James Barber

Hi Whoosh, I'm not aware of any changes to the pre existing traffic calming measures. and ot change them would require a public consultation, traffic order, etc. With so many 20mph zones it seems majority of collissions confined to main roads many of which are controlled by trasnport for London. Collissions don't seem to be occurring on roads with 3 speed cushions across them. Have a look at attached.

I'm not sure replacing countdown displays at East Dulwich bus stops with SMS texts messages has been thought through. What's the one thing Police tell you not to do - flash your mobiles around. What's the one thing TfL are now telling us to do at bus stops - flash your mobiles around. Also, paying 20p to find out what the buses are doing because you cant rely on the timetables isn't custoemr focused. My day job is in Telecomms and IT. London has 19,000 bus stops. To connect then up via digitial radios or broadband would be a drop in the ocean compared to the current bus subsidies. To remotely control street lights costs ?40 per street light and ?5,000 for the controller. Add a desplay costing ?200 ea including installation and you're looking at ?5m including project management costs. As I said I'll find the details I've been sent and add them onto this thread.

I'm sure if you asked the Village ward Polce Safer Neighbourhood Team to make a crime prevention visit they'll make useful suggestions. It would be a shame to have barbed wire and look like a PoW camp. Property marking kits reduce burglary by around 80%. You place a sticker at each potential door and window entry point so burglars know they can't fence any of the valuable. You're left with the odd idiot. Climbing over gates and fences. I'd peronally be surprised if many thieves could be bothered. They'll find an easier entrance at a neighbours. The contact details for the Village Police team are: 020 8721 2446 [email protected]

Free school lunches. I checked this morning if I'd understood the council leader Nick Stanton correctly. He stated that he'd applied for Southwark to join a London pilot for free primary school lunches. The govt pilot would have paid the full ?5m cost. Now that would have been free to Southwark. Apparently we didn't meet the criteria. So decided not to persue from council budgets due to cost and social inequity of it. hopefully this is the last I heard about free school lunches on EDF!

Hi Jeremy, Some time ago, when I started this thread, you asked about countdown displays at bus stops. I've been told by RTansport for London they are revewing all Countdown displays. In essence they're going to remove most of the ones we have and install new ones under differnt criteria. The new criteria appears to be if a bus stop is heavily used it may get a disply. If an infrequent bus stop it wont. That sounded reasonable until I was standing at an infruently used bus stop. The timetable said bus would come every 11-12 minutes. No one else was standing at bus stop so I thought as only 15minutes walk I'd walk. Needless to say a bus passed me 2 minutes later. Good for my health. Not good for encouraging bus use. If anyone's interested I'll post the full details.

Hi first mate, Sotuhwark Council Community Wardens do indeed issue fines to dog owners who don't pick up. I'll find out how many generally and how many in East Dulwich.

Its not for long. But thanks for everyone's patience.

I've had a further update from the head of Southwark's street cleaning service. The management team and suppervsors have'nt changed. What might have occurred is the street cleaners not being reminded recently thatthey clear up people's dog poos. As the worst part of their job apparently some need regular reminding. Disappointing they have to do this anyway. So, all street cleaners will be reminded and we'll see if this makes a difference.

Dog Poo. The officer in charge of street cleaning has again reassured me that Southwarks street cleaning operation has not had any management or supervisory changes. BUT he suggested it might be possible that the supervisors need to remind all the cleaners to clean up dog poo. As he rightly points out probably about the worst part of the job is cleaning up dog poos. All street cleaners will be reminded this is a key part of their role this week. We'll then see if the streets suddenly get cleaner that this has been the recent problem.

Tonight was budget setting assembly. We agree to freeze council tax for the next financial year. That's the third Southwark council tax freeze in five years and the other two were below inflation. It was made clear by the exec member for resources that Southwark has the second smallest reserves proportionally of any London council and that the finance director had advised they must be increased and the recommended amount was ?4m. Adding or withdrawing funds from reserves is not an everlasting commitment. Its decided each year based on financial advice. The increase in consultants fees are related to the tragic Baby P and all the extra costs associated with more children in care and also the Lakanal fire. All councils are suddenly realising that the training the London Fire Brigade provided housing officers really wasn't suitable for tower blocks. It was also made clear that just over a third of agency and consultancy costs are for street cleaners. Southwark employs more when the trees shed leaves, etc. Doing this is part of how Southwark became the third cleanest borough in London. Canada Water Library. For several years the revenue funding required to operate this library have been in the budget BUT Capitalised towards it building costs every year. This it to ensure we have revenue for when its finished. Your shadow resources spokesperson has been told this numerous times but it does make a good sound bite to claim running costs being incurred for an unbuilt library. I look forward to getting back to helping residents that need help.

Hi Penguin68, All Southwark's lampposts have been structurally assessed and given a status of red, green or amber. In 2002 a large number were not structurally sound and labelled red and these were targetted for replacement first. From recollection they were concrete lamposts and bits had been falling from them. These have all been replaced. I hope that reassures you. I believe we have 9 amber lamp posts in East Dulwich that's out of 870 lamp posts. I'll ask officers the latest status of those 35 and report back. As for patrolling. Southwark lighting officers patrol all streets at regular intervals - from memory fortnight all streets and more frequently for busier roads. when a light fails its very quick to repair if unrelated to the electricity supply to the lamp post - all the repairs are in Southwark's control. Where its the electricity to the lamp post and EDF energy are the repair agent it can turn into a real saga. We have two such long term repairs - one outside the Bishop pub and one on Goodric Road. Edited after double checking my sources for the number of Lampposts.

Hi Tomchance, That's exactly why we're doing it. Hopefully the public consultation proves most people would like to try this concept.

Hi Steveo, Apparently Southwark Life costs ?250,000 pa. Hammersmith & Fulham take an interesting approach where they take commercial advertising and have reduced the net cost to ?5,000 pa. Others such as Lambeth produce it fortnightly which presumably costs a lot mmore than 10 issues a year. Hope that answers your questions.

I recently acquired a map of Southwark with red dots for reported collisions involving people being hurt. See attached. I'm afraid I've lost the context of the period covered - memory tells me three years. Shows ribbon of crashes involving hurt people along main roads. Most of them TfL roads. Clear that Lordship Lane a problem. Hence the proposed crossing and ?500,000 to improve road safety along Lordship Lane and Grove Vale.

In 2006 we promised to finish moderning all 53 East Dulwich streets lighting. Under Cllr Richard Thomas leadership 19 had been completed in 2004/05. Since being elected in 2006 we've completed another 27 East Dulwich streets. Last week another 4 were started - Heber, Rodwell, Silvester and Thompson Roads. It's a long process as first the columns are installed. Then EDF Energy connects the columns to its electricity infrstructure. Then the heads get installed and commissioned. EDF Energy take around 8-12 weeks. One of the columns in Heber Road looks like it needs moving as it head will be in tree canopy. I've requested this after a helpful resident pointed this out. Generally any problems with lighting example shining in your bedroom let me know. Usually straight forward to fix.

Hi giggirl, I was indeed out canvassing at the weekend. Apologies if I was overly cheerful. It's just that canvassing is one of the best bit of being a councillor - excepting when we were out in the snow and ice that felt positvely dangerous. Anyway you meet lots and lots of people, collect lots of case work and find problems. Also, the odd myth gets dispelled. No doubt one day the mystery of iamhere will be solved.

Hi iamhere, I hada very short council meeting last night so spent the evening trying to find two email from the same person from the last fortnight that I hadn't replied to and I could'nt. So i extended the search to the last four weeks and still no luck. I sent you a PM yesterday lunch time apologising but have not heard from you. I'll send another PM with my personal mobile in the hope I'll hear from you. I'm really sorry but I'm at a loss. Did you send your email to [email protected]?

Hi Vikkim, Welcome to East Dulwich. Sorry I thought I'd made it clear I'd been asked to react on this subject via a PM. If you'd like to see what your Labour colleagues have suggested - http://moderngov.southwarksites.com/Published/C00000132/M00002877/$$Supp2838dDocPackPublic.pdf Your proposed funding for free school lunches works for one year only. The money you'd raid and stop from being placed in contingency funds is to buffer Southwark Council and its tax payers from the funding requirements of so many regeneration projects running concurrently - Elephant&Castle, Canada Water, Aylesbury. I take the view that these regenerations are very important. Southwark Council reserves, with such a stark recession, need to be bigger. 20,000 Primary school free lunches a day for 190 school days a year is a lot of free lunches, 3.8M, and a huge long term commitment. This would be storing up a problem when we all know central govt whether Tory or Labour will slash the money they give to local councils. The Labour alternative budget suggests 3.8M free school lunches will cost ?2.5M pa. 74p each. Not sure how nutritious a 74p free lunch would be. Perhaps it would cost more than that. Perhaps not so many free lunches? The alternative proposed budget doesn't include any capital costs for increasing sizes of existing school kitchens or the costs for building new kitchens for schools currently without. So the proposal in reality is probably for financial Year 11/12. In which case would you divert your proposed revenue spend to capital kitchen improvements? As an aside you've also said you'd stop the revenue funding of Canada Water Library. It would be clearer to say you'd stop building this new library as that is what the revenue funding is currently contributing to.

Hi spark67, You need to ask your College ward councillors to buy the local College ward Police Safer Neighbourhood Team some speed cameras/guns and active signs. We did this for the East Dulwich Police team and they can now have enforcement speed limits where residents report problems. Having these tools for the East Dulwich Police team meant we felt confident to seek this 20mph speed limit on roads bounded by Lordship Lane and including Whateley and Barry without speed humps and bumps. I'm hopeful the public consultation responses will agree.... If you have a view please do fill in the consultation form.

Hi SteveT, Speeding fines go to the treasury. They don't touch local council coffers. M25 has a 50mph speed limit to cope when high volumes. That seems to work. Dartford tunnel volumes keep going up and they're now talking about another bridge or tunnel. So I don't think speed limits would ultimately cope with this. Timing traffic lights to work consequetively if speed limit obeyed. great long overdue idea. Transport For london control traffic lights. Why don't they just do this?

I've been asked whether school free lunches could be universally provided to children in Southwark Schools. The total Southwark state school population is 33,849 with around 20,000 Primary school kids. This doesn't include children at Harris East Dulwich or Harris Bermondsey schools. So around another 1,600 pupils. 85% are Southwark residents. 7% from Lambeth 5% from Lewisham 3% from other boroughs. Something like 190 schools days a year. Around 25% receive free school lunches. So if schools did provide universal free lunches we'd have to find funding for circa extra 5 million school meal to provide total 6.7 million free school lunches. A number of Southwark children go to boroughs outside Southwark. So real problem of equity as they'd lose out on free school meals with their household paying for them. One way of paying for this would be to insist schools spent their money on this. So less money for teachers, books, etc. I think schools should choose how to spend their budgets. Another way would be cutting something else or to increase council tax to give schools more money. What do you think?

For this consultation all residents on Dusntans Road were sent letter by recorded delivery on 5 February. I've had assurance that Dunstans Grove access will be maintained throughout the Dunstans Road resurfacing - hence the reason they were'nt notified. I've pointed out that even though it wont greatly affect them being told that would have been better. This morning at 8.30am only two cars had to be moved and that the contractors re planned the day around no.71 being able to move. So all in all a good start to the works - except the signs stating the number to call with any problems did'nt have the telephone mnumber. The contractors Conways are correcting this. Any problems let Conways know, or let me know.

Hi Mitchk, Traffic calming measure like speed humps would be really disruptive to buses and the buses would soon flatten them out. Buses have very high axle weights which really pound bus stops - see Lordship Lane Psot office, Chener Books, Sea Cow, East Dulwich station. But I'd bee keen on 20mph speed limit along Lordship Lane and we have a completed public consultation and funding in place for a Pelican Crossing outside Somerfield on Lordship Lane. Goose GReen having zebra crossing seems to work really well. Pedestrians crossing seem to keep the roundabout calmer allowing all arms a fair chance to get round. Huguenot, fascinated to read about junction and link times.

I'll try and get a copy of the 20mph counsiltation. I have a draft but not the final published version. We've spent some months discussing with officers the areas covered.

Hi first mate, My point about the cold weather? I've checked and Southwark Council have the same operatives, supervisors, managers, equipment, etc. So Southwark Council doesn't appear to have changed in anyway. So the increase in dog poo is not due to less effort ro resources in keeping our streets clean. I'm guessing East Dulwich hasn't gone dog buying mad? So the only other factor I can think of is its been a lot colder. Does that influence dog or dog owner behaviour causing this dog poo outbreak?