Harrow Park Visitors Lost in Wilderness

Half of Harrow’s parks are so overgrown and neglected that Harrow Council has declared them a wilderness.

Answering a Freedom of Information request from HaHa Harrow, Harrow Council has revealed that of the 49 open spaces designated as parks in the borough, 22 need serious attention under its “no more wilderness parks” campaign.

These are the parks the new Council leader, Miss Susan Hall, told the Harrow Times were “so overgrown they might be a delight to adventurer Bear Grylls but no one else”.

Although the campaign to combat the undergrowth repeatedly gets central billing in Harrow Council publicity material, we haven’t yet found any of the 22 parks Miss Hall declared were “no secret” and the source of many complaints from her constituents.

Since they are “no secret” and represent nearly 50% of all parks, they should not be hard to find. Every other park in Harrow must be one of the impenetrable ones.

Dealing with the “wilderness parks” is a big issue for the new administration, becoming its first major project at the insistence of Miss Hall and diverting money away from a fund designed to help vulnerable residents cope with the transition to the latest restrictions on benefits payments. Miss Hall’s Conservative administration has decided that rehabilitating “wilderness parks” is a greater social priority.

Our FoI request, made over a month ago, asked the Council which of the parks had been designated wilderness. We are still waiting to find out.

Lowlands Recreation Ground Regeneration Project

Welcome to December, and the much trumpeted revamp of Harrow’s new town park, Lowlands Recreation Ground, has little to show for the nearly £1.5 million invested in it.

The signage on the hideous hoarding surrounding the once open space gushes implausibly of “breathtaking landscaping” which “should completed by December 2013”. When it was announced, the project was due to be opened to the public by August 2013.

In fact, work now appears finally to be starting on the site with the activation of two bulldozers.

In the meantime, the eyesore hoarding has been up for months, blighting the area and cutting off shortcuts to the station entrance. Ironic, since the Harrow council website promises: “New pathways across the park and an extension into Station Approach will improve access for everyone that uses Harrow-on-the-Hill station”.

Lowlands Recreation Ground is never going to “bring the town centre alive” as the council claims, because it is not in the town centre, can’t be seen from the town centre, and offers nothing to those using the town centre. In any case, for lovers of greenery, there is a much better and more used open space across the road.

Harrow town centre is St Anne’s Road and Station Road. Nobody shopping in those streets is going to walk all the way to Harrow on the Hill station, climb the stairs, walk through the station, and descend the stairs on the other side, in order to take a break from shopping to relax in the new Lowlands Park. And then climb back up the stairs etc. to go back to the shops. The very idea is beyond ridiculous.

This huge white elephant is another indulgence of public money which should be being sensibly invested in improved services.

Lowlands should be re-assigned as a cultural and educational site for an extension to the college (permission for which was granted in 2006) and for the erection of a destination building such as a decent main public library, which is desperately lacking in Harrow..

Harrow’s “Hall the Horrible” takes out the Chief Executive

Harrow’s unelected leader, Susan Hall, made clear from the off that she intended to imbed her boot mark on the Council in the short time she has available before next year’s council elections.

Her first objective was to secure her position and dispense with opposition. Her relations with the Chief Executive, Michael Lockwood had been “difficult” in the past, so she lost no time announcing that he would be dispensed with.

According to the council, the decision would be taken in 30 days, after a consultation, but no-one was able to say who was being consulted.

Michael Lockwood was said to be considering his options, which made clear enough that he thought he was on the way out.

With only one day of the consultation left, the Harrow Observer has learned that he was the only person involved in the “consultation”. 

Hall’s latest idea for swift policy implementation without involving the voters is thus matched in its audacity by her consultation that consulted no-one.

Who's the big bad wolf that runs Harrow libraries?

Hardly has the ink dried on Harrow Council’s outsourcing agreement with John Laing Integrated Services (JLIS) to run the borough’s libraries, when news arrives that JLIS, along with its Harrow libraries contract, has been swallowed by Carillon for £65 million.

Library staff have not yet had time to get used to their John Laing uniforms and email addresses but will shortly be issued with new ones.

Carillon claims “a sector leading capability in delivering sustainable solutions” but its hard to see how changing uniforms benefits staff or customers. At the very least, the cost of corporate vanity must be paid for by sacrificing other expenditure.

The main evidence of JLIS’s contribution to the library service since taking over in September (apart from new staff uniforms) is the denial of online access to the library catalogue and library accounts for several weeks, while it upgrades the system. The Harrow website says only that there will be “some minor disruption to subscribers for a limited time”.

Carillon has bought JLIS to widen its capabilities by acquiring sector experience it did not possess. This is somewhat ironic because John Laing Integrated Services itself had little experience in the library sector when it secured the Harrow contract. It had previously only managed libraries in Hounslow.

Thus Harrow libraries have entered a new era. The era of the blind leading the blind. Up a blind alley.

The way this apparently works is that the private sector company takes over dedicated public sector staff, lets them show the company how to run libraries, and then progressively makes them redundant. The libraries are restaffed with poorly paid, unqualified workers, led by one of the “sector leading contractor” managers who learned on the job from the people who would be pushed out. It’s called restructuring.

Harrow library staff were unceremoniously moved from public sector security to private sector uncertainty, and have now been moved on again. It’s how money is made. The cynical nature of this disposal of public sector business is underlined by the statement from John Laing PLC, of which John Laing Integrated Services (JLIS) was a part:

"JLIS has made significant progress over the last few years, but it no longer fits within our core strategy.”

It goes with saying that they knew this when the contract was signed with Harrow.

Susan Hall takes over Harrow

In her speech, Hall justified her challenge to the leadership of Thaya Idaikkadar with the assertion that the 9 members of the current cabinet were overstretched and the evidence of this was that residents keep getting in touch with her to say that the streets are not clean enough.

This somewhat thin argument was enough for the Tory sycophants behind her. One of whom gave a supporting speech describing her in terms that made her sound like the Virgin Mary.

On the other side, the Labour David Perry had little to say for himself, but simply said that Labour would be supporting the motion to unseat Idaikkadar. Looking like a cross between a builder and a used car salesman in a tight suit, Perry got little articulate support from his team either.

A debate never happened, and so directly to the vote.

The evenly balanced main parties dutifully voted for their leaders. The sole LibDem  and independents abstained, with the exception of James Bond who voted for democracy and therefore David Perry as representing the Labour Party which had won power at the last election.

Surprisingly therefore, it was not the independents but the splinter Labour group which held the casting vote, and they (with one abstention) voted for Susan Hall. Such a determined display of political suicide may never before have been witnessed in the Council chamber.

And thus the Conservatives have taken the reigns in Harrow without the need for an election. Presumably the voters won’t mind, so long as they get cleaner streets.

The Lady Mayor was in combative mood as she presided over this meeting of the Harrow Council which voted away a large part of the constitution before the main event, in front of a noisy public gallery which included vociferous persons from outside of the borough and at least two people in joke wigs.

To add to the zoo-like conditions, the Lady Mayor called for a vote from the audience too, Any Questions style, but sadly there were no cameras present to record this inauspicious farce for posterity. It was a colourful evening that was funny in a tragic sort of way.

Whatever the voters come to  think of Susan Hall’s leadership, Labour have ensured that they are unelectable following the still very acrimonious split in their group. And the result of the Hall coup d'état will be that even fewer people will bother to vote at the next election. 

Bananas democracy at its best.

Bananas Democracy - Harrow Style

Harrow voters, locked out of their public toilets, are also locked out of the political process.

Tonight they will have to wait on the sidelines while their councillors argue and vote on whether the Conservative Susan Hall should be allowed to wrest the leadership from Thaya Idaikkadar.

It would be a travesty of democracy if squabbling Labourites allowed her to snatch the top slot, despite the public having voted for a Labour majority.

Harrow’s “strong leader” model of government is ideal for the strident self-publicist Hall who would be able to appoint Cabinet and make all the key decisions herself.

She has long had her sights on the leadership and democracy is not going to stand in her way.

Her challenge for the leadership is on the agenda of tonight’s (Monday, 16^th September) meeting in the Civic Centre Council Chamber. Be there, or don’t be there. There’s nothing voters can do about it.

Harrow humans are less important than Harrow dogs

Hundreds of people use Harrow Recreation Ground, the popular park  on the edge of the shopping centre, to play sport, walk, sit, and picnic every weekend. On a sunny Bank Holiday weekend the numbers multiply. Many people spend many hours in the park. But they have to go home if they need to go to the toilet once.

The absence of such a facility for such a popular destination is shameful.The more so, because a decent facility was built at great cost. But it has been locked for months.

For dogs there is no such problem. Unlike the human users of the park  who may be "caught out" but have nowhere to go, dogs are taken there specifically to exercise their bowels. And unlike the humans who may be desperate, the dogs can take their time and choose their spot. While for humans there is no place, dogs can use the whole place.

While there is nowhere to change a nappy, nowhere for a child to do the necessary, nowhere for older people who may be needy, dogs can stop as often as they please before their owners usher them home to frolic in their unsoiled garden.

While the law prescribes that owners pick it up, (not the urine of course, urine is fine, so long as it is not from a human), that does not clean the soiled area. If anything it makes it more dangerous because there is less to see. And leaving aside the obvious unpleasantness of soiled footwear and clothing, a curious toddler's hand to mouth contact with faecally contaminated soil can lead to blindness and even death.

Despite this, dog owners in the leafy borough, most of whom have gardens, are encouraged to use the parks as dog toilets with the incentive of a special collection service for their dog deposits. The £35,000 that this costs every year is not being spent on caring services for the elderly and the infirm, and is coming from the pockets of all Harrow taxpayers.

This is barking mad.