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 Education Commission, chaired by Christine Gilbert, a well known educationist who progressed from Harrow.
“There are things that we in Harrow could learn from our colleagues in Brent, the flow of learning has clearly been in the opposite direction” said Chris Spencer, corporate director of Harrow children’s services.
In 1985, the ‘Two Kingdoms’, Brent’s education report that forcefully located pupils’ under-achievement in the education system, came at the time when Harrow was struggling to adopt an equal opportunities policy as its school population was rapidly changing, raising concerns about the achievement by different groups of pupil.
Education initiatives like the Development Programme for Racial Equality (DPRE), inspired Harrow education in a number of ways at the time, but by 1990s, the value of the Brent’s educational initiatives was lost in the mist of the local and national politics.

While Brent, with a higher deprivation factor, has struggled to address its educational achievement, Harrow has made progress in pupils’ academic care, partly because of the thriving private tutoring and excellent leadership of the well established Harrow School Improvement Partnership (HSIP).
Mr Spencer informs that senior officers from Harrow and some of the  HSIP associates have been advising schools in Brent on all aspects of school improvement.
But things are changing. While the Harrow’s education direction is uncertain because of the management restructuring and LA savings (still short of £7m), Brent is fully determined to excel and the Brent Schools Partnership under the strategic direction of the HISP leadership is all set to positively impact Brent’s educational outcomes.
Brent is not short of good practices either: for example, its education authority is more community orientated with readily available information about its work and the school matters like the school funding from various streams, keeping the Freedom of Information requests low.

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 her authority on the subject.
Cllr Ashton, a planning expert, was responsible for planning in the pre2010 Tory administration, elected by the voters.
Very strange that such a capable councillor has not been placed on the planning committee by the Tory group leader since Ms Ashton’s return to the council in 2011 in the Stanmore by-election that was called due to the resignation of a Tory councillor unhappy under Cllr Hall’s leadership.
Many feel that Harrow has been deprived of the Cllr Ashton’s planning expertise because of the acrimonious relationship of the Tory group leadership which became obvious when Ms Ashton decided to come back to the council in 2011.
The Tory group refused to comment why Cllr Ashton has not been placed on the planning committee to enrich the planning decisions and has been reduced to the position of a letter-writer!
Councillor Hall’s record of political leadership has been poor as it has set a pattern of defeats – Councils in 2010 and in 2014 where five sitting Tory councillors were defeated – and 2 Harrow West by-elections in 2013.
Cllr Hall’s short-lived administration, a fluke, further damaged Tory credibility in Harrow.

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 and transportation, to the assistant director planning and transportation, and to his present post in Hackney for the past nine years.
Commenting on this first senior appointment under the new management structure, the council chief executive Michael Lockwood (photo) said, “We are in the middle of a really positive transformation in Harrow and the skills Tom brings will be a great addition to the senior management team to help improve the vital front line services”.
Mr McCourt appears to have far more experience in public realm. Public realm is any publicly owned streets, pathways, right of ways, parks, publicly accessible open spaces and any public and civic building and facilities.
Although Mr McCourt has worked in a borough like Tower Hamlets which faced active racism for years and now he works in Hackney, his housing and community work profile appears to be less obvious. This is interesting considering the demanding housing situation and diverse population in Harrow which require high level of community orientation and engagement, especially at the time of financial instability like community and culture are forecasting a projected overspend of £284k against a total net budget of £5.084m, and the housing is facing £2.002m pressure.
Some of the Harrow characteristics: non-White 69.1%; 5-17 age group 16.21%; 25-59 age group 49.6%; non-White pupils in schools 81.5%

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 the housing ladder.
• The cut to Employment & Support Allowance will penalise people with disabilities who require more resources to remain in good condition.
• Cuts will push more and more people in to severe poverty, rent arrears and homelessness.
• Benefit cap at £23,000 will force families out of Harrow and London, putting more pressure on children and families.
• Limiting certain benefits to families with a maximum of two children has put some vulnerable families in a terrible place.
• The new national ‘living wage’ is solely an increase to the minimum wage, and falls below the actual living wage, which in London is £9.15.

All this is fine but what really interests is the next part of the motion that says ‘the Council will monitor the impacts of these welfare cuts on our residents’.
Perhaps in arguing for the motion in the interest of the residents, the councillors (photos), bringing the motion to the meeting, could describe how exactly the complex long term and short term impacts could be effectively evaluated, monitored and addressed, rather than describing the cuts and their implications which are public knowledge anyway, including ‘Harrow protest against cuts and austerity measures’.

We share the recognition of long service by Councillors Bath and Noyce – well done both!

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 plans granted for 318 new homes on the former post office site in College Road, Harrow.
Mr Blackman celebrates that it is his doing that the plans agreed by the Harrow Council have now been ‘called-in’ for the Secretary of State’s  consideration.
“The political game he is playing with his chums in Government will at the very least delay the supply of these much needed homes” says Cllr Glen Hearnden, responsible for housing.
Mr Blackman managed to retain his Harrow East seat not necessarily because of his ability as a MP but because of some local factors.
In the interest of Harrow, he should appreciate that an eye soar that has not been contributing to the local life for years, is now all set to provide much needed homes, including affordable housing, and a variety of community resources.

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 to increase significantly the number and scale of conflicts of interest. Therefore, a reassurance is needed to promote public confidence that conflicts are well managed, and measures are in place to ensure transparency at the local level when making commissioning decisions.
In Harrow, some GP practices are concerned about the transparency-related situations which include:
While there is plenty of vacant space at Alexandra Avenue premises, why Harrow CCG rents private space at Pinn Medical Centre (Pinner) whose senior partner is the chair of Harrow CCG?
The same Pinn Medical Centre provides walk-in primary care service seven days a week, and Alexandra Avenue, a part of Ridgeway surgery whose partner is a Harrow CCG member, offers weekend walk-in service.
Both of these outlets provide a number of other medical services.
The Commons public accounts committee said that a number of GPs who worked for the CCGs also had shareholdings in the organisation that provided out-of-hours care – such arrangements had “inherent risk of conflicts of interest”.
Now the National Audit Office investigation report, part of an inquiry into conflicts of interest in clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), published last Friday, says that the GPs who are members of the governing body of their local CCG have the potential to personally profit from new health services.
The report said that the role of GPs needed to be transparent as under these arrangements “there is potential for some GPs and their colleagues to make commissioning decisions about services they provide, or in which they have an interest”.
The National Audit Office report should be a wake-up call for those involved in commissioning and evaluating the health & care services.

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 as demonstrated by a high profile canvassing activity organised by some Labour councillors at the Harrow Town Centre last July!
Uma Kumaran, Labour MP candidate for Harrow East at the last general election, actively supported Sadiq Khan’s campaign for the selection of the Labour candidate for the London Mayor election next year.
While Gareth Thomas, Labour MP for Harrow West, who also contended for the London Mayor candidacy, badly lost.

Conservatives Party is quick to rubbish the newly elected Labour leadership. Most probably they are missing someone like Liz Kendall, a Blairite, who said Labour should not have voted for Britain to recognise the Palestinian state.

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 the 10-17 population. The mixed ethnic and White youth offenders were represented in line with their respective population.
In 2011 HMI Probation undertook a Core Case Inspection of youth offending work in Harrow and found the need for substantial improvement in the areas of safeguarding, public protection (likelihood of reoffending) and drastic improvement in Public protection (risk of harm).
In 2014 a Short Quality Screening inspection by HMI Probation highlighted that significant improvement is needed in the quality of management as well as to implement measures to improve safeguarding urgently.
This, like the provisions for the Looked After Children (CLA), is another area of the education directorate’s work that produces wordy reports and layers of talk shop structures after a critical inspection (almost failing) to be followed by yet another equally critical inspection.
We hope that under the restructured senior management regime, such failures would not be rewarded at any levels!
Having identified the over representation by the Black youth, the Harrow Youth Offending Partnership Youth Justice Plan for 2015-18, more interested in arguing for increased funding, fails to address such an imbalance. What an omission.
Speaking to the Harrow Monitoring Group, a Black professional, who has long experience of young offenders nationally and who does not wish to be named, identified some key reasons for the Black youths over representation. These include (a) more custodial sentences because of the institutional practices within the criminal justice system (b) not enough role models and where there are, they are institutionalised and afraid to speak out (c) low expectations (d) lack of the education resources like an appropriate library.
The Harrow council has yet to comment!

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 attend an interview to recruit the corporate director community because the date does not suit them!
Odd that none of Cllr Hall’s shadow colleagues could reorganise their diaries for an interview which their leader describes as very important.
Then Cllr Hall playfully draws a parallel between this recruitment process and that to reappoint the chief executive who was forced out by her elected-mayor style short-lived administration in the recent past.
She has described the chief executive’s reappointment as “controversial” and the process as “farcical”. One can sense personalisation here.
The chief executive was asked to review the council’s senior management structure on his return and propose changes to enable the organisation to better meet the significant challenges faced whilst also maximising the opportunities that are available to the council. Mr Lockwood is leading the restructuring but then that needs not to be the reason for the Tory leadership’s non-cooperation.
We sought clarification from the Tory group whether they are supporting the council’s senior management restructuring as approved by the June cabinet.
They refused to comment.
Considering the importance of the quality of both the administration and opposition in running the council for the benefit of the residents, it is very concerning that the opposition seems to be less interested in positively engaging and more in scoring political points all the time.

We hear good things about the Moorfields at Northwick Park Hospital.
Users are pleased with the improved facilities and environment at the refurbished Eye Centre which is a district hub of the Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS foundation Trust.
The centre brings expert eye care closer to patients’ homes and provides outpatient and diagnostic care for a wide range of eye conditions, as well as more complex eye surgery.
The hospital informs that the centre now provides some sub-speciality clinics and surgical procedures previously only available at the Moorfields in central London. Operating theatres are now open five days per week.
The recent improvements include “extending the roles of nurses and opticians to deliver injections for age-related macular degeneration and post-operative cataract care and nurse led clinics in glaucoma”, said Moorfields.
The visiting patients spoke to us say that the waiting areas are well organised and are pleasant. Displayed information like the number of doctors, nurses, patients on the day and the waiting time (mostly met), is helpful.
Health and safety information includes waste segregation charts as well as the infection, prevention and control which outlines the cleaning schedule and alerts about the areas where contaminations could take place.
A typical comment by the visitors that “people here are friendly and helpful”, summarises good staff attitudes at the centre.