Funding awarded to Lady Margaret Hall Settlement and Vauxhall Gardens Community Centre

Well done to Lady Margaret Hall Settlement (north Lambeth charity, currently based at Mowll Street in SW9) and Vauxhall Gardens Community Centre who have been granted monies from Capital Community Foundation to run various projects in the area. Take a look at the news section of their blog for more info.

LMHS won their monies to run a business training course for their All Sewn Up students to enable them to set up their own businesses. They'll also be running ESOL food/hygiene courses in conjunction with the currently centre-less Portuguese Community Centre.

Vauxhall Gardens Community Centre have won a grant to enable them to run a Memories Project in the area, aimed at older people. I look forward to being able to link to their findings.

Readers might also might like to know about the following LMHS courses running this term (all cost £125). If you're not personally interested, you might consider forwarding these to members of the local community whom you think might benefit:

Clothes Making courses:
6.45pm - 9.15pm (Monday evenings) beginning 19th September and running for 11 weeks
10.00am - 12.30pm (Friday mornings) beginning 23rd September and running for 11 weeks

Soft Furnishing courses:
10.00am -12.30pm (Thursday mornings) beginning 22nd September and running for 11 weeks
1.00pm - 3.30pm (Thursday afternoons) beginning 22nd September and running for 11 weeks
6.45pm - 9.15pm (Thursday evenings) beginning 22nd September and running for 11 weeks

For further information on any of the courses, call 020 7793 1110 or email mailto:admin@lmhs.org.ukwho are based at Unit 1, 11 Mowll Street, SW9 6BG. Nearest tube Oval.

Michaela Community School: Kennington Association to hold Public Meeting concerning proposal

I've stayed out of the Michaela Free School debate so far due to a short break from blogging and because I felt that I didn't have enough solid information to make an informed post.  At present, it's not clear where the proposed school would be situated or whether any funding has been agreed for the proposed opening in 2012.  Yesterday, however, I wrote a long  post on the protest concerning the retention of the Shelley site (something that was raised at the last KOV meeting and which I've been tracking closely), which unfortunately has not yet received any comments, except to ask my views on the Michaela Free School!! So...

A representative from Michaela emailed me in May, requesting that I publicise the Michaela Free School website and noted that an open day would take place on the 21st May, which I had hoped to attend.  Unfortunately, the open day was cancelled at the last minute on 20th May, and I've not spotted a public meeting since.  Consequently, I was delighted to note that Kennington Association have seized the mantle and agreed to hold a public meeting to discuss the proposal on Monday (18th July), 7pm at Ethelred Estate Community Youth Club, 7 Lollard Street, SE11 6QH.  After that, Lurking about SE11 hopes to have enough information to put forward a reasoned response.

In the mean time, many of the arguments for the retention of the Shelley site can be marshalled for the Michaela Free School, mostly concerning the secondary school aged population projection within the next few years.  At present, Lambeth is unable to send all students that live within the Borough to Lambeth secondary schools, and has to ship them out of the Borough for secondary education.  In addition, the demand for secondary education will increase on account of the building due to take place on the VNEB developments, especially because the Vauxhall (and thus Lambeth) developments appear to being approved faster than the Wandsworth developments.  Even worse, the VNEB proposals thus far do not appear to have accounted for a secondary school, so there is a clear argument (although perhaps the case is equally strong for Wandsworth) that additional secondary school places be provided for local students.  It's not clear (and seems unlikely) that the proposed Michaela School would have capacity for all of the additional students required across Lambeth (or Wandsworth), so it may be necessary for the council or free school trust to open one large new school or two/three smaller new schools.  Alternatively, (unless the LEA wishes to continue to send its pupils outside of the borough), some inventive means to expand current schools would need to be found (which should not include eating up local Playground space!).

The reason the Michaela School appears to have become so contentious is on account of its founder, Katharine Birbalsingh.  Birbalsingh made a speech at the October 2010 Conservative party conference about how she perceived the State to be failing to provide for the nation's children and to admit that she had voted Tory for the first time. Consequently, one can see how a slightly controversial start might have put some backs up in Lambeth, which is an entrenched Labour stronghold.  That, I suspect, is most likely the reason that some local hackles appear to have risen.

There is a Guardian article, outlining some of her views on State schools, written earlier this year and you can find further information about her from a comprehensive Wikipedia article.  Birbalsingh has written about 121 articles for the Telegraph (click "older entries" to read through the list), with the most recent article published today (just before Monday's meeting), on why she thinks middle class women on bikes (in Lambeth?) want to prevent working class children from receiving a good education.  It seems a tad impolitic to raise local backs further, before people have had a chance to hear about the Michaela School proposals, but presumably she hopes people will hear the free school ideas with open minds despite an article that appears deliberately provocative.  I am already wondering whether we're going to hear open and positive suggestions about Michaela free school from a diverse range of staff and parents or a Birbalsingh-only version of what Michaela Free School might look like.  The two are potentially quite different, so it's worth listening closely...

Local Development Framework - Draft Core Strategy [Sections 1 and 2]

Lambeth council recently released a draft version of its "Core Strategy", which is the most important document contained in the "Local Development Framework". The entire document is 116 pages long, although the Council welcome comments. I've been sifting through it over the past few days have and produced a cut-down version, mostly just summarising what was written. I've not changed their wording much, but have shortened and simplified because it contains some interesting ideas for the Borough.

I've used the document headings where possible, but have not summarised every section as it's a highly repetitive document.
The terms in purple are the "key" definitions.
The insightful comments in red are my comments.

Section 1 – Introduction

A Local Development Framework (LDF) is a collection of documents designed to guide development of a borough over 15/20 years. The Core Strategy is the first and most important document in the LDF. A Local Development Framework must achieve sustainable development for the area it covers. The four guiding principles for sustainable development are: Social progress, Environmental protection, Prudent use of natural resources and High levels of economic growth and employment. (p4)

The Lambeth Sustainable Community Strategy is a document used to prepare The Core Strategy, and the Sustainable Community Strategy contains data related to social, economic and environmental wellbeing, including health and community safety information. (p92)

Overall vision for Lambeth Sustainable Community Strategy is that by 2020 Lambeth will be a diverse, dynamic and enterprising borough at the heart of London, and there are 7 long term outcomes for the area:

* Great place to do business with high investment
* Greater well being for households through more residents in employment
* More young people on path to success
* Safe and cohesive places where people are empowered and play active roles in communities
* Improved health / well being of people to live independent lives
* Lower levels of poverty / exclusion by helping adults into employment, education and training
* Mixed and sustainable communities with more new homes, improved existing dwellings and environment

Lambeth’s LDF will be important tool to implement spatial aspects of outcomes such as geographical inequality, new housing and jobs and delivering infrastructure. (p6)

Significant proportion of Lambeth Core Strategy is dependent on private sector for delivery, re. new housing and commercial development; offices, etc. This is dependent on availability of development finance through the market. The Lambeth Core Strategy is meant to be flexible enough to enable private sector development at all stages of economic cycle.

Section 2 – Evidence Base

Population and Diversity

Lambeth covers an area area of approximately ten and a half square miles and population projected to grow 17% to 317,000 by 2026. Lambeth is among the most densely populated areas in the country, and current household composition includes high proportion of single parent households with dependent children. Population churn is estimated at 20% every year. [That’s very high! I didn't realise that so many people stayed in Lambeth so briefly.] (p13)

Lambeth is even more ethnically diverse than rest of London. The largest groups of immigrants between 2002 and 2006 were Polish, and after that Australian, and then Jamaican. [It seems to me that it’s a bit pointless to have “diversity” be an aim of the Sustainable Community Strategy when this has clearly already been achieved and is unlikely to change!] (p13)

Deprivation

2007 Index of Multiple Deprivation places Lambeth as 5th most deprived borough in London and 19th most deprived in England, which is worse than 2004, and is a result of improvements in other boroughs as well as a decline in Lambeth of income, health/disability, living environment and access to housing/barriers to services. (p13). The most deprived areas are spread, but concentrated in Coldharbour ward in Brixton, and Crown Lane area of Knights Hill ward. Most affluent include the Thames-side part of Bishops and Dulwich borer area of Thurlow Park (p14).

Housing

Lambeth’s housing consists 70% flats and 30% houses and is typical of inner London. Price of an average dwelling is around £350k in December 2007, but this had decreased by approx. 12% by December 2008. [That brings down the average dwelling to being worth £308k by my calculations.] Average gross household income in Lambeth is 31k per year. [My guess is that that's quite low for London as a whole.] (p14)

32% of council homes and estimated 11% of private sector dwellings were assessed as “unfit” by Council’s private sector stock condition survey in 2004. [That is bad. Are they really saying that a third of council homes are unfit for habitation? Are people actually living in them?] There are just under 2k households living in temporary accommodation (Dec 2008), and 13kish households in “housing need” within the Borough. (p14)

Economy

There are around 10k businesses in Lambeth. 75% of these have fewer than 5 employees. Lambeth has third lowest business density per head of population across inner London, but numbers of VAT registered firms grew by 14% between 2002 and 2006. [This will probably drop again due to the recession.] (p14)

There’s a cluster of large employers around Waterloo/Vauxhall. Over half of Lambeth’s existing jobs are located in Waterloo/South Bank area. The borough suffers high rates of unemployment – 71% of working age people employed in 2007/2008 in Lambeth compared with 70% across London and 74% nationally. (Doesn’t sound that bad to me, compared with the 70% figure for whole of London). Lambeth has one of highest number of incapacity benefit claimants (p15).

Education and Transport

Lambeth has 86 schools of which 13 are secondary. There’s a shortage of secondary places in the borough. There are very few surplus places in Lambeth primary schools and demand is expected to rise. Over 123 community languages are spoken in Lambeth schools in addition to English. (p15)

There are 14 overground railway stations spread evenly and 8 underground stations mainly in the north, with many bus routes. Residents in Streatham and West Norwood are dependent on rail and bus connections. Half of households don’t have access to a car, which is one of highest proportions in the country. Traffic congestion is a serious concern for residents. (p16)

Environment

There are 1.54 hectares of unrestricted open space in Lambeth per 1000 of the population, but access is unevenly spread and limited in north of the borough (p16). Total energy consumption in Lambeth is 3.2% of total energy consumption in London [seems quite low to me, considering Lambeth's high population, but this might be due to lack of industry]. In September 2008, an estimated 6700 households were in fuel poverty. Lambeth has lower levels of carbon dioxide emissions at 5.5 tonnes per 1000 population than London as a whole (6.8 tonnes). Despite predicted improvements in air quality in Lambeth over next 4/5 years, some measures eg. Nitrogen dioxide will continue to fail government targets (p17).

In line with targets, 25% of Lambeth household waste was recycled in 2007/8 and that has increased steadily from less than 10% in 2001/2002. Lambeth ranked 20th for house household recycling and composting in 2007/8 amongst London boroughs (p17). [It sounds as though Lambeth have taken vast steps forward, but there must be some way to go, since 20th is quite a long way down! Would be interesting to have a ranking compared to the country as a whole.]

Health and social care

Lambeth scores the 4th worst in London on unhealthy lifestyles and obesity is growing among young people. There are an estimated 5029 people in borough for whom drug use is a problem. [I expect this is a chronic underestimation because these stats. are likely to be very difficult to measure, and underestimating means that provision of services can be avoided.] Lambeth has one of highest incidence of mental health issues in capital, particularly among residents from ethnic minority backgrounds (p18).

Lambeth has a high and increasing birth rate, and numbers expected to live over 85 years old will increase demand in care services. Lambeth has the highest teenage conception rate in the UK (p18). [That’s a news headline if ever there was one.]

Community Safety

p18/19 Comparing London Boroughs, Lambeth had 4th highest count of Total Notifiable Offences (which includes majority of crimes, but excludes more minor offences), but that has been reducing since 2003/2004. Gun enabled crimes are high but decreasing. Tackling gang related crime, violent extremism and threat of terrorism are growing priorities for the borough. Crime in Lambeth is high around public transport interchanges.

[Even my cut down version of the document is long (around 4k words), so I'm going to post the next interesting sections as separate posts just to break it down somewhat.]