Forum Topic

Katherine Dunne fails (again)

I was bemused by the puff piece on Katherine done by Chiswick Calendar. Bit surprised they didn't ask her favorite color and if she believed in unicorns. Did we need glamor shots?? Also chuckled at the coverage of the recent area forum with feedback from Katherine's colleague, Alexandra Crush.  So many issues: "Element of competition" In order for there to be competition the competitors must provide the same service. They do not. Per the article, Voi services Ealing. That's it. Forest doesn't. This necessitates needing two different suppliers that can charge whatever they like because their competitor cannot provide the same service. The concept of checks and balances does not exist. Simple economics. "truncated journeys weren't a key issue" Surely Katherine should have choked on these words. "50% less Voi than promised" and "Forest immediately increases fees after getting contract" Is it me, or have the suppliers failed to comply with the terms of the contract? If so, what's the escape clause? If a painter fails to provide the works promised in a contract, the owner would have a court case in their favor. The contract becomes null and void. "no incentive for Lime to comply" False. Wandsworth dealt with this issue by rounding up non-compliant bikes and held them ransom. When I asked Katherine about this her response was "there is no regulation." Apparently she can't do what others clearly can. "commercially sensitive information" With spending public money, how is the public not made aware of any expenditure value? There is talk about competition on an open market yet oddly the market is secret. "I wasn't there but I'm sure it was raised" Why wasn't she there and simply how could she not know??? This begs the question can a petition be started for her removal? She fails repeatedly and there is no reason anyone should endure another two years of this dreadful and unnecessary policy she has put in place. She is clearly out of her league. As for any e-bike/scooter being left where it doesn't belong, what is the line item value for Hounslow Highways to remove them? Has it exceeded it's allowance? My bet is any increase in fees Katherine dreamt of by awarding Voi and Forest is erased (and then some) by the increase in costs for HH to remove illegal vehicles now dumped by three different vendors. Not to mention, the public can't use any Lime bike found in Hounslow. So those cost of removing them is wholly borne by Hounslow. To wit on Glebe Street this AM:


David Lesniak ● 36d82 Comments

"Do you go via Hounslow? Not sure what this example has to do with Katherine Dunne, unless there was a detour via Chiswick you haven't mentioned"Connect the dots, Andrew.Katherine Dunne awarded contracts to vendors who aren't able to provide the service that Lime did. Voi bikes can go one way but not the other and same for Forest. So choice is not an option. When you are in another borough needing to get back to Chiswick you have just one choice. Headed west that choice is only Forest. That's completely down to Katherine's choice of vendor. My bet is she didn't bother to do her due diligence. Probably she didn't even care.Forest is an abysmal service. When you try and get a bike and there is no response to scanning, what you don't know until later is the response was to your bank account, just not the bike. So you walk around scanning and scanning and scanning trying to find a bike and you can't. Meanwhile Forest is taking repeated deposits. No other service takes deposits. And what happens when the card is scanned in quick succession? It triggers a fraud alert from your bank. That is a massive and unnecessary headache. Add to that, there is always a sea of Lime bikes elsewhere that you have to pass by because they won't get you home. Then you have to find the measly few Forest bikes and pray they actually work. Just. Plain. Stupid. And no, I did not go via Hounslow. I went the direct route down Kensington High Street into Hammersmith and Lyric Square. The trip is 1.3 miles. So that silly little trip cost me £13 there and then. Insane.

David Lesniak ● 3d

"Katherine Dunne has chosen not to penalize e-bike suppliers as other councils have done."RBKC have done so - and I seem to remember Wandsworth were going to be doing something similar. Westminster seem to have a grip on it too. But it's not every other borough is it? So yes, I agree with you that an opportunity to raise money has been missed. But, as I pointed out, Hounslow ( along with all councils miss plenty of opportunities to raise money).E.g. enforcing the Except for Access restriction near Strand on the Green ... they could do that for a month and probably raise loads of money. Another opportunity missed. "The other day I had to pay £13 to get from the Holland Park entrance by the Waitrose on Kensington High Street to Lyric Square. By what measure is that an incentive to cycle? No one should need multiple accounts to cycle from one borough to another. Yet now, it is required."Do you go via Hounslow? Not sure what this example has to do with Katherine Dunne, unless there was a detour via Chiswick you haven't mentioned. If I lived in Hounslow, I'd be very pissed off with 'my' council, and, on balance I think I'd like to give the conservatives a go running the council, and yes, things seem to be better in other boroughs. On the face of it, Wandsworth Council do a far better job for their resident cyclists i.e.https://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/news/news-july-2025/50-off-lime-bikes-wandsworth-council-makes-e-bikes-fair-safe-and-affordable/I guess I'm in a nice position where I live near Chiswick, so can enjoy the good things about it, without having to worry about the useless council.And, perhaps, if I lived in Hounslow I'd feel like you do about Katherine Dunne. Maybe you're right after all.Probably time for me to end this particular debate with you, David ... I'll just have to bite my tongue for a while :)

Andrew Jones ● 4d

Katherine Dunne has chosen not to penalize e-bike suppliers as other councils have done. We now know the monetary value of said practice in Kensington. Money that will be directed toward active travel. Ergo, Andrew, Katherine has missed an opportunity to raise money and keep poor performance at bay. Some would call that Management 101. She has also missed an opportunity to raise money for her own pet cause. That makes no sense. One would think she'd gobble up funds any which way. She even says fund-raising is what was behind her recent inane decision to boot Lime out. Er...no. She's not pursued raising greater sums by imploding her own agenda item and spent more in the process. It certainly costs more to cycle now than it used to. The other day I had to pay £13 to get from the Holland Park entrance by the Waitrose on Kensington High Street to Lyric Square. By what measure is that an incentive to cycle? No one should need multiple accounts to cycle from one borough to another. Yet now, it is required. As for more than two vendors, simply look to other councils. My daily routine takes me through Chiswick, Hammersmith and Kensington. The latter has more than two vendors operating. Hammersmith has multiple vendors as well only some do bikes and others scooters. So again, ergo, completely possible. But it eludes Katherine to manage effectively and provide the same level of service as neighbouring boroughs have done. Seems to me that's down to the individual and nothing else. I can see why the status quo remains when folks just roll over and let Hounslow ride right over them. Not a democracy I fancy, but each to their own.

David Lesniak ● 4d

Wow, Jeremy. Loyal you are. I'll give you that. If, as you say, Katherine paid scant attention to details for something under her remit, she is patently unqualified for this part of her portfolio as well as any future position especially leadership.How could she not know? It is her passion. It is her remit. And you expect us to believe she was ignorant or "not on top of her game." Nope. She knew. She also knows Forest Bikes are able to be left anywhere and turn off after five minutes. I know this because she was CCed into an email response to me from Forest that states:"Regarding the ride where the ride was auto-parked, we have a feature where rides that are still but not paused will be automatically ended. After 5 minutes, if there is no movement on the ride, the bike will automatically pause and then after a further 5 minutes if there is still no movement, the ride will be ended. We would always advise pausing the ride when you are stationary to avoid this from happening. If in the case the ride auto pauses, you can also unpause the ride in the app."Not exactly an argument for compliance now, is it?A bad look, indeed.As for slightly easing the massive shortfall I maintain three suppliers would do more than the current two. That's just simple math, Jeremy. More suppliers, more revenue, less of a massive shortfall. But Labour is rubbish with anything remotely commercial and/or business related. We all know this. Nothing new. And as we're seeing repeatedly they are also adept at deceit. Katherine has proven that herself repeatedly. It is time for her to step aside.

David Lesniak ● 22d

Jeremy, it is unfathomable for me to think Katherine is a true believer of these policies. She destroyed them. She didn't fight. She didn't defend. She didn't innovate. She didn't lead. She bulldozed. That's it. Bulldozed. Without a care as to the impact to her constituents. Didn't consider truncated rides????The only ones benefiting from this new Lime policy are those from OUTSIDE the borough. She failed everyone INSIDE the borough. The ones she has been elected to represent. That's an epic fail. We're not paying her to help others. We're paying her to help and represent us. And she has not. I also believe it will cost us more as pressure mounts on Hounslow Highways to remove any offending vehicle (assuming they will which is not to discredit them). So what? The increase in revenue from Forest goes out the window and then some to collect Lime bikes that can't be hired? That's as stupid as stupid gets. I've always advocated for docking stations. Was accused of being anti-cyclist for it (go figure). That was prior to the arrival of e-bikes. At this point I think docking is outdated unless a large swath of space is dedicated for that purpose. Hammersmith has something under the flyover. Not the best example. But something like it. In my view, it could and should be part of a parking structure if Sainsbury's redeveloped. Dedicate an entire floor to centralized bike parking and divvy it up per vendor so all can service the borough. Win/Win. E-bikes. E-cars. Scooters. Cars. Vans. Charging stations. Gardens. That's what a modern car park looks like.But without user and vendor accountability with appropriate metrics and reporting we will only ever have the mess that Katherine Dunne created. She would be a miserable leader and the council would be worse off for it.An example of Labour's continued cluelessness: Hanif Khan being re-selected for the next election. Need we scrape the barrel?

David Lesniak ● 34d

David, I’m not calling for formality in all exchanges, rather pointing out the potential pitfalls of this kind of editorial approach. That said, probably better to have any inherent bias out in the open and the straight bat coverage on ChiswickW4.com doesn’t reveal as much about what is really going on as does John Dale’s Brentford TV site. While much of this may be gossip, there is no denying that it gives the best insight into the faction ridden Labour party in Hounslow. The picture painted there is Cllr Dunne is trying to put together a leadership challenge before next May.There is much to admire about her in my view and she possibly could make a good go of the job. Unlike most of her colleagues, who see active travel as a cloak for revenue raising opportunities, she is a true believer and is not afraid to articulate potentially unpopular policies. You and I might not like that she is convinced making life more difficult for motorist is a good outcome but we should at least give her credit for integrity for saying out loud what many will not.Doing a soft soap interview to distance herself from a policy which she plainly didn’t agree with, looks very like a first move in a challenge to Shantanu Rajawat. According to Brentford TV, the existing leader has a significant influence over which candidates will be selected to stand next time around and has already culled many potential opponents. It is speculated that the relationship between Cllr Dunne and Cllr Rajawat is poor and he did remove her as Deputy Leader. Leaving her in place at transport and then forcing her to implement a policy which she didn’t want to and alienated many of her former supporters including turning celebrity chum Jeremy Vine into a venomous critic, could have been an act of Machiavellian brilliance.She can’t reverse the Lime decision even if she does win the leadership, but she does need to act soon if she is going to make a challenge. It may be that the current leader’s grip on the party is unbreakable and she has to put her head down and suck it up.

Jeremy Parkinson ● 34d

"not the best look to designate politicians by their first name" Jeremy, it's 2025. Let's dispense with needless formality and cut to the chase. People, the ones in charge, should and need to be held to account. And if they can't tolerate robust scrutiny they have no place in today's democratic machine. Katherine could have easily helped plug any hole if she chose to collect Lime bikes and fine them accordingly as other councils have done. She chose not to. She imploded a system that worked and provided no tenable solution. As for Andrew's comment on parking, perhaps he should open his eyes. Marking up bays to park e-bikes has already been done. That system doesn't work because it fails to take into consideration human behavior. There is also, to my knowledge, no way for Hounslow to determine just how many fines any vendor has issued to offenders. So, again, without accountability from anyone, the system is destined to fail. If a vendor doesn't have to pay the price, why would they? Why risk losing customers if the vendor doesn't have to report anything? They are given a free pass. Snapshot this morning in my corner of W4 shows about 20 Lime devices. All are supposed to be reported to Hounslow Highways to be collected. How dumb is this? That means on a daily/weekly./monthly basis HH will charge the council for this service. Across the entire borough. This was foisted upon HH mid-contract so the cost will be above and beyond and that ultimately comes back to all of us. People think they can always call HH to fix everything. HH is on a fixed contract. Deviation from those terms have a cost. Poor decision. Poor management. And we pay for this? No. This poor performance in any commercial sector would be met with expulsion. Truly penny wise and pound foolish and destroying a network in the process. Utterly avoidable. Katherine could easily check the app herself — or have a minion do it — and report it back to any vendor or she could liaise with HH to resolve. But she simply washes her hands of it all. She is incapable of managing the situation. Inept.  And new vendors continue to arrive:

David Lesniak ● 35d