Richard Wilson

Last night was the Council meeting which set the budget for the 2010/11 financial year.  Stroud Green Councillor Ed Butcher is our finance spokesperson so presented our alternative budget, with a detailed and costed amendment calling for extra police, more recycling, and a freeze in Council charges (paid for by cutting Labour’s waste and spin).

Labour rejected our budget amendment, and bizarrely attacked our plans to boost late night policing.  However, Ed won the argument on improving battery recycling and at the very last minute Labour changed their budget to partly adopt our plans.

Currently the Council provides just a handful of places for residents to take batteries, so Ed argued for 100 more recycling points in convenient locations like libraries and schools.  Its great news that he has successfully pushed the Council into action to protect the environment from dangerous pollution from batteries.

Last week, local party members met to vote for the Liberal Democrat candidates for this May’s local elections.  I’m really pleased to announce that Ed Butcher and I have been re-selected, along with fantastic first-time candidate Katherine Reece.  This photo is a  result of a ‘photo shoot’ for the local papers which was held a few days ago.  The papers are obviously very interested in the Lib Dem team that could end 40 years of Labour control of Haringey in May.

Sadly, Laura Edge decided not to re-stand, and is moving on to pastures new after more than 6 years of leading the Lib Dem revolution in Stroud Green.  Laura has worked very hard to improve our area in her time as councillor and its been fatastic to work with her.  Laura’s stunning by-election success in 2004 (a 29% swing from Labour) and huge re-election vote in 2006 shows just how many residents she has helped and won over to the Lib Dems.

However, Katherine is a very worthy sucessor and has already been battling the Council on issues ranging from empty homes to gritting.  Please get in contact if you want to help our election campaign in any way.

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.

Lynne Featherstone has launched an urgent campaign to save the 24 hour Accident and Emergency (A&E) Department at our local hospital – the Whittington.  Under new plans being brought forward by NHS managers the Whittington could be downgraded to ‘local hospital status’ – putting the A&E service in jeopardy.  The story is covered in the Hornsey Journal – article here.

If the Whittington A&E closed Stroud Green residents would have to travel twice the distance in a medical emergency – to get to the Royal Free at Hampstead instead.  There is no A&E service in Haringey Borough at all – already making us comparatively poorly served.

Stroud Green councillor Ed Butcher joined Lynne in a recent visit to the Whittington to try to stop the proposals (see picture).   Health officials have refused to give Lynne written assurances on the fate of the A&E and so Lynne has launched a campaign to show the strength of local feeling against any closure.

Please do sign Lynne’s online petition here in order to protect our local health services.

Over the summer Ed, Laura and I launched a survey of parking issues in the roads just outside the new Crouch End Controlled Parking Zone – as we were being inundated with complaints from residents.  We felt we had to do our own survey as the Council had broken their pledge to hold a consultation after the new CPZ was implemented.

We’ve now had several hundred responses from the roads bordering the Crouch End and Finsbury Park CPZs.  The results so far show:

• Three quarters of respondents say parking has got worse in the last 6 months
• 62% say they are now in favour of a CPZ – with many residents saying they have been forced to change their anti-CPZ views
• The vast majority of residents would want a CPZ to be operational for only 2 hours

These figures show that local people in roads such as Mount View, Ferme Park, Stapleton Hall, Granville and Quernmore, think the parking problem is getting even worse and want the Council to take action.  We are using the results to demand that the Council conduct a proper consultation with residents as soon as possible.  But we are also pledging to scrutinise any Council proposals for new parking restrictions, to ensure they are focused on solving the problem – not boosting Council coffers.

We will be closing the survey very soon to present the full results to the Council, so if you haven’t yet had your say please fill it out online as soon as possible (link here).  This parking mess is largely of the Council’s own making – and they need to listen to residents views on how to sort it out.

Great news – my colleague Ed Butcher has been in contact with Islington Council and they’ve agreed for the third year in a row to pay for Christmas lights on the Stroud Green Road.  However, in worst scrooge tradition, Haringey Council is still refusing to pay its share of bringing Christmas cheer to the road (which is on the boundary of the two Boroughs). 

Ed and I launched our campaign for Christmas lights in December 2006 (see picture), and every year we press Haringey to match Islington’s generosity (for example – see last year’s post).  If Haringey joined in, I think we could get lights for the full length of the road, rather than just the Finsbury Park station end, which is what Islington usually provide.

This week, I even raised the issue with the Labour leader of Haringey at our Full Council meeting.  I asked her if she would look into the issue and find out why Haringey wasn’t supporting cross-borough projects like the Christmas lights - but got a disdainful response.  The Labour leadership really give the impression that they are not interested in projects like this – unless they are in their favoured areas.

I am very annoyed to discover that nobody from Haringey is attending the board meetings of cross-brough regeneration agency FinFuture.  Along with Islington and Hackney, Haringey gets one place for a councillor on the FinFuture board, but have refused to offer this to any of the Lib Dems who represent the Finsbury Park area.  Instead they subbonly insist on giving the position to Labour councillor Gina Adamou who has long track record of not attending.

Ed Butcher and I first raised this issue in 2007, when it was revealed that Cllr Adamou hadn’t attended a single meeting in the previous year.  At the Full Council meeting in May, I nominated Ed to replace Gina on the Board – but the Labour group unanimously voted to keep her in place.  We were assured it was a temporary issue – connected with Gina being Mayor that year.

However, this summer I decided to ask about Labour’s attendance since May 2007 and got this reply from the Council’s Chief Executive:

In 2007/08 there were 13 Board Meetings, of which, Cllr Adamou attended 4
In 2008/09 there were 6 Board Meetings, of which, Cllr. Adamou attended 0
In 2009/10 there has been one scheduled Board Meeting so far and Cllr Adamou gave her apologies.

This means Haringey’s seat on the Board of FinFuture has been left empty for almost all of the last 3 years – and we have lost our say on how taxpayers money should be spent in the area.  This is completely unacceptable - the area around Finsbury Park is visited by thousands of Haringey residents and commuters and is in desperate need of regeneration.

This isn’t really about Cllr Adamou – I’m sure she has made it very clear to the Labour Group that she does not want to attend these meetings.  What it shows is the low priority Haringey Labour put on the Finsbury Park area.  The fact that they would rather have a non-attending Labour loyalist on the Board than a robust opposition councillor also shows their determination to put party politics ahead of the interests of local residents.