The meeting discussed the launch of a new online platform for residents to engage with the council, the state of several local projects on the Area Forum Action Plan, and issues raised by residents during the open forum. Councillor Gurmail Lal, the Chair of the meeting, informed attendees that the next meeting of the Forum would be on Thursday 27 March 2025.

Launch of new online resident engagement platform

The Council officer responsible for the Heston and Cranford Area Forum, Thomas Allan, took the opportunity to give residents an update on the new Let's Talk Hounslow online platform, which was first presented at the previous meeting. He explained that the website had been designed to be very basic, with minimal features. He said:

It's highly likely that there's stuff on there that might be missing or might be better if it were done differently and so we're kind of relying on people in the forum and others to keep using it and there's a function there that you can tell us what we need to do better to help us grow it and evolve it so it works for residents in the long run.

Councillor Gurmail Lal welcomed the new platform, saying:

I think uh early on we were quite clear about our intentions in this area forum to make sure that the issues that are brought to our attention by residents um they don't get lost in ether and they're logged somewhere there's a digital trail and they're followed up so i'm glad to see that this this is now taking a firm shape and footing

He added that it was his hope that the other area forums in the borough would follow suit in launching their own versions of the website. The website can be accessed at talk.hounslow.gov.uk.

Area Forum Action Plan update

Cranford Ward

Councillor Vickram Grewal, speaking on behalf of Cranford ward, gave an update on the progress that has been made on the three items on the Area Forum Action Plan that relate to his ward.

Congestion at the A312/High Street junction in Cranford

Councillor Grewal reported that Transport for London (TfL) had adjusted the traffic signals at the junction to improve the flow of traffic and reduce congestion and waiting times. He said:

TfL have adjusted traffic signals to improve flow reduce weight times and minimize congestion in the right turn lane

Parking issues along Barkley Avenue, Way Avenue and Bass Road

Councillor Grewal reported that, after discussions with local residents and TfL, it had been agreed to implement a three-pronged approach to parking issues in this area.

1. Extending parking restrictions to apply seven days a week.
2. Reducing the maximum parking time from one hour to 30 minutes, with no return within one hour.
3. Moving the start of the parking bay on Way Avenue by five metres to improve junction clearance and traffic flow.

Antisocial behaviour in Meadowbank Alleyway

Councillor Grewal reported that a number of measures had been taken in response to reports of antisocial behaviour in Meadowbank Alleyway.

1. Fencing had been installed to deter street drinkers.
2. The frequency of street patrols and joint action days had been increased.
3. Parking restrictions had been introduced, especially during Friday prayers.
4. Street cleansing had been increased to address fly-tipping.
5. CCTV had been installed to monitor and deter antisocial behaviour.

Heston West ward

Lack of Children’s Playground or Play Facilities on the Brabazon Estate

The Chair of the meeting, Councillor Gurmail Lal, provided an update on the lack of a children's play area on the Brabazon Estate. He explained that the Council was planning to launch a consultation with residents later in the year.

The Council will be launching a consultation later this year to gather residents’ views on the creation of a children’s playground on Brabazon Open Space. This will be open to residents of Brabazon Estate as well as the neighbouring Norman Crescent estate.

Councillor Lal added that residents would be given a variety of ways to participate in the consultation, including online and paper surveys, in-person consultation events, and drop-in sessions at Brabazon Community Centre.

Fly tipping on the alleyway off De Havilland Road

Councillor Lal reported that the alleyway off De Havilland Road (behind the Brabazon shopping parade), which had previously been a hotspot for fly-tipping, had been cleared and the gate sealed off. He encouraged residents to report any further instances of fly-tipping via the Fix My Street app.

Encampments on Brabazon Open Space

Councillor Lal reported that boulders had been installed around the perimeter of Brabazon Open Space to prevent unauthorised vehicles from accessing the site. He said:

The Council’s Parks Team have installed boulders around the perimeter of the open space on the Brabazon estate to prevent any unauthorised vehicles accessing this space in the future.

Issues behind Vicarage Farm Road shopping parade

Councillor Lal reported that, following the previous meeting, a site visit had been conducted with councillors, officers and residents to discuss the ongoing issues in the area behind the Vicarage Farm Road shopping parade. He told attendees that an action plan had been developed to address the key issues.

Heston East ward

Dangerous driving on Heston Road

Councillor Lal reported that, while the primary focus of the traffic survey conducted on Heston Road in June was pedestrian crossings, vehicle speeds had also been recorded. He said that the average speed recorded was between 18 and 22 mph, which meets the Department for Transport’s criteria for a 20 mph speed limit with signage alone.

Area-wide issues

Adequacy of waste provision / frequency of waste collection at HMOs and flats above shops

Councillor Lal gave an update on the adequacy of waste provision and frequency of waste collection in the ward. He explained that the Council contractor responsible for waste collection, Recycling 360, had completed the mid-year grit bin cleaning programme in June. He said:

Hounslow Highways completed the mid-year grit bin cleaning programme in June, with one more cleansing scheduled before the end of the year.

He added that the Council had noticed an increase in instances of anti-social behaviour related to waste, with some residents placing inappropriate items in grit bins. He said that leaflets and advisory letters would be circulated to residents in the worst-affected areas.

Councillor Lal said that the Council would assess the waste provision needs of Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMOs) on a case-by-case basis. He encouraged residents with concerns about inadequate waste provision to contact the Council via email at Recycling@hounslow.gov.uk.

Cranford Community Hubs

Elliott Brooks, the Director of Communities at Hounslow Council, gave a presentation on the Council's plans to develop community hubs in the borough.

The Community Hubs initiative was also about maximising the use of existing buildings and assets, as well as facilitating a range of activities and service provision at different times across the week, not just on weekdays.

He explained that the Council's preferred option was to move Cranford Library into the existing sports hall at the Meadowbank Adult Education Centre on High Street. The move would allow the Council to expand the range of services on offer at the site, as well as extending the opening hours.

Several residents raised concerns about the proposals, including the loss of the existing Cranford Library building and the impact on parking in the area. In response to a question about the future of the existing Cranford Library building, Mr Brooks said that the site would be vacated and its future use reviewed under the Council's Asset Strategy. In response to concerns about the impact of the move on parking in the area, Mr Brooks acknowledged that the increased parking provision at Meadowbank would help to ease parking congestion issues for local residents.

The Chair of the meeting, Councillor Gurmail Lal, thanked Mr Brooks for his presentation and encouraged residents to submit their suggestions for the services they would like to see at the community hub.

Open Forum

A wide range of issues were raised by residents during the Open Forum, including:

• The Council’s Pension Fund

  One resident raised a question about the Council’s Pension Fund. They said:

  i'm going to raise an issue today which is not directly related to the green greening issues that we are so concerned about. we have benefited in the last year from a group of volunteers refugees from the iranian community they have been tremendous absolutely fantastic one of the issues though that's arisen since their stay here is when they are given leave to remain they are then homeless they have nowhere to go and i'd like to raise a question with you i don't expect an answer now but i'd like it to be recorded so we can come back to it on another occasion what do we do with refugees that have leave to remain they have nowhere to go their activities and their struggle really begins once they have leave to remain and they have to leave the hotels and there are several hotels in this area which are looking after them so that's my question what do we do for refugees that have leave to remain and have to find their own way in the community

  In response, Councillor Lal said:

  this this issue is a long-standing issue and i think it's incumbent upon the the government to work with local councils to find a remedy for this very very serious issue

  He added:

  the issue is not going to be resolved by this area forum but having it minted is a step in the right direction and i suspect that we may try and get a response from our own council's homeless division as to inform you as to what interaction if any we're having with the government to alleviate the concerns for refugees

• Fly-tipping

  Several residents raised concerns about fly-tipping, including the number of prosecutions being brought by the Council.

  Councillor Shivraj Grewal, Cabinet Member for Communities and Enforcement, responded to the concerns. He said:

  as far as prosecution is concerned we do take very serious uh we take this issue very seriously but we can only prosecute someone if we have very solid evidence right

  He added:

  we certainly will we take a very serious step on flight tipping and we have taken as far as you were saying that you needed some data on it at the moment i cannot give you data because i don't have it in front of me how many prosecutions have been done in cramford you say only one but certainly i can provide that to you if you give me your email or i can bring bring it in the next area for

  Councillor Vickram Grewal added:

  we spend 1.4 million per year collecting fly tipping on our streets this is an exponential issue across our borough and particularly in cramford as well where we see residents flytip but also there's professional flytippers that come to our borough and pollute our streets

  He called for the Council to do more to name and shame those responsible for fly-tipping. He said:

  i was actually elected in 2018 and in my first year i was chair of the housing and environment scrutiny panel and this issue of flytipping was close to my heart then as it is today and i pushed our council to follow the suit of other london boroughs of naming and shaming flytippers in house matters on our website on our social media feed and in any other forum possible to make sure these people a get prosecuted

• Nitrous oxide canisters

  One resident raised concerns about the prevalence of nitrous oxide canisters, which are often used recreationally. He said:

  i'd like to bring you back in fact this could be three points if i may in the one question um start off with my apologies i didn't manage to get to the last area forum but i did get to the previous area forum when i actually presented the uh the forum with a cylinder empty cylinder of nitrous oxide there is still a nitrous oxide problem in heston action groups works we did actually a little pic recently where we actually collected 20 nitrous oxide cylinders you did promise that the matter would be put on to the action register i didn't see that it was there can you tell me if it has been put on the register and could it be put back on the register because it is a problem in the west of houndslow kids drivers can be seen using this substance they use it as a drug there is likely to be a serious accident from this cause sometime in the future and then when they're actually finished with the cylinders they throw them out of the windows of cars you'll find them scattered across the roads in the west of houndslow and that adds the range of litter right the way across the borough and i travel across the borough regularly i travel travel from the east of the borough right the way across to here and further west there isn't such a problem there isn't a letter problem there doesn't seem to be a nitrous oxide problem in the east of the borough so counselors can i ask you please what you're going to do about it and what you're going to put on the action plan to actually solve this problem and can you please ask your police officers who i regret to say aren't as readily seen as they should be to actually take this matter very seriously and action this

  Councillor Lal said that the matter would be investigated.

• Space Waye

  One resident complained about the Council’s waste and recycling centre, Space Waye. He said:

  i am a fairly irregular user of space way i don't find it's very easy very easy to use i don't think it's it welcomes your constituents can you please look at space way please

  He added that the booking system was inflexible and that he had been turned away from the site, even though it was empty. He said:

  the booking system is very inflexible right um i i apologize mainly my fault i i rain i arrived a couple months ago without a booking um i therefore said could i come in i was told not fine okay but it was 2 30 in the afternoon so i sat in my car with my telephone and i made a booking it wouldn't allow me to make a booking despite the fact that spaceway was empty for that afternoon but i did make a booking for first thing the following morning so i presented this to the manager at spaceway who told me that i still wasn't allowed to come in deposit my rubbish despite the fact the whole place was completely empty that really isn't user friendly

  Councillor Lal said:

  as far as the booking it works for me i have not had a problem but i take it that it wouldn't work for everybody else so you know there is there is swings and roundabouts to this but i think you know you as a lead member council garibald you might want to have a similar thing to what they've showed us at the thing you know where people write into you and see what flavor you get you give them a couple of options and they might pick one who knows it might give you a steer as to which direction you go

• The use of the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel to house asylum seekers

  One resident raised concerns about the use of the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in Cranford to house asylum seekers.

  it's umi from cranford action group but what i'm going to say now is not really anything relevant to cleaning and greening and it is not my intention to also to to say anything of adversity that's already been expressed by by some people in this room regarding the use of the hotels as asylum centers so i think it's this uh not this week last week it was came to us and it was quite it's quite alarming to to understand and see without any indication or clarification from any anybody organization the council that a particularly historic hotel in within our community uh overpopulated community i should say has is now being used as a hotel for asylum seekers and like i say there's nothing i see here to say absolute empathy for the people who have expressed concerns about refugee status etc and the conditions they have at the moment but for the cranford community to have bestowed upon them quite suddenly and quite alarmingly the double tree hotel by hilton being occupied by and this is a this is an encounter that i can personally say that i have seen and i concur with other residents within our community to encounter groups of young men around our streets that we have never seen before within the vicinity of the hotel smoking cannabis jeering at young women staring at what young women it's very very unpleasant and whilst i could like i say i have a lot of empathy for members of the forum have said today this has come as a bit of a shock to cranford that this has happened we did not know that this i think then there needs to be some transparency down there so we have some understanding about what is happening within our within our village

  Councillor Vickram Grewal said that neither the Council nor the police had been made aware that the hotel would be used for this purpose. He said:

  i will say refugees obviously they they come to this country more often than not because of circumstances of of the land that they were born in or where they've come from so there's empathy needed in this situation um and i would encourage the residents of cramford that i'm so lucky to represent to to please have that during this time um that being said i spoke to um the council uh spoke to the police uh we we were not made aware that the double tree was going to become a hotel for refugees and neither were we consulted as a local authority or as a police um that being said um as a local authority we have monthly liaison meetings with the home office and the contractor we continue to push for good notice of any pending decision but as this case shows unfortunately this has fallen through the cracks and with little avail

• Overgrown bushes on the Brabazon Road estate

  One resident raised concerns about overgrown bushes at the junction of Brabazon Road and Cranford Lane. She said that the bushes were obstructing the view of drivers and could lead to an accident.

  i'm just wanting to um raise on behalf of some of the residents that live on the estate um as you come out of braves and roads and you're turning right onto cramford lane um there are some bushes that um tend not to be cut to so as you turn right you can't see the traffic coming you know on i've raised it on fix my street my partner's raised it on fix my street on many occasions with um the council coming back saying we think it's okay well the residents don't think it's okay we've got a four by four so you're quite high up and the amount of time my partner says we're going to have a smash here one of these days and it's a quick fix it's somebody going along you know just making the bushes a lot lower a quick win by the council i don't know whether the council department who deal with um you know the the um the um the grass in the woods whether that's privatized because part of that area are private flats but it's just every time we bring it up we keep getting kind of fobbed off from the department and all they're trying to do is help people coming out turning right for an accident waiting to happen particularly these young lads that come along on these bikes deliver deliver and that it's there's going to be somebody killed there and and it's dangerous and it's a quick win for the council to get that fixed you know so that's just from a lot of evidence on the brothers in the road state of coming out of the road to turn right

  Councillor Lal said that he would ask the relevant department to look into the issue.

• The lack of trees on Springwell Road and Summerhouse Avenue

  One resident asked whether the Council had any plans to plant trees on Springwell Road and Summerhouse Avenue, neither of which have any trees.

  Councillor Lal said that the Council was committed to increasing the number of trees in the borough. He pointed out that 58 trees had recently been planted on Springwell Road and Summerhouse Avenue.

• The need for a balance between parking and green spaces

  One resident spoke about the need to strike a balance between providing parking and preserving green spaces. He said:

  on the same point of biodiversity what on earth is going on with rectory farm to 2017 we were shown this glorious video of how this is going to become a biodiversity tropical or temperate rainforest uh in the middle of cramford it's now full of fly tipping people are using it for running car parking businesses for pork punters from heater airport we have no idea their cars are parked on a piece of fly tip land uh no word from the council it's radio silence we're told that there's no no further development it's absolutely disgusting

  Councillor Lal said that he agreed with the resident and that the Council was looking into ways to encourage residents to retain front gardens. He said that he had recently attended a briefing session on flooding across the borough and that he had raised the issue with the Council Leader and Chief Executive. He said:

  funnily enough we as local councils we had a meeting recently a briefing session on on flooding across the borough so it was very timely your discussion about um irrigation and then letting the water flow freely so we had something called was it suds wasn't it sustainable urban yeah suds is a surface water disposal yeah right and yesterday i did mention to navdeep that after the uh presentation for resilience of uh flooding i mentioned it to katherine dunn and the leader that we should bring some sort of bylaws that residents should not be allowed to pay their entire front garden 50 percent allowed they can park their car and rest should be green spaces and some councils do have these laws and if some councils have it we certainly can have it

• Bulky waste disposal

  One resident complained that some residents were not paying for bulky waste collection.

  thank you for giving me the opportunity to express my concern my problem is um for those of us that live in a flat i'm talking about bulky waste disposal so some people you have to call and say the number of items you want to dispose you pay for it and some people will just freely take their dog bulky waste and just put them around but the council will yet still collect it so what how do you police the people that put your bulky waste and not pay for them what happened to them where where do you

  Councillor Lal said that, while this was an issue, the Council could only prosecute residents if they had evidence.

• A stalled Clarion Housing Association development on Lampton Road

  One resident asked for an update on the Clarion Housing Association development on Lampton Road. He said:

  i have three points uh the first one is i've noticed that a clarion housing association building next to travelodge and lambton road seems to have stalled over the last 12 months and given the requirement for housing in the area i was hoping to understand why the building work seemed to have stopped and the building is beginning to deteriorate there's water where downpipes should be just flooding down the outside the outside elevation of the building there's bits of plastic hanging off where balconies should be located what's happening

  Councillor Lal said he would take this up with officers as a matter of case work.

• Heston Health Centre redevelopment

  The same resident asked when the Heston Health Centre would be redeveloped. He said:

  heston health center redevelopment it would be good to understand what the blockers are there there was a planning application submitted a number of years ago before covet hit to redevelop it um obviously that was based on the fact that there is a need in the community why has it stalled what's happening with it when can we actually expect to see gp services commensurate with the population growing

  Councillor Lal said:

  unfortunately you weren't here at the previous meeting so i'm just going to read out the blurb that there was because i did give an update on that so um the update that i provided at that meeting was that um uh here we go so referring to the redevelopment of the heston health center i reported that the northwest london icb that's integrated care board was in the process of developing a strategy for primary care estates across northwest london and any local plans for estate redevelopment would be dependent on the recommendations and outcomes of that strategy until this process is finalized members will not be in a position to provide any further updates but um the chair provided assurances that local ward councils were keen for a site to be developed so we are absolutely very very keen to get that site developed but it's very much in the hands of the nhs and they've got their own issues to deal with

• A cycle lane linking Hounslow and Southall

  The same resident asked for an update on plans to build a cycle lane linking Hounslow and Southall. Councillor Lal said he would raise this with the relevant Cabinet Member, Councillor Katherine Dunne.

• Blocked drains and fallen leaves

  One resident raised concerns about blocked drains, which were exacerbating flooding caused by fallen leaves.

  Councillor Lal said that the Council’s annual leaf collection programme had begun. He said:

  in terms of leaves i do believe there's a program of annual leaf collection and clearance so the program for councillor garawal has just started so i've been told that the program has just started so the program of leave leaves clearing etc started

  He encouraged residents to use the Fix My Street app to report blocked drains.

• Cyclists on pavements

  One resident complained about cyclists riding on the pavement.

  Councillor Lal said:

  again i'm afraid it's limited powers on our behalf but there are some people who are still flouting the law it's illegal and when police are able to catch the culprits they'll obviously confiscate the bikes or prosecute but yeah it's there are some people who are still doing it's reduced quite a lot actually but there are still some people with with bikes crisscrossing the borough and on the pavement etc so i'm not too sure what extra