Richard Wilson

There was consternation at this week’s Area Forum, when the Council spelled out its plans for forcing households to have two wheelie bins – and cutting the non-recyclable waste collection from weekly to fortnightly.  Residents from streets like Woodstock Road have complained that they just don’t have enough space in their tiny front gardens for so many bins – and that people wont be able to get in and out of their front doors if the Council push this change through.

Whilst lots of residents are really keen to get a recycling wheelie bin because they have the space and the boxes aren’t bin enough, many Stroud Green properties are not suitable for this change.  If the Council had bothered to consult with residents it would have found out that people have completely different requirements – but in typical Haringey style decisions were made in secret behind closed doors.

Haringey say that everyone’s front garden will be assessed, and that people may be able to request smaller bins.  However, its unclear what happens if your front garden just isn’t big enough to cope with two weeks worth of black-bag waste from all the flats in your house – or if your neighbours don’t recycle properly and put smelly food waste in the black bin (or what happens with nappies and cat litter which can’t be recycled).  Ed Butcher and I have been out knocking on doors in Upper Tollington Park and neighbouring roads and most residents are hugely supportive of attempts to increase recycling, but desperately want to keep their weekly bin collections.

The Area Committee agreed to put residents concerns to the Labour Councillor in charge of waste collections.

Just before Christmas, I was sent a spreadsheet setting out how much ‘Pupil Premium’ will be received by local schools next year.  The Pupil Premium is a Lib Dem initiative to target extra money at schools in the most disadvantaged areas. Next year each school will receive£600 for each pupil in receipt of free school meals.  The money can be spent however the headteacher thinks best – and will benefit the whole school.

According to the Government data, our three local primary schools are are due to receive significant sums:

• Weston Park Primary School on Denton Road will get £18,000
• St Aidan’s Primary School on Albany Road will get £23,400
• Stroud Green Primary School on Woodstock Road will get £107,400

Because of the way the Pupil Premium is targeted, Haringey is a massive beneficiary - with £8.8 million planned to go to our schools in 2012-13.   Nearby High Schools used by Stroud Green children will also get large sums – for instance Hornsey Girls School is getting £385,000, Highgate Wood £270,000 and the Grieg City Academy £378,600. Schools in the east of Haringey, where over two thirds of pupils can be on free school meals, will quite rightly receive very large amounts of Premium.

For five years I was a governor at Weston Park Primary School, and chair of the schools resources committee – so I know that this money will make a big difference and will be put to good use in our local schools.  It’s great to have some good news about school funding amongst all the gloom in these very difficult times.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Over the last few weeks I’ve been dealing with a very frustrating case, trying to get a window fixed in a flat in Woodstock Road.   I was contacted by the leaseholder who lives in a former Council flat which Haringey Council still owns the freehold for.  The terms of the lease state that fixing the windows is the Council’s responsibility, so when his window jammed open he contacted Homes for Haringey, the semi-independent organisation that manages Haringey’s housing stock.

The first Haringey repairman quickly identified what the problem was, and described it in layman’s terms to the leaseholder as a spring needing replacement in a sash window  (in fact the technical term is a spiral balance).  However, a catalogue of errors and inefficiencies by Homes for Haringey means the repair has taken 2 months and 8 visits (or ‘attempted’ visits) to resolve.

• 15th September:  first visit identifies repair needed
• 19th September: second visit arranged too soon – new spring hasn’t arrived yet
• 4th October:  spring still hasn’t arrived
• 19th October:  spring arrived – but only one operative booked when job needs two people
• 20th, 26th & 27th October:  duplicate repair accidentally booked into system results in three further abortive visits
• 9th November: final visit to complete repair

Many of these visits required the leaseholder to take time off work and spend lots of time on the phone trying to work out what was going on.  In many cases the repairman failed to show up for the arranged visit, causing even more frustration and wasted hours. However, it isn’t just this individual leaseholder who suffers as a result of this incompetence, the inefficient management of repairs mean all tenants and leaseholders suffer delays to getting jobs fixed and huge sums of money are wasted.   No wonder Haringey’s housing stock is in such poor condition.  I’ve let the Chief Executive of Homes for Haringey know about this case and asked him to look into the many errors made by his organisation.

The Finsbury Park Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) is very likely to be extended up to Ridge Road after 66% of those consulted by the Council asked for resident parking controls.  Earlier this week I attended a meeting with parking officers and residents to hear the results of the consultation, which finished at the start of 2011.  According to the briefing, 16% of residents in the consultation area outside the current CPZ responded, with 218 in favour of the expansion and 114 against.

If the expansion goes ahead as expected the following roads will now be added in to the Finsbury Park CPZ:

• The whole of Addington, Albany, Elyne, Quernmore and Ridge Roads
• The rest of Stapleton Hall Road, Mount View Road and Oakfield Roads (which are currently only half in the CPZ)
• The remaining part of Ferme Park Road (south of Ridge Road) – with the road north of Ridge Road going into the Crouch End CPZ.

Apparently 69% of respondents wanted parking controls for the minimum 2 hours a day.  The Council are suggesting 12 noon to 2pm – but at the meeting this week some residents wanted different hours, so the officers are going to look at this.  The Council will now draw up detailed proposals showing where all the parking bays will be – and there will have to be a short ’statutory consultation’ on the final plans.  With this further work, the Council have said it will take until November for the new extension to be implemented, which means residents will have to suffer several more months of parking difficulties.

The consultation inside the existing CPZ seems to have got more mixed results, with an almost 50/50 split on whether the hours should be reduced or not.  But the Council are proposing to create  a small inner zone near the tube station to try to deal with particular problems in Woodstock, Perth, Ennis and Oxford Roads.  I’ve asked officers for an urgent meeting to look at the detailed results – to make sure they are fairly representing the views expressed.

During 2009 Ed Butcher and I surveyed several hundred people about whether they wanted the CPZ (see picture) and got a very similar result.  Its a shame its taken the Council well over a year to catch up – but this is a big victory for those residents who have been pushing for a CPZ for all these years.

The big freeze last winter left many of our roads and pavements treacherous. The Council say they don’t have the resources to grit residential roads, and there is only a handful of grit bins – so local residents can’t make them safe either.

Therefore, I started a campaign to get more grit bins installed (see previous post) – and residents on six roads got in contact to say they wanted a grit bin.  Indeed – some pointed out that they used to have a bin – but the Council took it away.  I submitted these requests back in February but was told it would take months to decide.

Due to pressure from across the Borough, the Council have now published a list of new locations for grit bins – and four roads of the roads I requested are on that list: Albany Road, Oakfield Road, Denton Road & Uplands Road.  This is great news as these roads are very steep and treacherous when its icy, and now residents will be able to help keep the area safe.

However, Mount Pleasant Crescent and Woodstock Road have been left off the list – presumably because these roads are flat.  I’ll ask again for these to be included, as residents felt that these roads were still treacherous under the ice.

The new bins on the list are supposed to be installed later this month.  The challenge then will be to make sure the Council keeps them full – unlike last winter.

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.

Haringey Council have pulled funding from a cross-Borough initiative to stop dumping, littering and graffiti in the Finsbury Park area.  Through local regeneration agency FinFuture, Haringey, Islington and Hackney had all contributed to employing ‘Street Enforcement Officers’ to tackle the rubbish that often blights the area, which includes much of Stroud Green.

Haringey have unilaterally withdrawn this funding despite the fact that dumping and littering remain huge issues – particularly on the roads leading off Stroud Green Road.   A few weeks ago Lynne Featherstone, Ed Butcher and I were doing a walk about and found this huge pile of dumped furniture on Woodstock Road.   We need more Council efforts – not less.

Fortunately, Islington and Hackney will continue to pay towards one enforcement officer for the area and have not insisted that this officer boycotts the Haringey side of Stroud Green Road.  But in the long term it is completely unsustainable for this Labour Council to keep washing its hands of Stroud Green Road issues.