Richard Wilson

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.

My colleague Ed Butcher has been lobbying the Council to do a clean up blitz on Stroud Green Road and the surrounding area for a good while.  The pavements have got very grubby and there has been lots of complaints of fly-tipping on the side roads.  Thanks to this lobbying, and the work of our local Neighbourhood Manager, there will be a programme of activity to clean up the area – and to get volunteers helping out on the nearby Parkland Walk nature area.

This Saturday (13th) residents are being urged to help out with conservation work tidying up the Parkland Walk (the green walk along the disused railway line).  The meeting point is the Upper Tollington Park entrance to the Walk at 10am , and the work to trim back vegetation and create a ‘loggery’ for ‘mini beasts’ will be supervised by conservation officers.  The work runs to 1pm and volunteers may be rewarded with a spot of lunch!

On Saturday morning (10am – 12 noon) there will also be a skip on Albert Road to help encourage residents to properly dispose of any bulky refuse (though unfortunately they can’t accept white goods or electrical items – call 020 8885 7700 to get these items collected).   I particularly pressed for Albert Road to be targeted as flt-tipping at the bottom of the road near Stroud Green Road is a persistent problem that I have raised numerous times.

There will be further cleaning activities during the week, including a dog fouling patrol, and a deep clean of the grubby pavements on Stroud Green Road.  Ed, Katherine and I will be taking part in activities so please join us and help out.

I’m really pleased that, for once, Haringey and Islington Councils are working together to tackle the problems in teh Stroud Green Road area – with help from other local organisations like FinFuture and the Haringey Peace Alliance.  This attention is long overdue – and the challenge will be to keep up the cleaning once all the focus of the ‘Clean Sweep’ is over.

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.

Haringey Council have pulled funding from a cross-Borough initiative to stop dumping, littering and graffiti in the Finsbury Park area.  Through local regeneration agency FinFuture, Haringey, Islington and Hackney had all contributed to employing ‘Street Enforcement Officers’ to tackle the rubbish that often blights the area, which includes much of Stroud Green.

Haringey have unilaterally withdrawn this funding despite the fact that dumping and littering remain huge issues – particularly on the roads leading off Stroud Green Road.   A few weeks ago Lynne Featherstone, Ed Butcher and I were doing a walk about and found this huge pile of dumped furniture on Woodstock Road.   We need more Council efforts – not less.

Fortunately, Islington and Hackney will continue to pay towards one enforcement officer for the area and have not insisted that this officer boycotts the Haringey side of Stroud Green Road.  But in the long term it is completely unsustainable for this Labour Council to keep washing its hands of Stroud Green Road issues.

Great news – the Stroud Green Road will definitely be getting Christmas lights again this year. Ed, Laura and I first started pressing for festive lights at Christmas 2006 – because we thought it was outrageous that the Stroud Green Road was missed out just because it is on the boundary of two different London boroughs. The campaign obviously caught people’s imagination because we sent this photo of me trying to redecorate the road to the local papers and it made the front page that Christmas!

Our lobbying was successful and lights went up for the first time for Christmas 2007, thanks to Islington Council stumping up the cash. However, Haringey Council refused to contribute, despite the north side of Stroud Green Road being in Haringey Borough, and we were worried that if Haringey refused to pay its way again this year the lights wouldn’t go ahead.

The latest good news is that council officers have now confirmed that Haringey will make a contribution and the lights will go ahead. It seems the local regeneration agency FinFuture helped broker a deal.

Unfortunately, I’ve also heard that the lights will only go half way up the road again (from the railway bridge to Upper Tollington Park). This is a shame as a number of people contacted me last year saying it would look much better if they went the whole length of the road up to the Old Dairy. However, with Stroud Green Road often getting ignored by Haringey, I am pleased that everyone is starting to work together – even if progress can feel slow.