East Dulwich stats

This week lots of statistics were made public in responses to councillor questions at Council Assembly:

East Dulwich Potholes 2011/12 – emergency potholes 16, 24hour response potholes 66. For the whole of Southwark last financial year 2,697 and so far half way into this financial year 1,548 before the winter period when potholes are exacerbated from freeze/thaw action. So it looks like ur roads are declining quite rapidly.

East Dulwich council home sales – 1 right to buy since April 2010 and 12 non right t buy – when Southwark decides to sell a house. Zero council homes were built. For the whole of Southwark it was 90 RTB, 128 homes sold, 184 demolished and 13 built. Net decrease of 389 council homes.

East Dulwich fly-tipping (1/11/11-31/10/12) 254 incidents making us 8/21 mostly likely ot have fly-tipping in Southwark.

And finally….Southwark Council at its HQ on Tooley Street last financial year 2011/12 used 326,000 plastic cups at a financial cost of £5,868. Overall the spend on plastic cups, sugar sachets and milk has risen from £12,075 in 2009/10 to £22,277 in 2011/12.

Travellers Rights Expand

Southwark Council provides four travelers sites. Sadly not enough traveller sites exist across England.

Labour Southwark has decided to increase the rights of travellers for pitches at those sites. First they’re guaranteeing that fees will never rise by more than inflation. So in real terms the fees will go down with time. It also means the fees are unlikely to cover the costs of providing these sites long-term maintenance. They’ve also decided to give infinite successor rights. Child of the children of the children, etc, etc, etc of current travellers to live on a specific Southwark pitch for ever.

Weirdly this is the interpretation of part of the 2008 Housing Act that the last Labour government introduced with provisions coming into affect April 2011. Even in that act it only states succession not limited to one. So Southwark Labour could have stated two which would be amazingly generous not being based on need. For council housing successor rights are limited to one. I don’t understand why mainstream council housing tenants have fewer rights than traveller pitches which are another form of social housing.

Fortunately the decision has been called in to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee by Lib Dem members.

East Walworth by-election result

Congratulations to Dr Ben Johnson the Liberal Democrat candidate for running such a good campaign. Sadly he didn’t win. This was an important by-election. Not because it would change which party leads the council – it couldn’t – but for sending the message that the Elephant & Castle regeneration mustn’t be a sell out as Labour appear hell-bent on doing.

The results on a 25% turnout was:

Labour – 1259 – Rebecca Lury

Lib Dems – 1003 – Dr Ben Johnson

Conservative – 94 – Stuart Millson

I fear for Southwark Labour its back to the same groove with no lessons learnt.

Green Dale partially blocked

Last night a tree from JAGS playing field was blown over and has landed onto Green Dale.

I’ve reported it and a council employed tree team will visit ASAP. What’s particularly worrying is that some pedestrians are walking under the fence end where a gap is present – so I’ve asked the council treat the matter with urgency.

It should be fully removed today.

Operation Nexus

The Met Police have been working much more closely with the UK Boarder Agency. They estimate roughly a third of London’s 8 million residents are not UK nationals.

Taking this into account it is reassuring that less than a third of the people arrested in London are foreign nationals, 27%. But that is still a lot of people. Over 70,000 prisoners a year.

The problems the Police have is that they don’t have great processes or systems to then check whether such prisoners are wanted abroad, are illegally here, etc. hence the work with the UK Border Agency. The UK Border Agency also have the ability to decide that such prisoners have broken their right to remain in Britain by not ‘being of good behaviour’ and can then remove them.

A further step is the Met Police working more closely with other European Police forces so that the most serious criminality forensic evidence is shared potentially sovling other serious crimes here and abroad.

I must say I feel reasonably reassured that this is a sensible step.

What do you think?

30 minutes

A great new mapping system has been created that will show you everywhere within 30minutes trave ltime of a postcode. Great for working out the most feasible places to live for a given work location or vice versa – it also throws up comibnations of public transport you might not have thought about:

http://property.mapumental.com/

The map has taken over four years in development using the free open source data set the National Public Transport Data Repository and assuming sensible journeys combining public transport.

I’ve had a look and found it fascinating.

Landcroft Road

Today highway resurfacing of Landcroft Road starts. As a section has been resurfaced relatively recently the areas to be resurfaced starting today are:

Everywhere along Landcroft Road EXCEPT the section 75 Landcroft Road to Rodwell Road. The works will take four days to complete.

It will cause a LOT of disruption. Please bare with this disruption as a lovely newly resurfaced Landcroft road will be fab and long overdue.

Bacteria DNA testing

A recent outbreak of MRSA was managed using DNA sequencing. The outbreak at a Cambridge hospital started with 12 babies being affected. After treatments and deep cleaning it was thought to be resolved but then came back with another infection. They then turned to staff and found a colleague carrying the MRSA.

They could tell it was all part of the same incident by squencing the bacterias genetic code. This was possible due to the collapse in the price of gene sequencing.

How long before this technology will be applied to all sorts of infections – eColi would be an obvious place to start making a library of bacteria sequencing so that total infectious disease outbreaks can be resolved?

London Fuel Poverty

Gas and electricity costs are still rising leading to more people being placed in fuel poverty – where the proportion of household spend on fuel is greater than 10% of income to keep the household sensible warm. So not just warm in one room but the whole property.

Currently in London 9.4% are defined as in fuel poverty. The government is consulting on changing the definition of fuel poverty. As a result, nearly all English regions see a fall in the number of fuel poor households in their area. But in London the proportion will rise from 9.4% to 14.1% and more truly reflect the extent of fuel poverty in London.

This should help rectify the small proportion of energy efficiency spending Londoners have seen from energy company obligations. We’ve yet to se the Green Deal which started in October making a difference.

In East Dulwich we still see many homes with no insulation in lofts and the fuel homes with cavity walls have yet ot have them insulated.

Council Traveller sites

Southwark Council is about to make further changes to council traveller site rules:

http://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/mgIssueHistoryHome.aspx?IId=50000892&Opt=0

Amazingly it has a stated presumption that pitch prices will never change by more than inflation (RPI). The unlimited right of succession to pitches for family members. Allowing for very extended periods for traveller site tenants to leave the site and the pitch be reserved for them.

This appears unfair. Council Housing tenants have a right of succession of one generation. Providing for unlimited succession appears very odd. Am I missing something?