Christmas Trees

In a few days time we’ll all be starting to take our festive decorations down.

If you have a real Christmas tree you can dispose of it by putting it out on garden waste recycling days. Or locally take them to Peckham Rye Park (near the cafe) or Belair Park (car park).

If you’re disabled, elderly or don’t have transport and don’t have a garden waste collection service, you can arrange to have your Christmas tree collected.  To book a collection appointment between 5th and 29th of January call 020 7525 2000.

The following is a list of the next garden waste recycling collections in the New Year for East Dulwich:

Archdale Road            Tuesday 12 January

Ashbourne Grove         Tuesday 5 January

Barry Road                  Tuesday 5 January

Bassano Street             Tuesday 5 January

Read the rest of this entry.

Primary school admissions

This year Primary School admissions has been painful. Quite out of the blue we had unhappy parents. 120 appeals, 8 upheld.

I’ve asked council officers how many cases councillors and MP’s referred to them for help.

They’ve told me:

Labour 13 – councillors 5, Harriet Harman MP 3, Tessa Jowell MP 5.

Liberal Democrats 35 –  councillors 14, Simon Hughes MP 21.

Convervative 1.

Total 46.

East Dulwich Primary school places

Last night a meeting of the councils Overview and Scurtiny Committee met at the East Dulwich Community Centre to discuss the problems parents faced with this years primary schools admissions process.

Disappointing that barely a handful of parents could attend plus a handful of headteachers and school governors. However, the room was full of councillors and council officers. Really thought provoking presentation from Terry Parkin the lead officer accountable for admissions. Lots of searching questions that brought out lots of other facts.

Some unfortunate weird comments and wild accusations from Cllr Aubyn Graham. He seemed very confused.

Main points I took from the scrutiny:

– Idea of having quite a few pre prepared buldge class options and then activating them depending on parent demand. This de risks any future pupil predictions being wrong while the economy is in such turmoil.

– More assurance that the GLA stats people now understand what went wrong this year after 15 years of unblemished near spot on pupil predictions.

– Amazing to hear that Southwark created an extra 45 reception places and still has 17% spares places in less fashionable schools such as the excellent Bessemer Grange. Lambeth and Lewisham had to create 150 extra emergency reception places each, Richmond 210, Enfield a whopping 22 classes totalling 660 reception places. This was shocking and really put into context how well Southwark had coped.

– £30M being pumped in Southwark Primary schools to physically make them better by Southwark Council and £25M from central government.

– Southwark schools close to being in top quartile for performance but time lag from when a schools performance soars to when publicly recognised for this.

– That across Southwark175 and in greater Dulwich area 22 kids go ‘missing’ each year. They just don’t show up at the schools places they’ve accepted. It costs the council £100,000 each year chasing these down to ensure they are in a school somewhere and are safe. What a waste caused by tiny number of selfish parents.

– That the admissions department has enough officers for a normal year but this abnormal year they were overwhelmed with worried parents. These officers will be increased by three as admissions numbers are bulging for the next 5-6 years.

If you’re an East Dulwich parent and couldn’t make it last night please do feed in your thoughts and observations.

£9.8M plan

Southwark Council has submitted its Local Implimentation Plan to Transport for London of how it wants to shape and change its highways and transport over the next three years. A £9.8M plan.

Two things solely proposed for the Dulwich Community Council area covering East Dulwich, Village and College wards. Spending £500,000 on public realm and speed reduction along Lordship Lane and Grove Vale. Spending £500,000 subsidising the number 42 bus being extended from Sunray Avenue to terminate at Sainsbury’s on Dog Kennel Hill during financial year 2011/12 & 2012/13. This bus extension subsidy does seem expensive.

Proposed schemes covering the whole of Southwark include – cycle training, travel awareness and promotion events, safe routes to school/travel plans, supporting sustianable infrastructure, speed reductions measures, surveying, eletric vehicle on street charging points.

What do you think is needed to improve Southwark roads?

Have we hit the mark?

Latest East Dulwich Crime stats

Latest East Dulwich crime stats taken from the mets Police  http://maps.met.police.uk/tables.htm show that in the last year August to August the crime rate has dropped such that East Dulwich has moved from 4th lowest crime rate  in Southwark to having the lowest crime rate in Southwark.

This is despite having 1/4 of Peckham Rye, 1/8 of Village and 1/8 of College wards most problematic areas counted against East Dulwich ward. So the real underlying story is even better than this.

It’s so improved that the East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team have been straying outside East Dulwich to help out in Dulwich Park – which has seen a 37% decrease in robberies.

When I became a councillor this was one of my personal ojectives – to have the lowest crime rates in Southwark in East Dulwich. We started our campaign to become East dulwich councillors with a Crime Survey. the survey results helped us decide to target a lot of the resources we as councillors allocate. We’ve still more work to do. I want East Dulwich to be better compared to London as a whole. We’re currently just outside the best quarter for London.

How can we improve it further?

10:10

The 10:10 campaign seeks as many people, business, and other organisations to commit to reducing their CO2 emissions by 10% during 2010. www.1010uk.org

I’m delighted to report Southwark Council is signing up to this.

I’m now seeking a commitment for another 11% during 2011….would that make it a 21:11 from now or 11:11?

Increasing recycling from 21% to over 50%

Last night Southwarks main planning committee granted planning permission to a new Integrated Waste Management Centre on the Old Kent Road. The committee took over 4 hours to get the final decision right and sat until after 1am this morning.

This new facility should be completed in around 15 months time. It will provide enough recycling capacity enable an increase from 21% recycling now to over 50%.

Do you recycle everything possible?

Bojangles

Several weeks ago we suddenly heard the terrible news a registered private day nursery called Bojangles  close to the junction of Barry Road with Upland Road was threatened with closure.

It has run up signficant debt with Her Majesty’s Customs and Revenue. It was advised by accountants to go into liquidation. Bojangles changed its legal entity to Fingerprints (Dulwich) Ltd. Unfortunately that meant the lease with the church expired. So the church served a notice to quit on them. Overall this meant its Ofsted status ended and had to be reapplied.

Lots of worried parents contacted us. We quickly escalated this to Cllr Lisa Rajan who heads up Childrens Services. Quickly Southwark Council Early Years officers stepped in to try resolving the dispute between the church and Bojangles/Fingerprints without success. All parents were contacted and public meeting took place to help find other nursery places. Currently 95% of deposits have been returned to parents with remaining £6,000 to be returned. More importantly these young children have been offered places.

LESSONS LEARNT:

This is the fourth nursery in Southwark to take such actions to avoid HMRC tax debts. Officers are planning to proactively give advice to all such nurseries to reduce the risk of this happening again.

East Dulwich 20mph…

The East Dulwich councillors have been campaigning for our streets to be safer. Many residents have contacted us about speeding vehicles. We’ve provided the local Police with a state of art speed gun and display. But on some streets the speed limit is excessive.

Just before the summer holidays traffic and speed counters were installed for a fortnight on 22 of the 65 streets in East Dulwich. On some streets several were installed.

The governments rules to make a street 20mph is that the mean average speed must be lower than 24mph. The results of the counters are below. The next step is for officers to meet the police and other emeregency services and agreed that their happy for these streets to be made 20mph in principle. Local residents are then formally consulted. Then we have to by law advertise this in the local papers (now you know why lots of council tax money on publicity goes), then the signs go up and we should see an average speed reduction due to the signs of 1-3mph. Then local Police can enforce such reasonable speeds on wholly residential roads in East Dulwich. Read the rest of this entry. Read the rest of this entry.