Today East Dulwich cllrs Jonathan Mitchell and I (cllr Richard Thomas is on holiday), along with Greater London Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon met with Southwarks Police Commander Malcom Tillyer along with other Police and MPA officers.

A very useful third meeting to discuss the future of East Dulwich Police Station.

We discussed the East Dulwich councillors proposals of how a Police station as we would see it could be kept on the current site, combined potentially with other council facilities, while meeting Police aspirations for new facilities commensurate with their requirements while obtaining capital receipts for the site.

Unfortuntely everything is on hold while the Metropolitan Police Authority reviews it property plans. Hopefully, in 4-8 weeks time we can continue these discussions.

Southwark Council and Southwark Police have been recognised for excellent partnership working. Hopefully we can deliver a role model in East Dulwich that takes such partnership working to an even higher level by sharing facilities and increasing how joined up services are for the general public. If successful this could be a model for other sites in Southwark and London as a whole.

The East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team have requested that the East Dulwich councillors via our Crime Reduction fund buy two trial pocketable metal detectors. The beauty of these is that they can be carried easilly in a pocket. If/when officers stop someone and search them they can use a metal detector and reduce the level of intimacy of a manual search, reduce the time it takes and increase the likelyhood of finding any hidden metal items.

Even detecting one extra knife and taking it out of circulation will have made this funding worthwhile.

We await the results of this initial trial.

Last year for England crime dropped by 10% nationally but knife crime is still a problem. 22,151 reported knife crimes occurred with half of these in inner London, Manchester and Birmingham.

To help the East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team find knives before they are used to commit a crime the East Dulwich councillors are using Cleaner, Greener, Safer funds to purchase a metal detector wand so small it can fit in a shirt pocket. T

Hopefully this little device will work as hoped and help the local East Dulwich find any knives out their. Hopefully, they wont have any to find. Even finding one knife will be a huge success.

If this devices proves useful we’ll fund others.

This year the East Dulwich councillors Richard Thomas, Jonathan Mitchel and I have allocated £42,450 out of our £120,000 Cleaner Greener Safer funding allocation towards Crime Reduction. We’ve met the East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team Sgt. Duncan Jackson and agreed the initial spending. These monies are on top of the £35,000 last year and £15,000 the previous year.

175 Alertboxes - proven to reduce shop and busines crime by over half

2,000 Smartwater/Select DNA type property marking kits to make burglary pointless

New Neighbourhood Watch signs

Laser speed camera and mobile traffic calming message board 

When I was elected in May 2006 East Dulwich ward was 267th out of all 625 London wards, with 1st being best, for rates of crime per thounsand population.  We’ve helped improve this so that in East Dulwich we’re now 221st in London and improving. Roughly this means 130 fewer reported crime victims last year.

At long last Caffe Nero, having spouted considerable vitriol about Southwark Council, East Dulwich residents, council officers, and after the latest 30 day deadline, Caffe Nero have finally removed two noisy illegal and ugly air conditioning units they’d installed within a few feet of residents bedroom windows.

I never thought I’d quote the “unacceptable face of capitalism” and think it resonated with the appalling actions of a business located in East Dulwich.

Imagine what it must have been like having these units feet away from your bed, working 24/7, and being particualrly noisy in summer when you need to have your bedroom window open to keep cool.

At last some good news for these residents who can finally get a good nights sleep.

Southwark is one of two local authorities in the country taking part in an average speed camera trial. Barry Road was recently considered for this trial. I have had a number of East Dulwich residents complaining about excessive speeding and so have my Liberal Democrat ward colleagues cclr Richard Thomas and cllr Jonathan Mitchell.

Barry Road over the last three years has had two people seriously injured and 28 slightly injured so clearly lots of pain and suffering.  Barry Road at its junction with Underhill Road had six, four around Etherow Street and the school, seven at the junction with Eynella Road.

The requirements to consider a road for the trial included producing speed stats of the current situation. 63,527 travelled along Barry Road between 12 and 20 March. 1.49% exceeded the 40mph speed limit. The average speed was 25.7mph but 20% of vehicels travelled greater than 30mph.

So average speed cameras to enforce the 40mph aren’t really necessary. But changing the speed limit to 30mph to reflect the reisdential nature of Barry Road would seem long overdue.

Drink driving is up in Southwark by 14%. This compares to London-wde figures where charges for a positive breath test have gone down by 10%. How very disappointing and life threatening.

Several years ago the Traffic Police service in south London was decimated.  Perhaps this is one of the results. All the research shows that Traffic Police patrols are one of the two most effective means to reduce average traffic speeds to the speed limit - the other being average speed cameras.

This week the council executive of eight Lib Dem and two Tory executive councillors finalised budget recommendations for the next three years.  Considerable debate has taken place and several months of hard work by council officers and coalition councillors to reach this point.

The council leader Cllr Nick Stanton has done an exemplary job in keeping all the coalition councillors informed and involved.

It’s worth reminding ourselves that 70% of council revenues are provided by central government. That the Labour government has decided to use 2004 population figures and not more recent figures. As the population is dramatically rising in London and South East, 2004 population fugures results in less money for Southwark but benefits Labour heartlands up the M1. Councils with signifcant deprivation (Southwark is the 20th most deprived council in UK) are getting real term cuts from the Labour government for the next three years as opposed to councils such as Rotherham (the 50th most deprived) which is seeing dramatic real terms increased.

Considerable savings will be made by centralising many council offices into a new office on Tooley street. God knows where we’d be if this wasn’t already in progress.

Social care is being consulted on to stop providing care for those with moderate needs. Community Warden services will have fewer wardens and manager. Meals on wheels where Southwark is the cheapest in London will see price increases. Livesey childrens museum will close. A review of all three historic town halls will take place. Some council funded events will see cuts or no more funding. A whole host of other cuts will be made.

No one likes or wants cuts. Considering the dreadful hand of cards dealt by the government I think the residents of Southwark have had the best possible result.

The latest crime stat for London are available on the Metropolitan Police website. It shows that reported crime in East Dulwich has taken a sharp dip. Some of this is due to the Police more accurately showing East Dulwich political ward boundaries. But most of the dip can’t be explained in this way.

Much of the dip is due to the hard decisions the three Liberal Democrat councillors have taken to spend local Cleaner, Greener, Safer money in ways suggested by the local Crime Prevention Officer. Things like Alertboxes and gating alleyways. We’ve also been following up our promise to ensure all East dulwich streets have good modern street lighting levels.

So 2006 East Dulwich has 99.72 crime per thousand population. During 2007 this dropped to 86.16 crimes per thousand. This means we’ve gone from being the 3rd to 2nd best ward for lowest reported crime levels in Southwark. The next round of Cleaner, Greener, Safer applications has opened with a closing date of 31 March for applications.

Again we’ll be taking extra heed of what the evidence tells us will reduce crime when deciding between schemes. In one years time I expect to be able to say that East Dulwich is no.1 for lowest reported crime in Southwark. Watch this space….

The latest annual report by the UK based Privacy International advocacy group tells us that an increase in survelliance and decline in privacy safeguards globally has occurred during the last year.

The UK earned top place for having the most endemic surveillance due to having the biggest network of CCTV in the world + Labour plans for a national compulsory ID card rich with personal and biometric information, and minimal comeback for citizens when the government looses this information. And you know they will loose that information.

The report states that the UK Labour government “has access to its people and technology that China doesn’t”. We seem to have runaway adoption of such technologies with little or no progress in safeguards to ensure fair play for you and me as private citizens.

The latest cost estimate by the London School of Economics of the Labour governments ID card plan is £12 to £18 billion during the next ten years. Think how many Police officers that could pay for. Or how fantastic the reabilitation of prisoners could be, dramatically reducing reoffending rates.

The Youth Justice Board, which runs the Labour flagship Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme, said the re-offending rate was “very high” or in plain english 91% re-offended within two years!

What do you think the Labour government should spend our tax money on - ID cards, more Police or getting criminals rehabilitated?