Barry Road speeding

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.

Food safety

The latest board paper on Food Safety for the Foods Standards Agency shows that during the period 2000-2006 food safety did not improve. In fact has been getting worse. The most deadly, literally, issue is E.coli 0157 H7. This bug kills under 5’s and seniors roughly 10% of the time. Those not killed often suffer marginal to total kidney function lose and other issues. 

Such food safety failutes cost during 2000-2006 in the UK between £1.4bn. -> £1.7bn annually. If we had all kept food poisening to 2000 levels the country would have cumulatively saved £1bn. avoiding huge levels of suffering for many thousands of people. Many of those victoms will have long term health damage and require ongoing treatments such as dialysis.

How has Southwark performed during this period?

I don’t know but will find out.

Scales

Many people think councils collect a bit of rubbish, run a few schools and why does council tax so much for this?

One service that is never thought about unless things go wrong is Trading Standards. One particular area they are responsible for is ensuring all public scales weigh things correctly. One aspect that hadn’t occurred to and is now a national project by the trade body for local government trading standard is that hospital and other health service scales should weigh people and things correctly. Get it wrong and a child is given more or less radiation than they need for their body mass to fight cancer. Get it wrong and a 2g prescription of drugs is perhaps incorrectly 1.5g or 2.5g given and could be fatal. 

Cleaner, Green , Safer – Climate Chaos

The deadline for applications for Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding was midnight last night.

With the support of my Liberal Democrat ward colleagues cllr Richard Thomas and cllr Jonathan Mitchell I’ve applied for various schemes to help reduce emissions in East Dulwich.

The main application is for a home visitor project to talk residents through how they can reduce emissions, reduce fuel proverty and if eligible where to apply for funding. 

More symbolically I’ve also applied for a landmark windturbine for East Dulwich. We just need to find the best possible public building that would like one!  

Cleaner, Greener, Safer – crime reduction

Yesterday was the deadline for Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding applications. This flagship Southwark Liberal Democrat policy sets aside around £120,000 for each ward for capital projects and circa £5,000 for revenue events type projects.

As with previous years I’ve applied for funding to help reduce crime and the fear of crime. Previous years I’ve led on getting Alterboxes into East Dulwich shops. They’ve helped participating shops reduce shop crime by over 50% and engendered a more local shop community spirit.

East Dulwich ward was slightly better than average for crime being 274th/625 wards in London – 1 having the lowest crime rate in London. For Southwark East Dulwich has 2nd lowest crime rate out of 21 wards.  During the last year East Dulwich has improved slightly and is now 236th/625 wards in London but still no.2 in Southwark. So each resident in East Dulwich has a 8.5% chance of being affected by crime each year that they report to the Police. Still rather depressing. 

So this year I’ve applied, supported by my Liberal Democrat ward colleagues cllr Richard Thomas and cllr Jonathan Mitchell for things to further help reduce crime in East Dulwich. My personal aim is to help East Dulwich become a truely low crime ward, not just compared to other wards in Southwark but compared to London as a whole. To achieve this we will need to halve rates of crime in East Dulwich.

In about 6 weeks time we’ll know which applications won. The real work then begins.

 If you’d like to get involved the East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team next meeting is 23 April contact me for further details.

Graffiti at height problem

Southwark Council is really good at removing graffiti. You report it and it’s removed within 24 hours. Fab. We have a great Street Leader network of hundreds of active residents, including children, who report such eco problems. The Integrated Cleaning Contract provides for all street cleaners etc to report eco crimes. Community Wardens patrol our streets and report such eco crimes. One day we might even persuade Southwark’s Police Officers to report such eco crimes.

This is part of how Southwark has become one of the top performers in London for keeping streets clean.

But this only works when the graffiti is at street level. When the graffiti is at height such as on railway bridges, 1st floors or above on buildings it doesn’t get removed.

Southwark Council has metalwork teams that fix signs who use aerial platforms. We have teams that work with street lights who use aerial platforms. We even have some graffiti removal officers trained to work at heights from aerial platforms.

We just don’t seem able to join all this up.

So after many many many many many months of reporting the same graffiti over and over and over and over again, the property owner is served a notice and it eventually gets removed. A bit longer than 24 hours! Usually it takes over a year. It certainly took over a year to get the Gala Bingo hall on Camberwell Road. Its taken over two years to not get graffiti removed from Network Rail bridge over Newington Causeway. Walworth Road had lots of graffiti at 1st floor level but officers were able to stand on solid flat roofs over several weekends and it only took six weeks to get removed.

Needless to say I’m pushing for drastic improvements to this. It should not take longer than 24 hours. It does require co operation from organisations such as Network Rail, Bingo halls. We must lot graffit criminals keep feeling they’re are winning.

Get involved, become a Street Leader.

Daft nuclear power

The Government has announced plans for a new generation of Nuclear reactors. How bizarre when everyone knows the most efficient and safest way to reduce green house gases and fuel poverty is via insulation, energy efficiency and renewable energy generation.

Insulation – not all homes have loft insulation, cavity wall insulation, draft proofing….

Energy efficiency – we don’t yet have local combined heat and power, we haven’t banned old style light bulbs…

Renewable energy generation – virtually no one has solar water heating….

The government is currently drastically increasing its provisions for decommissioning past nuclear power plants to above £75bn or £1,200 for every person in the UK. The problems will be around for the next 250,000 years and we’ll have to look after highly radioactive material into the future longer than humanity has existed on earth. That’s quite a crystal ball to be sure this will be safe effectively for ever.

What is particularly sad is nuclear power generation will take 15-25 years to make happen. Whereas if we chose within 5 years all homes and businesses could be properly insulated saving more energy that all the current nuclear power station will ever produce. Within 10 years we could have combined heat and power pretty universally in place if a government made a political decision for this to happen. We could ban old style light bulbs within a year. If government chose it could create the conditions for solar hot water to become the norm within 5 years.

So where is the leadership to really transform our nations green credentials – certainly not with New Labour.

The Liberal Democrats want a Green Britain – we are the only party to produce costed plans to make Britain carbon neutral by 2050 without resorting to Nuclear Power. We want Britain to become a world leader in renewable energy and we will continue to fight Mr Brown’s daft and expensive nuclear plans every step of the way.

Free loft and cavity wall insulation

I read an article about British Gas providing free loft and cavity wall insulation for any home with some over 70 years old or on benefits.

I suggest my 71 year old mother try calling the British Gas number 0845 605 2535 (quoting code JOU?). A fortnight later a surveyor turned up on the agreed half day. A further fortnight later the cavity wall insulation was installed and earlier this week the loft insulation.

She has already felt the difference. What a marvellous scheme and smoothly working system.

If you know someone over 70 years old or on benefits do suggest they give it a try as well.

Post Office closure announcement

I understand that the Labour Government Post Office closures programme has been announced today.

In East Dulwich it is proposed to close the Melbourne Grove post office. This really is vandalism by the Labour government of a local community resource. Secondary shopping parades all over london will be badly affected with post office closures. In a time when we need people to walk and cycle to local services to reduce CO2 emissions the Labour government seems predicated to creating car journeys. Truely bonkers.

East Dulwich parking survey

The three local East Dulwich Liberal Democrat councillors had a big turnout of helpers on Sunday to personally call on home and deliver a parking survey to residents near to East Dulwich railway station and around Lordship Lane.

Over the last three years cllr Richard Thomas, Jonathan Mitchell and myself have had many people complaining how hard it is to park on their street. Hence the survey.

In several weeks time we should have the survey results.

Watch this space….