I’m sure everyone is as shocked as I am that a shooting incident has taken place in the Barry Road area of East Dulwich.
I understand the Police have launched a murder investigation.
At a suitable time my fellow East Dulwich councillors Richard Thomas and Jonathan Mitchell and I will be talking to the Police understand what has happened and what the next steps are.
The weather has been unusual this week. Not remarkable in that this type of weather happens about every ten years. Weather Scientists have stated that we’re going to have a decade of colder winters. Weather forecasters even predicted the severity of this weeks weather four days in advance.
Southwark Council had gritting lorries and teams out at the right time and spread 500 tonnes in the first 48 hours. Quite normal and sensible. Those operations could be tweaked – perhaps snow ploughs on the front of the gritters, perhaps a covered storage area for salt stocks.
But it feels as though as a capital city we didn’t cope. No buses to speak of when our part of London is so reliant on buses. Schools closing for two days. All those parents who could’nt go to work even if prepared to make a big effort as they had to stay at home to look after children. Its these little instances that make it harder for Southwark residents to get or keep work.
Tuesday night the culmination of three years hard work from East Dulwich councillors and council officers, planning permission for the complete renovation of the council Leisure centre in East Dulwich was given. Phew.
The original recognition came during the East Dulwich campaign in January 2006 that the centre was sub standard and unacceptable. It hadn’t had major investment in over fifty Labour years. On the door steps and in resident surveys many had expressed dissatisfaction. Our own personal experiences bore this out.
So the new renovated leisure centre will have a new DDA compliant entrance on Crystal Palace Road. The swimming pool will have more space around the actual pool making circulation easier and only for actual swimmers. It will also have a proper viewing area so parents can see their kids learning to swim. The pool will be changed from 27m to competition sized 25m. The main gym will be revamped. New dance studios and a cafe.
Overall it is anticipated that the numbers of users will increase to around 50,000 a year. Over half already walk to the centre. 8/9 schools that use the centre walk already.
Wherever possible insulation to modern standard will be installed. New air recycling and heat exchangers and plant. Overall a dramatic reduction in the energy used and CO2 produced to run the centre.
Cllr Richard Thomas and I persuaded the planning committee that the plans needed to have added roof insulation above the swimming pool and gym hall.
This scheme is one of the reasons I enterred local politics. Making sure local services are something we can all be proud of.
The East Dulwich councillors – Richard Thomas, Jonathan Mitchell and myself – helped establish a Crime Reduction fund in East Dulwich ward.
The latest actions this fund is taking is the purchase of 50 Alertboxes to create an electronic neighbourhood watch scheme in Crystal Palace Road between Whateley Road and Lordship Lane. This patch is a crime hotspot for East Dulwich as identified by the East Dulwich Police Safer Neighbourhood team. This enhanced electronic neighbourhood watch should see neighbours working more closely together.
Combined with SelectaDNA property marking kits the Police will engage residents to install Alertboxes and demonstrate how to use them. Installing the Alertboxes will magnify neighbours looking out for each other and we should see a dramatic reduction in reported crime.
The Government has decided to create 200 new bail hostels without publicy telling anyone where they are thinking of putting them. In secret they plan to talk with senior Police and council officers around the country.
Until very recently friends lived next to such a hostel. They had significant problems because mechanisms to manage it and the residents were not in place. The governments idea to create 200 new hostels without involving the public to ensure such governance mechanisms are in place is irresponsible.
Bail hostels are clearly needed. If they are ineffective offenders will be more likely to reoffend or not integrate fully into society. Without consulting with the public or having to follow the full planning process such checks and balances will not be in place.
Frankly such behaviour is soft on crime and the causes of crime. If you happen to come across one in East Dulwich please do get in touch so we can try and ensure it helps the residents rehabilitate and doesn’t cause local issues for residents.
Southwark Council has 13,000 leaseholders where it is the freeholder. After a very thorough consultation process with leaseholders Zurich has been the supplier of building insurance for two and a half years. The renewal date is April 2009.
Due to the lengthy consultation process required it’s considered too late to consider a full tendering process so officers are recommending the Zurich contract be extended by one year.
Zurich appear to have very carefully selected the date to consider any increase in charges via the rebuilding prices index produced by the Royal Institute of Charterered Surveyors as October. October was a high at 6.6% per annum which Zurich proposed to round up to 7%. How thoughtful. Whereas December is 5.2% and we can reasonably be sure in the current economic climate will fall further.
http://www.bcis.co.uk/rebuildingcosts/index/rebuildingcosts.htm
For leaseholders of Southwark council properties the difference between 7.0% and 5.2% will be an average of £2.68 for every leaseholder.
Clearly this is wrong and I will endeavour for more rigourous supplier management of Zurich to take place to get these increases minimised.
For the past two years Upland Road has held a very successful street party early each September. Abby Taubin has done a maginificent job helping organse her neighbours . For 2009 a new organsier Polly Collier had taken on this role. To maneuvre around legally required red tape that Southwark by law has to follow the East Dulwich councillors especially Richard Thomas have helped. We’ve also found a little funding to help avoid charging residents for advertising of the legal notices.
However, for 2009 I’d like to extend the invite to all other streets in the East Dulwich ward. It costs the same to advertise and raise a traffic order for one or 100 streets. If you think your street would like to be closed for a Sunday in September to hold a street party then let me know and we’ll try helping you achieve this.
In July this year a resident in north Southwark Mrs.Lambert died under very sad circumstances. Those circumstances are being investigated by Southwark Council’s CEO Annie Shepherd via an indepedent investigator. They will report back to the Coroner. Before this detailed investigation starts Southwark Labour party requested an extraordinary full council meeting which took place last night.
Regretably it descended into a farce with Labour oppositions councillors trying to turn the evening into a kangaroo court with repeated allegations from Labour councillors of a cover up and of officers and executive members keeping it all secret. The facts at the time were issued in a council press release 4 August which were printed on 12 August in local papers. So much for keeping it all secret and a cover up.
At the time I read this story of a frail 84 yrear old lady being discovered dead at her home. It resonated and troubled me as one of my grandmothers had fallen over knocked her head and wasn’t discovered dead until the day after it happened by neighbours. Tragically sad and moving whenever this occurs.
Amazingly 28 labour councillors either don’t read the South London Press or couldn’t be bothered to ask questions about this sad death that they now claim to be so upset and troubled by. Either this implies the Labour opposition has 28 lazy councillors or are being extremely cynical.
I did ask questions at the time and have kept up on how the process to investigate this has occurred. I do await the reports recommendations and will help ensure they are carried out. This is how positive politicians should behave.
We now await the independent investigation results which are due before February.
East Dulwich has had ZERO residential burglaries for two months. Zero residential burglary for two month. That is amazing.
In the summer East Dulwich councillors Richard Thomas, Jonathan Mitchell and myself agreed funding a crime prevention fund of nearly £50,000 from our bit of the annual Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding.
A large slab of this has been spent on over a 1,000 SelectaDNA (www.selectadna.co.uk) property marking kits. Aiming for every fifth home to have this property marking and homes that have been previously burgled or are in the proximty of homes that have been burgled. The East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team has been helping residents install these marking kits. Every school in East Dulwich has been given these kits. We also purchased UV lights for the Police to quickly spot marked property.
Even business burglaries are down. Four over the last two months. Two were pubs. They have now been property marked and helping promote these property marking kits.
Fingers crossed zero burglaries continues. As all the property marking kits are used the chances of burglars being caught and successfully prosecuted rises making East Dulwich an increasingly inhospitable area for burglars.
If you live in East Dulwich and have’nt yet had a SelectaDNA property marking kit installed by the Police then please do get in touch with me.
Earlier this year Southwark Council ran the Freedom Pass renewals in Southwark and did a bad job. A colleague couldn’t attend the first council scrutiny meeting to review how things went and how things should be improved going forward.
Unusually I then attended the remaining review meetings to ensure I followed the process through.
The committees recommendations will be presented to the council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee next Monday 8 December. Hopefully all our recommendations will be accepted. We put a lot of effort into this scrutiny.
Since my involvement further examples of how painful the process is have come to me as casework. We really must ensure we fix this service once and for all.