The Leader of Ealing Council, Cllr Peter Mason, was the guest speaker at the SCA Community Forum at Southall Town Hall on Thursday 27th October 2022

It was opportunity for residents to hear about plans relating to Southall and Ealing. Given the current national economic uncertainties and cost of living crisis it would be good to hear about the local response from Ealing Council.

Admittance to the Southall Community Alliance (SCA) meetings was by appointment or prior invitation only, due to the limited space available. The SCA management also reserved the right to refuse admission to the venue.

---

There were about 40 people at the meeting which included the Leader of Ealing Council, Cllr Peter Mason, Cllr Jasbir Anand, Cllr Shital Manro, Cllr Sarfraz khan, Cllr John Martin, Cllr Surinder Jassal and Cllr Faduma Mohamed. All the 40 seats were occupied.

There were up to 30 noisy protesters outside playing music and making speeches that made listening a bit difficult. More about them in a separate article. Their basic gripe is the lack of ward forums and lack of response to their pleas of help regarding the Southall Gasworks development(The Green Quarter).

This was not a ward forum meeting. It was not organised by Ealing Council. It was just the monthly SCA forum/meeting organised in their working office. The only difference was that the Leader of Ealing Council would be speaking. It may appear like a ward forum to some, but that is not the case.

---

The ground rules were explained by Harsev Bains:
This SCA meeting is by appointment or by invitation only. This is a big departure for us. No one is to engage in any anti-social or disruptive behaviour. No photography or video recording at Southall Town Hall without written approval because we want people to engage freely without feeling intimidated.

Our responsibility is to everyone here. We respect our elected counsellors. We respect our (council) officers who don't come here to be interrogated.

False allegation were made against this organisations several years back and these were addressed and found to be baseless, The same allegations are being circulated again against our officers.

The Leader of Ealing Council, Cllr Peter Mason said “I'm really pleased to be here” and sorry that it has taken so long since being elected leader of the council in May 20021, followed by the election cycle disruption that distracted us from having some of these conversations.

I am now leading a council that is the third largest in London with all of the challenges that we know it has. That requires the council to behave in a different way.

It's a move away from what has been for a very long time, almost like a parent and child relationship. Where we as the council tell you the community what is good for you, when we determine what you get, what you don't. Where we tell you what the challenges are, without coming up with solutions with you.

I know the council to be different and to behave in a different way.

And so fundamental to what we're trying to do in the conversations that I think we've done to have with Southall Community Alliance and with other organisations is let's reset that relationship. Let's actually start having conversations about the big challenges that we know. The ones that we can fix, the ones we can't fix and the ones If we work together, we can try to overcome.

Southall is such an industrious community where we at once stage had many, many jobs. jobs that provided opportunity, provided prosperity to many communities. The factories are no longer here. The work is different.

The stark inequality is something that I know that you will understand and have experienced. We've known about those in the qualities far too long. I represent Southall Green, the western edge of the borough, where the average income individually is something like £18,000 pounds. If you go the eastern end of the borough in Chiswick and it's more than double at over £40,000.

If you live in Southall, your opportunity and your access to get onto the housing ladder is next to nothing.

80% of the homes in Southall Green are in the private rented sector. The challenges and the quality of accommodation available leads people having to live in terrible situations.

Now the answer to that has been, I think for too long, that Southall should change to be some sort of dormitory town. But because we've got crossrail and a wonderful new station, the answer to our problems is to turbo charge that industrialisation. To give away all of the lands that was once the factories, that provided so many jobs, to tower blocks, into residential apartments and that we instead of getting people pay, we bring in people to pay their council tax.

And that is as a consequence of the decisions that were taken in the past, The Southall area of opportunity framework agreed with the mayor of London (Boris Johnson at that time) said that we would concentrate on homes at the expensive jobs, that we should lose some of our industrial lands to give way into residential development.

That doesn't work because the net consequence we've all experienced is a rapid increase in the number of two and three bedroom, homes around stations, and so much of it in the pipeline of places like south of Waterside, the old gas works, but the jobs haven't come and that has to change.

The resources that we've had over 11 years have slowly decreased while the pressures, people living longer lives, more complexity in terms of people's education, young people with disabilities continuing to grow.

You have seen the impact on your wage packets of growing inflation. That's pushed up both rents, food and energy. These are all the same things that we as a council face challenges with.

So, I could come to you with a Southall Reset programme and promise you the world. I could say that we can change things overnight.

But the reality is that we have limited power and limited money to be able to do the things that we would otherwise want to prioritise. But we do want to change. Far too often, as a council, when we ran into barrier or we ran into a difficult challenge, about powers that we didn't have or money we could not find. Too many times the answer to that question was that it's too difficult to challenge, to go to government and challenge them on environmental protection conversation.

But we don't have certain powers that we need to be able to encourage people who are community and rather than coming together as a community, to make that demand of government and tell the government, what powers that we use and the resources that we need.

Instead, we sort of drawn up the drawbridge, which disengage, brought down the shutters because we feared a conversation that we know that we would otherwise need to happen. And to some extent, it's born out by what's happening outside today.

We believe in the idea of compromise, in grown up conversations and look, we share with you the challenges that we have and you have the ability to tell us the challenges that you have and you can find ways of fixing them and we find ways of solving them.

You have to create spaces in which people come together to find the type of comprises … in a cohesive driving community like Southall.

We want to change Southall, the Southall Reset Programme is about saying that very clearly. It can't be case to continue on this trajectory towards not any jobs, but having many, many veins that people don't have access to, We can't have a situation in which we don't feel that they own their high street.

This is an open conversation that will continue and you will see that happening because our members will be here, our councillors, our officers will be here. And as we increase the volume of conversations that we have with the community, There are big things coming, the new local plan, a big conversation about the infrastructure that Southall needs and how we're going to pay for it and where we find the money.

I'm hopeful but we can’t give absolute guarantees and concrete examples of the way that we are going to change. Some of the decisions that have been taken in the past for the better. That started with the Southall Young Adult Centre in terms of preserving it for future use. And in November we're going to be talking about how we invest in it further and bring it up to the creative that it needs to be.

Sometimes decisions, take time. But ultimately, we have to make the right decisions, and that is about an open dialogue with everybody in this room and everybody out there in Southall.

Mr Chumber asked about the return of the in person surgeries?

Each ward councillor will run surgeries. If people want to have one to one conversation that is possible.

We did this for 4 years. We would go the Dominion Centre and sit for an hour and no one would turn up. We want to have bigger conversations. In order to have greater conversations people have got to come the table with the ability to contribute that meaningful and help engagement.

[Residents want the return of ward surgeries, where problems can’t be brushed under the carpet. There they find out that their problems are NOT an isolated case but a common problem. Short of money? Some residents have said they will pay for the hall hire, the councillors just need to turn up. They got no response in the past.]

Mr Ravi Jain asked:
I would like to find out whether you will be able to create a framework and a timetable so that everybody plays a role in the community engagement. Rather than talking about them and their needs …..

People are angry and frustrated. They are disruptive because that is the only way they know. The Labour party in Southall is in total control. They are not engaged. There is a mismatch.

The response fron Cllr Mason was:

The culture of an organisation is set by its leadership. If Felicia adopts a particular way of doing things or engages in a particular way of talking and behaving, then that's how the rest of the organisation will operate to.

And I'm really clear that we're doing things differently. The pace of organisations is changing and the pace of the council is changing. It is slow.

How long did it take us to make a decision on the young adults. We're here a year and half into my leadership, only able to say 18 months later that we are not going to proceed with housing delivery on the Young Adult Centre.

That is often because of things in the system, legal agreements and budgets and trying to navigate through to people, both members and officers through a complex web to get to the objective.

[While others may have given up on saving the Young Adult Centre, there was a group of individual meeting weekly at Southall Town Hall to resist and challenge the closure by ALL legal means available. They posed a lot of challenging questions and yet Ealing Council don’t want to acknowledge their efforts. They did not force us to make a u-turn, we FINALLY listened to the people at the eleventh hour.]

When you've heard me say over transparent, from inclusive, hope and energy and creativity. Those are the values. I'm trying to take into the administration. It does take time.

You are the community. You are the ones who are eyes and ears of the council. When somebody fly tips on the corner of the road, we need you to tell us, you know, we're not there all the time and the same is therefore true to what is happening in the community.

You like the people outside need to hold us accountable for it. If I make a promise, I wanted you to make sure that I'm shooting my words.

But I think I hope people are seeing particularly in the late. We are doing things different ways and it might not feel like all the time but we will take small wins when we can. A collection of small wins that help us get to that situation and a better way to do things.

Amarjit asked “You mentioned that the community needs to tell you the problems. Is there a magic number of times they have to tell you?”

Response “every four years we put together a manifesto …..”

[It was generic response to a specific problem. How many times do we need to report it to get it resolved. No one is asking “Have we dealt with it”. No one is looking at the results. No one is asking “Are you happy” with our (non) response? He has reported huge amounts of food being reglarly dumped near Guru Nanak Road that attracts pigeons and rats. Nothing has been done about it after years of reporting. The big issue he says is “lack of enforcement”. It does not help us or them (the council). No checks and balances in place.]

Parking enforcement on Southall Broadway. [It’s a unique business. It’s based on supply and demand. You can’t come up with excuses of shortage of resources/funds. The more tickets you issue, the more funds you get. Council has reduced parking spaces. It plans to further reduce parking spaces. It plans to build more tower blocks without parking spaces. Yet, it has no plans to tackle parking on the pavements that are getting damaged. It wants residents to walk. On the road or pavements?]

Attendees were only allowed one question each. Many were there to listen. Even then the SCA management said something that equates to “Time is up. This is a council building and it needs to close at 8pm. Please leave“. That applied to everyone, even the Leader of Ealing Council and the SCA management.

More info at a later date.

Comments after the meeting

Peter Mason tweeted; “Was great to be invited to speak at yesterday’s Southall Community Alliance meeting, to discuss the future of Southall, and the need for good, well paid jobs”.

“We’ve set out a plan, and we absolutely want to have people’s views and opinions on how we make our town better.”

The Southall Community Alliance said “Cllr Mason spoke of the need to change Southall but acknowledged the problems and barriers in effecting that change at a pace sought by Southall residents.”

“Community forums provide an opportunity to hear about important local issues and developments in Southall.”