legalalien

ps for those interested in cycle hangars, some info about the retender of the cycle hangar contract https://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/ieDecisionDetails.aspx?Id=7806. Cyclehoop are providing the hangars going forward, maintenance etc is being brought in house (to Southwark). Numbers wise, "As of 31 October 2022 there are 8,874 requests for a space in a cycle hangar (each hangar can take six bikes). Only 352 of the 3,582 spaces currently provided were free (9.82%) at this time. This is a clear demonstration that there is scope to do much more to encourage cycling in the borough by the provision of safe and secure storage. 5. In acknowledgement of this the revised council delivery plan (2022-2026) includes a commitment to deliver 1,000 cycle hangars in the borough by end of March 2026." (So I guess that's 6000 new hangar spaces, but each hangar likely to have an average 10% vacancy rate as demand is presumably not entirely equally distributed about the place. That's assuming no increase in demand by 2026? or alternatively - I haven't checked the council delivery plan it might be that the target is 1000 hangars in total, rather than 1000 new hangars - if that's the case it's a lot less new spaces... as there are already 597 hangars (if my long division skills still work))

Just a quick look at the policy documents. The existing 2019 Movement Plan says that " Our aim is to reduce trips made by car/motorbike to 13% by 2041", but there doesn't seem to be a hard target in the Sustainable Transport Strategy currently under consultation, or in the Climate Change Strategy/ Action Plan, so possibly the 13% aim has been quietly dropped?

Some more info here https://www.southwark.gov.uk/assets/attach/153798/SSP-Bessemer-and-Goodrich-PS.pdf Seems to be some provision for residents’ permits for those living within the zone.

It looks as though economic circumstances have done for Southwark’s aim to build 11000 new council houses by 2043- with this honest appraisal in the report for Cabinet: “ The current economic uncertainty makes accurate financial forecasting less certain. The cost of living crisis, the rise in energy prices and and the Russia/Ukraine conflict has increased political and economic volatility and made financial projections extremely difficult to determine. For example, the government target for CPI is 2% but CPI rose by 10.7% in the 12 months to November 2022 which is obviously significantly higher than the government target. Social housing rents have been capped at 7%, much lower than CPI+1% which is normally the calculation mechanism. Build and repair costs have increased even more significantly and have impacted on the monies available to finance the housing capital programme. The Building Safety Act 2022 has brought about legally compliant costs which have to be funded from within existing council resources. The council’s move to carbon neutrality by 2030 will also incur costs not previously accounted for. The target to build 11,000 new homes by 2043 is unattainable due to the lack of financial resources, increased build costs and the increase in interest costs on additional borrowing, where the base interest rate has increased from 0.1% in March 2020 to 3.5% in December 2022. 12. All in all, the circumstances facing housing local authorities now are very different from those faced two years ago and the council has to adapt to meet the challenges, of increased capital spend priorities but insufficient resources to meet those needs.” This is take from a report about one of the buildings on the Abbeyfield estate and it’s a sorry tale of stripping the building for refurb, leaving it empty for an extended period, realising what seems to be quite late in the piece that the building wasn’t structurally sound enough to cope with an additional rooftop build… and they’ve now decided to pull the whole thing down (a further £4 mill on top of £15 mill spent to date) and if I’m reading it correctly they can’t afford to build a replacement. I guess that means they end up selling to developers? I feel really sorry for tenants in the two buildings next door who are now going to have repairs etc which they have to contribute to, plus a lengthy period of uncertainty while consultation about next steps happens and a massive demolition on their doorstep. https://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/s111617/Report%20Abbeyfield%20Estate%20-%20A%20way%20forward.pdf

Credit to Cllr Newens, the LDs bring the electric bike up again in Tuesday’s meeting and she sticks to her guns (at 1:38) Fair play to her (some of her colleagues not so much)

Apparently there was some other “late” document from the Equality and Human Rights Panel saying that the equalities impact assessment that was done is insufficient/ inadequate. Which is a problem for the scrutiny process. Wow. The committee are going to flag the issue to the cabinet. Again can’t see the document anywhere but hopefully will be posted online in due course. There’s some suggestion that the document has always been intended to be ready for cabinet but not necessarily for the scrutiny committee. Everyone seems more than a little nervous. Apparently the equalities panel received the budget on Friday evening for a Monday turnaround. See from around 17 mins in particular, but worth watching from the start

Just started watching the next instalment of this meeting ( Tuesday evening, following the all day Monday meeting) and it starts off with Cllr Chamberlain deriding some sort of climate change impact analysis that he’d asked about the whereabouts of the previous day. Based on his description it’s not worth the paper it’s written on and is critical of the bulky waste charge. It doesn’t seem to have been published on the website yet. Will report back if any further developments in the meeting :)

I have a whole new respect for,Cllr Newens for her suggestion of a mayoral electoral bike At 3:43:45, the feedback from others made me smile. She was closed down on various other budget related issues on the basis that she was raising “policy issues “ so is probably in trouble with the powers that be, but I think it’s great to see local councillors speak up and say what they think.

Have been watching the video of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting going through the next year’s council budget. The proposal is to increase the annual charge for garden waste collection from £40 to £60 and the bulky waste collection fee from £25 to £35 per booking. Some interesting discussion about the potential for this to create an increase in fly tipping here at about 1:31 A little earlier there’s some discussion about moving to some sort of “needs based” approach to scheduling of waste collection which is sold as enabling increased collection in eg night time economy areas, but against a background of cuts to overall budgets, makes one wonder if standard residential collections might reduce. Let’s see....

Have been watching the recent Overview and Scrutiny committee meeting on this year’s budget. Really interesting watch (for the small minority who like this kind of thing). I testing discussion from 1:23 on Part 2 about the Kpop festival in Bermondsey - Cllr Rose does appear to say that without commercial events there won’t be grant money for community events.

I agree with DKHB on this, even though my natural instinct is to say that parks shouldn’t be used for private events. For those interested in council budgets, the Overview and Scrutiny Committee is going through the current one as we speak, I believe. Lots of painful detail here: https://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?MId=7388 (Btw looks like charges for garden waste and bulky waste are going up, am sure people will have views on that!) To some extent we should think ourselves lucky that, as a central London council, Southwark has some decent revenue- making opportunities- were that not the case council tax would have to be much higher . As it stands there’s a proposed increase of just under 5% this year plus the uplift in the GLA component of the tax. My biggest concern about council finances is the amount they’re potentially going to have to borrow to meet their housing targets and the cost of servicing that debt in a climate where interest rates are rising. I’m more than happy for them to spend events income on boring day to day activities rather than nice to have free activities for teens etc.

There’s a link in this Forbes article https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2023/01/19/study-londons-ltns-reduce-motor-traffic-on-residential-streets-but-not-main-roads/?sh=72b8c48f42e7 The authors make some interesting observations about the quality of data collection and analysis by local authorities.

Why do all these reports / summaries of reports always deal in percentages rather than raw numbers? It makes it so hard to know what is going on. If there were two car journeys in the LTN and 100 on the boundary roads then -1 journey in the LTN would be a 50% reduction and + 1 journey on the boundary roads would be a 1% increase, so comparing 50% and 1% is meaningless. (I made up these percentages to illustrate, they are not taken from the actual article). Am I missing something?

Interesting to see the conservatives in the London Assembly raising issues in relation to the decision making process around the proposed ULEZ expansion - the response being that a consultation is not a referendum - where have I heard that before? (That is of course a statement of fact, but doesn’t excuse manipulating the results of the consultation, if that’s what happened...) https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/ulez-expansion-consultation-sadiq-khan-london-assembly-labour-conservatives-b1053496.html?amp Conservative allegations here: https://www.glaconservatives.co.uk/post/sadiq-khan-made-false-and-dishonest-statements-to-the-london-assembly-and-manipulated-ulez-results Unrelated I believe there was something in the Telegraph about Dulwich residents’ groups bringing some sort of action to oppose the Turney Road closure. I don’t have a Telegraph subscription, does anyone know anything about that?

I think the townley / edg temporary lights and resultant tailbacks are entirely separate to south circular and LL issues (I say this as we drove back from Bromley late afternoon and had a clear run until we hit the DV/ EDG queue, having chosen to avoid traffic in Townley. Seems like a minor hole in the road at the corner of EDG and Greendale is the reason for the lights, the cordoning off and temp lights seem like overkill and are causing unintended consequences, I saw a couple of motorbikes and bicycles choosing to zoom up the pavement on EDG to avoid the queue, plus one cyclist deciding to take his life into his hands and overtake the queue to the right (heading towards LL, on the wrong side of the road heading into traffic heading towards HH, no lights. Crazy,)

What everyone else says - tube is a bit of a non starter in this part of London but it's perfectly possible to have a manageable commute to the City (London Bridge, walk and or bus to Bank, Moorgate, Liverpool St etc) or to Canary Wharf (via Jubilee line from LB) from here. Whether or not budget for housing is an issue is a different question which I'm sure we can all chime in on if you give further info...

I'm not sure that saying "sorry, we've decided this is now a placemaking project so we're going to ignore the outstanding equality issues from the earlier phase" is a very convincing argument, if that's what's going on. I don't think "access" in this context was intended to mean access to the (remaining) local shops so much as access to the local area more generally (doctor, route to hospital, visiting friends etc.)? Anyway - can't remember if I've posted it already, but here's a link to the current consultation on Southwark's Sustainable Transport Strategy which I believe is the successor to the "Movement Plan", the source of all the policy justifications in the specific decisions that the council makes. It closes 6 Feb so if you have thoughts, by all means send them in: https://consultations.southwark.gov.uk/environment-leisure/sustainable-transport-strategy-draft-consultation/. Worth reading the EqIA assessment attached to the draft. The point about expanding vehicle-free space notes that "Expansions of vehicle-free space will not affect the accessibility of locations by car. Where people still do need to use a car to reach their destination, they will still be able to do so." Which brings us back to the original argument about whether giving the option to drive the long way around, has the substantive effect of enabling blue badge holders to use a car to reach their destination, or not....

To be fair, although the article refers to mothers and kids, the actual quote from the council letter refers to children but not mothers or parents specifically, so it may be a clumsy summary by Southwark News — hard to tell. (The letter does refer to “pushchairs” as users in addition to children which made me smile). Logically, there are either lots and lots of blue badge holders (enough to pose a major risk to other users- if there are that many then their needs should be taken into account more) or very few - in which case they’d hardly pose a major threat, particularly if they were careful - and I’d hazard a guess they’d be more careful than some of the cyclists currently whizzing through. Although this misses the bigger issue, surely the point about having protected characteristics is to protect minority interests- so it shouldn’t just be a numbers game? What about allowing blue badge holders through except during the term time school run rush hours?

I’d say from this doct that it’s out of the highways budget. I found it when trying to find out where my nearest salt bin might be - it’s everything you need to know about Southwark’s gritting programme! https://www.southwark.gov.uk/assets/attach/148788/Winter-Service-Policy-and-Plan-2022-23.pdf

Here’s a new list of minor traffic schemes (double yellow lines, pavement adjustments etc) https://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/mgIssueHistoryHome.aspx?IId=50030016 Some of them are local. Notably an extension to the pavement build out outside Goodrich School.

Here’s an update on the council’s proposed changes to Bellenden Road as part of the Southwark Spine. https://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/mgIssueHistoryHome.aspx?IId=50030873 Looking at the objections, there seem to be problems from various perspectives (I) shops concerned about reduced parking and the effect on business and current customers concerned about access - the council report seems slightly more accommodating to businesses than the Dulwich closure one did, at least referring to the Local Economy team for monitoring rather than the usual blanket assertion that active travel will potentially increase footfall) (ii) those in favour of an LTN in the area saying that this doesn’t go far enough, and than increased traffic calming is solving the wrong problem - the issue is volume of traffic not speed of traffic and LTNs are the only way to achieve that (iii) potential for increased problems for cyclists and pedestrians as a result of the specifics (iv) council has decreased the time restrictions on loading in response to business concerns but others wanted them increased to address cyclist concerns, and also extended to weekends. Not sure what to think as I only walk there occasionally during the daytime on weekdays when not much traffic. But thought others might be interested.

I haven’t read any of the underlying council documentation but according to the judgment the smaller MUGA (as opposed to the 3G pitch) is going to be available free of charge and on a non-bookable basis, with the intention that it be available to the community on a similar “informal” basis as the astro has since the council unlocked the gates to it in 2018. There’s also a suggestion that the club has to use reasonable endeavours to secure a long lease of the St Olaves grounds for additional community use ( reasonable endeavours not the strongest of obligations of course). The judge says when considering the public sector equality duty point: “ In my judgment, unlike in Williams, the Council did not overlook a main impact of the proposal. The real point was that local people including many BAME people, use the Astroturf for informal sport and recreation and for them it is important that it is free and does not require booking. The Council expressly considered those matters and its judgement (in agreement with the GLA) was that the kickabout space together with the new and replacement facilities regulated by the Community Use Agreement would appropriately mitigate the impact.”

yes, that's my understanding (worth noting that the decision on repurposing MOL wasn't the subject of the legal decision - there were other grounds as set out further up the thread). There's a helpful summary of proposed community and school use in the judgment which I'll paste here as people might be interested: "Schedule 12, paragraph 1.1.2 of the s.106 agreement requires the football club to submit a draft Community Use Scheme which has been prepared in consultation with the Community Use Review Committee for approval by the Council before implementing the Football Site. Clause 1.1 of the s.106 agreement provides that the Community Use Review Committee shall include representatives from Sport England, London County Football Association, the Council, Football Foundation, and any other organisation required by the Council. Clause 1.1 also provides that the Community Use Scheme is required to set out details of (i) affordable rates to be charged to the local Community for use of the Leisure Facilities which shall not exceed those rates charged in similar facilities owned by the Council; (ii) mechanisms to minimise Pitch hire costs for the Community ("Pitch" being defined in Clause 1.1 to mean the multi-use 3G all-weather pitch); (iii) number of hours per week during which the Pitch will be available for use by the Community with the number being no less than 36 hours per week in Season and 38 hours per week in Close Season; (iv) the availability between the hours of 8 am and 6 pm for 25 hours per week during term time in Season and 36 hours per week during term time in Close Season of the Pitch, classrooms and changing rooms for use free of charge by state funded schools located within the Borough; (v) support and assistance to be provided to the Community Use Review Committee to enable them to carry out an annual review of the Community use of the Pitch and Leisure Facilities including details of usage, bookings, maintenance and rates; (vi) range of activities to be offered at the New Stadium including lessons and courses and block bookings for the Community; and (vii) the measures to be taken to ensure the New Stadium programme of Community use shall be subject to continual development, and how the general intention will be to manage a balanced programme encouraging use by the Community. The "Community" defined as follows: "Community means but is not limited to schools, registered charities, voluntary organisations, non-profit organisations, residents associations, clubs, groups or individuals based in the London Borough of Southwark and "Community Users" shall be construed accordingly". "

Judgment here https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2022/3211.html Haven’t read it yet but from a very quick scan looks as though the Council’s decision (or more accurately decision making process) has been upheld - the claim failed.