Question 1: Name three main policies for Princes Ward

Nine days ago (before we even knew who all the candidates in the Princes Ward by-election would be), I sent out a series of questions, to be answered by all Princes Ward Council candidates. The questions and answers are intended to help SE11 voters choose who to vote for by ensuring the candidates speak about their policies, rather than focusing on name calling campaigns.

I now have nearly all responses (English Democrat has promised his are to come) and now intend to publish the results one question at a time. Anything in square brackets or in bold, I've added to standarise the format of responses across the parties or as summaries. I've not changed any of the text that I was sent by email, but I've had to move certain answers across to different questions in order to keep the answers similar (I've indicated in all cases where I've made any adjustments, so tell me if you object). I'll probably save my personal comments for a post at a later stage as I want these questions to represent the candidates as best possible. I've put responses in alphabetical order, depending on the name of the party, and I've colour coded them for your ease:

Conservative = Michael Poole-Wilson = Blue
English Democrats = Janus Polenceus = Purple
Green Party = Joseph Healy = Green
Labour = Mark Harrison = Red
Lib Dem = John Roberts = Orange

Question 1:
Name the three main policies that you will make your platform for election in Prince's Ward, eg. crime/transport/street care/environment etc. and highlight the strategies that you intend to undertake to implement the policies. Do not mention any of the opposing political parties in your answer.

Michael Poole-Wilson:
A. [Housing] I will campaign for a reduction in social housing rents and better repair services, which can be achieved if housing is managed more efficiently, including contract management.

B. [Council Spending] I will campaign for a reduction in wasteful spending at the council. For example, I will fight to stop production of the propaganda paper "Lambeth Life" and seek to end 6 figure salaries and unjustified bonuses for council staff.

C. [Parking] I will oppose over-zealous parking enforcement and am in favour of a freeze on the cost of parking permits.


Janus Polenceus:
A. [Crime / anti-social behaviour] To tackle street crime we should look at putting more police on foot or even on bicycle on every street especially through out the night, as a kind of night watch. In my opinion CCTV cameras are not much help to our public's safety.

To avoid youngsters being encouraged to get involved into street crime there needs to be much more discipline in local schools to educate our young ones why things such as crime, violence, discrimination & bullying is wrong. If a teenager is proven of committing a crime or behaving wrong then the local authority has to have a closer disciplinary act on the teenager's parents. Bad behaviour often originates from bad parenting.

Anti-Social Behaviour: Often especially on Sunday afternoons in Spring Gardens at the back of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern pub there is a large number of homosexual couples that are lying on the grass and enjoying themselves in broad daylight. This is not a good example/view for our children and not everyone wants to watch such activity in public. These couples should learn to be discreet and do such flirtations/activities inside the gay bars in Vauxhall or at least out from the public eye.

B. [Environment] The should be more bins placed on each street to encourage people to drop their litter into a litter bin.

To make life easier for people who have dogs there should be more Dog Areas created on our greens such as in Spring Gardens, Pedlar's Park, Lambeth High Street Recreation Ground and Lambeth Walk Doorstep Green;

Also in these parks there should be more playground attractions for children and more sports exercise facilities for adults.

C. [Heritage] The English Democrats Party believe that there should be more focus on promoting local history, heritage & culture. For example in our ward there is what use to be our famous 'Lambeth Walk', there is even a famous song about this place. Now for the last few decades the Lambeth Walk has been more or less like a ghost town or simply just a regular neighbourhood housing estate. For The Lambeth Walk not to be forgotten what it once was there should be some sort of memorial museum on the street itself for the people to learn what was so special about this place/area that use to be a busy shopping high street filled with entertainment. The Lambeth Walk was famous for its Music Hall, shopping malls, pearly kings & queens and famous local people such as Charlie Chaplin who shopped and also lived inside the ward. There should also be events & walks to keep the spirit of The Lambeth Walk going, such as the music of the time and costumes like the pearly kings & queens outfits that people wore in them days. This should be researched by our local schools.
The Lambeth Walk is part of English & Lambethean heritage, history & culture.

Also we should acknowledge the fact that South London was in-fact Surrey County until 1963 before it was recognised as part of what is called Greater London, also as part of local history study. Local history is very important especially for the young ones to know more about where they come from and live.


Joseph Healy:
A. [Housing/Homeless] I am opposed to the privatisation of First Call emergency repairs service, concierge service and North Lambeth Cleaning to even though existing contractors do an unsatisfactory job for the Housing Dept. I want radical action on empty properties so that they can be used to house people as soon as possible.

B. [Schools /Hospitals] I also support free school meals for children and a push by the Local Authority committees and Lambeth NHS to ensure that the quality of food in local hospitals is improved and is locally sourced if possible and nutritious. The current quality of much hospital food is appalling and militates against a speedy recovery.

Mark Harrison:
A. [Crime] Tackling crime and anti-social behaviour
* Compulsory tagging for dangerous dogs on estates - there needs to be a focus from housing officers on this issue to ensure that all dogs being kept on estates are monitored and fitted with microchips to aid identification. I will press for greater resources for Lambeth's dog warden services, and continuing attention from the police on the issue.

* Guaranteed funding to get CCTV working again - With the Ethelred TMO Board I've been campaigning over the past year for the Council to pay the contractor to come back on site and get the system up and running. Pressure on Lambeth Living has resulted in the Chief Executive meeting the TMO and negotiations are ongoing. We're hopeful that continuing pressure will pay off. Other estates with CCTV that is broken should have its repair prioritised.

* Hit drug dealers and buyers with ASBOs that ban them from SE11 - it's totally within the Council's powers to issue ASBOs to individuals who are causing a nuisance by dealing or buying drugs. Labour is committed to using ASBOs as a useful tool for tackling anti-social behaviour.

* Support Labour's Safer Neighbourhood Police Team - Labour is committed to the Safer Neighbourhoods Teams because we set them up. A Labour Council will do everything in its power to support the Teams. As a ward councillor I will attend the meetings and ensure officers are fully aware of all the issues in the ward.#

B. [Youth / Community] Youth and community services
* Commitment to securing the old Lilian Baylis School site as a permanent community hub, with continued support for the Sports Action Zone and other community facilitiies.##

* Support for Labour's increased funding for youth services, luncheon clubs, street cleaning, trees, streets, children's services, and domestic violence prevention.

C. [Housing] Housing
* Work with Kate Hoey and councillors to lobby government to help reduce this year's rent increase
* Continue extensive work with residents' associations across the ward to help them in their battles to improve services from Lambeth Housing
* Campaign to radically improve customer service from Lambeth Housing
* Help the Vauxhall Five Estate win its new windows and balconies
* Help get the Ethelred's CCTV and security doors working

The # and ## symbols indicate footnotes in which Mark responded to previous comments that I've made in this blog and elsewhere. I'll try to publish his comments in a later post since I've sought to avoid mention of opposing parties in this question.

John Roberts:
A. [Crime] If elected, I will continue to work hard to get more funding to tackle crime locally and I already have the links to get this moving. This would include holding advice surgeries with the police, to link the work of the police and the council – something some other Lib Dem Councillors already do. As an estate resident, I am concerned that recent cuts to funding on estates – including cuts to Tenant Management Organisations (TMOs) will encourage crime and anti-social behaviour; if elected I will fight to reverse recent funding cuts

B. [Housing] The council has just implemented a 17% rent rise at a time of economic hardship. The government recently launched an initiative to reduce the rent rise nationally from 6.2% to 3.1%. Like many others on the Ethelred and other Princes ward estates my service charge jumped from £210 to over £600, in two years. If elected I will be backing the Lib Dem Group’s call for a lower rent rise. [Edited this to remove mention of other parties.]

C. [Environment / Community] On the local environment and community resources
* I want Kennington Cross to be more than just a junction and am supporting plans from the Kennington Association like the Tree of Hope and the ‘Arts Lav’ to improve the pavement area outside the Dog House pub and St Anselms Church. We should be looking to support more local shops rather than yet more estate agents! I will continue to support our local parks and green open spaces. I am proud that the Lib Dems have consistently fought to protect our green open spaces like Lambeth Walk Open Space and Spring Gardens from development – in an inner city area like Lambeth, where few people are lucky enough to have gardens, green open spaces are vital for all members of the community to enjoy.

* With regard to the Old Lilian Baylis site, I fully support the Ethelred Nursery and the Sports Action Zone using the site – it was Lib Dem Councillors who helped launch the Sports Action Zone there in 2005. But the future of the site is still hopelessly uncertain at the moment. Lambeth’s latest plans would also see a new church developed on the site. It is not at all clear how the Sports Action Zone and the Nursery will be able to share the site with the church. Residents do not seem to have been given the chance to be involved with the plan. We need to know why established local community groups have not been included. We need to know what the governance arrangements will be. And we need to have evidence that the council is getting best value for local people if it does hand the site over to a third party.

* I will ask Lambeth Street Care officers to carry out regular walkabouts with me around local “grot spots” so we can deal with these issues BEFORE they become serious problems. I also look forward to working with residents groups to tackle such problems in their local area.

[Lib Dems answered this question with info about what the candidate had already achieved. That information fits better in second question so I've moved it.]

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.]