Good to see the overall secondary school league tables showing Southwark in such a positive light.
Some new stunningly good GCSE new entries – Harris Boys Academy East Dulwich with 71% with 5 good GCSE’s including Maths and English.
Very good A-Level results as well.
Well done everoyne who made this and all the other schools results so good this year. Also great positive trends.
Southwark Labour introduced new rules that all new dropped kerbs must have 2 metres (6’6″) of double yellow lines both sides of them.That means that the dropped kerb reduces on street parking by one car length and 2 x 2m = by another car length of parknig removed with each dropped kerb. Ouch!
Last night at the Dulwich Community Council we had 4 such dropped kerbs to approve. I persuaded the committee that this Southwark Labour Council rule is silly. That if we must have double yellow lines they should be abslutely minimised. I’m grateful that all three parties agreed we should recommend 0.5m of double yellow lines OR the decision comes back to the committee to be looked at again with an officer to explain the minutae of these rules.
Fingers crossed this is the first step to getting more sensible dropped kerb and double yellow lines policies in place.
NB: We used to have rules allowing white lines across dropped kerbs and the home owners could insist stranger parked cars moving or calling the Police. It also meant home owners could allow people to park across dropped kerbs. Pragmatic parking rules.
2002 Southwark Lib Dems initiated the Cleaner, Greener, Safer programme where each ward in Southwark gets a pot of capital money to allocate to new projects.
Last night we decided which projects to support in East Dulwich ward – ED CGS 15_16
Safer: Fencing between Dulwich library and St.Thomas Moore RC Church, Library Annexe opened as new space for Police surgeries and the like, More Crime Prevention, Norcroft Gardens fencing and lgihting.
Cleaner: Friern Road estate play area renewal, Goose Green School entrance, East Dulwich Community Centre new flooring.
Greener: Lots more trees locally, Physic GardenHeber School Upcycle Garden.
Our next funding decision will be our £25,000 of revenue funding in March. If you have any ideas to make the area better please let us know.
It pains me to say it but Southwark Council have failed to reached it target of recycling. When Lib Dems led the council we negotiated what we thought and government advisors told us was a tough target to reach 38% recycling rate by April 2014.
Southwark Labour said they would double recycling from 22% in 2010 to 44% in 2014. They then back tracked to 40% when they were in power.
But the final recorded rate was 34% for 2013/14. A long way short of the Veolia contract we negotiated. But significantly having introduced food waste 4 years earlier than the Veolia contracted planned they don’t have anywhere to go.
It isn’t any better in Lambeth. where recycling fell from 23% in 2012/13 to 21%. It’s fourth year in a row of falling recycling. It’s as if Lambeth Labour have given up on recycling.
Do you recycle?
What could we do to help you recycle more?
At the AGM of the Dulwich Area Housing Forum – the forum for council tenants and leaseholders – Bill Newman gave his chairs annual report where he thanked delegates and council officers and then spoke about council housing…
“When major works are carried out to our homes we have endured a project that should be making our homes “Warm, Dry and Safe” but it’s not. We still have homes without insulated walls which are cold and damp resulting in the growth of mould. Condensation arising from badly fitted double glazing. Residents are being told that in a lot of cases that this is due “life style issues”.
We keep being told the repair service will be improved. We find it’s not. Mears now have has the contract to carry out their repairs to our homes for over two year’s Again we hearing they are having another “restructure” to improve their service to us, many residents are finding that they have to re-book appointments. Reasons being given of that the contractors were unable to get access, or that they are delayed, or they do not have the right materials or the job.
We have been promised an improved service to the communal repairs, the council employing new staff to manage these repairs. “Estate action days” are now used to complete some of the working which should have been done on normal day to day level.
The call centre was brought back “in house” last tear with again promises of an improved services to the residents. As we see from theirs stats it has not, We hear that by bringing it back ”in house” that the council have saved over 3 million pounds. Would it not have been better to use some of the savings to improve the service we receive. The managers at the call centres say they are now receiving a larger amount of calls., which is most likely due to the fact that this is the main way many residents can contact the council. If residents are lucky to be near one the one stop shops they find they have to wait or be given as appointment to have the questions answers. (more…)
Southwark Labour have just confirmed what roads and pavements they will renew over the next three financial years. It’s great they plan to spend more over the next three years but to fund this they plan to drastically reduce budgets in future years. Topically this remind me of GReek government finances.
But the decision has many duplications. For example they plan to renew 10% of footways on Dovercourt Road this coming financial year (FY) but then renew 100% of the footways in FY 17_18! Similar duplications for Aysgarth Road, Beauval Road, Casino Avenue, Copleston Road, Danecroft Road, Elmwood Road, Playfield Crescent, Wyneham Road.My favourite is replacing 75% of Tell Grove footwards in FY 2016/17 & then another 75% in FY 2017/18.
Grove Vale is called Grove Lane, some streets listed as in Dulwich are in SE1.
You could not make this up.
Perhaps their is a simple explanation. Eitherway do take a look at the currently signed off plans for road and pavement renewals in Southwark and those specific to the Dulwich area: Highway renewals
Needless to say I’veasked for the decisionto be repeated – in the Dulwich area alone we’ve spotted £147,000 of duplications. So for the whole of Southwark the errors are likely to be around £1M. Ouch!
Southwark Council have just added 20% to the costs of fruit and veg market stalls across Southwark.
They say the costs of disposing of fruit and veg stalls have risen by 20%. The stall holders say business is down which would means less waste being generated.
Eitherway, raising the costs of health fruit and veg will mean prices go up which will mean less is bought from market stalls providing health fruit and veg. And this at a time when we have an obesity crisis.
Taxing healthy eating just does not make sense. As the stall holders ay – ‘it’s bananas!’
Today Dulwich councillors were sent confirmation that new health facilities will be constructed on the Dulwich Hospital Site. The new health centre will be a new build and initially house the existing facilities provided at the Dulwich Hospital with the capacity to deliver more.
After 22 years I’m chuffed that a coalition government involving Lib Dems finally have decided what to do with this site and the re-provision of more health services. Hooray. Just the boring details of making it happen!
When Cllr Rosie Shimell, Jonathan Mitchell and I were elected in 2010 we made it one of our priorities to get things moving on the Dulwich Hospital. We ran a survey of over 25,000 local residents, street stalls, knocking on local residents door to find out what people think and wanted. This built on the sterling work Jonathan had done in helping to stop the things just being closed and sold.
15-01-16 Brand new health centre to be built in Dulwich FINAL
The full details will be released 22 January to the CCG Governing Body. The announcement I’ve received makes it clear NHS Property are now looking to sell the surplus land i will do everything in my power to ensure all the spare land is used for educational purposes.
What is troubling is that any money from the sale of land will be used nationally and not ring fenced to Dulwich. The Dulwich Hospital was paid for by public subscription by former Dulwich residents. It speaks volumes that such monies donated to health causes and charities could be ultimately used outside the area the donors could reasonably ever have expected.
The last Labour government in response to flagrant voter fraud started the process to introduce individual voter registration. The new system
The old system one person in each household registered everyone in the house – I did for our family. But sometimes people added extra people. So the new system means everyone has to register themselves with their unique National Insurance number to ensure no cheating from bogus residents.
My own experience is buy to-let landlords being registered sometimes multiple times for properties they don’t live in. So the new system will stop this and ensure tenants can register to vote.
To smooth the transition to the new system the Department for Works and Pensions has assisted local councils by matching over 90% of all the previously registered voters with their National Insurance numbers and other have reregistered themselves. This has left under a million voters across the country no longer being registered to vote.
So if you’re no longer registered to vote it is quick and easy and for the first time ever via a new online system. It takes just a few minutes, your National Insurance number and date of birth –www.gov.uk/register-to-vote
Lib Dems in government have also ensured another £10 million to smooth the introduction of this system that has been policy of all parties for a number of years.
The biggest industry and businesses in the Dulwich area are in education. Not just the required schools for local children – the 3 out of the 4 state secondary school or 11 infant and primary schools but also the private schools – 3 secondary schools and 5 infant and primary schools. (Kingsdale with it lottery admissions is no longer a genuinely local school).
These private schools and Kingsdale do attract many local children but they also have huge catchment areas. They support a private school bus network required to support such hugely expanded schools. And their expansion has been marked over the years.
I don’t blame the parents or children coming so far. We have great local schools but with so many now coming from so far it is contributing to serious local congestion.
The irony of those private schools being the core of a the Dulwich and Herne Hill Safe Route to School group while contributing so much to the congestion this worthy group wish to reduce won’t be lost on local residents. This group is now supporting measures to limit local junctions to try and reduce local congestion.
Southwark Council needs to find ways to reduce these attractive schools catchment areas and the congestion large catchment areas is causing.
I Southwark Council will use the planning process to impose new admissions conditions to further this aim.
This would be the route to minimising congestion and the harm and danger this causes local school pupils
Do you agree?