Community Policing: why we need a London Mayor

One of the Conservatives who had hoped to be that Party's Mayoral candidate prior to Boris Johnson throwing his hat in to the ring is someone called Lee Rotherham.

Lee is someone who believes that the very institution of the Mayorality should be abolished and powers restored to the borough councils; and in that we disagree. But he has produced a thoughtful, well-argued policy platform; the latest aspect of which covers policing and crime. Lee argues that the Mayor is irrelevant in the fight against crime and again we disagree: we would not have Police Community Support teams (which even he recognises as beneficial) in every single ward in our borough without the Mayor's leadership.

It is inconceivable that had the responsibility been with 32 separate London boroughs we'd have any PCSOs today - in the case of Putney, Roehampton and Southfields alone that's over 30 Officers lost. Fully qualified police are invaluable, but PCSOs not only provide extra Police presence on our streets but also enable 'full' police to focus on more serious crimes.

Lee makes several other good suggestions. Apparently, every arrest produced 3.5 hours of paperwork for the arresting officer. I agree with him that this red tape must be slashed: in itself that would free up resources to put more police on our streets. I also share his view that a day of civic recognition of the contribution (and, occasionally, sacrifice) our Police Officers - and for that matter Fire Fighters and Ambulance crews - make to our city, similar to that of Washington DC, is long overdue. You can read Lee's platform for policing here.
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Government's housing consultation

The Government Green Paper on Housing: Homes for the Future has now been published. Green Papers are official consultation documents and the Government is inviting views from all of us between now and 15th October on the housing challenges facing the country.

I'll be ploughing through it over the Summer and giving my feedback both here on my blog and to the Department for Communities but if you'd like to read more of the Government's ideas you can download the consultation paper here. This is a big file, incidentally: an Adobe PDF 1.7mb so beware if you've got a slow server!
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Voles for the Wandle

The River Wandle and Beverley Brook form, respectively, large parts of the boundary of the Putney constituency: the Wandle separating Southfields from Wandsworth, Earlsfield and Tooting; and Beverley Brook Putney from Richmond Park, East Sheen and Barnes. They are also hidden from public view - and perhaps therefore overlooked - for much of their length - either being routed under development like the Arndale or just difficult to access.

The London Wildlife Trust (LWT) has just announced plans to reintroduce Water Voles, which once were a substantial part of the Wandle's character, following a successful project in nearby Watermeads Island in Mitcham earlier this year. The Water Vole is one of Britain's fastest declining mammals, partly due to human encroachment on their habitat but also because Mink have been hunting them. Shockingly, there is now only one water vole for every 20 that existed just 80 years ago.

The last Wandle Vole was spotted in the 1960s but flood protection work in the 1970s is thought to have ensured their demise. This project, which I fully support, should also see other forms of wildlife cultivated, including dragonflies and Irises, and lead to an even more diverse, interesting and beautiful Wandle.

You can find out more about this and other London Wildlife Trust projects (as well as taking their quiz to find out what London Animal you most closely resemble!) by clicking here and you can visit the River Wandle - which exits into the Thames in Wandsworth town just past Point Pleasant - at a number of spots but especially from King George's Park in Southfields.
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Crime in Putney

Just thought I'd provide some information on crime rate in the constituency because, if you like this sort of thing, the stats are quite interesting.

A lot is often made of the high crime rate in Roehampton. Yet it's actually Thamesfield - the laregly very affluent area around Putney High Street and along the river - that has the highest crime rate: 148.1 crimes per 1,000 people. The reason for this surprising figure is a large number of theft and handling offences (as distinct from burglaries or robberies/muggings); presumably shoplifting given the presence of the town centre.

The figures in the table below show the crime rate per 1,000 of the population. There are approximately 12-14,000 residents in each ward, and the figures are as of May 2007 - pulled from the Metropolitan Police website.

• West Hill is - by far - the least crime-afflicted ward in the constituency - and indeed anywhere in London: it's crime rate is almost half that of the Capital as a whole. East Putney and West Putney are also comparatively crime free, though East Putney suffers from the highest number of burglaries.


• Roehampton does have a relatively high crime rate - though not massively above the London average - but essentially this is due to three types of more serious crime that are worryingly prevalent there: criminal damage, drugs offences and violence against the person.


• Southfields also has a relatively high crime rate - like Thamesfield it's also got a high proportion of thefts.

It's always worth emphasising that Wandsworth is one of the safest boroughs in London so as they say on CrimeWatch: don't have nightmares. There's more that can be done locally and I meet regularly with the Police to talk about local problems and how they're responding to them.

I'm also keen to get more Neighbourhood Watches set up around the constituency: if you're interested in helping to get one going in your patch do get in touch - I'd love to hear from you.

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Housing

You may have seen Gordon Brown's announcement yesterday in the House of Commons making housing a central priority of the government in the coming months and years.

This is obviously something I very much welcome: housing is by far the biggest problem faced by people in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields - and it's a problem that affects the whole community, just in different ways.

I'm going to wait until the publication of the Government's Green Paper - their consultation document - next week before commenting in more detail on their plans, but there are five key areas they need to address:

1. Recognising that London's housing problems are very different from the rest of the country: affordability; capacity and the polarisation of very affluent areas next door to incredibly deprived ones.

2. Protecting the Green Belt: we do not want Stevenage, Reading, Crawley and Chelmsford to become suburbs of Greater London due to urban sprawl - and the only thing preventing that is the Green Belt

3. Clearing the party-political roadblock that stops the provision of affordable homes - as in our area - while preserving the right of local people to have a say on planning issues and tailoring housing policy to local need.

4. Building sustainable communities: affordable housing should be high quality housing, communities should have a diversity of housing tenures, property sizes and residents should reflect a diversity of backgrounds. And homes should be built closer to jobs.

5. Increasing housing mobility: more schemes to help first-time-buyers, help with stamp duty, more council homes to rent - and an end to the stigma that living in rented council housing is something to be ashamed of; a duty on councils to replace every home sold under right-to-buy with at least two new homes to rent.

These are just the first steps I think are needed to begin tackling our chronic housing problem. It's good that the Government has given housing the priority it demands; I'm optimistic that they'll bring forward ideas next week upon which we can - pardon the pun - build.

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Wandsworth Museum

The campaign to save Wandsworth Museum has been producing a regular update on the putneysw15.com discussion forum. This is a cross-party, non-political campaign of local people trying to halt the frankly crazy, wasteful and costly plans by the Council to play musical chairs with the West Hill Library and Wandsworth Museum sites.

I have to say that the group's latest bulletin is remarkable for the clarity and logic in which its arguments are presented, and quite simply devastating to any surviving supporter of these plans. So much so, that I'm reproducing it below - and again, let me make clear that while I support this campaign wholeheartedly, they are not in any way associated with the Labour Party. Here's the bulletin


The public gallery was crowded to overflowing at the meeting of the Environment & Leisure Oversight and Scrutiny Committee (ELOSC) at the Town Hall on 2nd July. The Committee considered and approved proposals for

• The closure of the Museum at the end of 2007 and its relocation from the Courthouse in Garratt Lane to the library part of West Hill


• The closure of the library at West Hill in November 2007 and its move to the Courthouse where it would be amalgamated with Alvering Library which would also be closed

The closure of the Local History Service and its replacement with a Heritage Service

The closure & Relocation of the Museum

The consultants appointed by the Council presented their draft business plan for the relocation of the Museum to West Hill. It was evident that the plan had been prepared within a very tight timescale of just three weeks and against a limited remit. Many of the costings were qualified as rough estimates or subject to confirmation.

The draft business plan makes clear that a minimum of £600,000 from the initial £1.0m offered by the Hintze Foundation will be used up in converting West Hill Library into a museum. This sum would be required to make the library a secure and environmentally sound facility for housing the museum collection and to install and display the collection. However, the consultants emphasised that this was “a very conservative estimate” and did not, for example, include the services of a professional museum designer.

The present Museum, in contrast, was designed and laid out by a well-known museum designer.Staffing at the new museum will be almost half that of the present museum whose 10 full-time equivalent staff includes two curators, two education officers, a documentation specialist and staff with expertise in organising and mounting exhibitions.

The projected total headcount in the new museum, in contrast, is expected to comprise 6 employees:

- a curator
- an education officer
- an administrator and retail supervisor
- a professional fund-raiser
- 2 front of house staff

The draft business plan does not seek to preserve or expand the quality and range of services provided by the present Museum nor build on the excellence of its professionally designed displays. Much of the depth of expertise and breadth of local knowledge offered by the present Museum is certain to be lost. One post will be devoted exclusively to fund-raising and the reasons for this are described later on.Under the plans confirmed by ELOSC, the bulk of the present Museum staff will be made redundant at the end of September 2007. A small number of employees, including the two curators, will be retained so that the Museum can continue to open for 20 hours a week until end December 2007.

In comparison, the Museum is currently open for 34 hours a week.
The projected timescale for closing the present Museum and setting up the new is extremely short – three months from end 2007 to April 2008. There must be serious doubts over just how realistic this is.

The relocation of the Museum from Putney Library to the Courthouse in 1995 took eighteen months’ planning and over six months to complete with a much larger team and a smaller collection.

Financial Issues

The presence of a professional fundraiser in the new Museum is just one indication of how much of a financial challenge will be faced by the charitable company that will be responsible for running it. Wandsworth Council has refused to offer any ongoing revenue support for the new Museum despite the consultants’ comment that “We have not been able to discover another museum previously funded by the local authority before moving into trust status without receiving a significant annual grant from that local authority to part fund the museum’s running costs”.

A brief look at other London boroughs shows how financially committed their councils are to supporting and promoting their local museums:

• Gunnersbury Park Museum: £297,600 - 53% of these costs funded by local authority


• Brent Museum: £150,000 - 77% of these costs funded by local authority


• Croydon Museum: £476,000 - 100% of these costs funded by local authority

Wandsworth Council’s stance is all the more difficult to understand given its discovery a few weeks earlier that the actual financial out-turn for 2006/7 had added £5.7m more than expected to the Council’s General Balance.

The result is that despite the donation from the Hintze Foundation of £200,000 per year for the first five years of its operation, the draft business plan for the new Museum will require the professional fundraiser to bring in £92,000 from external sources. The draft business plan provides no information about where this £92,000 will come from. In addition, the board of the new Museum will be required to generate a further £30,000 a year. It is extremely unclear where the new Museum’s projected income of £122,000 will come from, and it is even less clear how the new Museum will survive in Year 6 when the annual payments of £200,000 from the Hintze Foundation will cease.

The new Board will have to work extremely hard to keep the new Museum afloat financially. One critical element if the new Museum is to secure funding and grants from heritage and other cultural bodies is the need for it to have Accreditation. There is serious doubt over whether the hard-won Accreditation granted to the present Museum can be retained when the collection is moved to a new building, with new staff and subject to a new charitable company.

It will be essential for the new Museum to obtain Accreditation, since otherwise the scope for the fundraiser to win funding and grants from heritage and other cultural bodies will be sharply reduced.

Draft Business Plan Assumptions

The consultants were unequivocal on one point – “A commercial level rent [for West Hill] without considerable rebate or grant aid from WBC will make the entire West Hill museum project inoperable.”

When this issue was raised during the ELOSC Meeting last week, the Council was unwilling to offer any commitment beyond a statement by a Council official that it would look “positively” on the matter. The draft business plan emphasises that anything more than a nominal rent for West Hill Library will make the plan for the Museum unworkable, but the Council has not yet been willing to commit itself even to this.

The Council was equally unclear if the lease for the new Museum at West Hill would include responsibility for repairs and maintenance or whether the Council would volunteer to cover other areas, such as insurance of the museum collection, given the Council’s decision to retain ownership of the collection.

One element of what is a complex equation lies partially in the hands of the De Morgan Foundation. At the ELOSC Meeting on 2nd July, the Council approved a proposal to serve two years’ notice on the Foundation under the terms of their present lease. If the De Morgan collection wishes to remain in the Borough, the Council confirmed a new lease would be put in place whose terms have yet to be negotiated. Should the new lease be unacceptable or should the De Morgan Foundation find a more congenial solution elsewhere, there is a real likelihood it will leave West Hill within the next two years. In such a case, it is unclear if the new Museum would be entitled to expand into the space vacated and, if it were to do so, on what terms. What is evident is that the departure of the De Morgan collection would be a real loss to the Borough and is bound to affect the number of potential visitors to West Hill.

The Council emphasised that the draft Business Plan would have to be adopted by the board of the new charitable company and it would then be for that board to negotiate the details needed to take the Plan forward. Although the Council indicated that Michael and Dorothy Hintze were content with the draft, there remains a substantial task for the board of the new charitable company which will include up to eight other members.

Until the board has finalised and approved a revised Business Plan as well as the various legal agreements that will be needed to underpin the Plan, there is no certainty that the present proposals for the new Museum will proceed as expected.The Wandsworth Museum Campaign Group (WMCG) will continue its work in representing the thousands of residents whose outspoken and continued support for the Museum has been a central factor over the last six months.

The Group wishes the board of the new charitable company every success in its task of establishing a new Museum and remains available to assist in any way it can in the critical process of agreeing and implementing a final business plan.Conversion of the CourthouseThe Council has regularly sought to separate the project for the conversion of the Courthouse into a library from plans for relocating and setting up the new Museum. However, it is beyond argument that their timing and execution are inter-dependent.

At the ELOSC Meeting, the Council disclosed that the cost of converting the Courthouse into a library had now risen from £1.2m to over £1.5m. However, as the Courthouse is a Grade II listed building, this new estimate is still subject to further discussions with and approval from English Heritage who have already rejected previous proposals as unacceptable.

A presentation of plans for the new library confirmed what has been evident since January this year – the result will not be a modern library with convenient access to all facilities on a single floor (as at West Hill and Alvering). Instead, the bulk of the £1.5m will be devoted to overcoming the limitations and eccentricities of a Victorian building whose cellular layout and multiple floors require a host of design and layout compromises.

According to the Council, the rationale for pressing on with a library in the Courthouse a few minutes’ walk from West Hill and Alvering is that it would save some staff costs, release the Alvering site for sale and would automatically attract an extra 100,000 visitors a year. The sole basis for this last statement is a rough analogy with other libraries in the Borough. No research or evidence was presented to confirm that tens of thousands of new users are ready and waiting for a library to open in the Courthouse in exchange for the closure of West Hill and Alvering. The suggestion that the creation of a central library could be deferred until the Ram Brewery site became available was rejected by the Council on the grounds that it was obliged to make savings now and could not afford to wait.

This again sits strangely with the news that the Council has just found a further £5.7m in funds this year. Residents might be forgiven for drawing the conclusion that having made the creation of a library in the Courthouse an absolute article of faith, the Council is prepared to spend a large and increasing amount of tax-payer’s money to achieve this end. And this in the face of the Council’s oft-repeated concern over “continued squeezes in government funding".

Issued on behalf of the Wandsworth Museum Campaign Group on 11th July 2007.
Email: wandsworthmuseumgroup@hotmail.co.uk
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My first putneysw15.com report

It’s a real pleasure to introduce my first report as Labour’s Parliamentary candidate for Putney, Roehampton and Southfields.

Some of you may know me from my eight years as a local councillor, when I was a regular contributor to this website. As Leader of Labour’s borough councillors I spent a lot of my time out and about in the constituency, taking up issues throughout Putney, Roehampton and Southfields.

I was born and brought up here so my commitment to and passion for Putney is, I’m sure similar to your own: it goes far beyond narrow party politics. Growing up I lived in flats just behind King George’s Park; I had summer jobs in both the Arndale and Putney High Street, and I turn out on Sundays for a football team in Roehampton. Local roots do matter.

Housing crisis

My first priority is housing: a national problem particularly acute locally.

This is a problem that touches us all. If you rely on council rented housing - the stock of which has been halved by this council - there is little chance of starting your adult life without moving miles away from your family, friends and community. For young professionals trying to get on the first rung of the housing ladder the lack of affordable homes to buy is the problem. The very smallest flat in Putney incurs Stamp Duty nowadays. And even if you’re fortunate enough to own your own home and perhaps have raised your family these problems affect you through your children.

Given the scale of the problem locally, housing is surely an issue your MP should be devoting a huge amount of their time and energy to. It’s not as if the solutions are complex: they’re not: we just need to be bold. This will be a regular theme of my campaign, which I’ll return to in future putneysw15 reports.

Regenerating Roehampton?

On 4 th July I attended the Putney Society meeting on the plans to redevelop the centre of the Alton Estate in Roehampton.

A major demand of local residents is that any of them displaced by the redevelopment will have a guaranteed right of return. Over 650 local people have signed a petition demanding such guarantees because they suspect the council’s motives are to replace local rented homes with private accommodation they will be excluded from. I stand 100% behind residents on this.

There were many other issues raised and as the timeframe for these plans extends beyond 2013 I’ll have plenty of chances to talk more about them. But my real concern is that without leadership residents face the prospect of little – if anything – actually coming of this. Roehampton doesn’t deserve to be let down again.

Wandsworth Museum

The job of an MP is not just to deal with national issues – it’s also their responsibility to stand up loudly for the community on local issues like the closure of Wandsworth Museum. Every one of us who values the Museum is, I am sure, immensely grateful to the Hintze Foundation for their £2million lifeline. It had become clear that despite over 22,000 people petitioning to save it, the Council was determined to close it. Even with this infusion of outside cash the Museum’s future is not assured. It makes no sense to waste almost £2million just playing musical chairs with the Museum and West Hill Library when both do perfectly good jobs where they are now.

The campaign to save the Museum has been magnificent: backed by supporters of all parties and none, which is as it should be. But this debacle is the perfect answer to the question “why bother voting: you’re all the same”. We’re not. Your vote does have consequences: good and bad, locally and nationally.

I’ve been up to much more over the past month but you’ll have to wait for my next report for more. In the meantime, my website is up and running, where I talk about these and other local issues in more detail. It’d be great if you could find the time to visit: the address is www.stuartking.net.
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Putney is working

Every month the House of Commons Library publishes the unemployment rate for every constituency in the United Kingdom. The latest report is for May of this year.

Putney has an overall unemployment rate of just 2.3%: just over 1,000 residents were claiming job seekers' allowance. That's a very low figure - far lower than when Labour was first elected in 1997. In April 1997, the month before the general election, Putney had almost 2,600 jobless: unemployment has fallen by almost 60% with Labour.

Another example of how Putney is working with Labour is the number of VAT-registered businesses in the borough. In 1997, the number of such businesses was 7,800. A decade later the number is 10,265 - an increase of 2,465.

Of course these are just statistics, but behind them are real people building careers and futures for their families. Strong economic management is the foundation upon which everything else we value in our country is founded: investment in public services, better opportunities in life, stronger families, better health, greater affluence, social mobility and higher school standards - all these things become achievable when the country is thriving.
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Congratulations Justine

Justine Greening was today given a junior shadow role in the Opposition Treasury team in the House of Commons. This is one of the most challenging briefs given the dismal economic record her Party still hasn't shrugged off from its last stint in power compared to the longest period of sustained economic growth in 200 years with Labour.

But this is a great opportunity for her so congratulations, Justine. I'm sure she'll bring her accountancy skills to bear in trying to make some sense out of her Party's confused spending plans!

That means two of the borough's MPs are newly promoted: as mentioned in an earlier post, Tooting's Labour MP Sadiq Khan was appointed a juinior Government Whip last week - along with Shahid Malik the first Muslims ever to hold government positions. I think it shows that regardless of party, Wandsworth has a deep bench of high quality elected representatives; something we can all take some pride in.

UPDATE: 16.07.2007
The Wandsworth Borough News has stories on both promotions:
Sadiq Khan here
Justine Greening here
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Roehampton regeneration

Tonight I went along to the latest public meeting on the potential redevelopment of the centre of the Alton Estate: the area around the top end of Danebury Avenue.

There is broad support for the principle of redeveloping these sites: there are surely very few who would argue that this area represents the best possible quality, use and image of Roehampton. But as with most things in politics, the devil is in the detail.

There are very real concerns across the political divide about the viability of these plans. The last thing that Roehampton needs is another unfulfilled promise: too many have been broken.

Alongside the plans to provide more retail space and more recreational opportunities, the Council also wants to demolish a lot of homes and to replace them with private homes for sale. Needless to say, the residents aren't happy about the prospect of displacement and don't believe they'll ever return to this area once forced out.

657 residents have signed a petition expressing their concerns. The Council must give cast iron guarantees that everyone who lives in homes under threat of demolition and who wants to return to a council-managed property in this redevelopment shall be able to. I give those residents my personal pledge that I stand with them in their campaign.

There is also a desperate need for:

* A bank (and/or a Credit Union) in the area where people can access their cash without paying through the nose for the privilege.
* A new health centre (and, ideally, dentist) for the estate is ideal.
* A more prominent, better staffed Police station.
The Boys Club must be found a new home if it cannot be rehoused where it is now on a rebuilt site
*And while a "blue-riband" retailer like Sainsbury's or Waitrose being brought to the area is a good idea there are real concerns that it shouldn't be too big (parking and access is a major consideration here) and that it shouldn't drive out smaller retailers - one of the nice thing about the existing shops is the diversity of local traders here.

None of this is easy. Unfortunately, Roehampton's councillors promised much but have provided no leadership: only one of them could be bothered to attend tonight. Likewise, Justine Greening seems content to take a backseat in the hope it just comes together through hope alone. If leadership is not provided this project will fail - that much is clear already, as the council is already starting to compromise and auction-off aspects of the plan.

Roehampton has been leaderless for too long. There is a huge potential here. But potential not realised equals neglect. Roehampton has been neglected too long by its Conservative representatives.

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