Many council charges are set to increase by 5%, including the burial charges, informs a report to the forthcoming Harrow council cabinet meeting.
Also, a new charge is proposed to cover the cost of arrangement fees for customers in care home or own homes who pay for care costs. The charges could be about £100 for setting up a community care package and slightly less than £100 for annual maintenance of a community care package. The council can only arrange traditional services such as homecare support and day care at council run day centres.
Harrow currently charges people with savings over the national threshold of £23,250, on a full cost recovery basis for the services provided but not for the cost to the council of making these arrangements for them.
While there is no increase in many charges, including car parking at the civic centre, on street and off street and the garden waste collection, some charges to increase more than 5% like for the special waste service – between 7% and 17% for collecting particular items. Pest control service increase is 5-7%.
Commercial Waste Services are introducing an additional pest control service. This will offer a rat prevention service including a CCTV inspection of drains and insertion of rat barriers in drains – rat flap £165 and CCTV inspection £131.00. This has been developed out of increased requests for a prevention service.
Fees and charges in Harrow generate in the region of £30m per annum and provide significant funding support to the provision of those services that are charged for.

Population: the population increase from under 250k in 2016 to 270k in 2026 and over 283k by 2036 – widespread but the most dramatic increases in Greenhill and Marlborough because of both the highest number of sites and the largest developments in these wards.
Building a Better Harrow strategy: the changes that will occur in Harrow over the next 10 years:

Health

All this is before Brexit!!

Very quietly the NHS in North West London has asked GPs and other prescribers to reduce prescribing of medicines and products (under the pretext of promoting ‘self-care’) that can be purchased without a prescription. (List)
The medicines patients are now advised to obtain over the counter include: vitamin D, skin creams, nasal sprays (like Beconase and saline solution for babies), lubricant eye drops, haemorrhoid creams, constipation laxatives (like Cosmocol), the commonly used painkillers, or dispersible aspirin to keep blood thin. One GP tweeted:

Such a money saving move hits hard vulnerable, elderly, school age children* or those on benefits, who are exempted  from the prescription charges but now have to buy these medicines, some of which are quite expensive. In order to save money, people try online shopping with a risk of buying cheap quality medicines.
*(the school age children are exempted if the product needs to be given at school as many schools will not administer medicines that do not have a dispensing label bearing the child’s name and the dose)

They do so seemingly to avoid bad rating by the Care Quality Commission inspection that would monitor the prescribing of these medicines.
Those in Harrow who need medical care not only suffer because of the cuts in medicine  but also because of a clinician decision whether a patient meets the evidence-based thresholds for the hospital treatment as defined in the Planned Procedure with a limited Threshold (PPwT) policy and which requires funding approval from the authority running a deficit budget.
There are thirty three  procedures covered under PPwT policy, including cataract surgery, grommets in children, hip replacement, correcting a deformity of the nasal septum and open MRI, for which individual funding request has to be made to the NHS Harrow Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) where  the  treatment falls under the ‘not normally funded’ category.
We understand Harrow CCG has declined many such requests.

Some in Harrow have received scam TV Licensing refund or payment issue emails in just a matter of days.
Somewhat convincing fake emails are being sent by scammers in a bid to steal bank account and personal details.
The emails claim that TV Licensing have been trying to get hold of the victim regarding a refund for an over-payment or that a refund is owed or that the TV License could not be automatically renewed.
The fraudsters include links to convincing-looking cloned TV Licensing websites designed to harvest bank account and credit card details.
Closer examination of the license information in the scam email shows that the TV license number or other details are incorrect – like the example below:

Recommendations for changes to Harrow’s ward boundaries have been published following consultation with the people who live and work here, though still chance to say what you think of them by 11 February 2019 before these become final on 26 March 2019 and implemented  in May 2022 if approved by the parliament.
The division lines tend to run alongside roads or railway tracks to increase or reduce the size of the wards – return of historic Centenary is interesting (last held by Labour).
The proposals  from the Boundary Commission include Harrow being represented by 55 councillors in the future, 8 fewer than now, and having an extra ward – 22 in total. Those councillors should represent 11 three-councillor wards and 11 two-councillor wards across the council area.
The dynamics of the 2 and 3 councillor wards and who holds these now projects increased number of Labour and lesser number of Tory councillors.
Harrow East and Hatch End would be more interesting battlefield for sitting Tory councillors as four Tory wards are recommended to be the 2-Cllr wards – wonder who would win in the ward selection in Belmont, Canons, Harrow Weald and Hatch End, given their controversial standing in their relevant Tory associations, past or present!

Harrow council to increase council tax by 2.99% and 2.0% in respect of the Adult Social Care Precept in 2019/20.
Can the Harrow council fulfil resident expectations of low council tax and high quality care or support? The short answer is not really – not because they are not interested in providing better services but because of severe reduction in council budgets as part of the government austerity programme.
By 2020, local authorities will have faced a reduction to core funding from the government of nearly £16 billion over the preceding decade.
How laughable was Tory Cllr Hall’s defence of her party’s economic policies at the last Harrow council meeting.
Harrow has seen its Revenue Support Grant reduced by 97% over a 7 year period, reducing the grant to £1.566m by 2019/20. This has translated into minimum cash reserves and budget gaps that the council has needed to fund over the seven year period 2015/16 to 2021/22 to achieve a balanced budget.
“Since 2013 the Government support grant to Harrow has been reduced year on year and will disappear altogether in 2021. Currently there is a funding gap of £125 million if we were to deliver services at their 2013 levels” informed Cllr Adam Swersky, portfolio holder for finance.
In briefing some from the voluntary sector, he also said that there are still further cuts in council services to be made and Harrow has to raise their council tax by the maximum permitted before having to call a local referendum.
Some of the cuts in services currently being looked at are that the only direct access by phone to the council will be to Adult and Children’s services, all others will have to be through a newly improved Harrow website. Community space, such as Parks etc will continue to rely on the user communities for support.
In reporting the briefing meeting to the Harrow Voluntary and Community Sector Forum, Bill Phillips, a forum representative, said Cllr Swersky was informed how the pressures from the revenue earning areas of the council is adversely affecting the work of some community organisations. For example,  the hitherto peppercorn rents being made fully commercial when reaching a rent review and small community based organisations like scout buildings being reassessed for full business rates.

A notorious rogue landlord must pay £1,500,000 or spend nine years behind bars after justice caught up with him at Harrow Crown Court last Friday (30 November).
The court found that Vispasp Sarkari from Harrow had flouted planning rules for more than five years – converting properties across Brent and Harrow into substandard flats without planning permission.
He defied all planning enforcement warnings by both councils to stop the use of his properties and carried on with his criminal venture raking in thousands of pounds from people desperate to have a roof over their head.
“Justice means taking the ill-gotten gains off this slumlord millionaire. This is a man who thought he couldn’t be stopped. He was wrong, and thanks to our joint work with Brent Council, Sarkari’s criminal venture is finished” said Cllr Keith Ferry, Harrow Council’s cabinet member for planning.
In sentencing Mr Sarkari, Judge Wood described the breaches as “a flagrant abuse of the Town and Country Planning legislation”.
“If you ignore planning laws or leave tenants to languish in poor conditions, then we will find you, we will take action in court, and we will win” warned Cllr Tom Miller, Brent council’s cabinet member for community safety.
Also read this and this for the convictions in 2012 and 2017.

Harrow Association of Disabled People is concerned that many disabled people in the borough are affected by the reduction in taxi card journeys.
They say Harrow council provides only 40 subsidised taxi journey per year. This is the lowest of any London Borough. Hillingdon, by contrast provide 104 journeys per year.
“Harrow was ahead in reducing this discretionary provision because of its budgetary challenges and low reserves – other councils are now planning similar measures in the face of significant cuts to the council budgets” said Fern Silverio, head of service- collections & housing benefits.
The Taxicard service gives disabled people who have complex problems, and struggle to use public transport, a lifeline by paying for door-to-door taxi trips.
The council had previously said that cutting the number of permitted trips is the only way of keeping the service running at all in the face of funding cuts.
“It is time local authorities stop using austerity as an excuse to cut vital services for disabled people” says Adam Gabsi, vice chair of HAD.
“In consultation with the voluntary sector regarding social care and other community services, the council decided to stop £700,000 subsidiary to this service for budgetary reasons back in 2012 but elected to continue for the TFL grant to keep the service running” said Fern Silverio, head of service- collections & housing benefits.
“The council need to speak to the very people that they are affecting to understand what impact their decisions are having on peoples physical and mental health. Disabled people want equality, justice and the freedom to live. The Taxi card scheme helps to facilitate this and should not have been cut” he said.
Such is the strength of feelings, that on December 3rd, which is International Day of Disabled People, Harrow Association of Disabled people, Harrow Multiple Sclerosis and Harrow Mencap are having a protest march to the Civic Centre to present a petition to the Harrow Mayor.
The march assembles at the Red Brick Cafe, 38-40 High Street Wealdstone, at 10am on 3 December 2018 and Arrive at the Civic Centre around 11.30am.

Many  council  budgets  are  now  at ‘Breaking Point’ as austerity  has  caused  huge damage   to communities up and
down the UK, with devastating effects on key public services that protect the most defenceless in society – children at risk, disabled children and adults, and vulnerable older people  – and  the  services  we  all  rely  on,  like  clean  streets, libraries, and children’s centres.
Local Government Association Labour has launched petition warning local authorities are at ‘breaking point’.
Harrow has its share of devastating cuts: for example, the council has lost £55 million of central government funding as their Revenue Support Grant has been eliminated entirely.
Harrow schools are facing annual funding pressures of £77,000 for primary schools and £194,000 for secondary schools.  Since 2015, Harrow has suffered a net loss of 105 teachers in its maintained schools owing in part to recruitment and retention issues.
In recognising the overwhelming impact of austerity on the local community, the Labour motion supporting the ‘breaking point’ petition is bound to go through at the forthcoming Harrow council meeting.
Harrow council is also to condemn chief secretary to the treasury’s misleading statement that  the government is “not  making cuts to local authorities”, when all independent assessments of government spending show that this is entirely false.
The council further notes Prime Minister Theresa May’s claim that “austerity is over” despite planning a further £1.3bn of cuts to council budgets over the next year.