GP Services

NHS Southwark Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) makes all the decisions about GP services. The CCG is a club of all Gp practices across the borough – replacing what was previously called the PCT.

They’re investing £2M in GP services but are they doing it in the right way?

They’ve created two hubs for overflow GP appointments. One in Bermondsey Spa to cover the north of Southwark and one in the middle at the Lister Primary Care Centre covering the south of Southwark.

The assumption is patients don’t care where they can be seen by a GP. That GP practices will never have sufficient appointment slots so sending patients elsewhere means GP practices don’t have to plan so thoroughly.

if you think this doesn’t make sense please email your thoughts to the CCG consultatoon manager – l.ing@nhs.net

you our can also tell her what services you think should be on the new Dulwich Hospital replacement facilities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lordship Lane Post Office – Modernisation Approved

For decades the Post Office network had been shrinking. Under Labour and Conservatives governments a number of local and many Post Offices nationally were closed. Between 1960-2010 the network plummeted from 25,000 to 11,500 Post Offices. As part of the coalition lib Dems ensured an investment fund was created to stop this rot continuing.

A key Lib Dem achievement in the Coalition was securing the future of Britain’s post office network. Business Secretary, Vince Cable, working with Postal Affairs Minister, Edward Davey, and Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, secured £1.34 billion of funding for Britain’s post offices and a Government commitment that there will be no programme of post office closures under the Coalition.

So I’m chuffed to announce that some of that money is being used to completely modernise our Crown Post Office on Lordship Lane. Planning Permission for this has just been granted. It will have self-service, better counters. The next challenge is getting more modern opening hours…

 

Labour Bakerloo Line Extension Sell-Out

Today’s Southwark News carries a depressing story where Labour GLA Assembly Member Val Shawcross states about the Bakerloo line having two seperate routes from Elephant&Castle “Realistically, only one option will be taken forward.”

Up until the general election one month ago Simon Hughes had been campaigning for the Bakerloo Line to be extended and Lib Dems suggested two separate routes. Labour told everyone it was there idea. Now the election has gone they say two routes was never feasible.

And we wonder why people are cynical about politicians.

Come on Labour if two routes for the Bakerloo line was good enough for your election campaign – one via Camberwell the other via the Old Kent Road – why isn’t it good enough for the residents of Lambeth & Southwark now?

It certainly makes sense about why Southwark Labour have been promoting a Thameslink station at Camberwell when this station originally closed from competition from a mass transit tram system. It really doesn’t look like they were serious about a Camberwell route for the Bakerloo line as well as an Old Kent Road route.

It isn’t too late to sign the petition to extend the Bakerloo Line via Camberwell AND the Old Kent Road.

Cycle Parking Limit The Cycle Revolution

Cycling in London has dramatically increased for London residents commuting into central London. In 2011 London 8.3% of such commuters cycle – it feels much higher now.

Apart from safer routes to encourage more people to cycle, and they appear to be on the way now, people cycling have to have somewhere to park their bicycles – at both ends. Without such parking the Cycling Revolution will stall.

We need a step increase in cycling to improve public heath helping the NHS cope with its financial pressures, longevity, better mental health, fitter citizens, less social exclusion. Cycling has a strategic imperative for our society.

Home Cycle Parking – Most cyclists have to parking their bikes in hallways, outside homes insecurely, blocks of flats basements – often behind many doors. We will never have a cycling revolution with such crap cycle parking. In East Dulwich we’ve been supporting new Bikehangars which are a start. We’ll need 200 for East Dulwich alone to support half of the 25% cycling levels we could reach within the next 10 years. So far we have 4 on order!

Our planning rules must change to ensure cycle parking is really accessible to all new homes – not hidden away in marginal spaces. New houses in London only have to have 1 or 2 cycle parking spaces but in Holland it would be 5 in a proper 4m2 shed. Flats 1 o2 in London, 2-5 in Holland and easily accessible.

Destination Cycle Parking – We currently rely upon ‘free’ cycle parking – locking bikes to lamp posts, railings and the like which only gets you so far. For a step increase in cycling you must have proper cycle parking and lots of it. In London secondary schools are supposed to have 1 cycle parking space for every 8 pupils or staff or 12.5%. Dutch schools have 50-100%. London offices have 1 space for every 90m2, Dutch offices 1.7/100m2. At my workplace – a modern building – the cycle parking is so obscurely placed in the basement that I ‘free’ park outside. So we must not just box tick that parking has been provided for people cycling but that it easily accessible.

If we get cycle parking fixed at both end we will see a cycling revolution.

Are you going to be part of it?

New London Lorries

I’m really chuffed to see that the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) campaign for a new lorry design they started two years ago to minimise crashes with cyclists is coming good.

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Construction lorries are involved in around 75% of all cyclists deaths in London each year. The cabs of these lorries are high, they have turning movements that many aren’t used to and they weigh so much that if they do run you down you are literally squished. A very dear friend had this happen over and she died.

So LCC came up with a concept from their lorry expert Charlie Lloyd ideas with a much lower cab. This gives much great vision and fewer dead zones where the lorry driver hasn’t a clue what s going on. But with a lower profile it reduces drag for the lorry saving fuel. And fuel is major expense for companies running any commercial vehicles.

Mercedes have just launched a new line incorporating these ideas. I hope it becomes the new standard that other lorry manufactures adopt and literally many lives will be saved…

actual design

Save Southwark Woods

We have the ridiculous situation where our graveyards don’t have sinking funds to pay for their upkeep. So we have to have new burials to fund their maintenance.

But new burials – and Southwark Labour are planning for 4,500 new burial plots – mean that what have become nature enclaves for residents to seek refuge from frenetic lives have to have that atmosphere destroyed. Bad for these 100 acres of woodland and residents.

An alternative would be to buy commercial burial plots for Southwark residents just 5 miles away. Kemnal Park is a no brainer. Also to make cremation cheaper to encourage more to use this service.

The Southwark Labour councillor responsible has said he wants poor relatives to be able to visit their deceased love ones. But for most Southwark residents our Southwark graveyards are several miles away tucked into the very SE corner of the borough. Not many live round the corner.

We can then concentrate on making our historic cemeteries into much more loved nature reserves.

If you agree please sign the petition – we need to make the lives of the living better in Southwark.

 

East Dulwich Neighbourhood Fund Allocations

This year Arpil’15-Mar’16 we have £30,000, + some underspend from last year, of revenue to spend in East Dulwich ward – Neighbourhood Fund.

We allocated the following – if you’d like to understand more about these projects please get in touch. If you have any great idea for how to improve East Dulwich please let us know we still have £31,365 to spend on local projects.

Name of Group: Name of Project: Funding awarded £]:
Bangladeshi Welfare Association Asian Elders Lunch Club £4,000
Crystal Palace Road Big Lunch 2015 Crystal Place Road Big Lunch £500
Dulwich Helpline and Southwark Churches Care Communities Reducing Social Isolation for Older People in the Dulwich Community Council Area £1,421
Dulwich Milan Association Eid and Christmas Event £970
East Dulwich Community Centre Association Open Day £640
Girl Guiding UK – Southwark District Southwark Guides Carnival Camp weekend £334
St Anthony`s Road Safety Action Group Road Safety Feasibility Study for St Anthony’s RC Primary School £5,000
St. Anthony’s Road Safety Action Group Safe Crossing Patrol for St. Anthony’s RC Primary School £5,000
Southwark Explorers Club Southwark Pensioners’ Club £1,500
The Vale Residents Association Physic gardening £1,900

Local Train Air Pollution

Southwark and Lambeth being inner London boroughs suffers from some of the worst air pollution in London and the UK. Without significant changes in the way we live and work we will never meet EU air quality standards that we’ve been breaching since 2010. In fact the UK Supreme Court has told the UK government it must draw up plans to meet them by the end of this year.

Even with such plans many south London residents will needlessly die while we await these plans to be implemented.

Where does this air pollution come from?

The worst offenders are diesel engines – they produce Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and particulates – that’s from diesel engines in buses, taxis, lorries, cars and trains.

Buses and taxis are something Transport for London control and can directly influence. Lorries and cars can partly be controlled by Transport for London through the congestion charging zone and low emissions zones but also UK and European regulations around taxation and design standards.

The last remaining diesel train services into London Bridge rail station come from the Hurst Green to Uckfield railway line. But we also have diesel trains serving Exeter and Salisbury into Waterloo station. Air pollution doesn’t follow political boundaries so on most days that Waterloo air pollution gets blown across Lambeth and Southwark.

So what can we do about it?

We can all support the electrification of the Hurst Green-Uckfield train line so they no longer have diesel trains coming into London Bridge. The coalition government asked for this to be studied and £100,000 to do this was allocated in the last coalition budget.

To help things along please sign this petition.

To end diesels trains coming into Waterloo please email wessexroutestudy@networkrail.co.uk asking them if they will help London meets its Air Pollution legal requirement by ending diesel trains into London Waterloo.

Aylesbury Estate

In April the main Planning committee agreed to the demolition of the 2758 homes that form the Aylesbury estate. The vast majority being social rented council homes, all 2,249 of them + 509 leasehold homes.

The replacement will be 2,745 new residential units in tower blocks up to 20 storeys high with only 37.5% social rent and 12.5% shared ownership with the remaining 50% private homes. So a huge decrease in social housing.

I sat on that planning committee and we heard much contradictory evidence. Assertions such as the estate had high levels of crime, ill health and low employment levels. But after 20 years of low investment is this surprising. The crime rate was an odd one as past years when they had their own Police Safer Neighbourhood Team they reported record lower levels of crime compared to the surrounding areas. We heard the heating was unreliable. But we also heard how for long periods it hadn’t been maintained properly. Much of the ill health is probably from poverty rather than the homes they live in.

Democratic
Several times residents have been asked how they would like to see the future of council housing. Overwhelmingly they’ve said they want to live in council homes rather than Housing Associations homes.
Other consultations people have said they like the vision for the Aylesbury estate but we heard from a number who didn’t agree. No one attended to support the application which I found telling.
For leaseholders it was suggested years of agony arguing over the value of their properties with offers falling woefully short of the replacement cost. From the heygate debacle it looks like social cleansing of leaseholders from the area.

Environment
From an environmental perspective it didn’t feel good.
The plans will see more than a one third reduction in open space. From 4.8 hectares down to 3ha. No segregated cycle paths. Routes within the park don’t all align with paths in Burgess Park.
The target is to only reduce CO2 emissions by 30% when we know the planet needs 80% reduction. But this will be more than swallowed up by the huge loss of embedded carbon in the current structures. We heard and I’ve visited a number of blocks that could be kept and urgent residential leaseholders
Could be decanted to them over time. But the applicant rejected this out of hand.

Safety
We heard that the building weren’t safe and could collapse like a pack of cards. Objectors pointed out it was the same design as the Heygate estate which didn’t fall down like a pack of cards during demolition. So the expert evidence just did;t come across as credible compared to real world experience in Southwark.

Conclusion

So I found myself unable to support these plans and no longer supportive of the general Aylesbury plans. They appear wrong headed on so many levels now that the detail has been fleshed out. Problems could be fixed through helping people find work to boost their incomes. Through long-term proper maintenance. And yes I have visited homes on the estate. AS a minimum many blocks are perfectly sound.

So I voted against the plans and application which I was surprised at as I had anticipated before reading the report that it would have been well thought through and convincing

Protecting Our Most Vulnerable Children

I was shocked to hear that Lambeth Council has been judged as “inadequate” about how our children in care are looked after. Things like taking an average of 1,081 days – very nearly 3 years – versus the UK average of 453 days for Lambeth children in care to be adopted. it describes across the board failures. Lambeth has lamely stated it has started to address the issues – but the report effectively contradicts these. Only 3 years ago the service was rated as “outstanding” so an incredible deteriation of this crucial service for our most vulnerable children.

Lambeth Council has vowed to fix the problem within one year. As important is creating mechanisms where such a service can’t implode again.

How does this compare with Southwark. They were also last inspected in 2008. Southwark was rated as “good”. Hopefully Southwark will be shortly inspected to reassure us that we don’t have a systemic SE London issue across more than just Lambeth Council.

Children only get one chance at a decent childhood. Councils and their councillors must ensure they’re are decent childhoods. Lambeth is very nearly a one party state. So Labour councillors must sort this problem out quickly without fear or favour.