Lordship Lane – walking audit

In 2007 the East Dulwich councillors arranged for a walking audit of Lordship Lane. Over the years we’ve gradually been delivering it recommendations.

The final problems from that report that need fixing are crossing East Dulwich Grove where it meets Lordship Lane and crossing Lordship Lane around where the Coop/Somerfield supermarket it.

I’m chuffed to report that it has finally been agreed and approved to install three crossing to fixed these final problems. The timescales will be that the works will be completed by March 2012 and will include some rearranging of local parknig to ensure that overall a gain in car parking to make up for the loss of parking that these crossings need to proceed.

I’d like to thank residents patience. Businesses for highlighting that we needed to make good any loss of parking. Good challenge that we’ve ensured is more than met. And lastly a thank you to officers who’ve been really supportive to ensure we’ve come up with the best overal solution – and the East Dulwich Grove entry crossing solution was after a number of meetings with East Dulwich councillors and specialise consultants.

Roll on March 2012.

Plot to rename bonfire night

Labour run Southwark Council have decided to hold a public bonfire event in Dulwich Park. Sadly they don’t feel they want to call it a firework display but have come up with a more politically correct name for the event – “The Colour Thief”.

They plan to spend £55,000 on this event Friday 4 November. They’ve confirmed to me they expect 2,000 attendees which works out at £25 a head!
To others they’ve said 3,000 – 5,0000.
They’ve said to the Friends of Dulwich Park that they have no choice it will happen whether they like it or not. At the Dulwich Community Council last week they said it will be decided via a public consultation.
To local Councillors they’ve said it’s not a rival fireworks event but to the press the Labour cabinet member councillor Ward has said “We have some great ideas for the fireworks night event, which includes our new Colour Thief display, and we are currently consulting local people about what they’d like to see”.

I think it’s safe to say local people would like some honesty. Dulwich already has numerous public firework events and doesn’t need another one whatever crazy politically correct names it’s given. Ideally the events budget would be devolved to local community councils to decide which local events to support.

Honest councillors?

Finally I’ve received the mobile phone bills for the council Blackberry phone the council provide me for the period December 2010 to May 2011! I spent just under £50 which to avoid any errors or dispute about were any of the calls personal I’ll be paying back.  This should mean that councillors phone bills will be published in the near future – good for transparent honest local politics.

Separately I’ve heard via a Freedom of Information request that three councillors are behind with paying Council Tax. Two Labour and one Lib Dem. I’d like to reassure East Dulwich voters that I’m fully up to date with paying my Council Tax and pay via Direct Debit.

Times are hard for many and most people in realterms have not seen wages keep up with inflation. A hard fact of life while the nation sorts it finances out. So I have sympathy with colleagues finding it hard to makes ends meet. But equally we do receive a large allowance to help us be councillors and in fact many receive extra Special Responsibility Allowances – most Labour councillors receive SRA’s for example. Voters will not understand how councillors can owe the council money when they are paid so much.

Southwark Council gets remoter

Dulwich is 1/8th of Southwark Councils population and about 1/4 of its land area. In the past Southwark Council HQ was dead centre in the middle of the borough at Southwark Town Hall. This is/was where council assembly and most other committee meetings occurred.

Southwark Labour party have decided to sell Southwark town hall and relocate all meeting to Tooley Street – just about as far north as you can get from Dulwich without getting your feet wet.

To compound things our Dulwich Housing office is being relocated to a new office in Harris Street covering the south of the borough. To show how out of touch Labour are they think Harris Street is in the south. I doubt I could find a person in Dulwich who could tell me where Harris Street is.

Why is this important?

It is hard to get people to attend public council meetings and committees now. The Council is already considered aloof and distant. It will now be physically much more remote from most Southwark residents and over % miles away for many Dulwich residents. It will be rare for Southwark council senior managers to experience Southwark outside the enclave of London Bridge. This can’t be good for understanding of what needs fixing.

I could understand this IF significantly more powers and budgets were being devolved to local community councils to counter the gross centralisation. But it isn’t – not Labour politicians style of philosophy.

Dulwich Leisure Centre completed

Today the final part of the Dulwich Leisure Centre renovation reopened, the gym. Its’ been a long haul since we promised in our Lib Dem 2006 election manifesto to completely renovate it. No one else made that promise so at the time it felt brave. After more than 50 years of no investment under Labour it would take a huge investment to fix. To complicate things we knew that as the building is listed it would need full planning permission that English Heritage would be happy to approve.

We won that election and set the process of getting the centre renovated.

It’s been a long wait while all the permissions and planning and consulting widely with literally thousands of people in East Dulwich about what they wanted from a renovated centre. The works seemed to slow down after the 2010 elections but finally the centre was fully reopened today and £6.2M investment fully delivered. It looks and feels fab.

And people say politics is a waste of time and makes no difference!

Do take a look and try it out and let me know what you think.

Amnesty International 50 years old

Congratulations to Amnesty International for reaching its 50th anniversary.

I first heard of Amnesty in my school days and helped form a local school support group. At that time the head teacher was horrified assuming we’d become some kind of radical revolutionaries and considered expelling us – until the local newspaper printed an article. Phew.

If ever a demonstration of how important Amnesty was to us about free speech that was it. We spend much of the next two years while at school writing Urgent Action airmail letters to central American officials asking for political prisoners to be treated well, information on where they might be if they’d disappeared.

Sadly this work is just as necessary now as then and just as life saving and changing. The world stage feels more unstable without the cold war but it should mean the political dogma of that war doesn’t hold people back from being decent and humane.

Do join Amnesty today and help make the world a better place.

Or alternatively come along to a benefit concert Saturday 16 July 7.30 at St.Stephen’s Church, Sydenham Hill, SE21 7HN – performance by the Astreaeus Ensemble.

Labour snouts in the trough

Last nights Southwark Council annual constitutional assembly was full of contrasts. We had the wonderful example of public life described of the sadly deceased mayor Cllr Tayo Situ and the new mayor Cllr Lorraine Lauder.

But the meeting then went onto Labour councillors deciding to vote for money for themselves via eight more Special Responsibility Allowances. The recommendation from London Councils is that no more than half of councillors should be paid SRA’s. Tonight Southwark Labour party decided to ignore this and created another eight SRA’s – deputy cabinet members. Presumably this is to prop up their cabinet councillors.

So instead of 30 SRA’s out of 63 councillors we have 38 of which 27 are Labour councillors.

So the run rate of councillor costs has needlessly risen. This is a very weird Labour view of austerity.

Carbon based parking charges

Southwark Council has been consulting via the community council on charging for parking permits based on the vehicles carbon emissions.

Overall it will see more than 25% increase in charges.

Option 1 – straight increase in charges from £99.30 to £125 – ouch.

Option 2 – increase the charge from £99.30 to one of 6 bands between £30->£225 but overall an average charge of slightly over £125.

At the Dulwich Community Council the councillors and audience opted for Option 2  of the two options. The surplus on running the parking revenue account is used for things like lolly pop ladies, teaching kids how to cross roads. Useful stuff.

But it now transpires that the council are slashing it spending on lolly pop men and women. The average lolly pop person has seen a drop in salary of £200pcm. With many at cancelled being cancelled.

It seem perverse to have a huge steep increase in charges while at the same time slashing services. it must be that Labour don’t belief in lolly pop men and women and the value they bring.

Avoidable injuries amongst Southwark children will occur and frankly it is a disgraceful decision. Apart from the cruelty of this in pure costs to our local society the total costs of these injuries will out-way the savings. And the savings aren’t necessary because of the huge rise in parking permit fees.

Party President

Last night we had the pleasure of meeting the Lib Dem party president Tim Farron.

Really interesting overview of the last 12 months and scene setting of the Lib Dem party history. We then had an excellent Q&A session with him. Left is photo of me, Rosie Shimell and Tim at the end of the evening.

House of Lords reform

Great to hear about House of Lords reform announced this week. A little annoying to hear that two options with one being only 80% elected but at least using the Single Transferable Vote system.

IF you want the House of Lords to be 100% purely democratic then sign one or both of the following petitions:

 

I understand that elections would be every five years with Lords elected for 15 years periods. That’s a long time to be an elected representative but at least they’ll be elected and on a rolling basis. It really is time for the UK to join the modern democratic world – importantly its taking Lib Dems in government to make it happen. I