New Gipsy Hill Federation Secondary School

Yesterday evening I met Sir Craig Tunstall, executive head of the highly regarded Gipsy Hill Federation, to discuss his plans for a new secondary school in the area. The plans for a secondary school follow overwhelming support from over 2,000 local parents at the federation’s primary schools, who want their children to continue their education within the Gipsy Hill Federation. It already is oversubscribed by 130% and all going well will open 2016.

For the last five years my number one priority has been ensuring local families have a great school for their child.

This has meant initiating and leading several campaign for new free schools. I’ve also helped with lots of practically help other free school campaign. At the last count five new local free schools.

The government’s free school policy is practically the ‘only show in town’ to build new school so despite my initial serious personal misgiving I’ve put those aside and pressed on to ensure we have lots of great local school place. We’re avoiding the worst of the national school admissions crisis. Phew!

Our next priority has to be helping create lots of new quality nursery places. We simply don’t have enough locally.

Do you know of any great new locations for a new nursery?

 

Greener Travel Plan Enforcement

At Southwarks Planning sub-Committee A 15 October we had to decide on a Dulwich school re organising its parking. It caters for 5-13 year old boys.

This application was designed to enable a more secure site for child safety and while doing this upgrade the playground. This was in response to Southwark Council highlighting child safety concerns.

Sadly it also requires the loss of depending how you read the plans 4 to 7 car parking spaces for staff. I read the before and after plans as reducing staff parking from 36 to 32 car parking spaces while doubling cycle parking.

Residents highlighted that a few parents while dropping kids double park or block driveways. Police officers have been subject to verbal abuse. It sounds so familiar of other schools.

We approved the planning application but will new conditions we’ve not tried before:
1. Green travel required to be reviewed within 6 months, 1 year at 18months and then annually.
2. That the green travel plan includes a protocol for working with local police where the school will take sanctions against families whose parents abuse the police or break parking rules.

I’m keen to see the final green travel plan to ensure the committees intentions that I led on are implemented as we anticipated.

David Laws Letter

Last year we formally launched our campaign for a new local secondary school. We’ve been so successful that over 750 families have signed up to give there support and two school providers have applied to open it – Haberdashers’ and Charter.

But the same thorny issue could potentially scupper the brilliant school we all want – a site.

The obvious site is the Dulwich Hospital site where more extensive replacement health facilities only need around a third of the site. The remaining two-thirds would be ideal for our secondary school.

But we’ve hit two snags. By far the largest is Southwark Council are refusing to re zone the site and no longer insist on lots of housing. The second snag is Southwark Council won’t zone a site for one of the two Harris primary schools for the area – we’ve even suggested sites to them.

Bizarrely Southwark Council are refusing to help. It means the land for the secondary school would cost far more than £64M. NO government is going to spend so much on land for a single school however much it is required and desired.

To try and break this deadlock Cllr Rosie Shimell and I have written to Minister of State David Laws. We’re asking for his help and advice to get Southwark Council to actually do something to make our secondary school financially viable to be built on the amount of space we all desire.

Letter to David Laws 17 October 2014

Bakerloo Line Extension

For over 100 years London has talked about extending the Bakerloo line south. Extending it even started in the 1950’s but stopped after 18 months of building work.

The Mayor of London and Transport for London have released their London Infrastructure Plan 2050. It includes a Bakerloo line extension with little relationship to the past 100 years of historic proposals. Their proposal is to extend via the Old Kent Road via Lewisham to Beckenham and Bromley.

They are consulting on this extension please do respond.

Liberal Democrats have always said we want the Bakerloo line extended. For some time we’ve suggest it have two branches – one via Camberwell to Tulse Hill and terminating in Streatham and the second branch along the Old Kent Road to Lewisham and beyond. That each branch have 15 trains per hour of the maximum 32 possible in the central section of the Bakerloo line.

The Plan also shows clearly how poor public transport is in the Dulwich and West Norwood area proving the need for a Bakerloo branch. That road congestion will rocket between now and 2030 by 25% and ultimately London population increase by 2050 to something between 9.5 and 13.4 million people. Staggering growth.

Ensuring Proper Dulwich School Provision

Southwark Council is about to embark on the journey towards a new Southwark Plan.

We have three local problems around the planning designation we need to resolve to ensure proper state school provision in the Dulwich area.

I have formally requested the councillor Cabinet member for Regeneration who is responsible for this mark.williams@southwark.gov.uk please let him know if you agree with me and copy me. Without these changes we will not have enough primary or secondary places in the right cirumstances and places:

1. Dulwich Hospital. After new health care provision that the remainder of the site, circa 18,000-20,000m2, be allocated for a new secondary school. Without such a planning designation change the government DfE will be unable to afford this much land as the cost would be more than £60m. (The East Dulwich Police station was sold for £6M and is 1/10th of the space because it wasn’t in planning terms protected as a site for eudcational use).

2. 520 Lordship Lane (former Harvester pub) That this be designated for education use. This would enable the Harris Primary school looking for a home to be placed there. Without this it seems likely that the new Harris Primary school will be placed at the Dulwich Hospital site OR they will apply to build on the East Dulwich Harris Girls Academy Metropolitan Open Land. Both of these options are much less desirable than 520 Lordship Lane.

3. 62-68 Half Moon Lane. The Dulwich Estate carved the absolute minimum space from the former Kings Biological Sciences centre for the Judith Kerr Bilingual Free School that opened 2013. Effectively they provided the main building and a tiny tiny playground – fencing off most of the site for future residential use. The lease includes a condition that the school must never talk about the minimal space leased to them. Ideally the whole site would be designated for educational use helping to push the Dulwich Estate towards being more charitable and the whole site being made available for the Judith Kerr Bilingual School. Effectively the Dulwich Estate have carved 2/3rds of the site for future residential building so that they provide more subsidy for private schools more over the state provided free school pupils having reasonable outside space.

To see the full email comunications – Dulwich Education Planning Status Request Email 26 August 2014

What other planning designations do we need changed?

Postage Stamp Secondary School

Since starting the secondary school debate and campaign in East Dulwich the key has always been where to put it. The only obvious space is the two-thirds of the Dulwich Hospital site that are no longer required for health facilities.

So the site for both secondary schoo,l campaigns is key.
I’ve written an open letter to Southwark Council Leader about this – Open Letter to Southwark Council Leader Peter John 25 July 2014

As things stand with Southwark Council marking out most of the Dulwich Hospital Site for housing the land values are so extremely high only a tiny portion of the site will be affordable for a new secondary school.

Southwark Council need to explain how it will avoid this situation, or as I’ve previously requested change the planning expectations for the hopsital site.

So far instead of practically trying to sort this out they’ve been raising the spectre of a Harris primary school also going on the site.

Without the council leader getting a grip, apart from the universally agreed replacement health provision, we will have both a secondary school and primary school on ridiculoulsy squeezed postage stamp sized spaces plus housing.

Harris ED Free Primary School – Temp site

Last night the planning application submitted in May was finally granted planning permission for the temporary site to house the Harris East Dulwich Free Primary School. The planning application was submitted 23 May and should have been decided by 16 July but Southwark Council didnt wanted to give planning permission to a Harris school and was using Metropolitican Open Land as a reason to consider resisting.

At the planning committee Labour councillors repeatedly haranged the agent about a late application – when the lateness was caused by Southwarks own officers. Even the planning chair admitted she was blaming the wrong messenger.

Weirdly Southwark Council has approved numerous uses of MOL for private schools but their hate of all things Harris is even more consumnig than their hate of private schools in Southwark!

Eitherway we now have the temporary site needed until such time the permanent school can open on the former East Dulwich Police Station. Well done Harris and EFA for reaching this point but even more so to the parents who children will start school there on the temporary site on Homestall Road in just 6 weeks time.

 

106 Lordship Lane

Lots of building work had been taking place at 106 Lordship Lane. Residents were concerned that another attempt was being to turn it into a restaurant but on the sly.

So I and my ward colleague Cllr Rosie Shimell called-on the planning application to be decided by a Planning Committee to ensure the best possible scrutiny.

So it was a pleasant surprise to be on that Planning Committee.

It was even more of a pleasure to hear from both the objectors and proposers of the scheme. The proposer clearly felt bad about the fear that had been caused and agreed to obscured glass at the new rear windows and doors. The residents appears pleased that this had been agreed.

Fingers crossed this all works out well. I thought everyone at the Planning Committee had been really focused on getting the best possible result for all concerned.

My first Planning Committee attendance since being re elected and it was a real pleasure.

East Dulwich New Cinema

I am delighted that the Picturehouse Cinema group have obtained planning permission to open a new cinema in East Dulwich at 116a Lordship Lane – the former St.Thomas Moore Church Hall. And hopefully by Christmas!

Having a local cinema will make going to the cinema much easier. It will mean me and my family will go to the cinema much more often.

This is fantastic news for East Dulwich.

A few have expressed disquiet about this group not paying the London Living Wage. I agree they should pay this and moving towards doing that have made a large wage increase offer of 21.5% towards this. I hope they complete this by the opening.

Will you use this new cinema when it opens?

Ring Road Money Pit

I was horrified to read that Boris Johnson has asked TfL to work up plans for a £30bn ring road tunnelled under London.

Apart from the traffic generation and extra air pollution it would cause £30bn is a colossal amount of money.

We could build roughly 6 complete new underground lines in London for this sum. Such a huge expansion in tube lines would bring huge benefit to all Londoners not just the tiny minority that drive in central London.

Or we could build 300 new tram lines across London. A revolution in public transport.

Or we could make every street and road in London utterly cycle friendly and still have many billions of pounds left over.

How would you solve London transport problems with £30bn?