Nineteen flower baskets have been organised for Lordship Lane and North Cross Road by East Dulwich councillors and are looking really good in the sunshine.
Where do you think needs a local hanging basket?
Lordship Lane Flower Baskets
Bus Crashes
Bus Garage Collisions London 8,600 buses travel an amazing 490 million kms a year across 700+ bus routes. Last year 2.35 billion bus customer journeys. So bus trsavel is safe but then the drivers are professionals.
The following is table of buses that crashed and needed repaits.
Major crash requires more than 40 hours of repairs, minor crash less than 40hours of repairs. Apparently the higher rates such as at Perivale, which is an engineering centre, and Stamford Brook, which is a London United refurbishment centre, indicate where the buses are taken for repair or renewal rather than the depots at which they are stationed for operation of routes.
Even allowing for this big variations between the crashes per million kms. Why the difference. Clearly some bus garages are doing something smarter than others. It means more crashes than we truly need on London roads.
Disbelief in Met
Recently the Met Police force, under the direction of London Mayor Boris Johnson, paid an awfully large amount of money to deliver a leaflet to every home titled “WE’RE IMPROVING THE WAY WE POLICE YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD”.
They usefully highlight that non urgent crime reporting can take place by calling 101 or online somewhere within the www.met.police.uk website.
They then state if you want to report something face to face that instead of having an East Dulwich Police Station open 16 hours every day, which Boris had closed from 24 June, you should pop Dulwich Library on a Wednesday between 7-8pm.
The East Dulwich Safer neighbourhood Team has been further reduced. Originally under Ken Livingstone it was 1 sergeant, 2 PC’s and 3 PCSO’s. Under Boris the sergeant has had to be shared. Now we have a named sergeant but who has many other duties. One PC and one PCSO. So in theory we only have a third of the dedicated resources. But now that these limited resources are based in Camberwell without any forward base in East Dulwich or based with us locally as they used to be they’re time in East Dulwich is significantly reduced.
Taking all these facts into consideration it;s a weird claim that they’re improving the way we police neighbourhoods. Sadly we can;t take them the Advertising Standards Authority!
Estate Agents Demise?
East Dulwich has many estate agents. With the fees and percentages they charge they don’t need to sell many houses to survive and even thrive.
Along with stamp duty estate agents percentages – often 1.25-2% become a significant expense from local property sales.
a new business model of “Pay-per-view” has been launched. Instead sellers pay £118.80 for taking photos, drawing floor plans and listing the property on major property websites – which is how most people look for properties now. They then charge £42 per viewing up to a maximum of £420.
This is really cheap compared to the fees residents in East Dulwich are paying.
Will it take off? Would you use them?
Currently non estate use is around 5%.
If it does take-off Lordship Lane would see around 20 shop units become free….
Income equality 25 year high.
Amazingly post recession UK is less unequal than any time over the last 25 years as per the Office for National Statistics(ONS). As measured via the Gini index an internationally recognised method.
This appears to be from wage stagnation but with benefits and tax credits rising by inflation helping protect the poorest.
The ONS has just announced that 2011/12 tax year the gaps between the poorest and richest has narrowed. And to close a gap that for 25 years has been widening this is big.
Using the Gini index Sweden is at 25%, US 40%, and the UK has improved from 33.7% to 32.3%. So we clearly have some way to go but its clear that over the next few years we’ll increasingly moved towards Swedish levels but the rate will dramatically slowdown with benefit restrictions coming into force.
I suspect during the next government 2015-20 indirect taxes such as VAT will be reduced. These disproportionately hit the poorest who currently pay around a third of their income on indirect taxation whereas as the richest fifth pay around 14% of income.
Direct taxation also disproportionately hits the poorest. Things like Council Tax. Clearly moving local taxation from asset based to income based would also help close the Gini index gap. Another correction for the next government.
Do you think we should aspire to be more US or Swedish?
Personally I’d go for the latter and the most cohesive society we can but creating better entrepreneurial support mechanisms.
Illegal Parking Permit
Today the High Court has decided ina a case broguht by Brent residents to block the raising of parking permit costs from £40 to £100 a year – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23406427
Justice Lang rules that Barnet Council acted unalwfully to use parking permits to generate more money for other purposes such as road maintenace. Barnet Council plans to appeal. But I get the sense that they’ll fail. If they win an appeal it owuld mean paring permits could be used for revenue raising puproses which would go beyond the 1984 act allowing parking permits to be charged for.
This potentially has a huge impact on Southwark which only 18months ago increase fees from £99.30 to £125.
It seems clear that parking permit charges can only cover the costs of providing them. Which with online applciations etc must be very much lower than the fees charged.
Fuel Poverty
In the UK we have nearly 5 million households of the 25 million UK homes in fuel poverty.
In Southwark we have 10,139 or 9.2% of our 109,674 homes in fuel poverty.
In Dulwich and West Norwood we have 4,627 or 11.1% of the 41,748 homes in fuel poverty.
This is clearly too many. The governments Green Deal is meant to deal with this. It effectively enables people to borrow money for insulation etc to reduce their bills against the savings they’ll make.
But I still think we have a big gap where basic loft and cavity wall insulation needs to be made free for everyone. Many don’t have the skills to jump through the hoops required if they’re already entitled. Others just don’t need to individually. But nationally we need to reduce our dependence upon fuel imports and the national security issues it creates.
Does you loft need insulating – what’s stopping you?
Care Bill
For too many years getting old and needing social care has ruined families finances.
So I’m chuffed that the Lib Dems in the coalition government have ensured the Care Bill moves our country towards the Dilnot Report recommendations:
– New asset threshold before having to help with the cost will rise from £23,250 to £123,000. A huge leap.
– Cap the maximum amount of costs a family or individual will incur a lifetime limit of £72,000 .
– Ability to move from one part of the country to another – often to be nearer family.
– Ofsted type rating will be given for all care providers which should help boost the quality of care being offered.
Progress.
Do you think these changes go far enough?
Green Machining East Dulwich
Many residents have been telling us how messy our streets have become. This is one of many pictures residents have recently sent me.
But the council is telling us our streets have never been cleaner since they’ve reduced the street sweeping to once every four weeks and litter picking to every other day – which is right, tell us what you think?
Out of 10 how clean is your street with1 being terrible and 10 being fabulously clean – tell me at james.barber@southwark.gov.uk?
Locally in East Dulwich we’ve allocated £20,000 from our Cleaner, Greener, Safer annual capital budget to buy a Green Machine 400 series motorised street sweeping machine.
With this machine the same number of staff can sweep all our streets THREE times every four weeks. This should really make a difference to getting our streets cleaner. We just need to persuade people to drop less litter…
What other ideas should we pursue to make keep our area smarter?
Lost SPD millions?
Southwark Council has through planned inaction decided to have Council Tax Single Persons Discount amnesty. Officers have advised they can;t back date chasing people who’ve wrongfully claimed SPD by 12 months. So delaying by 6+ months considering doing this represents an amnesty costing £1.5m+….
30 April Audit & Governance committee http://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/g4262/Public%20reports%20pack%20Tuesday%2030-Apr-2013%2019.00%20Audit%20and%20Governance%20Committee.pdf?T=10
Page 88 section 21 states:
“Single Person Discount Exercise – back dating request. Following initial discussions with the Assistant Director (Revenues, Benefits, FTSS), he wants to make further consideration of the scope for this, particularly in light of other key projects currently being undertake within his division. As such he will report back on in June.”
Effectively a statement of no action taken.
The previous committee 28 February
page 3 of the January meetings minutes section 10 states “bring back further detail to the committee on whether it is possible and cost-effective to data match historical records for signs of possible council tax fraud”.
Page 38 sections 32 – 35 state 13,000 data matches about SPD has been found. That £1.5m has been recovered from wrong SPD claims.
At the time I asked why Southwark didn’t recover money for the past financial year. The data is present to show where SPD has been wrongly claimed for a prior 12 months. The 30 April report states officers have chosen NOT to try and recover another £1.5M+ and they they’ll announce their plans in June. At best this represents a delay of 3 months and loss of £1.5m/4. At worse they’ll try and quietly drop it.
I’m passionate about this as it was my idea that led to the matching exercise resulting in 13,000 matches and £1.5m. To procrastinate and lose potentially £1.5m+ if they quietly drop it as near an election is outrageous.
What do you think?