James Barber

Ring 020 7525 2000 for a new one. HAve you ever thought of sharing bins 2 bins four flats seems generous. If not then when asking for a new bin you might want the petite size. Standard wheelie bins 240L size, petite are 180L size.

I should point out I'm the Southwark councillor Cycling and Walking champion. Also a regular user of Greendale both for walking and cycling with kids. Member of Southwark Living Streets and Southwark Cyclists. I submitted the Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding to the Dulwich Community Council that improved the southern end. Regretably the kink or chicane in Greendale was put in at the request of South Camberwell Councillor Veronica Ward. Its created an area where cyclists are zooming though taking the shortest line but so do the pedestrians. Clear in my mind it would'nt pass a proper safety audit as at some point they will collide. The officer who allowed this has now left Southwark Council. Also vehicles accessing the sports fields cut the corners and are churning up the mud. A tremendous waste of money to make this part of Greendale unsightly and dangerous. Its also made it more expensive to achieve the goal to have a wider pavement for pedestrians making it more attractive with a kerb making a clearer seperation between cyclists and pedestrians. Propose that all interest parties walk Greendale early in the new year. How about meeting at the southern end of Greendale 8am Tuesday 5 January and walking along to the northern end making lots of notes about how it would ideally be improved. I'll make sure I send an invite to South Camberwell councillors.

Hi Mellors, I will contact Southwark Councils enforcement team and ask them what they are doing about this.

After talking with council officers they have re stated that the official opening time for all Southwark parks that are locked is 8am. The unlocking is carried out by our grounds contractor Quadron as they are based in Dulwich Park. They arrive on site around 7.15 am which means it is possible to gain access by 7.30 am from the main gates at College Road and Court Lane. There has been no change to this arrangement. However as detailed in the Dulwich Park Friends Newsletter, the park locks have been changed to high security padlocks. This is needed to protect the park infrastructure due to a series of break-ins at the Caf? and Quadron yard including locks going missing. This was decided in consultation with the Friends. Since that newsletter was published a number of residents have approached the park manager revealing that they have keys to the gates and were letting themselves into the park before opening. Clearly not equitable. Some residents would like to access the park earlier in the morning. In response to this officers will ask the contractors to quote for an earlier service and review the situation based on the budget available. If Dulwich were to open earlier we would need to fairly apply this policy to all our major locked parks, and to adher to safe working practices this could only be possible in the lighter mornings from April to October. Any questions, observations, concerns let me know.

Hi Applespider, Yes, we were hugely successful distributing 1,000 property marking kits to East Dulwich homes and ran out. We've now re stocked the Police with another 1,000 kits which when fully distributed in East Dulwich would be close to 40% of East Dulwich ward homes.

One last corection. Southwark Council now charges the London average for meals on wheels. For seven years we kept the meals on wheels charges unchanged. But now have to charge the London average.

Hi Victoria, I'm puzzled with what figures you're thinking of. I suspect you're confused between in-year collection rates and total collection rates as debt is collected post year. It is hard to extract council tax from many in Southwark. Our total collection rate is 96% as per target. The same target Wandsworth and Westminster councils work to. Equally sure you'll be aware that in 2002 Labour Southwark charged the 6th HIGHEST council tax in London out of 33, Lib Dem Southwark now 7th LOWEST council tax in London out of 33 and LOWEST in SE London. Attached is extract from the last council assembly to review council tax collection.

Hi lozzyloz, The other ward councillors I've persuaded to allocate money toward crime prevention are Lib Dem colleagues in north Southwark. You could buy privately as I did from Selectamark and look for SelectaDNA (I bought myself one as felt a bit of a conflict of interest to give my self a kit paid for by tax payers). They cost ?50 retail. PS. nice photos on your website.

Hi Anna, The old wood yard used to owned by a Mr.Banfield. It now has planning permission for 6 x 3 bedroom houses. This permission was granted 26 June 2008 which obviously coincides with the recession. Hence no physical works on site. The planning permission was granted with eight conditions the first being that building work has to begin within three years else the granted scheme will lapse. Eitherway, I've ask council officers to get the site cleared up as we're going to have to live with nothing happening on this site for some time. I've also asked that the fencing be made secure. Officers will first contact the site owners and give them from memory 15 days to fix. If the owners don't then southwark fixes the problem and asked the site owners to pay for this. If they fail to pay then we have the costs charged against the land registry so any attempt to sell involves the council being paid back. As you can imagine this is painful, time consuming and costly. Fingers crossed the site owners go for the first option.

Property marking kits come with stockers for doors and windows saying the property within a house/flat has been property marked. The markings are unique to each kit and show up in UV light - you paint the stuff on. If the marked property is removed it will always have this marking. If the thief or recipients ever bump into the Police or have a visit from the Police they will be caught. Only truly stupid theifs ignore the stickers. Only truly stupid fences would'nt check for this. Hope that makes sense sophiesofa.

Hi Victoria, You paint a wonderful picture where all the decisions were taken by committee and Labour with the majority did'nt ever decide anything. Labour ran Southwark Council for 40 years. The Labour leadership proposed the outsource. The council was run by a majority of Labour councillors. That's how it worked. Please don't duck what Labour did when it was in power. Terminating Liberata. The contract is being terminated by a decision taken by a Lib Dem executive in charge of resources after Liberata failed to improve. With a two year termination clause this is a big decision and you have to have proven grounds to terminate. Yes it has proven harder to collect council tax since the recession started. The in year collection is bad hence the contract termination. The total collection hasn't dropped as bad once the post financial year is included. As it is, too many people have to be taken to court to pay. This is a sign of Southwark being one of the nations most deprived boroughs with residents finding it now even harder to pay.

Please do lock your side gate. This character is likely to come back. If you live in East Dulwich ward (east side of Lordship Lane for the area you've stated) we can give you a free property marking kit which dramatically reduces your chances of being burgled.

East Dulwich Xmas lights are coming up for replacement. Likely to use lots of LED's. Fingers crossed we can make the budgets work for 2010 allowing this.

How is 10:10 progressing amongst London's local authorities? Time Out 10:10 map of London Last week the Greater London Authority also signed up to 10:10. It nearly did this in September but the Conservative members walked out blocking the debate. Guess they did'nt feel they could block climate change measures in the same month as Copenhagen.

To place christmas lights every lamp column used has to be checked structurally to ensure it can take the extra weight at the top of the lamp post. Also, the electrics have to be checked to ensure they can pass the extra load. We've agreed to arrange for these checks to take place. It wont happen before christmas this year but expect late winter/spring and then we'll know what the cost of ensuring christmas lights for Upland Road 2010 will be. Any other East Dulwich locations that should have Cristmas lights?

Hi Acid Casual, The lighting is definately better than it was. Horrid weak yellow lighting and fewer lamp posts. Greendale needs a holistic review to resolve the bordering land uses - derelict land attracts problems. The fencing of this derelict land for a while. The anti social activities have reduced in terms of the number of problems I get to report. Happy to meet anyone interested on Greendale and talk through the issues and how we can resolve them.

Southwark has over 120 open spaces/parks/gardens. Those that are locked at night snd reopened early in the morning suffer from less vandalism etc. We spend much more now locking and unlocking parks & gardens to protect them as we've spent so much time and effort making them nicer. Record number of Green Flags. At this time of the year is gets light late and dark very early. Equally, to unlock lots of gates takes some time or considerably more people. So compromise between the two. I'll happilly check if any change of policy has taken place and report back.

Hi Bic Basher, Southwark doesn't use Capita. Housing benefit and council tax used to be done in-house by Southwark until around 1997/98. It was then outsourced by Labour to CFL. CLF were so outrageously bad that it was one of the 2002 local election issues - Housing benefit cases taking over 6 months to decide resulting in council tenants being evicted. Truely awful. Lib Dems won 2002 local elections sufficiently to run a minority adminstration. CFL then became Liberata with new people. Lots of priority to improve things by the Lib dem adminsitration - reviewing every complaint, etc. they then improved and became award winning. Recently they've not kept up with how others have improved. The contract agreed in over ten years ago has two year termination notice period. Very clever for local government as politicians elected onfour year terms. Eitherway we issued that contract termination earlier this year. Preperations for taking this over are in hand. Hope that clarifies things for you Bic Basher.

Hi ontheedge, I was quoting figures for East Dulwich ward. This is a smaller area than the one we all think of as East Dulwich. Their have been two one month blips which where houses with flats was burgled BUT we've also had months with zero burglaries. So the average is now dramatically down. However, the effects are wearing of hence the extra 1,000 kits. Crucially we'll be reminding previous recipients that they need to use the kits to have an affect. If you want to dramatically reduce your chances of being burgled then get in touch either directly with the East Dulwich Police Safer Neighbourhood Team [email protected] 020 8721 2447 OR ping me an email with your contact details - name, address, phone number. I applied for similar funding in neighbouring wards but local Labour and Conservative councillors declined to fund such schemes for Village, College, South Camberwell The Lane or Peckham Rye. One view expressed to me is that 'burglary is the Polices problem'. I'll try again but don't hold out much hope.

Hi Acid Casual, Greendales is in South Camberwell ward. This summer all the lighting was replaced (at great expense). Still a few gaps of darkness between lamp posts but it has been improved. Lots of little bits that all contribute to making this path less desirable. I'm a regular user and report graffiti about once a fortnight. It will always feel forbidding as it has little passive surveillance and few people use it after dark. QED. To make it first class would need a lot of cash. Would it increase walking and cycling and be value for money? I'd say yes. One of the flagship policies for the Lib Dems running Southwark Council is that each area gets around ?350,000 a year to spend on improving things - making the footpath wide enough so pedestrians don't walk in the cycle path, more lighting columns, improving ther junction with the path to Sainsburys, improving the path to Sainsburys, improving the path to Bessemer Grange. Hopefully the Camberwell councillors will decide to prioritise Greendale this year. To prod them apply for Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding.

I'm a little concerned at the randomness of the funding allocations. Southwark had 2.5 bulge classes this year. 1 in north Southwark 1.5 in Dulwich area. We get ?12m for more school places. Lewisham and Lambeth had 6 bulge classes each and respectively get zilch and ?9m. Next Friday 18th I'll be meeting the executive member of Southwark's education and officers to try understanding all this.

I'm sorry you've all missed me. I've been busily beavering away in the background. We now have another 1,000 SelectaDNA property marking kits to give away to local East Dulwich ward residents. Last year we bought and distributed a 1,000 of these kits. Burglary has nose dived from 10-12 per month to around 2 now. To lock this in I've arranged the purchase of second tranche of 1,000 kits.

Last year we bought 1,000 residential property marking kits and another 50 for schools and similar. The local Police and Community Wardents helped distribute them free to locals. The affect on burglaries has been startling. Generally before 10-12 burglaries in East Dulwich ward and now around 2. To ensure we lock in this success we've just arranged the purchase of another 1,000 such kits. If you'd like one let me know - tell me your name, address, contact number.

Hi TownleyGreen, I'm a regular user of Greendale cycle and pedestrian route. Technically it's in South Camberwell ward. Its lighting was completely replaced over the summer and it is now better lit but still has a few gaps between lamp posts. Several other improvements to the ends to ensure more often clear of traffic. So its better than it was but would more lighting make it feel safer? YES. The proposed Super Cycle Highway is along Lordship Lane and Dog Kennel Hill in recognition of the Greendale fear factor. How can we get more lighting? One route would be for you to apply for Southwark Council - Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding. I could apply but often different party councillors in different wards take humbrage. So me applying is likely to generate a clear no - subtext don't interfer with my patch.

Hi Amelie, Before the Lib Dems gained control of Southwark Council in 2002 the Council tax collection was outsourced to Liberata. Liberata at the time held quite a few such contracts and over time have moved the work outside of the borough. Amazingly the contract negotiated pre the Lib Dems allowed this. So Liberata employ people in Barrow in Furness, Bromley, etc. The service Liberata provides for in year collection is not acceptable. They collect some after the financial year but overall we're not happy with their performance. So the decision has been taken to terminate the Liberata contract. From memory this is a long two year process. Liberata to some degree are being shadowed and I hope that many of the jobs will return to the area with time. As for breaching the laws you quote. This seems unlikely as the point back office work takes place would'nt be covered just the front office and we still have counter services in Southwark.