capacity.
Also, during an intervention in the Commons, he said: “One of the ways to improve retention and recruitment of NHS staff at Northwick Park Hospital, which serves my constituency, would be to invest in doubling the number of Intensive Care beds there”.
He then asked the Health Secretary Steve Barclay, who had visited the hospital, whether he discussed the issue with Northwick Park’s chief executive and when he would announce funding for a new 60-bed unit.
According to data from London Northwest Healthcare Trust and Mr Thomas, the intensive therapy unit (ITU) had regularly averaged as high as 99 per cent of its bed occupancy.
The A&E department in Harrow is one of London’s busiest, and last winter was regularly experiencing a near total take-up of available beds.
Northwick Park hospital serves an ethnically diverse population, mainly concentrated in the London Boroughs of Brent and Harrow.
The Care Quality Commission inspection in May 2022 found that the hospital Requires Improvement. That is, ‘the service isn’t performing as well as it should, and we have told the service how it must improve’.

The high court has dismissed a legal challenge by five Tory-led councils against the expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ).
Out of 32 London boroughs, Harrow was one of the four Conservative held London councils – Bexley, Bromley, Harrow and Hillingdon – that along with Surrey County Council had gone for a judicial review challenging the London mayor’s Ultra Low Emission Zone expansion programme.
To help clear up London’s air, the ULEZ is expanding from 29 August 2023 across all London boroughs, including Harrow.
Most petrol vehicles under 16 years old or diesel vehicles under 6 years old meet the emissions standards, and those which do not, have to pay a daily charge £12.50 if driven inside the zone.
The high court challenge, paid by the taxpayers’ money, was apparently instigated by the Harrow Councillor Susan Hall who at the time led the GLA Conservatives group and is in the habit of calling Mayor Khan “a disgrace”.
Later, she stepped down from the post to become the Tory candidate for the London Mayor election next year.
The honourable thing the Tory councillors in the Tory-led London boroughs and their MPs could do is to apologise to the residents for wasting the ratepayer’s money for political gain!
Cllr Hall is known for creating chaos for political gains.
Under Cllr Hall portfolio for environment, residents rejected the unwise change in the frequency of collecting the Brown and Waste Bins by the new Harrow Conservative administration in 2006, to the point that a Conservative seat in the Harrow Weald ward was badly lost in the August 2006 by-election that was held due to the death of the Tory councillor.
During her opposition leadership that started in 2010, Tories lost the councils in 2010 and 2014 – five sitting Tory councillors were defeated – two Tory councillors defected and 2 by-elections were lost in 2013.
The Conservatives lost the Harrow council twice, apparently because of the accumulated backlash of the waste collection arrangements and heavy-handed implementation of the CPZ (controlled parking zone), both being under Cllr Hall portfolio.
Regarding the Cllr Hall mention ‘I became the Leader of the Council in Harrow’, she was not elected by the residents. Many say that her very short-lived administration (late 2013 to May 2014 when Tory group lost the council) was a fluke.
[In mid-2013, the breakaway Independent Labour Group, encouraged and supported by the Tory group, snatched the council administration from Labour because of what was described as the personal grudge within the Labour group.
A few months later, Cllr Hall grabbed the council administration with the support of the well-groomed Independent Labour Group who voted in the Tory group through a highly controversial process which created the political mess in Harrow (i.e. a hung council where both the Labour and Tory groups had 25 councillors each, and Tory minority administration was put in place because of the 8 ILG councillors)]

Labour leader Starmer on Sunday confirmed he would retain the two-child limit, imposed by the Tories in 2013, despite growing calls from poverty campaigners for the cap to be abandoned.
The limit bars parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017.
The policy was introduced in an attempt to cut the welfare bill as well as to ‘encourage’ parents to work or to get better paid jobs. Yet, Department for Work and Pensions figures for 2022 show that the majority of families affected by the two-child limit for benefits are in work.
Affected low-income families are left at least £3,000 out of pocket. Larger families, and minority ethnic households, are disproportionately affected.
In 2022 some 359,000 families were affected by the 2-child policy. In Harrow, it is a significant problem, as confirmed by Department for Work and Pensions statistics which show Harrow in the top five of London boroughs most affected.
Children are badly hit as 36% of children in the borough lived in households with an income of less than 60% of the UK median after housing costs have been subtracted in 2020/21, and approximately, 6,100 children aged 0-5 years live in the 30% most deprived areas in Harrow.
“What this means is that lots of children in Harrow are going hungry. That their parents are stressed. That both parents and children are more likely to become unwell” points out concerned Pamela Fitzpatrick (photo), a previous socialist Harrow councillor and parliamentary candidate.
“We have three MPs representing the people in Harrow – two Tories, one Labour. All appear to be committed to ensuring the 2-child cap continues. It is perhaps hard for MPs to empathise with the level of poverty in their constituents as they have very large salaries, good pensions, many have additional income from rental properties and of course they have subsidised dining in Parliament” said Ms Fitzpatrick.
“We are constantly told there is no money. This of course is ridiculous. We remain one of the wealthiest economies in the world. Governments have vast sums to spend. The question is what they choose to spend the money on” she asks.

Violent crime makes up 25.8% of all crimes reported in Harrow, and increased when compared year-over-year in the period of May 2022 – April 2023 (Plumplot).
The most common crimes in Harrow are violence and sexual offences, with 5,149 offences during 2022, 5% higher than 2021’s figure of 4,886 offences and a difference of 1.05 from 2021’s crime rate of 19 (CrimeRate).
Greenhill South is the most dangerous neighbourhood in Harrow, followed by Greenhill North in second place (CrimeRate).
What the Harrow Times has reported in the past six months also suggests that the hotspot for the violence and sexual offences like Wealdstone has moved on to the areas surrounding the Harrow Town Centre.
This June, an aggravated burglary on Kenton Road left a 46-year-old man with stab injuries.
A few days back, the police were called to St Anns Road when a fight involving a group of males was reported – two males were arrested after the town centre brawl left one person with facial and head injuries.
A few months earlier, a man was rushed to hospital after a stabbing at the back of St George’s shopping centre in Greenhill Way.
In another incident that month, in nearby North Harrow, a man, aged in his late 50s, was murdered in a fight outside a residential address.
Last November, two teenagers were arrested following a triple stabbing close to Harrow-on-the-Hill station and bus station.
The Harrow Town Centre is in the Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) zone that is thinly implemented.
Odd that all this is happening in the council that is supposed to focus on ‘putting residents first; a clean and safe borough’!
Also, the council administration when in opposition was quite concerned about the crime rate in Harrow and criticised the then administration for being “dismissive” and not doing enough to tackle the crime.

In a regulatory notice published on 20 April 2023, the Regulator of Social Housing concluded that the London Borough of Harrow has breached the Home Standard and, as a result, there was the potential for serious detriment to tenants.
Mushroom growth of ‘tall buildings’ in the central Harrow were supposed to address but have failed to ease the housing crisis as even the ‘affordable’ housing is unaffordable.
Feed up with the reckless planning decisions, Harrow residents say enough is enough, as confirmed by the actions like hundreds have signed a petition in an attempt to stop ten new tower blocks in Harrow dubbed ‘Tesco towers’.
London housing association Notting Hill Genesis is all set to submit a planning application to build more than 500 homes and a new Tesco store at the site of Tesco, Station Road in Harrow. The newly developed tall building Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) could help the planning application since it allows tall buildings in the vicinity of the tall buildings (negative implications for areas like central Harrow but positive for Hatch End, Pinner or Stanmore).
Director of Harrow Law Centre, a former Harrow councillor and chair of the Harrow planning committee, Pamela Fitzpatrick, called housing “one of the biggest problems” in the borough and suggested, whilst there’s enough housing, it’s “largely unaffordable”.
Ms Fitzpatrick added: “Housing associations no longer do what they were set up to do – provide low-cost, secure rented properties – so many people can’t even afford to live in housing association homes. The proposed Tesco site development appears to simply add to the problems and will do little to alleviate the housing crisis.”
Besides, although such a development along with other developments in the area pose big challenge for local infrastructure, no apparent forward plan to cope with the pressures of these developments.
Feet away from the Tesco is Safari cinema redevelopment: apartments rising up to 11 storeys.
Harrow Council has closed the Civic Centre, Station Road Harrow, dispersing its services to various locations – the site has released the land for creation of a new community of 1,000 or more homes.
Harrow Council is looking at developing the existing council car park at the end of Greenhill Way near the junction with Station Road with the potential to have a mini town hall, leisure, residential and commercial uses.

Michael Lockwood, 64, is accused of six counts of indecent assault and three counts of rape against a girl under 16.
The offences allegedly took place between October 1985 and March 1986, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
Lockwood, appointed by a Tory administration in 2007, was Harrow council chief executive until the end of 2013, when the position was eliminated by a short-term Tory administration under Cllr Hall, and again from 2015 after it was reinstituted by the Labour administration. But the relationships between Hall and Lockwood remained tense.
After the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, he led recovery work and liaised with survivors and victims’ families.
He left the Harrow council when he was appointed director general of the newly formed Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) in 2018. Lockwood also chaired the IOPC Board, the majority of which is made up of Non-Executive Directors.
Under his watch, the IOPC handled the most serious complaints against police in England and Wales.
He left the IOPC last December after it emerged he was being investigated over a ‘historical allegation’.
More on Lockwood: https://harrowmonitoringgroup.uk/2022/12/04/harrow-council-ex-chief-in-national-headlines/