rch

Actually the ?10K (almost ?11K now) is an allowance to cover expenses (bus fares and computers to answer emails, etc) but, if you do the job properly, it's not nearly enough. I was going backwards at a rate of noughts, working 60 hours a week for ?10K, which is another reason I had to stop. However, the party in power gets top-up allowances of over ?30K each per annum for cabinet positions and between ?8-20K on top of the ?10K for committee chairs and deputy cabinet posts. At this point it becomes a viable remuneration, while the opposition councillors struggle to survive, or end up not being able to cover the expected councillor duties as well as expected because they're working on top of having a family life. So, it's really unfair... if everyone got an equally basic income at minimum, with smaller cabinet and chair top-ups, then the residents would almost certainly get a better service and representation from elected members. I would reduce the number of cllrs per ward to two, or maybe even one, and split the ?33K per ward total so that it became a full time position with administrative back up.

Well, why not? Both Herne Hill and Dulwich Village are having discussions about creating devolved Neighbourhood Forums... it might be something that we should consider in the fullness of time. But, in the meantime, I think the best we can do is stick together to fight for the interests of our community.

You can keep denying it, Wulf, but it's this kind of "corporate denial" that is holding back actually solving the problems. I totally agree that cycling issues should be addressed, but not at the expense of a dynamic solution that serves the whole community. In 2011, 10% of the DCC population of 36,535 was over 65 and 21% were under 15. That's 30% of the local population, to say nothing about the influx of pupils into the local schools from outside the area. And this isn't the Netherlands, it's London - which is based around a medieval street layout. Or, in Dulwich's case, farm tracks. I tried for over a year in 2007 with the headmaster of Alleyn's to work out a way of implementing a segregated cycle lane on Calton Ave (with CGS funding) but, because of the trees, it was impossible to do this with obliterating one lane of parking, which proved unviable... so we abandoned the idea in the end. I also tried to have it made into a planning policy that all new developments is Southwark were required to implement separate cycle lanes in all their road schemes, but this was impossible to implement as well. You have to look at the bigger picture. Yes, a lot can be done to improve cycling options, but it won't necessarily get the majority of people out of their cars. We need creative layers of alternatives.

But, as Tessmo points out, the bottom line in both the Townley Junction and the Melbourne Grove discussions is the poor bus service in the Dulwich area, specifically the east-west service connecting Herne Hill, Dulwich, and East Dulwich. If we really want to get people out of their cars, we're going to have to drastically improve the public transportation in the Dulwich area. The geographical distances are much more extensive than in the middle and the north of the borough, along with the existence of up to 20 schools within a one-mile radius. Furthermore, the Dulwich demographic has a higher number of elderly residents as well as a higher number of families with young children than anywhere else in the borough, for whom cycling is an unviable option. So, if we genuinely want to address some of the issues that are being raised, we're going to have to look at the bigger picture here in Dulwich and not the one-size-fits-all fob off.

Just wanted to go back and flag the point that James made about the 2007 Safety Audit (which I posted about ages ago at the beginning of this thread). It did indeed flag up multiple safety issues created by the fact that TfL's contractors didn't follow the agreed layout plans. The biggest problem was with the pedestrian access, which is very high volume because of the schools. The extra crossing time created by the sheep pens was causing pedestrians to avoid the islands and walk straight out into the road. We tried to have the railings removed, but this was against highway safety advice, so the only choice was to remove the islands and build the corners closer together in order to shorten the pedestrian crossing timings, which would in turn speed up the light phases for cars, thereby reducing the traffic queues. A simple redesign with funding was scuppered in 2008 by political machinations and it's been difficult to raise the funding ever since. This situation did indeed have a knock-on effect, which led to the successful Save the Lollipops campaign in order to protect the high volume of students crossing the dysfunctional junction at peak school times. So, my suspicion is that the next event to look out for will be the council's removal of funding for the crossing guards now that the pedestrian crossing of the junction has been adequately improved. As a regular pedestrian user of this junction, I've walked back and forth across the new layout repeatedly and it is definitely noticeably better... so far.

The reporter told me that he had been following the discussion here on the forum, so I assumed that he grasped the bigger picture, otherwise I would have gone back to basics. On the second point, bear in mind that James is indeed the only councillor that we have regular contact with on local issues... we just need to figure out how to communicate more effectively so that these misunderstandings don't happen. As I've said repeatedly, I think the councillor system needs drastically overhauling... having three different people doing the job part time is insane ,there is no joined-up thinking. But we should have a separate discussion on this, as the ward boundaries are about to get reviewed before the next election and I think Southwark's representation is flawed. Or, better still, I genuinely think we need to start thinking of ways to set up our own network and community facilities down here in the Black Hole of Dulwich.

If I had been able to speak at the DCC meeting we could have sorted all this out in real time. Now we're all having to communicate on a forum and through the media. Welcome to democracy in Dulwich!

In a nutshell, we're still trying to confirm exactly what the DCC have decided to spend up to ?10,000 of public money on, as all the claims on the forum and in the media are going around in circles and are contradictory. To be clear, what our petition presented to the DCC on Sept 9th asked for:- "We believe the best way to get safer shared streets for everyone is to call on Southwark Council to produce a comprehensive traffic management study to include all roads in the Grove Vale/Lordship Lane, East Dulwich Grove, Townley Road triangle."

It would be useful to know what formal wording of the DCC decision is, because I'm now alarmed at the quotes in the Southwark News article that was published this morning, which looks as if the study could be misdirected into humps and "pinch points" now, which would be a nightmare for reasons that we have already discussed here on the forum. Southwark's highway engineers understand exactly what the issues on Melbourne Grove are and could probably suggest far better measures to address them, which is precisely what the bottom line of our deputation on Sept 9th was stressing. I also find it misleading that the action group and councillors are being quoted in the article as "bemused" at the anti-barrier campaign, when just two weeks ago our houses were leafletted claiming that "we've received some funding for a feasibility study into a barrier across Melbourne Grove."

The committee clerk did take draft minutes, but they only reflected the presentation of the action group and the sympathetic discussion of councillors afterwards (and I was told that there was no audio recording). I think the formal allocation of funding happened at the end of the meeting (which is usual practice), and we couldn't get the formal wording of this until the chair approved the minutes to be published a week before the Sept 9th meeting as per community council protocol. Catch-22.

Yes, it's true that local government virtually closes down in August, and the Southwark News article definitely didn't help, but bear in mind that we started asking for clarification the day after the June 24th deputation. If you go to the beginning of this thread, you'll see in James' post from June 25:- "What we agree last night was to fund a study of the anticipated impacts of closing the road. Once we have that study we will decide how to proceed. Clearly something needs to be done which could range for closing a road to better traffic calming. But until the study is completed - I suspect they have all the data already for this study - we don't know whether a road closure will be thought practicable. Lots of research to suggest some traffic evaporation would occur with a road closure - likely most would use Lordship Lane as an alternative. Some Townley." Even though this statement virtually contradicts the engineers' June 24 briefing which we finally accessed, we had no other channel of communication... none of the other councillors apparently corrected the belief that the funding was to study a road closure and neither did the chair of the DCC when I emailed him. So, by mid-August, we felt that we had no choice but to launch an anti-barrier campaign in order to give the "silent majority" a voice.

first mate... bear in mind that we actually held off until August 15th to start our anti-barrier petition because several of us kept trying to find out from the council exactly what was going on, because not even the pro-barrier petition that we saw had wording at the top confirming what residents were campaigning for. The point is that we got 300 signatures over the Bank Holiday period when most people were away... but, had we started the petition at the beginning of July, we probably would have gotten twice, maybe three times, more signatures. I spent a lot of time talking to people directly, so I'm pretty clear on what the problem is... I also spent a lot of time talking to those members of the action group that I could find. Sorry to sound like a broken record, but I would have clarified all this had I been allowed to speak at the Sept 9th deputation...

Another correction... the problem was that I DIDN'T know what the decision the DCC took on the 24th June was because I had to leave early and we didn't get the confirmation of the precise wording in the minutes until just a week before the Sept 9th meeting when it was posted on the council website. All we could see was a request for funding for a barrier and more yellow lines in the supplemental agenda for June 24th. In the meantime, the street was being leafletted at the end of August announcing the Sept 5th Play Event road closure (which was never consulted on as per the Play Event requirements, so we didn't even know about THAT until the traffic order came out on Fri, Aug 27th, just before the Bank Holiday) with the confirmation that, "Second, as you may have heard, we've received some funding for a feasibility study into a barrier across Melbourne Grove. That will happen in the next few months." We kept asking council officials, councillors, and even here on the forum what the funding for the feasibility study was allocated FOR, but no one would tell us so we assumed that the Melbourne Grove Traffic Action group has been successful in talking cllrs into allocating funding for a barrier study because that's what was being publicised. Residents were literally stopping me in the street, asking me what was going on and how we could stop a barrier. Even people who had theoretically signed the "petition" for the barrier were concerned. I also had to leave before the Sept 9th wording was agreed, so I technically STILL don't know what wording for the allocation of funding was agreed. I'm just pretty sure that it doesn't include research into a barrier option... and hopefully not a chicane, either, which will have the same knock-on effect. Preferably, the engineers will be free to ascertain what the problem is and recommend solutions without being diverted by people who don't understand highway legislation!

Smiley Face!! :-)

I totally agree with mate and intexas, but I'm glad we're able to clear the air and we should move forwards. BTW, James wasn't involved in the "hysterical" comment, but I'm glad that EDAus brought it up, as it's now become a frequently used council fob-off term. One last comment... the problem on Melbourne isn't speed and volume, but from the June 24 briefing and the short comments that Matt Hill was allowed to make on Sept 9th leads me to suspect that the highways engineers understand exactly what's going on.

I wasn't going to say anything more on this, but I feel like I still need to correct disinformation. I only apologised for the way I addressed a specific piece of disinformation that the June 24 deputation was presenting because I think the wording that I used was inappropriate and I was told that there was no audio recording so I couldn't prove what I had objected to, in order to justify my comments. In retrospect, this whole mess has been exacerbated by disinformation because the council communication chains are so poor. This is demonstrated by cllrs not even being aware of the disconcerting literature that was being circulated to all of us while not being able to confirm the funding allocation wording... even three days before the Sept 9th meeting, an action group member was aggressively telling me on the street that the barrier was pretty much a done deal and that *I* was the ONLY person objecting to it. I personally spoke to around 40 people in Melbourne and many of them, who had signed the first petition, signed our anti-barrier petition because they were concerned with how their signatures were being represented. And I'm not having a hard time adjusting to not being a councillor anymore - I have attended DCC meetings since before I was a councillor, it's one of the main reasons why I decided to become a councillor in the first place. But the DCC meetings aren't the open forum that they used to be, which is what I'm finding frustrating. I found Grok's comments about me feeling like I expected special treatment useful because, from my perspective, I find that I'm regularly struggling to be allowed to speak or even ask a short question at all, which appears to be causing me to behave like a cow. So this is why I'm relieved that so many people witnessed the overt gagging machinations during the deputation, as it's all now out in the open. But I genuinely think that the community council meetings are now as bad as council assembly and therefore attending them is pretty much pointless... what comes out of all of this from my perspective is that we really need to create a dynamic community forum where residents can be informed and issues can be openly discussed and debated.

No James, my memory is that there were several of us sitting together in the audience who were quite shocked at what was being said, so we might have been bantering loudly between us (especially when the leader of the deputation went well over his 5 minutes and then started bringing other supporters in to speak, which should have been stopped by the chair), but I only stood up and interrupted once during the question and answer period when the claims got too outrageous. I later asked the clerk to clarify what had been said from the recording, but it hadn't been recorded. I'm just glad that other people have actually witnessed the gagging tactic for themselves now, especially as I was part of the deputation this time.

ed_pete... I must remember to insert smiley faces when deploying ironic humour! :-) spider... see Bobby P's account above, he was there. But I don't want to focus on bashing, am going to go out and increase my Vitamin D levels in the sunshine, then post factual updates later on.

James, just to be factually accurate... I interrupted the previous 24 June deputation ONE TIME, because what they were repeatedly claiming was factually inaccurate and this was clearly influencing councillors' decisions, leading up to the mad decision to allocate up to ?10,000 of public money to study a "problem" that had been previously consulted on and which technically doesn't exist. The other times I spoke out was when the chair called on me after I raised my hand, which I actually thought was incredibly democratic of him at the time (and wrote to him afterwards to thank him for letting me speak). The point about the Sept 9th DCC meeting is that we went through the accepted constitutional deputation process... the leader gets to speak for 5 minutes uninterrupted and then other members of the deputation can respond to members questions or comments. During the exchange, there were several points that members were making that were inaccurate, but I wasn't allowed to respond even though I was formally part of the deputation. Consequently, there are several points which I'll go into in future posts here on the forum, but bear in mind that I know this subject extremely well because of extended police and highways briefings over the years... but, more importantly, bear in mind that because the local communication chain with the council is now so bad (which is what actually led to the anti-barrier campaign), my summer was totally ruined because residents were literally stopping me in the street asking me what was going on and what they could do to fight it, because NONE OF US could get a straight answer out of anyone for almost two months. On the positive side, as I specifically decided NOT to lead the anti-barrier campaign PRECISELY because I knew that I would be gagged, the result is that we now have a brilliant network of community activists with complementary skill sets who will continue to work together on other local issues. As for chairing DCC meetings... when I chaired the DCC, I quickly learned to keep the agenda items as reduced as possible in order to allow residents and other councillors as much time as they wanted to express their opinions, even though the protracted discussions often drove me mad. This was because I strongly believe in the democratic process... the DCC meetings are often the ONLY chance local residents have to hear their elected members speak openly or, more importantly, for residents to speak themselves and ask questions and have open discussions with the agencies who are presenting items that affect the community. But, unfortunately, because of the overt political machinations, one of the things that became abundantly clear at the last DCC meeting is that local democracy in Dulwich is a now complete sham.

Hi, mate. I don't want to name and shame anyone specifically... bear in mind that it wasn't just one particular councillor who was being obstructive - in my opinion, there was a complex political machination going on. And I hate politics! I'm actually enjoying working with a group of kindred spirits in the community... the silver lining in all of this is how a group of local residents have now formed a network that can address other community issues in the future. Power to the People!

Am going to attempt to be diplomatic here. The good news is that it looks like the barrier "solution" has been kicked into the long grass. The more disturbing news is that all of us in the deputation feel that the democratic process in Dulwich is less than satisfactory. We were hoping that, after our deputation statement was made (and specifically kept short to allow time), we would be able to have a open public exchange with members about various aspects of the situation, including an exchange with the highways officer who was present. We were all stunned at how our democratic attempts at a discussion were undermined. It was observed by members of our group how I, in particular, was obstructed from speaking to address specific issues that were raised. At one point I said to one councillor THREE TIMES that "You won't let me speak, you won't let me speak, you won't let me speak". To which he replied that he'd seen me speak on the East Dulwich Forum and that was enough. So, this is where we are now. We're still not sure exactly WHAT instructions councillors will give to highway engineers regarding the feasibility study. We're just fairly sure that it won't include a barrier and that the above statement from the 24th June (which wasn't released to the public until a week before the Sept 9th meeting) still stands. But we're not sure what KIND of traffic management study will be made, seeing as we have a recent police study from April 2015 along with a highway engineer briefing in June. In the meantime, the communication problems that caused this mess in the first place appear to be continuing and therefore the only way that the community can communicate with each other is via the forum, so I will continue to do that.

One more quick update... there are now 154 signatures online, plus at least 35 more paper signatures that were handed in yesterday in addition to the ones submitted on Sept 2nd (which totalled 122 paper and 103 online). So, I think we now have over 300 signatures in total which will hopefully amount to 250 once the invalid ones are removed. The total of 250 is useful as this represents the number of signatures required for valid petition request which can be submitted to the community council, as defined by the Southwark Constitution. Here's the link again in case anyone wants to join in before the Dulwich Community Council meeting begins at 7pm!:- https://www.change.org/p/southwark-council-no-barrier-for-melbourne-grove

Just want to say thanks to everyone who worked on and supported the Anti-Barrier campaign. In the spirit of goodwill, I spent quite a bit of time talking to my neighbours on Melbourne Grove about this entire situation... although I'm not sure how many MG residents signed the online petition, I know that over 30 signed the paper petition within the space of about a week. From my discussions, it appears that a significant number of these had signed the original petition, but were happy to sign the Anti-Barrier petition because they were concerned about the misunderstandings about whether a barrier was actually being proposed or whether it was simply being used as a "bargaining" tool (I've still not been able to confirm what was written at the top of the original petition, and the one submitted to the DCC had no statement at the top). There also seemed to be a lot of misunderstanding over what the actual problem on Melbourne was, which discussions on the doorstep were able to address in a positive manner, but were incredibly time consuming. The concerns were exacerbated by the traffic displacement nightmare triggered by the closure of Melbourne Grove on Saturday at lunchtime, it really was quite shocking to observe. In an attempt to get to the bottom of what was going on, I finally called the council myself yesterday, who confirmed that the other events were being cancelled because of a significant number of complaints and anomalies in the consultation process. I could probably say a lot more but, to be honest, I'm completely sick of typing and how this mess has ruined my summer. I'm quite happy for professional council officers who are getting paid to sort this out, am quite happy to meet with them to discuss it. One of the frustrations that I've observed over the past ten years is that every time a solution has been proposed by engineers and consulted on, residents have voted against it, which only prolongs the perceived problem... so, if nothing else, maybe a local public open day with engineers, proposed build-out drawings, and a seminar explaining ACPO speed definitions would help.

One more plug for the online petition:- https://www.change.org/p/southwark-council-no-barrier-for-melbourne-grove We're very close to a total of 250 signatures now, adding the online sigs plus the paper sigs. If we get to 250, then this meets the constitutional requirement of a petition to the community council, rather than simple support for the deputation, which basically means our request has more impact. If we can get the online version up to 150, then we'll definitely have over 250 total! More exciting updates later...

There used to be a CGS revenue fund, which is now known as the Neighbourhood Fund... I think the underspend was probably from the old CGS revenue fund, but James can confirm. FYI, the good thing about going through the standard bidding process is that all bids are assessed by officers as to viability and cost estimate, so unviable ideas are eliminated at this point. Then, councillors make their final decisions on short listed bids that are genuinely achievable and will improve the area. Part of our deputation is going to cite the exact aspect that you quoted above. Having seen the officers' briefing for cllrs, I suspect that a CGS or even a Neighbourhood Fund bid for a barrier on Melbourne wouldn't make it through the officer assessment stage...