Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence had been received from Councillors Neil Fyfe, Dominic Gilham, Phoday Jarjussey, Mo Khursheed and Kuldeep Lakhmana.

To receive the minutes of the meeting held on 2 November 2017 (attached)

RESOLVED:  That the minutes of the meeting held on 2 November 2017 be agreed as a correct record. 

The Mayor announced that she was over half way through her mayoralty and had attended more than 300 events, 40 of which had been outside of the Borough.  Over the Christmas period she had been busy attending nativity plays at a number of schools across the Borough as well as the Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Trafalgar Square.

 

The Mayor had welcomed three World War II veterans to the Mayor's Parlour and had conducted a ceremony to formally present them with the Légion d'Honneur medals that they had been awarded.  She had read their citations and hosted a cream tea for the veterans and their families. 

 

Fundraising for the Mayor's Charity was going well.  The next Quiz Night would be held on 31 January 2018 and a Murder Mystery Supper with three course dinner would be held on 1 March 2018. 

 

The Mayor asked that those invited to the Civic Ceremony on 4 February 2018 advise whether or not they would be attending, if they had not already done so.

5.1       QUESTION FROM MRS ANNA WILLIAMS OF HARTSHILL CLOSE, UXBRIDGE TO THE LEADER OF THE COUNCIL - COUNCILLOR PUDDIFOOT:

 

"Following the publication of the Project Ark report which identified over 450 buildings or obstacles around RAF Northolt that 'intrude into the safety zone for aircraft landing' at the airport, can the Leader confirm whether the MoD has informed the London Borough of Hillingdon whether any of its assets are identified as those obstacles?

 

"Given that those 'obstacles' also include residential apartments of people living in the Borough, will the Leader seek assurances from the Ministry of Defence that all landowners of property and assets which have been identified as obstacles have been informed of the potential dangers to them, their families and their property?"

 

Councillor Puddifoot was aware that Mrs Williams had originally attempted to submit her question for the Council meeting in November 2017 but had failed to meet the seven-day submission criteria and, as such, had resubmitted her question for this meeting.

 

The issue of the campaign had been raised at the November Council meeting and a report on what was said at that meeting had been included in the January / February 2018 issue of Hillingdon People.  Councillor Puddifoot read out the article entitled 'Who is really behind the Stop Northolt campaign' from the publication.

 

Councillor Puddifoot had received a letter from Boris Johnson MP on 27 November 2017 in which he stated that, following the recent scaremongering that had taken place surrounding the future of RAF Northolt, he had been keen to seek further assurances on behalf of local residents.  He was delighted that the Defence Secretary could not have been clearer in his response that there were no plans to increase the number of civilian commercial flights from RAF Northolt.  For the avoidance of doubt, the Secretary of State went on to comment on the infrastructure works to address the condition of the runway at RAF Northolt, informing Mr Johnson that he could inform his constituents that the work was required for military operational reasons.  He made assurances that, following the runway infrastructure works, there were no plans to increase the number of civilian commercial flights and there were also no plans to change the aviation terms and conditions which specifically prohibited scheduled airlines at the station.

 

Councillor Puddifoot asked Mrs Williams to go back to the campaign organiser and its backers and tell them that, as far as Hillingdon Council was concerned, the air campaign was as dead as the Project Ark report.  He suggested that she also inform them that the Council found this type of scaremongering of its residents contemptible. 

i)        URGENT IMPLEMENTATION OF DECISIONS

 

Councillor Puddifoot moved the recommendation as set out in the report.  This was seconded by Councillor Simmonds and it was:

 

RESOLVED: That the recent urgent decisions taken, as set out in the report, be noted.

 

ii)      PROGRAMME OF MEETINGS 2018/19

 

Councillor Puddifoot moved the recommendation as set out in the report with an amendment to the Cabinet meeting in May 2018 which would take place on 24 May 2018.  This was seconded by Councillor Simmonds and it was:

 

RESOLVED: That the timetable of meetings for 2018/19, as set out in Appendix A, be approved (subject to the amendment above) and the Head of Democratic Services, in consultation with the Chief Whip of the Majority Party, be authorised to make any amendments that may be required throughout the course of the year.

To consider the report of the Corporate Director of Finance (attached)

Councillor Bianco moved the recommendation as set out in the report.  This was seconded by Councillor Puddifoot

 

Councillor Curling moved an amendment to the motion to vote on recommendations a) to d) separately from recommendation e).  This was seconded by Councillor Morse.  On being put to the vote, the amendment was lost.

 

RESOLVED: That:

 

a)     the report of the Corporate Director of Finance for the calculation of the Council Tax Base and the Business Rates Forecast be approved.

b)     in accordance with the Local Authorities (Calculation of Council Tax Base) (England) Regulations 2012 the amount calculated by the London Borough of Hillingdon as its Council Tax Base for 2018/19 shall be 99,070.

c)     the Corporate Director of Finance be authorised to submit the 2018/19 NNDR1 return to the Department of Communities & Local Government (CLG) and the Greater London Authority (GLA).

d)     the Discretionary Rate Relief Scheme for 2018/19 be approved alongside a Government-designed additional relief scheme for pubs.

e)     the amendments to the Council's local Council Tax Reduction Scheme effective from 1 April 2018, be approved in order to align the scheme with recent changes to Housing Benefit.

 

[N.B. - All Members of the Labour Group wished for their abstention from the vote to be recorded]

8.4       QUESTION SUBMITTED BY COUNCILLOR GRAHAM TO THE CABINET MEMBER FOR COMMUNITY, COMMERCE AND REGENERATION - COUNCILLOR D.MILLS:

 

"Would the Cabinet Member please provide Council with an update on this Administration's offer to purchase Uxbridge Police Station and contribute £250,000 a year towards running costs for the nextfive years, to ensure that our Police colleagues have adequate, practical and affordable facilities from which to operate?"

 

Councillor D Mills emphasised the strong working relationship that the Council had with Hillingdon police.  It was recognised that Uxbridge was the Borough's main metropolitan town centre and needed to have an accessible police station.  This had been outlined very clearly by the numerous residents and associations that had attended the MOPAC public meeting held in September 2017. 

 

The current situation was that the Council's offer had been sent to MOPAC but that, at this stage, the offer had been neither accepted nor rejected.  Lines of communication had been put in place and further dialogue was expected before the end of the month to try and progress to an outcome which would be beneficial to Hillingdon residents. 

 

The Mayor of London, had advised that the rationale behind the closure of police stations across London, which included the closure of Uxbridge, was that without the money that would be raised from the disposal of estate, there would not be enough money to fund the Metropolitan Police Service in Hillingdon or across London during 2018/2019.  Councillor D Mills noted that the proposals would not see Uxbridge police station physically close until 2020 at the earliest.  As such, funds would not be available from the sale of the site until at least 2020/21 and the only savings that had been achieved in the short term were from moving two officers from the front counter in Uxbridge to a new front counter in Hayes. 

 

Rather than being about operational efficiency, Councillor D Mills believed that the proposals enabled the Mayor of London to make a political statement about the impact of cuts in Government funding on policing.  Hillingdon residents had been behind the Council in supporting the retention of a police station with a front counter in Uxbridge. 

 

Councillor D Mills advised that Councillor Curling had stated that Hillingdon Council should scrap its plans to spend £4.5 million on saving Uxbridge's police station to prevent other services from future cuts.  However, Councillor D Mills highlighted the key services that the administration was determined to maintain and reassured Members that the Council would continue to put its residents first by working with the police force whilst also making sure that the core services that people valued were protected.

 

There was no supplementary question.

 

8.3       QUESTION SUBMITTED BY COUNCILLOR BARNES TO THE CABINET MEMBER FOR PLANNING, TRANSPORTATION & RECYCLING - COUNCILLOR BURROWS:

 

"Can the Cabinet Member please inform me how many schools and students attended the recent 'Safe Drive Stay Alive' event which was fully funded by the Administration?"

 

Councillor Burrows advised that he was passionate about Road Safety and proud that, for the past five years, the administration had fully funded the Safe Drive Stay Alive event.  This year's event had again been a great success with 1,714 pupils from 15 secondary schools participating.  Over the five years, more than 8,500 pupils had attended Safe Drive Stay Alive, with Bishopshalt School making the attendance compulsory for its students and also making it part of their citizenship lessons.  Councillor Burrows hoped that the Council would continue to fund this worthwhile event in the future. 

 

By way of a supplementary question, Councillor Barnes asked whether the Cabinet Member thought that the dedicated road safety budget and the commitment of the administration to make Hillingdon's roads safer for residents was having an effect and, if so, what evidence could be shared to support this. 

 

Councillor Burrows advised that the dedicated road safety budget was having a massive impact on the safety of roads across Hillingdon.  He, the Leader of the Council and Councillor D Mills had recently met with Transport for London's (TfL) Commissioner of Transport, Mike Brown, at the Civic Centre.  Mr Brown had talked about the Mayor for London's vision of zero tolerance approach on road safety and was impressed with the 18% reduction in accidents in the Borough in the last year.  Initiatives that had been undertaken to achieve this reduction included the Safe Drive Stay Alive campaign and the camera enforcement of school 'keep clear' markings.

 

Mr Brown had offered to see if there was anything that TfL could do to help further improve safety in the Borough.  He also noted that there were no other London boroughs that could come close to Hillingdon's performance in the past year.  The Council was now in communication with TfL about the effectiveness of having a dedicated road safety budget in place. 

 

8.5       QUESTION SUBMITTED BY COUNCILLOR KAUFFMAN TO THE LEADER OF THE COUNCIL - COUNCILLOR PUDDIFOOT:

 

"Following his statements at the last Council meeting, would the Leader please update Council on the response, or lack of response, from those responsible for funding and running the scaremongering campaign about the future of the Northolt RAF base?"

 

Councillor Puddifoot stated that the Stop Northolt campaign was being funded by supporters of Biggin Hill Airport for commercial advantage.  A professional organisation had been employed that claimed that people's minds could be changed by the way that a story was told - in this case by trying to scare Hillingdon's residents. 

 

The advent of social media had facilitated a stream of fake news stories for political or commercial advantage.  The Stop Northolt campaign had been well structured and funded and it had taken in a Labour MP, the Conservative GLA member and the Hillingdon Council Labour Group but not the Conservative administration in Hillingdon.  It was noted that the only realistic threat to the survival of Northolt as an RAF base was building a third runway at Heathrow as the airspace would be needed for Heathrow aircraft. 

 

Heathrow, in advance of a formal legal decision being made, had proposed that communities would have no specific flight path details so they would not know when, for how long or how much noise they would experience until after the decision to approve a third runway had been set in stone.  Hillingdon Council, together with the London Borough of Wandsworth, London Borough of Richmond and the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, had maintained that this approach was both unfair and unlawful and the Council would be taking robust action as appropriate

 

There was no supplementary question.

 

8.2       QUESTION SUBMITTED BY COUNCILLOR KELLY TO THE CABINET MEMBER FOR CENTRAL SERVICES, CULTURE AND HERITAGE - COUNCILLOR LEWIS:

 

"Could the Cabinet Member tell me how the visit of 12 December to Uxbridge Library by Darren Henley, the Chief Executive and Sophie Lancaster from the Arts Council of England went?"

 

Councillor Lewis had met with the Chief Executive of the Arts Council for England (ACE), Darren Henley, and Sophie Lancaster, a senior manager at ACE, to tour Uxbridge library on 12 December 2017.  They had been fascinated by the dementia table and had been briefed on the library services, the music hub, Culture Bite, Arts in Action, the Summer Reading Challenge, Hillingdon's theatres and the plans for a new museum and the new visitor centre at the Battle of Britain Bunker. 

 

It had been rewarding that, when talking about Hillingdon's libraries service and cultural offerings, external professionals such as Mr Henley and Ms Lancaster felt that what they had seen of the Borough's offering had been inspirational and by far the best that they had seen in England.  Ms Lancaster had asked Councillor Lewis to become a peer mentor through the LGA to other cultural leads across England.  Mr Henley had subsequently tweeted that Uxbridge library was a brilliant cultural beacon. 

 

Councillor Lewis noted that, at a time when neighbouring boroughs were cutting back their library services, Hillingdon had committed to rebuild one of its libraries and update the other 16 libraries across the Borough.  Through strong financial management, the Council had been able to properly finance the arts and heritage services in Hillingdon whilst encouraging officers to become the very best they could be.  Officers had wholeheartedly risen to the challenge by being forward-thinking and dynamic and making sure that Hillingdon's offering was what residents really wanted.  As such, the libraries had become community centres for residents of all ages where they could learn new skills, study, read, do yoga, hold tea dances, grow plants, fight aging and fill in online forms.  Councillor Lewis was delighted that the visit had been better than he could have thought possible and that the administration should be praised for its wholehearted commitment to the arts, culture and heritage.  He also thanked the Council officers for all the hard work and commitment that they gave to the Borough's residents throughout the year.

 

There was no supplementary question.

 

8.6       QUESTION SUBMITTED BY COUNCILLOR AHMAD-WALLANA TO THE LEADER OF THE COUNCIL - COUNCILLOR PUDDIFOOT:

 

"Would the Leader please confirm that, despite objections from the GMB trade union, the administration will continue to provide funding to support those opposing Heathrow expansion and ensure that a robust legal challenge is mounted to defend our people and our environment as and when required?"

 

Councillor Puddifoot advised that the GMB union was the third largest affiliate to the Labour Party and claimed to have one job which was to improve the pay and conditions of GMB members in the workplace.  The best way to do this would be to increase the number of GMB members in order to strengthen the union's power.  Accordingly, the GMB had been a major supporter of a third runway at Heathrow as this was seen as a way of increasing the membership, and the power, of the GMB. 

 

In December 2017, the GMB had put out a press release stating that Hillingdon Council was consulting with its employees on terms and conditions but had spent £215k employing lawyers to oppose Heathrow expansion and £602,860 on lobbying.  Councillor Puddifoot advised that the figures quoted had been selected from FOI requests that had been made by the Back Heathrow Campaign Group.  Unsurprisingly, like much of the information provided by the Back Heathrow Campaign over the years, this was disingenuous.  The first FOI request covered the period between August 2016 and August 2017 where it had been stated that the gross costs had been £215k but that, after deducting contributions from other members across Hillingdon, was £73,215.  As such, the GMB statement was 66% wrong.

 

The second figure covered all expenditure over the eight-year period from January 2007 to December 2014 and again the gross figure of £602,860 stated in the GMB release was incorrect.  Gross expenditure for the ten year period amounted to £757,078 which reduced to £587k after contributions from others were taken into account.  This amounted to a spend of twenty pence per annum for each resident of this Borough over the ten-year period.  Councillor Puddifoot believed that this was a small price to pay, even by GMB standards, to protect the Borough's residents and environments.  This protection extended to the well-being of GMB members who worked at Heathrow who should be breathing cleaner air. 

 

In September 2016, the Council had debated a motion which had supported the proposal of Gatwick as the most logical airport for increased runway capacity.  The motion had been passed despite every Labour Councillor, including those representing Heathrow Villages, abstaining - such was their commitment to defending the residents and environment that this Council represented.  Councillor Puddifoot made absolute assurances that, under a Conservative administration, Hillingdon would ensure that a robust legal challenge was mounted at the appropriate time to again defeat the expansion proposals as had happened last time.  The Council would also continue to provide financial support to residents groups and others who stood with the administration against Heathrow expansion.  The wellbeing of Hillingdon's people and its environment was what the Council was here to protect and it would not be influenced by either a lack of support from the Labour Group or the GMB.

 

There was no supplementary question.

 

8.1       QUESTION SUBMITTED BY COUNCILLOR BRIDGES TO THE CABINET MEMBER FOR EDUCATION & CHILDREN'S SERVICES - COUNCILLOR SIMMONDS:

 

"Can the Cabinet Member update Council on what the most recent league tables published about primary school performance tell us about this service to our younger residents?"

 

Councillor Simmonds advised that it was very important to start by reminding Members that schools were very much autonomous institutions.  Head teachers and the Governing Bodies, on which a number of Councillors served, provided the leadership for education in all of Hillingdon's schools.  The Borough was fortunate that it had a thriving community which contained many excellent and outstanding school leaders, including a number who had taken on responsibilities beyond the borders of the school that they started out with.  They had taken that expertise to other schools to help more children to enjoy the chances that everyone would like them to have. 

 

At a time when the resources that the Council had at its disposal to support the improvement of schools were being ever more constrained, having that goodwill and that drive amongst school head teachers was incredibly important. 

 

The Government had again changed the way in which data on school performance was published, both for primary and secondary schools.  Traditionally, publishing the raw attainment figures that were achieved by children in schools in different types of externally validated exams tended to flatter those schools that had a relatively prosperous catchment area.  As such, it would not have been surprising to see that schools in quite a number of wards that were relatively affluent had primary schools that came out very high on those particular tables.  Clearly, this was a great achievement and a good start in life for the children involved but what it did not illustrate was the work that had been undertaken for those children whose home and family circumstances may not have been as good.  As such, the shift to looking at what schools were doing to progress value-added measures had resulted in the publication of a number of additional league tables on the Department for Education website.  These had been analysed by the Education Policy Institute and had resulted in a number of recent BBC articles which had highlighted the fact that Hillingdon was one of the top boroughs in the country.  In fact, Hillingdon had been highlighted as one of 16 boroughs where a very large, and growing, proportion of younger residents had access to schools where the value-added was extremely high.

 

Councillor Simmonds highlighted that St Matthews School in Yiewsley, Cowley St Laurence School and St Martin's School in West Drayton, which had been built by the Council to serve the local community, were all part of the Frays Academy Trust.  They continued to show outstanding progress for children who may not have had the advantages of children from wealthier areas. 

 

West Drayton Academy had recently become part of a multi-academy trust, the Park Federation Academy Trust which had grown from Cranford Primary School with the support of the Council.  Through its leadership of schools such as the new Lake Farm Park Academy, which had been built by the Council, the Federation had been providing outstanding education for children who might not have walked through the school door with the best chance in life. 

 

Councillor Simmonds noted that, whilst no education system was ever going to be perfect, he believed the head teachers of Hillingdon's schools deserved a pat on the back for the doing such a fantastic job for those children.  The work undertaken by many school governors, and indeed many of the parents who got involved in ensuring that school their child attended offered the widest possible range of opportunities, should be commended. 

 

Councillor Simmonds believed that it was also important to recognise that, as an administration, a key priority was to provide a good quality school place for every child and to move towards the higher end of those league tables where children from all backgrounds gained access to education that ensured they had a good chance of getting on in life.  This was something which the Council should be proud of. 

 

There was no supplementary question.