Some local residents have put together a marvellous map of local independent shops.
Please see attached. Indie Shop Map
WELL DONE EMMA PALLANT for the lovely artwork and MADELIENE WORRALL for conceiving of the idea and making it happen.
I helped find the money and guranteed it so they could print before Christmas. I’ve already been asking them about the next version…
What have we missed?
Around two years ago I highlighted to the Cabinet member at Southwark Council that property adjacent to Burgess Park was up for sale. Key property that would really help improve the Southampton Way boundary and area. Cllr Barrie Hargrove was interested.
I’m delighted that the council cabinet committee agreed this week to potentially seek Compulsory Purchase Orders to make this idea a reality.
Burgess Park was conceived during WWII to make the area much more green and pleasant. Huge number of homes and many businesses to make this happen. Some were my family. So I’m keen that in my lifetime this great project is properly finished.
What improvements do you think would help bring Burgess Park onto a par with London’s Royal Parks
Every year local ward councillors get to decide how to spend some devolved Cleaner, Greener, Safer budget. The scheme started when Lib Dems first led the council in 2002 with only one year when it didn’t operate when the Labour administration wanted to use the money on pet Olympic projects.
I’m particularly excited by the prospect of improving the junction of North Cross Road with Lordship Lane. It’s one of our crash hot spots, doesn’t work well when closed for the street market on Saturdays. The Bike hangars will be a great experiment to see if they can work locally in East Dulwich – fingers crossed. And lastly trialling the Dulwich Hospital phlebotomy service on Saturdays. IT should really make it much easier for people to have blood tests outside of normal work hours and provide a real alternative to being at the hospital before 7am weekdays.
This year East Dulwich councillors have decided to allocate the following:
CGS capital:
– ED Crime Prevention fund £10,000
– ED street trees £10,000
– Lordship Lane secure derelict property £4,500
– Chesterfield £6,000 for upgrading street lighting to white light, £4,000 for pavement tree pit upgrading.
– Bike hangars – fund 2 to be decided where most popular by residents £10,000
– East Dulwich Community Centre (EDCC) children garden area materials £524
– Bassano Street gating £2,000
– Dawson Heights tree planting £1,000
– Upgrade junction of NCR/LL £50,000
– ED public Automated Emergency Defibrillators £5,000
– Historic photos project £4,500
Total £112,524
CGS revenue:
– Give and take EDCC events £1,500
– Goose Green nursery improvements £1,400
– EDCC gardening £700
– WW2 plaques across Dulwich £667
– Street cleaning machine extra half-time employee £11,605
– Saturday Dulwich Hospital blood testing trial x 26 weeks (as per separate email) £20,000
Total £35,872
A chap called Breass discovered the best overall flow of traffic may not be by the most direct route. In fact adding direct routes can slow down traffic. The corollary is removing shorter more direct routes can actually speed traffic up.
Example to demonstrate this…Imagine a single route between A and B that however many cars take this route it always takes them 10minutes. Add a second shorter route that takes 1 minute for every car using it. If everyone, all 20 cars, take the shorter route their average speed will be 20minutes. Chopping this shorter route and diverting them back to the less direct route would half their average journey time.
In New York they’ve produced this affect in real life. 42nd street, the second busiest road, was closed for a day. Instead of expected chaos traffic flowed much more smoothly.
I wonder what road in East Dulwich and Southwark would produce this effect?
Southwark Council can be painful to deal with. It’s such a large organisation doing so many different things that people often tell me it’s hard to find the right person or get the response they expected.
All queries are dealt with by a now in-house contact centre based in Peckham. It handles huge volumes of phone calls and emails. Typically 25,000 calls a month but only gets to answer between 45% and 73%. The average time taken to answer those calls is much improved from a high in October 2012 of 5 mins 56 seconds down to 1 mins 21 seconds in December 2013. But most organisations aim for just a few rings before answering in less than 10 seconds. So still huge work to be done.
When you do get through, 77% of residents found they received the help they needed, 15% didn’t and 8% aren’t sure. Importantly many of these calls are to tell the council something they want to know to fulfil its duty to us as residents.
During 2014 efforts to get more services online to avoid having to make a phone call are planned. Silly things like bulk waste collection will go online. So far 55,000 residents have registered to use online services and is increasing by 300 pw. If you haven’t registered please do register here: https://my.southwark.gov.uk/Default.aspx
What have your experiences been like?
Which council officers has gone the extra mile for you?
Southwark Labour have decided to centralise day care from two sites into one in North Peckham. This means the Fred Francis Centre on Lordship Lane will close disrupting the lives of a number of very elderly people who go there each day. It seems short-sighted when we have an ageing population. But whatever our views it’s a fait accompli.
So we need to ensure this site isn’t left idle. In East Dulwich we have huge demand for nursery provision. Two recent plans for nursery provision have failed to be built – 41-43 East Dulwich Road and 116A Lordship Lane.
As an East Dulwich councillor I call on Southwark Council to ensure the Fred Francis Centre remains in community use but with a nursery ONCE it day centre use comes to an end.
We’ve spoken to a number of nursery providers who would be interested.
Do you think we need more nursery provision in East Dulwich?
Are you frustrated that with more older people local provision is being removed?
For decades people have been campaigning, fighting to stop climate change. After Kyoto, Copenhagen, Cancun and IPCC our global politicians still haven’t agreed how to stop cataclysmic climate change.
But it appears all those little things that I and hopefully you have been doing to save energy, reduce car use, thinking about our planet have started to make a difference.
In 2012 CO2 emissions grew by less than the previous year and less than a third of the global rise in GDP of 3.5%. Breaking the link between GDP rises and CO2 increases is the key to humanity living on this planet with a secure future.
Apparently htis indicates Kuznets curve where higher levels of economic development countries use resources more smartly and economically reducing pollution.
Are you doing enough to reduce your carbon footprint?
At the last Dulwich Community Council East Dulwich councillors had to make tough decisions about their devolved highway budget.
After visitng various part of East dulwich we decided to spend your taxes on:
– Resurfacing Goodrich Road between Barry Road and Friarn Road – it’s currently in a shocking state, quite frequented and on a route to schools.
– Resurfacing Pellatt Road eastern end. Again the road is in a terrible state.
The main council resurfacing budget is planning to resurface Ashbourne Grove and the remaining third of Landcroft Road.
Over the years the centre of Herne Hill has been flooded every few decades – 60’s, 2004 are mentioned by some residents. Herne Hill sites at the bottom of Brockwell Park, Herne Hill, Red Post hill. Even Burbage road slopes down to Herne Hill. The completely buried River Effra flows under Herne Hill on its way to the River Thames.
A scheme has been talked about for some time since the last weather related major flooding in 2004.
But talk has accelerated since the UK’s interpretation of EU Floods Directive (2007/60/EC). This means local councils have to compelte Preliminary Flood Risk Assessments and Flood Risk Maps.
The government has also recently made water companies responsible for the connections from homes and businesses into their networks.
Any Herne Hill flooding would see water flowing back through the network into people homes – gushing toilets. So with the new responsibility Thames Water is now keen to install non return valves for all the Herne Hill connections.
The government DEFRA via the Environment Agency is also keen to avoid large flooding events in London. So they’re keen to fund water storage and capture capacity – similar to the bunds on Alleyns’ School playing field.
Together this means Southwakr Council Herne hill Flood Alleviation project has obtained £2M funding from Thames Water and £1.755m from the Environment Agency/DEFRA.
The plans are that contruction works start March 2014 and end December 2014. Herne Hill should then be safe from weather related flooding.
After many attempts to redevelop the site of the old Crystal Palace a new Crystal Palace has been proposed. It’s described as a £1/2bn project to recreate a cultural attraction.
Chinese developers are proposing with London Mayor Boris Johnson supporting a replica of the original Crystal Palace. But hopefully with better fire alarms and sprinklers to avoid a repeat of 1936 when the original burnt down!
But such a huge structure with 94,000m2/990,000ft2 of space predicted to employ 2,000 people would have to draw huge numbers of visitors.
How will they get there?
What’s not been mentioned yet is that the original Crystal Palace was so successful it needed an extra railway line and Crystal Palace High Level Station: 
Recreating this railway line to ensure the success of the New Crystal Palace would likely need the rebuilding of Honor Oak, Lordship Lane and Upper Sydenham railway stations as well as a high level station in Crystal Palace to serve this rebuilt railway line. This would revolutionise public transport in south Southwark.
Do you think a these schemes should happen?