January crime stats: Roehampton joins the sub-100 club

For the first time since I've been reporting Putney's crime figures, the number of recorded offences in Roehampton ward fell below 100 crimes per 1,000 residents in January.

This is a remarkable achievement by Roehampton's Safer Neighbourhood team, and I congratulate them. In May 2007; the first month I reported Putney's stats, Roehampton crime rate was 127.5 - last month it was 97.7: that's a drop of 25% in just over a year and a half.

January's figures also show that there was no "Christmas spike" in crime, as there was over the December/January period in 2008. Crime fell in four of our six wards, and in most categories of crime. There is also no sign of a surge in so-called "economic crime" linked to the recession, yet, although drugs offences rose in Putney, Wandsworth and London as a whole.

Ram Brewery towers "called in"

Following the news earlier this week that Labour Communities Secretary Hazel Blears had "called in" - the technical term for reviewing the decision on the Ealing Broadway tower plan; she has done the same for the Ram Brewery towers.

You can read more here.

In another sign of how way out of step with Putney the Conservatives have got on this, Tory Council Leader Edward Lister is quoted as attacking the Government's decision saying: "It’s unbelievable that in the depths of a recession we have a minister that would put at risk £1bn of investment in the town centre."

Well, actually Councillor, it's unbelievable that you have railroaded this absurd overdevelopment plan that will clog the remainder of road capacity in central Wandsworth. It's unbelievable that you have forced through plans that will overwhelm local services and transport provision. And it's unbelievable that you think it's a good idea to blight our borough with skyscrapers that will make the Arndale estate towers look miniscule and be visible for miles and miles around.

It's important not to get too carried away here: the independent Government inspector could rule after his review that the plans should proceed. But it is clearly significant that Labour Ministers have stepped in where Tory Mayor Boris Johnson has failed to and looks to be of the view that "out of town" skyscrapers are inappropriate.

I'm delighted at Hazel Blears' decision. It shows beyond doubt that the choice at the next election will be between Tory towers and Labour defending our area from overdevelopment.

King George's Park: close but no cigar

King George's Park has failed to win one of the Mayor for London's parks improvements grants, but came fourthd in the public vote, which I reported here.

The two parks in south west London that won are Wandle Park in Croydon - which is near the source of the Wandle and will involve unearthing the river here, which currently runs through a concrete pipe - and Crane Valley Park that borders Richmond and Hounslow.



You can read more about the winning parks - and the candidates - on the Help a London Park website.

Childreach International

A Southfields student - 20 year old Katharine O'Donnell - has been in touch to let me know about her part in a 250 student fundraising expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro.

Nottingham is my old University, so I've agreed to publicise Katharine's fundraising effort.

The climb is in aid of Childreach International, a global youth development charity that works to alleviate poverty and bring education, safe water and healthcare to the world's poorest and most vulnerable children.

Katharine and her mates from the University of Nottingham set off on their climb in June. From the reports we're getting back from the Comic Relief celebrity team that have just accomplished the feat, it's going to be a gruelling, once-in-a-lifetime challenge.

If you would like to support her efforts then you can donate via her website at http://www.justgiving.com/katharinesmammothclimb. For more information about the work of Childreach International visit their website here

Earlsfield overcrowding

A new report from the London Assembly Transport Committee has highlighted Earlsfield Station as one of the most overcrowded stations in London.

Sadiq Khan, the MP for Tooting - who represents the majority of Earlsfield's community - has been campaigning on improving Earlsfield Station for years; in fact Labour's council team for Earlsfield made the state of the station a major campaign issue way back in 2002.

But a small section of our constituency also regards itself as Earlsfield - areas like Penwith Road, Strathville Road, Ravensbury Road and Dounesforth Gardens are all in the Putney constituency, albeit a long way from Putney itself.

The Transport Committee is pressing the Mayor to implement some of the promises both he - and Putney's Conservative MP made when they were seeking election but have so far failed to deliver on, such as introducing longer trains, improved reliability and a reduction in the number of cancelled trains.



Elsewhere in London other planned public transport upgrades, such as Crossrail will help relieve pressure. But there is very little for our part of South West London other than the three options above.

Until we can create significantly new capacity for south west London there will continue to be overcrowding problems at Earlsfield. And that makes for unhappy commuters.

You can read a copy of the London Assembly Transport Committee report here.

Sheltered housing stupidity

Over the past week, I've been working with sheltered housing residents in Roehampton over crazy plans by the Conservatives to play musical chairs with the wardens who look after the schemes and their residents.

Sheltered housing offers independent living for senior citizens, but with the support of a "warden", someone employed to check on residents, to make sure they're ok and to offer help and support when asked.

The best wardens build great trust and friendship with the residents and become much loved - in fact the strong personal connection is the whole point of such schemes.

The Conservatives are now planning on destroying this link - and with it the trust and security that goes with it - by forcibly rotating wardens around all the borough's sheltered schemes every two years. Worse still, they've done this without consultation with residents and without any council overview and scrutiny. This is not just bad practice and gross arrogance - it has caused real trauma among residents.

The bizarre logic behind this upsetting plan is that senior sheltered housing officers are apparently overworked. How rotating wardens will ease workload is something understood only by the Tories. Wouldn't the rest of us take the view that if a service is overstretched then either workload needs to be reduced or more wardens need to be employed?

There seems to be some belated admission from the Conservatives that they may have failed to consult properly, but that has not prompted them to halt their plans - which come in on 02 March. This is not good enough and I'm doing all I can to help our senior citizens - who deserve so much better - from losing their wardens.

Old maps of Putney

As a local historian, I enjoy looking at old maps of the area. A forerunner of the A-Z maps of London, which sadly doesn't have a date of publication in it but would, at latest, have been printed in the 1930s, is Bacon's Up-To-Date Atlas & Guide to London. Price: sixpence.

Today and tomorrow, I'll publish the local maps from that book on this blog, starting with Southfields and Wandsworth town, below. Click on the image to get a much larger version (which is a 3mb file, so may take a while to open). I've added some observations below the picture.



The biggest changes in this part of the world can be found towards the north of the map where the river Wandle enters the Thames. Have a look at the King George's Park area.

First, note the viaduct that ran across the park, just north of Mapleton Road - it runs from St Ann's Hill across to Merton Road before going underground at either end. And Mapleton Road used to be a through-road to Garratt Lane.

Also, have a look at how much freer the Wandle itself was: where Neville Gill Close is now the river used to form a large pool. It also had a little spur running alongside Buckhold Road, where the new Hardwick's Square development now is.

A more significant branch off the Wandle occurs even closer to the Thames, where it snaked alongside Frogmore to a road that's no longer there: Raft Road, parallel to Sudlow Street (it's now the Wandsworth Council Depot). One of the older members of Putney Labour Party used to live there in the days when the river branched out, and apparently there was quite a scandal when a young girl drowned while playing alongside this section.

It's also interesting that what is now called Ram Street, alongside the Brewery and where the 220 and 270 buses go down, was originally a continuation of [Old] York Road, before the one way system was introduced; and Fairfield Street that runs past the entrance to the Town Hall continued all the way down to the Thames (now that part of Fairfield Street is part of Smugglers Way). There's another member of Putney Labour Party who used to live in Warple Road - which is now Swandon Road which leads to the Wandsworth Bridge roundabout.

On the left-hand side of the map, in what is West Hill ward (west of the District Line to Southfields), you can see some of what the area was like before the large council estates that were built after the war. Whitlock Drive has not been built; instead Edgecombe Hall - after which the estate there is named, and it's acres of grounds - remains.

One of the things that I think is really important is that historic local names survive; in this area in particular a lot of the blocks that now exist are named after mansions, old roads, fields or other historical names; for example "Florys" lives on the corner of Augustus Road and Princes Way lives on in Florys Court; and Allenswood, Ambleside and Fernwood are all now blocks on the Wimbledon Park Estate.

White elephants

Hardwick's Square was among the first of the recent massive housing developments the Conservatives approved for our area - it's the site just behind Wandsworth High Street, and it's far from complete.

Today the Wandsworth Guardian is reporting the folly of the Conservatives' housing strategy: the stack-em-up, pile-em-high mentality that is not only blighting our area with high rise blocks but is creating hundreds of empty private homes when the area is in desperate need of affordable housing to rent.

And it's not just the Guardian realising this problem. Some of the most senior council officers are admitting how wrong the Conservatives have got it. In an email to my campaign on Monday, one of them - who to spare embarrassment I won't name - wrote:

"Because of the housing/mortgage situation and recession, these are not filling as rapidly as predicted...I suspect this will now plateau out somewhat."

That being the case, why on earth are the Conservatives ramming through hundreds and hundreds more homes: 500 on the brewery in Wandsworth town; 150 in the new "Argento Tower" block beside the Arndale shopping centre; another 500 in Clapham Junction; 100+ at Tileman House and goodness knows how many more they want to cram into the remainder of the Riverside Quarter site behind Wandsworth Park.

The Conservatives are completely out of control. I can only stop them with your votes.

Thames Water fined £125,000 for Wandle spillage

As I reported late last year, Magistrates referred Thames Water up to Croydon Crown Court for sentencing over the terrible spillage of bleach into the River Wandle that killed tonnes of fish and did severe damage to the river.

The Magistrates passed the case on because they were limited in the amount of fines they could impose on Thames Water but felt the mistake had been so catastrophic that a bigger punishment needed to be imposed. And so it was: Croydon Court judges are making Thames Water pay £125,000 for the damage they did.

I think this fine is proportionate and sends a clear message that London's tributary rivers are as important as the Thames to our capital.

"Economic" crime? December crime stats

I often go on about the high level of crime in Thamesfield ward, which is almost entirely due to the amount of crime that occurs in and off of Putney High Street.

Let me try to put how much more crime there is in Thamesfield compared to the rest of Putney into context. There are more theft and handling offences alone in Thamesfield than the entire amount of reported crime in East Putney, West Hill or West Putney wards.

That's why my campaign for town centre patrollers in the High Street are so important: when they were tested out in Clapham Junction and Tooting about four years ago they cut street crime by one third. And they'll allow the Thamesfield Safer Neighbourhood teams to give more attention to the residential parts of their patch. It's why I'm also campaigning against the £472 million the Conservatives want to cut from the Metropolitan Police, which cannot but mean reductions in front-line police locally.

So-called economic crimes like theft, or burglary - ie property crimes, are likely to rise during an economic slowdown. Politicians always struggle to talk sensibly about such crimes for fear that talking about the reasons why a tiny minority become more likely to thieve and steal in such a climate equals condoning or understanding such behaviour. Of course there is never justification to take someone else's property -period.

Fortunately there isn't that much sign of property crime increasing in Putney - yet. Burglary is somewhat down in five wards and slightly up in one. Thefts did pick up noticeably in December in four wards, dropped in two. Drug offences were down across the board and sex offences down in five out of six wards. There also seems to be a delay in reporting any crimes during the Christmas period in the figures - maybe these will feed through to the January figures due out next month.

November crime stats

Crime fell again in all six Putney areas in November 2008 (remember there's a two month lag between the month they happened and the reporting of them).

As this graph shows, with the exception of December 2007, when crime spiked in the run-up to Christmas, all wards are now safer than they were in May 2007 when I first started reporting these figures. There have been marked falls in crime in Roehampton and Southfields during this period - during which Roehampton has become substantially safer than the London average.



As we saw at the end of last year, it's probably wise to forecast a notable jump in crime in the December figures - but what we also saw was a January fall larger than the December "blip" - so that's also something to watch out for.

Here are November's figures - a reminder that green figures show a decline or the same level of crime as the preceding month; red shows an increase.

Chuggers Law?

A few days ago, the Labour Government announced it was looking at introducing a licensing system for public charitable collections - the so called Chuggers (Charity Muggers) who accost us when we're out shopping, trying to get us to sign up to a standing order for their cause.

This is something I have called for myself, and from the correspondence I receive through my Save Putney High Street campaign, something that animates a lot of you.

The aim is for a new licensing scheme for public charitable collections that will ensure responsible fundraising and deter bogus collections and prevent any nuisance to the public. I look forward to this review being completed so that we can better control what is at best a public nuisance and at worst can approach harrassment.

The planning threats just keep on coming

The Wandsworth Borough News is reporting on a reception held by the council last night to unveil yet more overdevelopment they're championing - almost all in the Putney constituency.

The schemes unveiled included:

• The next phase of the Riverside Quarter development between Wandsworth Park and the River Wandle
• South Thames College on Putney Hill
• Hardwick's Quarter, which is presumably their fancy name for the Cockpen House development
• Southside shopping centre
• The nearly finished Parkside tower block beside King George's Park, which they are misleadingly calling affordable housing

The thing I find most disturbing is the relish with which the Conservatives keep rolling out these plans (just before Christmas, when they think we'll have our minds on other things, note) as if the views of local residents are irrelevent, the character of our area immaterial and the strain these developments will place on local infrastructure inconsequential.

Bizarrely, at the very reception the Conservatives were announcing their plans alongside their developer chums, they also announced a redesign of the Wandsworth one-way system to show off the "elegant Georgian terraces, churches and pubs that characterise the area": as if all this new development won't more than offset any small improvements to traffic flow a redesign may provide.

It's bad enough that they keep giving the green light to all this overdevelopment - but now they're actually wining and dining the developers in lavish receptions funded by local taxpayers: and putting out press releases to make sure we all know it.

Parking permits up 27%

The day after Tory Leader David Cameron lectured us about the evils of tax increases, Wandsworth Conservatives unveil a 27% increase in the cost of residents parking permits.

The price of a permit will now be £95 - a cost that has increased 44% since the council elections two years ago.

Curiously, the Conservatives mentioned nothing about their plans to hike up the cost of parking permits in their election manifesto for those elections - just as they forgot to tell us about their plans to close Wandsworth Museum or West Hill Library.

This is the reality of Wandsworth: Council Tax may be low but only because the Tories claw back the money through stealth taxes like this.

Inflation busting parking permit hikes are just one example; council tenants pay among the highest rents in London; pensioners needing home helps pay among the highest charges in London; charges for collecting bulky rubbish are among the highest in London; the amounts raised through library fines among the highest in London (and slammed by the Taxpayers' Alliance, no less); leisure centre charges among the highest in London; even the cost of dying - burial charges - are among the highest in London.

The irony of this 27% parking permit hike is that at the last council elections Labour in Wandsworth under my leadership pledged to make parking permits for the first car in every household free - which we'd have paid for by increasing the costs for second and subsequent parking permits in multi-car households. Of course, the Conservatives won those elections - so they'll say you get what you voted for.

It goes to show the real difference your vote makes locally.

Tories push another Putney tower

Last week councillors met to decide the Ram Brewery planning application in central Wandsworth.

Alongside the main application (which to recap is for twin towers of 32 and 42 storeys among other buildings on the brewery and adjoining sites) was an additional application to redevelop a site opposite King George's Park known as Cockpen House.

This plan (which unlike the brewery itself is in Putney constituency) would have built a 16-storey building above the park.

The real significance here is that, at present, there are high buildings - the three Arndale estate blocks in Neville Gill Close plus the new "Parkside" block - along just one side of King George's Park. This application would have opened up a new "front" for developers along another side, enclosing the park beneath these blocks as well as adding 200 new flats - 300-odd residents - plus all the associated traffic piled into Wandsworth's already gridlocked road network.

Most attention on this massive application, understandably, has focussed on the landmark skyscrapers on the Brewery itself, leaving the Cockpen House application almost unremarked on. And just look what the Council tries to do when no one is waging a campaign against over-development: the Tories recommend approving their tower blocks.



Labour councillors have "called in" all four planning applications to be debated by all sixty councillors at the full council meeting tonight which, given the importance of this application is only right. But there are 51 Conservatives and just 9 Labour councillors in Wandsworth, so don't expect much to change after tonight's important council meeting - except that if it doesn't, they'll have established a precedent that could make tower block-style overdevelopment elsewhere in Putney that much easier.

Wentworth Court arson attack

Twelve flats in Wentworth Court on Garratt Lane, part of the Arndale estate in Wandsworth town, were badly damaged by fire in the early hours of Saturday.

Fortunately, no one was killed in the attack, which fire investigators have now said was deliberate.

Anyone with information should call Wandsworth CID in confidence on 020 8247 8734.

I will be writing to the Council Housing Department for information about the state of the twelve flats that have been affected and to make sure that there was no structural damage done to the block - one of the largest in the constituency - by the fire.

Wentworth Court is the nearer half of the long, lower-rise yellow and grey blocks in the picture above.

Thames Water face unlimited fine over Wandle pollution

Thames Water's pollution of the Wandle last Autumn has been referred up to Croydon Crown Court after local magistrates in Sutton decided that the incident deserved a more severe punishment than the maximum £20,000 fine they were able to impose.

Two tonnes of dead fish had to be extracted from the Wandle following the spillage of 1,600 litres of hydrochloric acid (bleach) into the river last year. Fortunately, no lasting damage was done to the river and after remedial works and extra investment the Wandle is again thriving.

The company now faces an unlimited fine; which is right except even though the people who ultimately pay for this criminal negligence are you and me. Thames Water behaved appallingly over this incident - not only by letting the acid escape in the first place but then trying to cover up their error by tightening security and putting up new signage before the Environment Agency had arrived to find out exactly what happened. And yes, they have spent over £500,000 rectifying the damage but that doesn't erase the original error.

I write regularly about issues affecting the Wandle: you can read my news stories about the river at www.stuartking.net/blog/wandle.htm

Vote for King George's Park

The Mayor for London is running a competition for awarding grants of up to £400,000 to improve parks throughout the capital.

King George's Park, where I won my first football medal when I was a pupil at Allfarthing School, is one of the parks in the running. As the blurb on the competition website says:

"King George's Park is a long, thin open space, but most of its facilities are at the northern end. A grant would support work with the local community to develop a masterplan for the park, a new playground at southern end, improved wildlife habitat by the river Wandle, a riverside footpath; a new community café and an all-weather games pitch."

Anyone can vote for King George's Park - it's really straightforward.

Incidentally the photo shown here is of my 6-aside football team (I'm the the one on the bottom right if it isn't obvious! My team mates are [clockwise] Ansell, Zubair, Richard, Richard & Matthew).

Vote for King George's Park

The Mayor for London is running a competition for awarding grants of up to £400,000 to improve parks throughout the capital.

King George's Park, where I won my first football medal when I was a pupil at Allfarthing School, is one of the parks in the running. As the blurb on the competition website says:

"King George's Park is a long, thin open space, but most of its facilities are at the northern end. A grant would support work with the local community to develop a masterplan for the park, a new playground at southern end, improved wildlife habitat by the river Wandle, a riverside footpath; a new community café and an all-weather games pitch."

Anyone can vote for King George's Park - it's really straightforward.

Incidentally the photo shown here is of my 6-aside football team (I'm the the one on the bottom right if it isn't obvious! My team mates are [clockwise] Ansell, Zubair, Richard, Richard & Matthew).

Crime: how does Putney compare with the rest of the borough?

The October crime figures, just released, again show good progress by the Police in cutting crime. East Putney and West Hill wards all saw declines in every single category of crime; in West Putney all categories bar one were down. Overall, crime fell in five of our six council wards, with only a small rise in Southfields.



With crime figures, context is everything - it's why, alongside the ward by ward figures, I also provide the borough and London averages - so you can see how Putney is doing compared to larger areas. But this month, I thought you might be interested in seeing how Putney's six council wards compare to their fourteen counterparts elsewhere in the borough.

In the table below I'm just showing the "total" number of crimes per 1,000 - the figure that's in the shaded grey box in the table above. And, instead of ordering them alphabetically, I've ranked them in terms of that total crime rate - with the lowest crime areas at the top, and the highest at the bottom.

Three of the safest four council wards anywhere in the borough are in Putney - and four of the top ten. But Putney's Thamesfield ward is the most crime-ridden ward in the borough by far. Putney probably has the largest shopping centre in the borough, so it is to be expected that the sort of town centre crime that affects Thamesfield will be higher than other town centres. But I don't think the gap should be quite so stark.

Putney BNP members outed

The entire national membership list of the fascist, racist British National Party has been posted on the web.

I managed to get a look before the website was taken down, and found that the BNP has a grand total of eleven members in Putney - not exactly a mass membership party!

But you'd be surprised where some of them live - mainly in more affluent parts of the constituency like the Southfields Grid, a street off Lower Richmond Road, the Lytton Grove area and leafy West Putney.

These are usually regarded as affluent, Conservative-voting areas, somewhat removed from the stereotyped BNP member as working class, living on a council estate and poor. But wherever they live, BNP members are just pathetic, usually poorly educated people who can't handle the modern world and who are too cowardly to do anything other than blame "outsiders" for that.

Local dentists

Click on image if you need a larger version.

Restoring the Wandle

I'm passionate about getting the river Wandle, which forms the Putney constituency's eastern boundary, cleaned up. I've written about the importance of the Wandle regularly since being selected, and when there's something to say about it, I'll continue to do so.

I grew up with the Wandle on my doorstep but when I was growing up the river was polluted and very nearly dead. Today, the news is very different, despite the Thames Water acid spillage a few months ago.

Not only is the water cleaner but The Wandle Trust has been organising cleanup events to haul the huge amount of trash that has been dumped in it over the years. This isn't just about aesthetics: rubbish in any river raises the water level - and that worsens flooding, so it's important to keep the Wandle clean AND clear.

The Wandle will never return to being the vital channel for industry it was in Victorian times: servicing 90 mills along its length, but it can once again be a proud and important river no longer buried by planners or polluted by fly-tippers. That's something I hope we can all welcome.

If you'd like to get involved with one of the cleanups call the Wandle Trust on 0845 092 0110.

Razing Merton Road's raised crossing

A few days ago I was in Hanford Close, a council estate on the edge of the Southfields Grid at the corner of Brookwood Road and Merton Road - opposite Southfields Community College.

Last year the Conservative Council decided to raise the zebra crossing here, no doubt with the well-meaning intention of making motorists better aware of the large number of school pupils crossing Merton Road here.

These are laudable aims but a questionable way of tackling a problem I'm not sure ever existed.

The consequence is that while cars do slow to avoid any damage as they go over the raised crossing, lorries have no need to do so, and so slam over the crossing at all hours. That creates a huge din loud enough to wake Hanford Close residents in the early hours of the morning.

If the crossing prevents road traffic accidents then that may be a price worth paying for the disturbance. But I doubt there was a problem with the old crossing before it was raised. I find it hard to believe that motorists failed to spot the crossing, the flashing lights and the bright markings when it was flush to the road surface; nor am I aware of any road traffic accidents here prior to it being raised up.

And if raising a crossing has such a dramatic impact saving lives, why hasn't the council raised all crossings around the borough, or even just those near schools and colleges?

I've written to the council asking them to review this crossing, or provide clear evidence that raising the crossing up in itself has produced significant road safety benefits that outweigh the detrimental impact on the residents of Hanford Close of what is effectively a super-road hump.

The residents of Hanford Close and I look forward to hearing from them.

June's local crime figures

There's not much to write about in this month's crime figures - it's fallen very slightly in three Putney council wards and risen very slightly in three. Without further ado, here are the tables:



And May's comparison:

The high rise signal from Boris that should worry Putney

Today's Evening Standard reports that London Tory Mayor Boris Johnson just can't be bothered to submit an objection to a 43-storey tower block on the South Bank, the Doon Street Tower.

This is a complete reverse of his campaign pledge to block tower blocks across the capital and should be a major concern in our neck of the woods where, of course, we are under threat from several tower block plans - some of similar height to this one.

I am someone who isn't opposed to high buildings on principle: they can be appropriate in the City of London and central London. Putney isn't such a location. But that's not Boris's position. He ran for election and, I suspect, won quite a few votes, for his blanket opposition to tower blocks.

Yet today he couldn't even muster the interest to jot down a few words of opposition and submit them to the Secretary of State for Communities, Hazel Blears, who has to rule on this application following a Public Inquiry earlier this year.

If Boris can't be bothered to object to a tower block plan that was backed by a Labour Mayor, was reviewed before he was even elected and which no one will hold him accountable for, the prospects of him standing up to his Conservative allies in Wandsworth over their planning mistakes aren't high, to say the least.

We need Boris to honour his election pledges - not sell out at the first test of them.

Don't forget about 16-storey Cockpen House!

I've written a lot about the hugely significant and damaging plans for Putney Place and Carlton Tower recently - and rightly so. But the biggest over-development plan, and the furthest advanced, is that for the Ram Brewery site in central Wandsworth.

Although I oppose this plan as wholeheartedly as I do the Putney Place and Carlton Tower tower blocks, because the Ram Brewery is not within our constituency I have left it to the local Labour MP: Battersea's Martin Linton, to make the running on this application.

That said, the plans for the brewery site will have a massive impact on Putney. Standing on Putney Bridge the four Arndale towers (plus the latest tower block imposed upon us by the Tory council - Parkside, currently under construction) are clearly visible, despite being almost two miles away. The two Ram Brewery towers will dwarf Sudbury, Albon, Edwyn and Knowles Houses - the Arndale towers.

But aside from the fact that we neighbour this site and it will have a huge impact on our local infrastructure and quality of environment there is, in fact, a legitimate constituency concern for us. Part of the Brewery site does fall within the constituency boundaries: the Cockpen House site at 20-30 Buckhold Road, right next to the Royal Military Police Building.

This specific part of Wandsworth town has already been subject to huge construction in recent years - I've already mentioned the Parkside block at the end of Neville Gill Close, but just behind Buckhold Road is Hardwick's Way which has become a huge housing development with another block on the edge of Buckhold Road nearing completion.

To add to the gross over-development of this area, the Council is currently considering plans for a 16-storey tower, a 10-storey block on Buckhold Road (where currently the buildings are no more than two storeys and are mainly small inter-war cottages) and what they call a five storey "element" to the rear.

To put a 16 storey block in context, the tallest block on Roehampton's Alton estate is eleven storeys high. And worryingly, even the artists' impressions of the buildings - pictures that are supposed to make us look more favourably on these plans - make me cringe in horror at the ugliness of the architecture.

The Council has produced a handy guide to the plans for both the Ram Brewery and the Cockpen House site which you can download here. Although the deadline for submissions in respect of these plans closed last month, it's still worthwhile to see just how seriously our community is under threat from these carbuncles.

Putney - safer than other parts of London?

Every month when I publish the ward-by-ward crime statistics I usually focus on the change over the previous month.

This month it's worth looking at how crime in Putney compares with London as a whole.

Every single ward in Putney has a lower record of drug offending, fraud or forgery, robbery and other notifiable offences than the Met Police average.

Every single ward in Putney bar one has a better record on burglary and theft & handling (Thamesfield being the exception); criminal damage and violence against the person (Roehampton); and robbery (Southfields) than the London-wide figures. Roehampton has a stastically insignificant higher rate of sexual offences, which are a very small percentage of the total anyway I'm pleased to say.

Putney also compares favourably to our borough as a whole - though the pattern is very slightly different. The overall Wandsworth figure for crimes per 1,000 of the population is 99.6; the overall Putney figure is 89.9.

So what these crime figures show, month-in, month-out is that Wandsworth is safer than other parts of London, and that Putney is safer than other parts of Wandsworth. Don't let the Tories tell you different.

Here are the year to May 2008 figures:



And the April 2008 figures for comparison:

A river runs through it

There was some coverage over the weekend of proposals by London's Mayor Boris Johnson to unearth or open up London's rivers.

Because so many of these have been concreted-over or have dried up it is unsurprising that many who aren't familiar with London's history have no idea that our Capital has far more rivers running through it than just the Thames.

Locally, we are fortunate to have one of the few that remains above ground, at least for large sections of its length: the Wandle. The Wandle was also one of the rivers highlighted in the news coverage of the Mayor's plans. Although they would mainly affect areas downstream of the Southfields sections of the Wandle I welcome them; as I do any plans to reveal as many of London's forgotten rivers where it is practicable to do so.

I hope the Mayor's ideas also help defeat the plans to over-develop the Ram Brewery site which runs alongside the Wandle near its mouth into the Thames. Although these plans do not cover-over the Wandle, the huge tower blocks - of up to 42 storeys - proposed will create a dark canyon either side of it that will hardly enhance the river.

I'd also like a duty on those who own property abutting the Wandle (and other above-ground rivers) to provide a public path along the river enshrined in London planning law, in exactly the same way policies like this helped, over thirty years, create the Thames Path many of us enjoy today.

Large expanses of the Wandle, not least alongside King George's Park, are already open - there's a Wandle nature trail that takes you as far south as Croydon - but far more could be opened up, especially where there are prime re-development sites backing onto the river. Not everywhere will be appropriate - such a policy wouldn't force residents to surrender their back gardens for instance - but a lot more could be done to make the river more accessible.

And it will ensure that never again will councils be able to build shopping centres like Southside over the Wandle. One of the great missed opportunities of the Arndale (Southside) development is that had a more sensitive plan - which made the Wandle its feature - been implemented it would today be a far more vibrant, welcoming and popular shopping centre.

Putney gets safer - again

The April crime figures for Putney's six council wards are out and show another decline in crime compared to April 2007.



The only ward to buck the trend substantially was Thamesfield - I'm particularly concerned about the amount of burglaries taking place in this ward and it's disheartening that the Council - especially given that the Tory Council Leader Edward Lister represents this area - isn't doing a lot more to help the police cut crime.

One of the things that would help tremendously here would be town centre patrollers: when the Labour Government funded two trials of such patrollers in Clapham Junction and Tooting town centres, street crime - by far the biggest problem in Putney town centre - fell by a third.

Town centre patrollers wouldn't directly cut the burglary figures, but what they would do is free the Thamesfield Safer Neighbourhood Police up to focus on the rest of Thamesfield ward away from Putney High Street, and that can only be helpful.

Regretably, when the Government street patroller funding stopped, the Tory Council chose to sack the wardens rather than find the money itself to continue the excellent service. And before the Tories scream "Council Tax rises" just think how much this Council spends producing Brightside, and how it finds the money to run off (and pay to be delivered) fancy leaflets whenever it wants to attack the government - campaigning on the rates, big time. Cutting back on propaganda would go a long way to funding town centre patrollers in Putney.

As usual in these reports, here's the comparison table for March 2008:

Bar charts

We all know how the Liberal Democrats love a bar chart: well here's one that shows the result in Southfields in this month's Mayoral elections.

Unlike Lib Dem bar-charts, this result doesn't need any spin or small print: it shows beyond any doubt which party is the ONLY challenger to the Tories in Southfields.

"Where do I vote?"

It's been a few weeks since the Council sent out pollcards telling us where our polling station is in the elections this coming Thursday.

We're sending out our own cards letting thousands of Labour supporters in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields, know where to vote on Thursday. But if you want to check where you vote, you can do so on my website by clicking here.

There's a list of polling stations down the side, or you can check using the map - by clicking on the links you'll get a list of streets that vote at each station and a satellite image of the location on it.

Most polling stations are where they've always been, but a couple have changed since the last elections in 2006:

• The Putney Vale estate now votes at Stag House in Stroud Crescent, following the Tory council's closure of Newlands Hall;


• Residents of the Alton East estate are back voting at Roehampton Parish Hall (now called Cornerstone), on the corner of Alton Road and Roehampton Lane.

Clamping down on Coleman Court car crime

On Tuesday I was out and about in Coleman Court, off Kimber Road on the edge of King George's Park in Southfields.

I took the opportunity of my visit to Coleman Court to ask residents about problems that had been reported to my via my website.

A number of residents expressed their concern about a spate of car crime locally.

Although there is some parking within Coleman Court, most residents use Burr Road which runs parallel to the estate. It seems there has been an increase in damage to vehicles (broken windows) and some thefts.

Problems of this nature if not stamped out quickly can escalate. They are also exactly the type of crimes that Labour's Safer Neighbourhood police Teams were established to tackle: a local police response to very local problems.

I have been in touch with the Southfields SNT and was impressed with their response. Sgt David Mepham, who leads the team, has a number of ideas about how to tackle this and a number of other problems in the area and I am confident it is "on his radar". He'll be in touch with residents to outline how they can help - and I hope everyone will play their part in tackling this problem.

Crime down in Southfields

Yesterday I attended the panel meeting of the Southfields safer neighbourhoods police team. The meeting, held at Southfields Community College, was presented with some encouragingly low crime figures for the ward.

In the first three months of 2008 burglaries are down a whopping 38% compared to the same period in 2007; the number of drug offences is down by 22% and violence against the person is down 13%. Throughout Southfields there were fewer than 300 crimes during this period, a 5% fall compared to 2007 and one of the reasons why one member of the public present described Southfields as "a really safe ward to live in".

We should not allow complacency to creep up on us, but this is a encouraging set of figures and Sgt Mepham and his team and the local neighbourhood watches should be congratulated on their good work. However, I know that some people do not always report when they are a victim of crime, especially if they think it is a supposedly minor incident (e.g. damage to a vehicle). It really is important that ALL crimes get reported so the police can direct resources as necessary.

The meeting also confirmed the priorities for the Southfields SNT for the next three months, which will be:

• dangerous dogs
• problems with some school aged children
• safety in King George's park

If you wish to contact the Southfields SNT then you can do so by emailing southfields.snt@met.police.uk or call them on 020 8247 8760.

PJ front page in Guardian

Further to my report yesterday on backing British Serviceman and Wandsworth resident PJ Williams get action from the Home Office so that he continue serving our country in the army, the Wandsworth Guardian have made this story their front page this week.

I'm delighted that this story - little short of a scandal, in fact - is getting the attention it deserves. If we continue the pressure on the Home Office, I'm confident that we'll get the breakthrough needed, and PJ will get the resolution to his two year nationality dispute he deserves.

Click here to read a full-size version of the front page.

How not to treat our servicemen

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my campaign session in the Arndale.

Following our work there a resident od Sudbury House, Mr Williams, got in touch to seek help with a problem he's having with the Border & Immigration Agency (BIA).

MrWilliams is a Jamaican national who serves in the British Army. He married an EU citizen and has a teenage daughter who was born in this country. He has always worked and saw active duty in Kosovo. He is entitled to permanent leave to remain in our country, which he has made his home.

Yet the BIA has so far failed to deal with his application – despite having over two years to do so. On its own, this is a shoddy state of affairs and one wonders why exactly such a relatively straight forward matter should take so long.

However, it is compounded by the fact that in making his application Mr Williams was required to surrender his passport to the BIA. Consequently, he has been unable to travel abroad for either personal reasons or professional business. That means that he has been unable to join his unit in either Afghanisatan or Iraq, where his services as a mechanic would be of obvious use and benefit to service personnel serving in those theatres of war. Imagine for one minute how you would feel if your passport had been confiscated by the government for two years - unable to travel abroad on work or holiday.

I have written to both the Border & Immigration Agency and Liam Byrne MP, the Immigration Minister, to argue Mr Williams’ case. I want his application determined as a matter of priority.

Mr Williams has served this country in Kosovo and is willing to serve it again in Afghanistan, Iraq and wherever else he may be needed. He has shown a degree of commitment to our country that deserves our gratitude, an entitlement to stay as long as he chooses, and his passport back.

The Wandsworth Guardian has now taken up this story after I got in touch with them.

Out and about in Putney

The main reason I've been posting a little less frequently in recent days is because of the London election campaigning my team and I are up to.

We've been out all over the constituency, and I've just today finished adding all the places we've been too in the past month to my constituency map page.

We've been talking to you about your concerns and priorities for London in the next four years and the clear choice between the experience, tested leadership and delivered improvements to the capital over the last eight years with Ken Livingstone; and the bluster, blunder, lack of substance, lack of vision, and lack of any credibly-costed plans of his Tory opponent.

So far this campaign we've been to the Longstaff Estate, Galveston Road, Lebanon Road, Sutherland Grove, Skeena Hill, Combemartin Road, Girdwood Road, Whitefield Close, Arcadian Place, Wimbledon Park Road, Albert Drive, Hayward Gardens, Pullman Gardens, Beaumont Road, Whitlock Drive, Kersfield Road, Lytton Grove, Littlecombe Close, Arlesey Close, Chepstow Close, Whitnell Way, Gay Street, Crown Court, Waterman Street, Kingsmere Close, Felsham Road, Glenthorpe, Hanover House, William Gardens, Minstead Gardens, Aubyn Square, Toland Square and Vanneck Square - apologies if we've visited you but aren't listed above.

We've a lot more campaign stops all around Putney, Roehampton and Southfields before polling day on Thursday 01 May so look out for us!

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.

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

Southfields' Olympic lift

One of the Conservatives' campaign pledges at the last general election was that, if they won Putney, Southfields station and the District Line in general would receive a massive overhaul: a longer platform to accommodate longer trains, air conditioned trains, more trains and a more accessible station.

Of these, the only one they have even tried to claim they have delivered on is the last: a more accessible station - because Southfields is going to get a passenger lift in the next few years. I believe in giving credit where it's due; even to Putney's Conservative MP if and when she is personally responsible for improvements to local facilities as she has claimed in respect of the Southfields Station lift.

So when I met recently with the Transport for London official responsible for District Line services I was really surprised to discover that, contrary to Tory claims, the reason Southfields is getting a lift is solely because it's an Olympic Station: the Tennis Olympics take place at the All England Club, just down the road. As I say, I'm more than happy to credit Justine Greening with winning the lift for Southfields Station - all she has to do is tell us about the decisive role she played in winning the 2012 Olympics for London!

Until then let's give credit where credit's due - to the team led by Tony Blair, Ken Livingstone and Lord Coe - without whom the Conservatives would not even be able to attempt to mislead residents they had delivered any improvements to Southfields Station.

Wandsworth Museum Obituary

The borough's amenity societies: the Balham, Battersea, Putney and Wandsworth Societies, the Wandsworth Historical Society, the Friends of Wandsworth Museum and the Wandsworth Museum Action Group have joined forces to write an obituary of the museum that the Tory Council - backed by Putney's Conservative MP - closed on New Year's Day.

You can read the obituary on the putneysw15 website here - it gives a very effective picture of the resources the borough has lost with the closure, as well as the breadth of support the Museum had throughout the community.

Sorting out Southfields' neglect

A few months ago, I wrote here about such severe neglect of council properties in Avening Terrace, Brathway Road, Longstaff Crescent and Longstaff Road, that window frames were crumbling away to nothing.

Residents, who had tried and failed to get the Council's housing department to take their concerns seriously, asked me to get onto the case - and I was happy to take up their legitimate complaints with the housing department.

The council has now accepted that the windows are in an unacceptable state and need repair which is great news. Work is scheduled to start this Summer in good time for the onset of Winter.

Life returns to the Wandle

I reported last November on Thames Water's accidental release of chemicals into the River Wandle that wiped out wildlife for hundreds of metres downstream.

I'm pleased to report that after coughing up £500,000 - the least Thames Water could do to make up for their debacle - signs of life are returning to the river. Trout have been spotted in the affected area, which is great news.

While I don't want to sound like some latter day Huckleberry Finn, I grew up alongside the Wandle and I think London's minor rivers are among the capital's greatest treasures. So many of them have either dried up or been paved over as the city expanded and grew that it's really important to cherish the rivers that run through our urban, built-up environment.

That's why the return of wildlife to the river, alongside more active efforts to return the area's indigenous creatures like water voles - which I've also blogged about - is news to be celebrated.

English Heritage Blue Plaques

A couple of years ago I wrote an article for the Wandsworth Borough News about the local dignitaries who are remembered through English Heritage blue plaques in our borough.

I really enjoy investigating local history - in part it comes from living here for 37 years, but my degree was also in history. Anyway, here's the article, which I hope you find interesting.

What links the borough of Wandsworth to a former Prime Minister, a music hall artist, the dentist to Queen Victoria and an artic explorer? The answer is that all of them (David Lloyd George, Sir Harry Lauder, Sir Edwin Saunders and Edward Wilson) lived or worked in the borough, and have an English Heritage blue plaque outside the house in which they lived.

There are twenty-two English heritage blue plaques located within the borough of Wandsworth, out of a total of 456 throughout London.

2005 marked the centenary of the erection of the first blue plaque in Wandsworth, which was located at Holly Lodge, Wimbledon Park Road, in memory of author and novelist George Eliot, who lived “in sin” at the property with her lover, G H Lewes.

This selection of a figure of literary note seems apposite given that literary figures make up the largest group of recipients within the borough. These include the poet and novelist Thomas Hardy (who lived at Trinity Road), Victorian adventure story writer G A Henty (Lavender Gardens) and poet Gerald Manley Hopkins (Manresa House, Roehampton).

Three plaques are dedicated to famous figures from the British music hall era –the comedian Gus Elen (Thurleigh Avenue), and Harry Tate and Sir Harry Lauder (both of Longley Road). During its heyday the music hall was the most popular form of entertainment for ordinary people, and its stars were the popstars of their day. Harry Tate’s funeral at the cemetery in Blackshaw Road, Tooting, was attended by over a thousand mourners.

Only two politicians have been commemorated – former Prime Minister David Lloyd George (Routh Road) and Battersea MP, and the first working class man to enter the British Cabinet, John Burns (Clapham Common North Side). Burns was elected as an independent MP in 1892 and served Battersea in Parliament until 1918.

Others who have been commemorated include the former President of Czechoslovakia, Dr Edwards Benes (Gwendolen Avenue), John Walter, founder of The Times newsapaper (Clapham Common North Side) and anti-slavery campaigner, William Wilberforce (Broomwood Road). The most recent plaque to be erected in the borough was in 2000 in honour of the celebrated sculptor Charles Jagger, who lived and died in Albert Bridge Road.

The blue plaque scheme is a national programme run by English Heritage. To be eligible for a plaque, nominees must be worthy of national recognition, recognisable to the well-informed passer-by, and have been dead for twenty years or passed the centenary of their birth, whichever is the earlier.

As it has been five [now seven - ed.] years since the last plaque was erected in the borough, readers may wish to suggest other candidates suitable for nomination. There is surely a wealth of suitable nominees in this great borough of ours. Here is a full list of the 22 blue plaques in Wandsworth, with the Putney ones highlighted in colour:

• BATEMAN, H.M. (1887-1970),Cartoonist, lived here 1910-1914. 40 Nightingale Lane, Clapham South, SW12 Wandsworth 1997
• BENES, Dr Edward (1884-1948),President of Czechoslovakia, lived here. 26 Gwendolen Avenue, Putney, SW15 Wandsworth 1978
• BURNS, John (1858-1943),Statesman, lived here. 110 North Side, Clapham Common, SW4 Wandsworth 1950
• DOUGLAS, Norman (1868-1952),Writer, lived here. 63 Albany Mansions, Albert Bridge Road, SW11 Wandsworth 1980
• ELEN, Gus (1862-1940), Music Hall Comedian, lived here. 3 Thurleigh Avenue, Balham, SW12 Wandsworth 1979
• ELIOT, George Mary Ann Cross (1819-1880), Novelist, lived here. Holly Lodge, 31 Wimbledon Park Road, SW18 Wandsworth 1905
• HARDY, Thomas (1840-1928),Poet and Novelist, lived here 1878-1881. Plaque replaced by new one on same building in 1962. 172 Trinity Road, Tooting, SW17 Wandsworth 1940
• HENTY, G.A. (George Alfred) (1832-1902), Author, lived here. 33 Lavender Gardens, SW11 Wandsworth 1953
• HOPKINS, Gerard Manley (1844-1889),Poet, lived and studied in Manresa House. Gatepost at Manresa House, Holybourne Avenue, Roehampton, SW15 Wandsworth 1979
• JAGGER, Charles Sargeant (1885-1934),Sculptor, lived and died here. 67 Albert Bridge Road, Battersea, SW11 Wandsworth 2000
• KNEE, Fred (1868-1914),London Labour Party Pioneer and Housing Reformer, lived here. 24 Sugden Road, SW11 Wandsworth 1986
• LAUDER, Sir Harry (1870-1950),Music Hall Artist, lived here 1903-1911. 46 Longley Road, Tooting, SW17 Wandsworth 1969
• LLOYD GEORGE, David, Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor (1863-1945),Prime Minister, lived here Replacement for GLC plaque erected in 1967 3 Routh Road, Wandsworth Common, SW18 Wandsworth 1992
• O'CASEY, Sean (1880-1964),Playwright, lived here at flat No. 49 49 Overstrand Mansions, Prince of Wales Drive, Battesea Park, SW11 Wandsworth 1993
• SAUNDERS, Sir Edwin (1814-1901),Dentist to Queen Victoria, lived and died here. Fairlawns, 89 Wimbledon Parkside, SW19 (Plaque on gate pier) Wandsworth 1997
• SPURGEON, Charles Haddon (1834-1892),Preacher, lived here. 99 Nightingale Lane, SW12 Wandsworth 1971
• SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles (1837-1909), Poet and his friend, Theodore WATTS-DUNTON (1832-1914), Poet, Novelist, Critic, lived and died here. 11 Putney Hill, SW15 Wandsworth 1926
• TATE, Harry (Ronald MacDonald Hutchison) (1872-1940),Musical Hall Comedian, lived here. 72 Longley Road, SW17 Wandsworth 1984
• THOMAS, Edward (1878-1917),Essayist and Poet, lived here. 61 Shelgate Road, SW11 Wandsworth 1949
• WALTER, John (1739-1812),Founder of 'The Times', lived here. 113 Clapham Common North Side, SW4 Wandsworth 1977
• WILBERFORCE, William (1759-1833).On the site behind this house stood until 1904 Broomwood House - formerly Broomfield - where William Wilberforce resided during the campaign against slavery which he successfully conducted in Parliament. 111 Broomwood Road, SW11 Wandsworth 1906
• WILSON, Edward Adrian (1872-1912),Antarctic Explorer and Naturalist, lived here. Battersea Vicarage, 42 Vicarage Crescent, SW11 Wandsworth 1935

Save Southside's local shops (part 3)

I'm pleased that the Wandsworth Guardian has today put the issue of local shops being driven from the Southside shopping centre on its front page, because the shape of our town centres is an issue close to my heart.

There is plenty wrong with Southside - if it wasn't there today no-one would, I suspect, suggest building something similar - it is very much a creation of the 1960s and 70s - but driving out the shops that make it different from any other shopping centre isn't going to fix what's wrong.

Millions have been invested into Southside in recent years - absolutely rightly - but it seems that the "bigger must be better" mentality that built the Arndale Centre in the first place still persists among managers and planners. They're wrong. The future of town centres, if we want them to retain any distinctiveness and what I call "soul" is through encouraging local businesses, not just pandering to the big brand names. We need a mix. Southside and the Council just don't seem to get this self-evident truth.

Here's the Guardian frontpage story in a larger version

Save Southside's local shops (part 2)

The Wandsworth Guardian has picked up on the campaign to save the local family shops that are being booted out of Wandsworth's Southside (Arndale) Shopping Centre in the New Year because for some reason they don't fit the management's idea of proper local shops.

I'm not happy about this: while no doubt the shopping centre can make a lot more money cramming in the big brandname stores, the damage this trend does to local businesses and community links is significant.

Apparently, the council - the major influence within the Southside management - is claiming it can help the evicted businesses "find new premises". I'd like to know where, locally? Southside has already been largely responsible for eradicating small shops in Wandsworth High Street, and you need to trek quite a long way down Garratt Lane before you get to the Earlsfield local shopping area. While there are plenty of available premises in places like Roehampton High Street - where they'd be very welcome, this is hardly keeping shops local to Wandsworth town.

If you agree with me, please sign my online petition to save Southside's local shops.

And here's the Wandsworth Guardian story.

Final days of Wandsworth Museum

Wandsworth Museum will close for the final time this coming Sunday, 30th December at 5pm.

The closure, imposed by Wandsworth's Conservative Council, fully supported by Putney's Conservative MP despite the decision costing taxpayers over £1million and petitions of over 20,000 residents and users - wins my "most incompetent decision of 2007" award.

Not only will the Museum, based in the old courthouse opposite the Southside shopping centre in Garratt Lane, close but the Council is taking down two libraries with it: West Hill and Allfarthing.

My "best local campaign of 2007" award goes to the Friends of Wandsworth Museum who have fought a quite spectacular battle that has shredded the credibility of the councillor behind this wasteful idea, Malcolm Grimston, and demolished one by one every single excuse he has come up with to explain the Tory council's bizarre plans.

I remain absolutely convinced that had Putney benefitted from the leadership of its MP, the Council's plans would have collapsed - Justine Greening's complicity in this decision is an inexcusable betrayal and destroys forever any claim that she puts the interests of Putney residents ahead of supporting her pals on the council.

We need a Putney loyalist, not a party loyalist representing our patch. With her (lack of) action over the Museum, Justine proved she's not fit for purpose.

Pupils and buses

Another story that caught my eye in this week's Wandsworth Guardian was a complaint by the Deputy Head of Southfields Community College that 156 bus drivers haven't been stopping near the college at home times.

He makes the not-unreasonable point that by refusing to pick up groups of schoolkids, the group only grows even larger and more rowdy. On the other hand, being a passenger (and I'm sure a driver too) when large groups of noisy, boisterous pupils surge onto a bus, shouting, jostling and often behaving aggressively and thoughtlessly is not a pleasant experience.

What would help no end would, I suggest, be the College - and our other secondary schools too - sending a staff member out to the bus stops at home time to make sure that the pupils behave themselves while waiting for their buses. In such circumstances, other than when buses are already full to bursting, there would be no excuse whatsoever for 156s not to stop. The Guardian story is here.

The scrooge spirit spreads to Southside

I'm just getting news that shops in the Southside shopping centre in Wandsworth - including the RSPCA charity shop - have been served eviction notices by the centre's management and have to be out early in the new year.

Notices have been served on several of the small and family-run businesses in the shopping centre - some of which have been in the Arndale Centre for a generation - with no possibility of renewal or moving to different units.

As my mum worked for over thirty years in the Arndale and as I too had Summer jobs there when I was growing up, I want to see Southside improved and the variety of shops increased: but I don't believe that this needs to happen at the expense of outlets like the RSPCA charity shop. Having allowed Putney High Street to become one of the blandest "clone" shopping centres in the country* I hope the Tory Council won't let the same happen with Southside.

We should be encouraging local stores with roots in the community, and I'm fully behind the storeholders' campaign to stay put. They've already collected over 300 signatures in support in the short time since they were served notice - I urge everyone to join in this fight.

* A 2005 national shoppers survey rated Putney High Street as one of the five worst "clone" shopping centres - meaning areas with few independent retailers and with too many shops selling almost identical itemss - in the whole country.

Our Safer Neighbourhood Teams

Putney now has forty Police Safer Neighbourhood Officers - members of teams that didn't exist just four years ago, and which we wouldn't have if the Conservatives had their way - they opposed all funding of them.

Here are the details of our six local ward teams along with any details of forthcoming events they're holding:

East Putney Team

Acting Sgt Matt Snowden
PC Sandrine Tanghe
PC Russ Percy
PCSO Simoni Simoni
PCSO Alison Brownlow
PCSO Douglas Cameron
PCSO Kelly Collins
PCSO Claire Fairman
PCSO Paul Henry

Write to them at: Jubilee House, 230-232 Putney Bridge Road, London SW15 2PD
Phone:020 8721 2433
Mobile: 07920 233925
Email the East Putney team

Upcoming East Putney team meetings and events:

• 28/11/2007 - 19:30 - 21:30 - Community Event - Cadets, Lytton Grove
• 09/12/2007 - 11:30 - 13:30 - Street Briefing - West Hill Road
• 17/01/2008 - 19:00 - 20:30 - Public Meeting - Putney High School
• 28/01/2008 - 18:00 - 19:00 - Community Event - Brownies, Wandsworth Police Station
• 31/01/2008 - 19:00 - 20:30 - Public Meeting - London Mosque

Roehampton Team

Sgt Peter Salmon
PC Andrew Voong
PC Amanda Kennedy
PCSO Lisa Burke
PCSO Noel Perkins
PCSO Nicky Edwardes
PCSO Fuad Osman
PCSO Marco Serrano

Write to them at: Jubilee House, 230-232 Putney Bridge Road, LondonSW15 2PD
Phone: 020 8649 3551
Mobile: 07843 065885
Email the Roehampton team


Southfields Team

Sgt David Mepham
PC Darren Hunt
PCSO Liam McLaughlin
PCSO Jacek Zebracki
PCSO Alexandra Claridge
Write to them at: 146 Wandsworth High Street, LondonSW18 4JJ
Phone:020 8721 2429
Mobile: 07920 233931
Email the Southfields team


Thamesfield Team

Sgt Roger Chapple
PC Bosede Odelusi
PC Stuart Paton
PCSO Gerald Baffoe-Bonnie
PCSO Sophie Wood
PCSO Julie Kirk

Write to them at: Jubilee House, 230 - 232 Putney Bridge Road, LondonSW15 2PD
Phone:020 8721 2434
Mobile: 07920 233924
Email the Thamesfield team


West Hill Team

Sgt Nigel Mussett
PC Glen Cheal
PC Mark Toulson
PCSO Daniel Taylor
PCSO Lisa Tyler
PCSO Laura Smith
PCSO Kirsteen McPhee
PCSO Andrew Morgan

Write to them at: 146 Wandsworth High Street, LondonSW18 4JJ
Phone: 020 8721 243
Mobile: 007920 233930
Email the West Hill team

Upcoming West Hill team meetings and events:

• 01/12/2007 - 12:00 - 14:00 - Drop-in Surgery - 26 Montfort Place SW19
• 05/01/2008 - 12:00 - 14:00 - Drop-in Surgery - 26 Montfort Place SW19

West Putney Team

Sgt Eric Ostrowski
PC Stuart Baggaley
PCSO Sharon Ellis
PCSO Michael Yates

Write to them at: Jubilee House, 230-232 Putney Bridge Road, LondonSW15 2PD
Phone: 020 8721 2760
Mobile: 07747 757590
Email the West Putney team

Thames Water pollute the Wandle

On September 17th, Thames Water accidentally discharged industrial bleach into the River Wandle from their sewage treatment works in Beddington.

As a result, it's estimated that over 2,000 fish died between the plant and Morden - though we can take limited comfort that Thames Water believes that the bleach had so dissipated further downstream that there has been little to no effect on the Southfields stretch of the river, which is of course part of our constituency.

This is just the latest in a catalogue of mishaps and poor service from Thames Water; which includes:

• The discharge of raw sewage straight into the Thames whenever it rains heavily
• The lamentable waste of water through pipe leaks while at the same time the company charges us ever more and lectures us about saving water;
• The poor standard of water quality revealed in the Thames report (which I covered here) and
• Reducing mains water pressure which forced residents living in blocks at the top of Putney Hill to shell out for additional pumping equipment in order to maintain their service

While Thames Water have funded the cleanup and are better monitoring their Beddington sewage plant, it's becoming clear to me that the diffuse regulatory regime governing this company (with responsibility split between the Environment Agency and Ofwat principally) is allowing this company to get away with, quite literally, murder (or at least manslaughter - of Wandle wildlife).

The Longstaffs

These past two weekends I've spent part of my time in Longstaff Crescent, Longstaff Road and the Longstaff Estate.

Longstaff Road and Crescent are two streets of pleasant inter-war council cottages in Southfields just alongside King George's Park; an area I know well because I lived just the other side of the park when I was growing up.

The Longstaff estate is a completely separate development: it's the small council estate just behind the fire station in West Hill, right opposite the junction with Upper Richmond Road.

The common feature which unites these two is that both look distinctly neglected by the Council; in the case of Longstaff Crescent the windows are badly eroded and long overdue for replacement; the Longstaff estate is shabby and grim, with stained brickwork.

Working with local Labour councillors I've now taken up several specific cases of council neglect; it's time the council gave a firm date in the near future for replacing the Longstaff windows given the approach of Winter.

On both occasions the reception was mostly warm and positive - indeed, many people commented positively about the visit given there isn't to be an election for some time. No one could recall a visit by Justine Greening since she became Putney's MP over two years ago.

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.

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