Richard Wilson

Tomorrow is the Area Assembly for the Stroud Green, Crouch End and Hornsey area, which is being held in Priory Park from 12 noon.   The focus will be on health and sport. There will be lots of opportunities to hear and ask questions about health provision in Haringey, how to register at a GP; penalty shoot outs with the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation and the opportunity to find out about volunteering to help at the Olympics.

Between 12 and 2pm there will be a ‘health fair’ with stalls to find out more about local services and participate in health awareness activities.  This will include information on cancer screening information, diabetes prevention, and stopping smoking.  From 2pm-4pm will be the actual Assembly, which will include a presentation on the area’s new Neighbourhood Health Centre on Park Road, and also the usual opportunities for residents to raise issues from the ’soap box’.

This is the second Assembly we’ve had in the Park, and I hope that this one will be as successful as the ‘intergenerational’ one 2 years ago in getting a wider group of people involved.  Crouch End Councillor Lyn Weber has been the driving force behind these Assemblies and will be chairing as usual.

Tonight is the local Area Assembly 7.30pm to 9.30pm in Stroud Green School (entrance on Perth Road).  The theme this time is green issues, and there will a number of presentations from local community groups working on green projects. These include a talk from ‘Urbivore’ on urban growing, healthy eating and sustainable living, and ‘Foodcycle’ on food recycling and a community cafe for Haringey.

The Assembly will also give people the chance to have their say on the bids that have been submitted by local residents to the ‘Making the Difference’ grants programme. There has been a wide range of applications, such as new benches for bus users and new kits for a youth football team.

As usual there will be the opportunity for residents to have their say in the ’soap box’ segment and to quiz a Haringey Council cabinet member, and Cllr Lyn Weber will be keeping order as Chair.  Please do come along and join in!

Great news – a long running campaign by local residents and councillors for a review of the Finsbury Park Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) is finally being acted on by the Council, who have at last agreed to put this in their 2010/11 work plan.  The review would include a parking consultation with residents who live outside the CPZ who are badly affected by displacement parking, as well as residents inside the Zone.  Last year we did a survey of residents in streets outside the Zone which got over 300 responses, and presented the results to the Council.  79% said parking had got worse and 61% said they now wanted the CPZ extended, and residents on some roads have put together petitions to demand action.
 
This is also great news for residents who live inside the existing CPZ who regularly complain about the rules, hours and enforcement of the parking controls.  It will also help residents who are angry about the boundary of the CPZ, with anomolies like the Oakfield Road bridge being included in the CPZ when there are no residents living on it.  Labour councillors have repeatedly promised reviews over the last 4 years, but these pledges have always been broken. 
 
The battle now is to hold the Council to this promise and to make sure the consultation is promptly and properly conducted, and is fair and considers all options.  As councillors our job is to make sure all views are heard, whether anti- or pro-CPZ.  Obviously we remain absolutely adamant that CPZs should purely be about helping solve residents parking problems, and not about raising money for the Council.  We will scrutinise any proposals to brought forward by the Council to ensure they stick to this principle.
 
Yesterday, along with councillor Lyn Weber from Crouch End ward, I met with the council officers in charge of parking to press for this review to  go ahead as soon as possible.

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.

Well there is space for quite a lot  more it seems.  On Tuesday night I attended a meeting to decide which of the bids made to this year’s local neighbourhood budget could be progressed.  Two local residents had put in bids for trees in their street – Upper Tollington Park and Quernmore Road.

The Council’s arboriculturalist has found there is space for at least a dozen extra trees on both those roads.  This highlighted to me how badly our area has been neglected since its Victorian heyday.  Many of our local streets have empty tree pits (see picture left from Stapleton Hall Road) and many more tree pits have been tarmaced over.  Apparently, some of these tree pits can never be refilled because wires and pipes have now been placed under them.  The empty pit outside the ‘Instanbul Supermarket’ on Quernmore is an example of this.

So I am really pleased that we were able to approve a small budget for tree planting on these roads.   And our Area Assembly chair Cllr Lyn Weber (Crouch End Ward) was successful in badgering the Council to put in some central funding to plant trees in these roads as well.   With a bit of time we may be able to turn our streets back to the tree-lined avenues they once were.