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

Upgrading North Cross Road

We’ve achieved much to improve North Cross Road and there market – road resurfacing last year, electric points for the market stalls, marked pitches.

IMG00353-20140323-1500We’ve just had the last patch of sub standard paving relaid. The Costcutter has started to smarten up its fencing (thank you).

We’re now trying to get the UK Power Networks electric sub station tidied up. For years and years an abandoned UKPN employee car and trailer have been present. Getting this removed will give the place a less abandoned look….

abandoned car and trailer

Lordship Lane Challenge

We need to find ways of making Lordship Lane an even better place to shop, socialise and serve the local community.

As Lib Dem East Dulwich councillors we’ve ensured much improved pedestrian facilities – making it 20mph, two signalled crossings, an extra zebra crossing at Goose Green, raising side roads to make Lordship Lane level, hanging baskets.

We’ve talked to five cinema providers and we’re delighted the Picturehouse Cinema are working to make a cinema happen by Christmas.

We’ve improved North Cross Road and the market.

What next? The junction of Lordship lane and North Cross Road will be revamped during the summer with money we’ve allocated from our devolved capital budget. This should solve an crash hot spot and make the market more inviting.

We also need to:

– Lordship Lane pavements improved. This will mean helping small businesses with the pavement they control. Currently they look terrible.

– Free wifi which will be free if done on a Southwark wide basis.

– Legible London signage to make it clearer where everything is and draw people from East Dulwich station along to our high street (via Grove Vale).

– Town Centre loyalty card.

– Season banners on lampposts.

What do you think we need to work on to make Lordship Lane better?

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

Labour Tree Chopping

Air pollution is a big issue. Latest figures suggest close to 1 in every 8 deaths air pollution was a significant factor.

One method of mitigating air and noise pollution and reducing the heat island effect is via trees. They’re also historic. East Dulwich has lots and lots of its streets called Groves as originally they were tree lined.

For many years we had a gradual increase in street trees. Sadly Labour led Southwark Council has been chopping down many more trees than it plants. Last year 97 more tree were chopped down than planted.

But we need to not just stop this irresponsible chopping of trees down but hugely expand the number of trees in Southwark and add lots of green walls.

In East Dulwich we’ve used devolved capital budgets to every year spend at least £10,000 on average for each of the last eight years to plant more street trees. If you have a spot where you think a street tree should go please let us know. The next tree planting seasons is January-March 2015.

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.

 

Choosing Our Secondary School Provider

Since launching the campaign for a new East Dulwich secondary school we’ve had many suggestions for who could provide it. East Dulwich councillors worked our socks of to find supportive families. The total of families is now at 540.

We thought it important that parents make that decision of who the provider should be. WE expect this school to be around for not just decades but centuries to come. This was the driving force for us creating the Parents Steering Group – I wish we’d done it sooner.

The following document explains the thinking behind choosing Haberdashers’s Aske’s over The Charter School. We had thought the decision would be much tougher than it proved to be. In the end despite so many on the Steering Group thinking they were clear cut for The Charter School it was unanimous for Haberdashers’ after all the evidence was reviewed and studied at length.

Please do read the document. Email me your thoughts. We didn’t take this decision lightly.

FinalSchoolSelectionQandA

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”.

 

 

 

Not Sitting Pretty Traditional

Terrible news that at Planning Sub-Committee B the planning application that will drive green grocer Pretty Traditional out of North Cross Road was granted planning permission.

As Lib Dem East Dulwich ward councillors Cllr Jonathan Mitchell, Rosie Shimell and myself insisted this planning permission was called-in.

I argued that the plans were an overdevelopment of the site, would cause noise for neighbours with a first floor terrace, and have access problems.

Sadly the committee discounted these issues and granted planning permission. This allows the site owner to terminate the lease kicking out Pretty Traditional.

So we now need to find another site while Chris looks at how to enforce the verbal contract allowing him to stay.

For this to happen the day medical advice tells us to eat more fruit and veg and see’s this the last green grocer in such peril is appalling.

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.