New East Dulwich Cinema

East Dulwich Lib Dems are very excited that at last the planning application from the PictureHouse cinema group has been submitted to convert the former St.Thomas Moore Hall at 116A Lordship Lane into a cinema.

Council planning officers are ready for your comments whether supporting or objecting. The details of the planning application can be seen here.

Please send your thoughts to planning.applications@southwark.gov.uk and copy me at cllrjamesbarber@gmail.com with subject line 14/AP/1101

We think a cinema will be a great new asset to the area. So much so that over the last few years we’ve talked to five different cinema groups trying to attract one to the area. But as with any change it needs to be planned with care to minimise any negative impact.

Please do tell us what you think. And please ask your friends and family to also tell Planning Officers what they think.

Leaseholder Freedom Needed

Southwark Council has a number of leaseholders and pseudo freeholders.

Many houses and flats over the last 40 years have been sold under the Right To Buy but because the road they’re on has been kept as an estate road they’ve been sold as freehold houses or leasehold flats that pay estate charges and often much more.

I think we need a small team to review all such freeholds and leaseholds with the aim of adopting the highways and severing freeholder and leaseholder liabilities for highways.

Similarly for leaseholders. in many cases being the freeholder creates a painful liability and un recouped costs for Southwark. I would task such a team with giving the freehold which has negative values to Southwark to the leaseholders.

Both measures would over time reduce the management costs of running Southwark Council housing and save money. This would leave council staff to concentrate on managing the real council properties.

It is ridiculous that so many Southwark residents have been tied needlessly to Southwark Council with reduced freedom at a higher cost

St.Francis Road Luck Needed

Years ago the Abbotswood Estate was built. Part of it include some cycle and pedestrian shared paths. But despite asking years ago (when I chaired Southwark Cyclists) they’ve never had a dropped kerb to make them work – you have to be stunt cyclist to use them. So almost no cyclists actually use them.

So I’m trying to get this fixed yet again. Wish me luck.

What other little details block people cycling freely?

IMG00339-20140307-0735

Southwark Heartbleed

April the 7th a security patch was released in response to a new security loop hole for websites was discovered – the Heartbleed issue.

Amazingly one our Lib Dem volunteers after checking all our websites on the 8th then the checked Southwark Council website and email servers on the 9th and found they didn’t have this crucial software patch. Southwark Council have an awful lot of personal data from people registering with MySouthwark.

I immediately alerted Southwark Council officials first thing on the 10th.Half a day later officials responded that indeed they did have security holes and hoped to seal it that night on the 10th. They didn’t undertake the work until the 12th. We’ve avoiding speaking about this since to ensure Southwark have had time to fix everything.

Frankly it is shocking that for so many days Southwark Council exposed all its users and colleagues to this avoidable risk. It shouldn’t take Lib Dem volunteers to find this out and nudge you to fix such things. We should need to keep checking to make sure this essential work is completed.

 

Haberdasher’s Aske’s East Dulwich College

I’m delighted to announced the new Haberdasher’s Aske’s East Dulwich College.

The East Dulwich Lib Dem councillors initiated a campaign in 2013 for a new co-ed non-faith secondary free school. This followed their experiences helping to avert the pending primary school places crisis by leading a successful campaign for new local primary schools. It was also informed by casework from distraught local families being offered secondary school places outside the area – places like Catford, New Cross, Walworth. It became clear that a new local secondary school was urgently needed to meet local demand and no later than September 2016. We even brought education minister David Laws MP to East Dulwich to discuss the problem last July.

When we met Southwark Council officials they were clear that no new school was required expecting local kids to travel across London for places and that they would contest any new school we campaigned for. Ouch!

After many months of us leafleting and canvassing homes, schools, street stalls, online we found more than enough support for our campaign and a new free school application to be made. We’d proved the officials wrong. We then moved onto finding a  great school provider. For this we initiated a Parents Steering Group which successfully took on this task and also helped increase the numbers of supporting families. We’ve now reached 454 supporting families.  Working with this group, who have met four times and with us visited various local schools on fact finding trips, and after considerable deliberations, a unanimous decision to work with Haberdashers’ Aske Federation was taken. Haberdashers’  have now announced that their governing body has approved taking this project further. They plan to model a new Haberdashers’ Aske’s East Dulwich College (secondary school) on their outstandingly successful Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham College. The school would be for around 180pupils per year group include a sixth form  and open September 2016.

To further support this project East Dulwich Liberal Democrats in February submitted a Right to Contest application, using legislation created by Liberal Democrats in government. The application is about freeing up the two-thirds of the Dulwich Hospital site which has remained unoccupied for over 20 years. The Parents Steering committee agree with us that this space represents the minimum space for our new secondary school.

We look forward to continue working with Haberdashers to support them submitting a free school application November 2014. We still welcome further support via our website www.newschool.org.uk or email us directly cllrjamesbarber@gmail.com

We also welcome the support both Southwark Labour and Conservatives have now given to this project and that officers have now confirmed a new school is needed.

Councillor James barber ” it has been a long journey to reach this stage but I’m truly delighted to bring on board such a prestigious and renowned school provider as Haberdashers’ Aske’s and to model our new school on their Hatcham College”.

Councillor Rosie Shimell added “having denied any need for a new secondary school its great that Lib Dems have won the argument and Southwark Labour are now saying they support our campaign. We just need to see them practically support it now”.

COuncillor Jonathan Mitchell also said “I’ve slogged my guts out canvassing for support for our idea of a new secondary school. So I delighted all our hard work has born fruit attracting such a great school provider to our area who will complement all our existing outstanding schools”.

 

 

 

Jimmy Savile Tragic Southwark Involvement

The Secretary of State for the Department for Education has received information that children at 21 children’s homes and schools may have been abused by Jimmy Savile. He has initiated work to have these cliams investigated thoroughly.

Child abuse scars peoples whole lives. I dont think it’s something that truly goes away from people. They just learn to manage and hide their feelings. It can lead to self harm and suicide and feelings of self-loathing. Truly awful thing to happen to anyone.

Southwark Council had a children’s home called the Hollies in Sidcup between 1965 and 1989 ans this is one of the 21 to be investigated.

If you were at the Hollies and experienced anything untoward please call the NSPCC on 0808 800 500 or email help@nspcc.org.uk for help and advice. It’s crucial lessons are learnt from the disaster that Jimmy Savile has been found to have been.

Fingers crossed the investigation by Southwark will quickly reach a thorough conclusion for all the now adults who could have been affected.

Deciding Planning Locally

In Southwark planning applications for schemes up to 50 new homes were decided at local planning committees. Southwark had eight to cover the whole borough and one main planning committee for schemes greater than 50 new homes.

These were swept away Southwark Labour. Supposedly to save money but the amount of money spent on each community council meeting is now so huge that you could hold the dames number of meetings as used to be held for less money.

It is so embarrassing that local schemes aren’t decided locally that Labour cabinet councillor Barrie Hargrove pleaded a special case for the Flood Alleviation Planning Application.

Sadly even Barris didn’t make any progress against the entrenched decision that local planning decisions shouldn’t be heard anywhere convenient for residents.

 

Southwark 20mph

Southwark is introducing 20mph speed limit on all roads except those controlled by TfL or the Dulwich Estate.

This has been a long time coming with the strategy agreed when Lib Dems led the council. Richard Thomas was the lead councillor on this years back.

But not much point making our roads 20mph without any enforcement.

The Association of Chief Police Officers have announced a course option for motorists exceeding 20mph as an alternative to a fine and or points on driving licences. The course would be for motorists travelling 24-31mph.
Avon and Somerset Police are the first ti pilot this course.

We need to persuade our Met Police in Southwark to also take this approach.

Do you agree most roads should be 20mph in Southwark?

First Steering Group Meet

Sunday afternoon at my home the first inaugral meeting of the steering group for a new East Dulwich free secondary school met.

Inaugral new East Dulwich secondary school campaign steering group

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although I launched and have run with this campaign for many months it’s definately time to open it up to parents that have the time to help make it happen. I’m also keen that it becomes a cross party campaign. Ensuring enough good school places shouldn’t be political.

A dozen of us chewed over what we’d like to see. We agreed that it would be:

– co ed and non faith

– non selective but have good SEN provision and ensure boys and girls succeed and with gifted and talented.

– subject specialism of teachers and the school specialise working with some of our great world renouned South London institutions.

– engage with parents and supporters.

We also agreed to approach two school providers initially – Prendergast and Haberdashers – to see if either wanted or could fulfil our aspirations. At that point we would pass the baton to them to lead this campaign.

Even small gifts influence behaviour

My day job is in procurement. It really compliments my home time being a local councillor. And occasionally being a councillor informs the day job.

I came across some really interesting peer reviewed research showing that even small gifts make a difference to peoples behaviours and decisions:

http://blogs.wsj.com/totalreturn/2012/12/21/the-big-corruption-in-small-gifts/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/health/research/19beha.html?_r=0

Sadly almost all organisations don’t recognise these impacts and do allow such small gifts.

In both roles I’ve never accepted gifts. Sometimes I have eaten sandwiches at a suppliers remote premise. As a councillor I have never accepted anything. I have only had lunch with developers once and paid my part of the bill much to their consternation.

But some councillors haven’t taken on board this research and don’t just accept small gifts but gifts worth thousands of pounds. The research suggests it  must affect their decision making.

If you’d like to explore the interests of councillors see each councillors register of gifts and hospitalities on the Southwark Council website – http://www.southwark.gov.uk/info/200038/councillors_mps_and_meps/1367/your_councillors

The council leader Cllr Peter John has in just the last 12 months received £1,881.15 of such gifts and over a dozen dinner and balls tickets valued far in excess of this but the value hasn’t been stated:

http://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/mgListGifts.aspx?UID=189