Chiswick Deserves Better: It's Time to Get Back to the Basics

Chiswick Gunnersbury councillor Vickram Grewal reports back

Cllr Vickram Grewal

July 11, 2026

It is an incredible honour to have been elected as one of your Conservative councillors for Gunnersbury. Listening to your concerns and acting on them is my absolute priority, which is why I hold my monthly ward surgery from 12:00 to 13:00 on the fourth Saturday of every month at Chiswick Library. I encourage anyone needing assistance or wishing to raise a local issue to come along for a face-to-face discussion.

Since taking office, one thing has struck me almost immediately: residents aren’t asking for miracles. They are simply asking the Council to get the basics right.

People want cleaner streets, safer neighbourhoods, and thriving local businesses. Most of all, they want an administration that puts residents first. Unfortunately, under the Hounslow Labour Party, those core priorities have been completely lost.

Crime Must Be Taken Seriously

Whenever I speak to residents and local shopkeepers, crime dominates the conversation. Shoplifting, anti-social behaviour, and a visible sense that offenders operate with impunity are actively damaging confidence in our High Road. Our local police officers do an outstanding job under enormous pressure, but resources are stretched thin.

That is exactly why Hounslow should be embracing modern technology. Live facial recognition, used lawfully and proportionately, has already proven highly effective at catching prolific criminals across London. If we are serious about protecting local businesses and making Chiswick safer, we must use every tool at our disposal. Passing the buck is no longer an option.

Residents Must Come Before Festival Organisers

Gunnersbury Park is one of West London’s greatest treasures, but under the current setup, it often feels like local residents’ quality of life is being traded off for Council revenue.

The recent formal review of the park’s premises licence—rightly driven by the Gunnersbury Park Garden Estate Residents Association—laid bare what local people are living with. Residents report amplified, low-frequency bass that literally vibrates their walls, late-night anti-social behaviour, blocked driveways, and a park effectively closed off for festival setup for over 100 days a year.

As Chiswick Conservative councillors have consistently highlighted during this review process, ad-hoc adjustments by organisers are simply not enough. We need a permanently tightened licensing framework that reduces sound limits and implements independent real-time monitoring. We must strike a fair balance between economic benefits and protecting the peace of the people who actually live here.

Supporting Our High Street: Chiswick Conservatives Will Always Back Our Businesses

Few things define the character of Chiswick better than our historic riverside pubs like The Bull’s Head, The City Barge, and The Bell & Crown. The hospitality sector has endured a brutal few years, battling soaring energy costs, rising employment taxes, and high inflation. The absolute last thing they need is aggressive bureaucracy.

Many residents were rightly furious when longstanding outdoor seating, enjoyed peacefully for decades, suddenly became the target of heavy-handed Council enforcement. While public pressure forced a pause, the heavy-handed handling of the dispute—including the ridiculous escalation of a police visit to a local campaigner—attracted national ridicule.

Let me be absolutely clear: Chiswick’s Conservative councillors will always back our independent local businesses. We are here to champion them, not create obstacles that threaten local jobs.

Realigning the Borough's Priorities

Too often, the Hounslow Labour Party's enforcement priorities seem completely upside down.

Take traffic management. This heavy-handed, revenue-first approach is visible right across our ward, particularly with the recent installation of yellow junction boxes at Barrowgate Road and Sutton Court Road. Camera enforcement started immediately with absolutely no warning-letter grace period, leaving local motorists stunned by the total lack of proper consultation.

This isn’t about road safety; it is a cynical cash grab by a Labour administration desperate to plug a multi-million-pound black hole—a deficit driven significantly by their own mismanagement of the council-owned Lampton Group, which posted massive losses.

Worse still is the rank hypocrisy. While thousands of hard-working Chiswick residents are stung by Labour's aggressive traffic traps, recent figures revealed that taxpayers' money has been used to quietly bail out the Council's own employees—paying for dozens of parking tickets (PCNs) given to Council drivers.

It reinforces a toxic local reality under Labour: it is one rule for them, and another rule for the rest of us.

This is part of a shameful pattern of double standards. We all remember when the media revealed that a former Labour councillor parked his Lamborghini in a disabled space without a blue badge, swiftly followed by another local Labour councillor doing the exact same thing. They only paid the equivalent of a fine after they were caught red-handed.

While frontline services face severe cuts, the Labour leadership sees no issue with spending public money on frivolous un-receipted expenses and paying off their own parking fines.

Common-Sense Control

This matches a wider pattern of a Labour Party that has run out of ideas. Under their watch, Hounslow remains one of the worst local authorities in London for environmental offences like fly-tipping.

When I chaired the Housing and Environment Scrutiny Committee in 2018-2019, we recommended a tough, pragmatic ‘name and shame’ policy to target chronic, serial offenders with the full force of the law. Instead, the Labour administration chooses soft targets. A shocking example highlighted by the BBC saw a hard-working resident slapped with a ridiculous £1,000 fine simply for placing a single cardboard envelope neatly on top of a full communal bin.

Penalising normal residents for Labour's own failure to provide basic public services is an absolute joke. It is a prime example of why Hounslow desperately needs common-sense, pragmatic Conservative control.

Local politics does not need to be complicated. If we keep our streets clean, back our High Road, make our neighbourhoods safer, listen to residents before making major decisions, and spend public money wisely, we will build a stronger Chiswick for everyone.

That is the approach I will continue to fight for as your councillor. I will always listen, I will always be accessible, and I will never stop standing up for Gunnersbury and Chiswick.

Cllr Vickram Grewal  

vickram.grewal@hounslow.gov.uk  

07904 184099

DEMOCRACY: DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

Anyone can attend public meetings of the council. Hounslow House is fully accessible. Hounslow Central tube station is not step-free. The 237 bus stops nearby. Parking in local roads is limited.

Principal meetings are broadcast live on the Council’s YouTube channel

Cabinet : 14 July

Borough Council : 21 July at 7.30pm

CONSERVATIVE COUNCILLORS CONTACT INFO

Chiswick Gunnersbury ward

Cllr Joanna Biddolph joanna.biddolph@hounslow.gov.uk  07976 703446

Cllr Vickram Grewal  vickram.grewal@hounslow.gov.uk   07904 184099

Cllr Ron Mushiso ron.mushiso@hounslow.gov.uk  07976 702887

Chiswick Homefields ward

Cllr Michael Denniss  Michael.Denniss@hounslow.gov.uk

Cllr Jack Emsley jack.emsley@hounslow.gov.uk  07977 396017

Cllr Linden Grigg  Linden.Grigg@hounslow.gov.uk   07779 436258

Chiswick Riverside ward

Cllr Gabriella Giles  gabriella.giles@hounslow.gov.uk  07966 270823