Past London Peak Cars?

Transport for London has done some strategic analysis of transport trends.

Most significant is that the population of London has expanded by ONE MILLION people in the last decade to 8.2 million people. I must admit I don’t remember being asked to vote on this – it’s not from new births.

During the decade the number of jobs has been static at 5 million – with a dip of 250,000 jobs from the recession that has now fully recovered and up 5.2%. This contrasts sharply with the population rise.

During the decade a sharp increase in trips by public transport and the proportion has rise from 30% in 1993 to 35% in 2001 to 43% in 2011. The flip side is private transport has fallen over the same period from 46%   to 43% in 2001 and 34% in 2011. Cycling use has risen from 1% to 2%. This is all in sharp contrast with the rest of the UK.

Are you using public transport or cycling more?

 

New Harris Primary School Application

I’m delighted to announce that we’ve achieved sufficient support for the Harris Federation to apply for a new two form entry East Dulwich Primary School.

The application has been submitted today.

Huge thanks to the 160 local families who  lent their support for this project. We needed 80 families with children due to start reception classes in 2014 or 2015 and 94 families have stepped forward. Another 66 supporters with younger children has also come forward.

We’ve also received lots of other support from residents. Thank you.

I’d also like to publicly say thank you to the Harris people who agreed to support our request on them to create a new school. Without finding such a successful and willing provider many local children would soon be stuck for reception places.

But the shortage of reception places by 2016 will reach 75-90 in Dulwich and up to another 135 for Peckham Rye and Nunhead areas.

It looks increasingly likely that the Judith Kerr Bilingual Primary school offering 50 places will be located in East Dulwich. But it isn’t certain and both schools together would still leave a gap of 115 reception places.

So we’re still campaigning for more support – so we can try and get the new East Dulwich Harris Primary school increased to three form entry (90 pupils).

If we obtain even further support we’ll ask Harris to apply for a second primary school in January 2014 to ensure all children have great schools places near to where they live.

If you support new primary schools in our area – please email me your support ASAP.

 

 

9 December – train service downgrade.

LONDON OVERGROUND is being extended from 9 December by adding a section Surrey Quays to Clapham Junction – http://goo.gl/9roun

It brings 4 trains per hour (tph) 7 days a week between Clapham Junction and Highbury & Islington via Wandsworth Rd, Clapham High St, Denmark Hill, Peckham Rye, Queens Rd Peckham. This will open up new journey opportunities to east and west London. All these south London stations will appear on the new TfL Tube map. The downside to that is that it looks as if the new Tube map will show us cut off with no rail services to central London. How daft is that.Southwark Rail User Group have thoughtfully produced a much more useful map to publicise our rail connections into central London – http://www.bellenden.net/SRUG-maps.

BUT THE SOUTH LONDON LINE DISAPPEARS
But this also means we say a sad goodbye to the inner South London Line (SLL) – http://goo.gl/yWQmd. This hopefully temporary closure until 2018 when London Bridge station reopens will really isolate communities along the SLL route with no direct access to London Bridge and very patchy services into Victoria – many people will be deterred from living in Camberwell and other communities along the line. Many users, organisations and representatives fought a long and hard campaign to save it. But it was not successful. See here for some of that story – http://www.bellenden.net/rail-cuts. We’ll have to fight hard for the service to be returned in 2018.

REMAINING SERVICES
The changes will leave us with these services off peak:

– Victoria from Nunhead, Peckham Rye and Denmark Hill: 2tph Mon to Sat, but none in the evenings, and none on Sunday. (3tph between 8am-9am)

– Clapham Junction via Wandsworth Rd, Clapham High St, Denmark Hill, Peckham Rye, Queens Rd Peckham to Canada Water and beyond on the London Overground: 4tph, 7 days a week morning till night.

– St Pancras and beyond from Nunhead, Peckham Rye, Denmark Hill via Elephant Castle/Blackfriars: 2tph, up to 9pm Mon to Fri, and terminating at Blackfriars after that time and weekends. (More tph Mon-Fri between 8am-9.15am)

– London Bridge from North Dulwich, East Dulwich, Peckham Rye, Queens Rd Peckham, Sth Bermondsey: 4tph, 7 days a week morning to night. (In the peak there will be 6tph – a 10 minute frequency.)

DISAPPEARING SERVICES
The services we are losing are:

– the 2 tph between London Bridge and Victoria via Sth Bermondsey, Queens Rd, Peckham Rye, Denmark Hill, Clapham High St, Wandsworth Rd, Battersea Pk, provided by the South London Line. (SLL). They are currently 7 days a week from morning till night.

Their loss means for the stations affected:

– no trains to London Bridge via Battersea Pk, Wandsworth Rd, Clapham High St, Denmark Hill.

– no trains to Victoria via Sth Bermondsey, Queens Rd, Clapham High St, Wandsworth Rd, Battersea Pk.

– no trains to Victoria after about 7pm, and none on Sunday from Peckham Rye, Denmark Hill.

– a reduction from 4tph to 2tph to Victoria from Peckham Rye, Denmark Hill.

– a reduction off peak from 6tph to 4tph to London Bridge from Peckham Rye, Queens Rd Peckham, Sth Bermondsey.

CAMPAIGN TO RESTORE OUR VICTORIA SERVICES
In the longer term we want our South London Line service between London Bridge to Victoria, via Peckham Rye and Denmark Hill and all the current SLL stations, restored once London Bridge station is rebuilt in 2018.

In the meantime, the campaign continues to get the gaps filled in services to Victoria that the loss of the South London Line creates in the evenings and at weekends and to restore the service to 4tph – http://www.bellenden.net/victoria – You will see there the email addresses of all those who should know the effect of the loss of our South London Line.

New Primary Schools for SE22

After a number of years of forecasters telling us we have a temporary baby boom they are now clear we have a permanent problem – we need more school places on a permanent basis.

At full Council Assembly 25 January I had it confirm that in the Dulwich area ongoing we need an extra 60-75 reception places every year from 2015.

At Council Cabinet 20 November it was confirmed by council officials that the shortage is bigger and increased to 75-90 reception place per year by 2016 for the Dulwich area and for the Nunhead and Peckham Rye area  90  to 135 reception places per year by 2016. The two demand equate to 2 or 3 brand news schools.

The council’s plan is to ask the government for £40-50m to expand existing schools. But the ideal size of primary schools is two or three form entry. If you go above that size the adults and children don’t know each other – it becomes anonymous. Not an experience we’d wish for our youngest.

We know a German/English school are interested in being created in Southwark or Lambeth – we need more certaintythan this.

So the East Dulwich ward councillors have been in conversations with the Harris Federation. They have a clear track record of excellence at creating new schools that Ofsted rate as outstanding. None of our local Primary schools are rated outstanding yet. After many points and perspectives being shared they have agreed to apply for a new school serving the Dulwich area. But I’m hoping to persuade them to apply for a second primary school serving the east Dulwich/Peckham Rye/Nunhead area which has little school provision.

Our converaations have involved Sir Robin Bosher the ex. head of Fairlawn rated outstanding and Sir Dan Moyniham the chief executive of the Harris Federation. We’ve met him before when visiting Harris schools in East Dulwich.

We hope to persuade other local politicians for this to be cross-party and have contacted College, Nunhead, Peckham Rye and Village ward councillors.

The obvious site is a fifth of the Dulwich Hospital. To make that happen will take a lot of influence by the Department of Education over the Department of Health. I’d be amazed if Lord Harris and his team couldn’t make that happen.

To make a new school in Dulwich or the Peckham Rye/Nunhead area we need to find 80 children for each school who would attend ie. 1 and 2 year old children now. The families need to say that they would like their children to attend a new Harris Federation Primary school. It doesn’t commit them but it does indicate they’d like to attend if built and if we succeed will ensure we have enough extra  excellent places locally for all our children.

Please see attached form Harris have kindly produced.

12414_HF_HarrisEastDulwichFreeSchool_Leaflet_LowRes

Please complete the last page and post it OR email me your name, your child’s date of birth, your postcode. Or just email me if you’d like to be kept in touch with this campaign.

Together we can make this happen.

Belarus teddies

Alexender Lukashenka, President of Belarus, is known as ‘Europe’s last dictator’. Amazingly Lukashenka has now turned his authoritarian regime on soft toys.

A Swedish PR firm parachuted teddy bears with messages about democracy over Minsk in an attempt to break through the media censorship imposed by the regime. Since then Lukashenka has asked all Swedish Diplomats to leave the country and begun a diplomatic dispute over the issue.

Later two journalists were arrested in Belarus for protesting against the regime by taking a photo of themselves with a soft toy. You could not make this up. This is the surreal world of dictators.

His police beat and arrest those who campaign for democracy, his regime rig elections whilst the media is censored to hide these crimes against human rights. Still Belarus imprisons and tortures political prisoners, including young campaigners for democracy.

So Liberal Democrat Youth have a great campaign asking people to take photos of themselves with teddy bears to show spport and solidarity with the oppressed people of Belarus.

Why don’t you join the campaign – email your picture to sam.fisk@liberalyouth.org

Trashed Greek ideals

This fortnight the nation is enjoying all things Olympics. The Olympics being a great ancient Greek idea and ideals.

So it’s ironic that at a time of great Greek inspiration for the British peoples the even larger and more significant Greek idea of democracy is being trashed by the Conservative party. They announced that they couldn’t deliver an elected House of Lords. They’d rather keep it cosy hand picked selection of chums. The perfect retirement club for those Tory MP’s that find voters so annoying with a rump of Labour MP’s supporting them.

A week of elation and commiserations. A good week to bury such dismal backward step for UK democracy.

Residents kept in the dark…

I was amazed to discover that Southwark Council is considering switching of Southwark street lighting. Clearly adjusting street lights is an ongoing sage managing over 16,000 street lights in Southwark.

What’s really amazing is that this news is buried in Highway Electrical Newspage 12. The article is titled “42% of Councils in England and Wales Planning Some Street Lighting Cuts”. It shows Southwark as one of of the local authorities in the “Councils planning total or partial night switch off”.

I haven’t knowingly heard this before. Have you?

It’s the only London Authority listed in this category. No public announcement. No public consultation even with the Police let alone residents or businesses.

Another example of no democracy in a Labour led Southwark.

What is particularly galling is that it took me four year to get all the street lighting in East Dulwich ward brought up to modern standards – bright white light rather than faded yellow light. This saved buckets of electricity. So really frustrated to hear they might be turned of.

4,000 missing people?

At Southwark Council’s Audit & Governance meeting last week the officers report on anti fraud activities (page 89) states “4000 Single Persons Discount matches were released in February 2012 and work has commenced on these.”
The match is finding local and central govt data records of 2 or more people living at an address where a single persons council tax discount is claimed.

A few months ago Lambeth claimed they found 15,000 such matches by using a commercial agency checking against bank etc address records. (http://www.southlondonpress.co.uk/news.cfm?id=35616)

So either Southwark is failing big time to find all the potential wrong claims for single persons discount or Lambeth is wasting a lot of residents time fighting to keep single persons discount.
Which do you suspect?

But as each wrong discount will be costing circa £300 on average whether its 4,000 or 15,000 that is an awful lot of money not being collected. This means the correct council tax payers in Southwark are needlessly being asked for £11 to £43 per household per year.

Olympic chaos

For many months Londoners, who lets not forget are each paying £240 towards the Olympics being held in London, have been inundated with communications to minimise travel. That banned night time deliveries will potentially be allowed. That Zil lanes will be created to whisk non athletes Olympic hangers on with snouts in the 5* trough around London at break neck speeds. Olympic ticketing shambles where applicants appear to have feast or famine with tickets. Sponsorship from companies with no London or UK connection – just dull global brands.

Twenty days ago at the 100days to go mark someone in the Olympic organisers suddenly realised that the Olympics appears a pretty rotten deal for Londoners with even less interest outside London. That a huge glut of Londoners putting their homes up for rent during the Olympics. Many are planning to simply avoid all the crap by being out of London for as much and long as possible.

A sudden plea at 100 days from athletes to enjoy the Olympics and ‘a golden summer’. I hope the Olympics are a roaring success but boy have the London Olympics committee done everything they can to alienate it from Londoners. The London Olympic brand appears very tarnished.

I have been fortunate in the ballot and have tickets for two Olympic and one Paralympic events. This is solely for my children to enjoy the buzz. I’m prepared to cover up for their sakes as much of the rubbish as I can to make it the best possible experience. They wont realise we’re conforming to the petty debranding of their cloths to avoid any embarrassment.

Oh why oh why couldn’t the London Olympics have kept the original Olympic type spirit. Even the London 1948 Olympic austerity games would have been preferable to the complete sell out and apparent incompetence we’re experiencing.

£500

The coalition government has made all local councils make public all payments of over £500.

You can see Southwark’s here.

Sadly the barest minimum is provided – the title of the supplier and the amount spent in that month. No archive of months, no past years, no running total, no categorisation or cost centre making  the order, order raiser, or even a description of what is being purchased from the Purchase Order. In fact no context at all. It’s also presented as a pdf file making manipulation a little trickier. This really isn’t the open government intended.

It’s so bad that National Audit Office is getting involved. It is now pushing for a new central body, the Open Data Institute, to lay down standards about how to present such data. Hopefully Southwark wont wait until then and will finally publish data in the spirit that was meant rather than its current obfuscation.