James Barber

Hi Loz, No thoughts to making it one-way. The residents have'nt asked for this. It's a residential street used as a rat run. On one-way streets vehicles travel faster as they don't have to think of what might be coming the other way. My first thoughts would be passing points if it gets really jammed. The advice I've received is it would settle down and people would spread their routes out. Equally travelling down Mebourne Grove is currently more attractive than other routes as the humps have'nt gone in yet. Let's wait and see how things settle down.

Hi KalamityKel, Hmm. Good question. I'd guess only Derwent Grove, some of East Dulwich Grove and Grove Vale would park there. As a precaution I'll request that for some of the latter two and the all of Derwent Grove that letters be delivered. I can't imagine residents in Tell Grove or Elsie Road would park on Melbourne Grove. I guess also seeing no other car parking on the pavement will give strong visual clues. People commuter parking if they were away next week would'nt get a warning before a fine but agian I'm hopeful the visual clues would be enough.

Melbourne Grove parking chaos. For many years pavement car parking has been allowed on Melbourne Grove (between Grove Vale and East Dulwich Grove), this stems from it being a previous no.37 bus route and ongoing rat run. With the complete renewal of the pavements it has been an intention for pavement car parking to end and car parking only be allowed on the road. Soon the road will be renewed and sinusoidal humps installed making Melborune Grove a less appealing rat run. Allowing pavement parking on the new paving slabs will see it wear out very quickly. Also, the pavement is blocked for people with pushchairs, etc. On Friday council officers told the parking ticket contractor to enforce this change. Unfortunately this was before the residents had been told or all the signs allowing this were removed and this instruction did not follow Southwark's normal procedures. I was immediately alerted to this by an understandably angry group of residents. I visited the site and the residents told me exactly what they thought and they were right. I apologised that they'd been issued parknig tickets and promised to get things sorted out. I now have confirmation that all issued parking tickets will be cancelled. The one remaining sign allowing pavement parking will be removed today. Today the attached letter explaining what happened and apologising will be delivered by council officers to all residents. From 1 March any pavement car parking on this part of Melbourne Grove will be given a and warned that from 8 March parking tickets will be issued if they park on the pavement. If any Melbourne Grove resident or visitor has an problems or concerns please do contact me.

Hi siduhe, The contract with Veolia states kitchen waste must be universally collected no later than 2015. But they get performance bonuses for collecting more recycling than the target. My understanding is that once the new Integrated Waste Management Facility is built finishing 2011/12 Veolia will have the capacity. So realistically Veolia will need to start collecting kitchen waste during financial year 2012/13 gradually phasing it in over the following two years. Normally East Dulwich and the Dulwich area generally, with so many street properties, is used to test these things. In the mean time we've had a great 3 month trial in East Dulwich where we've used our Cleaner, Greener, Safer pot of money to enable local businesses Palmerston, Franklins, Blue Mountain Cafe, Sema Thai, Pretty Tradditonal, Vintage Pretty, Mon Petit Chou and Suzanne James to send food waste for composting. Hopefully, they'll keep using the commercial composting service into the future.

Hi themaninblack, It would be all those but also less attractive. Paving slabs do allow some drainage whereas tarmac doesn't. So flooding risk would increase. Perhaps residents should be asked what they want - paving slabs 3 months looks nice costs more vs. cheaper quick and cheerful?

Apologies for the length of this post but rather complicated answer. A while back some I was about whether Southwark?s recycling plans moving from its current partial separation to commingling is such a good idea. Council officers and fellow councillors have been really patient to explain the full logic of why this was deciding. Some East Dulwich residents suggested material should be separated at the kerbside, citing high quality valuable product and WRAP and EU recommendations that prefer kerbside separation. However this has around 10% less recycling and severely restricts the opportunities to add additional materials to the collection. Southwark?s current "kerbside separated" scheme already has a high amount of co-mingling. Paper collection was originally for white paper only but now also collects a mix of white and coloured paper, plus card and cardboard. Seven years ago glass had three containers at bring sites for the three colours of glass, we now mix them. Cans and plastics - consists of 2 types of can (steel and aluminium) and up to 15 types of plastic. This mix (of cans and plastics) already has to go to a Materials Recovery Facility. To operate true separated recycling, we would need vehicles with 24 compartments to operate the current collection, or 25 compartments to add tetrapaks! Mixed recycling services are considered a better approach than source separated collections in inner city, urban areas, such as Southwark. Mixed collections are more prevalent across London's inner-city councils as they are operationally more efficient, allowing faster loading which helps where on-street parking and heavy traffic prevail. They also allow safer rear loading as opposed to side loading. Mixed collection services are more convenient for residents to use and easier to communicate to short-term residents and those for whom English may not be the first language. For all these reasons Southwark Council is moving to borough-wide mixed recycling services during 2011, ahead of the opening of the new Integrated Waste Management Facility that is planned for Old Kent Road and due to become operational during 2011. Mixed collections will reach East Dulwich during the summer and allow even more different types of items to be recycled. Let me know if you?d like to know anything else about recycling.

Southwark Cyclists pointed out the following mapping area on the Southwark Website. Useful to view by different layers of details: http://maps.southwark.gov.uk/connect/southwark.jsp Regards james.

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.