Council Housing Fire Risk Assessments

In the week I attended the Dulwich Housing Forum. This forum covers all the housing is East Dulwich, College and Village wards. East Dulwich actually has a lot of social housing. Around 500 acquired streeet properties, 200 other council houses. Equally Housing Associations have around another 500 properties. So in total 1,200 social housing properties out of 5,100. Around the national average.

Eitherway, the topic of Fire Risk Assessments (FRA’s) was discussed. Southwark Council about a year ago bought in London Fire Brigade expertise to train our housing officers in undertaking FRA’s. After lots of training a nine month details programme started in May. To everyone’s huge shock the tragic Lakanal House fire happened. So the nine month programme has been drastically accelerated and on 22 September the 350 Dulwich area FRA’s were successfully completed.

Illegal parking at school gates

After pressure from local Lib Dems, Southwark Council is to start using two cars equipped with cameras to get tough on people who ignore traffic rules by monitoring school gates in the mornings and afternoons. We’ve had complaints about this from parents with kids at Heber and Goodrich Schools. Footage will be used to issue penalty notices of up to £120, with revenue from the fines directed back into road safety projects and traffic calming measures outside schools and across the borough.

Clearly illegally parked cars outside schools create dangerous situations for children and parents. The School Keep Clear road markings are there for a reason and I suspect with these camera cars coming people will take those markings much more seriously.

It also means our local East Dulwich Police and community Wardens can spend more time doing other tasks.

400 to 3

Came across some fascinating facts.

40 pedestrians are killed every year WHILE ON PAVEMENTS by motor vehicles.

Over the last 10 years 3 pedestrians have been killed by cyclists. 400 to 3.

Whether a reckless motor vehicles driver or reckless cyclist the full force of the law must be excercised.

Wierdly I only seem to come across residents angry with cyclists on pavements even when they are not being reckless.

1 Sargent, 3 PC’s and 5 PCSO’s

The East Dulwich Police Safer neighbourhood Team now consists of 1 Sargent, 3 Police Constables and 5 Police Community Support Officers. 9 officers in total. Amazing.

This might be related to the Police being unable/unwilling to correct their Police stats computer to reflect the actual East Dulwich boundaries. Currently East Dulwich includes 1/4 of Peckham Rye, 1/8 of Dulwich and 1/8 of College. Changing the Post Code lookup table in a computer file is dull but really very simple to perform. Only then will we truly know whether the efforts of councillors, council officers and Safer Neighbourhood Teams are working.

So even a team of 9 is hardly enough to cover 150% of the intended area for a Safer Neighbourhood Team.

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?

No.12 buses

We’re keen on the no.12 bendy bus route no longer terminating in East Dulwich. Even replacing no.12 Bendy Buses with double deckers would be an improvement – crime reduction, blocking streets while turning etc.

We have in the past campaigned for the no.12 to go onto Forest Hill, but on reflection no other buses terminate there or turnaround so probably not realistic.

But waiting until the no.12 bus contracts comes up for renegotiation November 2011 is a long time to wait. To break that contract early would be very expensive. In the current climate we’ll have to wait until double deckers replace bendy buses as realistically the only option.

Rubbish collections 6.15am

Since being elected May 2006 I’ve had several report each year about rubbish collections starting before 6am.

Rubbish trucks are only allowed out from their Manor Place depot (close to Walworth Road Elephant & Castle end) at 6am. Recycling lorries at 7am. It takes about 15 minutes to reach East Dulwich. So no rubbish collections are legitimately allowed before that time. We have had some very keen crews sending colleagues ahead to move wheelie bins into position from 5.30am. Again this is not acceptable.

Why 6am? Croydon, Lambeth and Southwark start refuse collections at 6am, Tower Hamlets at 6.30am and Lewisham 7am. Delaying Southwark collections by 1 hour, due to the extra traffic congestion starting an hour later, has been calculated at requiring an extra crew and dustcart at around £150,000->200,000 pa. In the current climate we wont be reallocating this amount of money from other areas to fund this.

If you ever experience rubbish collections or preperations starting before 6.15am please do get in touch with me. james.barber@southwark.gov.uk

Lordship Lane cleanliness

Lordship Lane has frankly been looking a little bit grubby. Unfortuantely we can’t afford to wash down all the streets every night as we’d all wish but can ensure we maximise our streets cleanliness.

Street cleaniness is measured by a company called Encams 3 times every year. Overall for Southwark last financial year (lower % good) we were litter 6%, dtritus 125, graffit 3% and flyposting 1%.

Following my enquiry Southwark’s Street Cleaning Inspector has confirmed for East Dulwich now litter 2.4%, detritus 22%, graffiti 0% and fly posting 0%.  So more attention in East Dulwich is now being made to clearing this detritus – all that organic material like leaf fall, etc.

If you see anything out of the ordinary regarding litter, graffit, fly posting, or leaf fall please do let me know or call 020 7525 2000 to report this problem yourself.

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.