Richard Wilson

After the chaos caused by the snow before Christmas, local activist Katherine Reece and I thought we would check to make sure the grit bins in Stroud Green are full. The bins allow local residents to grit the pavements clear near their home if they wish, and are usually provided in hilly areas.  Our steep streets can be treacherous when icy, and I know many local older people feel trapped in their homes when the pavements aren’t gritted.

Therefore, we were surprised to find the bins at the top of Inderwick Road and Mayfield Road (both at the Ridge Road end) were empty apart from some litter.  We immediately contacted the Council yesterday to ask them to urgently refill it.   I know that the bins at Chettle Court on Ridge Road were empty a few days ago too, and residents were having to keep asking for them to be refilled.

The Council is supposed to check and refill the bins regularly over winter – but it appears this hasn’t been happening.  Obviously main roads have to be a first priority, but the Council can’t ignore entirely the need to keep pavements in residential areas clear and safe.   And it makes sense to give residents the opportunity to do their bit.

I’ve received notice from the Council that Streetcar are planning to put 3 new cars into Stroud Green.   This is excellent news as I know lots of residents are making very active use of the car club and are keen for new sites.

The proposed locations are:

• The Oakfield Road Bridge (when the current engineering works have finished)
• Nelson Road, near the junction with Ridge Road (see photo)
• Osbourne Road, near the junction with Victoria Road

The formal consultation is planned for February, but if you have any views on these locations then please get in touch and I’ll pass them on ahead of then.  I’m pleased that they have responded to resident’s suggestions of putting car club bays in the roads inside the Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ), such as the Oakfield Road bridge, rather than on the clogged roads just outside the CPZ (see previous post).

The new cars should be in place by June.

Yesterday, we presented Haringey Council will the final results of the Stroud Green Parking Survey.  We got a huge response with over 300 surveys completed either on the doorstep or online.

We started the survey because so many residents in the roads outside the existing Finsbury Park and Crouch End CPZs were contacting us to complain about parking (see post on launching the survey).  The key results were:

• 79% of residents believe that parking has got worse this year
• 61% of residents say they are now in favour of a CPZ , 32% are against a CPZ, and 7% stated no preference.
• 38% of residents say they used to be against having a CPZ but are now in favour.
• 58% of residents believe any CPZ should only operate for 2 hours .

These results demonstrate the urgent need for a proper Council consultation looking at the options for tackling parking problems.  We’ve written to the Haringey cabinet member in charge of parking demanding that he now holds this consultation - and a full review of the existing Finsbury Park CPZ.

As well as setting out residents’ views on CPZs, our letter also sets out other suggestions residents have made to reduce parking pressures, such as:

• Allowing residents who live just outside the CPZ boundary to buy permits to park inside.
• Allowing free parking on stretches of road where there are no houses, such as the Oakfield Road bridge or the covered reservoir.
• Providing dedicated van and truck parking (in appropriate places) for local residents who run vital ‘man and a van’ businesses.

The Council must listen to local residents on parking.

Its not very often that residents contact you asking for the Council not to repair something, but that is what happened this week with the smashed wall at the end of Ridge Road.  The wall is outside Chettle Court, at the entrance to the little row of houses called Highbank Way.

The wall is regularly knocked down by cars reversing and turning, and residents are fed up with seeing money wasted endlessly repairing it.  This picture is of me by the wall in August  last time it was damaged.  Since then it has been repaired and now knocked down again.

Residents are also annoyed, because it attracts groups of young people who sit on it – and sometimes it is used as a bench by people drinking alcohol in the street.  In my picture you can see there is a beer bottle sitting on the broken wall.

Therefore, I’ve backed residents calls that the Council’s housing organisation Homes for Haringey (which owns the wall) just removes it completely. Hopefully this will improve the local area and save some public money to be spent on more useful things.

This week I’ve been helping to deliver our local Stroud Green FOCUS leaflet, which is a great opportunity to spot problems that need sorting on local roads.  For instance, I’ve reported this graffiti at the top of Inderwick Road near the junction with Ridge Road (see picture).

Of course, you also see all the problems you’ve raised with the Council but which they’ve failed to take proper action on.  Sticking with Inderwick Road -I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve raised the appalling condition of the roads and pavements.  Bizarrely, the Council have taken half-action by replacing the pavement on one side of the street (but not the other), and re-tarmacing the northern half of the road (but leaving the southern half).  The result is to make the unrepaired sections look more obvious – its like cleaning one pane of a window but leaving the other pane dirty.

I’ll keep up the battle for the Council to finish what they’ve started on Inderwick Road.  I hope they remove more than half the graffiti.

This week I got a call from an annoyed resident of Ridge Road about a large commercial vehicle that had been parked in the street for many months.  The resident had reported the vehicle to the Council, but got no response.  I took a look and contacted the appropriate department.  The tax disc has now expired so I think the Council will now be able to take action.

The parking problems in the area are very bad – so it really annoys residents when businesses use Stroud Green as a car park for their commercial vehicles.  But we’ve become a magnet for these vehicles now, because there are so many resident parking zones nearby.  When I first got elected as a councillor I tried to organise a some concerted action to move these vans – but it appears the Council’s powers are limited.  They say they can only remove these long-stay vehicles if they are out of tax, look unroadworthy or are above a certain size (i.e. a lorry).

A good solution might be for the Council to provide appropriate areas for vans to park – particularly for local residents running small ‘man with a van’ businesses, which are so vital to a community.  This is an issue that I know a number of different residents and councillors have raised with the Council – but the idea never gets taken up.  I think Haringey should try to be innovative for once and look into doing something that might help residents and local businesses.