4,000 missing people?

At Southwark Council’s Audit & Governance meeting last week the officers report on anti fraud activities (page 89) states “4000 Single Persons Discount matches were released in February 2012 and work has commenced on these.”
The match is finding local and central govt data records of 2 or more people living at an address where a single persons council tax discount is claimed.

A few months ago Lambeth claimed they found 15,000 such matches by using a commercial agency checking against bank etc address records. (http://www.southlondonpress.co.uk/news.cfm?id=35616)

So either Southwark is failing big time to find all the potential wrong claims for single persons discount or Lambeth is wasting a lot of residents time fighting to keep single persons discount.
Which do you suspect?

But as each wrong discount will be costing circa £300 on average whether its 4,000 or 15,000 that is an awful lot of money not being collected. This means the correct council tax payers in Southwark are needlessly being asked for £11 to £43 per household per year.

Peckham Rye station

I was delighted to hear that £10.6M will be spent making Peckham Rye station and the immediate area around it something we can all be proud of.

I helped ensure this was in the Lib Dem 2010 local election manifesto so it has always been a priority for me and my political group. So its good to know its become a local Labour priority. Roughly half the money will come from Transport for London and half from Southwark Council.

Creating a large open square to the front of the station, renovate the station, create a buzzing pleasant day time and most importantly evening destination. Currently things like the cinema are fine but really under used. Venturing out into the centre of Peckham for leisure doesn’t seem popular. I regularly take my family but it feels odd with so few people around. Changing this for a cafe culture and hopefully other attractions will be a real fillip for Peckham and more generally Southwark.

The only fly in this ointment is the proposed four year time scale. Christ that’s a long time to make it happen. I wish I was the project manager…

Harlem Zone’s vs Sure Start

As a nation and indeed local Southwark community we seem to be floundering how to solve the root causes of last summers riots and how a significant proportion of our communities are so disengaged from the majority.

The recent report seemed to blame the problems on everything from schools having pupils leaving who couldn’t read to rampant materialism.

Harlem under inspired insight from Geoffrey Canada has the Harlem Children’s Zone. This is a long term scheme to raise expectations of the whole community not just save the lucky odd child or family. Focus initially was on the first three years of children’s lives with pre nursery, tutoring, dance and sports classes, food co-ops, social services, and help with housing and health. Real community intensive care of families.

A 2009 Harvard report that evaluated this scheme after five years reported stunning results. They said it was the most effective intervention of any kind in the whole US at creating a huge step increase in school results offering many more opportunities.
The cost is about $5,000 per child per year but the costs of not making these life changing interventions is wildly higher.

This all makes our UK Sure Start interventions look very British. Small and very marginal.

How can we create our own Camberwell and Peckham Children’s Zones?

Capital Projects

At the last Dulwich Community Council meeting we decided (in no particular order) how to allocate our limited capital to projects:

1. Artistically illuminate East Dulwich station bridge £10,000 – we think making the station area more attractive will help reduce crime and the fear of crime there.

2. Go slower signs £6,000 – residents often contact us that people are speeding on there roads but they don’t want speed humps. Where do you think we should put the 4-5 active speed signs?

3. Cycle contraflow on Henslowe Road £8,500 – some residents have told us its a long cycle round while others have told us they don’t like pavement cycling. This should solve both points but we hope to do it for a lot less than the ridiculous sum council officers have suggested.

4. Fix North Cross Road grot spot £4,000 – just by the electricity sub station.

5. Community notice boards £3,000 – they’ve worked well so far and more should work even better.

6. 20mph Lordship Lane £15,000 – we’re hopeful that with the new crossings on Lordship Lane simple signing of a 20mph speed limit will work making Lordship Lane even more attractive.

7. Trees on Lordship Lane £8,500 – we want to make Lordship Lane even greener and more friendly.

8. Goose Green School £5,400 – they’ve asked for help greening the school grounds.

9. Goodrich School £3,300 – they’ve asked for help greening the school grounds.

10. East Dulwich Crime Reduction fund £8,000 – some more funds for local Police to tell us how to reduce crime further.

11. Worlingham Road grot spot £5,000 – space between sheltered accommodation and 31A Worlingham Road.

12. Goose Green playground £5,000 – a little help to make it an even better playground.

Total £81,700 (with reserve of £312).

More classes please?

The Dulwich Leisure Centre has become significantly more popular than before it renovations.

It reopened with 63 classes in its studios. Complaints have been made about having more class participants such that its reduced the quality of peoples experience – not enough space to fling an arm let alone a cat. These 63 classes currently host 1,701 participants each week. But so many more people are failing to get places.

Now a new rota has been introduced with 80 very slightly smaller classes taking 2,000 participants in total per week.

This 18% increase in participants is a good start. But clearly it wont solve all the demand for places. So I’ll be pushing for even more classes until nearly everyone has a class who wants one.

What classes do you want?

Buried in details

 Southwark doesn’t take a long-term view of its cemeteries and crematoria.

Southwark residents pay standard fee but non residents pay significantly more. But many Southwark residents and neighbouring borough residents live close to the border. We should have reciprocal arrangement with neighbouring boroughs to allow use of each others facilities at borough resident costs. This would give more options for Southwark residents to be buried or cremated closer to family etc and vice versa. It would also remove perverse situations where people across the road from a facility get charged significantly more than a family living several miles away but on the right side of the artificial borough boundaries.

Partnering with a body, such as Kemeal Manor, which has cemetery and crematoria capacity in outer SE London/NW Kent where many Southwark residents children have migrated away from Southwark would be useful and give Southwark extended families more options. Equally such graves would be cheaper as the land is less valuable and it would help conserve burial space within Southwark.

Saturday’s burials and cremations are apparently difficult to arrange with Southwark.

Cemeteries

Private cemeteries typically hold 25% of burial fees to maintain cemeteries into perpetuity i.e. endowed. Southwark solely funds maintenance from current burial revenues. Hence Nunhead cemetery, where many of my family are buried, is an overgrown wilderness.

Lots of infill is available in Southwark cemeteries. So actual capacity is significantly higher than currently reported.

Plot ownership – ideally this should occur when the funeral director is paid a la City of London. Currently families can be passed cemetery plot ownership having not paid the funeral director fees.

Muslim believers must be buried as indeed must some others faiths. So crucial we keep our cemetery capacity.

But we do need to increase the future number of burials Southwark can host. One method is to lift out a coffin, dig the hole deeper and then re-place the original coffin back down ‘lift&drop’. A new coffin can then be placed in the old coffin’s original position. Limiting this to graves over 100 years old alone would largely solve cemetery space – potentially we could reuse much of Nunhead cemetery which with an endowment policy in place would see a permanent improvement to Nunhead maintenance (NB. some of my relatives are buried there).

For the Camberwell cemetery where builders rubble etc problems have been experienced we should create vaulting which some cultures particularly favour and allows many more internments for the area available. This would require significant capital hence the attraction of external investment. 

Crematoria

Considerable funds have been spent on this site within the last year eighteen months but at no point have funeral directors been seriously consulted ie. the principal users representatives.

In the 1970’s around 14 cremations took place each day but now circa 4 a day anecdotally. So huge capacity available if run properly. Currently crematoria doesn’t flow maximising privacy for families and helping more cremations taking place per day reducing the price that needs to be charged. Talking to others and attending some cremations other crematoria have ½ hour slots and the buildings designed for cremation parties to flow through the crematoria.

Conclusions

We have no need to use Honor Oak Recreation site for more cemetery places. We should sell it to Lewisham with a covenant that it wont be used for anything other than sports and recreation. Lewisham then have to fund its maintenance and it is located in Lewisham.

One proviso is perhaps moving the fence 2m to allow a strip of several hundred burials.

Recommendations:

–     Ensure 25% of burial fees placed into long term maintenance endowment fund.

–     Form user group of funeral directors to ensure their regular feedback include the relevant cabinet member and relevant shadow cabinet member.

–     Lease our facilities on long leases e.g. 25 or 50 years so that the necessary capital funding can take place but include requirement for each cemetery and crematoria to achieve green flag status and public access. Include pricing requirements about inner long average pricing.

–     Seek partnerships for cemetery and crematoria capacity outside Southwark to be booked via Southwark e.g Kemeal Manor or similar that could have a Southwark section.

–     Start lift and shift policy for graves over 100 years old.

–     Promote cremation to help burial space go further.

 What do you think – tell me – james.barber@southwark.gov.uk

Teenage pregnancies

Figures released last week show teenage pregnancies in Southwark fell in 2009/10. The fall was dramatic with 192 conceptions in Southwark by those under 18 in 2010 compared to 233 in 2009 and 318 in 1998.

What fantastic news. I’m really pleased that the work done by the previous Lib Dem administration which ended two months after the 2009/10 period has resulted in such a huge reduction in teenage pregnancies.

But will this rate of conception stay here or go lower?

Part of teenage pregnancy is seeing others do it so clearly that part of the equation is lower but also the effort put into tackling this problem. Sadly Labour led Southwark Council has cut that funding by 54% undermining all this good work. Only time will tell what will happen but it doesn’t look good for our most vulnerable young people.

Horrific admission

Southwark issued some great news earlier this month about secondary school admissions – but it has proved wrong.

Yesterday I finally found out how many secondary school applications did not receive any school allocation, 20, rather than the zero proclaimed.

20 families in total didn’t receive a secondary school allocation. Shocking. A HUGE thank you to the Dulwich resident who highlighted their case to me.  It meant I could get to the bottom of their case and after various assurances I was mad and that this was impossible council officials think they know what went wrong and then found 19 other such families. All were offered places on Friday.

So the revised figures should look like:

* Total of 2,456 applications were received, 65 less applicants than last year

* 1,362 (55.4%) received a first preference school a 2.9% increase on last year’s figures 1,322 (52.5%)  versus the London average of 66%.

* 195 (7.9%) families without a preference and offered an alternative school fewer than last year – 243 (9.6%)

* 20 (0.8% ) families offered no places or an alternative school.

* The number of online applications has remained at the same level as last year

If you know of any families with school admission problems please do put them in touch with me.

Food Fight

The coalition appears to be heading for a food fight with plans to ban Environmental Health Officers from having the right to enter food premises to ensure they’re safe and not causing food poisoning and risking public health.

The Protection of Freedoms Bill could result in EHO’s only being able to inspect premises with the invitation of owners or a court order. Obtaining court orders takes time – allowing food poisoning to spread OR the owner to cover-up whatever the root causes of poisoning have been. The same type of problems are likely for pollution control inspectors and trading standards officers.

I really think this is a case of throwing out good regulations. Most people who eat out do so on the basis of believing businesses are responsible and regulations will find out the bad businesses. Breaking that covenant means people will feel less certain their health wont be compromised by the perfectly innocent act of spending money in local food businesses. To rely on outbreaks of food poisoning to catch badly run businesses and inspections where the business is forewarned to put on an act will see more instance of food poisoning.

Hopefully no one in East Dulwich will become a martyr for the foolishness of these changes.

Draft House

Blackcherry appears to have been sold and renamed Draft House.

The first thing the new owners do – talk to neighbours NOPE but apply for shorter licensing hours.

They have applied to be open Thus, Fri and Sat 10am until 1am and the  rest of the week 10am until midnight. Draft House licensing extensions. This is dramatic improvement on the current 2am and 3am closing.

If you think Lordship Lane and East Dulwich already has enough anti social problems from late night revellers then please do SUPPORT this application by emailing licensing@southwark.gov.uk and please copy me james.barber@southwark.gov.uk. Equally if you think we don’t have enough late night drinking tell me that.

The only tweak would be closing at midnight on Thursday.

Whenever you see or hear any anti social problems that don’t warrant a 999 call please do call the the non emergency 101 number. Without reporting problems they never happened as far as licensing and Police officers are concerned and businesses can keep on causing alcohol fuelled problems for East Dulwich.

But this application is a move towards a saner East Dulwich.