The new team (l-r): Adele Morris, David Noakes, Rosie Shimell, Michael Bukola, Anood Al-Samerai, Graham Neale

Leader of Southwark Liberal Democrats, Councillor Anood Al-Samerai, has unveiled her new frontbench team for the year leading up to 2014′s council elections, with the focus on more affordable homes.

Cllr Adele Morris will be the Southwark Liberal Democrats’ new deputy leader and is taking on a new Shadow Cabinet role of ‘Regeneration, Jobs and Affordable Homes’. The Lib Dems have created this role to mark out affordable housing as a priority for a future Lib Dem administration.

Cllr Morris has recently completed a Masters Degree in Urban Regeneration and has already been pressing the Labour Council to be more open about their dealings with developers, as well as their failure to deliver more affordable homes in new developments.

In addition to her leadership responsibilities, Cllr Al-Samerai will be focusing on council budgets and community councils, outlining the Liberal Democrats’ commitment to giving residents more say over how their own money is spent.

The full frontbench team for the next year is:

Cllr Anood Al-Samerai – Leader; Finance and Community Councils

Cllr Adele Morris – Deputy Leader; Regeneration, Jobs and Affordable Homes

Cllr David Noakes – Older People, Health & Adult Social Care

Cllr Rosie Shimell – Children, Young People and Equalities

Cllr Michael Bukola – Housing Management and Community Safety

Cllr Graham Neale – Environment and Leisure

Cllr Al-Samerai has also reaffirmed her commitment to providing value for money for Southwark residents by putting together a smaller front bench team which better mirrors the council’s existing departments. Labour’s currently have nine Cabinet members and they have resisted calls to reduce this number.

Previous deputy leader Cllr Paul Noblet will be leading on putting together the group’s 2014 election manifesto.

Commenting on her new frontbench team, Leader of the Southwark Liberal Democrat Group Cllr Anood Al-Samerai, said:

“We’ve got an impressive and diverse team going into next year’s election, which will be working from now until polling day to prove we’re on the side of Southwark residents.”

“Affordable housing is the biggest issue in Southwark, which is why it is a top priority for local Liberal Democrats. Residents are tired of seeing their council leaders roll over to big developers whilst they sell off our council homes. It’s at the top of our agenda.”

“I’d also like to pay tribute to Councillor Paul Noblet who has been a fantastic deputy leader over the past 3 years and who is now going to be overseeing our manifesto process. Over the next year we’ll be getting out our message that if you want the council to get the basics right on the things like homes, schools and street cleaning, you should be backing Southwark Liberal Democrats.”

Success. Earlier today the Dept of Education announced that they’ve agreed we need at least one more primary school and possibly another two.
Funding for one new primary school to open September 2014 has been approved – http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/leadership/typesofschools/freeschools/b00222077/pre-opening

Our campaign for more primary school places to solve the pending places crisis has taken a massive leap forward due to your support and help. Thank you.

Background. By 2016 our area will have a shortage of 215-235 primary school reception places. That means we need 2 to 3 new primary schools around the Dulwich, Forest Hill Road, Nunhead areas. The Harris Federation agreed to apply for funding to open a new primary school with vision of being in the top 10% for results and progressions of English schools. The Judith Ker bilingual school have confirmed a site in the SE24 Southwark Herne Hill area.

Next step. Parents and members of the community are invited to attend a public meeting to discuss the school on Tuesday 11th June, 7.30pm at Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich, Homestall Road, SE22 0NR.

2009 I obtained agreement on behalf of Southwark Council from TfL that for the cycle super highway along Southwark Bridge Road (most of its route in Southwark) that it would be 20mph.

Putting self enforcing measures along the road would be really expensive and disruptive.

Separately I’ve been nagging Southwark Labour cabinet members about trialling 20mph average speed cameras.

I’m chuffed to see both moving forward: http://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/s38028/Report%20-%20Allocation%20of%20discretionary%20funding.pdf

20mph average speed cameras will also have a small £10,000 study about them being applied to Southwark Bridge Road.

I submitted details to them about Siemens having a self funding scheme with 3-4 speeders paying to attend speed awareness courses and some of the fees paid for the £50,000 per cameras pairs and administration.

Hopefully the study concludes this route is suitable. Happy days for an opposition councillor to helps steer an administration policies.

For a few years I’ve been banging on about Southwark Council funding a study about extending the Bakerloo line http://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/mgIssueHistoryHome.aspx?IId=21396&Opt=0

This approach by Greenwich Council about extending the DLR resulted in the Woolwich Arsenal extension. Funding such a report – not cheap at £50,000 – ensures some real depth occurs and hopefully will push the Bakerloo extension along by several years.

It is brilliant in opposition to push policies and actions you want and see them adopted. Happy day.

Southwark councillors will have the chance to increase the number of Community Councils in the borough from five to eight when Liberal Democrats force a vote on the issue this week.

Lib Dem councillors have put forward a motion at Southwark Council’s annual meeting on Wednesday (22 May), calling for a return to the previous Community Council model of eight neighbourhood areas. It would end the council’s experiment with only five Community Councils, which was brought in by the Labour administration last year despite protests from opposition councillors and residents.

The change would see the Bermondsey & Rotherhithe forum split into two separate Community Councils, Walworth taken out of Borough, Bankside & Walworth, and Peckham taken out of the Nunhead & Peckham Rye Community Council area.

Southwark Liberal Democrats argue that the new set-up isn’t working, with attendances dropping and over-packed agendas. They say more localised Community Councils would increase local participation and give more time for important issues to be discussed with residents.

Whilst the total budget for Community Councils would remain the same this year, the Liberal Democrats have already pledged to increase their funding in future years should they win back control of the council.

Leader of the Liberal Democrat group at the council, Cllr Anood Al-Samerai, said:

“Southwark Labour took a perfectly good model of community involvement and cynically dismantled it for political purposes. Their general approach to local democracy is to squash it wherever they see it because they want to hold on to as much power centrally as they possibly can.”

“Public opinion is on our side on this. Residents want a return to the old system, and Southwark Liberal Democrats will continue to make that case. I hope Labour councillors will see sense and back a return to more local decision making.”

Current Community Councils areas:

1. Borough, Bankside & Walworth
2. Bermondsey & Rotherhithe
3. Camberwell
4. Peckham & Nunhead
5. Dulwich

Proposed Community Council areas:

1. Borough and Bankside
2. Bermondsey
3. Rotherhithe
4. Walworth
5. Peckham
6. Camberwell
7. Nunhead and Peckham Rye
8. Dulwich

Some years ago the Lib Dems created Community Funds for each of Southwark’s 21 political wards to spend locally, £100-£1000 on local groups running local projects and events. It turns out we were onto something bigger and more meaningful than we ever imagined.

Various research projects of traumatic events have discovered that communities with more robust social networks coped much better with earthquakes, heat waves, etc than those without.  Even the day to day issues and problems are ameliorated by strong social networks. Importantly stornger social networks have a large impact on things like child health, school grades, teen births, adult mortality, social disorders and even amazingly IQ scores. Some have dubbed this the “enduring neighbourhood effect”.

The more community groups the great the “enduring neighbourhood effect” – lowers crime rates, less violence as well as the other benefits mentioned earlier. You name a parameter and its improved.

How to foster more community groups and networks?

Ever since standing as a councillor many residents in East Dulwich have been very clear that they agree we should ensure our shopping streets don’t become clone zones.

The New Economics Forum have come up with a method to measure this.

This methodology involve counting the number of independent stores versus the number of shops and the different types of shops.

We’ve surveyed Lordship Lane northern main shopping area, Lordship Lane around Dulwich Library and Grove Vale. The measures is that areas 0-50 are called Clone Towns, 50-65 Border Towns and 65-100 Home Towns.

Lordship Lane (northern/main area) = 73 – largely affected by estate agents

Lordship Lane (Dulwich library area) = 75

Grove Vale = 78 — but vitality affected by number of takeaways.

Walworth Road = 61

To make Lordship Lane more of a Home Town we’d need more variety of shopping – we don’t have electronics, sports/cycling store, music/games. We also have a very large number of chain estate agents and food stores.

We’ll be using these survey results to inform the Dulwich planning bible currently being prepared.

What do you think would help preserve and increase the shopping vitality of Lordship Lane?

Cllr David Hubber

Opposition councillors have welcomed a change of heart by Southwark Council on fees charged for adult learners.

The council has said it will now scrap the controversial ‘repeat fee’ for concessionary learners, introduced by the Labour administration in late 2010 for people who had already been on a course before. It meant that people on low incomes were being charged more than 300% of the normal concessionary price for some courses, even if they were going on to do a follow on course.

A course on CV writing and interview skills, for example, costs a jobseeker £46.50, as opposed to the £111 standard price. However, for anybody who has already undertaken a course of adult learning, the ‘repeat fee’ price would shoot up to £165.

Concerns about the new fees structure have been raised a number of times at meetings of the council’s cross-party Education, Children’s Services and Leisure scrutiny committee, with representations made to the committee on behalf of students.

Campaigners from Save Southwark Adult Learning have been critical of the ‘discriminatory” repeat fee, and have also presented a deputation to Council Assembly.

The ‘repeat fee’ will continue to be charged for non-concessionary learners, however.

Basic adult learner fees will also now be frozen, according to the new pricing schedule announced by the council.

Welcoming the move, Cllr David Hubber, Liberal Democrat chair of the scrutiny panel, said:

“This is good news indeed for those people who are keen to continue on adult learning courses, but felt they couldn’t afford the repeat fees after their initial course.”

“I am very pleased that the Cabinet member for Communities and Economic Wellbeing has listened and responded positively.”

Work on the new Elephant and Castle leisure centre is now underway, marking an important step towards returning lost sports facilities to the area. Residents will now want to be reassured that they are getting a good deal on the site.

When the deal on the neighbouring St Mary’s Residential tower was originally agreed, the council talked a lot about the contribution the developers would make towards the construction of the new leisure centre, with council leader Peter John even saying “without the tower being built we would not be having a new leisure centre on this site because we couldn’t afford to do it.”

But a closer look at the details shows that the developers have contributed only £3.5m towards the £20m cost of the leisure centre. That’s only 17.5% of the funds required, with the balance being made up from the sale of other council assets. When you consider that even this small contribution was made only at the cost of all affordable housing in St Mary’s Tower, many will feel that residents have again lost out as the council rolls over to the demands of big developers.

Lost facilities

Local Liberal Democrats have long been concerned about the limited facilities that will be on offer at the centre, compared to the old centre. The loss of squash courts and reduction in the size of the sports hall will be keenly felt, at a time when the council should be doing all it can to encourage residents young and old to keep active and live healthy lives.

Despite these problems, it is good to see the project get off the ground, and the new leisure centre will no doubt become a well-used resource. Southwark Lib Dems will continue to put pressure on the council to ensure the project now delivers all it can for the local area. When it comes to sports and leisure facilities in Southwark, you can be sure the Lib Dems are on your side.

Southwark Labour have proposed changes to the protocol councillors have to follow else they received sanctions.

Amazingly counter democratic proposal “…members (except when accessing services as a residents of  the borough) should always advise the relevant chief officer in advance of such visits”.

Sounds innocuous  enough but it would mean council would always be prepared for visits. Little opportunity to really tests services. It also precludes helping residents in person when they need. Help as we wouldn’t be able to brief the chief officers in advance.

See the reports  page 24. The Labour chair said many things including “I don’t see any problems with these changes.”

After an awful lot of hassling Labour they finally agreed for office to review the proposals again. Hopefully Labour will be shamed into something much more democratic.