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.

Local residents are trying to spread the word about the Boundary Commission consultation on whether Stroud Green should move out of Hornsey Constituency and into Tottenham.  The deadline for people to have their say in the consultation is just 13 days away.

The Stroud Green Residents Association is holding a public meeting tomorrow (Thursday) night to discuss the proposal.  The meeting is at 7pm upstairs in Stroud Green Library.

And even better, local community group GreenN8 has made a film about the issue, speaking to lots of local residents, as well as Lynne Featherstone, Katherine Reece and myself.  I’ve just watched it myself for the first time and I think its a fantastic way of communicating the issue.  Please make sure you have your say.

The popular Station House Cafe in the Mind building on Stapleton Hall Road has been celebrating its first birthday.  Lynne Featherstone and I joined the Food Cycle team who run the cafe to help them mark the anniversary.

The Cafe has proved hugely popular with local Stroud Green residents both as customers and volunteers.  Local people have really bought into the FoodCycle concept of reducing waste, protecting the environment and providing nutritious food.   It’s also great to see the historic Station House being used by the local community.  

The Cafe is open every Friday lunch time and serves delicious and good value vegetarian food.  Details are on the FreeCycle website.

Stroud Green councillor Katherine Reece has joined local MP Lynne Featherstone on a last minute push to get local parents to back the campaign for fair funding for our schools.   The Government are holding a consultation on school funding formulas which ends on Tuesday 11th October – and this is an opportunity to end the long-standing unfairness of Stroud Green schools receiving less funding than those in nearby boroughs.

Schools in Haringey receive as much as £1,500 less per pupil than schools over the border in Hackney and Islington, because Haringey is counted as Outer London by the Department for Education – even though Haringey teachers get paid inner London salaries.   This anomaly has existed for decades – but thanks to Lynne’s campaigning it may be coming to an end as the Government consultation proposes a better ‘combined approach’ formula that would remedy the situation.

You can respond to the consultation and demand fair funding for Stroud Green’s schools on the Department for Education’s website.  It’s outrageous that children who live on the north side of Stroud Green Road receive thousands of pounds less school funding than those who live on the south side.  Lets hope Katherine and Lynne’s hard work pays off.

This evening’s Council meeting will take the decision on whether to cut youth services by 75% and close clubs and centres aimed at vulnerable older people, such as the luncheon club at Abyssinia Court on Weston Park in Stroud Green ward. At tonight’s meeting to set the Council’s budget for 2011/12, I will be helping to set out the case for alternative cuts to save front line services.

Obviously, this is a really tough and horrible year for local government spending, as central government cuts grants to deal with its massive budget deficit. But Haringey will still have £280 million to spend next year (excluding ring-fenced housing and schools budgets) and it is vital that money is spent in the best possible way.

As deputy leader of the opposition Lib Dem group I have seconded our amendments to the ruling Labour Party’s cuts. You can read our full amendments here, but in summary we propose:

• To reduce Haringey’s £16.5 million a year IT budget by 3%, rather than cutting vital youth services by 75%.
• Reducing the number of trade union official posts funded by Haringey, rather than cutting drop in centres, luncheon clubs and day centres for older people.
• Limiting spending on Council communications to £1 million a year, to help create a £700,ooo a year fund to protect Haringey’s voluntary sector from cuts.
• To cut the costs of senior managers (currently £20 million a year)  by a further 6%, to save volunteering and anti-crime projects in the Borough.

These are probably the most important decisions that Haringey Councillors have taken for many years, and I really hope the Council leadership can set politics aside and be persuaded to accept our amendments, in order to save some of these vital services. Last month, Lynne Featherstone MP and my colleague Katherine Reece visited the Abyssinia Court lunch club (see picture), and started a petition to save it and the other clubs and centres.  We’ve now launched an online version of the petition, which anyone can sign to support the campaign to save these services.

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.

I keep hearing excellent reports of the new community café that is open every Friday lunchtime in the Old Station House (the MIND building) on the corner of Stapleton Hall Road and Ferme Park Road.  Local MP Lynne Featherstone and councillors Katherine Reece and Dave Winskill visited on Friday and said the food and atmosphere was fantastic. They’ve sent me this picture of them enjoying a meal with local residents.

As I posted back in October the café has opened by innovative charity ‘FoodCycle’ who aim to bring together volunteers, surplus food from local supermarkets and idle kitchen space to create cheap and nutritious food (More details on the FoodCycle website).  The launch was supported by local councillors through a small start-up grant from the ‘Making the difference’ programme.

I’ve had lots of reports from many different people that the café is a big hit with local residents and has been attracting a good number of customers.  I hope this success means it will be able to eventually extend its opening hours so that more people can access it.

The café has now closed for Christmas and will re-open on Friday 7th January.