Renewal Area Stalled?

At the beginning of the month I finally pinned down the Nunhead & East Peckham Renewal Team to give them a good grilling.

The news is mixed. On the plus side the Bellenden Renewal project is just about polished off, so the team can now focus entirely on Nunhead and East Peckham. They also seem to be making reasonable progress with the street renewal project on Astbury Road and Colls Road which will see households who have opted in get new garden walls and a brickwork clean up. Low income households (defined as those on income support) will get additional help to bring their homes up to a decent standard including safety works such as rewiring and energy efficiency works like insulation and double glazing.

The other very good news is that the money for the project has been secured for the next three financial years.

On the downside the staffing problems have got even worse. The team is meant to have 10 people and currently there are only 5! An inability to fill vacancies has been a problem for the project ever since it started 2 years ago. The result is that lots of promises have been made, particularly to make improvements on Evelina Road and Queens Road, but very little if anything appears to have been done. I am now regularly asked by residents if the project has been cancelled.

Myself and my ward colleagues have raised this issue numerous time with questions at the Town Hall. The LibDem Executive Member responsible seems to be very pleased with himself for attending lots of committee meetings, but I'm left wondering why he doesn't spend some time sorting out the problems facing this project!