James Barber

This route was retendered as part of Transport for London tranche 339 with consultation starting in February 2009. Input from Southwark residents, councillors and officers meant we asked for the route to call into Sainsbury's on Dog Kennel Hill. TfL rejected this as it would make the journey less direct, lengthen the journey and overall increase the subsidy costs. What they did agree to was including longer buses as an option in the tendering process. In October 2010 Abellio was awarded the contract (previous operator London Central) on condition new buses were used. The most recent communication from TfL Buses to Southwark in February confirmed the new operator and buses would start in March. Clearly they've made a great start. If you ever have concerns about particular bus routes do let local councillors know. We raise issues with council officers who are in regular contact with TfL so when bus route contracts come up for retendering they have lots of feedback to give TfL. Council transport officers also check with councillors what inputs and views we hold before submitting the councils input to TfL.

We've recently had a 50 trees planted in East Dulwich under the Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding. Several on Fellbrigg Road have been vandalised and now removed. We've arranged to replace them in the next 10-14 days. It is outside the normal tree planting season but hopefully these replacements wont be vandalised and will survive despite the late planting. This has been made possible by the suppliers Street Tree Care only charging cost price for the trees and planting them for free.

This Tuesday 7pm Dulwich College Great Hall the latest public meeting of the Save The Velodrome campaign. They've some good new in agreeing a 15 year lease with Dulwich Estate for the track but the grounds still on much shorter rolling lease. So still lots to be done to secure a long term future. If cycling and youth facilities are your thing please do pop along.

I've sent a message to the head of service asking how we can ensure the changing rooms are warmer and less draughty. As soon as I get a response or have to chase I'll let everyone know.

Upto three weeks due to emergency repairs required.

We've finalised the budgets for traffic calming with humps for Matham Grove, Ashbourne Grove, Chesterfield Grove and 20mph speed limits for Bassano, Blackwater, Heber, Goodrich (between Lordship Lane and Barry Road), Jennings, Landells, Landcroft, Pellatt, Silvester and Thompson. The total cost of this is ?50,000 + ?2,000 contigency. Without the contingency in place it couldn't proceed. So we've decided to reallocated ?2,000 from the ?8,000 remaining in our Crime Prevention Fund and hope to be able to return it. The works shouldn't take more than a couple of months from now before completed. Any questions or concerns please do get in touch with me.

Hi aspidistra, I had hoped I'd made it clear that residents, market traders and shop owners were near unanimous against sunday trading. The council manager involved didn't publicly make any further proposals for sunday trading. It appears to have been led by Cllr Althea Smith with her colleague aligning quickly despite the protestations of the Lib Dem and tory Licensing Committee members who listened to the recommendations made as a result of the public meeting at the Dulwich Community Council. I'm sure that Althea will be much more helpful when confronted by a lot of residents and councillors giving evidence in about 6 months time. Hopefully the meeting wont be at an obscure location or time to avoid this.

We had a huge debate when the pool first reopened about pool temperature is 'denny' the only one to think its overly cool/cold again?

Emergency road works reported to me on East Dulwich Road close to Goose Green starting on 14 March. Apologies I didnt notice this email in the daily deluge. Not clear when it will end but the emergency notice is for 21 days.

Hi Fred, This isn't last minute end of year spend. It's a decision taken last summer. Officers don't expect or have to spend the money by 1 April.

Hi treehugger, Could you please report it to me ideally with the lamp post number or precise location so that council contractros can quickly find it. Their is a type of this sign that is no longer maintained. But council officers will be able to tell us that once inspected. If it is one of the defunct types I'll ask for it to be removed.

Hi DJKillaQueen, The advice from council officers that colleagues have been shown is that Southwark council housing might be ?1M worse of per year BUT it will have far less bureaucy to contend with. As the Housing Revenue Account is a huge account with hundreds of millions this should be perfectly manageable.

Hi skyblue, I couldn't agree more. This will sound weird but I'm political with a small p. My prime goal is to improve things where we live.

Apologies and thank you Penguin68. Yes, I meant Friday 8 May.

Hi skyblue, You did ask! The Labour administration have said they can't make a business case to justify the new school so they wont apply for the money to be released. Until 5 May last year we had the proof needed and still believe it is required. With Canada Water redevelopment and many thousands of new homes there and across north southwark happening a school will be needed. Equally NW lewisham is developing thousands of new homes. At the last Rotherhithe Community Council the Labour cabinet member for education stated publicly the funds had been withdrawn by the government. Simon Hughes double checked and has had it confirmed they haven't been withdrawn. Frankly, its political priorities. When no Lib Dem councillors were in the south of Southwark we still made sure the Harris Boys school happened as it was the right thing to do for the SE22 area.

Hi DJKillaQueen, Well reducing succession seemed pretty radical at the time and telling people they haveto move when paretns have just died seems a little harsh. It will be interesting to see if the Labour led Southwark Council changes this.

The Underhill Road/Barry Road junction improvements will take place starting 4 April and take five weeks. Effectively each side of this junction will have what is called an entry treatment where the road is raised to the level of pavement. These 'vertical deflection' each side of Barry Road on Underhill Road slowing vehicles down and this is expected to drastically reduce the frequency and severity of collisions. So from Friday 8 April this junction should be signififcantly safer. The final part of the jugsaw will then be changing the Give way to stop signs...

The licensing sub-committee that will undertake the Dulwich Hamlet Footbal Club license review will meet 10am 28 March at Southwark Town Hall, Peckham Road/Havil Street junction.

Hi lordshilass, Deadline is tomorrow to apply to the council - this is due to the legal requirement for advertise any road closures and check with emergecny services that they don't have a problem with anything proposes. This latter point is even more important is several roads plan to close on the same day.

Hi speedbird, The collission maps do indicate a ribbon of crashes along Grove Vale, Lordship Lane and east Dulwich Road. All three roads do need changes to reduce collissions. Orignally the emphasis was going to be Lordship Lane first as clearly the worst collission ribbon and a busy high street to boot. The change in administration and the emphasis moved to Grove Vale as it represents the border between East Dulwich ward (Lib Dems) and South Camberwell ward (Labour). A large slab of the proposed works and budget are for Tintagel Crescent that has virtually no recorded collisions but does appear on Goose Green school travel plan wish list. As I suggested to officers they should be spending such money elsewhere in Southwark where collisions actually are occuring.

My eczema has been terrible in the past. A 10 or 11 years ago I felt I had to be seen right away and could'nt wait the then 12-16 weeks for a referral and went private. Lovely lady at Kings College Hospital. After the first consultation she transferred me to NHS side. Eczema resolved for 6 years after two consultations. 4 or 5 years ago another flare up and given UV light treatment. Worked a treat and only recently has the excema given me a littel grief.

Hi intexasthemoment, Apololgies I am having a bad hair day. I think it terrible if kids living in SE22 are being offered school places in schools outside Southwark, that means they'd have to travel past schools in Southwark they'd like to attend, while kids near the out of Southwark school don't attend their local school but travel to a Southwark school. Its not good for local community and its bad for the planet. Beign in SE22 I've only come across one family that have visited the Deptford school and their reaction to no other places being offered locally is to see if they can afford to go private. This is a terrible state of affairs and makes me feel angry. Harris Boys banding and its over subscription will mean some kids living near the school wont have been allocated places. It spreads the ability range but can create weird anomalies. As Renata has reiterated our local schools have become dramatically better and more families want to use local Southwark schools. One thing that would help is the previously proposed but Southwark has now cancelled new secondary school in Rotherhithe the government has funds reserved for. With the domino affect it would mean all kids in Southwark would be offered a local place and fewer others would be attending schools outside the area.

Hi Dorothy, I'm arranging to visit Harris Boys School. I'm also planning to arrange a visit to Kingsdale School. Admissions policies are not easy or quick to change.

The Grove Vale scheme has a budget of ?500,000. To mount a Judicial Review would require a solicitor and barrister/s and if costs were awarded against me could quickly mount in more than the ?21.63 in my wallet or my small bank overdraft facility could cope with! Saying that the threat of a JR usually see's Southwark climb down.

I look at Germany and see they had to cut government spending by 1%. They have balance of payments surplus, high growth for Europe all within 20 years of abosrbing 15million extra souls from E.Germany. I see Scandanvian countries doing well. It speaks volumes that we're economically closer to southern Europe in terms of national debt than our geographic location would have suggested.