Richard Wilson

This weekend Katherine Reece and I were out surveying local residents about access to health services.   A lack of GPs willing to take on residents who live near the Stroud Green Road has been a big issue for many years. The problem is that most of the local GPs are on the Islington side of the Borough boundary (which runs along the Stroud Green Road) and don’t allow Haringey residents on their lists. In fact, one Islington surgery has recently purged all its Haringey residents, sending out a letter asking them to find another GP.

Katherine and I have met with Haringey Primary Care Trust (PCT) and written to Islington PCT to try to find a solution – but Islington are denying there is a problem. So Katherine hit on the idea of surveying local residents to demonstrate there is a problem, and got our local MP Lynne Featherstone to help launch the survey, along with concerned local residents (see picture).

I joined Katherine in a second batch of surveying this weekend, where we spoke to residents in Florence Road, Victoria Road and Osbourne Road.  A number of people said how difficult it had been to get a GP – and how they had been told they weren’t in the ‘catchment’ for local GPs that were just down the road.

Once we’ve got a good sample of surveys, we will use these as evidence to try to get all the different sides to work together to sort out the problem.  It is really frustrating to see health services being arranged around the needs of bureaucrats, rather than the needs of residents, who just want a choice of good local GPs.  The good news is that the Government plans to change the system over the next few years to stop GPs from blocking residents from registering based on where they live.  But I think local GPs and health bosses should take action now – rather than wait until they are forced to sort the problem out a few years down the line.

As part of our campaign to slow down traffic on Upper Tollington Park, my colleague Cllr Katherine Reece has joined a local police patrol in the area.   After being alerted to the problem by councillors and local residents, the neighbourhood police team have been taking action to catch people speeding near the pedestrian crossing at the junction with Florence Road.

In this patrol a few weeks ago, four cars were stopped for speeding, a penalty notice was issued for failing to stop at a crossing, and a ticket was given out for using a mobile phone whilst driving. The action is necessary because so many residents have raised concerns about cars driving too fast and failing to stop at the busy crossing, which is a route to a local primary school.

Another partial success from the campaign has been getting electronic speed signs installed, which flash a warning when vehicles break the speed limit.  However, the locations they have been installed don’t seem ideal – as one of them is after the crossing and partially obscured by vegetation.  I’ve contacted the Council asking them to re-assess whether the signs are in the optimum positions!

However, our real aim is to get traffic lights at the crossing – and we are collecting signatures for a petition to make the Council take action.   Please sign up.

On Sunday, I joined a group of local residents and Lib Dem activists collecting signatures for our petition to demand a safer crossing for Upper Tollington Park.  We launched the petition online in June (see previous post), but we are also knocking on doors and posting copies of the petition.

It was a fantastically sunny day, and I’ve been sent this great picture of me, John, Dan and Fatuma by the crossing on the corner of Upper Tollington Park and Florence Road, with the petition on our clipboards.  Please sign up online here if you’d like to back the campaign.

Lynne Featherstone has joined the Stroud Green Lib Dem team in launching a campaign to make the pedestrian crossing on Upper Tollington Park (by the junction with Florence Road) safer.  The campaign was launched after local residents raised concerns about the speed of traffic on the road and a recent accident near the zebra crossing.

This is a key route for children going to Stroud Green Primary School and many years ago the Council employed a ‘lollipop lady’ to patrol the crossing. However, I’m told that when she retired she was never replaced. So as a first step to make the crossing safer, we are calling for the Council to employ a new crossing patrol person.

Thanks to pressure from Lynne, Ed Butcher and myself, the Council have now agreed to put up more warning signs on the road, and the local police are doing extra speed patrols on the road.  However, the real long-term answer is to get the crossing upgraded with traffic lights and measures to slow down the traffic.

To get the Council to take action, we have launched an online petition to demonstrate how strongly local people feel about this issue. Please sign up here.

Everyone I’ve spoken to so far has been extremely supportive of the campaign. In fact, when we took this photo of us launching the campaign, several residents came out of their houses to offer us their backing and tell us their concerns about the traffic.  I hope with such strong support we are able to make a difference.

One of things that happens when you become a councillor is people start emailing you pictures of rubbish.  A fortnight ago I was contacted by a resident of Florence Road who was very pleased that the Council have installed new bins on the Parkland Walk, but was annoyed that they weren’t getting emptied.  He sent me pictures of the resulting mess:  a lovely nature reserve blighted by an overflowing rubbish bin and a revolting dog mess bin. 

However, a week later there was still no response from the Council to my request to clean the bins up, and the resident was back in touch with even worse pictures (see above).  Outraged at the blight on the Walk (a disused railway line turned much-loved nature walk) the resident set me a challenge of getting the bins cleared before the busy bank holiday weekend.

Unfortunately, I can only report a partial success.  A parks officer has now added the bins to the collection rota and so they should start being emptied regularly.   But as of Friday, the dog waste bin was still full, which isn’t a pleasant thought given how hot its been this weekend.

Its a shame that even when Haringey Council tries to do the right thing it invariable gets it wrong.  And its very annoying that even when it is alerted to a simple problem with a bin it fails to get it sorted promptly.