Lordship Lane – walking audit

In 2007 the East Dulwich councillors arranged for a walking audit of Lordship Lane. Over the years we’ve gradually been delivering it recommendations.

The final problems from that report that need fixing are crossing East Dulwich Grove where it meets Lordship Lane and crossing Lordship Lane around where the Coop/Somerfield supermarket it.

I’m chuffed to report that it has finally been agreed and approved to install three crossing to fixed these final problems. The timescales will be that the works will be completed by March 2012 and will include some rearranging of local parknig to ensure that overall a gain in car parking to make up for the loss of parking that these crossings need to proceed.

I’d like to thank residents patience. Businesses for highlighting that we needed to make good any loss of parking. Good challenge that we’ve ensured is more than met. And lastly a thank you to officers who’ve been really supportive to ensure we’ve come up with the best overal solution – and the East Dulwich Grove entry crossing solution was after a number of meetings with East Dulwich councillors and specialise consultants.

Roll on March 2012.

Building control

I’ve had a small trickle of casework referred by residents about Southwark Building control since being elected in 2006. They have usually been quickly resolved and communications seemed to be the common theme. Half a year ago I consolidated these issues into a question at full Council Assembly (question 21). The answer highlighted thatsignificant delays happen with a minority of cases. The cabinet member responsible Cllr Foley agreed to follow this up. For clarity  this is a long term issue spanning numerous administrations.

Lets not forget that Building Control is about helping to ensure new buildings and changes to building are safe and that they meet eco standards to save the planet.

Earlier this week I met with council officials and Cllr Foley to reflect on the service, see how it could be made even better, and see how things have changed since I originally raised the issue.

Apparently the legislation doesn’t require the issue of building certificates unl;ess asked for. But for the last 10 years Southwark has always issued a Building Certificate. Over that period of the project referred to it only around 50% ever complete such that they can be granted a building certificate. Amazing.

Building Control acknowledgement letters have been changed to make it clear exactly what information will be required – electricians certificates.

We all agreed Building Controls web presence on the Southwark Council website could be enhanced as for many this will be the first port of call.

For the last years a proper IT workflow system has been in place helping to ensure projects don’t fall between the gaps. And this new system allows council officials to email out certificates as PDF files. This is particularly helpful when people selling their houses suddenly need a new copy as they lost the original.

But this still leaves 50% of projects that never complete. Cllr Foley accepted my suggestion that all open projects be sent a one off letter reminding them that they officially have an open project and what the council needed to complete it. I look forward to seeing the proposed letter shortly. Cllr Foley also came up with the useful idea of checking incomplete projects to see if a trend of a few builders causing this that might need just some gentle re-education.

Progress.

Plot to rename bonfire night

Labour run Southwark Council have decided to hold a public bonfire event in Dulwich Park. Sadly they don’t feel they want to call it a firework display but have come up with a more politically correct name for the event – “The Colour Thief”.

They plan to spend £55,000 on this event Friday 4 November. They’ve confirmed to me they expect 2,000 attendees which works out at £25 a head!
To others they’ve said 3,000 – 5,0000.
They’ve said to the Friends of Dulwich Park that they have no choice it will happen whether they like it or not. At the Dulwich Community Council last week they said it will be decided via a public consultation.
To local Councillors they’ve said it’s not a rival fireworks event but to the press the Labour cabinet member councillor Ward has said “We have some great ideas for the fireworks night event, which includes our new Colour Thief display, and we are currently consulting local people about what they’d like to see”.

I think it’s safe to say local people would like some honesty. Dulwich already has numerous public firework events and doesn’t need another one whatever crazy politically correct names it’s given. Ideally the events budget would be devolved to local community councils to decide which local events to support.

Southwark Council gets remoter

Dulwich is 1/8th of Southwark Councils population and about 1/4 of its land area. In the past Southwark Council HQ was dead centre in the middle of the borough at Southwark Town Hall. This is/was where council assembly and most other committee meetings occurred.

Southwark Labour party have decided to sell Southwark town hall and relocate all meeting to Tooley Street – just about as far north as you can get from Dulwich without getting your feet wet.

To compound things our Dulwich Housing office is being relocated to a new office in Harris Street covering the south of the borough. To show how out of touch Labour are they think Harris Street is in the south. I doubt I could find a person in Dulwich who could tell me where Harris Street is.

Why is this important?

It is hard to get people to attend public council meetings and committees now. The Council is already considered aloof and distant. It will now be physically much more remote from most Southwark residents and over % miles away for many Dulwich residents. It will be rare for Southwark council senior managers to experience Southwark outside the enclave of London Bridge. This can’t be good for understanding of what needs fixing.

I could understand this IF significantly more powers and budgets were being devolved to local community councils to counter the gross centralisation. But it isn’t – not Labour politicians style of philosophy.

New East Dulwich Library

Museums, Libraries and Archives council recommend 30 square metres of spaces for every one thousand population. For Southwark’s 305,000+ population (this number is those registered with GP’s) that would mean we needed 9,150 m2.  Currently we have 4,914 m2. We clearly have a huge deficiency in library space.

The nearly finished Canada Water library will help by adding 1,315 m2 net compared to Rotherhithe library which will close. This still leaves us hugely deficient.

But more locally last night the Planning Committee approved a new development next to East Dulwich station that includes a new Grove Vale library. The current library has 100 m2 for customers and the new one would double that to 200 m2 + have 50 m2 terrace. The time line would see this delivered in the first half of 2014.

Its currently bursting at the seams homework club of kids mostly from the East Dulwich Estate in South Camberwell ward, toddlers groups, etc  could all expand with no extra resources. The current library lease costs £25,000 a year but the new library would have a 125 year peppercorn rent of £100 a year. The new library would also be one big space allowing other services such as selling coffee etc to raise revenue to support the library. The new building will have CHP and be eco excellent in its part saving lots on the utility bills. The one risk is the current library review. I’m hopeful that new revenue streams and reducing layers of management and back office costs will occur from that review rather than close libraries from our already under dimensioned library service.

For your say on the Southwark Library review: https://forms.southwark.gov.uk/ShowForm.asp?fm_fid=591

For a picture of what 18-22 Grove Vale will broadly look like – 18_22 Grove Vale

Southwark failing to detect fraud?

At the last Audit & Governance meeting the committee received a Fraud Briefing from the audit Commission. Fascinating. Pages 8-28 in the committee papers.

It highlighted that fraud involving people wrongly claiming Single Persons Discount on Council Tax has been found to typically run at 4% and this would mean Southwark can expect to find another £400,000 of fraud if its looks.

Illegal council housing tenancies – people sub letting or fraudulantly claiming things about housing that are not true. Southwark has found its the 3rd highest ratio of this compared to other local authorities finding 170/40,000 council let properties. However, during major evacuations a far higher proportion of illegal letting has been found. The committee has asked for more information around this.

One London local authority discovered 13 cases of fruad around social services. Southwark has found none. Is it plausible Southwark has none?

Procurement fraud. Southwark has reported zero cases of procurement fraud where 31 such cases have been found in inner London boroughs. Again is it plausible that Southwark actually has zero cases?

Blue badge fraud. Southwark has reported finding two cases of Blue Badge fraud in financial year 09/10. Whereas a neighbouring borough has reported 171 such case. Again is it really true Southwark only had 2 such cases?

Recruitment fraud. The Audit commission stated “Evidence from council who employ enhance vetting procedures indicate your [Southwark] deated fraud cases could be just the tipe of the iceberg in terms of the total amount of recruitment fraud targeted against your Council”.

Whistleblowing. Southwark doesn’t record the amount of whistle blowing so doesn’t know if its policies are successful. A neighbouring borough recorded 50 cases.

So overall Southwark doesn’t appear to have grasped the fact that fraud will be taking place and hunting it down.

Expensive travelling

Labours capital budget being discussed tonight at council assembly has several items related to the four traveller sites in Southwark.

In total they propose to spend £1.23M on the 38 traveller pitches or £32,368 per pitch. WOW!

Southwark being 1 of 32 London Boroughs is providing 1 in 14 of London’s traveller pitches.

Surely their must be cheaper ways of refurbishing these pitches – even if it means buying places elsewhere in London to create new or extending existing sites?

Why is Southwark disproportionately accommodating travellers compared to other London boroughs with a housing policy to promote money for more traveller sites?

Do you think these are strange choices?

Predicted flooding

No joke but on 1 April Southwark Council became responsible for flood prevention.

Initial work suggests the following areas are liable for a 1 in 100 year flooding event:

– Herne Hill area (i.e Half Moon Lane)

– Champion Park area

– Area between Peckham Park Road and Asylum Road.

– Area bounded by Willow Brook, Commercial Way, Southampton Way, Well Way and Saint George’s Way.

– Area bounded by Camberwell Road, Camberwell New Road and Wyndham Road.

– Dulwich Park area

– Belair Park area along Croxted Road

In theory it should mean that flooding events such as the Dulwich 2004 flooding of costing over £1M will be less likely if Southwark Council gets its flood prevention right and encourages us all to take simple but effective measures.

So I’m looking forward to Southwark Council quickly releasing its assessments and guidance of what Southwark Council will such as changes at Belair Park and what households and businesses can do.

Dulwich Leisure Centre completed

Today the final part of the Dulwich Leisure Centre renovation reopened, the gym. Its’ been a long haul since we promised in our Lib Dem 2006 election manifesto to completely renovate it. No one else made that promise so at the time it felt brave. After more than 50 years of no investment under Labour it would take a huge investment to fix. To complicate things we knew that as the building is listed it would need full planning permission that English Heritage would be happy to approve.

We won that election and set the process of getting the centre renovated.

It’s been a long wait while all the permissions and planning and consulting widely with literally thousands of people in East Dulwich about what they wanted from a renovated centre. The works seemed to slow down after the 2010 elections but finally the centre was fully reopened today and £6.2M investment fully delivered. It looks and feels fab.

And people say politics is a waste of time and makes no difference!

Do take a look and try it out and let me know what you think.

Pilot ignored

I was saddened to discover that Labour councillor Barrie Hargrove has decided Southwark Council should ignore the 9month food waste pilot they initiated. This pilot has involved over 10,400 homes and largely been a success and we’re all working on fixing the issues.

It involved collecting food waste, metals, plastics, glass and paper recycling every week and everything else fortnightly. This difference between 1 week for recycling and fortnightly for everything else encouraged people to maximise their recycling to get stuff taken away. In the pilot area some week 53% has been recycled.

But the pilot has been ignored.

The pilot and 37,000 other homes in Southwark will have weekly food waste and fortnightly recycling and everything else collections. This is said to save £125,000 a year over the 47,000 homes or £2.65 per home per year. But it only has to result in 27kg of recycling from each home each year going into the wrong wheelie bin and this saving won’t be made. On average each Southwark home throws away more than 1,000kgs a year. More than 27kg per home in the wrong wheelie bin and it will cost more than keeping weekly rubbish collections. I could understand if for the first year only weekly recycling collectionswere made to get people into this virtuous habit but sadly this isn’t the plan.

I call on Southwark Council to maximise recycling from these changes rather than take the risk of a worse service costing council tax payers more.