James Barber

Last I heard was weekend 25 & 26 September. I'm not holding my breath - excuse the pun.

Hi Peckham Rose, Apologies. I tried to resist but in the end being prodded twice got to me. Sorry.

Hi kford, The link took me to some very strange ideas. Where street lighting had been modernised - which is East dulwich ward is virtually every street one yellow sodium light has not been replaced with three lamp posts. This modernisation is to national standards. Where its happened it has seen a dramaric reductions in electrity useagge of around 35%. The white light is meant to enable people to see whites of other peoples eyes and where they're looking. IF anyone has street lighting shining into their bedrooms then a shield can be added to deflect light away. In the last two years I've arranged this about 3-4 times. Just email me your full contact details to get the ball rolling. I have enquired about central control of street lights enabling options such as dimming them for set times - costs around ?40 per lamp post. But frankly sorting out the streets that have'nt been modernised has been the priority. Crime and light levels. Modernising streets lighting is great to help resolve hotspots. Modernisation helps avoid new crime hotspots developing. More effecive is reducing the fear of crime and the more people out and about generally the lower crime levels as more passive surveillance.

Worth trying Dawson's Hill/Heights.

Hi VikkiM, Sorry you feel suggesting to residents they visit their next local community council and tell their councillors how they feel about this issue is a silly post. Being a Lib Dem i can't help believing in local democracy. Having a real local issue to motivate more local residents to get involved and visit a community council is in my mind a good thing. I've received more requests this week about this issue over hear in East Dulwich that any other single issue. Those lights are causing problems in East Dulwich. Hi Gavin Edwards, Broken promises. Presume you mean lib dems joining a national coalition and having to negotiate which manifesto promises the coalition would deliver. Now that is a silly response. Labour are in coalition running Wales compromising and not delivering everything they promised. Labour were in coalition with Lib Dems running Scotland and both parties compromised and didn't deliver all their electoral promises. If voters don't leave one party with a majority then of course not all electoral promises can be delivered. When the negotiations for a national coalition were being made Labour bottled it and have chosen for non of its manifesto promises to be delivered.

Hi DulwichFox, Plan is to rotate pictures so I'll ask for replacement. 'scum' should never cause us to live timidly. This is great scheme that's brought a lot of enoyment and we will conitnue to keep it until residents get bored of it. Where and what next? Sculpture hanging of off a wall at the junction of Lordship Lane with East Dulwich Grove?

Take a picture and please emial it to me.

I'm sorry that promises made to the local community when the Lib Dems ran Southwark Council isn't going to be kept after change of political leadership for what sound fine reasons in abstract but don't appear to resonate with anyone's experiences who live there. If you disagree with the Labour Peckham Rye councillors and officers recommednations go to the next Community council meeting and tell them. Date of next one is 5 October with venue to be confirmed. http://moderngov.southwarksites.com/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=177&MId=3391&Ver=4

Hi Marmora Man, I do recall such a promise being made. I've contacted officers asking this question and await their reply.

That is a remarkably unfair representation of Cllr Nick Stanton and what he has said and his views and those of the Liberal Democrats. Nick doesn't broadly agree with conservatives on the free market and council housing. As with any coalition compromises were agreed. I think you'll find Nick's view is that an area such as E&C so near to central London SHOULD NOT be poor. It should have lots of oppotunities and schemes to get currently residents well employed. Nick created lots of local apprenticeships, insisted suppliers take local apprentices, ensured every new building with S106 maximised local training and employment. That's the argument he was trying to make. He laos guranteed that every resident can return to the regenerated E&C but if they've moved to other parts of Southwark they can choose to stay there. I've spoken to several very happy East dulwich residents who moved down from the Heygate estate. The regeneration discussions of E&C were started way before the Lib Dems led the council from 2002-2010. Including the Heygate estates into the scope was agreed before Nick became council leader way back in 2002. The final signed regeneration scheme signed in July by the new Labour administration REDUCES the social housing that the draft document that could not be signed during purdah. Genreeally the social housing problems in Southwark and UK generally are related to the inability of Southwark to legally borrow on the free market. Southkwark is only allowed to go via treasury vehicle that charges ridiculous rates. It also means Southwark can't borrow to force those 5,000+ empty homes back into use. The mere ability to say the council could would move many of those homes back into use.

Apologies the resident from Lordship Lane amongst odd numbers 331-351 I've lost your pseudonym so can't PM you. Officers have told me the following about gas works which have so far taken 10 weeks: " Thank you for your email enquiring about the works being carried out on Lordship Lane. Unfortunately, Southern Gas has encountered a few problems. Please see below an explanation / outline of the works being carried out. Section from outside 310 Lordship Lane to junction of Barry Road - - Started as planned on 16th August under 4 way temp signals. - Found unrecorded back feed and buried valve (S/O Barclays Bank and hardware shop). - Abandoned 18" main yesterday (from 310 to outside St Thomas More Church) approx 260m. - Approx 2 weeks remaining. - Will be resourced Tuesday to weld new pipe and insert across junction in one operation (working extended hours as required). Section from Friern Road to Court Lane - This section was planned to be finished and reinstated before 16th August, but over ran due to the following reasons - - The 18" main dives to approx 1.4m cover, therefore making insertion not an viable option. - Had to open cut, taking longer to lay new main. - Had a broken water main at junction of Court Lane (not damaged by MUS) that took approx 1 week to get repaired. - Had some access problems to properties whilst renewing services. - Team are backfilling trench and service connection holes today and tomorrow so reinstaters can be on site over weekend to tarmac. The Road Network engineers will continue to monitor the works to ensure that Southern Gas keeps to the schedule. " Coming across all these unexpected problems - especially 260m of abondoned mains which I'd guess is cast iron - is very hard to keep to any project plan or schedule.

Hi louisiana, You've asked about the proposed new Grove Vale library and St.Aidan's. Firstly St.Aidan's. Their latest scheme is a business centre in Croydon and its reached the first floor. So I can only assume they don't just sell approved schemes but do indeed build some of them themselves. I can;t comment on Crystal Palace as I don't know anything about that. New Grove Vale library. I came up with the idea in 2005 and a scheme achieved planning permission in January 2008 after hurculean negotations during a crazy property market. Unfortunately the economic bubble burst and bank lending is problematic meaning the orignal scheme doesn't work commercially. Saying all that things have been proposed, commented on etc since then at frequent intervals. Attached is the latest ground floor I've seen. The blue would be an aspirational retailer/coffee shop I've been told possible names but that means nothing until ink dried. The green would be the new Grove Vale library around 280m2 which is roughly twice the size of the current one which is 144m2. The new library would come with peppercorn rent, etc. So moving the current library alone would save a little more than 25% of the current Grove Vale library costs. Problems. Clear that council budgets will be cut. Whether this library saving 25%+ would still be kept open by the administration isn't yet clear as they have a lot of options to consider. Next steps. The developer working up detailed plans and submitting them - which I expect within the next 8 weeks. Council then deciding whether it wants to take up the option of a new enlarged library on peppercorn rent or close Grove Vale library. Our community then commenting whether they agree with the scheme or not and telling planning officers. Then a planning committee sitting and deciding. I'm clearly prejudicial as I came up with the idea of incorporating a new library in any scheme so I wont be on any committess making decisions. But I would expect to speak at any planning committee as a ward councillor. Have I answered your questions?

Various sources believe UK population will increase by around 10 million net in the next 20 years from 62 million to 71.5 million. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/21/uk-population-growth-70-million http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article21565.html For Southwark that could mean an extrs 50,000 people!

Hi Mick Mac, Yes, Project Manager on the case, artitects have done detailed drawings, and I believe the planning application has been submitted. Hopefully all installation will happen before Xmas.

Hi pecksniff, Not yet. I'll have to chase officers for response ot question if council can do anything. I suspect it will be problem for you to deal with directly with the owner.

Former East Dulwich councillor Richard Thomas created a scheme to try and help Independant Local Retailers by improving the Environment (ILRE). Every community council area was given funds to spend improving local shopping. The decision of how to spend this for Dulwich was taken when 6 conservative councillors and majority was allocated to Norwood Road. However, we did reach agreement for the environment for shops on Underhill Road to be improved. Attached are artists impressions of how it should look.

Hi rahrahrah, peterstorm1985, louisiana, Blimey! Speed enforcement by the Policei n London is largely under the control of the Mayor of London. Ken Livingstone halved the number of traffic Police, Boris Johnson hasn't reversed that and nearly closed the Police unit that concentrates on lorries obeying the law - such an uproar he did as U turn. Locally we've arranged for the East Dulwich and village Police to have speed radar guns but they can;t enforce speeds all the time and even East Dulwich with 65 street some as long as Crystal Palace Road. To declare an area 20mph, unless the aveage speed is under 20mph already, has to have physical measures to make people travel at 20mph. Hence speed bumps. Average speed cameras could enforce 20mph areas but the Labour govt really put the brakes on this tecdhnology being approved for 20mph and Tory side of coalition believe breaking the law when speeding should'nt be enforced with cameras. So we're stuck with either allowing speeding or installing humps. Several types of humps. The best are sinusoidal humps as installed on Melborune Grove betweem Grove Vale and East dulwich Grove which affect all vehicles including 4x4's Speed cushions which 4x4's can ignore are installed on Melbourne Grove betweem Lordship Lane and East Dulwich Grove. What is proposed is sinusiodal humps. The other benefit of such humps is not just the speed reduction but also that they discourage rat running along residential streets. If we could take photos on number plates etc - that's the same technology to record entering and leaving number plates which would be fab as humps can be very uncomfortable for people with disabilities.

I thought they looked fine when turning in profile. Shame they could'nt have circled around for a while. Eitherway historic moment commemorated.

Fro memory Southwark Council has debt of around ?750M or which circa ?550M is from building council homes in the 60's and 70's. The average rate of interest is 14% which plunges to around 8% in 2014 when certain debts mature and get replaced. All borrowing has to occur via a treasury vehicle which blocks Southwark or any other LA borrowing on the open market. If Southwark could borrow on the open market at market rates it would borrow more to fix issues that cost too much to patch - roads being one - and then save sufficient revenue to pay down debt. Most Southwark debt interest is paid for by central governtment as a central govt council housing subsidy. So current council housing is in debt. 45,000 tenanted properties divided into ?550M = ?12,222 per property. Southwark typcially receives around ?85pw rent from tenants.

Why dodn't you go along to the Southwark Local History Library on Borough High Street behind John Harvard Library. I'm sure they'd be delighted to give some steers where you might look in their archives to track this club down.

A public consultation will shortly take place, my guess about 4 weeks time, whether residents would support 20mph speed limits with traffic calming on Matham Grove, Chesterfield Grove and Ashbourne Grove - probably in the form of sinusoidal humps and 20mpn signage only for Blackwater and Bassano. I'm expecting to view the draft consultation documents on Monday. One suggestion was to reverse the one-way worknig of Matham GRove. Any views please email me.

Hi Fuschia, Around East Dulwich about 3 hotspots where the parking restrictions stated on little plates on poles are regularly removed so enforcement can't take place. When the plates are in place enforcement officers have been repeatedly intimidated. These locations are known and if the problem continues we end up having to make them double yellow lines which don;'t need the plates and no parking is allowed. So as long as your taking notice of the yellow lines and signs you should have nothing to worry about.

Voter regristration forms should be arriving now on doormats. Pleasedo ensure you respond to stay on thre electoral roll. Also I believe credit/mortgage agencies use the electoral roll to help confirm bona fide nature of people.

After taking a look at the pictures decision to hold of replacing them for now as damage not as bad as first thought and will hold back the cash for more dire repairs/replacements in the future. Also, at some point I'd like to change the pictures.

On Friday the South Circular collapsed on one side. They opened it up and found little holding the road up on both lanes. I've been told it will take two weeks to rectify. So guess that means another eight days of traffic chaos if you're trying to use the South circular towards the east. Thankfully non of our residential streets will be affected by the diversions around the problem.