Building Stanley Park for the Future

On Saturday I attended the third and last consultation session where the three remaining potential sites for the rebuilt school were open for discussion.

As well as Education Spokesman for the Conservatives, I am a Governor at the school and part of the project team so have a vested interest in the success of the rebuild.

The three sites are Orchard Hill, Stanley Road allotments and the existing site. There are pros and cons with each site. These need to be taken into consideration before picking a site to follow up.

The Government have given us £23m for a once in a lifetime opportunity to rebuild the school. Stanley Park High School has had a rotten reputation for the last couple of decades but David Taylor, the current head has brought the school on leaps and bounds with a vastly improved ethos and better results to match. There is still a long way to go and this relaunch will be a massive boost to teachers, pupils and parents alike.

Rather than writing an essay, I'll try to come back and add my thoughts about the three sites over the next few days.

Carshalton Feels the Force of the Gales

Though the London Plane tree next to the Ecology Centre may have survived the battering over the last week, other trees and as a result cars, did not fare so well.

Last Thursday as well as the incredibly poignant funeral service of Jo Pollock, high winds brought a tree down in Carshalton Place flattening two cars and narrowly missing two people.

This week Carshalton Park took some damage but another tree fell onto the road opposite the old Texaco Petrol station resulting in someone having to be cut out of their car.

My colleague, Tim Crowley who was travelling through the ward yesterday spoke to Environmental Services. The trees appeared to be maintained but such wet windy conditions made the accidents unavoidable.

Philippa Stroud joins the battle for Sutton

After a marathon session lasting all of Saturday, Philippa Stroud was chosen by Sutton & Cheam Conservatives to fight Paul Burstow to become the next MP for the constituency.

Philippa beat a very strong field and I look forward to working with her to ensure her victory whenever the election is called. Her role as head of the think tank "Centre for Social Justice" will bring new ideas to the constituency and I am sure that residents of Sutton will be able identify with her, the down-to-earth approach that she has and the principles that she shares with my colleagues.

Josephine Pollock

I have spent what should have been a positive day helping to choose the next Parliamentary Candidate for Sutton & Cheam. I was dragged back into a dreadful sense of reality on the awful news that the wife of Hamish Pollock, Jo died on Thursday.

Hamish is a LibDem opponent but party politics melt away on such occasions. Jo was 43 44 and left behind 2 children as well as a hardworking, long suffering husband. My heart goes out to Hamish and family.

Update: My apologies, I got the age wrong. See comments.

Euro Christmas Squiggle

You have probably seen that the Conservatives have followed Prince in being represented by a squiggle. There are strict rules imposed centrally on the use of the new logo. Never sticklers for the rules, MEPs Chris Heaton-Harris and Roger Helmer have given us this Christmas wish. May I add mine and wish you a prosperous New Year when the squiggly tree might truly blossom!

(You need the sound turned on)

Where Your Taxes Go, Part 1

As the annual horse-trading starts, when the LibDems give us their list of proposed cuts, ready to come in claiming to save the day in March when the council tax increase in announced, here is the first in an occasional series where you can judge whether your taxes were used well or not.

An eagle-eyed constituent took a photo of this 55ft cycle lane. Not sure if Ken Livingstone had this in mind to encourage more cycling. The lane also seems to end just in time to bring cyclists back amongst the traffic on a blind bend.

Successful Call for Dispersal Orders

At the last full Council Meeting, I proposed the main Motion, seconded by Eric, looking to use all tools at the disposal of the Council to fight crime in the Borough.

Sutton has the lowest number of police officers of all London Boroughs. In the past six months, my 15 year old neighbour has been kicked unconscious in broad daylight, a 14 year old family friend was punched and mugged on a bus, a thrown firework narrowly missed my 8 year old daughter and my son had a stick pushed into the spokes on his bike sending him over the handlebars onto the busy Croydon Road. I am not interested in being safer than Hackney or Newham. I want the best policing for Sutton, not just to rely on demographics to keep us near the top of a league table.

My colleagues and I argued for the use of dispersal orders in certain troublespots in the Borough. Guy Road in Beddington and Fairlands Park in Cheam suffer from antisocial behaviour. Allowing police officers the ability to move crowds of youths on can help. Although it moves the problem on, when surrounding areas use such orders, the problem grinds to a halt in Sutton. It may be a short term fix but it disrupts behaviour in the meantime and is only a single weapon in the police armoury not the be all and end all.

We negotiated an amendment which included the line "This Council supports the use of dispersal orders if and when requested by the police." This is a clear reversal of policy by the LibDems so a very good result for residents around these trouble areas. Now it is up to you to ask the police for their use if you see such problems around your area.

Developers Win Appeal in Rotherfield Road

The second plan rejected by councillors to demolish four houses next to All Saints School in Rotherfield Road and replace them with nineteen flats for sheltered accommodation was allowed on appeal to the Planning Inspectorate.

I was a member of the committee that rejected this application. Four attractive houses are going to be torn down to be replaced by a soulless development in an area that suffers from parking and traffic problems with the school and High Street putting pressure on the surrounding roads. We have pushed to get Rotherfield Road included in the conservation area but to no avail and so the well organised residents' committee (CRAG) who have battled to protect their road have to suffer the thin end of the wedge as the first development of this kind comes to this part of the village. The residents are looking to fight on and I wish them the best. With a lack of support coming from planning policy in this council, from the Mayor and certainly from national government, it is up to local residents to stand up to these pressures and ensure that they can continue to live in the area that they want to live in rather than being dictated to from a distance.

Not-so-stealthy Taxman

The phrase "stealth tax" has become well-worn over the last few years. I really like the idea of a flat tax in principle where everyone is taxed just once on their money (rather than on income, then stamp duty and on savings when it is invested and then VAT when it is spent and finally inheritance tax.) However there are significant problems in trying to introduce such a system to a mature economy like the UK. In lieu of this, a flatter tax system will do. People have no idea how much tax they pay. Gordon Brown in particular has complicated matters beyond belief. Lord Saatchi has proposed a Bank Holiday on "Tax Freedom Day". This is a symbolic day calculated by the Adam Smith Institute to show what proportion of the year you are working for the Government to pay your taxes.

So in 2006 all of our income from New Year's Day until 3rd June went to cover our tax bill. The rest is ours to decide what we want to do with our own money. In 1997 it fell a week and a half earlier on the 25th May. The definitive tax guide Tolley's Yellow Tax Handbook has increased from 4555 pages in the 1996-7 edition to an accountant's shelf-breaking 9050 pages in the 2005-6 edition.

Anyway the video above is a Republican advert. Typically American but the point is clear.

The Future of the Carshalton War Memorial Hospital

The hospital opposite Carshalton Park has been closed for sometime now. I have been contacted by several constituents asking about what is planned for the site. We have all heard about the financial problems of the Primary Care Trust so residents are rightly worried about the prospect of the land being sold off for housing.

I have found it impossible in eight months to contact anyone in the PCT that can tell me anything so I was pleased when I saw that the Wallington Forum was being updated on the situation. I have to get what I can take as I couldn't fathom why it wasn't to the Carshalton Forum that they presented their report since the three ward councillors sit on this body and not the Wallington Forum.

I left the meeting with some optimism. The plan is to use the site as a "Post Acute Intermediate Care Unit". Essentially this is for people that still need a hospital bed but are going through physiotherapy or such like. Carshalton would provide the beds for recuperation but in very different surroundings to a typical hospital. This fits in with the "Better Healthcare, Closer To Home" government initiative. The PCT project manager is due to produce the business plan in order to get the funding within six months.

The building on the site will not be kept. They left the meeting fully versed with the fact that it was a Memorial Site and so should be treated sympathetically. There is a possibility that the facade of the building would be kept. To my mind, I would rather see it used as a small cottage hospital of any sort even with changes to the building, than an overdeveloped housing estate. Now I have made a contact at the PCT, I am keen to keep a close eye on this site.

Very Short Update on Ruskin Road

We had an update on what was happening to the buildings on Ruskin Road between Rotherfield Road and Acre Lane and the answer was ... not a lot.

The large house on the corner is locked up whereas the small bungalows are still being used as temporary accommodation. They are due to be redeveloped but their future is linked to the Durand Close regeneration project in the Wrythe. This is a massive project involving the controversial valuations of residents' flats in a Compulsory Purchase Order exercise and the relocation of several families, so little will be happening in the coming months. When it does, rest assured you'll hear it here first.

Brookfield Avenue Application

I have been contacted by constituents about the application to convert a house in Brookfield Avenue into a House of Multiple Occupancy (HMO) with staff quarters (Ref. C2006/56621).

There is no information in the application as to who might be living there. Staff accommodation suggests considerably more than simple bedsits.

I have been in contact with the planning department to clarify the position. The planning officer has requested further information from the applicant, specifically to find out more about who is to be living in the property. The applicant has 21 days to respond. If he does, the planning department will give neighbours another opportunity for consultation and to raise objections on the fuller facts. If he does not respond, the planning officer can judge the application on the information to hand. Commonsense would suggest that he would find it difficult to approve of the application if he does not have all of the information.

My usual "without prejudice" clause for talking about live planning applications applies (See Coleridge Avenue below).

Coleridge Avenue Application

Developers have returned to a site on the corner of Coleridge Avenue and Shirley Road in the Poets' Estate where a similar plan was rejected last year.

The planning application proposes the demolition of the corner house and the building of seven houses in its garden.

This application is as controversial as the first with several residents objecting on similar grounds to before, namely overdevelopment of the site which is prone to flooding from the culverts running alongside the garden and the danger posed from traffic going in and out of the narrow corner access. Despite our best efforts the Poets' Estate was not recommended to be designated as an Area of Special Local Character (ASLC), which would provide an extra hurdle for potential developers but we were promised that the Local Development Framework would provide a sensitive approach to this individual area. I suspect that this will be the first test of this promise.

As a member of the committee that may decide on this application, I will decide on the night if and how they have overcome the reasons for rejecting the original application. Comments on the application (ref. no. C2006/56847) should be sent to London Borough of Sutton, Environmental Services, 24 Denmark Road, Carshalton, Surrey, SM5 2JG.

The Long Wet March for better healthcare

Ok. Not so long but quite definitely wet. A few hundred residents of the Borough joined together to brave the elements and campaign to end the cuts in the NHS and St Helier in particular. A new first for me is the video blog so have a look and see what you think of my Scorsese amateur production.

An Extraordinary waste of our money

Last night, I spoke at an Extraordinary Council Meeting that was called by our Conservative Group. We discussed one issue; the handling of the management contract for the Borough's leisure centres.

Essentially, the existing contractor, Sutton Community Leisure (SCL), a non-profit making trust gave the required 3 month notice to quit, citing the fact that they either needed to put prices up or needed a further £129,000 to keep going for the next year. Because Sutton Council had agreed to a contract with such a short break clause, they felt bounced into ignoring standard procedure of competitive procedure and appointed Greenwich Leisure to take on the remainder of the contract which expires in February 2009.

Now you might say that "where needs must", we ought to do this but there was an alternative. This appointment will cost Sutton Council £372,000 over the 26 months. If we had paid SCL £129,000 and given them 12 months notice, we could have examined all of the options according to procedure, appointed a new contractor in 2008 and spent £243,000 less than has now been agreed. To cap it all, SCL are to be taken over by Greenwich Leisure anyway, meaning that the leisure centres are going to be managed by the same people who have now received £372k rather than the £129k that they originally asked for.

If your head isn't hurting at this point, indulge me for one moment more. Lord Tope, lead councillor for Leisure refused to explain this bungled bargaining, preferring to accuse us of wasting money in calling an additional meeting. The room was booked to be used by the LibDems anyway with lighting, microphones etc. and I don't think even they can run up a bill for £243k to host a council meeting so this argument is just a touch thin.

The Conservatives were not against the appointment of Greenwich Leisure, only the lack of forethought and the disdain for procedure. Even though the cost of the meeting pales into insignificance next to this waste of out money, the need to have a meeting at all must rest with the ruling group. We take our role of Opposition seriously, holding the LibDem group to account for their decisions through proper scrutiny. Changes made by the LibDems and further changes planned show that the ruling group are not as keen at being scrutinised.

(Photo: Phoenix Centre, Roundshaw)

One Rule for them...Part 2

Today saw two announcements from City Hall. Mayor Livingstone explained that he would be increasing the Congestion Charge for 4x4s to a rip-roaring £25 per day. He is using the same banding that Gordon Brown devised for vehicle excise. If he applies the same lack of forethought as LibDem Richmond, then 1.6l cars will find that they are finally taxed off the roads of London.

Unfortunately, these taxes are a double-edged sword. I have written elsewhere that green taxes are worth further investigation but I suspect that such a scheme will mean lighter traffic for the rich that will be only too happy to pay an extorionate amount to remove others from the roads.

The Mayor, in the meantime thought nothing of spending £36,000 of our money and sending about 8 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere for a five day jolly to Cuba and a trip to Venezuela that was cancelled at the last minute because President Chavez was too busy to see him. The only official business was a 30 minute press conference at an Olympic conference in Havana.

Having said this, the Mayor is mindful of value for money when he tells us "The costs of my visit to Cuba are modest and in line with the costs incurred on other Mayoral trips." So remember that when you look at the Thomas Cook brochure. But what has he learnt from the trip? Apparently London has much to learn from Cuba about producing Olympic boxers. You couldn't make it up.

One rule for councillors...

I sit on the Development Control Committee deciding on planning applications. Rules introduced by this Government dictate that I would have to declare a personal or prejudicial interest if I knew the applicant and might have to leave the room unable even to contribute to the debate let alone vote.

Though commonsense needs to prevail in acheiving a balance to show transparency and fairness in decision making, current rules are far too dictatorial leading to instances where councillors that have been elected on the back of a particular issue have been unable to participate in the debate even though they represent the majority view and may have some specialist knowledge. I have seen one councillor leave the room whilst an application was heard about siting a mobile phone mast because he owned a phone from that network and so might benefit from improved coverage.

Imagine my surprise on Saturday when I opened the papers to see the Attorney General claiming that it was fine for him to have the final say as to whether Tony Blair should face prosecution over the "cash for peerages" scandal. As a friend of Tony Blair and a beneficiary of his patronage, this is the cherry on top of the Labour sleaze cake. For a man whose 'independant legal opinion' on the legitimacy of the invasion of Iraq changed depending on which day of the week it was, to claim that he is above such matters is staggering. Sir Ian Blair and the head of the CPS have already stepped aside of the investigation citing personal links. Lord Goldsmith must do the same and soon.

There are simple answers to both points. Change the rules so that councillors can do the job that they were elected for and find a new Attorney General.

Solving Wallace Crescent's Congestion

Eric and I met many of the residents of Wallace Crescent at their residents' association meeting last Tuesday. The three perennial issues came up and I hope that we can make some real progress on them in the coming weeks.

Building has started on a a Mother and Baby unit in the corner of the Crescent. Residents are naturally anxious about the effect that this will have. They have resolved to get to know the
management and build up a relationship to head off any problems. Eric and I will intervene if necessary.

Four years ago, I pledged to lobby TfL to get the Crescent closed off at the Pound Street end. Now I am elected, I will finally have a chance to fulfill this. Circumstances have changed that ought to make it easier for TfL to agree with the closure of the two shops that were reliant on that stretch of road for their deliveries. I am a self-confessed rat runner myself as I live in Salisbury Road so my acid test for any solution is one that stops me from using the road as a cut through.

The final problem is the garages in the corner and the number of cars left in the Crescent taking up space, sometimes with broken wings etc. leaving sharp edges. I have the details of the landlord and will be approaching him directly. I'll report back on all of these later.

Sutton Guardian's Guide to Political Blogging

Despite the photographers' best efforts, I wasn't able to exude for the lens and looked half asleep. Richard Lyon's sharp eye noticed a photo of my garden with the ladder that I had forgotten to put away. But hey, I'm being picky. I came home to an excellent article in today's Sutton Guardian about the rise of the political blogs in Sutton, which I have covered in an earlier post. Since it hasn't gone up on their webpage yet, I have copied the text here. To spare the public and avoid incurring the wrath of the Guardian lawyers, I have put one of my own photos alongside.

Blog standard
Richard Lyons

Posted on the internet is a photograph of Conservative councillor Paul Scully’s back garden.

It is a rich, green affair with a well kept lawn and borders of shrubs. On closer inspection you can clearly make out a yellow whirlygig clothes dryer and, at the bottom, a big black trampoline. Next to the photo, which also shows a white parasol and a discarded ladder, reads the words: “The picture shows the view from my bedroom window”.

As if to remind us the site is not some kind of councillors-homes-through-the-keyhole, the text goes on to discuss the issue of back garden development. OK, so we may still be in the realm of local politics, but it is not politics as we know it. Welcome to the brave new world of political blogs.

Taking the lead from national political blogs and the webcam diary of David Cameron, a growing number of local politicians are starting their own online diaries. Mayor of Sutton Richard Bailey gave out the web address of his blog at a meeting of the full council this month and councillor Cohn Ball and former councillor, Charlie Mansell are also established bloggers.

Claiming to be the first however, is Coun Scully who is aware of the medium’s ability to let the public know what councillors are doing almost as soon as they’ve done it. And what is more he adds, blogs can break down barriers between politicians and their constituents, allowing them to get to know the person in a way never quite achieved before. “I think blogs give an immediacy and an intimacy,” he says. “When people vote for you they generally vote for the party and few people know the individual. I think it’s important they get to know the individual because you may have particular political issues and problems and if they know you have a similar outlook as them they may be able to trust you more.” Coun Scully’s first posting was on May 29, 2006— just three weeks after being elected and bore the title ‘Does cyberspace need another blog?’ Since then he has written a total of 37 entries covering everything from the future of Westcroft Leisure Centre to whether classroom assistants should wear veils.

Much less prolific, by his own admission, is deputy leader of the council Cohn Hall, who left a month between his last posting and the previous one dated September 27. But despite this under-use of his cyberspace presence, he remains extremely enthusiastic about what blogs can achieve - particularly in terms of connecting with the community. “I have had more response from doing more things on a blog than I’ve had from all the leaflets I’ve done in all the years I’ve been councillor” he says. “If I put something up on the blog I might get half a dozen emails about it which is great. The more I can engage with the residents, the better.”

There is also a suggestion the more successful blogs could start to challenge newspapers by breaking stories before journalists. Fortunately for the Sutton Guardian, there is little chance of that happening in this borough. What the blogs of our councillors do seem to demonstrate though is that the internet can bring people closer together — even the public and politicians. “I think it has the potential to change politics and make politicians more human because we do seem a very strange breed,” Coun Hall says. “The potential is there but we need to take it up a level. More councillors should start blogs.”

Taxes to turn Mini owners green

Richmond council are seeking to introduce new payment scales for their controlled parking zones. The headline is that it will cost £300pa to park a 4x4. With the current trend for green taxes, many people will find this attractive.

As usual, the devil is in the detail. There are 7 categories A-G. 4x4s, Porsches, Ferraris etc. will come under category G. Half of the Minis sold in the UK will come under the second most expensive category, F. There are very few cars that are actually on the market in the UK that will come into category A.

With a basic 1.6 litre saloon being so penalised, it is hard to see this being more than a money-making exercise rather than a green initiative. Four years ago, I was at the forefront of the campaign to reject a proposed CPZ in Wallington that would have affected 20,000 people. Although an intial low charge was proposed, I worried about the future as the council became more dependent on this revenue. History has shown the 3000 people who objected to be right.