Herne Hill Flood Alleviation

Over the years the centre of Herne Hill has been flooded every few decades – 60’s, 2004 are mentioned by some residents. Herne Hill sites at the bottom of Brockwell Park, Herne Hill, Red Post hill. Even Burbage road slopes down to Herne Hill. The completely buried River Effra flows under Herne Hill on its way to the River Thames.

A scheme has been talked about for some time since the last weather related major flooding in 2004.

But talk has accelerated since the  UK’s interpretation of EU Floods Directive (2007/60/EC). This means local councils have to compelte Preliminary Flood Risk Assessments and Flood Risk Maps.

The government has also recently made water companies responsible for the connections from homes and businesses into their networks.

Any Herne Hill flooding would see water flowing back through the network into people homes – gushing toilets. So with the new responsibility Thames Water is now keen to install non return valves for all the Herne Hill connections.

The government DEFRA via the Environment Agency is also keen to avoid large flooding events in London. So they’re keen to fund water storage and capture capacity – similar to the bunds on Alleyns’ School playing field.

Together this means Southwakr Council Herne hill Flood Alleviation project has obtained £2M funding from Thames Water and £1.755m from the Environment Agency/DEFRA.

The plans are that contruction works start March 2014 and end December 2014. Herne Hill should then be safe from weather related flooding.

Lordship Lane 20mph – at last

This week our long term plans to make Lordship Lane 20mph have come ot pass.

It’s now 20mph between Goose green roundabout and Melborune Grove where it meets Lordship Lane. 600m of high street now just that bit calmer.

We started trying to make Lordship Lane more friendly for locals and visitors walking about in 2006. In 2007 we had a Living Streets walkability assessment done which worked with locals to test the areas walkability.

Why? Because 99.99% of us walk.

We’ve added two extra formal crossings before, had many side roads with raised treatments, improved Goose Green with thrid arm having zebra crossings.

Last year Living Streets produced a report which reenforced our reasoning for this 20mph in particular is a Living Street report called The pedestrian pound. Making the main high street parts of Lordship Lane 20mph should make it better for people to walk around.

Any way the reports key findings:

•Research shows that making places better for walking can boost footfall and trading by up to 40%
•Good urban design can raise retail rents by up to 20%
•International and UK studies have shown that pedestrians spend more than people arriving by car. Comparisons of spending by transport mode in Canada and New Zealand revealed that pedestrians spent up to six-times more than people arriving by car. In London town centres in 2011, walkers spent £147 more per month than those travelling by car
•Retailers often overate the importance of the car – a study Graz, Austria, subsequently repeated in Bristol found that retailers overestimated the number of customers arriving by car by almost 100%
•Landowners and retailers are willing to pay to improve the streetscape in order to attract tenants and customers.

 

M&S Appeal Fails

The Planning Inspector has made their decision about the M&S/Freeholders planning appeal about replacing the current Iceland shop on Lordship with a much large shop unit, removing the current car parking and building eight flats above.

The inspector agreed with residents and East Dulwich councillors that the scheme as proposed would add to local parking stress and the deliveries plan was not acceptable.

To read the who decision, which I recommend, please see:

2198122 DECISION

What next?

Well we know Waitrose has been patiently waiting in the wings hoping for this outcome and hopes M&S will walk away. M&S may decide they want to proceed with the shop unit as is. It seems unlikely Iceland will want to extend its lease beyond January 2014 when it ends. But it’s now in the hands of the freeholder.

What will they do next?

New Crystal Palace

After many attempts to redevelop the site of the old Crystal Palace a new Crystal Palace has been proposed. It’s described as a £1/2bn project to recreate a cultural attraction.

New Crystal Palace

Chinese developers are proposing with London Mayor Boris Johnson supporting a replica of the original Crystal Palace. But hopefully with better fire alarms and sprinklers to avoid a repeat of 1936 when the original burnt down!

But such a huge structure with 94,000m2/990,000ft2 of space predicted to employ 2,000 people would have to draw huge numbers of visitors.

How will they get there?

What’s not been mentioned yet is that the original Crystal Palace was so successful it needed an extra railway line and Crystal Palace High Level Station: 265px-Crystal_Palace_High_Level_Station_1908

 

 

 

 

Recreating this railway line to ensure the success of the New Crystal Palace would likely need the rebuilding of Honor Oak, Lordship Lane and Upper Sydenham railway stations as well as a high level station in Crystal Palace to serve this rebuilt railway line. This would revolutionise public transport in south Southwark.

Do you think a these schemes should happen?

White Line Enforcement

White lines are meant to ensure people have access. Elsie Road has been a long standing issue with regards to white line enforcement. REsidents there felt the Police were being a bit random in their responses. So this is what I’ve found out…

If a vehicle is stuck on the driveway and is blocked in then the Police can have it removed. If a driveway is blocked and a person is stopped from driving onto their driveway, then they can’t.

The Police local patrol team (LPT) or if the local Safer Neighbourhood Team is in the area, the Police always aim to turn-out and try and resolve white line issues, but if the Police are otherwise engaged  calls will be passed to despatch for another LPT or the response team to attend. This is categorised as ‘E’ graded call (a lower priority response, as it does not require the immediate attendance of a police officer) this can entail a long wait as so many other things take priority. Very often the police will eventually attend and find that the problem has remedied itself and the vehicle has moved.

Last year some of the unhelpful calls for help included:

– one resident called the police to attend when his driveway was ‘blocked’ by six inches but could drive in or out.

– another called when he had a skip on his drive and argued that police should remove the car as the skip needed emptying, we got the car moved – but the skip was there (full) for another two weeks.

– another request because a resident could only turn left out of his driveway but could exit their drive.

– one resident parked his car across the white line of his driveway to make sure nobody else did

Apparently the vast majority of vehicles are moved before the police arrive, even when they are close by and get there within a few minutes. Of the remainder, many apparently have occupants within them and move upon request, some are nearby residents and we can trace the through the PNC and of the very few that remain we do aim to remove them or ticket them if we suspect they are nearby and will shortly return. Unfortunately, when we are on foot we do not always carry parking tickets – as we give out so few of them and there is a staggering amount of tickets, booklets and forms available to us – I fear my officer’s legs would snap if they carried them all (if they carried just one of each, they would require a small rucksack to carry them in).

 

 

 

Get Britain Cycling

The All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group have produced a report titled Get Britain Cycling.

I’m chuffed to say that thE Liberal Democrats have adopted all 18 of the recommendaitons.

The key components being:

–  government providing funding of £10 per person each year for cycling. That this amount rise to £20.

– cross -departmental cycling action plan be produced

– appoint a national cycling champion

– raise the target proporiton of all trips by bike from 2% in 2010 to 10% by 2025.

These actions owuld produce a heatlhier, happier and richer country.

Carmageddon

It has been reported that one of the coalition minister Tory Eric Pickles wishes to relax parking restrictions. He fear local authorities are “anti-car”.

We’ve had our own local issues around Lordship Lane and the bus lanes being zealously enforced but what would happen if Mr.Pickles had his way?

Through a weird quirk of fate an full scale experiment along the dogmatic lines Mr.Pickles proposes has taken place in Aberystwyth.

Due to a mix=up between the police and Aberystwyth local authority they’ve had no parking enforcement for exactly 12 month.

These extracts from 1 June Daily Mail describe the chaos Mr.Pickles wishes up the rest of the country…

“For the last 12 months, citizens have been free to park wherever they please, without fear of prosecution. And any faith in human nature, that people might act responsibly and observe the restrictions anyway, is quickly dispelled by a visit to the town. Forget Armageddon – this is Carmageddon. Everywhere you look there are cars parking where they shouldn’t be: on single yellows, on double yellows, next to bus stops, on pavements , and – most brazenly of all – in just about every disabled parking space available.”

“As the residents of Aberystwyth are discovering, the iron is that when,  in theory you can park anywhere, you can’t in reality find anywhere to park.”

“With allocated loading bays being blocked by family saloon, frustrated delivery drivers are simply stopping their lorries in the middle of the street with queues of he-up motorists honking in frustration and demanding to know when they will be moving on.”

Loony Left Returns?

I was agog at the 20 month energy price freeze Ed Milliband announced yesterday. He stated he will freeze energy prices from May 2015 to January 2017.

There is no such thing as a free energy price freeze.

Surely he can’t have thought this through. Energy companies have little control on the prices of the raw materials they use while maintaining their legal responsibilities to shareholders – most shares being held by pension funds and insurance companies.

They can’t control their costs without incurring risks and extra costs. If they hedge costs by buying raw material options ahead of need, guessing future raw material prices, they can get this seriously wrong. This risk has to be paid for. That means higher prices for consumers.

A price freeze takes retail pricing out of the energy company hands leaving limited options for them. If their input costs rise above some level they can absorb they can either withhold and not produce and sell energy potentially leading to blackouts. More likely they’ll hedge raw material costs and pay for this either before the freeze with extra price rises between now and the 2015 general election or borrow and pay for the borrowing by post freeze additional price rises. Considering Ed Milliband also talked about breaking up the energy companies the latter option wont be practical. So we should all expect ot see exttra prices between now and May 2015 as energy companies prepare for the freeze.

There is no such thing as a free energy price freeze.

Funny Money

The Bank of England is thinking of replacing its cotton based notes with plastic ones. The latter ones sohuld last twice as long.

But a new study has found that bacteria loves some kinds of banknotes better than others. They steralised bank notes and the introduced MRSA or E.coli onto them. Euroes didnt pass E.coli onto people’s skin. US dollar passed on some bacteria. But the worst culprit was the Romanian leu a ploymer plastic banknote very similar to that proposed for the UK. So if the Bank of England plans proceed we can potentially expect to see more bacterial skins infections spread by our banknotes. Funny money indeed.

So the Bank of England will save a few millions but the NHS potentially spend more on fighting bacterial infections. Not joined up government.

Teen Rapists?

A study by Emma Fulu funded by a UN programme to tackle gender based violence has delved into the causes of male sexual violence in some countries. Sadly the UK wasnt one of the countries.

http://download.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/langlo/PIIS2214109X13700743.pdf

Overall the study showed that 58% of thgose who raped started while in their teens. This tells us that the potential to divert and stop rapists exists in childhood and education programmes could target this issue.

What we need now is such a study in the UK and South London.