Southwark building control

This year I’ve had two pieces of casework highlighting huge delays in getting building certificates at the completion of building work.

I’ve personally also had delays last year making me extra wary their might be an issue.

A formal response to a question I posed at full council assembly shows me that a very real problem does exist that no administration has been able to resolve – largely I suspect this service has never been picked up on any radar as failing.

For example this financial year 512 building certificates have been issued with the average certificate issued 42 days from the last officer visit. That in itself is huge delay. BUT the worst quartile had an average of 283 days delay for the certificate to be issued from the last visit. That’s 2/3rds of a year to get an A4 peice of paper – outrageous.

Just 37% of certificates were issued within the target 10 days.

I’ve followed up this question and spoken to the Labour councillor responsible Fiona Colley and hope to work with her to see a turn around of this service.

If you have any problems with this service please contact me so I can help.

Read the rest of this entry. Read the rest of this entry.

Cherry Blossoms in East Dulwich

The last round of Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding East Dulwich councillors decided to allocate £12,300 towards more street trees.

bloom562.jpg

The previous year we funded lots of Cherry Blossom trees on Melbourne Grove near East Dulwich station. They looked wonderful in March for about three weeks when they all blossomed together.

I’m hopeful we’ll be able to extend this across other parts of East Dulwich.

The proposal is for 30 new streets at the following locations – if you have any locations in East Dulwich that needs a street tree please do let me know:

http://jamesbarber.mycouncillor.org.uk/files/2010/12/proposed-street-trees-for-east-dulwich.pdf

St.Francis park

St.Francis park is located just north of East Dulwich railway station. It’s the main pedestrian through route to get to and from the Sainsbury’s Dulwich store on Dog Kennel Hill.

When the planning applications was agreed to build on Metropolitan Open Land it was also agreed that Saisnbury’s had to provide and maintain a public open park.

Well they have but the maintenance is rock bottom and I suspect Sainsbury’s HQ don’t know how rough and ready this maintenance is.

So I’ve asked them. I’ve also asked when can they work towards achieving a Green Flag award for this park.

I await their initial response before deciding how to take this campaign forward. 

2011 Census

Next year the national UK wide census is taken – it happens every decade and is run locally by the local authority.

The 80% of Southwark Councils budget provided by central government is based on how many people the census finds. Other public bodies are also funded on the number of people found to be living here.

The last census was undertaken in 2001 when Labour ran the council and achieved the 8th worst census completion in the country. This is partly residents not joining in, partly not engaging residents, but equally it takes a well led and run census locally to make is successful at getting people to fill in the forms. The 2001 produced such dire results with such bad consequences in the funding Southwark Council received that more effort is being put into getting this one done better. A cross party scrutiny was undertaken last year to help ensure it is done better this time round with plenty of useful recommendations.

But is Labour led Southwark Council doing enough. What’s at stake is many tens of millions of pounds every year.

Grove Vale library

In 2005 I spotted that developer had made a Planning Application for 18-22 Grove Vale where the Dulwich Garden Centre is. The scheme look at best dull. Equally the Grove Vale library is two small shops unit poorly linked together. Great library in terms of children’s books etc but poor building to provide library services.

So I approached the developer and suggested that if they included a new Grove Vale library their scheme would be more successful. That turned into a long two years working with the developer, council officers and colleagues to incorporate a new 230m2 Grove Vale library which gained planning permission January 2007.

Then the recession hit. BANG. All property values slumped but more importantly since then it has become REALLY hard to borrow money. One surveyor told me you can’t borrow money outside London and in London banks expect 35% margins to borrow ie a big cushion just in case.

So I’ve had many conversations with the developer about what might be possible. I’ve spoken to Southwark libraries about what could/would work to give a great new library. Various rules around insulation are now much tighter – new part L building regs today, Southwark Core Strategy where all rooms have to be bigger, etc.

After a lot of soul searching I’m hopeful we’ve sailed a route which should give us a new 250m2 +50m2 ‘winter garden’ Grove Vale library. It would be behind a new retail unit at the front with library accessed via a 3 metre wide corridor at the back. The residential flats above would reduce to 21 units.

Yesterday I met with the developers team and Southwark Planning officials to witness the hurdles and issues the developer needs to bridge before submitting a full Planning Application. I’m hopefully these wont take long and a scheme can be submitted in November or January.

If you have any questions or thoughts about this please get in touch.

Hopefully I’ll have some images to share soon. 

Northcross Road market expansion?

For some time the East Dulwich councillors have been proposing an expansion to Northcross Road Market on Saturdays. It’s a success at 20 stalls and appears Northcross Road has plenty of space for more stalls.

We’re already arranging electric pop up points so the stalls will have electricity and they’ll no longer need to run minim generators but more stalls say 30 or even 40 would really make the market more successful.

Southwark council is now consulting on expanding the market. They’re proposing that it increases from 20 to 30 stalls but importantly this expansion would apply not just to Saturdays but also Mon-Fri and add an extra market day on Sundays.

We feel Sunday isn’t a good idea. It would mean residents don’t get a single day of peace or quiet and the inconveniences they currently suffer without complaining would increase and potentially become intolerable. Equally expanding Mon-Fri probably when the current stalls aren’t used is pointless and will increase local residents fears.

Whatever your view and whether residents, visitor, stallholder, or other local business please do respond to the consultation via: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/northcrossroadmarket

4 October – food recycling and fortnightly bin collections start

A pilot scheme involving 10,000 homes in Southwark starts on Monday 4 October. The pilot involves adding organic waste i.e. food to the weekly recycling collections via 240L, 23L and caddy brown bins and also biodegradeable plastic bags.

img00012-20100928-0828.jpg

Those homes in the pilot will have received a non addressed letter a month ago and another leaflet this week. Hopefully you didn’t miss it!

Clearly many will be surprised come Monday with the letter and leaflet being lost in the general masses of junk mail/leaflets we all receive. To confirm if you’re in or out of the scheme you can call 020 7525 2000 – I was assured people could check this via the web but this is still not up and running.

For those that are in the scheme not all homes on a street are necessarily in the pilot – if council officers felt insufficient room to store a brown bin then they’re not included. So you can expect neighbouring properties to have either weekly or fortnightly ‘residial ‘ rubbish collections – you’ll need to pay close attention!

If you have any problems please let me know and I’ll try and help.

Dulwich Pool

The Dulwich Pool reopens this Friday 24 September 6.30am with adult swimming lanes.

Last week I popped in to take a pre opening peek with my ward colleagues Cllr Rosie Shimell and Cllr Jonathan Mitchell. it looked fab.

pict0082.JPG

It was 2005 and Cllr Richard Thomas and I were discussing with East Dulwich residents what did the area need. Renovating Dulwich Leasure Centre including its pool became one of our key 2006 manifesto pledges. It’s taken five months longer for phase 1 and will have taken 10 month for phase 2 (the gym) than we promised but I’m still chuffed to bits that its happened – huge project considering the building listed and has been kept largely open while the works have taken place.

Do pop along and see what all the fuss has been about this coming weekend and let me know if you like the changes….

Recycling rate and amount 2009/2010

The last full Southwark council year hasa just been reported to me – delayed due to Valuation Office Agency (VOA) not issuing figures of how many homes in Southwark.

The recycling rate (National Indicator 192) was 22.13%. Disappointing as the expected rate was 24%.

Amount of rubbish per home (NI191) 696.13Kg which is slightly down from the previous years amount of 703.61kg.  This has been delayed as Southwark has an extra 1,331 homes.

NI193 is the percentage sent to landfill 45.70%.

Dulwich Pool reopening

Dulwich Pool, on East Dulwich Road, is reopening after extensive works and with a new entrance on Crystal Palace Road on the weekend of 25/26 September.

Huge frustrations with the amount of delay in the last few months. Shame kids summer holidays have been missed. But at last we have the opening dates set.

Relieved that this Lib Dem electoral promise is being delivered and that the pool phase about to complete. Just need the gym phase to complete things. Hooray!