Richard Wilson

Ed, Katherine and I want to know what you think about Haringey Council’s plans to allow a 10 day music festival in Finsbury Park this summer. The ‘Jamaica Village’ event will take place during the Olympics from 3rd-12th August and will be the longest ever event held in the Park.

The organisers have already been granted a license by Haringey Council and will be able to serve alcohol and play amplified music until 10.30pm at night.  In December I attended the licensing committee meetings, and with other residents argued successfully for restrictions to the event try to protect residents from noise and anti-social behaviour.

Sadly, there has been very little consultation with local residents about Jamaica Village.  The only publicity the Council gave to the licensing application was a few posters put up in the park in the middle of winter, which meant few people realised what was happening or had their say.

However, after I criticised the lack of consultation, the Parks Department has agreed to listen to comments made during February about their plans to manage the event.  As your local councillors we want to know your concerns about issues such as noise, litter, parking, anti-social behaviour and lack of access to the park.  The Council plan to hand the southern part of the park over to the organisers for over 3 weeks during August, and I know some families have concerns about losing access to such a large portion of the park for half of the school summer holidays.  We’re also very worried about the impact such a long event will have on the state of the park.

Jamaica Village sounds like great fun for those attending, but it is essential that residents are protected as much as possible from noise and disruption. Please tell me your views so that I can respond to the Council before their deadline for comments ends on 29th February.

Yesterday, Ed Butcher, Lynne Featherstone and I attended a conference on Blackstock Road organised by FinFuture, a local regeneration charity. The aim of the event was to bring together residents, businesses and the three Councils that cover Finsbury park to discuss how the area can be improved.

The Finsbury Park area is held back by the difficulties in getting Haringey, Hackney and Islington to work together and prioritise a place that often feels neglected.  For instance Ed and I have struggled to even get the Boroughs to co-operate on simple things like Christmas lights on Stroud Green Road.  And the Council’s don’t seem to talk to each other on issues like planning applications and events in the Park.

Lynne Featherstone used her speech at the conference to call for residents from all sides to work together to drive change.  She raised the prospect of people using the new Localism Act to create an official cross-borough Area Forum in Finsbury Park.  Residents in Highgate, which is similarly split down the middle, have recently started the process of setting up just such a Forum using the new legal powers.  The Localism Act is a key Lib Dem initiative in Government and Lynne revealed how she’d pushed for cross-boundary forums to be recognised.

The good news from the conference is that Islington, Hackney and Haringey Councils are going to sign some kind of agreement to work together better on Finsbury Park issues.  This is welcome and long overdue step, but there have been lots of fine words on Finsbury Park before, and residents will want to see real action to improve the area resulting from this initiative.

Well done to FinFuture for organising the conference and bringing people together.

There was consternation at this week’s Area Forum, when the Council spelled out its plans for forcing households to have two wheelie bins – and cutting the non-recyclable waste collection from weekly to fortnightly.  Residents from streets like Woodstock Road have complained that they just don’t have enough space in their tiny front gardens for so many bins – and that people wont be able to get in and out of their front doors if the Council push this change through.

Whilst lots of residents are really keen to get a recycling wheelie bin because they have the space and the boxes aren’t bin enough, many Stroud Green properties are not suitable for this change.  If the Council had bothered to consult with residents it would have found out that people have completely different requirements – but in typical Haringey style decisions were made in secret behind closed doors.

Haringey say that everyone’s front garden will be assessed, and that people may be able to request smaller bins.  However, its unclear what happens if your front garden just isn’t big enough to cope with two weeks worth of black-bag waste from all the flats in your house – or if your neighbours don’t recycle properly and put smelly food waste in the black bin (or what happens with nappies and cat litter which can’t be recycled).  Ed Butcher and I have been out knocking on doors in Upper Tollington Park and neighbouring roads and most residents are hugely supportive of attempts to increase recycling, but desperately want to keep their weekly bin collections.

The Area Committee agreed to put residents concerns to the Labour Councillor in charge of waste collections.

Ed, Katherine and I have today submitted our response to the Boundary Commission’s consultation, on behalf of the hundreds of residents who have contacted us or filled in our survey.  An amazing 98.5% of those who have responded to us (401 out of 407 responses) are opposed to the Commission’s proposal to move Stroud Green ward from the Hornsey Parliamentary Constituency to the Tottenham Constituency.

The change would mean Stroud Green residents would vote for and be represented by the MP for Tottenham after the next election.  Instead of the boundary between the two constituencies being the railway line to Finsbury Park, the dividing line would wind round and split local residential roads in half.  A local campaign group have made a video to explain.

The Commission’s proposal for Stroud Green has been opposed by local residents associations, community groups and school governors and all the main political parties.  The clear message that everyone has put to the Boundary Commission is that Stroud Green has much stronger community ties with Crouch End and Hornsey than with Tottenham.  Our survey found that just 3% of respondents (11 out of 402) think that Stroud Green has strong community ties with Tottenham, whilst 96% (388 out of 404) say we have strong ties with Crouch End.

Our consultation response has pressed the Commission to listen to residents and keep Stroud Green in Hornsey.  With so much support, I’m sure we can win.

Ever since I’ve started raising awareness of the Boundary Commission’s proposals to move Stroud Green from the Hornsey parliamentary constituency to the Tottenham one, I’ve been amazed at the strength of feeling from local residents.  Katherine, Ed and I have been conducting a paper and online survey, and have been asking people to contact the Boundary Commission directly.

I’ve now looked at the first 100 responses to the online survey, and the results are:

• 100% of respondents oppose the Boundary Commissions proposal to move Stroud Green into Tottenham constituency
• 97% believe that Stroud Green has strong community ties with Crouch End and Hornsey.
• 2% believe that Stroud Green has strong community ties with Tottenham

So its clear that Stroud Green residents are completely opposed to the proposals.  All we need to do now is convince the Boundary Commission, whose consultation closes on 5 December.   We have now received hundreds of survey responses and we will sending these to the Boundary Commission demanding that they listen to local residents.  I think this is a battle we can definitely win – if everyone makes their views clear.

Last month my colleague Ed Butcher predicted the Council’s plans to force residents in the Finsbury Park Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) to return all their visitor parking permits would result in chaos (see previous post).  This prediction has proved correct – and we have been inundated with complaints from residents about how long it has taken to get replacement permits and from some who have been given incorrect permits.  And council officials patrolling the zone a few weeks ago found many cars still using old permits.

As a result of pressure from residents and local councillors the Council were forced to extend the deadline for people to stop using the old permits by two weeks.  However this extended deadline has now run out – and visitors using old permits now face fines.

It is so frustrating that the Council didn’t listen to our warnings last month and have pressed ahead in creating this predictable chaos.  Ed and I think that this two week amnesty is not enough and have urged the Council to not make the switch until 2012 – allowing residents to use up more old permits, and reducing the risk of visitors being fined.

Ed, Katherine and I have launched a survey in Stroud Green to find out what residents views are on the Labour Council’s plans to introduce fortnightly collections of non-recyclable rubbish next year Collection of recyclable rubbish would remain weekly. However, very few people are aware of the plan, because the Council are remaining silent on the subject, and have held no consultation with residents.

Council flats and flats above shops will be unaffected, but all street properties will be covered – including the many houses that have been broken up into flats. My understanding is that this is the first time fortnightly collections have been attempted in a dense urban area like Haringey.  I’m very sceptical that it will work in a place like Stroud Greens where gardens are so small and there is such little space – and the population is so dense. And some really smelly things such as bones, pet litter and nappies can’t be recycled – and will therefore be sitting in wheelie bins for up to two weeks.

So please do tell us what you think of this plan so we can present the results to the Council and hopefully get them to listen to residents.  The survey is here.