Ever-decreasing Democracy, Ever-increasing Fines and a Sense of Balance

Chiswick Gunnersbury councillor Joanna Biddolph reports back

Cllr Joanna Biddolph

July 17, 2026

Borough Council – what's the point?

Meetings of the full borough council disrupt the day-to-day life of a local councillor, forcing us away from responding to residents’ concerns, and bothering about improving our wards, while we dissect motions, write amendments, consider responses, and read papers looking for gaps and traps.

Sometimes, the value of all that effort is zero. I had prepared four three-minute contributions, including one to speak for our motion on fly tipping and one to speak against Labour’s amendment to our motion, only not to be called to speak on either.

Even the records are frustrating. This time, the agenda included the annual reports of the overview and scrutiny committee and its three panels. Usually, panels meet to agree the content of their annual reports but, in Hounslow’s world of ever-decreasing democracy, it appeared on the agenda unseen beforehand by me. I felt I had to speak about the utter pointlessness of being a member last year. I’ve written before about how the topic – land ownership – was imposed on us from ... well, it’s not exactly clear who it was but there was no budging. We spent a year considering the regulatory enforcement team’s need for systems to identify land ownership and share the information internally. Isn’t this just day-to-day work? It was obviously a diversionary tactic, to stop us from scrutinising policy.

Attendance at meetings was embarrassingly low. At one, it took me 50 minutes to get there; 50 minutes to get back; we met for 38 minutes, starting late and stringing out the discussion. Yet the annual report seemed satisfyingly chunky. Why? It included five pages on how to develop recommendations. Meanwhile, as I said in the chamber: residents continue to experience terrible overcrowding, shocking damp and mould, lack of family housing, poor maintenance, bodged repairs, inefficient contractors, and money wasted on unnecessary work. Thankfully, the panel will be looking in depth at housing this year.

More fines for not fly tipping

Still, the land ownership project should lead to more fines for fly tipping though let’s hope not for people who have not fly tipped. I’ve had another flurry of requests to help reverse these unjust fines, from businesses with commercial waste contracts who put their waste in designated bins for which they pay hefty fees, but apparently also at the same time placing one piece of cardboard, with a label identifying it belongs to them, under a nearby tree for which they then receive a hefty fine. A resident experienced similarly. He would have had to go out of his way to fly tip rather than walk a few yards to place the piece of cardboard in the appropriate bin at his block of flats. Yet there it was, on the pavement, generating an aggressive letter demanding £1,000 or see you in court.

The legislation is based on a presumption of guilt, as the explanation from the regulatory enforcement team’s revenue-raising contractor APCOA, revealed: “Please note that when waste is found deposited unlawfully and can be directly linked to an individual or household through identifying information, we are entitled to take enforcement action. In this case, the evidence obtained included material bearing your details, which is why the FPN was issued”. There does not need to be evidence of someone dumping the waste; it just needs to be found.

Whose policy is it anyway?

Labour is busy claiming the moral high ground again, as if its ideas of free bulky waste collections and community skip days, are all its own. In fact, when Cllr Vickram Grewal and I were on the housing and environment scrutiny panel in our first year as councillors (2018-2019) we recommended that the council review the cost of this service as the fixed fee for up to five items was off-putting to people with only one thing to get rid of. We were told we could not tell the cabinet member what we thought the price should be, if any. It’s only taken six years for the point to sink in.

On community skips, we Conservatives included big skip days in our 2022 local council election manifesto and in our 2026 manifesto. We had pinched the idea from Conservative Wandsworth council. In the chamber on Tuesday, Liberal Democrat councillor Roger Crouch said it was first used by his former council: Richmond. We are both right. Wandsworth and Richmond share several services including waste management. Now, its success depends on the details and how easy it will be to reach the big skips.

How many potholes does a councillor’s allowance fix?

Having agreed, five or six years ago, that Hounslow would peg its councillor allowances in the middle of the independent panel’s recommended ranges for each role, increasing or not each year in line with staff pay, Labour got greedy this year and proposed large hikes. See the comparisons here.

Our position on non-jobs (requiring little if any work, useful for securing support in internal Labour party wrangles) remains the same: the six cabinet assistant roles should go as should the seven vice-chairs of area forums. I have a tradition of measuring allowances to the number of potholes they would fill. Abolishing these 13 allowances would save £100,500. That’s 1,812 potholes fixed (based on 2024-2025 costs, as published by ALARM, the Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance survey report).

Chiswick Post Office

Thank you to everyone who signed the petition for a stand-alone full-service post office in Chiswick. After the petition reached 2,000 signatures last week, I wrote to Post Office Ltd for the second time, urging a positive decision and asking about the truth of the rumour that it had measured-up Robert Dyas and ordered furniture before its own consultation had ended. I’d have thought that, after the Horizon scandal, brilliantly dramatised in Mr Bates vs The Post Office, it would want to respond positively to a large community that is full of praise for the current postmasters, and wanting the maximum that Post Office Ltd could deliver. Please do keep signing to discourage bad news.

Excited for democracy

After eight years of being a group of 10 Conservative councillors against 52 Labour councillors, the shift to 17 of us and 13 other opposition councillors has brought excitement to debates and decisions and a better balance on committees such as planning. On which note, if you have been interested in the five-year blanket application for festivals in Gunnersbury Park, it is on the agenda of the planning committee on 6th August.

Councillor Joanna Biddolph

Chiswick Gunnersbury ward

joanna.biddolph@hounslow.gov.uk

07976 703446

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

Planning Committee : 6 August at 7pm

Overview and Scrutiny Committee : 1 September at 7pm

Audit and Governance Committee : 2 September at 7pm

Planning Committee : 3 September at 7pm

Chiswick Area Forum : 16 September from 6.30pm

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