Good that Harrow Leisure Centre’s main pool, learner pool, sauna and steam facilities reopened to the public on Monday (16 September) after a six-month closure for urgent safety ceiling repairs.
The re-opening has “absolutely delighted” councillor Janet Mote, portfolio holder for community and culture.
The pool facilities underwent a routine inspection in March, where it was found that the ceiling fixings had been severely corroded, constituting a risk to the public.
But then, “this should have been picked up earlier”, points out the Labour opposition group on the council.
They also call on Harrow Council to “undertake an urgent review of their most profitable properties, as it was revealed at this month’s Cabinet meeting that the Council have been made to pay the private leisure operator of Harrow Leisure Centre £300,000 for loss of earnings following the temporary closure of the pool”.
The leader of the council, Cllr Paul Osborn was honest to admit that “a lot of our leisure facilities are coming to the end of their life, the leisure centre is now a very old building that is towards the end of its life – and there is no money set aside to fund the replacement of a leisure centre”.
After the cabinet meeting, the Leader of the Labour Group, Cllr David Perry, said: “Local Conservative Councillors should be embarrassed by the revelation that £300,000 of taxpayers’ money has been paid out to a private leisure operator for loss of income due to the Council failing in its duty to keep Harrow Leisure Centre operational”.
“Many residents use and enjoy the Leisure Centre, and it is extremely profitable for the Council; is it so much to ask that they ensure the proper maintenance of facilities?”
“It is totally unacceptable that local taxpayers should pick up the £300k bill for the oversights of the Conservative Councillors running the Council” he added.
Nice for the Harrow council to have a priority to ‘put residents first’ but implicit within should be the care and respect for the residents’ money.

The Harrow cabinet meeting on 17 September 2024 approved the Harrow Youth Justice Plan 2024 -2027 without any expressed reservations! But then this is a complex area, as the opposition leader, who could ask few questions, pointed out.
The Annual Plan is a government requirement to establish suitable Youth Justice Service and partnership arrangements in a local authority area.
Descriptive and less evaluative plan includes the local youth profile, their different needs, crime profile, relevant statistical information and what has been happening to tackle the challenges so identified.
The plan also has a strategic objective to ‘address’ the over representation of young Black men within the criminal justice system (not really to address but tackle ‘disproportionality’ as they can’t address why over-representation).
Over 60% of Harrow residents are from Black, Asian, and Multi-Ethnic backgrounds.
The report informs that the management team (to implement the plan) has been reduced, as well as the number of practitioners. Also, that in the wider context of the re-organisation the Youth Justice Service is a part of the Children’s Early Help Service, so integrated with the universal and targeted Youth Offer. However, Early help no longer sits under the same umbrella of one Assistant Director (as was previously the case) which may bring challenges.
No doubt, the multi-agency approach to implement the plan, involving the council departments, pockets of initiatives through the pocket of funding and outside ‘partners’ like Police, Health, Probation, Education and Community Safety with different institutional ethos, ‘cultural competence and understanding of structural and entrenched forms of endemic racist systemic arrangements’, is a big challenge.
The plan could have shown learning from the weaknesses in the multi-agency approach in Harrow: youth offending service, a part of the Harrow Youth Justice Service, inspected in December 2021 scored 17/36 with overall rating ‘requires improvement’ (i.e. not good) where the ‘partnerships and services’ also required improvement.
Harrow Strategic Safeguarding Partnership’s Joint targeted area inspection of Harrow on 24 May 2023 found: The Harrow Strategic Safeguarding Partnership does not have effective oversight or scrutiny of the multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH), or early help offer in Harrow. Children and their families benefit from a wide range of early help services that support them to improve their lived experiences. However, this is uncoordinated without a lead professional or multi-agency focus and often provided through a single-agency approach at the exclusion of partners. This means children and their families need to tell their stories over and again to different agencies, and that the support the family receive is not always tailored to their specific needs.
What flows from all this is that the multi-agency approach needs robust central coordination to oversee the organisational arrangements as well as to monitoring the effectiveness of the youth-specific services provided across the board. Given such a demand and other circumstances like the youth justice team operating from a number of sites, the staff reduction is most unhelpful.
Another challenge is that the Youth Justice interventions are to deal with the effects rather than to address the cause, resulting in re-emerging effects. For example, the lack of any scope to question the socio-economic policies such as the benefit capping that have differential impact on the quality of life of different groups of youth, give rise to a concerning profile where out of 63,400 aged 0 to 19, approximately 6,500 children, 12.3% live in “deprived” households focused on Wealdstone, Marlborough, Roxbourne: data from the report.
Similarly, the youth justice service can have an ongoing action plan to tackle ‘disproportionality’ but has no scope to address why disproportionality.
While the Children vulnerabilities are looked upon, the plan gives no sense to address the possibility of the drugs related exploitation leading to violent crimes.
[According to the data in the plan, about thirty percentage of 1,598 Serious Violence offences recorded in Harrow in the twelve months up to September 2023, involved a person under the age of 25. Upward trend of non-domestic knife crime since March 21 where in the twelve months up to September 2023, 81 recorded offences compared to 56 in the previous period. Also, in the How Are You Harrow Survey, 38% of young people said there are areas of Harrow where they feel unsafe].
What stops the Harrow professionals and executive politicians to let the government know that the adverse impact of the socio-economic deprivation jeopardises the effectiveness of the hard-worked Youth Justice Plan? A council motion could do this!

Former Conservative Prime Minister Sir John Major has criticised the previous government’s Rwanda asylum plan, branding it “un-Conservative, un-British” and “odious”, BBC reported on 18 September 2024.
“I thought it was un-Conservative, un-British, if one dare say in a secular society, un-Christian, and unconscionable and I thought that this is really not the way to treat people,” he said.
The UK’s Conservative government and Rwanda agreed a Migration and Economic Development Partnership in April 2022. It included a five-year ‘asylum partnership arrangement’ upgraded to a formal treaty in December 2023.
The vicious arrangement with Rwanda would have allowed sending certain people seeking asylum in the UK to Rwanda, where the Rwandan government would decide their asylum claims. If their claims were successful, they would be granted asylum in Rwanda.
In a tweet on 16 June 2022, Priti Patel supporter Harrow East MP Bob Blackman said: “During a (Rwanda) Statement by the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, I asked what can be done to speed up the process of deportation”.
On 12 December 2023, he voted for Emergency legislation to approve a deportation deal with Rwanda.
Speaking in the Commons on 6th December 2023 (UK-Rwanda Partnership), Blackman said “The message that needs to go to the people smugglers and those desperate people is: “If you make this desperate journey you will be removed to Rwanda, a safe country, for processing”—and this is the key point—“from now on, not in many months’ time.”
Perhaps he was unaware that on 15 November 2023, the UK’s Supreme Court declared the policy unlawful because Rwanda was not a safe country to which asylum seekers could be removed.
Another Conservative, Lord Popat of Harrow, who is active in African matters, actively supported the discredited Rwanda plan: “As a refugee myself, I welcome the government’s Rwanda plan” – he stated at politicsathome.com.
He was David Cameron appointed UK Trade Envoy for Rwanda and Uganda from 2016 until the last general election.
Speaking in the Lords (21 Nov 2023), he said “In dealing with Rwanda for the past nine years, I have found the Government to be very honest, transparent and forthcoming”.
Lord Popat has led several British delegations to Rwanda and Uganda, including two in 2019.
The two Harrow Conservatives, who supported the ill Rwanda plan, should apologise.
There is also a case for the public enquiry to find the use of public money tied up in the lucrative ‘scheme’, most beneficial to Rwanda. Publicly available information suggests that, as of July 2024, at least £318 million had been spent on the scheme.
The Labour government has now rightly axed the Rwanda scheme.

Nice to know that the council working is additionally evaluated by the Local Government Association Corporate Peer Challenge (CPC), providing opportunities for improving its organisational and working arrangements.
The CPC evaluating team in 2023 and the review team in 2024 included CEO and leader of other councils as well as the LGA representative, and followed the process and framework that are broadly based on the Ofsted model of inspections.
Like Ofsted, the CPC reports have been made public, enabling the residents to see the quality of their council’s leadership and management.
However, the CPC assessment in 2023 and the follow-up review in 2024, do not give a sense of being carried out on behalf of the residents nor have an explicit focus on assessing the quality of the services to the residents. Such a shortcoming could have been avoided should the CPC have evaluated the effectiveness of the council’s work in terms of the outcomes like the quality of services to the residents (more than the satisfaction surveys) or the street-level health and safety environment. What is also missing is linking the context within which the council operates, its input indicators, like the resident needs and vulnerability, to the adequacy and quality of the council services in meeting these challenges.
The CPC gives ample description of how the council organises its work, but not enough evaluation of the effectiveness of the organisational arrangement in delivering the services and improving the quality of life.
Also, the evaluation seems to have far more focus on the management and hardly any on the quality of leadership despite that Harrow council administration abolished the chief executive post, arguing that these are the elected members who are the executives. Did the CPC observe a cabinet meeting?
But then, it looks that the Local Government Association Corporate Peer Challenge initiative is more to prepare the councils for Ofsted inspections, given that a high percentage of councils effectively fail Ofsted inspections, raising concerns about the value for public money.
Following the Harrow council’s LGA Corporate Peer Challenge evaluation last year, a Progress Review, an integral part of the challenge process, took place in January 2024.
The findings of the review, before the Harrow council cabinet meeting on 17 September 2024, are generally positive about the implementation of the recommendations of the 2023 CPC Harrow evaluation, but there are something less positive.
The council services have brought forward mitigating actions where savings have not been achieved, in some instances reserves are being used to meet the deficit, this is not sustainable in the medium term, finds the review.
Given the necessity of a high-functioning HR service, the council should closely monitor resource requirements to ensure it is equipped to deliver the scale of the activity required to deliver the council’s priorities, says the review.
In evaluating the progress of the regeneration projects like Poets Corner and Byron Quarter, the CPC notes that Harrow council have looked to improve its project governance for these major projects, with an oversight board established with elected members and external advisers sitting on this. London Borough of Harrow should monitor the board’s effectiveness and ensure members are provided with the necessary information and training to undertake their role. [Perhaps the members would be more enthusiastic now, after the generous increase in their allowances].
The review reports that London Borough of Harrow have reintroduced a council-wide appraisal and target setting process but makes no evaluating judgement how the appraisal information is used in a structured way to improve individual or collective performance.
The review informs: in April 2023, London Borough of Harrow received a regulatory notice from the Regulator of Social Housing for failing to meet statutory health and safety requirements for electrical and water safety. It was found the council had not completed electrical safety reports for 3,500 homes and had not completed water risk assessments for every site. An improvement plan has been developed, and it is important the council demonstrates progress on improving standards for tenants.
The review team noted: it was announced in January that LBH will receive a CQC local authority inspection in the spring of 2024. Preparations are underway, with a series of bespoke Adult Social Care staff workshops to consider interdependencies and joint working across the partnership and will be delivered to NHS and safeguarding partners.
Despite such preparations, in August 2024, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) released its report on the London Borough of Harrow’s Adult social care, rating it as ‘requires improvement’, i.e. not good.

Marlborough ward: this everyday depressive view (7/9/2024) that the residents have to live with in the borough that claims ‘putting residents first’!!

“Thanks to all those who came out to bravely stand shoulder to shoulder against racism and Islamophobia last night. A truly inspiring evening. But, where were our councillors. Where were our MPs. It’s not good enough” tweeted Pamela Fitzpatrick, a community activist and Harrow West independent parliamentary candidate last election who stands for the Harrow residents.
Hundreds turned up at the peaceful anti-racist demonstration in North Harrow, a location that the far-right had identified in their hit list of actions for Wednesday (7 August).

As expected, the far-right didn’t turn up. Their apparent strategy was to create fear and disrupt everyday life, otherwise they don’t seem to have capacity for a wider scale action! But seeing success of their harassment as many businesses and organisations in Harrow closed early or did not open at all as advised, what stops them to repeat their threat.
The public in Harrow is quite right to feel let down by their elected representative’s lack of support for the community solidarity against far-right and their obvious unease about the descriptor ‘far-right’.
We also glean concerns that the Harrow council, apparently now pushed to the right,  not only failed to meaningfully condemn the far-right activism and issue strong reassuring statements, but also tried to deter the public using their democratic right of peaceful protest against racism.
“We understand that there have been calls for residents to attend the ‘counter-protests’. We would ask people not to attend as this will make the job of the Police to keep everyone safe harder” stated the leader of the Harrow council who watched the North Harrow demonstration in the council camera monitoring room.
Why such a low expectation of the Harrow residents behaviour? Harrow had a number of demonstrations over the years but peaceful and with no history of any violent clashes.
Harrow had its share of facing far-right racism some years back when the council was also under Tory administration, but like now, it was the public unity against racism that deterred the far-right.

The Harrow Law Centre was shortlisted for the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards under the category Legal Aid Firm/Not-for-Profit Agency.
“Fifteen years ago, when I had the idea to set up a charity law centre in Harrow, I would never have dreamed we would be shortlisted in the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards which took place on Friday” said the local socio-political activist and the founder Pamela Fitzpatrick.
“Harrow Law Centre has helped thousands of Harrow residents across issues including housing, education, welfare benefits, immigration and crime. Legal support is financially out of reach for most people, and I’m so glad that we could be there for local residents when they’ve most needed our help” she added.
“Thank you to all our wonderful staff and everyone who has supported us over the years”.

The awards are organised by Legal Aid Practitioners Group, on a non-profit basis, as an unashamed celebration of the work of lawyers on the social justice frontline. It is the close links to the profession’s grassroots that make these awards so special, and unlike any other legal awards.
“The Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards are unique and distinct because the lawyers we celebrate are unlike any others across the entire legal profession. Legal aid tends to attract those who are not just exceptional lawyers but exceptionally courageous and compassionate human beings” say the organisers.

Abbas Merali’s recent long-worded glossy leaflet highlights his ‘campaign to restore pride back into Harrow’ but is not convincing.
His proclamation seems to be somewhat puzzling, as neither the Harrow council Conservative administration nor the Harrow East Tory MP have indicated that Harrow has lost its pride and needs restoration.
In any case, if Harrow has failed to retain its socio-cultural and environment pride, why Mr Merali and not the existing decision-maker Harrow Conservatives are ‘restoring’ Harrow pride?
Very fresh in the memory is a similar catching phrase by the illusive Tory London mayor candidate, also a Harrow councillor, to ‘deliver the change London needs’ which was badly rejected by the voters.
Mr Merali claims ‘standing up for our community’ and is saying whatever it takes to please places of worship and some in his community but his six points descriptors in the public leaflet, seemingly taken from a Tory vetted political phrases bank, say nothing about this community’s concerns or the poverty in Harrow or the people hit by the government socio-economic policies:
[according to the Census 2021: 31% of children in the borough lived in households with an income of less than 60% the UK median after housing costs have been subtracted in 2021/22, and, in Harrow, 19.6% of residents were estimated to be earning below the Living Wage in 2023]
On the other hand, it can only be good that at least one Harrow parliamentary candidate, Pamela Fitzpatrick, independent candidate for Harrow West, demands to increase the minimum wage to at least £15/hour – to abolish work capability assessments, the two-child limit and benefit cap – and restore the national council tax benefit scheme.
What Ms Fitzpatrick demands makes good sense in view of the Labour and Tories playing with the financial plight of the families like Tory claims and Labour disputes that Labour will cost working families £2,094 more in taxes.
Because of all this, difficult to confront those who say: ‘we are tired of the Tories but now feel can’t trust Labour’.

Soon after the prime minister Sunak announced 4th July general election, Pamela Fitzpatrick independent parliamentary candidate for Harrow West, was quick to issue the following video statement:
I live and I work in Harrow. I was also a councillor here in Harrow West for eight years, but it’s particularly through my work at a legal centre which I set up 15 years ago, a charity which gives free legal advice to local people, that I see the real issues that are impacting on people.
Whether that’s housing, whether it’s the education issues for their children, it’s poverty, problems with benefits and disability benefits or immigration issues.
And what I’ve seen over the last quarter of a century is that whoever’s been in government, things haven’t got better.
We’ve been failed by our politicians and I think people are moving away from the kind of two-party system, they’ve recognised that it’s not acting in the interest of the community.
We have tower blocks being put up all across Harrow, and these tower blocks would be fine if it dealt with our housing crisis, but it doesn’t.
What we found is that these properties, big ugly tower blocks, are too expensive for most ordinary people to live in.
I have watched with horror what’s unfolding in Gaza and that impacts on so many local people because Harrow is such a diverse area.
I have joined the local protests, I have joined the national protests and I have seen the people coming together of all nationalities, of all religions, peacefully protesting and demanding an end to the violence.
Pamela Fitzpatrick ended her statement with an appeal: “If you want somebody who’s going to try to create a society based on the needs of the community rather than the greed of a few, please join my campaign”.