Wooddene Sold

Nearly 3 years after the last resident left and the block was demolished, Southwark Council has finally managed to find a development partner to take on the Wooddene site on Queens Rd (which used to look like the photo below and is currently the big empty site between Carlton Grove and Meeting House Lane).



No info as yet on what exactly they plan to build there, but this is a big step forward and hopefully we will start seeing some plans very soon.

What I'm particularly hoping for is a proper active street front on Queens Rd, preferably with shops. As we've seen with Tescos at the station, a busy shop with lots of people around makes an area feel much safer.

I'd also want to see plenty of affordable housing to replace the homes which were lost and no silly mistakes like the offices on the end of Lugard Rd which have now been standing empty for years!

What do you want? Tell me in the comments...

New Nunhead Community Centre - Decision Day!

Today's the big day for the Nunhead Community Centre campaign. After years of campaigning, firstly to get our old centre reopened and latterly for a new Centre, it looks like we will get official sign off from the council tonight.

Hidden deep within the Executive Committee report on its refreshed capital spending program is the proposal to spend £600k on building a new Nunhead Community Centre next to the Old Nun's Head Pub (on the soon to be vacated Early Years Centre site).

The project is self funding as the Council plan to sell off the old site to developer and the centre will only take up a portion of the Early Years site, the rest of which they will also sell off.

It's a compromise of course - in an ideal world with unlimited public funding we'd have liked to refurbish the old centre and have another public facility (perhaps a health centre?) on the site of the Early Year Centre, but in the real world money is tight and this is as much as the council was prepared to give.

So fingers crossed that everything runs to plan tonight then we can start on our next steps to make some bids for match funding (so we could have a bigger, better and greener centre) and start working with the council on designing our new centre!

Brayards Building Plans

Myself, Althea and Sunil joined around 40 local residents yesterday at Southwark Council's exhibition of their plans to build on and around Brayards Green.

It was the first chance we've had to see any detailed plans and these are my initial thoughts on them.

I'll start with the positive bits
- The designs have been drawn up in such a way that the mature trees could be saved
- The plans are for 8 3-bed houses, all 2 storey, no big blocks
- A couple of the houses will be wheelchair accessible, something we are very short of in this borough is fully accessible family sized homes

And the negative
- They still plan to build on part of the Green and the cage
- In an attempt to mollify local residents they've come up with a rather silly idea for a patch of "community space" down an alleyway behind the houses, doesn't look safe to me
- In my opinion (and this is a matter of personal taste) the design of the houses is unattractive with black brick and odd roof lines. I'm generally a fan of modern design, but it didn't do it for me (see pic below).

There seems to be a bit of confusion about where exactly the sites are so I've sketched out this map. The red box on the left is the garages site on Firbank Rd where there would be 2 houses (marked in yellow). The red box on the right is the site encompassing the cage and part of the green. This would have 6 houses built on it in an L shape and they were suggesting a community space down an alleyway behind the gardens which I've marked in blue. Please note these are my hand drawn impressions and probably not spot on.

I've also marked the other site which people have been told is due to be built on (by a private developer) with a pink X.

I spent around 2 hours at the exhibition listening to what residents had to say. Almost all were against the plan to build on the Green and cage. Opinion was mixed about the garages site, I think most people accept the principle of building new homes there. A lot of people were concerned about the general intensification of the area as apparently there are also plans to build on a plot of land behind the gardens of Stanbury Rd, Lugard Rd and Hollydale Rd.

Overall my view wasn't changed. I can accept building on the garages site, but I am completely opposed to building houses on any part of the Green. Here in inner London we have preciously little green and open space and whilst I recognise the need for additional homes that has to be balanced against protecting the local environment and quality of life for local residents and children. I believe there are plenty of other sites around where new homes could be built and that the whole of the green space should be protected.

A few pictures I took of the plans. Click on them for larger versions.

Plans for the cage/Green site


Drawing of what the houses would look like at the end of Stanbury Rd


Drawing of the two houses on the corner of Firbank and Caulfield Rds

Nunhead Labour Blog Launched

We've just launched a new blog for the Nunhead Labour Team. It'll have posts from Althea and Sunil as well as me.



In other blog news, Blogger are turning off their support for FTP publishing soon. This probably means nothing to most of you, but for me it means some technical work later in the month to migrate this blog to a new platform. Hopefully this will all run as smoothly as Blogger claims, but if the site disappears for a while that'll be the reason. Once it's migrated the url will change to blog.fiona-colley.net but hopefully everything will redirect (fingers crossed).

Save Brayards Green

I'm disappointed to have to announce that Southwark Council has resurrected plans to build on Brayards Green. Local residents have made it clear time and again that the Green is important to us, it is not disused or underutilised space as the Council like to claim. Yet despite representations from myself and the Brayards Estate Tenants & Residents Association the LibDem and Tory councillors who run Southwark Council voted through a proposal to build flats and houses on the Cage, the garages on Firbank Rd and a chunk of the Green. Fortunately all is not lost, the plans still need to get planning permission and we're launching a campaign to get as many residents as possible to object to the plans.

If you want to know more and help the campaign please join our Save Brayards Green Facebook Group where I'll be posting regular updates and letting people know how they can lodge their objections.

If you live nearby you should have received a leaflet from us with a tear off petition slip so please send that back to me as well.


This is the part of the Green the Council wants to build on. They want to build a row of houses starting at the top of Stanbury Rd over the cage and onto the Green as far as the first alleyway through to Hollydale Rd.

A campaign a few years ago saw off these plans, but now they have reappeared we need to Save our Green all over again.


This picture below shows the cage and the section of the Green that the LibDem and Tory councillors on the Executive Committee have voted to build on. It's not all of the Green, but it's still too much. And if they get away with this what's to stop them coming back next year to try and build on more of the Green? I'm trying to get the Green designated as a protected open space so that if we do manage to fight them off this time they won't be able to try again!


If the plans go through many if not all of these trees will be felled.


The Council also plans to knock down and build a block on flats the garage site on Firbank Rd.


That could mean the loss of one or both of these trees too.



As well as myself, the campaign to Save the Green is supported by the Brayards Estate Tenant & Residents Association and my Labour colleagues Cllr Althea Smith and Sunil Chopra (pictured below).

Nunhead Forum - come and chat

Just wanted to let readers know that there's a new online message board for Nunhead..

The Nunhead Forum is just getting started. It's a spin off from the highly successful East Dulwich Forum and is a great place to discuss local issues, life, the universe and everything with people living in Nunhead.

Ivydale Rd - chaos reigns

A brief update to say I'm getting a lot of complaints about the roadworks on Ivydale Rd.

It seems that after consulting in February the council failed to write back to residents to tell them what they had actually decided to do - the answer is that a small majority were in favour of the pinch points and so they are going ahead (see here for the original plans, they haven't changed much since then and here for my views on the scheme).

What's more the communications regarding the closures, parking restrictions and bus diversions seem to be entirely inadequate. The signage in the area is also pretty hopeless and despite this residents are under threat of having their cars lifted if they get in the way of the works (and then being charged for it!).

I've sent numerous emails and had a number of phone conversations with council officers about this, but nothing seems to have changed. I've tried to speak to LibDem Cllr Paul Kyriacou (the Executive Member for Transport) about it, but he's gone away for 3 weeks and his out of office rather unhelpfully only suggests an alternative contact for issues in South Bermondsey!

Anyway, I shall keep trying. Today I'm meeting a senior officer from the Highways department to go through the complaints. Will post further soon.

UPDATE 12.30pm
The meeting went well. Officers agree that the information has been poor and are writing a new letter to be hand delivered over the next couple of days. They will run it past me this afternoon or tomorrow and I'll post it here. They are looking into local signage and are having meetings with TfL about bus diversions.

The road work will stop for two weeks over xmas and the road will be reopened from Friday evening till 5th Jan. All work on the section from the junction with Linden Grove to Athenlay Rd are expected to be finished by 20 Feb, then work will start on the section from Athenlay Rd to Cheltenham Rd.

Oh, and they aren't going to charge people if they have to move parked cars, but would appreciate it if people could move cars when the no parking cones and signs appear so they don't have to lift and move them down the road.

Action Stations! Have your say on investment in stations.

Southwark Rail Users Group have let me know that Network Rail is currently carrying out a survey about local stations. The survey results could help bring extra investment and improvements into stations like Nunhead, Queens Rd and Peckham Rye. So please, please take a few minutes and fill it in. The deadline is the end of November.

More details on the Network Rail site or go straight to the survey here.

It would be really great if you could particularly focus on the comments bit, for instance it would be really good if a number of people asked for Nunhead station to be given (say) a lick of paint, the adjacent wasteland cleared and a live departure board outside the entrance. I'd also like to see it made fully accessible. For Queens Rd I'd like much the same plus a cafe/kiosk, more sheltered waiting areas and all the graffiti removed!

Ivydale Road works

As people who live on Linden Grove and Ivydale Rd will doubtlessly know, the roadworks for the new traffic calming measures have now started.

Vikki Mills, one of the Labour Candidates for Peckham Rye ward, lives on Ivydale Rd and has posted lots of useful info on the Peckham Rye Labour blog.

------------------------------

Vikki writes

I posted about the Ivydale Road traffic calming last month and this is just a quick update.

Back in October the council told me that the work, initially planned for late spring/summer, would eventually begin in November. The first stage is the resurfacing of Ivydale Road from its junction with St Asaph's Road to its junction with Limesford Road (in Nunhead ward). This work was scheduled to start on 12th November but I understand that it actually started today.

That bit of Ivydale Road is now closed with the P12 on diversion via St St Asaph's road and the Honor Oak estate before going back on route at Brenchley Gardens.Stage two is the resurfacing of rest of Ivydale (this is the bit in Peckham Rye ward and is where I live).

The start date I had was 23rd November but if things are a little behind, and I haven't heard anything, I suspect this means this might still be a week or two away. I'm waiting to hear what this means for the 343 and 484.

Stage three is the construction of the buildouts on Ivydale Road and rolling closures of the road will occur between December and February. Final works to the junction of Kelvington and Hawkslade Roads are programmed for February.

Primary School Places in Southwark

I'm sure a lot of readers will have been following the ongoing news coverage about the shortage of primary school places in London. Nunhead hasn't had too much of a problem so far, but there were problems this year in East Dulwich and the latest projections suggest that extra places will be needed here soon too.

I've been doing a lot of work on this in my role as Chair of Overview & Scrutiny on the council. My committee conducted a scrutiny investigation into the situation this year in East Dulwich and the what the council can do to prevent further problems next year and beyond. There is a lot of comment on this on the East Dulwich Forum, the Peckham Rye Labour blog and the draft scrutiny report is now available.

Given that this year's problems seemed to be largely caused by a failure of the council to predict the increase in demand, I was surprised to see the Leader of Southwark Council quoted in yesterday's Evening Standard ignoring this fact and trying to lay the blame entirely at the government's door. I agree that London will need more funding to cater for the baby boom, but the Council and GLA must also set it's house in order to make sure that the money goes to the right places.

You can read that article here and today they have published a letter from me on the subject. Letters don't seem to have make it onto their website, so here's the text.

It seems Cllr Nick Stanton, London Councils’ schools spokesman, wants to have it both ways – demanding greater devolved powers for councils one week, then trying to pass the buck back to government over primary school places the next.
This year, in large part due to inaccurate Greater London Authority projections many London local authorities grossly underestimated the demand for places - including Southwark, led by Cllr Stanton.
Following a scrutiny investigation I have no doubt Southwark and many other London councils will need large amounts of additional government funding. But unless London Councils and the GLA also address how they got it so wrong this year how can Londoners be confident that the money will be used to provide the extra places where they are needed?
Cllr Fiona Colley
Southwark Council

Nunhead & East Peckham Renewal Area - Update Part 2

Following on from last week's post... We now have the answer to my ward colleague Cllr Dominic Thorncroft's Council Assembly question about what exactly has happened to the £14.5m.

Bizarrely the answer from LibDem Cllr Paul Noblet (the Executive Member for Regeneration) only covers £4.75m! So no answer on what's happened (or happening) with the remaining £9.75m. I've typed the full answer in at the bottom.

I'm truly flabbergasted at this. Dominic's question was crystal clear and asked for a full breakdown of the £14.5m. He asked it in the most formal way possible for a councillor - via a council assembly question to the executive member. I'm shocked that they think they can get away with this partial answer and I'm left wondering what they are trying to hide. Perhaps the most revealing line of the answer is the final line which confirms that money which hasn't yet been spent or committed will be "reviewed as part of the capital programme refresh ... early in the New Year."

The council has recently commissioned an audit of the project, unfortunately I've only been allowed to see it on a strictly confidential basis and would risk being "struck off" as a councillor if I published it. I had hoped that the council question would bring the information into the public domain, but clearly that hasn't worked so today I have submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the council asking for the audit report and repeating the request for a breakdown of the full £14.5m. My full request is pasted in at the below and I will post the council's response when I receive it.

33. Question to the Executive Member for Regeneration from Cllr Dominic Thorncroft
In 2005 the council allocated a five year budget of £14.5 million for the Nunhead and East Peckham renewal area. Six months ago, local councillors met with senior officers to seek an update, but despite officers indicating that a progress review was in hand, no further information has yet been forthcoming:

a) Please provide an itemised breakdown of spending that has been made from the allocated budget;
b) Please provide an itemised breakdown of spending that is committed to be made from the allocated budget;
c) How much money remains in this specific budget for allocation on this renewal area?

Response
a) A total of £933,268 has been spent to date, against the following heads of expenditure:

• Nunhead environmental £95,899
• East Peckham environmental £192,151
• East Peckham & Nunhead lighting £645,218

b) Remaining commitments are £2,837,687 against the following heads of expenditure:

• Nunhead and Evelina Road £739,000
• Meeting House Lane £487,997
• East Peckham & Nunhead lighting £366,645
• Queens Road £1,244,045

c) There is a remaining balance of £979,045

The uncommitted sum will be reviewed as part of the capital programme refresh being submitted to executive early in the New Year.

Freedom of Information Request to Southwark Council - 9 November 2009

I would like to request the following information under the Freedom of Act.

a) The Overview Report of the PWC audit of the East Peckham & Nunhead Renewal Scheme commissioned the Director of Finance

b) An itemised breakdown of the spending that has been made from the allocated £14.5m budget including

• Street renewal
• Loans & Grants
• Environmental Improvements (phase 1 and 2)

c) An itemised breakdown of spending that is committed to be made from the allocated £14.5m budget including

• Street renewal
• Loans & Grants
• Environmental Improvements (phase 1 and 2)

d) The money remaining of the £14.5m budget including

• Street renewal
• Loans & Grants
• Environmental Improvements (phase 1 and 2)

I note that the answer provided to Cllr Thorncroft at Council Assembly on 4 November only covered Environmental Improvements Phase 1 (£4.75m). This request for is for information covering the full £14.5m budget.

Please reply by email to this email address.

Regards

Cllr Fiona Colley
Labour Member for Nunhead Ward

Nunhead & East Peckham Renewal Area Update Part 1

A lot of people have been asking me for an update on the Nunhead Renewal Area. I must apologise for not posting more on this, but it had become difficult to know what exactly is happening. I was in the midsts of making formal complaints and most of the information I'd been given was on a confidential or off the record basis, so it had become difficult for me to blog anything meaningful. Things are now becoming clearer and into the public domain.

The £14.5m Nunhead & East Peckham Renewal regeneration scheme was initiated in July 2005 and was due to be complete by July 2010. The money was supposed to be split between home improvement grants for low income owner occupiers, street renewals (new garden walls, brick cleans etc as seen in Bellenden area) and shopping area improvements (eg for Evelina Rd). Work was supposed to start with around £1m being spent on new lighting in year one and street renewal on Astbury Rd and Colls Rd.

As regular readers will know my (and many others) excitement about this scheme has gradually turned to deep cynicism as little or nothing was actually delivered except for consultations, focus groups and promises of jam tomorrow.

Myself and other ward councillors took our concerns formally to the Deputy Chief Executive and Finance Director at Southwark Council who initiated an audit to find out exactly what had been spent and delivered. Since then the lighting scheme has finally been delivered (the new Victorian style street lights in Nunhead Grove and other streets to the south of Evelina Rd) and the works in Astbury Rd and Colls Rd are also finally complete. However, with the project due to expire in July and the council's budgets in a mess we were left wondering where the rest of the money has gone and if we'd ever see all the improvements we were promised.

My colleague Dominic Thorncroft has submitted the question below for tonight's Council Meeting at the Town Hall, but we also got some indication on Saturday from Cllr Tim McNally the LibDem executive member for resources.

It seems that £6 to 7m has been spent on the lighting, Astbury/Colls, some work on Meeting House Lane and a lot of individual grants to low income home owners for essential home improvement works. Of the remaining money some is already commited to be spent, but the vast majority is now likely to be clawed back by the council to spend on other projects. I have secured a pledge that the £450k which we were told would be spent on smartening up Evelina Rd will be saved, but it now looks highly unlikely that there will be anymore street renewals.

Sadly I still can't publish my full and frank views on who is to blame and what I would like to happen to them without risking being reported to the Standards Board for breaching the Member - Officer code of conduct. Suffice to say that if the £450k is safe I'll be asking for the delivery of that work to be allocated to a different team in the council.

Here's Dominic's question. I'll post up the answer when I have it (I may well live twitter it from the meeting tonight so watch the Twitter feed).

33. QUESTION TO THE EXECUTIVE MEMBER FOR REGENERATION FROM COUNCILLOR DOMINIC THORNCROFT

In 2005 the council allocated a five year budget of £14.5 million for the Nunhead and East Peckham renewal area. Six months ago, local councillors met with senior officers to seek an update, but despite officers indicating that a progress review was in hand, no further information has yet been forthcoming:

a) Please provide an itemised breakdown of spending that has been made from the allocated budget;
b) Please provide an itemised breakdown of spending that is committed to be made from the allocated budget;
c) How much money remains in this specific budget for allocation on this renewal area?

New Community Centre for Nunhead

This Saturday I chaired a debate at the Nunhead Community Forum AGM to decide a way forward for the Nunhead Community Centre Campaign. Gavin, Vikki and Renata have already posted on it on the Peckham Rye Labour Blog.

As previously reported the existing Centre closed in 2007 and since then it has been a continuous battle with the council to get our centre back with the goal posts constantly being moved.

Earlier this year we were offered some shop fronts in the new block next to the Nun's Head, but at a public meeting people agreed that this was not adequate. Some local residents protested by occupying the centre and reopening it to the community, till the council evicted them.

Since then the council has come back to the table and significant progress has been made with them now offering to build a new centre (most likely on the other side of the Nun's Head on part of the soon to be vacated Early Years Centre site). First they offered around 180m2, but we've now got them up to about 220m2. It's still far smaller than the old centre (which was around twice the size), but the campaign team felt it should be presented to the community to seek views about whether to focus on this option or to continue the fight for the old centre to reopen.

So on Saturday Cllr Tim McNally, the LibDem cllr in charge of council finances and properties, came to the Community Forum AGM to present the proposals and to answer questions. He made it clear that the council is facing tough times with its budgets, that they do not believe the old centre is viable either in terms of the money needed to get it open again or the ongoing maintenance and running costs.

After over an hour of debate we took a vote and by a large majority the 50+ residents at the meeting agreed that we should focus on getting a new centre. It was clear that there is considerable reluctance about this and it was agreed that we should keep on pressing the council to make the new centre as large as possible and also look to see if we can raise some match funding to help with that.

No way to live

This is a bit of video one of my constituents filmed. She lives in a council owned house and basically the roof has a huge hole in it. Every time it rains water pours through the ceiling in her living room and little boy's bedroom.



She first reported it to Southwark Council in December 08. When it was inspected in early 2009 the guy said it was too dangerous for him to even go in the loft and said he'd ask for it to be authorised as an urgent repair. 9 months later and Jessica and Ewan are still waiting! Ewan is now suffering from respiratory problems, most likely due to the damp and Jessica is just desperate.

I'm posting this video and sending a link to the people who run Southwark Council's housing department, particularly Tory Cllr Kim Humphreys, in the hope that this will make them take this seriously and get this sorted.

Ivydale Rd & Linden Grove roadworks

A bit more info has emerged on the forthcoming road works to put pinch points into Ivydale Rd and Linden Grove. Click here for the traffic management orders. Seems that work on Ivydale Rd will start on 2 November and take up to 10 weeks. Linden Grove is to start on 5 January and take up to 10 weeks.

I am trying to get more details about how exactly the road closures are going to be done, how traffic will be managed and what bus diversions will be put in place and I will post when I have more information.

If any residents do have questions or problems the best people to contact are Matt Joel of F M Conway (the contractors) on 0208 636 8822 or Joseph Okai the project manager at the council on 0207 525 2145.