Green Dale changes

Southwark Council directly and indirectly are planning some big changes to the incredibly popular Green Dale cycle and walking route.

Cycling alone in the  4 months April to August has seen a total of 39,287 cyclists using this route. That implies over  100,000 cycle movements along this route a year.

The changes at the northern end to reduce car blocking with Champion Hill and at the southern end removing excessive bollards and planting look good. The middle section, Wanley Road junction, sees a hedges usefully cut back to increase safety with further changes of adding bollards which looks daft and dangerous.

To compound the middle proposals a Planning Application has been made that would increase the tunnelling affect by narrowing Green Dale and adding blank hedge frontage just south of Wanley Road junction with Green Dale:

261873_1

I’ve asked the Cabinet member for Transport Cllr Barrie Hargrove to amend his middle plans and not added unnecessary bollards. I’ve formally objected to the Planning Application.

Fingers crossed common sense prevails.

Community Asset Register

One brilliant Lib Dem change to national government is the Community asset Register part of the Localism Act.

Community groups can nominate local community assets. Once a community asset they can;t be sold without community groups being given the chance to buy them. It provides six months for a community approach to be found to keep as asset in use for local community.

What local assets would you want on such an asset list  – tell me?

The following are my initial thoughts for East Duwlich:

East Dulwich Police station

Old East Dulwich Police Station (junction Crystal Palace Road with Upland Road)

Dulwich Library

Grove Vale Library

Dulwich Leisure Centre

Continue reading →

London Living Wage

Congratulations on Southwark Council being formally accredited with paying the London Living Wage.

Southwark council has been paying a London Living Wage for many years and I’m proud that a Lib Dem led council started doing this all those year ago. This was despite the then Labour national government telling us it was neither “appropriate or necessary” and could lead to “inflationary pressures”.

But what does this accreditation mean?

It means the London Living Wage Unit calculates a figure every year to ensure people live don’t live in poverty. This isnt just a nice thing to do. Paying people a wage they can properly live on rather than just barely survive usually results in dramatic cuts in absenteeism os its good for business.

So no change then for Southwark Employees who have been paid the London Living Wage for many years. It has gradually meant that as contracts with third parties that employ people outside London have ended that they’ve been replaced with contracts where the contractor commits to the London Living Wage. Finally this year all contracts employing people outside London have ended.

It means contracts such as the one with Liberata for Council Tax collection which had call centres and admin offices across the UK have been terminated and replaced with workers in London. So rather than paying a Borrow in Furness worker the London Living Wage which would have been strange when the cost of living there is so much lower.

Also legal advice in 2008 was that EU law meant that the London Living Wage could not be specified in procurement processes. How legal advice angle and contractors change.

So I welcome the accreditation but practically little has actually changed.

Bike contraflows

We don’t have many one ways streets in East Dulwich but those we do are a real pain for cyclists. Two new cycle contraflows are being designed and planned – Zenoria Street and Etherow Street. They avoid detours that few take and so pavement cycling is encouraged which we all want to avoid. And no loss of car parking is proposed.

01 Etherow Street Contraflow – Consultation , 08 Zenoria Street Contraflow – Consultation

Take a look and let me know what you think. I’m expecting us to make a decision on them at the 27 November Dulwich Community Council.

Stray wheelie bins

Amazing how wheelie bins can go so astray.

This one appeared on the corner of Melbourne Grove and East Dulwich Grove. Minus a lid it soon started to collect rain and then rubbish from people passing by.

I’ve given it a while expecting council rubbish contractors and street cleaners to resolve it but to no avail. So I’ve now reported it.

If you ever see such problems please do email the council via environment@southwark.gov.ukif nothing happens escalate it to me by forwarding the original email to james.barber@southwark.gov.uk

East Dulwich Police station

Boris is clearly in disarray. When standing for election he was clear no police station front counters would be closed without a replacement service as good or better. He’s just reconfirmed this in answer to a question from Caroline Pidgeon. But his Deputy and Met Police are ignoring him – the old East Dulwich Police station on Crystal Palace Road (until very recently used for SE London firearms unit) has been sold and the current East Dulwich Police station is apparently up for sale.

All Dulwich councillors came together to agree this letter:

DulwichCllrs_PoliceStation

In it we ask the Deputy Mayor for Policing to stick to Boris’s reconfirmed election pledge. Without a Police base/station in the Dulwich area residents would have very long journeys to report crime in person, officers would spend significant parts of their daya travelling to and from the area wasting valuable Police resources.

Lets hope sanity prevails.

Free Insulation from British Gas

British Gas have a scheme offering free loft and cavity wall insulation whether you’re a British Gas customer or not and you don’t have to be on any benefits.

So if you own your property OR the property owner wants free insulation nothing is stopping you getting it for free except inertia. This offer is worth up to £1,000 per home.

If you’re over 70 or on a wide range of benefits they’ll even pay to move things out of your attic. If scaffolding is required they pay up to £475.

IF you refer a friend to this scheme British Gas will even give you £50!

The closing date is 30 November. Call 0845 971 7731 to book the free survey or go online http://www.britishgas.co.uk/freeinsulation

NB. I’d like to thank Donnachadh McCarthy for making me aware of this through his Southwark News column.

Fatal Collissions needed

For many years Transport for London have been promising pedestrians phases on the Lordship Lane/South Circular traffic lights.

But nothing ever happens. To my latest request for information they eventually stated:

“Thank you for your email.  I am sorry for the length of time it has taken to provide you with a response.

We have looked at various options for adding green man crossing facilities at this location over the last few years; however, it has proved difficult to develop a scheme that does not have a significant impact on traffic capacity at a location where congestion occurs at busy times of the day. In addition to this, the collision history at this location does not make it a top priority in terms of collision reduction, and pedestrian volumes are quite modest.

For the above reasons no scheme is actively being taken forward at this stage. The potential of land acquisition for localised road widening to help address the capacity concerns has been raised but has not progressed at the present time due to the high level of investment required.

We will nonetheless continue to monitor safety at this junction as well as throughout London, and focus our limited resources at those locations with the greatest level of personal injury collisions each year.

Once again, I apologise for the delay in my response. Please let me know if you have any further queries”

These lights are close to a blind person centre. Effectively TfL have said they want fatalities before they’ll make any provision for people walking.

Outrageous but typically of Boris’s tory leadership of TfL.

Vanishing East Dulwich buses

I came across a South London Night Bus poster on a number 68 bus stop on Denmark Hill:

south-london-night

Weirdly it doesn’t show the no.12 or 176 bus routes which run overnight.

I also came across an East Dulwich bus map while looking into the above:

east-dulwich-a4

 It doesn’t include the no.12 or 197 bus routes. They seem to have defined East Dulwich buses as those that traverse Goose Green roundabout only.

Lib Dem GLA Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon has agreed to ask Transport for London why the errors and omissions and when they can be corrected.

Bizarre that such long standing rout4es can vanish from TfL maps.

Foreign crimes

Bizarre stories have emerged in the last few weeks about a third of everyone arrested in London are not British citizens – foreigners!

In the London area that 72,505 criminals alone. Truly astounding. And this is apparently a lower number than the previous year.

So it’s hardly surprising if the Met Police in London have drafted in immigration officials to try and support them. In fact its such a large problem they’ve created Operation Terminus with the UK Border Agency for six months. The idea being such criminals sometimes also wanted by their original country. So far they’ve found 79 of them are wanted for murder, 708 for rape and 1,863 for robbery! Like I said astounding. Hopefully this operation will not end at six months.

But I also suspect foreign nationals are also more likely to be the victims of crime.