One Year In - A Newly Elected Local Councillor's Busy Life

Local Conservative Party group leader Joanna Biddolph writes about her new role

It’s a year since the nine of us were elected – three of us re-elected, six of us brand new – and what a year it’s been. I tell everyone who asks that I don’t think anyone could have described it in words that would have meant anything.

Overwhelming is one but understanding what it means in practice would have been impossible. Interesting? Of course. Busy? Unimaginably so. Worthwhile? Without doubt.

Residents and others don’t always know that being a councillor is not meant to be a full time job. It can take up as much time as being employed but it’s supposed to be fitted in around work. And the majority of us do work. An analysis by First, one of many local government related magazines that flop onto our actual or digital doormats, recently revealed that councillors spend, on average, 22 hours a week on council business the largest chunk of which (eight hours) is on council meetings. Some of us do more than that in an interesting interpretation of work-life balance. There isn’t much balance.

I’ve now come off the planning committee, only partly because it meets so frequently and can involve two days of scrutinising applications and visiting sites, not to mention long meetings. The record meeting end time this year was 23.47 and how lucky am I to live on the Piccadilly Line which runs till well after midnight midweek. We don’t all have such convenient journeys home from Hounslow House, the council’s shiny new office.

Being on the overview and scrutiny committee is illuminating. It’s totally free of political combat – we are all on it to hold the council to account, to ask critical friend questions and dig deep to see where weaknesses are, or which needs aren’t being met, and to break through PR puffery, as I call it. Having said that, all the new councillors on this important committee have said it’s taken us time to find our investigative streaks while getting to know and trust each other, and to understand the process and the effects of various options open to us. This is despite excellent training from the national external specialist Centre for Public Scrutiny.

This year, I’ve sat on task and finish groups (a term I struggle with – it’s incomprehensible local authority gobbledygook, isn’t it?) interrogating the council’s record on fly tipping (Turnham Green ward is host to the borough’s second worst fly tip and thanks go to Hounslow Highways for meeting its commitment to remove fly tipping within 24 hours of it being reported) and the council’s approach to contract management.

Cllr Patrick Barr, on the health and adults care scrutiny panel, has considered A&E targets, health integration and the role voluntary groups can play in prevention and early intervention. Cllr Ron Mushiso, on the children and young people’s scrutiny panel, has looked at knife carrying, increasing apprenticeships and enhancing provision for looked after children. Watch out for the committee’s official recommendations on these and other issues. If you think any aspect of the council’s work should be scrutinised, please let me know. We meet soon to discuss priorities.

It’s too early to know if every municipal year is the same but our first started with fewer committee meetings (evenings filled instead by an onerous and intensive training course) building to a crescendo with my diary full of council-related meetings every midweek evening, and visiting residents or following up their enquiries over the weekend, for several weeks in a row.

Now, at the start of our second year, the pace has slowed but I’m expecting it to build to a sprint. New commitments include councillor development training. I hope we’ll be asked for ideas of what is needed. If we aren’t, I’ll be offering suggestions. To be Rumsfeldian, we now know the known unknowns we wished had been uncovered when we were new – and we expect more unknown unknowns to come. All thanks to residents for raising issues that keep us inquisitive and enquiring. It has been surprising, and pleasing, discovering how much happens in Chiswick that enables us to contribute to discussions, about issues affecting other parts of the borough, with knowledge and first-hand experience.

Some wards are entirely residential without the extraordinary mix we have, here in Chiswick, of big international business, light industrial, retail, education, health, adult and child care, housing, poverty, leisure, open spaces, the threat of big development as well as the standard planning stuff of extensions, pollution, litter, recycling, waste, conservation areas, the river, major transport routes, rat runs and CS9. The list is exhausting, if not exhaustive.

Invitations flow in. We can’t accept them all and there will always be clashes with committees and allowing time for having a life outside the Hounslow bubble. Seven faiths or denominations are represented in Turnham Green ward and we are all aware that, although we were elected here in Chiswick, we have a wider responsibility to speak up for residents throughout Hounslow whatever their faith or none. Attending a community iftar last week, sharing the daily celebration of breaking the fast during Ramadan, was a first for me and deeply impressive. The welcome at the Hounslow Jamia Masjid was warm, inclusive, embracing, generous, kind and inspired. I kept my speech very short which suited everyone. My only regret … the choice of scarf to wear on my head. I learned it’s essential to wear one with texture; slithery will slither, as mine did repeatedly.

Left to right: Hounslow councillors Komal Chaudri, Javed Akhunzada, Afzaal Kiani, Sam Hearn, Hina Mir, Joanna Biddolph and Khulique Malik.

And now I have added another time-eater as leader of the Conservative group (the cake I baked for our first group meeting, held in the afternoon, went down well, the houmous made for the second, an evening meeting, not so much; everyone loves the Indian nibbles Cllr Ranjit Gill brings).

One immediate change is to this blog which will not be written every week by the same councillor. Instead the nine of us will take it in turns, exposing the full range of what we do. Divvying up our workload in other ways is crucial, too. If your instinct is to turn to long-standing councillors can I ask that you give new councillors a chance to shine? We are all here to provide a public service.

Subjects on my desk and at my finger tips this week
Traffic gridlock made worse by the closure of Hammersmith Bridge. Working with our ward police tackling shoplifting. Mitigation plans to reduce the impact on residents and businesses of Lovebox/Citadel in Gunnersbury Park. Offensive graffiti (four words, collectively best described as paying homage to the EU) it was removed very swiftly (thanks Hounslow Highways). A contentious planning application (I am now free to help, no longer constrained by being on the committee). Warning businesses of the risks of their land being used for fly tipping. Deterring drug dealing. A dangerous road junction. Alleged illegal trading. Parking infringements and enforcement. Visiting a resident foxed by conservation area guidelines. Nuisance neighbours. Supporting independent traders and continuing the work of the Chiswick Shops Task Force.

Dates for diaries
• Community litter pick, A4 underpasses: Sunday, 9th June at 2pm (contact Cllr Ron Mushiso)
• Chiswick Area Forum: Tuesday, 25th June 2019 (papers will be published a week before here)
• Chiswick surgeries: Every Saturday from 9.30am to 10.30am at Chiswick library, upstairs in a private room.
• Gunnersbury surgeries: First Saturday of the month from 10am to 11am at The Triangle Club, The Ridgeway, W3 8LN, usually a group discussion but privacy can be arranged.

Councillor Joanna Biddolph
Email: joanna.biddolph@hounslow.gov.uk
Phone: 07976 703446
Twitter: @JoannaBiddolph

Turnham Green ward

June 3, 2019