Transcript

Do we have any apologies for absence? So I've got lateness for Councillor Rajuwat and I've had an apology from Councillor Aksar Ahmed and I have apologies to Councillor Dhaliwal. And if there's no more apologies, I also need to ask if, according to the agenda in front of us today, do members here have any declarations of interest on the agenda? Good. And lastly, do members here have any communications that they want to share at this moment? Fine, you'll get plenty of opportunity later on anyway. Moving on to agenda item number two, again it's another notification for you. And the notice that this meeting is being recorded. Whilst this meeting is not live streamed, it is being recorded and will be published on the Council's YouTube channel after the meeting. Members of the public are asked not to discuss personal details during any contribution to this meeting. Now moving on to, I'm going to change the agenda slightly. I'm going to bring up the minutes from the previous meeting now and then we'll come on to agenda item number three. So if I can ask members to just pull up the minutes for the previous meeting, please. I'm afraid it's not as simple as that. Now the minutes of the previous meeting. So the previous meeting was held on Thursday the 21st of November and it's quite a detailed minute in the sense that there's quite a few updates within it. And I will allow members present should they want to provide a verbal update on any of the items that affect them. They can do so or we can have the minutes agreed as is. In which case, there is, from my side anyway, I want to make sure I clarify a couple of things that happened at that meeting and the two issues that I'd like to clarify. One is to do with the cycle lane proposals linking Hounslow to Southall. So at the last meeting, a question was raised about the cycle lanes that are being put into place across London by Hounslow. But in particular, the cycle lanes which run from Cranford and Heston into Southall and a resident raised the issue with me. At that time, I didn't actually know the plans which were referred regarding these cycle lanes. And so I said that I would come back to this meeting and give an update and I do have an update for you and it's quite a dry update, but I'll read it out anyway. The Council's strategic transport planning team confirmed that the draft Hounslow cycling action plan established a priority cycle network for the borough, which included routes connecting Hounslow to Southall. Consultation on the draft cycle action plan was held between Hounslow and Southall and Southall Lane, which is currently on site, North Hyde Lane, and following feedback will include a connection via Norwood Road. The priority cycle network is the Council's ambition for the cycle network in the borough, which it will seek to bring forward at the earliest opportunity. The proposed cycle network aligns with Ealing's cycle network plan that includes Norwood and Merrick Road in Ealing. The scheme forms part of Ealing's 2526 program, which will include further engagement and detailed design with local stakeholders. I hope that response is sufficient regarding that particular item, which was brought up at the previous meeting. The other item I would like to take the opportunity to update on is regarding progress of Clarion Housing Association development on Lambton Road. So those of you that know the particular area, there has been ongoing building works along Lambton Road on that particular site for quite some time. In fact, a number of years, and it's been going on for ages. And I'm glad at the last meeting somebody actually raised the issue and sought clarification on what exactly is going on there and what Hounslow is doing about it, Hounslow Council is doing about it. So, unfortunately, the feedback that I received wasn't very, very good, but I'll read it out anyway. So, unfortunately, when the officers looked into the matter, the officers reported that the contractor had actually ceased trading. So, work was underway to secure a new contractor to remedy some water damage that had taken place during the delays. And the current target completion date for that site is anticipated to be 2027. Yeah. Right. So, those are the ones that I wanted to particularly raise with you. All the other issues are, you can find the updates within the minutes. So, coming back to members, can I ask you to confirm the minutes are after a reflection of the previous meeting? And I'll ask you once again, is there any matters arising from that meeting? No. No? Okay. So, I can sign off these meetings on an actual record? Okay. So, that's that done and dusted. Thank you. Now, on to agenda item number three, which is an item marked positive change. It's a new befriending service. And I think Mr. Singh is going to say a few words about it. Are you ready, Mr. Singh? Okay. You want to get him a mic? Testing. Good evening, everybody. Thank you so much for having me. I won't be very long. My name is Sahib Singh. Who I am isn't important, but the organization that I work for is. So, the organization that I work for is called Positive Change. We're a grassroots registered charity here in Hounslow. And we provide a befriending service to people who are socially isolated and lonely within the borough. People are socially isolated and lonely for a myriad of different reasons, whether it's old age, disability. It could just be the fact that your kids have grown up, left the nest, spouse has passed away, your circles have gotten smaller. We're hoping to be able to help. So, what we do is we provide a befriending service through volunteers. And our volunteers are DBS checked, reference checked, and then we try and pair them up with people who have similar interests. Again, we're a grassroots UK registered charity here in Hounslow. The service is free. So, if anyone wants to either volunteer for us, please do, because the demand is really high. But also, if you know somebody who's suffering from social isolation, please get in touch with us. I'm just over there by the police, and I've left some leaflets on the table. We have a QR code you can scan or just take a picture of the poster. And please do get in touch with us as well. Thank you so much. Again, the organisation is called Positive Change. We're registered here in Hounslow. So, yeah, please, please do get in touch. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, Mr Singh, thank you very much. Right. Now, we're going to move on to agenda item number four, which is the Open Forum. The Open Forum provides an opportunity for residents to share their ideas, debate local topics of importance, and voice their concerns to councillors present and other key representatives of the council. Just read out the rules of engagement here. So, those participating in the Open Forum are asked to note the following. Questions will be allowed at the chair's discretion, and items submitted to the chair in advance of the meeting are most welcome. The chair will normally allow one question per item. Items on the main agenda should not be raised in the Open Forum, and finally, individual cases cannot be discussed at this Area Forum. Having said that, the Open Area Forum is now open. Again, do any residents wish to raise any issues with the councillors present? Okay. Mike to the gentleman on the left here. Hello. Hi. Thank you very much. Introduced myself a little bit. My name is Dr Hassan Mirza. Maybe some of you know me through my father, who was very active in the local community for many years, Abdul Rashid Mirza. So, I'm a Cranford resident. I've been for the last 30, since I was born, actually. I don't want to tell you how old I am. But I've been a resident in Cranford since I was born, and I also run my business, which is my dental practice in Cranford as well. So, I know the area very, very well. I don't want to make this into a long speech, but I'm going to just pose my issue. We are, if you don't mind me saying, suffering with exactly what my colleague Saheb just mentioned, which is the issue of socialization and the issue of local communities. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to ensure that the youngsters, our next generation and our older generation, are taken care of in such a way that they're allowed to integrate in the society in the best way possible. Now, there's a library, which you all know about in Cranford, which has been designated to be, well, actually has moved now, we've been told, to a new place called the Meadowbank Centre. And this place is now an ideal place for our community centre in Cranford. Now, many of you people have driven up and down Cranford from, if you're going to the airport or if you're going to Hounslow. So, often Cranford is forgotten because it's now become almost like a hotel city or a hotel village, rather. When you drive up and down different areas in the UK, whenever you come to a village, you see slow down, 20 miles per hour, sometimes even 10 miles per hour. In Cranford, it's 40 miles per hour. Get out quick, kind of thing. And we've got to change that because what's happening is that you don't realise that there are communities that live amongst these kind of roads and these kind of areas. We need to safeguard these areas as much as possible. And what we're proposing today is someone to look at a possibility of that Cranford library to be used as a social centre, a community centre. And we've got people in place that can start running this project and working really hard in this area. So, that's my issue. That's my concern. I don't know, do I have a small collection of signatories from the local Cranford area, over 300, and I'm happy to hand it to my local councillor, councillor Vikram. Yes, go ahead. Thank you very much, councillor. If I hand you this signatory, there's over 300 signatures there. And something that we've been passionate about and really want to do, I'm born in this area, bred in this area. We want to do the best for our future generation. And everything Sahab mentioned, bang on, really good, what he mentioned. I'm glad he came just before me, because getting in touch with our elder community, those people are lonely, those people are in trouble. We can do this ourselves. We've got people in place, action groups and organisations. We just need to give us a place, and we'll do it for you. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Right, you've handed the petition over to councillor Vikram Garawal, who will then process it through the normal channels. But I want to give Councillor Garawal a quick chance to say something. Thank you very much for the petition. I appreciate it. There's over 300 signatures. You're quite modest in your framing of it. That's a lot of signatures, but that syncs to the fact that this is a very important matter for Cranford residents. It's in the fibre of Cranford's community that we all come together. Irrespective of our backgrounds, colour, creed or caste, we are one, and that's throughout every corner of Cranford. So I really appreciate the desire for community centre. I would personally like to give my support for it as a ward councillor. I'm sure Councillor Butt, who's here with me, will also do the same, and we'll speak to Councillor Dalywal as well. So you have our full support, and I think your father will be very proud of you. I had the pleasure of meeting him a lot of times. He gave me a lot of support in his time as well. So congratulations on that, and I'll be more than happy to help you along the way to hopefully see the fruition of your dream for the library. So thank you. Thank you very much. Do anybody else have any questions on the open forum? The gentleman, you can come next. Hello, I'm Michael from Heston Action Group. I'm hoping to, some of the questions I have will be answered in the tracker. Maybe we can come back to that. I just wanted to mention an issue around all of these yellow plastic covers and all the manholes around Heston. I've reported many of them via Fix My Street because I believe they fall under the remit of Hounslow Highways, but many of the cases remain unresolved. We have these plastic manholes or plastic covers over manholes and barriers all over Heston, and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. I don't know whether it's cadent or whether it's just that there's a defect in the footway, but it would be helpful to try and understand what's going wrong. One other point is there seems to be very little progress in improving arrangements for waste and recycling and flats above shops. I'm really hoping that someone here today will be able to give us an update on that and also to address some really bad fly-tipping hot spots across Heston. There is a particular resident of the ringway who spends at least an hour of her day every day cleaning up after people, cycling around with black bags and just dumping them outside the parade of shops at the ringway at Ross Trevor Gardens. I think the talk has got to end somewhere. We need enforcement, whether that's through CCTV cameras or more manpower, to catch the minority of people who are spoiling it for everybody else. Thank you. Right. I think you've raised a number of issues. Coming to your first question about issues that you raised at the previous area forum, again, the updates are in the minutes, and I'm happy to go with them with you after the meeting if you see me. In terms of the issues that you now have brought to our attention, again, one or two of them are, again, from a previous area forum meeting. But fortunately, today, we do have an officer available who probably can give a more comprehensive answer regarding some of those issues. But before I go over to the officer first, I think Councillor Garibald would like to say a few words. Yeah, thank you. As far as the yellow manhole covers are concerned, they are in reference to Cadent. They are doing a gas service pipeline to the houses. And if you write to me, I can ask the person in charge in highways to ask them to maintain them and make sure the barrier is in the right place so it's not causing any obstructions to the residents. I can do that. But I have not had that complaint so far, personally. I don't know about that. Yeah. Okay. I think that's quite an officer responding to the question. Right. So, as I said earlier, so thank you, Councillor Garibald. The other issues that you mentioned regarding waste and recycling above flats, I've got an officer here with me today. So, I'm going to allow him to speak on that topic and maybe pick up five ticking hotspots as well, maybe. Okay. Thank you. And thanks very much for inviting me tonight. My name's Jim Perkins. I'm the head of waste, recycling and circular economy for Hounslow Council. Yes, flats above shops. Contentious issue. We've got a whole new raft of legislation coming in at the moment. So, for every household in Hounslow, you've got a residual waste collection, expanded recycling collections are going to be required and a food waste collection is going to be required. I've been with Hounslow about six months now and I've reviewed the methodology used for flats above shops and it's clear that one size doesn't fit all. The grip bins, as they're called, work sometimes in some locations. What we've undertaken and what we're undertaking at the moment, more in readiness for the new legislation that's coming out to expand recycling services and food waste services to flats above shops because what we don't want is three grip bins. We've now trebled the problem. We are now surveying every single location in the borough of what will work. We know what doesn't work. The grip bins will work in some locations. In other locations, it might be wheeled containers. In some, it might be a mini bring site for the flats above shops. We've got to be careful not to encourage the illegal dumping of commercial waste from the flats, from the shops below the flats. So it's, but on the same hand, we don't really want to have 15 different solutions. We need to get these solutions down to four or five things that work for that bespoke location. The one size fits all doesn't work. So similarly, we could go a near entry system, a mini bring site. Again, that won't work in all locations, which is why my officers are now out every day surveying every single location to see what will work. Coupled with that, because of the churn of residents in flats above shops, council messaging needs to be improved and increased. So, you know, it's looking at what we're not doing as well. We've gone through a one size fits all, which doesn't work. Are we communicating properly? Are we communicating often enough because of that churn? You know, we do it once a year or twice, you know, once every two years. Should we be doing that every six months? And at the end of all that, then we're looking at enforcement of fly tipping. But it's making sure that residents of flats above shops are enabled to be able to do it. It's okay us demanding that you put your bags there. But it's attracting more waste. It's attracting other bags. Moving on to the fly tipping, which is a Hounslow Highways issue. Ordinarily, that would be a waste and recycling issue. Again, we're spectacularly good at picking up fly tips. It's gone within a day. It's gone within two days. When reported. Being so good at picking them up enables people to say, it was gone tomorrow. It's gone in a day. I'm going to put some more out. And it's gone tomorrow. And on it goes. So what are we doing about trying to prevent it in the first place? These are the key issues. And again, enforcement. Better information. Better communication about what to do with your waste. I've been speaking to many of you tonight. A fly tip 20 years ago. The community would be outraged. Unfortunately, it's been normalised. And so there's less outrage. It's almost expected. So again, we've got to get back to those, you know, that civic pride. The council doesn't fly tip. The council doesn't litter. But we're spending about £400,000 a year in disposing of fly tips and litter. You know, and enforcement plays a part. But more importantly, we've got to enable people to do the right things. Be that better facilities, better bring sites, better information, better education. So hopefully that's covered off both of your points. As a member of Eston Action Group, we've proactively gone out delivering purple bags to flats above shops. I agree with you about the point of communication. There's also an element of people living on the fringes of society. Some of them may not be even licensed or legal. And they don't necessarily want to come forward to request purple bags. Absolutely. Unfortunately, if those grip bins are misused, because they're always collected, either by the shops or by other residents, because they know if they've got any excess waste, they'll just pop it in and it will go. There's now no room in the box for the additional purple bags. So again, it's another blight. And split plastic bags, of course, you've got the ongoing problem of additional litter. So... No. And it's another reason that perhaps they don't work. The solution wouldn't be bigger bins. Times three for recycling and food waste. And trying to get food waste out of a grip bin is just going to be, you know... So a lot of time and a lot of effort is going into trying to find the solution. Can I just stop you there for a second? We're getting into a one-to-one conversation here. So if you do have something further to say, can you give the mic to him so everybody can hear what he's saying? No, the same gentleman. Sorry, I was just going to say, please do consult with the community. We've been volunteering for seven years. We really understand the issues. And we are impatient to see the solutions. I guess the only question I would have is that what is the likely timescale so at least people can manage their expectations? The new legislation has got to be in place so for residual waste, expanded recycling and food waste by the 31st of March 2026. So I've got a year to sort this out, borough-wide. Right. While the office is up, I saw another hand go up, so I'll take that question. I assume it's to do the same. OK, go ahead. Thank you, Chair. Brian Smith, also Heston Action Group. Please excuse me, but I used to be a resident of Chiswick. This would not be allowed in Chiswick. And I want the same facilities, please, in Heston as I would enjoy in Chiswick. So you have a problem, sir. Welcome to Townsville, OK? Glad you've had a good six months. Perhaps we can invite you back again in six months' time and see what success you've managed to achieve. Be glad to be. Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you. And the gentleman at the front there. Thank you. My name is Zohair Bhatt. I'm in the resident of Cranford. I have two issues. First of all, as everyone knows, Eid's coming either Sunday or Monday. We actually applied the exemption for single yellow line parking. It's been refused. I know why it's refused. So many reasons. People abusing Cranford quite a lot. Blocking people's driveways. It's not by the Heathrow Masjid or Cranford Masjid. It's not by the Heathrow Masjid or Cranford Masjid. The council actually allow, give the permission to people perform the pray in the park. And they should assess day how many people, the attendees. Cranford is a very small place. And the two issues links together. It's been, most of the Cranford High Street has been double yellow line. And it's not been consulted to a resident or anyone. It's by force they put the double yellow line. It's been raised so many times, this issue. Right. I'm the victim as well. Last year, somebody blocked my drive for 45 minutes. I want to get out. And people have no courtesy for anyone. And I request to the council, the next year, when you allow any event in the park, please do the consultation for the resident. If the resident is happy, please allow them. We've got two beautiful mosques in the Cranford. Heathrow Masjid have 800 capacity. Which is, they perform six prayers in a day. And obviously, Cranford Masjid have capacity of 300. I think it's manageable. So I'll request to the council, please do consider. And I'll request to consult with the resident before you allow any permission to the park next year. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, I think absolutely. Certainly, a certain amount of consultation should always take place before certain measures are put into place. You mentioned Cranford quite a number of times. So do the Cranford councillors want to say anything on the matter? Councilor Kerr-Wall. Thank you, Mr. Butt. You're not just a resident in Cranford. You're a pillar of it. So thank you for the matter you raised. I mean, it should have been consulted, especially to residents in a close vicinity of the park, which I know you are one of those. So there's been a clear oversight and procedure there. So I will pick this up. And the head of Heathrow mosque or Park Avenue mosque or Cranford mosque, whatever you want to call it, he reached out to me. And from my perspective, if it's not his Eid celebration or prayers in the park, and now he's not allowed a relaxing of parking restrictions that's directly impacting his worshippers, in my view, I don't think that's a fair conclusion to make, because especially if he wasn't consulted on the Eid prayers in the park as well. So I do apologise. I'll make sure that it's investigated. And in my view, I'm sure there's a workaround that we can do for Eid that will either be on Sunday or Monday, as you correctly say, because it's the landmark holiday for Muslims. And, you know, the worshippers should not be disrupted as long as they don't block driveways or footpaths or the usual stuff. There should be a relaxation of rules. So I'll pick this up. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Garibald. Any other questions? Open forum. Okay. Lady, right in the back, on the right-hand side, could I have the mic there, please? Hello. Yeah, my question is, I've lived in this area for 60 years. I want to know how many more proposed flats are going to be built in this area. Because all we seem to be doing is building flats, building flats, building flats. We don't have the resources. But even with the Treaty Centre, I've been told now that it's a private investor, and he's deciding to, he's going to build flats there. It's just too many flats now. So how come it's just Hounslow, and this is where the area I've been in, that's the area, that's where all the flats are being built. I just want to know how many more flats are being proposed. Well, I may have somebody who can answer that question, but before he does, I'd just like to say that countrywide, let alone borough-wide, or even London borough-wide, we've all got targets in terms of housing development. And it may feel like to you that the area that you particularly live in is being overbuilt, but there are other areas within the borough where also we are heavily engaged with developments. Now, before any development takes place, there is extensive consultation. So you will always have the opportunity as a resident or residents or resident groups to put forward your comments to the planning committee. And the decision whether a planning application goes ahead for any flats or developments like that goes through a rigorous procedure. And when it goes through that procedure, we are duty-bound and legally bound to have justifiable reasons on planning grounds to refuse such developments. Now, in the absence of that, then these developments will take place. So it may feel like that your area is overbuilt, identity, et cetera, and the issues that come with it. But unfortunately, it is not an issue for our area alone. I don't know if you've seen across the borough in Brentford, the number of developments taking place there as well. So housing and housing development will continue apace. We have targets, which we need to meet. And I'm just going to request for me, Councillor Rajwad, to just elaborate a little bit further on that for you. Thank you, Chair, and apologies for being late. I mean, everything you said I concur with. Actually, there is very little going on in the Heston-Cranford area in terms of development. There's more happening across other parts of the borough. You're absolutely right, Chair, to say that there is a housing target that we need to meet. But the planning process is one part of it. That's sort of the end part of that process. Anyone that wants to develop in the borough does come and have conversations with me as leader and my Cabinet colleague, who leads on regeneration. And we have a lot of conversations, not just about housing necessarily, but the sort of communities that need to be built, and the infrastructure that's needed, and the contributions that they need to make. You cop across the border from Heston into Southall, and you see the level of development happening there. It's a lot more. It's a lot higher. We actually challenge anyone that wants to develop in the borough quite heavily. And the process of our planning committee is very, very rigorous. Thank you very much. I didn't see any consultation around that building. I've been told that it's been converted into flats or something like that. So I just wanted to clarify as to what is happening to the British Airways building. Well, as far as I'm aware, we get notification of stuff that's going on in our particular wards, and Cranford councils have not had any indication of anything going on in the Cranford area regarding that particular site. So we are unaware about what you're actually referring to. So it probably needs looking into it. Has anybody else got any light that they can shed on? Oh, Heathrow House, just on the edge of Cranford. So the last government did relax some of the planning rules around office spaces. It's something called prior development, allowing existing office blocks to be converted into housing, into flats without reference to the planning authority. So I would imagine it's probably that, but I don't have any more details on that. I'm happy to look into it. Right, any more questions from the open forum? Okay, so you've already been, so I'm going to go over to that gentleman over there. Well, you've probably gathered from my accent. I don't come from around here. But I've been staying, I'm sometimes, you know, come and see Bill every 18 months, every 18 months or so. And I was saying to the girls when I came in, that path from the BP station to Brabazin Road, it's still one of the most, it goes back to what I was saying, rubbish, one of the most hideous eyesores in your whole community. Now, you can, it's up to yourselves, of course it is, but maybe do one clean up and then put litter bins every 50 yards. I'll tell you what, if it doesn't work, then you can get in touch with me through Bill and give me a bollocking for talking such rubbish, if you excuse the pun. But I'll kid you not, it's just as bad as it ever was. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? That's it really. It goes back to it's rubbish. Okay, I'll sharpen. Okay, yeah. Fair enough. The issue that you're referring to will be picked up in the agenda item number six on the action tracker. Anybody else? Okay. Again, just following on to the theme of the litter and the problems that that's creating. These matters have been reported, I believe. And I've been duly informed that councillors have known about this problem, especially in Heston West, for over six years. Okay? And it hasn't been addressed. And I think the buck has been passed. So I don't know how we put this on the agenda. This is my first time attending this forum. But to the gentleman who's just been appointed, every morning I walk past a rat-infested area where children and mothers walk their children to school, being totally ignored and blamed on somebody else. So it's coming back to the flats above shops. And we know where it is. It's on Vicarage Farm Road. So I don't know if this gentleman who's just recently appointed, I'm sure you've got a priority list or a hot list maybe, and that might be on it. But I'd just like to say that that has been known and still hasn't been addressed. So I wonder if this is something that we could put on future agendas so that we can actually keep reporting on what's going on with this. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. A couple of issues there. So early on at probably the first area forum meeting that I chaired, I did say I wanted a lot more transparency and accountability when residents bring issues to this area forum to be addressed. And we've tried to develop mechanisms where we were able to track issues that brought to our attention. So you've seen a lot happening with our Let's Talk website and the action track, et cetera. Now, the particular issue regarding Rectory Farm reared its head, I think, at the previous area forum meeting, and it's on the minutes, and I think it's on the action tracker as well. And so it will be discussed this evening, and you will get hopefully a formal response as to what's happening with that particular issue. Regarding the flats above shops, again, I think we did have a comprehensive response from Councillor Gurrywild, the lead member for... I forget the title again. Recycling. Recycling, yeah. So, again, it's a semi-private development, but we've tried to bang heads, and we have managed on occasions to get the area cleared up. But I think it's an ongoing issue. And, again, I would like some... I would, when the opportunity arises later on in the evening, on the action tracker, perhaps a little bit more clarification for you from the lead member. Are you going to take it now, are you? Yeah. The clarification has been done by Jim just now, what we are planning to do regarding recycling flats above the shops. And we have got a program, which we have to make sure will be completed by 2026, as well as the gentleman from Heston Action Group mentioned. He did mention it last time as well. He just mentioned that we should engage with the communities, and we are engaging with Heston Action Group, and Jim will be in touch with you guys. And I've already mentioned it to Mr. Dew, Mr. Dew. Yes. And you will be given an update on what the plans are for the future. Yeah. All right. Okay. Okay. So all the eyes are on you now, right? So in terms of this area of forum. Okay. Any other questions? Okay. Turn up at the front there. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, fellow Houns of Councilors. My name is Anjan Mirza. I'm the older brother of Dr. Mirza here. First of all, fully support his idea for the community centre. I'm with you all the way. He's afraid to tell you his age. I'm 59, coming on to 60. Hopefully many, many long years. I'm a football referee, and I remember Cranford being a great place, especially the park. And Councillor Vikram has done a lot of work already with the gym equipment there and lots of other things. But if you look around, there's football pitches in the Cranford community here, 10 pitches, and they're busy every single weekend making money. I think we need to do that to Cranford Park again, make Cranford like it used to be in the old days, make it great again, bring the football pitches in, bring the cricket pitches in, bring somebody in to look after it, and most important, put some toilets in there. We need toilets in that park urgently, especially for the elders that go to the park and struggle because they can't get out of the park and do some funny things. It's not their fault, of course. But we need to have toilets in there on an urgent, urgent basis. And then if you can't do it yourself, subcontract it so that somebody comes in there, makes money from the council from those pitches, to pay for the caretaker. Thank you very much. Okay. Thanks for your ideas on the way forward there. And I hope the Cranford councillors are listening and are attentive to what the community requires. It may not all happen. It may not happen straight away, but I'm sure I have every faith in the local councils that they will try to follow up on your dreams and the dreams for all the community. Right, I have one last question, then we're going to move on to the next item on the agenda. So I've had a hand up right in the corner over there. Hello. Oh, my God, I'm very loud. Sorry. Hi, I've actually got two questions, but we're going to make them one. So I've had this problem going to the treaty centre, and I've had this problem in my local area just walking home from the bus stop, which is electric bikes, bicycles, and electric scooters. And even I've seen a teenage boy on a quad bike. Can you believe this? And there is no warning for people like pregnant women, disabled, wheelchair, elderly, even me, able-bodied. There is no way that on a pavement, suddenly you swerve and you're knocked over. It's even worse than even a car accident. Something needs to be done. And I do live in Cranford. I'm a local resident. And I'm very, very concerned. What can you do about the safety? And then mentioning the treaty centre, and I've heard people talking, you're creating a lot of flats. So when is the treaty centre in Hounslow closing? So two questions. Thank you. On the quad bikes, unfortunately our policing colleagues have left a little bit earlier. But funnily enough, I did have this conversation with them because it was raised at a previous area forum meeting about electric bikes on pavements, etc. And it is very much a policing matter. And they try their level best. But as you can appreciate, unless they're at the right place at the right time, in the right mode of transport, so a vehicle, a car could not necessarily, a police car could not necessarily catch the culprit on the bike. So there's a lot of permutations there to catch these people. It's abhorrent what they're doing. We're all against it. I think we all agree that something needs to be done. But unfortunately, it is a policing matter. and the buck stops with the police to enforce such behaviour. I did say I was going to move over. Is it a burning question? Okay, one second. If I'll allow that, just give the mic. Sorry, I'm just picking up from what the lady said about the electric bikes. This is the first time I'm coming to a forum like this. I'm not a resident of Cranford. I'm a resident of Heston. But I think it's probably borough wide the issue about the line bikes and the way they're positioned on residential roads. They're an absolute eyesore. As soon as you turn into a road, you just see a big black pole, which you try and avoid not hitting because it's so close to the edge of the road. It's quite dangerous, to be honest, because in the dark, someone like me will probably miss it and bash my car into it. Not only that, with the electric bikes again, you've got children just running around on pavements with the bikes and then just leaving it by a tree or outside someone's house. They're absolutely, I don't know, I feel it's a waste of money. I don't think they work in the way they're probably intended to because they're being misused. and the positioning of the parking of these bikes are not very well thought through, I'm afraid. They are a really bad idea. Okay, firstly, can I welcome to your first ever attendance at an area forum meeting. What about in Heston, do you live? Crossways. Okay, that's Heston Central. Okay, that's that. But that's irrelevant in the sense that the issue that you presented regarding electric bikes, the answer still stands. It's a policing matter. In terms of the line bikes, again, we have moved quite a long way since the early inception of the line bike scheme and there's been several reviews. in fact, there was a review only this year, I think, for the Heston-Cranford area for residents to be able to, through their councils or themselves, to present any issues with the current positioning of the bays or locations, et cetera. In terms of discarded line bikes, again, there is an email site, a website, where you can report that activity as well and it's on that fix my street as well. And again, we've been informed that the culprits who do do this, when they do get caught, they do get fined, right? So, they are getting fined. But there are always loopholes that people use to get away with it. But it's not acceptable. We clamp down on it big time. We're not happy with the way this is happening and we have regular meetings with the people who have the line bikes contract regarding this issue. I do have an officer here today fortunately who may want to say a few more words about this. Just briefly, Chair, on the issue of electric bikes, Zahir was just reminding me that we recently had a day of action with the police, the Safer Communities team and the local police. They happen all around the borough, Chiswick, Brentford, we had a Hounslow High Street one quite recently and it was specifically around this problem and they did actually, the police did on that day confiscate eight of these so it might not seem there are less but it's a bit of an ongoing battle but it was a really successful day. They went to the hotspots where they know it's active. It's really difficult trying to track it on CCTV. They don't obviously have number plates or anything like that but they did manage to successfully confiscate eight on this day of action that we held recently. And I can concur particularly in my ward when we made representations based on residents' concerns we had some bays removed and other bays located in other suitable areas so there is a process for that. The last issue was the regarding the tree centre and what's going on there so I'm going to ask Councillor Rajabat to just give us a background information on that. Thank you very much. So residents you might or may or may not be aware the treaty centre isn't actually owned by the council it's owned by a private company and it is at the end of its operational life so something does need to happen at the treaty centre. My current understanding is that that is a while off to be perfectly honest. We are engaging with the owners being very clear that whilst they may want residential we want a retail offer that works for Hounslow that complements Hounslow's vibrancy it is still a very busy town centre it's one of the busiest in terms of footfall certainly in West London and so we need to be sensitive to that with anything that comes forward. I think therein lies some of the problem housing makes money for developers whereas commercial doesn't necessarily as much and the quantum isn't as much so at the moment we are working very closely and having conversations but it's for the owner of that site to bring forward plans at the moment there aren't any plans so whilst we know that there may well be some residential there we are keen to protect the commercial there and the public realm and make sure that people can access it properly so there are a number of considerations within that we hope to have something into planning by the end of the year but it has been painfully slow that the people looking to develop it are facing the same costs bill cost pressures and inflation that other developers are facing at the moment but we are trying to jeer along so that we get something because we do appreciate whilst it's at the end of its life a lot of the shops are empty there now and so it is looking like a bit of a white elephant in the middle of the town centre and we're very cognizant of that and that should spearhead more of a redevelopment of the high street more generally as well OK thank you very much for that Councillor Rajabat right that brings us to the end of the open forum and I need now to move swiftly on to the next item on the agenda which is agenda item number 5 which is the health and wellbeing strategy I'll let the officers introduce themselves but before they do that I just want to pass it over to Councillor Lily Bath who is the cabinet member for this portfolio Thank you Chair for allowing me to speak so I'm Councillor Lily Bath and I'm a councillor in the Bedford area and in case you're wondering why I'm here in Heston I'm also the cabinet member for adult social care public health and health integration and public health comes under my responsibility and we are currently renewing our health and wellbeing strategy so what we really want to do today is hear from you about how you can shape our health and wellbeing strategy which is up for renewal so health and wellbeing strategy is like our local plan for the area for the borough in terms of how we work as a council with the NHS with local community organisations and yourselves in terms of implementing health and wellbeing of our communities and that's just not physical health but mental health wellbeing as well so I mean earlier it's interesting earlier on today we've heard quite a lot about social isolation activity making places you know available for people to be fit and healthy and I think those are the sort of conversations that we really want to hear today so that we can feed into this strategy because although the strategy is around our direction of development over the year we also want to hear about the wider wellbeing so we want to hear about not just your experience of health services but about how we together can make Hounslow a much healthier place to live in you're going to hear some presentations from I've got Kelly O'Neill who's the Director of Public Health and Stephen Forbes who's the Executive Director of Children and Adults and they're going to give you a presentation which is going to be around local health and statistics in this area and how it compares to the borough as a whole so you'll get an opportunity to ask questions but it's really to hear from you as to how you think you could feed into the strategy but I want you to it's important to think about health and wellbeing in a wider sense as well because I think that's really important and I think we've heard some of that today here but okay I think that's all I'm going to say but I'm going to pass over to Kelly first is it? Yeah Thank you very much for having us as Councillor Barth has just said we refresh this strategy every three years and I think it's fair to say the last refresh was just after COVID and we followed quite a traditional way of looking at health and wellbeing and while we went out for consultation we didn't really do it in person and probably didn't do it sufficiently to really properly represent the whole community so what we've done is for the last few weeks we've been going around to various area forums around the borough just to ask people what their views are what's important about health and wellbeing and actually just to sort of take a note of the things that people have said so when we start thinking about what the priorities are we include all the things that you say rather than what we say as sort of health professionals because our interpretation of what's important will be quite different to yours and this is your health and wellbeing strategy and it's your opportunity to have your say and I have taken a note of all the things that have been said this evening because many of the sort of conversations have been focused around health and wellbeing and are really important and they have come up before so what I've started to see from the conversations is there's quite a pattern of what people think are important so as Council of Arts has said what we've done for different area forums is to look at some health needs in Heston Cranford and we've compared that to the rest of the borough and then I've sort of had a look at sort of three age groups children and young people working age adults and our older population and looked at the recorded levels of the five top health conditions now the caveat with that is is that it's based on recorded information so some of the things that have kind of risen to the top are probably not the things I would have expected but it's to stimulate the conversation it is not to do anything but to stimulate the conversation so let's kick off this is a quite busy diagram and what this aims to do is set out what drives health and well-being now many of you will want to talk about access to primary care and we know that that's a problem primary care being pharmacy services GPs and dentists and we know that fundamentally that there are big problems in accessing those services it predates COVID and it's still a problem but also what I want you to sort of think about is that health and well-being is very much driven by the environment in which you were born the environment in which you live and the environment that you live right up until the end of your life so things like social mobility and being able to sort of develop and have a healthier life outcome is very much dependent on the environment in which you live okay so one of the things that just to point out is that we talked about housing now if there was one thing that was fundamentally important to improving health and well-being the number one priority is that people would have a roof over their head and not to be homeless not to be in a temporary accommodation but far too many people are so while I get the point that that's been made about the number of flats being built there are significant proportion of this population in the whole of London and in this borough who do not have access to a safe warm home and that's really important other things such as education and good schools and sort of green spaces and the ability to have active travel are really really important and one of the things that is really difficult in this area that we'll see is the levels of obesity of children and the levels of obesity for adults and when we look at the picture of London about where the hot spots are for high levels of obesity what we see is the outer London boroughs have significantly higher levels of both of those than the inner London boroughs and that's because the inner London boroughs have access to much better transport systems and actually much better access to that healthy active travel the other part of that I really want to pick up is the importance of social networks feeling included in society and obviously we had a discussion about positive change and about loneliness and social isolation now if you do not have good relationships or you do not have someone who's supporting you and someone who loves and cares about you and it's the same if you don't have anyone that you can love and care for your life expectancy and your ability to have good physical and mental health is really really much lower okay so that feeling of being part of a society that feeling of being somebody that is recognised as important by other people is fundamentally a real driver of health and social care and that cannot be the level of importance of that cannot be underestimated so as I said these are a few proxy indicators which I mean we're looking at kind of social indicators and health indicators and as I said this is comparing Heston and Cranford area with the rest of the borough and as pointed out the environment in which people live and the sort of infrastructure is much much more important than access to health services when you talk about prevention and living a healthy life so when we look at the number of overcrowded homes now overcrowded homes is defined as whether you have the right number of bedrooms for the number of people that live in your house and you can cut that in a number of ways but overall in Hounslow 14.6% of homes are overcrowded in Heston and Cranford that's 20% so it's significantly higher when we look at the number of homes that lack central heating it's always a surprise when there are homes that lack central heating but it's pretty comparable so 2.3% of homes in Cranford and Heston lack central heating compared to 2.2% in the rest of the borough when we look at economic health universal claimants this is the benefits that people have if they're on a low income or if they are unemployed the average is 141 people per thousand population for the borough and there's 158.8% in Heston and Cranford when we look crime crime is quite a lot lower in Heston and Cranford it's 75.6% per thousand population compared to Hounslow at 86% when we look at access to green spaces and we've talked about Cranford Park the ability for people to access green spaces and the importance of green spaces on physical health and wellbeing is really important so you're walking 58 metres no further which is quite different because actually green spaces are pretty accessible but it's a little bit further I'm not saying you shouldn't be walking there it's just a little bit of an extra leg push to get to it and going back to what I was saying about obesity in central London access to public transport and that kind of healthy active travel the public transport accessibility level is a 0 to 6 score and it's for London so central London is 6 it means it's got really really good transport infrastructure 0 which we do have 0 in the borough is absolutely you know it's completely lacking and the level for Hounslow is 2 which means it's fair to middling it's not great but you've got the same access to that level 2 here that we have across the rest of the borough so it's not great but it's the average for the borough when we look at air quality now this is a thing that people talk about a lot the whole of London is what we call an air quality management zone which means that the whole of London has relatively poor levels of air quality and that's really unsurprising you've got the level of vehicles that are going through the airport we've got big sort of significant A roads and M roads around this area so you would expect that level to be a little bit higher when you look at this area for both particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide both of which are caused predominantly by vehicle emissions and cause respiratory problems shortness of breath wheezing and can exacerbate asthma you're looking at pretty comparable levels here compared to the rest of the borough the more that you're closer to a main road the higher those levels are going to be these are picked up from about seven different air quality testing stations that are around the borough and we just compare that over the course of the 12 months looking for peaks and troughs of pollution now dividing the borough into three age groups looking at Heston and Cranford for children young people aged 0-17 again when we look at if you look at the blue bars that's Heston and Cranford the orange bars are the rest of Hounslow when you look across those levels what you see is high levels of asthma relatively comparable levels of recorded autism high levels of children with learning disabilities lower levels of children with ADHD and sort of a comparable level of young people with anxiety I would say that some of those might be under recorded but this is the information that we currently have the other area that we looked at is children's obesity this is a perennial thing that people keep asking about and what we have in the borough is our levels of obesity for children aren't particularly bad in general so in Heston and Cranford we've got more underweight children compared to the Hounslow average we've got fewer children who are overweight but we've got slightly more children who are obese this is taken from the National Child Measurement Programme which has two milestone of weight and height measures for children when they're in school one is in reception class these are the four to five year olds and what we're seeing here is a pattern which is similar across the country so what we see is still too many children who are an unhealthy weight but the biggest thing we see is when you get to year six which are 10-11 year olds and what we see there is a significant proportion and a significant indifference in the number of children who are in those groups so don't be put off by the size of those bars if you look at that obese level we're looking at roughly about just over 10% of children in Heston and Cranford are obese and when we get to that year six we're looking at about 27% so it's a massive increase so one of the things that we've been trying to look at is what creates that difference and obviously when children get a little bit older they start making some decisions about their own food they start making decisions about their physical activity now one of the things we don't do those are the only two milestones so year R and year six if we were to look at 15 year olds especially girls that would be simple in comparison we would see really really high levels because we know that particularly teenage girls their physical activity will reduce and that level of obesity is much much higher and obviously that has implications if you look forward about sort of fertility and sort of healthy childbirth and that's really important when we look at the 18 to 64 the working age adult group we see lower levels of smoking and one of the things that I've been challenged about all the time is the level of smoking that we have in the borough and the level of smoking has gone down but the people that are smoking are long term every single time we get someone to quit smoking is like a major celebration it's really hard work so fewer people in Heston and Cranford smoke compared to the rest of Hounslow but more people are obese and more people have non-diabetic hyperglycemia that's pre-diabetes so that's pre-diabetes indication and more people have high blood pressure hypertension and more people have diabetes now you would expect some of those particular diabetes because it's a diverse population compared to some of the other areas of the borough so that's unsurprising but again these conditions and managing these conditions are really important because when we start looking at sort of older age and the ability for people to live longer lives but longer lives in a healthier condition the fact that we've got lots of people in this particular age group with those long term conditions really is a concern for that older age group so when we look at the older age group the 65 plus what we see is quite a significant increase in the number of people who have high blood pressure and the number of people with diabetes and non-diabetes and obesity and coronary heart disease so what this is saying is that people in Hesford and Cranford have considerably are more unhealthy compared to the rest of the borough now what I didn't say right at the beginning in that kind of infographic is that one of the things that's missing from that infographic is the level of income that you have and the wealthier you are at population level the healthier you are and that is not just an issue for this borough it's an issue across the country so when you look at deprivation the higher the deprivation the poorer the health in a population and I'm going to leave that there and pass over to my colleague Stephen thank you Kelly Kelly has stolen one of my two bits of thunder so I'll start with the bit that she has stolen two things are true the amount of money you have in your pocket impacts your general health and well-being and the other thing that's true is how healthy you are from birth and actually pre-birth to your early years into your childhood lays the foundation for how healthy or unhealthy you will be in your 30s 40s 50s 60s and 70s those two things are true Kelly's the public health expert I'm not she would be able to run off huge amounts of statistical data and studies that evidence those two things and to try and put this into context and pick up a little of what Councillor Bath said about why is it important to have a conversation with you and why is it important to think what we can do in your local community about this is I use the example of an average child in Hounslow so I start off with the first thing which is money the average wage in London is 65,000 pounds a year for all the people that live in London 65,000 pounds a year it's higher for men it's 76,000 and it's lower for women at 53 nationally the average wage is 37,000 pounds a year we are the second lowest wage economy in London only the people of Barking and Dagenham earn less than the people of Hounslow and the average wage in Barking and Dagenham is 34,000 pounds a year and in Hounslow it's 38 so those other people who are earning above that Hounslow level have in essence to put it simply more money left in their pocket at the end of the month when they've paid rent, mortgage living costs etc heat etc they have more money and they're able to make better choices about health and well-being things like the kind of food you buy the kind of entertainment and exercise you have your social connection all of those things impact on your health now what enables you to gain that kind of wealth is as Kelly said education and it's right back to early years and what Kelly didn't put up on the slide is the other fact that I bring which is on average 20 to 25% of children in Hounslow and it varies a little across the borough but not hugely when they present at reception class at school are not what we classify as ready for school that's not that they're not ready to learn they're not ready for school and that's simple things like being able to sit still and pay attention to be able to share and engage with other children to be able to be toilet trained to be able to participate to be able to explain themselves and articulate their choices and options and what our schools have to do is spend about a first year to 18 months getting those children ready for school in school to be ready to learn so fundamentally the children of Hounslow 20 to 25% of them lose about a year to year and a half of their education and learning purely because they come to school not ready for school now the good news is that in general our children and they've improved over the last three years attain or progress and that's when you basically do your GCSEs there's a national measure then they attain or progress at or above national level so our children make that up they gain the other thing that we don't quite understand is that our young people so from about age 18 to 25 when it comes to securing what's classified as your first good job so we've all had experiences probably in our youth I certainly did of doing part time work or weekend work or a job you did because you hadn't quite worked out what you wanted to do so you did whatever job was available they are just your jobs your first good job is the one you stick with which is potentially the one that sets off your career and there's a national measure for that our young people in Hounslow take twice as long as all the other young people in London to secure that first good job and we don't really understand why that is so from that pre-birth underweight coming to school not ready for school gradually making it up progressing and attaining but not securing their jobs what we're seeing is that our young people are not in essence managing to capture the opportunities let alone that this city offers and they're not as competitive in terms of that fundamental job market where they could secure better income for themselves so that kind of puts it into context so one of the things I would say is whilst as Councillor Bath said we're absolutely open to hearing about the issues of access to hospital and GPs and dentistry and the services that I run in adults and children and schools and whatever what's really important is potentially I think picking up from yourself gentlemen what could be done here in this community in streets in families to defeat that disadvantage that our young people experience that impacts on their health and wellbeing lifelong now you could say to me and rightly you could that there should be a service for that we have loads of services so we have three family hubs we have 11 children centres we have lots of schools that have extended offers where we're actually doing that kind of work with young children in essence to progress them but what needs to happen is a bit more than that and it isn't a service it's in essence what could happen in a family or in an extended network or in a community that puts that energy and effort into those young children that fundamentally defeats some of that stuff that Kelly's shown us in that 25 year arc interestingly we have some events on inside the council today and one of them was looking at what Hounslow would look like in 2050 and it dawned me when I was sitting there that it's 25 years since the millennium and I remember 25 years ago planning for the future so the children that were born in the millennium year have turned 25 now interestingly if we look forward to Hounslow 2050 the children born this year will turn 25 in 2050 and it wouldn't it be great if we collectively over that 25 years defeated some of that disadvantage starting this year with this year's cohort of children that will be born and that's I think the challenge and the ask I have of you is there is a service option and there are services but what could be done in your community to enhance that within your families and at that point I will stop the last thing I will say because colleagues will run me ragged if I don't is one of the options we do provide and I am the absolute salesman for it every time I go somewhere is the 50 things to do before your 5 app if any of you have family members or know people who've got a child or are expecting a child this app is absolutely free it's on the council's website you go there's a QR code there any of you can take it off this one I've got here basically it's 50 things that a parent or any adult could do with a child that prepares them to be ready for school and an example is singing now you might sit there how does that help singing requires a multitude of things it requires you to participate it requires you to engage it requires you to think it requires you to think about rhythm it also requires most importantly that you learn how to control the shape of your mouth and what we find for a lot of those children that come who are not ready for school is they cannot actually articulate to actually express themselves because they haven't learnt how to shape the words so that's just an example of these things on here so I would desperately ask if before tonight you could take a go of that on your phones and spread that because that alone will help start defeating some of that disadvantage at that point I'll stop Chair thank you and we'll leave it for questions okay I think that was a very very informative presentation regarding public health in Hounslow and how we stand in Heston Cranford now I'm going to open the floor open to members of the public and councillors are there any questions that you wish to ask Kelly and Stephen okay so I'll kick off with Councillor Garwell on my left thank you Chair you didn't even look at me and you knew I put my hand up that's how you know we have the right chair for this forum thank you Kelly Stephen Kelly just seeing you today reminds me of how you were the absolute stalwart of this borough during COVID-19 and you got us all through it so thank you for that in particular the statistic about smoking does that capture vaping because your average kid these days you see them vape and not smoke and unfortunately now a lot of us know that vaping more often than not is actually worse than smoking so if it does I'm assuming it doesn't because you shook your head slightly so how do we capture that information because I think that's vitally important because we know that it goes from vaping to other things and that might just be the beginning of a very bad habit yeah so vaping is a little bit of a concern there is no data there's no data that's being collected about the levels of vaping not least because I don't think that we would capture an accurate picture so just to be really clear about smoking and vaping smoking is very very bad for you it's a single most modifiable factor that affects that leads to poor health okay it's the number one so vaping is a harm reduction approach so if you're smoking vaping reduces your harm so if you're already a smoker going to vaping as an alternative is the right thing to do however if you are a non-smoker and if you're a child vaping is really bad for you okay so while it's a harm reduction for those people who are smoking and it's a step down and is helpful to help people quit children should not be vaping and anyone who doesn't smoke should not be vaping either now one of the things that we have got is that the government has given quite a significant amount of money to local areas in order to tackle not just smoking but vaping so that five year money that's sort of being led by the chief medical officer as part of his real ambition to reduce smoking and again going back to that comment I made before is that we've done a lot of work over probably the last 20 years to reduce the levels of smoking and for many of us who were around sort of in the sort of 17s and 80s smoking was really really prevalent and it was really common to see people smoking and it's often felt that the majority were doing it so every time we get someone to quit now it's a really important milestone so what we're doing with this money is increasing the number of stop smoking advisors for adults so more and more quits per year and really holding those services to account that we've given the money to and for children is really focused on school based health activity and really focused on sort of giving sort of health education to children about the sort of the health harms that are caused by vaping and the importance of really being able to manage peer pressure because we know that vaping is particularly common when you start getting groups of people it's going to be a long haul because it's seen as super cool don't know why never been a smoker I'm sure there's a reason why young people feel that way but that education is about tackling that and we're trying to run that through all of our services and support schools to tackle it but again it's about one of those things that children young people are doing lots of things that are not particularly healthy and this seems to be for the last few years seems to be the new unhealthy thing on the block which we're trying to stop but again it's a challenge are you happy with that response very small supplementary thank you conscious of time I guess this is direct a bit more towards Stephen as well I think the underlying theme within these statistics is that the more we go towards a digitalised society and the more young kids are introduced to devices whether it's a phone tablet what have you the higher obesity we'll have we've seen adolescence grip this nation for reasons that are very important not just about masculinity but other issues as well so is there a way that we're sort of capturing that and what is our stance on banning phones in schools in this borough and how do we adopt that or how do we police that approach if we do ban devices okay so two parts that I'll deal with the first bit first things like obesity are unbelievably complex I mean it would be just bad for Kelly and I to sit here there is one simple solution to obesity there are multiple solutions issues behind obesity it's about diet choice it's about time it's about money it's about access to good quality food it's about the attraction in terms of the availability of not good quality food so good thing that the council has done recently has pushed through its ban on advertising of poor quality food on its own sites that doesn't mean it stops it elsewhere around the borough and Kelly will absolutely say that if you move into areas where it's a bit more deprived you suddenly see a significant increase in the amount of advertising of fast food so there's a whole load of things I think the worry about many of the things our younger people are facing that takes them into adulthood which is obesity and mental well-being and mental health are incredibly multifaceted I'm not one that immediately condemns technology I think technology managed effectively can enable children's learning but the problem is when it starts to take over or begins to supplement social interaction we all learn how to conduct ourselves by you know how many of us went to nursery or the equivalent I remember nursery I'm 60 but I remember nursery I have very fond memories or not fond memories of nursery it enables you to learn to interact make friends share know how to regulate your own behaviour technology doesn't in fact sometimes technology exacerbates it one of my good friends his brother has a seven year old they are beginning to get really worried about his behaviour because he's spending hour upon hour inside an iPad watching Japanese anime games and when he does put the iPad down he starts to act out the fighting and violence and he gets very aggressive and that's the sort of thing that worries me whereas if you're doing some supervised technology stuff it can be fantastic schools use technology for kids to learn in terms of the school bans I always go 25 years ago the person doing my job would have had the ability to direct schools to do things because of government policy over 25 years I no longer have that responsibility the responsibility for implementing a ban or a control on mobile phones sits with the school governing body and the head teacher there is no national statutory legal guidance for them to work to it is very much up to the local school to determine whether or not they try to put in place a ban or they control the use of phones I would personally if I had the authority require our schools in Hounslow to put phones aside at the beginning of the teaching time and put it not take it I think you cause more problems I've seen one example where children if they were coming in with a phone it was taken away and it wasn't returned it was technically confiscated for a week I think you create real problems with that but when the lesson starts the phone goes away and it doesn't come out until the lesson has ended and potentially at break times some schools have put limitations on the use of phones at break times and if that's manageable in your school I would also probably say that's a good idea I'm mindful of the time as well so councillor Thank you chair you have noticed me I was trying to get in very much earlier to support Dr Mirza because you actually raised a very good point which is directly linked to what Kelly and Stephen and also the other presenter Sahib was saying unfortunately he did a very quick gallop through the befriending side of things but these are key elements of a well being mentally alert person if we as a local authority give that full time support the community centre side of things is just not a community centre but you and I know in terms of the overall health and well being that those people who are elderly and even young who are engaged and are fully supported they do very well throughout their life but also in the older years some of the issues that you brought up like you know diet well the fundamental problem is in Hounslow we suffer from a low income bracket so we're already starting from a very low point so it doesn't matter how much further you go up no matter how far you go up you'll not still be able to catch the rest of London and that's why our youngsters are finding it very difficult the quality of jobs that we're getting are warehouse related all around Heathrow is one of the largest employers our problem is trying to get very good quality jobs into Hounslow I don't see the council helping very much and other leaders here and he will disagree with me but on the borough council on Tuesday I did state on their transport policy that they didn't go far enough and the reason being when you got nitrogen dioxide and you got PM10s and PM2s Canadian studies have shown and I'm sure you're well versed with those that anybody that lives within 100 metres of a major arterial road or line of communication they are most likely in the older years to suffer from dementia and Alzheimer's if you don't believe me please do look it up because we in Hounslow and particularly these people in Cranford they've got three or four major arteries going through the centre of their village and that's why a lot of problems in Cranford exist I don't see any way that they're overcoming sorry I'm being pushed by the chair because he's under manners to not allow me to speak so what I'm going to wrap up early is that how is it that we are pushing out presentations which I absolutely commend you for but yet there is a great disconnect between what the council is saying and what the council is actually doing how are you overcoming those particular problems right if I may interject there because I think although councilman feels very passionate about this area of activity I think your presentation alluded to most of the stuff that he regurgitated so I don't think we need to have a further response on that I wasn't trying to curtail your intervention or your request I was just trying to be mindful of the fact that we're running short of time and I just wind it up that's what I meant I was not trying to shut you down so on that basis we're going to move ahead and I get a mindful time and take questions from the open forum now so chap at the back first and then chap at the front can I just request again just to make the questions to the officers very concise please and officers if you can give a concise response back I just wanted to ask I mean prevention is better than cure so a lot of the data that you highlighted while it's interesting what I'd like to understand is Councillor Mann pointed out that we are in an area of deprivation in terms of income I don't think that that in itself should stop us from being ambitious we just need to be more creative about how we go about overcoming those challenges the one encouraging thing about Heston and Cranford is that it seems to have come alive in the last five or six years there is community gardens there are people volunteering at an unprecedented level and I think that there's a great deal that can be achieved by working closely with schools many of which have got gardens in the primary schools Heston primary was rebuilt about ten years ago it has a beautiful outside learning space which is woefully underutilised and I know that because I walk by it almost every day so challenges should be placed upon school leadership teams to ensure that the facilities that were built are actually being properly utilised that's the first thing second thing is how does the 15 minute strategy feed into the kind of things that you're trying to achieve so if we have a cycle lane that could be going all the way up Heston Road from Hounslow to South Old Broadway to the Elizabeth line what are we doing to get people on bicycles surely we can have schemes whereby you can bulk buy a couple of thousand bicycles at better rates and people are encouraged to sign up to those and be able to use them the PTAL rating that you referred to stuck out in my mind and I looked up the TFL website today many areas in Heston and Cranford have a PTAL rating of 0 or minus 1A or 1B I don't recognise the two I think it looks optimistic for this area so that is bad but the flip side is that well we can actually lead the way and say well we're going to get people on bicycles it's how you tell the story if you don't explain why you're doing certain things and taking certain actions then you will meet resistance if you give people context they will buy into it thank you and duly noted you're absolutely right in terms of prevention and I would go further to say that it's not just about schools I think that the solution is how neighbourhoods and communities mobilise and how we use the voluntary community sector to really support some of these prevention activities because that's where the sustainability is absolutely agree on the cycling the PTAL is an average across the area but you're quite right there are certain areas when we went to Chiswick which obviously has much better infrastructure there are areas of Chiswick which are significantly difficult to get to public transport but as I say I just want a little bit of focus we've just done our annual public health report and it's focused on what we call core 20 it's the 20% most people that live in the most deprived areas access fewer of them access preventative services that wasn't borne out and it was a really positive surprise that said there are certain areas of Heston where I bash my head every year because the uptake of flu vaccination and children immunizations is incredibly low that's why you get to see jazz on the hot team on a regular basis in Heston West because always they have the lowest so there are pockets within the areas which we target and we target because the data tells us that the level of transmission of some things that a vaccine could actually prevent is much much lower but really neighborhoods and communities and investing in the community sector from a public health perspective is the key for sustainable improvement in health yeah I will definitely jump at the front there thank you can say thank you to Kelly and the team for a very comprehensive and interesting report my question is on air quality around Dolly Wagner roundabout I live I live on Monington Crescent as you come out of Monington Crescent the roundabout is 70 yards and sometimes it takes you five minutes to go around the roundabout so I want to know if you've done any quality survey around that area or not and what were you finding there we don't have a testing site at that point but what I will do is take away your name and details and contact details and I will ask the air quality officer about whether they've done any kind of mobile testing so the information that I have is the static points of which there are seven across the borough but I'll look into that if you just give me your details see there's a lot of traffic coming from Feltham going to Hayes Bypass or going to the M4 and the traffic on this side can't cross the roundabout because they don't get a chance to cross it so we need something put in place whereby the people on this side of the road can get a chance to go across noted and as I said just reinforce it as you would expect and the honest view is that where there is a major trunk road air pollution the quality of air will be lower but I will take some details afterwards and link you up with the air quality officer okay last question there's a lady right at the bottom on the right inside hello I've listened to everyone and I'm not going to do too many questions in one don't worry this be a quick question you're saying young people are becoming obesity nervosa there's other conditions bulimia and erection nervosa actually for example obesity nervosa is actually a psychiatric disease or medical condition ailment so if you and the other thing you said about young people is that they're not doing well because they don't earn enough well actually for me personally you need role models and you're very quick to blame the parents but what about elderly dependents like grandparents they can have a sign it's having very positive role models in your life they don't have to be your family they could be grandparents they could be parents mother figure father figure sister brother they could be a school teacher even one school teacher who could make that difference to a child so I heard what you say about nature and nurture and all that kind of thing but then maybe in schools we need a counselling service some kind of psychiatric service because literally this is an epidemic whatever you call it an epidemic serious thing that's going to get worse as we get older in society so this is actually a psychiatric disease people think it's just very physical it's actually psychiatric to start with the ailment and then it becomes physical but if they see their grandparents oh granddad goes to bingo or grandma goes to bingo oh I learnt this skill a real skill without using the phone without using the computer or the ipad or the tablet then again skills learnt good things learnt from the elder generation help the younger generation to really set a very good foundation for the future that's all I have to say thank you I'm just picking up your first point so I would say don't always blame the parents and don't always blame young people it's who they have access to as role models okay thank thank you very much and before Kelly gives your I think you're chomping at the bit to give a response but before you give a response can I request counsellors to one of you to move suspension of standing order so we can finish the business are you in agreement thank you okay Kelly I'll answer the first part that data on underweight obesity and overweight is not to do with anorexia or bulimia they are psychiatric conditions and any child that is experiencing that the pathway for management of a healthy weight is not through what I would say is a kind of a traditional weight management pathway it is a psychiatric condition that is dealt with by psychiatric professionals it's quite separate okay let's agree to disagree and happy to have a conversation afterwards right I was quite happy with Kelly's response but Steve you want so just to clarify we're not blaming the children and the young people and we're not blaming the parents in fact what we're trying to do no no what we're trying to do is acknowledge there are huge challenges for many of our parents and families and how they can do things like get their children ready to school it's why we run a range of services the conversation we're having is is there more we can collectively do to support those parents and those young children and you did raise a particular about why don't we have a counselling or service in schools we do we do there's a mental health team for schools that operates within can you just let me finish can you just let me excuse me can you let me finish so what I was saying is we have a mental health support team that goes into the schools it's a very small team a number of colleagues and I would like that to be a bigger team but it targets those children particularly the schools and parents have concern about so there is an offer it's not as big as we might want it to be but there is something happening for those children and for those children who can't be supported in the schools we have the children's and adolescent mental health service which is run by one of our NHS partners and that deals with what's called tier 3 and tier 4 when children have got potentially a diagnosed condition and that service then kicks in the mental health and school service deals at the lower level so there is a range of offer not as much as we'd like but there is a range of offer right thank you very much so the last question from the gentleman at the front if you can centre yeah you can keep it brief thank you very much Kelly and Stephen fantastic presentations I'm much more informed now than before I came into this meeting so thank you very much following on from what councillor Amrit Man said and I heard him speaking very passionately for Kranford thank you for that councillor 0 to 25 my children are now 25 25 30 years old and all my children four children have got little issues because of living under the flight path having these terrestrial roads around I want to change things going forward for the next new generation like you said 0 to 25 I'd like to invite the councillors Kelly Stephen to meet with us on a regular basis and thus start acting on this now and finding ways to get your message into the community as quickly as we can thank you right okay I think that's the tail end of that presentation but before we finish it off I would just allow councillor Lily Baths to just say a few words thank you very much I just wanted to thank everybody for their input because this is exactly what we wanted actually we've had a lot of conversation about health and well-being but ideas around not just isolation but about mental health about keeping fit being active and I think it's important to recognise that although you've had a lot of rich information about health and well-being in your local area and statistics I think it's important to recognise that the council has changed quite a lot over the last few years in terms of being more visible in the community to providing a lot more health and outreach work and I think that is really about giving you an opportunity to engage with us so that you are more aware of some of the services that we offer but not just services that we offer but in general how to look after your health and I think sometimes there's a lot of what can I say I think sometimes people don't realise that there is a lot more on offer than there actually is and it's about having these conversations that really opens that up so I think I hope this is not the end this is the beginning so that you can when you have ideas or you know in your local community or any ideas in general which you think will help with your own health and well-being I think it's important to to raise it with your counsellors no matter how small you think they might be so I really I found it really interesting listening to everybody actually and and I'd love to sort of come back again I think we will see and and and have more conversations like that yeah really good okay thank you very very much for that very informative presentation right moving swiftly on to agenda item number six which is the area forum action tracker I'm going to run through it I think members here have got copies in front of them so on the first page I've got some flight tipping and antisocial behavior issues regarding the rectory farm site so do we have a council who can give us an update about that but I think since I saw a hand go up also if I can tag on to that if you may the the future perhaps of that site and how it's looking because that came up in the at the previous era forum thank you chair yeah I'll try and be as brief as possible I'll start with the history of the site obviously everyone knows where rectory farm is it sort of dissects Heston West and Cranford wards it's a large piece of land and there was it's been purchased by a private company so to be absolutely clear again that entire piece of land is owned by a private company there were plans a couple of years ago to build a park because it has been identified that underneath the soil there is a lot of gravel that can be extracted and we are required to extract that gravel so there were some very ambitious plans a number of years ago to build a park first on stilts etc and extract the gravel over a number of years with the pressures that exist within the market it looks highly likely that that site will not go forward that plan will not go forward now so we are in contact with the owners of the site we are trying to again put pressure on them but they are not in a position to bring anything forward on that site that creates a converse problem because part of that site towards Henley's Roundabout is owned by them so on what we know is the alleyway between the BP garage and Braveson Road almost three quarters is owned by the owner of Rectory Farm the bits at either end so near Braveson Road and near the BP garage are the property of the council so we have been working very closely both with the council the landowner and the BP garage to try and find solutions so since we last discussed this at last forum there have been two meetings that have taken place between the landowner and ourselves and various council teams and I can give you an update chair on some of the actions that have been implemented to explore the issues of fly tipping ASB along the footpath so with police colleagues we've agreed increased patrols so the police our own internal safer neighborhood safe communities team sorry and neighborhood enforcement teams have stepped up patrols in the area and officers have engaged with residents reinforce a key piece of policy that we introduced as a council which is a public spaces protection order specifically on street drinking which moves those on not complying with or street drinking further fly tipping enforcement whilst I appreciate it's ramping up and there is an ambition to do more of it one of the early successes is any household waste that we find dumped on that alleyway especially near the Braveson end of the footpath are inspected they've gone through in great detail and they have led to 11 fixed penalty notices being issued and the trace the waste have been traced back to the individual properties on surrounding estates so we know it's coming from the surrounding areas and our teams will continue to go through any waste that is dumped there improve surveillance so this is a work in progress land owner and our neighborhood enforcement team are working with the BP garage at the top end to explore the introduction of CCTV which would provide intelligence on fly tipping and anti-social behavior incidents near the premises separately the council CCTV team are also assessing the feasibility of installing CCTV at the Braveson end of the footpath we have put a lot of pressure the three ward councillors have put a lot of pressure on the land owner for the removal of general fly tipping waste on the retro farm site and we'll continue to do that I appreciate for some that may not be enough and certainly if that's the feedback from this we will take that away but we are pushing very hard for it landowner is considering some sort of secure fencing at both ends of the footpath to prevent unauthorized access and further fly tipping I'll get more details on that as they progress that and then the BP garage has agreed to carry out regular litter picking in the area between the chain link fence and the wooden panel fencing there are further meetings the landowner has agreed to continue in conversation with the council and all relevant agencies and those meetings will take place in coming weeks to review progress and discuss additional measures and the three of us as ward councillors are very happy to bring back further updates we had asked the landowner to provide a further briefing beyond what I said at the beginning of this unfortunately that wasn't received at the time that we met we will continue to push them and ask for further updates thank you that was that's actually brilliant and again earlier on I said that we wanted to take substantive action where and when possible by the council and I can see from the report that's just been the update that's just been presented it's a it's a brilliant response it tackles nearly every issue that that was brought up with this site and hopefully we can we can get it moving forward in terms of redevelopment opportunities now moving on to the next item on the agenda it's the issues behind Vickridge Farm Road and probably tagged in with shops sorry houses above shops etc but I can tell can I leave that to council Gary go yeah thank you chair there has been a issue ongoing issue in the shops behind the shops on Vickridge Farm Road in Heston Central there was a delay in establishing the works group to address this issue at Vickridge Farm Road due to the vacancy of the state safer communities core coordinator post for Heston the post has now been filled as of March 25 and the new officer is coordinating and working group compromising relevant services partners and agencies to tackle the ongoing issues during this time reassurance patrols with businesses and residents has been continued since the new coordinator started several actions have been taken including an abandoned vehicle was reported clamped and ticketed CCTV has been inspected confirmed operational and repositioned to directly monitor the central alleyway between the shops it will remain there overnight for the next 30 days and it will be monitored missing lines of the loading base in front of the shops which were not very clear have been been asked that by highways that they be relined local businesses were contacted visited and request was made made for them to move their skips and relocate abandoned vehicles in the alleyway before the london fire brigade visit which is to commence on first of april the visit will be conducted alongside with housing neighborhood enforcement team and the ASB coordinators photographs have been shared with the council tax bills and HMO teams to clarify the number of residents living on the top of the shops whether they are legal HMOs and people who are living there are really the people who are on the council tax so we can monitor them while the the waste which is dumped whether it's done by the residents living in the flats so that we can monitor that for more information if if anybody wants to contact the new coordinator is Tara doll she's from the safer communities coordinator of Heston Cranford and australian spring row additional note to fixed penalty notice have been issued to businesses that were found disposing of commercial waste in the household waste bins and it's an ongoing monitoring process and it will continue throughout the year yeah thank you councillor again really really good comprehensive response and i remember very vividly the the the lady that brought this to our attention some era forums back and she was very very parishionate and very angry about the that particular site and it still is a hot spot so please keep your eagle eye on that and don't let things fall apart but i'm also looking forward to more enforcement and prosecutions of the relevant people who are actually doing this stuff okay moving on to the the next page which was the waste collection grip in service for flats above shops and hmo so hmo so we've already had a presentation or a response from james perkins on that which covers that in centaurity moving over the page to our cramford colleagues so if i could have an update please on the junction of a three one two high street cramford thank you chair this issue was raised at the area forum on 8th january 2024 and has been highlighted at the previous area forums meetings residents raise concerns about congestion in the right turn filter lane at the a312 high street junction in cranford causing dangerous slowdowns on the dual carriage street tfl has investigated the issue with the right turn traffic detector and the problem has now been resolved the engineer and identified that the detector was misaligned realigned it and confirmed that it is now operating correctly the fault has been fixed thank you thank you thank you council brilliant that's that's great uh so that one uh it's it's been ticked off and i think that'll probably come off the action tracker going forward well done thank you very much for your involvement in getting this resolved resolved um the next one up i've got um it's regarding um it's regarding anti-social behavior in medibank alley uh council very well thank you chair thank you um so the good the good folks of medibank alley uh and and medibank way quite quite frankly were quite passionate as you said and angry about this issue when they brought it up in previous forums that the lady in particular is not here today unfortunately but i'm sure she'll be delighted and hopefully watching this you'll be delighted and hopefully watching this online with the update that i'm about to give so the safer communities team continue to monitor the meadowbank area and as part of their routine patrols identified it as a key hotspot higher visibility patrols have been carried out and provide to provide reassurance to the public and additional joint patrols are being planned along the bath road parade of shops including meadowbank alleyway these will involve the police neighborhood enforcement team apcoa who are the largest parking control company in europe uh and arc to strengthen enforcement efforts cctv surveillance remains in place with cameras actively monitoring the alleyway entrance so that's those are measures we've taken uh particularly after they've been raised in this area form so what does what does that actually pertain to what's the result of that um a recent operation in meadowbank area on the 18th of february conducted in partnership with a lot of the stakeholders we're talking about resulted in three fixed penalty notices uh being issued apcoa has now incorporated the area into their routine patrols and further joint operations where the police are being arranged to ensure continued vigilance and deterrence goes on so um chair we can say that this has been rightly addressed um and thank you to the residents for raising this okay council garo thanks again to the cranford councils for bringing to this to a good resolution um so again back over to you again on the next issue regarding barclay avenue thank you shes only right cranford is front and center of this area form given it's in cranford um so uh part this this was a real bug bearer for me actually even before i had the the privilege of being a cranford councillor on the campaign trail before 22 which was parking issues alongside barclay avenue way avenue and bath road which have caused problems for a very long time for cranford residents um so as said residents raised concerns about taxis and private hire vehicles occupying short-term parking spaces on barclay avenue way avenue and bath road in cranford the council's parking team has reviewed and approved the proposal to change the parking restrictions and many of you will know that from previous forums to make uh shorter times that cars can be in these bay so there's higher turnover and hence uh less blockage of of those bays um it was approved by tfl who essentially uh and sometimes um unfortunately it's in their jurisdiction not ours they work very well with us obviously we'd like it to be in house if possible but such is life um the next step is for tfl's uh planning team to assess the proposals uh they've advised that they've uh undergone some internal reorganization resource constraints uh so there are slight delays but they've assured us that they will process and progress this as efficiently as possible um so please do do keep your cranford councils informed if there's any further issues in this uh and we'll keep pushing tfl to resolve this matter as soon as possible well done council uh councils from cranford well done indeed right there's another one uh church road please thank you chair uh i can assure you i wasn't uh the one behind this planner it's just fallen like this um so the the third and final contribution for me as as you must have heard my voice more than enough tonight um is road safety and environmental improvements on church road um right near cranford scorn obviously as a nursery then some industrial areas there as well um so residents continue to raise concerns about safety fly tipping and antisocial behavior on church road key concerns including narrow roads potholes and obstruction of pavements uh that pose risks to residents to pedestrians especially nursery users um you know we've we've been told about parents uh with buggies being on roads because pavements are blocked and either blocked by vehicles um sometimes lorries sometimes fly tips uh and we know that that could cause a real serious accident um a borough wide consultation on waiting uh restrictions is scheduled for this month as part of a broader review as part of this process a proposal to introduce a no-stop red zone from the beginning of church road to the nursery has been included this measure aims to prevent vehicles from parking alongside church road and obviously preventing fly tipping uh the consultation will run for six weeks and depending on the feedback provided implementation could take up to six months so my request that all of the good residents of cranford and those affected by this please partake in this consultation to make sure that your views are heard and fed into the ultimate decision okay i said it often enough thank you very much cranford councillors um for your response on on on on these particular issues um we're now going to uh move on to the next item on the agenda which is agenda item eight um but before i do that can i just ask thomas to um come forward um he needs to make a plug for um some more members to join a scrutiny panel uh review panel um go ahead go ahead yeah hello everyone um yeah so i met with uh anthony stocker from heston farm tra earlier and he's part of a new um council housing tenant and leaseholder scrutiny panel that's been set up and he's asked me to say that if there's any resident that is interested in improving housing services and making a difference to where they live uh to get in touch with us at engage dot hounslow uh sorry engage at hounslow.gov.uk or you can speak to one of the officers uh with the purple lanyard and we'll take down your details and pass them on um thank you very much oh and one other thing if i may really cheeky uh there is um an opportunity to give feedback about today's forum matthew curtis wherever he is puts a tremendous amount of effort organizing these forums and supporting members so if we wouldn't we would need to be able to hear what you think we want the experience to be really positive and informing and engaging so the more you tell us the better we can make the forums and the better we can support the members so please do either go online to um talk.hounslow.gov.uk forward slash hcaf um or you can uh pick up a um feedback form at the front desk before you go sorry chai i tightly robbed that plug but uh thank you very much okay that that's fine absolutely right moving on to agenda item eight the date of the next scheduled meeting is monday the 30th of june um monday it says that's a departure from norm isn't it okay but anyway it's okay so monday the 30th of june um and the next item agenda item nine is there any other uh urgent business i have not been informed of any urgent business beforehand is it short go ahead oh councillors that i haven't brought with me any nitrous oxide uh containers this time and i did note that you had something in the uh the notes about my nitrous oxide um when heston action group actually did a uh little pick the other day um i did actually pick up two more cylinders uh have a photograph if you want to see them okay what guys are you actually doing about the nitrous oxide problem in heston and before i can i also be cheeky can we invite all of you along to the heston action group we're open in southern playing fields every sunday you all be very welcome to come and see what we we are doing you want to come along on our litter picks and i'm going to ask my friend behind me michael to confirm next time how many bags of litter we've actually picked uh just for the record so nitrous oxide please yeah so yeah you're absolutely right it's in the minutes already there's an update in there and i'm happy to elaborate a little bit further with you after the meeting's finished right um there is no other urgent business so i formally close the meeting thank you very much for your attendance thank you