Richard Wilson

Over the last few months I’ve had lots of residents and shopkeepers complain to me about refuse sacks piling up by the shops on the Ferme Park Road.   This photo was emailed to me this weekend by someone annoyed that the bin bags put out by residents on Saturday morning were not collected all day.  Apparently this photo was taken at 11am and the pile grew all day.

These piles of rubbish are not a great advert for shopping in Ferme Park Road and I can understand why people get annoyed.  The root of the problem is Haringey’s contract with the refuse collection company Enterprise, which does not require them to collect refuse at any particular time of the day.  This means that the residents who live above the shops have no fixed time to leave their rubbish out and Enterprise have fixed time to collect it.

The refuse collection contract is being re-tendered this year, so Ihave formally written to Cllr Bevan, the Labour Cabinet Member in charge of rubbish and recycling, asking that the contract be changed so that there are fixed collection times for shopping areas like Ferme Park Road (as there already are now in some areas such as Crouch End Broadway).  This should help solve the problem in the long term.

One even simpler thing that could be done to improve the area is to install some litter bins – as strangely there aren’t any bins by the shops.  I’m pleased to say that last week I got an email from the Council confirming they would urgently put in a litter bin outside Londis.

Unbelievably, according to Haringey Council it takes 8 months to buy a grit bin and install it on our streets.

As I reported in a previous post, in January I passed on to the Council a pile of requests from local residents for more grit bins on Stroud Green’s hilly streets.  The Council’s website says “suggestions for new sites are welcome”.

However, I have now got a reply back saying they will decide whether to get the bins in March and then, if they are approved, install them in October.   I don’t see why such a simple task needs to take so long.

This week the freezing weather has really returned and it has snowed a couple of times.  Yet the Council are acting as if there is no urgency to providing grit bins to residents and seem to think winter is over!   Someone needs to lend our Labour Council leaders a calendar.

At the end of December I was alerted to the fact that there had just been a public exhibition about a huge proposed new development on the Stroud Green Road.  As the image on the left shows the John Jones arts centre plan to put a large 6 storey development on their site.  They are at an informal consultation stage – the formal planning application has not yet been submitted.

The development is on the Islington side of the road, and Haringey don’t seem to have made much effort to get involved in the process.  Councillors such as myself weren’t alerted to the event - which meant I couldn’t advertise it on this website.  So I immeadiately put an email into Haringey Council asking how they were going to ensure that residents on the north side of Stroud Green Road were able to have a say.  This week (5 weeks later) I got a response just directing me to Islington Council’s website and saying no Haringey panning officers had even attended the December consultation event.

Clearly this development would have a major impact on Stroud Green.  Its great to see people wanting to invest in Stroud Green Road, but this proposed building does seem quite tall, given the height of the Victorian terraces surrounding it.  I think everyone should have their say on this development – regardless of which side of the borough boundary they live, and  I will press for wide-scale consultation when the planning application is submitted.

Like many councillors I’ve spent the last few weeks reporting all the potholes I can spot on our local roads.  Its a pretty thankless task – sometimes you think it would be easier to send in a list of all the places that don’t have potholes.  So far I’ve reported them on Granville, Inderwick, Nelson, Stapleton Hall and Mount View Roads (this photo is from Mount View).

Of course, the current rash of potholes has been caused by the snow and ice, and the Lib Dems have pressed the Council to do a special survey to identify these new holes.  However, the Council have refused to go out and find the holes themselves and instead say they will only fill them if they are reported by residents or councillors.

I think this neglectful policy is absolute madness, as it gaurantees some potholes are missed and not repaired.  The Council has a duty to keep our streets safe and potholes are incredibly dangerous for cyclists and motorcyclists.  Its not acceptable for Labour to just decide potholes are not a priority.

The long term solution is for the roads with the most potholes to be completely resurfaced.  It’s such a waste of money to keep patching-up roads where the surface is completely worn out and crumbling away.  I’ve called time and time for these roads to be resurfaced – but too often the Council refuse to act, even though it would mean saving money in the long run.

Good news!  In a previous post I mentioned that for a number of years now I have been nagging the Council to remove the derelict old phone box by the shops on Weston Park.  It was installed by a private (non-BT) phone company and hasn’t been in operation for many years (see picture).

The Council have previously refused to remove it unless the company that installed it paid to do so – but of course the company has long since vanished.  However, for the first time, I have now gained a commitment from Council that the phone box will be removed, regardless of whether the costs can be recouped.  I’m really pleased – but its a shame that it has taken so long to make the Council see sense!

We have also been trying to make the shops feel safer in the evenings.  A couple of residents contacted Cllr Ed Butcher and me last year about groups of young people gathering near the shops in the evening, and creating an intimidating atmosphere.  We contacted the local ‘safer neighbourhood’ police team and they agreed to increase patrols.

I chatted to the local police sergeant about the issue again this week – and they have talked to the shopkeepers and think they have identified where the kids are coming from.   It sounds like the issue is in hand, but I’ve also written to local residents urging them to contact me if the problem persists – or returns when the evenings are warmer.

Like all Haringey Councillors, I’m regularly contacted by families in desperately overcrowded or temporary accommodation looking for a family Council house.   These families wait for years, and there are over 16,000 families on Haringey’s housing waiting list – with 566 looking for a home with more than 3 bedrooms.

So when residents alerted local Lib Dem activist Katherine Reece to a large 3-storey empty council house in Nelson Road (N8) I was determined to investigate why it wasn’t being used.  I’ve now got a response which shows the house has been left empty and boarded up since April 2009, and will not be returned to use until March 2010 at the earliest.

Unsuprsingly the house now looks like a dump and the neighbours must be furious.  But what is really scandalous is that Haringey Council is happy to let this house, which could be a wonderful family home, lie empty for nearly a year.   No wonder we have such long housing waiting lists in Haringey, when our Labour-run Council is so wasteful with its own housing stock.

Co-incidentially, the national Lib Dems have just announced proposals to bring 250,000 empty homes back into use, to boost jobs and tackle our housing crisis.  Ideas like this are clearly badly needed in Haringey.

Since I started highlighting the lack of grit bins in Stroud Green, I’ve had a dozen requests from local residents to get a bin installed in their road.  In fact, residents of Woodstock Road and Denton Road pointed out that their roads used to have a grit bin but the Council took it away a few years ago.

As a result I’ve sent in a request to the new Cabinet Member for the Environment Cllr John Bevan, asking for grit bins to be installed in the following six roads:

• Albany Road
• Oakfield Road (between Stapleton Hall Road and Ridge Road)
• Denton Road
• Uplands Road
• Woodstock Road (near Stroud Green Primary School)
• Mount Pleasant Crescent

At this week’s Full Council meeting I had planned to raise the lack of grit bins and a number of other ways I thought Haringey could improve its preparedness for snow and ice.  Cllr Lyn Weber and I had put down a motion calling for the Council to hold a formal review to find out resident’s experiences and learn lessons.

However, in one of the most childish displays I have ever seen from a grown adult, Council Leader Claire Kober deliberately talked nonsense for half an hour to stop our motion being reached.   Its shocking that the Leader of a Council that is rated the worst in London thinks this is an acceptable way to behave, and presumably doesn’t think the Council has anything to learn from residents’ experiences of the recent snow and ice.