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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

I’m also delighted that Ed, Katherine and I were also elected in Stroud Green ward with increased majorities over Labour (the Greens remain in third place and the Tories in fourth).  Full details of the parliamentary and council election results are on Haringey’s website here.

Ed, Katherine and I would also like to thank our large network of volunteer leaflet deliverers, envelope stuffers and other activists in Stroud Green – as we couldn’t have inspired so many people to vote Lib Dem without their help.

Sadly, we failed to end Labour’s 40 years of control of Haringey Council.  This is hugely disappointing as we had so many fantastic plans to improve the Borough.  But obviously we’ll continue to use ours seats and influence on Haringey Council to fight for local residents.  We remain the only opposition to Labour on the Council, with yet again no Greens or Tories elected, so we are very aware of our responsibility to challenge and scrutinise the Council’s leadership.

I’m absolutely shattered after the hard work of election (and the epic 11 hour count which took from 10pm on Thursday till 9am on Friday) – but really excited about being able to serve the residents of Stroud Green for another 4 years.

It is now over four years since the Council last tried to condemn the play fort in Stationers Park as unsafe. During the election of 2006 the Labour Council promised to replace it – but instead once the election was over the money was diverted elsewhere and the fort was just patched up.  But, as I mentioned in a post back in January, thanks to the work of the local residents on the Friends of Stationers Park, most of the funding to replace the fort has now been granted from various sources (though more fundraising is still ongoing).

The fort has been treasured by local families for years – and we need to make sure it is replaced with something even better.  The design of the new play area should be down to local residents – especially the children who will use it.  To achieve this, Groundwork (the environmental charity managing the new design) wants to engage with the community through Friends of Stationers Park – and has planned a public consultation to present design options to park users.

This consultation event will be held in the park from 11am to 3pm on Saturday 15th May.  Please bring your family along and have your say!

It is brilliant to see progress being made at last.  However, there have been too many years of broken promises on replacing this fort from our Labour Council.  The Lib Dem team of Lynne Featherstone, Ed Butcher, Katherine Reece and I have made it a key election pledge to make sure that this time the promise is not broken – and that the Stationers Park fort is replaced with an even better play area.

I attended a first brainstorming session a few months ago which the Friends group ran with the play area designer from Groundworks. People came up with some really imaginative ideas,  so I think this event in the park could be a really exciting opportunity to get local families’ reactions to these, and to add even more ideas into the mix.