This weeks Local Transport Today has an interesting article about Dutch style roundabouts called a turbo roundabouts.
They provide 1-1.5 time more capacity than traditional 2 lane roundabouts but with 50-70% less serious crashes than respectively traffic signalled & give-way junctions.
Struck me as a possible model for Paxton Green.
You can see a 70second video of the concept here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMYib3IR43I
Do you think it would help solve the problems at this intersection?
This week I had the opportunity to challenge the Labour council leader Peter John asking why community council meetings now cost £36,040 each!
I asked him “Will the leader consider returning to eight community council areas and allowing chairs to manage the existing budget more efficiently?”
In 2011/12 the council spend £1,376,003 to hold 52 community councils and 61 planning community council meetings – so they each cost £12,166.
This year the council will spend £901,000 to hold 25 community council meetings so each cost £36,040.
This is partly because the 8 previous community councils have be squashed and squeezed into 5 and partly from holding fewer meetings.
Savings had to be made but I see no reason why the meetings should have tripled in price. Do you?
I suggested to him that Community Council chair people would be sufficiently skilled to hold the original number of community councils and the 113 meetings for the £901,000 budget or £8,000 per meeting.
He disagreed said no and ranted on about how much money he’d saved.
Anyone can cut outputs but cutting the costs genuinely is achieving more with less. But £36,040 per meeting is outrageous and not saving money.
Success. Earlier today the Dept of Education announced that they’ve agreed we need at least one more primary school and possibly another two.
Funding for one new primary school to open September 2014 has been approved – http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/leadership/typesofschools/freeschools/b00222077/pre-opening
Our campaign for more primary school places to solve the pending places crisis has taken a massive leap forward due to your support and help. Thank you.
Background. By 2016 our area will have a shortage of 215-235 primary school reception places. That means we need 2 to 3 new primary schools around the Dulwich, Forest Hill Road, Nunhead areas. The Harris Federation agreed to apply for funding to open a new primary school with vision of being in the top 10% for results and progressions of English schools. The Judith Ker bilingual school have confirmed a site in the SE24 Southwark Herne Hill area.
Next step. Parents and members of the community are invited to attend a public meeting to discuss the school on Tuesday 11th June, 7.30pm at Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich, Homestall Road, SE22 0NR.
2009 I obtained agreement on behalf of Southwark Council from TfL that for the cycle super highway along Southwark Bridge Road (most of its route in Southwark) that it would be 20mph.
Putting self enforcing measures along the road would be really expensive and disruptive.
Separately I’ve been nagging Southwark Labour cabinet members about trialling 20mph average speed cameras.
I’m chuffed to see both moving forward: http://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/s38028/Report%20-%20Allocation%20of%20discretionary%20funding.pdf
20mph average speed cameras will also have a small £10,000 study about them being applied to Southwark Bridge Road.
I submitted details to them about Siemens having a self funding scheme with 3-4 speeders paying to attend speed awareness courses and some of the fees paid for the £50,000 per cameras pairs and administration.
Hopefully the study concludes this route is suitable. Happy days for an opposition councillor to helps steer an administration policies.
For a few years I’ve been banging on about Southwark Council funding a study about extending the Bakerloo line http://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/mgIssueHistoryHome.aspx?IId=21396&Opt=0
This approach by Greenwich Council about extending the DLR resulted in the Woolwich Arsenal extension. Funding such a report – not cheap at £50,000 – ensures some real depth occurs and hopefully will push the Bakerloo extension along by several years.
It is brilliant in opposition to push policies and actions you want and see them adopted. Happy day.
Some years ago the Lib Dems created Community Funds for each of Southwark’s 21 political wards to spend locally, £100-£1000 on local groups running local projects and events. It turns out we were onto something bigger and more meaningful than we ever imagined.
Various research projects of traumatic events have discovered that communities with more robust social networks coped much better with earthquakes, heat waves, etc than those without. Even the day to day issues and problems are ameliorated by strong social networks. Importantly stornger social networks have a large impact on things like child health, school grades, teen births, adult mortality, social disorders and even amazingly IQ scores. Some have dubbed this the “enduring neighbourhood effect”.
The more community groups the great the “enduring neighbourhood effect” – lowers crime rates, less violence as well as the other benefits mentioned earlier. You name a parameter and its improved.
How to foster more community groups and networks?
Ever since standing as a councillor many residents in East Dulwich have been very clear that they agree we should ensure our shopping streets don’t become clone zones.
The New Economics Forum have come up with a method to measure this.
This methodology involve counting the number of independent stores versus the number of shops and the different types of shops.
We’ve surveyed Lordship Lane northern main shopping area, Lordship Lane around Dulwich Library and Grove Vale. The measures is that areas 0-50 are called Clone Towns, 50-65 Border Towns and 65-100 Home Towns.
Lordship Lane (northern/main area) = 73 — largely affected by estate agents
Lordship Lane (Dulwich library area) = 75
Grove Vale = 78 — but vitality affected by number of takeaways.
Walworth Road = 61
To make Lordship Lane more of a Home Town we’d need more variety of shopping – we don’t have electronics, sports/cycling store, music/games. We also have a very large number of chain estate agents and food stores.
We’ll be using these survey results to inform the Dulwich planning bible currently being prepared.
What do you think would help preserve and increase the shopping vitality of Lordship Lane?
Southwark Labour have proposed changes to the protocol councillors have to follow else they received sanctions.
Amazingly counter democratic proposal “…members (except when accessing services as a residents of the borough) should always advise the relevant chief officer in advance of such visits”.
Sounds innocuous enough but it would mean council would always be prepared for visits. Little opportunity to really tests services. It also precludes helping residents in person when they need. Help as we wouldn’t be able to brief the chief officers in advance.
See the reports page 24. The Labour chair said many things including “I don’t see any problems with these changes.”
After an awful lot of hassling Labour they finally agreed for office to review the proposals again. Hopefully Labour will be shamed into something much more democratic.
From 1 April the Localism Act of 2011 made me and all other councillors, MPs and tenant panels “designated person”
This means we can refer problems social tenants experience to the Housing Ombudsman. Previously the Housing Ombudsman would only consider complaints after te housing providers complaints procedures have been exhausted – often and exhausting process – and within 6 months.
This is particularly good news for housing association tenants. Previously councillors really felt disarmed when presented with terrible problems with housing associations properties.
At last we can help in such cases.
if you have a social housing problem do use your local councillors. We now have more powers to try and help.
This week at the Dulwich Community Council the Labour led Southwark Council had officers asking residents if they agreed with the council selling off council housing or having it transferred out of council ownership.
They asked whether it should be run by an Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO). As the Labour cabinet member stated “We’ve taken the bull by the horns and are asking the questions that many have avoided, about how councils can continue to deliver good social housing to those in need despite funding cuts and changing demographics”.
But at the last local elections when the Lib Dems predicted that Labour would propose this they said we were wrong and lying. I doubt we’ll ever get an apology.
At the meeting many residents were enraged with such questions and abstained from responding to the loaded directive questions. It was embarassing to see a council official have to present something that they confirmed all the senior managers and cabinet councillors had signed-off.
What do you think should be the future of Southwark Council housing?