Although it has been relatively common for bins to be uncollected in Southfield and the rest of Ealing’s streets, this Christmas has seen a huge number of complaints into our post boxes from residents venting their anger at the Council.

There were also lots of green bags spotted containing swept up leaves, but they have been left for many weeks around Acton, Chiswick, Elthorne and Ealing, when the contractor should have removed them much quicker.

We saw that the Council’s own magazine Around Ealing reported different collection days to the Council website which left many residents unsure of when to leave out their bins for collection.

A few months ago the Liberal Democrats put a motion which was debated by Ealing Council and it was agreed that a Climate Emergency was happening but after waiting, the report DID NOT contain measures to assess whether the Council was succeeding or failing to meet its climate change targets.

So Liberal Democrat Group Leader gained agreement of Ealing Council to the three requests which means that:

1. Ealing Council Cabinet papers should have text at the start of Council reports to indicate the impact on climate change of Council decisions so people can work out if a proposal will help or worsen our environment.
2. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor progress or not on climate change projects would be created and used covering areas like Energy, Food, Transport, Green space and Waste.
3. The Chair of Overview & Scrutiny (OSC) be asked to consider if the committee would include the topic of Climate Change in its future meetings to help the Council meet its Climate Change.

We all know that in London knife crime is out of control. The homicide rate this year is on course to surpass that of 2018, which had seen the highest level of violent killings in a decade, with over 110 murders before the end of September. In Ealing, we are dealing with tragedies on a weekly basis and in September our community experienced three fatal stabbings in one week. That’s three Ealing families and their extended communities that have been robbed of their loved ones by violent senseless knife crime.

We must react with urgent action to bring our communities together and tackle the root causes behind knife crime. 

Between Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan utterly failing to grasp this emergency and the Conservative party’s short-sighted focus on stop and search and cuts to our police, youth and mental health services, London and Ealing is in crisis. Siobhan Bentita, our Mayoral candidate, and I understand that enough is enough. Siobhan’s “Feel Safe, Be Safe” 5 point plan for London will give every young person a voice, activities and the security of good schooling. 

I’m ready to fight this issue as your future MP, and I’ve already started work on the ground by setting up a working group to have local conversations and embed holisitic solutions in our community to tackle knife crime. With your help, I am critically fighting to stop our local police station from closing. With a Labour Council and Mayor subjecting us to cuts and failing to attack knife crime in Ealing, now is the time to speak up for our community.

Please sign our petition to help save our police stations and fight knife crime.  

New polling published in Ealing Today has shown the Liberal Democrats projected at 28% of the vote in Ealing Central and Acton. This puts us just seven points behind Labour.

Sonul Badiani, Lib Dem candidate, said: "I’m delighted to see national polling start to show what we know to be true in Ealing and Acton: the Lib Dems can win, you can demand better than Johnson’s and Corbyn's Brexit and the two party political system is over."

Find out more about our outstanding candidate here.

If you are a local resident of the Pitshanger Lane area and you have been on holiday for the last month, you may not be aware of the  plan to add two stories to the buildings on the South side of Pitshanger Lane.

The development is going to block sunlight on the street and is out of scale with the (protected) buildings on the other side of the road. At a meeting at St Barnabas Church Hall was packed with local residents with standing room only.  Nobody spoke in favour of the plan.

At the Overview & Scrutiny meeting tonight, which was prompted by a Lib Dem call-in about libraries, Labour-run Ealing has allowed five libraries run by voluntary groups without any assessment of the business cases about how the community run libraries might operate.

Lib Dem Councillor Jon Ball voted for the plan to be sent back to Cabinet to be reconsidered.

In a packed meeting with well over hundred residents, Labour-run Ealing Council agreed to have five libraries run by voluntary groups without offering an assurance of what would happen if any of the voluntary groups were not operating in a few years’ time. At the same time many libraries will see reduced hours.

At the meeting Liberal Democrat Leader Councillor Gary Malcolm said: “Liberal Democrats think this is totally wrong. We would not close any libraries and would find money to manage them rather than allowing them to be run by an external company. Education and libraries are crucial. How often is it that we say that we need to educate ourselves and then at the same time we reduce the facilities for people of all ages to study and make use of library facilities?”

Labour’s Ealing Cabinet meeting agreed to close two well-loved Children’s Centres in Wood End and North Ealing.

At the meeting Liberal Democrat Leader Councillor Gary Malcolm said: “Last year a Council Scrutiny Panel heard evidence that intervention at an early age can reduce violent crime. Closing children’s centres will cause a lot of issues for parents and their children. The Council should put their plans on hold and listen properly to what parents are saying.”

This somewhat incomprehensible notice has been posted at the northern end of Bellevue Rd. For a full sized image click here.  You may remember that Bellevue Rd came to our attention because it was suffering from parking issues because of an ill-thought-out Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) in the south. Now it seems they are to be squeezed from the north by the removal of parking spaces in Perivale gardens .

West Ealing station is being rebuilt for Crossrail. Maybe they will get it finished soon, and when it does this area will become a magnet for commuters who will have fast trains to the West End and City. Hence the rush to develop the area.