Nursery to relocate - new health centre to be built in its place?
The Council has recently revealed plans to relocate Nunhead Green Early Years Centre to a site at Rye Oak Primary School. The new Childrens Centre at Rye Oak will be able to offer a much wider range of services and I suspect will be a good thing.I say I suspect because I knew nothing about the plans until a few days before the Council Executive decided to go ahead with the proposals. I believe that parents with children currently at the centre were consulted, but no other local residents. It's difficult for me to do my job of representing residents if council officers don't tell me about their plans till so late in the day. My experience is that some departments are better than others at consulting and I've now made arrangements to meet with senior officers in Childrens Services every six weeks. I've also got the agreement that the relevent officers will come and make a presentation about their plans at the Nunhead & Peckham Rye Community Council so anyone who's interested can find out more. I'll post again when I've got details of the meeting.
The thing that troubled me most when I found out about these proposals was the lack of information about the future of the site on Nunhead Green. Fortunately now the area has been declared as a Conservation Area and the Planning Department says"there are significant limitations to the amount of development the site could sustain due to the presence of trees on site which have protection, the conservation area status of Nunhead green and the setting"
They also say they would not support development of any more that 2/3 storeys on the site.
More good news is that Southwark's Primary Care Trust (which is responsible for managing local health services, eg GP services, community nurses, preventative health) are seriously considering buying the site and building a new health centre there. It would mostly like involve the Nunhead Grove GP practise relocating to the new centre and providing more services. Sounds promising so let's hope it happens. I'm also pressing for the Council and PCT to involve local residents in developing the plans.
Labels: Childcare, Conservation Area, Early Years, Health, Planning, Street scene
posted by Fiona on Monday, March 19, 2007
3 comments
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3 Comments:
Parents were not consulted. I have just sent this email to the Ass Director of Community Services:
Mike Smith,
As a parent of one of the children at Nunhead Green Early Years Centre I received your letter yesterday explaining the situation regarding the future of the Centre. I am grateful for receiving clarification, though have to express dismay that we were only informed about this possibility AFTER the decision has been taken. As a former Council Leader myself in another Authority I am familiar with the need to consult on issues such as this that can have significant impact on the delivery of public services. Decisions such as these, if they are to be informed, need to take in the perspectives of those affected and weigh them up. This clearly has not been done. The decision has been taken in the dark by individuals without any connection to the Centre or the people involved.
So the EYC is in a building with a limited life (and the heating bills must be very high), but has anyone thought to enquire of parents and staff how much they value the green space around the building, and would alternative uses make as full use of such green space (assuming a replacement building has a similar footprint)? You say that this is a decision 'merely' to move the centre, but your letter begs as many questions as it answers. What are the thoughts over timetable? How can a building on a restricted site without grass provide as good a service to the children involved? I understand that you expect to be answering these questions from those parents able to attend, and I will be making every effort.
I would like you to communicate my complaint about the lack of consultation to the Director of Community Services, and if there is any rational reason you can think of why it is that staff and parents had first to find out about this by reading Southwark News, I would be grateful if you could communicate that to me. It is no indication of a Council keen to find out the views of its residents and service-users.
Paul Ingram
Dear Fiona,
Do you know anything about the £100.000 re-generation of the old pool area in Peckham Rye Park? Apparently there has already been and a consultation and by all accounts it had a very low attendance, mostly a handful of people in the know. There was absolutely minimal advertising regarding the meeting. The fact that the old pool area is situated so close to the Nunhead side of the park it was very surprising that the residents of Nunhead were seemingly so un-informed. At least a notice on the Nunhead Green notice board would have helped. Before the East Dulwich masses move the pool to the other side of the park or divert the funds towards more lampposts around Goose Green could you post some information on your Blog just to give it some extra exposure?
Thanks
More on the EYC soon.
Anonymous - I'll make enquiries about this. I've got a meeting coming up with the officers who manage the Cleaner Greener Safer projects and I think this was one of them.
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