Kick In The Teeth For Food Recycling

Southwark Labour have decided to curtail food waste collections by no longer providing free biodegradeable bags to residents.

They say that normal carrier bags can be used or bio bags can be bought from supermarkets or that residents can wrap food waste in sheets of newspaper.

These may be true but what what will happen is food waste collections will plummet.

If Southwark Council don’t take food waste collections seriously why should residents.

But generally Southwark Labour have failed to hit their own recycling target by 2014 of 44% by a whopping unrecyclable 10% (they reached 34%). They are going to fail to hit government and EU targets of 50%. And these new steps to put people off food recycling will only make matters worse.

Come on Labour pull your recycling socks up.

Solving Cold Private Rented Homes

Lib Dems in government have announced new regulations that up to 1 million tenants renting energy inefficient homes can benefit from – warmer homes with cheaper energy bills:

  • From April 2016 residential private landlords can’t unreasonably turn down a tenant’s request for energy efficiency improvements. This will mean landlords have to accept the request if they can get help through widely available support like Green Deal finance, the Energy Companies Obligation (ECO), or grants from the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund.
  • From April 2018 private landlords will not be able to rent out properties which do not meet minimum energy efficiency standards.

They will help reduce fuel poverty as many privately rented homes already cost much more to heat than the average home.

In East Dulwich we’ve seen that around 600 of the 4000 roofs of homes have no loft insulation from aerial thermal imaging.

The problem is landlords don’t pay energy bills so many have shown no interest in investing in energy saving measures. These new regulations should make them interested. And clearly it’s only going to affect dodgier landlords.

Another great policy from Lib Dems in government – well done Ed Davey.

New East Dulwich Cinema

I’m sure almost all East Dulwich residents are aware that a new cinema is being constructed on Lordship Lane – the East Dulwich Picturehouse Cinema – at number 116A Lordship Lane.

It is now proposed to open in March.

A key aspect will be how this cinema will operate. Today I was notified that their proposed Cinema Management Plan has been submitted to Southwark Council planners – it is a planning condition that this plan is agreed with Southwark Council officers.

I’m really keen that local residents have an opportunity to look at this plan and tell council officer Michael Glasgow (michael.glasgow@southwark.gov.uk) and fellow East Dulwich Cllr Rosie Shimell (rosie.shimell@southwark.gov.uk) and myself whether you think this plan is fit for purpose – has it missed anything?

Rosie and I look forward to hearing from you.

Recycling Failure

It pains me to say it but Southwark Council have failed to reached it target of recycling. When Lib Dems led the council we negotiated what we thought and government advisors told us was a tough target to reach 38% recycling rate by April 2014.

Southwark Labour said they would double recycling from 22% in 2010 to 44% in 2014. They then back tracked to 40% when they were in power.

But the final recorded rate was 34% for 2013/14. A long way short of the Veolia contract we negotiated. But significantly having introduced food waste 4 years earlier than the Veolia contracted planned they don’t have anywhere to go.

It isn’t any better in Lambeth. where recycling fell from 23% in 2012/13 to 21%. It’s fourth year in a row of falling recycling. It’s as if Lambeth Labour have given up on recycling.

Do you recycle?

What could we do to help you recycle more?

Labour Higher Energy Prices

In 2013 Labour promised to freeze energy prices for 20 months if they win the 2015 general election.

As feared when this pledge was made – energy companies would de risk Labour winning by ensuring higher prices before the election to buffer them from this proposal.

With the dramatic fall in wholesale energy prices only some has been passed onto consumers. Npower and others have stated that they would have decreased prices by more than the 5.1% they have reduced prices by IF it wasn’t for Labours pledge. Power are behaving perfectly rationally to de risk their business from the risk Labour policies are causing them.

And it’s the consumers who are now paying (roughly £140/year) for this daft Labour policy.

Whoever you are you probably can save money by shopping around – Ofcom can help.

NB. For transparency I’m with Good Energy.

 

Healthy Eating Tax

Southwark Council have just added 20% to the costs of fruit and veg market stalls across Southwark.

They say the costs of disposing of fruit and veg stalls have risen by 20%. The stall holders say business is down which would means less waste being generated.

Eitherway, raising the costs of health fruit and veg will mean prices go up which will mean less is bought from market stalls providing health fruit and veg. And this at a time when we have an obesity crisis.

Taxing healthy eating just does not make sense. As the stall holders ay – ‘it’s bananas!’

Longest Ever

The UK and Norwegian governments have agreed to the UK National Grid and Norwegian electric distribution company Statnett constructing a 450mile long electricity interconnector between the UK and Norway known as NSN Link.

It will connect the electricity systems of the two countries via a subsea cable, allowing the UK and Norway to trade power. When completed it will be the longest subsea interconnector in the world, passing through British and Norwegian waters.

An outline planning application to Northumberland County Council has already been submitted so it’s all systems go.

Why the interest? It will carry Norwegian hydro electric power. It can supply electricity for 4 million homes and hydro electric is ideal to be switched on and off very quickly. So the ideal compliment to all the wind and solar power that Lib Dems in  government are making happen. Another step to rebalancing out economy to be greener.

 

 

Roundabout Repeated Mistakes

Transport for London with Southwark Council are consulting about changing to the northern Elephant & Castle roundabout.

They plan to remove the SE corner. It will mean everyone has to travel a lot further to get from A to B around this area. For the life of me, and it might mean my life as the roundabout is that dangerous, I can’t see how making cyclists travel through so much more traffic to get somewhere will be safer.

Overall it looks a terrible missed opportunity. Take a look for yourself and tell me what you think CONSULTATION.

What they should do is move the Faraday electric substation dimpled structure somewhere else and turn the whole thing into a proper traffic light junction. It would create much more new public space. Traffic light cross road junctions offer the most direct route. Segregated cycle paths become much simpler to install and for people to understand.

Instead TfL are making the same mistake as the Waterloo roundabout and the south side of Westminster bridge.

It’s as if they don’t want safe cycling or is it that a nice simple totally legible junction just isn’t challenging enough for them?

 

Flight Noise Ghettos

South London has more than its fair share of aircraft flight paths – planes for Heathrow line up overhead and planes for City airport also fly over East Dulwich over a quarter of the time.

If you agree this is already a problem then you’ll want to respond to the London City Airport consultation that seeks agreement to make matters much much worse. The proposal is to deploy something similar to GPS to make aircraft very precisely follow set flight paths. This will really concentrate all those flights going into London City Airport. The deployment of this technology is a requirement of the Civil Aviation Authority. To make matters Tower Hamlets gave planning permission to increase flight paths to and from London City Airport from 80,000 to 120,000 each year. A huge increase which will be magnified if the proposals aren’t changed.

The consultation document shows that for 27% of the time East Dulwich, Dulwich, Herne Hill, Brixton will have a further concentration of flights with aircraft flying between 2,000 and 3,000 feet.

This technology could be used to vary flight paths to share the noise burden but London City Airport has no plans to do this. Shame on them.

I hope you’ll join me in responding to this consultation by emailing London City Airport lamp@londoncityairport.com and the CAA airspace.policy@caa.co.uk asking why they are allowing this secret consultation with no public meetings or leafleting or other promotion.

If aircraft noise annoys you then do consider joining HACAN East who campaign for more reasonable aircraft noise levels from London airports.

 

Harris ED Free Primary School – Temp site

Last night the planning application submitted in May was finally granted planning permission for the temporary site to house the Harris East Dulwich Free Primary School. The planning application was submitted 23 May and should have been decided by 16 July but Southwark Council didnt wanted to give planning permission to a Harris school and was using Metropolitican Open Land as a reason to consider resisting.

At the planning committee Labour councillors repeatedly haranged the agent about a late application – when the lateness was caused by Southwarks own officers. Even the planning chair admitted she was blaming the wrong messenger.

Weirdly Southwark Council has approved numerous uses of MOL for private schools but their hate of all things Harris is even more consumnig than their hate of private schools in Southwark!

Eitherway we now have the temporary site needed until such time the permanent school can open on the former East Dulwich Police Station. Well done Harris and EFA for reaching this point but even more so to the parents who children will start school there on the temporary site on Homestall Road in just 6 weeks time.