Our Manifesto

Friday, 19 September 2014

At the Willesden Green Town Team
meeting on 1 September residents were shocked to learn from a Brent Council
officer that a decision had been made to scrap the enlarged One Stop Shop (now
known as Customer Services) at the Willesden Green Cultural Centre (WGCC), and
instead let the space for commercial use.

The implication was that this would
not be a commercial retail let to a bookshop or café but would instead be commercial
offices in a similar vein to the current proposal to let 2 floors of the
Wembley Civic Centre to Air France,
which is currently under consideration.

Many residents will remember that
the council’s original rationale for the building of the Cultural Centre
included:

4.6 The Council is currently
driven by the overarching concept of One Council. This aims to provide
excellent public services and deliver these in the most efficient way but also
to build strong relationships and better communications between the Council and
citizens ensuring local priorities are addressed and that local potential is
nurtured. A redeveloped WGLC will play an important role in this strategy
supporting both the One Council Library Transformation Project and the One
Council Future Customer Service Project.

4.8 The Future Customer Service
Project aims to improve efficiency and clarity of the services offered to
citizens. The strategy is dependent on developing a new customer contact centre
at WGLC providing a service for the south of the borough, an area where many of
the Council‟s
high need customers reside.

Report adopted by the Brent
Executive on 16 January 2012
http://democracy.brent.gov.uk/documents/s7189/rmp-willgreenreport.pdf

So to hear that yet another public facility (arguably the only part of
the new Cultural Centre that represented an improvement for local residents)
was being stripped from the new building was concerning, meaning a further
reduction in community assets.

Both MWG and individual residents
contacted some of our councillors and met with varying responses.

An enquiry on Twitter received an
aggressive and unhelpful reply from Willesden Green ward councillor Tom
Miller.

A full week later Cllr Miller was
still none the wiser about what was actually happening but was at least a
little more considered.

An email inquiry toCllr James Denselow, the Cabinet Member for Stronger
Communities asked the same question and got a vague response:

“We're still
gathering this together and seeing what the exact customer services offer will
be run from the library - will be in touch shortly”

Other residents have had responses
from both officers and councillors saying no decision has yet been made – and the
council’s entire Customer Services programme is subject to a review which will
report back in October – a response which flatly contradicts the council
officer’s very definite statement at the Town Team meeting and leaves residents
in a state of confusion, fearful yet again,
that backroom deals to reduce public assets are being done behind our backs
with no transparency or accountability. If indeed there is a proposal to reduce
the physical Customer Services space (perhaps as a result of more transactions
being done online) then the additional space can be well utilised by the
community in this part of Brent, rather than commercial offices that offer no
benefit to residents at all.

We note also that any attempt to
change the Customer Services area to commercial offices should require an
amendment to the original planning application for Change of Use to be
discussed by the Planning Committee.

Meanwhile, after a reasonably
amicable meeting in July, two months on we are still waiting for answers from
Councillor Denselow to a series of questions we put to him regarding, among
other things, the community input into the running of the centre and the
process by which the agreed retail tenants will be selected (so as to promote
more of a community venture or an independent business rather than yet another
Costa coffee shop). A recent request asking for progress on answering our
outstanding queries brought a two-word response:

“Will do”

However, one interesting feature
which did come to light as a result of a residents’ recent email is that Cllr
Lesley Jones states that :

“As for how centre set up and used, I have officers working on
setting up an informal ‘panel’ or ‘friends of’ the centre who could
comment, suggest, complain on these aspects. Expect panel to be local
interested people from different perspectives, including original objectors to
the development. Early days yet, but invites to join a panel will go out
eventually, probably in the new year.”

This was one of the suggestions MWG made
during our meeting with Cllr Denselow so we’re pleased to see they are taking
up our idea. Nevertheless, on current form it will be down to us to make sure
this is real resident involvement and not an attempt to hoodwink residents into
some form of sham consultation as happened with the proposal to build the
centre itself. We await our invitation.