James Barber

With the threat of a Councillor Call for Action (CCfa) from fellow Lib Dem Cllr Robin Crookshank-Hilton and the planned demo this morning the administration last night announced they'd 'found' ?50,000 to save all the lollipop patrols for one year. The campaigning in the Dulwich area has led to all 10 patrols across Southwark being saved for now. Talking to the managers concerned they undertook a study of lollipop patrol useage on 4 & 5 April. However, some schools broke up noon 5 April and others 6 April with many kids collected that week in cars due to the volume of end of term course work to be taken home. It seems clear that the CCfA, which would have been the first in Southwark, would have shown the basis for the lollipop analysis was funadamentally flawed. Well done kids, parents, school staff and Robin for saving all Southwark lollipop patrols for now.

Hi karter, What fuschia has described traffic wardens is daft. Either as you point out they have targets to hit in which case hiding and giving tickets would be more successful in hitting targets OR visitng more than once. This is probabl a job for the smartcars :o)

Hi bea1, I beg to differ. Tragic that the incident happened at all and I hope the bus driver and other passengers make full recoveries. BUT Southern Gas Network have been very lax and lacking any sense of urgency. For such a major thoroughfare you'd expect people to be working from 8am-6pm at least. They don't start before 9am and end by 4pm. The incident happened 11 days ago and still the southbound lane is closed. For Southwark Council to allow this style of 'working' is beyond me.

I've located the attached high level budget - and have asked for tha copy of the detailed Library budget book. I asked about eBooks some time ago and Southwark Library officers were waiting and seeing how that developed - one of the earlier requests when I started properly on the forum.

You should have dialled 999 to report the assualt. You should still report it even now. The behaviour as you've report it is criminal. Sadly Southwar;'s noise team no longer operate after 2.30am which means realistically no more calls after 1.30/2am. If you find you don't get sufficient Police follow up please email so I can escalate it.

Hi Fuschia, What you've described seems daft. I'll ask about the smart cars and whether they can visit.

Can you please emial what happened and I'll invesitgate. Southwark should serve notice to ulitilies blocknig suck road works for two years.

Appalling. The ED Police have free attack alarms. Email me your contact details to arrange to get one

Hi Saveshambo, Yes, buses between Peckham Rye and Streatham means buses from ED. If you're travelling to London Bridge probably best to stroll over to Barry Road and catch no.12 to PR and catch train from there.

Hi georgegarrett, I'll PM you else this thread would not stick to local issues you'd like me to fix. Regards james.

My ward collegue Councillor Jonathan Mitchell is out of hospital but must reast for the next 4 weeks. So please, any case work direct it to me and avoid JM for the next month.

I've tried iPad2 and Kindle for reading and I found it a horrible unengaging experience. I and most people will stick with books thank you.

Lollipop patrols are paid for from a ring fenced account of parking tickets, parking fee, parking permits charges minus costs of enforcement. Parking fees have just been nearly doubled, parking permits are going up on average by 26% and the costs of enforcement is being cut with a new contract. So the council has more money for lollipop patrols but has decided to cut them. Savings ?50,000 per annum. One road death costs the country ?1.5M. All the crossings being cut are on roads greater than 20mph and adherence to the traffic lights very imperfect by drivers. Apart from the eventual tragic human cost of death and injury this is a daft financial cut - at the same time ?9M a year is beign added to the reserves from revenue and another ?6M a year from capital. The councils unallocated reserves were ?21.2M at the start of this year and will end at over ?35M and increase at that rate for some years to come.

Hi undisputed truth, I'd be amazes to obtain the break down of the ?1/2m but will ask.

Hi first mate, What an appalling memory you have. The council last formally consulted about this some time before 2006. Last year many residents raised this on the doorstep so local Councillors ran a questionaire about this and small majority from meory wanted controlled parking. Really don't see the car wash at the Lordship Lane end of Chesterfield causing Parkin stress on Melbourne Grove? The parking stress survey that was gently undertaken will make it clear if commuter parking is the issue or not.

I received an email earleir to say southboumnd Denmark HIll is now reopened under controlled traffic lights. not Southwark's finest hour.

Denmark Hill still closed sounthbound and no obvious work going on this mr ing or changes since yesterday morning. Truely bizarre.

Yes it is free. A public consultation that will include the part of Melbourne Grove between Grove Vale and East Dulwich Grove will take place late Autumn about whether residents want Controlled Parking. A parking stress survey has taken place and I'm trying to obtain the results.

Hi savage, You're right someone should answer the phone or it should divert in extremes to voice mail. Easy to hook this up to email voice converter so that the noise team get to see it straight away.

I've just received an email from SOuthwark Council officials hoping to open Denmark Hill to southbound traffic tomorrow. Must say I'm hugely disappointed at how this appears to have been handled. Closing such an arterial road then only reopening it northbound after 35+ hours and the southbound blocked probably for another 48 hours with little or not visible work going on for most of this time is outrageous. If we had tube lines people would have underground ways of getting past this. Even the nourthbound bus services are disrupted as they don't carry lots of spare buses and drivers to cope with the added journey times of the southbound buses.

Denmark Hill still pointlessly closed to southbound traffic. As of 8.15am no one on site doing anything. Clearly shows the high regard bus users are held by Southwark Council Network Management team. If this is annpying do complain to councillor [email protected] and cc please cc me [email protected].

Hi savage, Southwark Council is led by the Labour party and their budget for this year was to drastically cut the noise teams. They no longer operate after 2.30am and reduced. Weirdly they are on during weekday 9-5 hours. This was a political choice they made while hoarding an extra ?9M into reserves every year going forward.

Hi Fuschia, Great idea. Please do feed it into the Library review. Income generation last year was over ?500K. At the new Canada Water library its proposed to have a permanent full time booking person to maximise room bookings.

Hi triniy, Southwark Council have decided to reduce the number of lollipop people from 52 to 42. The 10 selected to be removed are at signalised crossings. I don't believe any survey of how many vehicles don't stick to the traffic lights have been undertaken. All are located on roads above 20mph. Recent research not taken into account is clear that 7-11 year olds are unable to judge vehicles speeds above 20mph - hence why kids in this age groups feature disproportionately in traffic collisions. The research surmises that this is why you get comments "they just stepped out" of course they did beacuse at 50mph you don't register in such kids brains. So the junctions Southwark Council have chosen to remove 10 lollipop people are exactly the locations they should'nt be removed without proof that vehicles ARE obeying the signals. The money that will be saved is calculated to be ?50,000 in total. The pot of money this comes from is the surplus on the parking account. So after paying for parking wardens etc all the money raised from parking fees (prices double this year) parking permits (increased by 26% on average this year), and parking fines (money spent enforcing this reduced after a renegotation). So they've loads more money and their slashing spending keeping our kids safe. This means many families will be much less likely to let our kids walk to school unsupervised and when they do let them do this they'll have to be much older. Huge cost to our society far outweighing the ?50k a year. Even one child in a serious or fatal collission every 20th year at these crossings will cost more than the savings. If you don't want this to happen then several things you can do: - write to Southwark News and/or South London Press ([email protected] & [email protected] respectively) telling them. - Email the Labour council leader your views on this and why and it can't be money - [email protected] - Join the Facebook group Save Southwark's Lollipop crossing. - Promote this issue to your PTA and spread the word via the school. Even if your school isn't affected it could be next time.

Hi Ko, Litter pickers have very little kit and a LOT of ground to cover. I suspect the idea is to avoid loading them down as they wont cover the ground. Whereas we now have street sweeping once a month and they have everything needed and more to undertake it. In the past we didn't have litter pickers only street sweepers who cleared litter at the same time and it costs an awful lot more sweeping the streets several time a week. Sorry to hear dog poo clearing now 4 hours rather than 1 hour response time. Another cut back this year (I'll refrain from explaining why it wasn't needed!).