(East) Dulwich Baths

Dulwich Baths is one of the jewels of East Dulwich. It was built by that breed of municipal Victorian politicians who took a real pride in their community and were determined to improve the lives of local people at a local level.

But just like our great Victorian parks, Dulwich Park and Peckham Rye Park, Dulwich Baths were neglected to a scandalous extent  – seemingly by every generation that followed them.

The parks have been beautifully restored over the past few years and now the spotlight is falling on the Dulwich Baths.

As local councillors, we have been campaigning with local residents to save the pool – and it has been a very popular cause!  Happily Southwark council is funding a multi-million pound refurbishment.

The building’s charm also makes refurbishment a difficult job but the plans include improved changing facilities, a café and poolside viewing area and an expanded gym.

Planning permission for the work was granted earlier this year and the refurbishment works have now begun. This means that the pool has been taken out of service but the good news is that despite the scaffolding, gym facilities will be available throughout the refurbishment works.

The final scheme also has great green credentials with a dramatic reduction in the energy required to heat and light it. Modern insulation has been used where ever possible.

The new swimming facilities should be available from spring 2010 and I’m sure will be well worth the wait. After all we’ve waited over a hundred years for this sort of investment!

East Dulwich street parties 2009

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.

East Dulwich cycle saturation

As part of this years Cleaner, Greener, Safer scheme the East Dulwich councillors awarded money to help local East Dulwich schools increase cyclnig to school.

Its just been announced that Goose Green and St.Anthony’s RC schools are the most suitable for this.

Fingers crossed it all goes to plan and we see an increase in children cycling to these local schools.

Elected members of police authorities

The latest queens speach setting out the Labour governments legislative plans included the proposal of elected a few members of Plice authorities.

So the proposal is to elect a minority of Police authorities members. Police authorities, except in extreme circumstances, influence local Police but don’t control or direct them. So we’re being asked to vote for people who infuence an influencing board of the Police. We’re being asked to elect a minority of members of those boards. How will that change anything?

Ideally local Police should have priorities set politically by elected politicians.  Those politicians should be on the hook for local taxation to pay for local Police. That is the way for real locally accountable poltiics of local Policing.

Lambeth council rent 2nd dramatic rise

I was shocked ot read that Labour run Lambeth council rent will rise dramatically for the second time this year.

£12.01 rent rise per week and other charges for heating, hot water, etc will rise by 5% as well. This will cause incredible hardship for residents ,iving in Lambeths 30,000 council homes. What a terrible time for Labour to cause this fiasco.

Fortunately Lib Dem Southwark is running its council much better and doesn’t have a £15M hole in its finance as Lambeth does.

Freedom Pass Review scrutiny

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. 

East Dulwich street lighting

The latest decision relating to Southwarks street lighting have been taken including those in East Dulwich. The East Dulwich Lib Dem cllr Richard Thomas, Jonathan Mitchell and myself made an electoral promise in May 2006 that all East Dulwich street lighting will meet modern standards by May 2010. Such street lighting helps reduce crime and the fear of crime.

This years decision and plan is that the following five East Dulwich streets will have upgrades to modern white lighting:
East Dulwich Road
Goodrich Road
Grove Vale
Lordship Lane
Upland Road

That the following eight East Dulwich roads will have recycled SON lighting upgrading from SOX (orangey/yellow lighting) for white light:
Crystal Palace Road
Dunstans Road
Fellbrigg Road
Friern Road
Heber Road
Rodwell Road
Silvester Road
Thompson Road

If you’d like to see SON and White Halide street lighting in situ they can be seen on  Whateley Road and Landcroft Road.

Beach weddings

Some friends wanted to get married on a beach. In England we don’t allow that. So they travelled abroad. We don’t allow getting married anywhere outdoors. How weird is that?

Why would the state want to specify that civil weddings and partnerships can only take place in a few very restricted places. I guess our national politicians still feel beholden to making civil weddings feel as close to the style of a state religion wedding as possible. Good luck to those that want to become married via their religion but as a society we really should give people freedom to express this as personally and meaningful a way as they want.

For me my civil wedding would have felt as loving, passionate and sincere in a garden, woods, on a beach, or on a mountain, as it felt in a licensed venue for civil weddings.

Can you imagine getting married in Dulwich Woods, Stave Hill in Russia Dock Woodlands or one of our several Green Flag parks.

East Dulwich Police station

Today East Dulwich cllrs Jonathan Mitchell and I (cllr Richard Thomas is on holiday), along with Greater London Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon met with Southwarks Police Commander Malcom Tillyer along with other Police and MPA officers.

A very useful third meeting to discuss the future of East Dulwich Police Station.

We discussed the East Dulwich councillors proposals of how a Police station as we would see it could be kept on the current site, combined potentially with other council facilities, while meeting Police aspirations for new facilities commensurate with their requirements while obtaining capital receipts for the site.

Unfortuntely everything is on hold while the Metropolitan Police Authority reviews it property plans. Hopefully, in 4-8 weeks time we can continue these discussions.

Southwark Council and Southwark Police have been recognised for excellent partnership working. Hopefully we can deliver a role model in East Dulwich that takes such partnership working to an even higher level by sharing facilities and increasing how joined up services are for the general public. If successful this could be a model for other sites in Southwark and London as a whole.

Knife crime

Last year for England crime dropped by 10% nationally but knife crime is still a problem. 22,151 reported knife crimes occurred with half of these in inner London, Manchester and Birmingham.

To help the East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team find knives before they are used to commit a crime the East Dulwich councillors are using Cleaner, Greener, Safer funds to purchase a metal detector wand so small it can fit in a shirt pocket. T

Hopefully this little device will work as hoped and help the local East Dulwich find any knives out their. Hopefully, they wont have any to find. Even finding one knife will be a huge success.

If this devices proves useful we’ll fund others.