My Post Office response

I've just submitted my formal response to the Post Office on their consultation over the proposed closures of the branches in Lower Richmond Road and Putney Bridge Road. You can download it here.

I've also submitted over 700 response cards and online petitions that residents have sent back to me: this is getting on for a 20% response rate which market research experts tell me is a very high return, so thank you if you took the time to respond to my campaign.

There are still two days to register your views - write to:

Anita Turner
Network Development Manager
Post Office Ltd.
Freepost Consultation Team

or email consultation@postoffice.co.uk

A Nightmare on Treville Street

Despite what it looks like, this is not Freddy Krueger's home in the Nightmare on Elm Street horror films, but the boarded-up remains of Roehampton's Conservative Club.

The Club was closed down by the Police in January after a drugs raid. The Conservatives then embarked upon a rather embarrassing and half-hearted attempt to claim that the Club was "nothing to do with us, guv" despite several senior Tories, including former Putney Conservative Councillor Michael Chartres and current Southfields Conservative Association Chairman Terry Walsh being trustees of the club.

What with one of the Roehampton Conservative Councillors now living in Bournemouth but refusing to resign his seat and let the area choose a more committed replacement; the recent outrageous blog about the Alton Estate by another Conservative Councillor, the pending closure of the Putney Vale Youth Club and the boarding up of their Conservative Club, Roehampton Tories aren't doing at all well, are they?

Roehampton regeneration part 1

The Council has recently come out with some clearer plans for Roehampton following consultation with residents. Because the plans are quite detailed and I want to do them justice, I'm going to post here what they are, and in part 2 - which will follow soon - what I think of them.

For those coming to this subject fresh, the plans concern the area around the top end of Danebury Avenue where the shops are, opposite Roehampton High Street. There are four key sites:

Site B, which is the block that includes the housing office, the boys' club and the Roehampton Safer Neighbourhood Police. The council wants to move these facilities, demolish the building and replace it with 34 flats (19 one bed; 9 two bed and 6 three bed), 64 parking spaces plus 410 sq m offices.

Site C, which is the block that includes the Co-Op shop. The Council wants to demolish this block and replace it with another 34 new flats(17 one bed; 9 two bed and 6 three bed), 20 car parking spaces and 565 sq m new shopping. For info, that's about three times as many flats proposed than are there at the moment.

Site D, which is the long parade of shops down Danebury Avenue, with flats above them. The council is proposing to demolish this block and replace it with one of two options:

Option 1 would provide 127 new flats (70 one bed; 25 two bed and 32 three bed), 2,600 sq m of new retail (inc. a supermarket) and 141 underground parking spaces.

Option 2 – submitted by the Roehampton Business Forum - would provide 100 new flats (50 one bed; 34 two bed and 16 three bed) and 1,325 sq m of new retail.

And finally, site E which is Allbrook House and Roehampton Library. These are the most controversial proposals - the council has come up with three options:

Option E1 retains Allbrook House (and refurbishes the flats) plus the library and provides 64 new flats (38 one bed; 10 two bed and 16 three bed), plus commercial space (1,490 sq.m.) and 144 parking
spaces.

Option E2 also retains Allbrook House and the library and provides 64 new flats (32 one bed; 20 two bed and 12 three bed), commercial space (500 sq m), office space (1,000 sq m) and 132 underground parking spaces.

Option E3, prepared by the Roehampton Business Forum, demolishes Allbrook House and replaces it with 143 new flats (100 one bed; 16 two bed and 27 three bed), commercial space (5,000 sq m), new library (730 sq m) and 224 car parking spaces.

As a result of overwhelming public pressure, the council has U-turned over plans to concrete over the green space in front of Allbrook House (which always comes into its own at this time of year!): this will now stay untouched.

As I say, I'll follow up with my comments and observations on these ideas in a forthcoming post.

Crime falls again - but what impact will Youth Club cuts have?

Crime dropped markedly in January as forecast in my last monthly report. Not only is the crime rate down compared with last month's figures, which included the unfortunate but typical surge in the run-up to Christmas, but in four of our six council wards crime is down on the figures up to November 2007 - the last broadly comparable month.

East Putney, Roehampton, Thamesfield and West Hill all saw crime drop - Southfields continues to seesaw, presumably largely dependent on the numbers of crimes committed in the Southside shopping centre which is in the ward. West Putney experienced a small rise on November, though this is explained more by November's figures being unusually good for this ward.

But my big concern as we move into the new financial year is the closure of the Putney Vale Youth Club in Roehampton and other borough youth clubs by the Conservative Council.

Most criminologists acknowledge that nuisance crimes increase when kids have nothing to divert their attention - that's not to say that most teenagers are criminals or yobs, but given no alternative, creative or recreational occupation for their time, there will be more kids on the streets and trouble will find some of them.

That's why the Tory Council's closure of youth clubs is so damaging and they should rethink things urgently. The Council meeting next Wednesday is the last chance for councillors to come to their senses and reverse these damaging closure plans. We've got to keep our youth clubs open - if anything we should be increasing youth service provision as Labour's London Mayor Ken Livingstone is committed to doing.

It's important that we don't see youth service provision solely through the prism of keeping crime down: youth clubs provide invaluable training, recreational, socialising and educational opportunities for young people - in the case of Putney Vale in the most deprived community in the whole constituency; and they reach teenagers who schools can't always reach.

The Conservatives' closure plans are just more of the short-sighted stupidity that's come to typify this Council's approach to any service that actually costs them something to provide.

Here's the chart of the 12 months to February:


And here's the comparable 12 months to January:

Taking housing concerns to the top

On Tuesday I met with Housing Minister Caroline Flint MP at the House of Commons to take her through my plans to tackle Putney's housing crisis.

Housing is my number one priority; whereas the incumbent Conservative has yet to ask a single question or come up with a single idea to tackle the increasing shortfall in housing affordable to ordinary Putney people it will be my focus as MP for our constituency.

Here's my five point housing plan:

1. For every rented home the council sells off, they will be obliged by law to replace it with two new ones; and first refusal for every surplus piece of public sector land will go to affordable housing

2. Two thirds of all new homes in Wandsworth must be affordable - and by that I mean what most of us regard as affordable: not the absurd formula the Tory council uses which puts new "affordable" homes beyond the means of most Putney residents

3. The Stamp Duty threshold increased to £250,000 as a first step towards a higher threshold for Greater London; and much wider availability of long-term 10 or 15 year fixed rate mortgages.

4. HomeBuy schemes through which first-time buyers can get a grant of up to a third of the cost of a market home worth less than £300,000 repayable only when they choose to move-on, at whatever one third of the value of their property is at sale

5. More family houses - the Tory Council is obsessed with building ever more apartments and flats - especially one bedroom flats - when Putney is in desperate need of family accommodation

This is a common sense, affordable and urgently needed first step towards tackling our housing crisis. But this is a huge problem locally, because of which my plan goes further than the Government's Housing Act.

I'm taking the lead on housing, while the Conservatives have nothing new to say on this critical issue.

In their own words: Conservative neglect of the Alton

Apparently, one of Wandsworth's Conservative Councillors ventured onto Roehampton's Alton estate last Saturday (before anyone asks, it WASN'T one of the councillors elected to, supposedly, serve Roehampton!). This is how she describes her experience on her own blog (in a post titled "Different worlds"!):

"The lift wasn't working, the smells, sights, sounds can be intimidating. On 23rd floor I took fright and ran all the way down and went and did a different block. But I knew I had to go back and finish the one I hadn't done. I came back via the basement walking through foul smelling leaking sewage."

Aside from the fact that no block on the Alton has more than twelve floors - so climbing to the 23rd was a remarkable feat even for a Conservative councillor - let's just take a reality check:

• The Conservatives have run Wandsworth Council (and its housing department) for 30 years
• They've (at least notionally) represented Roehampton ward for the past ten years
• They're the ones who sacked the local caretakers in favour of a cheapskate, out-of-town cleaning contractor
• They're responsible for the lifts working...or not; and the drains being cleared...or not

As the Councillor says candidly: Putney Conservatives live in a different world - on a different planet - entirely.

I wonder if she's bothered to report her findings to the housing department, let alone demand they be fixed? Maybe she doesn't realise that the point of being an elected representative is to improve the quality of life of our constituents, not just to write these shocked, skewed and, frankly, derogatory blogs about the novelty of visiting a council estate, of all places!

UPDATE 26.03.2008 - curiously, the councillor's post has, all of a sudden, disappeared from her website. Fortunately, thanks to the wonders of Google, it's been cached - so you can still read it here. Or, if you prefer, as a PDF here.

Alton School's deserved praise

I've written before about the huge efforts that the The Alton School makes to improve the educational achievements of its pupils. So I was delighted to read the school's recent Ofsted report, and the positive write-up this prompted in this week's Wandsworth Guardian.

Alton School serves one of Europe's biggest estates, in Roehampton. The population of the Alton is changing rapidly - as well as some of the worst deprivation in the borough (Roehampton is the second most deprived ward in Wandsworth) it also has a large and growing eastern European population, which is both highly transient and introduces lots of children for whom English is not their primary language.

High turnover, significant deprivation and sadly, on occasion, parents who don't always appreciate that education isn't just a 9am-3pm past-time but rather a round-the-clock collective effort: all these factors mean that Alton will always struggle to head the Primary School league tables.

The school's just launched a breakfast club starting at 8am offering a healthy breakfast and games to start off the school day. As Headteacher Ruth Hudson says: "If children aren't coming in ready to learn it's no use forcing literacy and numeracy on them". That's not some liberal excuse to not teach the basics - it's a recognition that schools like the Alton need to go an extra mile to set their pupils on the right course. They're evidently doing so, and it's great that Ofsted has recognised their achievement.

You can read the Ofsted report here.

Tibet

History doesn't usually repeat itself, but the parallels between the conduct of the Chinese Government in cracking down on Tibetans, and that of the Burmese dictatorship attacking the protests led by that country's monks are alarming.

When I wrote about the Burmese protests here and here, the international consensus was that China's opposition to Burma's behaviour was crucial because they are the regional power and carry greater influence with the ruling junta.

I was always somewhat concerned about this line of argument for the reasons that have become self-evident here: how can a regime that behaves in exactly the same way over Tibet be expected to be taken seriously by countries with equally dubious human rights records.

Of course there are differences between China's relationship with Tibet and Burma's with its own people; and the real politic of dealing with Asia's main superpower will lead many to treat it differently. But I for one was proud to see Gordon Brown offer to meet with the Dalai Lama the other day, and if that causes "dismay" within the Chinese government, so be it.

More from the Arndale

This is the Arndale estate - or at least most of it: the photo was taken from Sudbury House, the big block right on Wandsworth High Street. The three tower blocks are Knowles House, Edwyn House and Albon House on Neville Gill Close, and below them the long block that comprises Eliot and Wentworth Courts.

And here are some more photos we took on Saturday of the neglect of the estate by the Council. One of the things people kept mentioning was that they never get the chance to raise these problems with their councillors (all Conservative), or MP (also Conservative). The Arndale estate lies in Southfields ward, but evidently for their elected representatives, Southfields comprises just the leafy streets around the station - they don't appear to venture north of Granville Road.



When Putney had a Labour MP, Tony Colman, residents of the Arndale and the other northern parts of Southfields could pop in and see him regularly because he held an advice surgery at the Penfold Centre, right at the foot of Albon House. When I'm MP for Putney, Roehampton and Southfields, I'll hold advice sessions in this area too so that local residents are properly represented.

Out and about on the Arndale Estate

For far too many residents of council estates in Putney, this picture typifies the state of the housing the Tory Council believes they deserve to live in.

This is the entrance to Knowles House (or, as the Council's vandalised lettering would have it: "Koles Hous"), one of the three high-rise blocks overlooking King George's Park above the Southside Shopping Centre in Wandsworth Town.

What a disgraceful image to present to the world of our borough, and how unfortunate that the residents have to put up with such lack of respect for their homes.

My campaign team and I spoke to over 200 residents of Knowles House, its sister blocks Albon and Edwyn Houses, Sudbury Court - the really big blue and white block on the corner of Wandsworth High Street and Garratt Lane, and Eliot and Wentworth Courts: the long blocks in the middle of the Arndale development.

We came across problems that are sadly typical of those we pick up all around the constituency: damp problems, refuse collection problems, graffiti, dangerous dogs, lack of thorough cleaning, anti-social behaviour and - in this case the Housing Department is excelling itself - a flat that floods every time it rains.

Unfortunately, the Council seems much more interested in piling up new high-rise blocks in next door Hardwick's Way and further down Neville Gill Close rather than taking decent care of the ones it already has responsibility for. We're going to be keeping Council housing officers rather busy over the coming weeks, following up on the concerns residents asked for our help with.

Keep track of my Don't K.O. our P.O.s Campaign

I've just added my work on saving our local post office branches to the list of key issues on the side bar. if you scroll down on the right, you'll find this the second issue listed, after dangerous dogs. That means that you can now read all the entries to this blog that I've made on the specific issue of post offices rather than ploughing through the main page or the monthly archives.

You can also keep in touch with what I'm doing on this and other local issues by signing up to my monthly e-news bulletin: click here to add yourself.

And if you haven't yet signed my online petitions, there's still time: click here for the Lower Richmond Road branch and/or here to save the Putney Bridge Road branch.

Tonight's Post Office meeting

I had the opportunity of addressing tonight's meeting on the proposed closures by The Post Office of their branches in Lower Richmond Road and Putney Bridge Road.

About 100 residents attended tonight's meeting as did representatives of The Post Office and PostWatch, which I applaud them for given the hiding-to-nothing they, unsurprisingly, got.

I made the point that sticking a poster up in the branches under threat and making available some notices within them is not close to being satisfactory consultation. Nor is the shortness of the consultation period - inexcusable given that they reached the decision about which closure proposals to proceed with back in December. And their response: that the consultation period is fixed and unmoveable, is - I understand - simply wrong.

The Council representative present was asked about the innovative approach taken by Essex County Council in taking over local branches threatened with closure. The council replied that the branches Essex are taking over have already been through the consultation process and have now been confirmed for closure, so they're further down the road. They undertook to give serious consideration to similar measures if our local branches are confirmed for closure after we've made our case for a reprieve. I welcome that.

To date over 700 of you have signed my online petition or returned the postcards I circulated locally: thank you so much for the cross-party support I've received over this. The next stage in my campaign will be to make my formal submission against closure backed up by the response cards and online petitions you've sent me.

More on this soon.

Budget 2008

The media is portraying the Budget as dull as though that's a criticism. It's anything but: in a global economic climate that is stormy, we don't want flash and costly measures that could backfire. Stability was the watchword in this Budget: it's absolutely what's needed.

The one stand-out measure in the Budget was the one I called for back at the start of the New Year here: an increase in winter fuel payments for pensioners. Because of the huge rise in fuel prices, this measure was essential to ensure the well-being of our senior citizens this year. Over-60s will get £250 this Winter, up £50 and over-80s £400 - a £100 increase.

But let's be clear: it's not the government's job to meet these costs for the sake of it, and in the process help boost the bonuses our foreign-owned power companies reap. That's why this was a one-off Winter Fuel Payment increase. It gives the government and the Power Regulators a year to get to grips with some of the root causes of fuel poverty that I wrote about in January.

May 01: The choice on transport

On Monday Labour launched our transport manifesto for London for the next four years.
Transport is the area that has been most transformed by Labour's eight years in charge of London:

• Buses have been transformed
• The Tube is slowly but surely beginning to benefit from the billions invested
• We've taken control of some of the worst performing train services to creat London Overground
• The number of cyclists in London has never been higher
• London's great town squares like Trafalgar Square are once again being returned to pedestrians
• We've revolutionised paying for public transport journeys by introducing the Oystercard
• The congestion charge has reduced traffic gridlock in the city without the dire displacement around the edges the Tories scaremongered would happen
• And the income from the congestion zone has made it possible for everything else listed above to be provided by Labour without crippling fare rises.

That's what we've already done - but we're nowhere near done. Here's what you'll get by re-electing Labour for another term of office on 01 May:

• A brand new London bike-hire scheme
• Free public transport travel for our service veterans
• Pensioners with Freedom Passes able to use them any time of the day
• More convenient ways of paying for Oyster and the congestion charge
• Cheaper fares than the Tories will saddle you with: each bus journey will be 15p cheaper with Labour
• The expansion of London Overground

Coupled with the campaigns I'm running for:

• Extensive improvements to Putney Station
• Setting up the AirTrack network connecting Waterloo with Heathrow
• More capacity on local train services by returning the six unused Waterloo platforms vacated by Eurostar
• And fully accessible East Putney and Southfields Stations

...these are bold, enterprising, ambitious and achievable plans to make London an Olympic City by 2012.

I don't like talking about what things were like under the Tories - it was such a long time ago that they messed things up so badly, after all. But on transport, even those barely old enough to remember the underfunded, run-down Conservative years have the scars of the dreadful mess they made of London Transport seared into their memories. Don't let the Tories take us back down that tunnel again.

Vote for Ken Livingstone as Mayor and give us a Labour voice on the Assembly for the first time ever by backing local Assembly candidate Leonie Cooper.

You can read Ken's Transport for London manifesto here.

Embryology Bill

Given its controversial nature, I'm surprised there hasn't been more media coverage of the Human Tissues and Embryology Bill currently going through Parliament.

The Bill will deliver a major overhaul of the law on a range of measures related to embryo research - in essence what the government is trying to do is tie together years of different and sometimes disparate acts of law into one comprehensive piece of legislation. The Bill covers issues as diverse as Embryonic Stem Cell research, cloning, artificial insemination and much more. It is highly likely that during the debate MPs will revisit the issue of abortion limits.

On their own, several of these issues raise complex ethical questions - and you will perhaps forgive me if I don't claim to have reached a settled conclusion on all of them. But together, they represent a moral and ethical dilemma.

Usually on such matters, the political parties recognise that these are matters of conscience for MPs and allow a "free vote" - that is, they don't whip their MPs to vote a particular way. That has still enabled legislation to pass, as a cross-party majority has usually existed to get the bills through. But it allows those with genuine moral, religious and ethical problems to oppose bills that conflict with their own sincere convictions.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are giving their MPs a free vote on this Bill. My party, Labour, is not. That's wrong and I hope the Government will see sense and allow MPs to reach their own conclusions on the ethics of these proposals. As MP for Putney, I would find it extremely difficult to support the Bill.

Post Offices: will Wandsworth follow the Essex lead?

Essex County Council has been negotiating with the post Office to take over the running of Post offices in their county. The BBC are covering the story here.

This issue has already been the subject of some debate on the Putney SW15 website; it's also something that Labour Councillors in Wandsworth have been investigating.

The Essex plan is important because so few local Post Offices win reprieves once they have been tagged for closure. It's of course important that any deal between the Post Office and Council Tax payers don't just end up subsidising the branches instead of national taxpayers (every week, the Post Office needs a £2million subsidy).

I'd like Wandsworth Council to look at a similar deal to save the Lower Richmond Road and Putney Bridge Road Post Office branches. Whether or not they have the courage to follow Essex County Council's lead, there are other ways the council could support Post Offices - by making it possible for residents to collect council benefits and pay council tax or rent at local branches; even by combining housing offices with post offices, possibly as part of a one-stop-shop facility for the community. There are so many innovative and enterprising possibilities here.

I commend Essex County Council - a Conservative-run authority - for its innovation. It seems to me that this is now a fundamental test for Wandsworth's Conservative council. Are they genuinely committed to saving local Post Office branches and doing the right thing for local people - or in fact do they actually want to see the Post Offices closed so that local Conservatives can continue to play politics?

Why not attend the public meeting the Council's holding this Thursday at St Mary's Church, 7.30pm and find out?

Putney School of Art expansion

It's great to see that Putney School of Art in Oxford Road is set to expand after submitting a bid for Government Learning & Skills Council funding.

It's also good to see Wandsworth Council celebrating this success - not least given that not that long ago they tried to close Putney School of Art down: only thwarted by a spectacular groundswell of local opposition from the local community.

I'm reminded of the saying about there being no-one quite as enthusiastic as a sinner who repents. Let's hope the bid is successful, and that this kicks into touch forever any attempts by the Conservatives to close Putney School of Art and replace it with another luxury apartment building.

Out and about on the Alton Estate

Isn't this a great photo of the Alton Estate? We took it from the top of Chilcombe House in Fontley Way when we were out contacting residents there yesterday.

You can see pretty much all of the Alton West in this picture: in the left three of the blocks in Tunworth Crescent and next to them Sherfield Gardens and Clarence Lane. At the back then come the five Highcliffe Drive blocks, and in front of them the ten high rises in Tangley Grove and Ellisfield Drive.

Below them are the long blocks that run down Danebury Avenue, and in front of them Laverstoke Gardens. And, at the foot of the picture, the very well maintained grounds of Whitelands College - you can just see part of Parkstead House, the focal point of the Whitelands campus - in the bottom right.

Tudor Lodge Clinic: responding to patient need

There was a really good report in the Evening Standard yesterday about how the Tudor Lodge Clinic in Victoria Drive is responding to their patients' needs by staying open beyond office hours.

The practice, which serves 6,000 patients in the West Hill area, opens between 8am and 6pm, as well as Saturday mornings. It is soon to extend weekday hours to 7.30pm. As the Clinic Manager Prath Thurairatnam commented: "We open later because it's about patients, not money".

This comment, for me, sums up why the Doctors' Union is pushing an argument they just can't win in opposing the government's plans to be more responsive to patients' needs.

GPs have received a huge pay increase and had the burden of required out-of-hours service lifted from them over the past few years - they deserve it and it was long overdue. But as someone in the area I was talking to the other day said: "illness doesn't keep office hours, and neither should doctors."

For any of us who leave for work before 8am and who don't get home til after 6pm, traditional opening hours simply aren't any use. It's no longer acceptable for doctors to essentially demand of us that we either take half a day of leave to get to see them, or just let our illness or ailment go untreated.

That's why I commend Prath and his team at Tudor Lodge for the excellent service they provide - and I suspect it's one reason why their patient satisfaction score is as high as 98%.

You can read the Evening Standard article here.

Putney's Olympic venues

This map shows the locations of sites in Wandsworth that the Olympic Organising Committee is offering as training venues for national teams in 2012.

In fact, the announcement of the UK's Olympic training venues was made in Wandsworth: at Ernest Bevin School in Tooting yesterday.

I haven't yet come across a precise list of venues and I'm not entirely convinced the map they've issue has pinpointed them accurately, but in Putney you'll see we have two, one near Putney Heath and one close to Putney Common.

I'm sure Olympics team organisers from around the globe are avid readers of this website, so my message is: come to Putney - you're sure of a warm welcome!

You can download the full Olympics site brochure and learn more on the London 2012 site here.

Christmas crime rise, but Putney still safer than London overall

Crime figures in every single ward in Putney (and, I suspect, the borough) rose in December, but five of Putney's six wards remain much safer than the London average.

Crimes associated with Christmas - like theft and possession of stolen goods - were the principal cause of the uptick in figures, though in most areas crime was on the increase. But the London-wide crime rate was 126.4 crimes per 1,000 of the population; across Wandsworth as a whole the comparable figures was 111.1 and across Putney just 98.4 - we remain one of the safest and crime free communities in London. If crime committed in Putney High Street and Wandsworth town centre is removed from the picture, our residential areas fare even better.

One final point: you may have seen some coverage in the local news and by Conservative councillors that Southfields is to lose its Safer Neighbourhoods Police team. In fact, the team of six officers Southfields and every other ward in Wandsworth was promised by Ken Livingstone in the 2004 Mayoral Election is staying put. What the stories alluded to - but did not make clear, is that any extra Police officers the borough gets (and Putney has forty SNTs even though on a strict allocation we should only have 36) are to be allocated to parts of the borough with far higher crime rates than Southfields.

Here are the figures up to January:



And here's the table showing the figures up to December for comparison:

The risk of flooding

Yesterday the Environment Agency held an exhibition and consultation at St Mary's Church about its plans to protect riparian communities like Putney from the growing threat of flooding.

Although this is a chance for us to have a say over how the powers that be protect the Thames area from flood risk through to 2100, the exhibition was as much a chance to reassure residents that Putney and London are not at any imminent risk of severe tidal flooding.

Protecting against severe flooding also needs to be offset against, for example, the visual impact of flood barriers. Many would argue that a great concrete wall along the Putney embankment similar to the one in Barnes would not be worth the loss of our riverside vistas or accessibility to the foreshore for pedestrians and rowers alike.

The Environment Agency is also looking at protecting communities that live alongside the Thames's tributaries - in our neck of the woods that means those in Southfields and Wandsworth town living near the Wandle, and the Roehampton and Putney Common areas alongside Beverley Brook.

Given that both these areas experienced some flooding during last Summer's downpours, the Agency is looking at ways of diverting "fresh water" floodwater (as opposed to tidal floodwater) onto flood plain land and away from homes; meaning in the case of The Wandle onto King George's Park, and in respect of Beverley Brook Richmond Park and Barnes Common.

But the underlying message to come out of the consultation was that London is secure from flooding; the Thames Barrier - while it needs some strengthening - is still fit for purpose for decades to come; that we do not yet need a new barrier further towards the estuary and that communities like Putney, if we do experience flooding, will do so due to freak downpours of rain rather than tidal surges.

You can find out a whole lot more about the flood risk, what the Environment Agency is proposing to do to protect us, and have your own say, by visiting: www.environment-agency.gov.uk/te2100

Post Offices push unique web visitors past 2,000

Putney, Roehampton and Southfields residents wanting to register their concern about the Post Office's closure of local branches in the constituency helped set new records for this website in February for the fourth successive month.

2,091 different people visited last month - that's up from just over 1,700 in January; with two days exceeding 200 visits for the first time ever. It's really nice to see readership of my local site grow by so much every month - so thank you very much for visiting, and I hope you find the content beneficial.

As well as the obviously huge number of visits to my campaign pages to save the Lower Richmond Road and Putney Bridge Road post offices, the real problem dangerous dogs are causing continues to make my work on this issue the most viewed section of the site.

There's only so much growth a local website with a very specific focus like this one can go on experiencing, but I very much hope you'll keep returning here and telling your friends and neighbours about this source of news in your neck of the woods.

Putney farmers' market returns

It was good to see that the farmers' market is now back in Church Square by St Mary's Church and the Odeon Cinema, after a couple of false starts earlier this year.

If you missed it today, it's back again tomorrow and every weekend from now on, between 10am and 3pm, with around 12 stands offering free-range meats, fresh fruit and veg Speciality Cheeses, Organic and Artisan Breads, Salads, Oils, pies, fresh flowers and much more.

This is one of the very few pleasant features of Putney High Street: the redevelopment of this riverside quarter - which the Conservative Council opposed - has really shown how new life can be breathed back into a town centre.

While we look forward, desperately, to the repaving of some more of the High Street - work again paid for not by the Council but by Ken Livingstone's Transport for London - this still leaves too much of Putney's town centre cluttered, grubby, grimy and run down.

The Putney Society are rightly heralding the repaving works but I hope they won't regard this as job done: I need them alongside me continuing to crusade for a Putney High Street we can all take some pride in.

Visit my Save Putney High Street campaign pages to give me your views on how we can improve our town centre.