NICE alcohol

Talking to East Dulwich Police the majority of Violence Against the Person – people hitting other people and worse – is behind closed doors and usually alcohol related…. 

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has recommended as part of its latest advisory document on public health that each alcohol unit should have a minimum price.

NICE says “Making alcohol less affordable appears to be the most effective way of reducing alcohol-related harm. There is sufficient evidence (within the published literature and from the economic analysis) to justify the introduction of a minimum price per unit. The evidence suggests that young people who drink and people who drink harmful amounts of alcohol tend to choose cheaper drinks. Establishing a minimum price per unit would limit the ability of these groups to ‘trade down’ to cheaper products. A minimum price per unit (unlike a tax increase) would prevent retailers from passing on any increase to producers, or absorbing it themselves, so it would prevent them from selling alcohol below cost price.”

This contrasts nicely with a survey of 10,000 teenagers by Prof Mark Bells from Liverpool John Mores University showing that alcohol is so cheap kids can get plastered on pocket money – 17p an alcohol unit or £1.36 for a 2 litre bottle of very strong cider.

Contradicting this is ASDA supermarket executive Paul Kelly & Sainsbury’s Nick Grant to a Commons Health Select Committee.

It will be interesting to see if the supermarket chiefs win over peer reviewed scientific research.

Will NICE be nobbled by the Department of Health. Sadly my money is on those supermarket drinks promotions selling at ridiculous prices winning at an ever greater cost to society of drunken behaviour.

Southwark Primary school results

Over the last four years, from 2005 to 2009, Southwark school results have been the most improved in the country. For Primary school key stage 2 English has gone from 72% to 79% and for Maths 67% to 79%.

In the league table of 150 English local education authorities Southwark has gone from 107th to 80th for English and 107th to 58th for Maths and from 110th to 92nd for science.

amazing success due to children, parents, teachers, governors, council officers and executive councillors.

Fantastic progress….with I’m very hopeful more to come.

Bus information

Transport for London has just announced we’re two years away from 2,500 bus stops having the Coundown  replacement. No information what bus stops in East Dulwich will keep Countdown and IF any new ones will get it.

My day job is in telecommunications. It should be a really quick easy project to roll out countdown to every bus stop and all bus routes. Imagine how many people would choose to use bus more often if bus stops clearly showed when the next bus would be along. Combined with GLA Asssembly Member Caroline Pidgeon 1 hour bus ticket campaign we’d see a step increasein bus use.

Instead what will be offered is the ability to look on the internet or text via mobile phones. Frankly ridiculous stunt that a tiny minority will find it useful.

Primary school admissions

This year Primary School admissions has been painful. Quite out of the blue we had unhappy parents. 120 appeals, 8 upheld.

I’ve asked council officers how many cases councillors and MP’s referred to them for help.

They’ve told me:

Labour 13 – councillors 5, Harriet Harman MP 3, Tessa Jowell MP 5.

Liberal Democrats 35 –  councillors 14, Simon Hughes MP 21.

Convervative 1.

Total 46.

East Dulwich Primary school places

Last night a meeting of the councils Overview and Scurtiny Committee met at the East Dulwich Community Centre to discuss the problems parents faced with this years primary schools admissions process.

Disappointing that barely a handful of parents could attend plus a handful of headteachers and school governors. However, the room was full of councillors and council officers. Really thought provoking presentation from Terry Parkin the lead officer accountable for admissions. Lots of searching questions that brought out lots of other facts.

Some unfortunate weird comments and wild accusations from Cllr Aubyn Graham. He seemed very confused.

Main points I took from the scrutiny:

– Idea of having quite a few pre prepared buldge class options and then activating them depending on parent demand. This de risks any future pupil predictions being wrong while the economy is in such turmoil.

– More assurance that the GLA stats people now understand what went wrong this year after 15 years of unblemished near spot on pupil predictions.

– Amazing to hear that Southwark created an extra 45 reception places and still has 17% spares places in less fashionable schools such as the excellent Bessemer Grange. Lambeth and Lewisham had to create 150 extra emergency reception places each, Richmond 210, Enfield a whopping 22 classes totalling 660 reception places. This was shocking and really put into context how well Southwark had coped.

– £30M being pumped in Southwark Primary schools to physically make them better by Southwark Council and £25M from central government.

– Southwark schools close to being in top quartile for performance but time lag from when a schools performance soars to when publicly recognised for this.

– That across Southwark175 and in greater Dulwich area 22 kids go ‘missing’ each year. They just don’t show up at the schools places they’ve accepted. It costs the council £100,000 each year chasing these down to ensure they are in a school somewhere and are safe. What a waste caused by tiny number of selfish parents.

– That the admissions department has enough officers for a normal year but this abnormal year they were overwhelmed with worried parents. These officers will be increased by three as admissions numbers are bulging for the next 5-6 years.

If you’re an East Dulwich parent and couldn’t make it last night please do feed in your thoughts and observations.

£9.8M plan

Southwark Council has submitted its Local Implimentation Plan to Transport for London of how it wants to shape and change its highways and transport over the next three years. A £9.8M plan.

Two things solely proposed for the Dulwich Community Council area covering East Dulwich, Village and College wards. Spending £500,000 on public realm and speed reduction along Lordship Lane and Grove Vale. Spending £500,000 subsidising the number 42 bus being extended from Sunray Avenue to terminate at Sainsbury’s on Dog Kennel Hill during financial year 2011/12 & 2012/13. This bus extension subsidy does seem expensive.

Proposed schemes covering the whole of Southwark include – cycle training, travel awareness and promotion events, safe routes to school/travel plans, supporting sustianable infrastructure, speed reductions measures, surveying, eletric vehicle on street charging points.

What do you think is needed to improve Southwark roads?

Have we hit the mark?

Latest East Dulwich Crime stats

Latest East Dulwich crime stats taken from the mets Police  http://maps.met.police.uk/tables.htm show that in the last year August to August the crime rate has dropped such that East Dulwich has moved from 4th lowest crime rate  in Southwark to having the lowest crime rate in Southwark.

This is despite having 1/4 of Peckham Rye, 1/8 of Village and 1/8 of College wards most problematic areas counted against East Dulwich ward. So the real underlying story is even better than this.

It’s so improved that the East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team have been straying outside East Dulwich to help out in Dulwich Park – which has seen a 37% decrease in robberies.

When I became a councillor this was one of my personal ojectives – to have the lowest crime rates in Southwark in East Dulwich. We started our campaign to become East dulwich councillors with a Crime Survey. the survey results helped us decide to target a lot of the resources we as councillors allocate. We’ve still more work to do. I want East Dulwich to be better compared to London as a whole. We’re currently just outside the best quarter for London.

How can we improve it further?

Council Housing Fire Risk Assessments

In the week I attended the Dulwich Housing Forum. This forum covers all the housing is East Dulwich, College and Village wards. East Dulwich actually has a lot of social housing. Around 500 acquired streeet properties, 200 other council houses. Equally Housing Associations have around another 500 properties. So in total 1,200 social housing properties out of 5,100. Around the national average.

Eitherway, the topic of Fire Risk Assessments (FRA’s) was discussed. Southwark Council about a year ago bought in London Fire Brigade expertise to train our housing officers in undertaking FRA’s. After lots of training a nine month details programme started in May. To everyone’s huge shock the tragic Lakanal House fire happened. So the nine month programme has been drastically accelerated and on 22 September the 350 Dulwich area FRA’s were successfully completed.