(Good?) news from the Triangle Playground & community news from Archbishop Tenison

I've been informed that Archbishop Tension School have published their first ever community news sheet.  On account of the fact that we're a caring, sharing blog that always represents two sides of any argument, I'll let you take a look:

I don't recall ever seeing an Archbishop Tension School community newsletter before, but perhaps I'm wrong and an eagle eyed reader will inform me that this is part of a long tradition.  My guess is that the letter was released because the Triangle Association have strengthened their campaign.

Now, whilst I'd acknowledge that there might be no current plans for Archbishop Tension School to take over the Triangle Adventure Playground and replace it with a car park, I simply cannot agree with their line (p1) "neither the school or Lambeth Council has ever had any plans for a car park on this site".  I make no comment other than to point you to the architectural plan 6 (the one Lambeth Council chose), which clearly shows that one corner of the space occupied by The Triangle is marked as "parking".  Also, I've still not had any good answer from the Council on the question of why plan 6 was chosen?  There are 5 other architectural plans which don't require the use of the Triangle's land for the expansion of Archbishop Tension School, and the Council chose the only one that required land from The Triangle.  Why?

In an attempt to be generous, the school acknowledge that they "desperately need more space for play..." and "want our school facilities to also be used by local residents".  But since the land is not theirs, why is the question posed in this manner?  Why do the school not graciously request permission of the Triangle Association to use the Triangle Playground, instead of attempting a take over and then "permitting" community use?  Also, the school argue that they have "strong links with the community in Oval".  Please could somebody comment on this point?  Mention of "community youth groups" is made, so it would be useful to hear which groups currently use the school site.  Also, I'd like to see a breakdown of the number of local people who attended IT training sessions at the school who were not already affiliated as parents.  Has anybody attended one of the school's IT sessions that could comment further on this?

Anyhow... The leaflet above seems to affirm that the school expansion will not take place (the BSF plans have been shelved by the Con Dems), but still states, "Once there is a clearer picture about the future refurbishment of the school we will discuss the possibilities.  The school desperately needs more space for play..."  This suggests, does it not, that the school intends to continue its attempts to get its hands on the Triangle.  It seems likely that the school is going to continue to insist that the Triangle be given to it on the grounds that the plans belatedly developed for the site under BSF represent the best use for the land and will provide a play facility for the local community adequate to replace the Triangle.  The point is though, that the Triangle Playground should not be "up gor grabs".   Founded by Marjorie Porter MBE in 1957, it is the oldest Adventure Playground in London.  She remained active on its committee up to the age of 97 and thought of the playground as one of her "greatest achievements".

There is a strong argument to be made, I think, in separating play institutions from educational institutions.  The organisation Fair Play for Children was brought into being, in part, through a letter to The Times from Bishop Trevor Huddleston, who stated in 1972:

"Since the Plowden Report it has been recognized that there must be Educational Priority Areas involving more generous financal provision from the state.  But, as the recent National Child Development Study From Birth to Seven makes clear... "equality of educational opportunity cannot be achieve solely by improving our educational institutions"... It is the total environment that must be be changed.  The local authority, the local community and many voluntary agencies in East London are doing their best to provide recreational facilities and opportunities during the school holidays.  But they are up against vast environmental difficulities in terms of disued canals, dangerous motorways and, above all, lack of open space."  Read the rest of the letter here (bold emphasis mine).

In my view, the school should be permitted to use the Triangle playground land, but it should not be handed over to them.  Play should be safeguarded alongside, but separate from education.  It's too easy to put up temporary classrooms in playground areas when schools become overcrowded, and a separate organisation can guard against this tendency more adequately.  There is an excellent Association that runs the Triangle playground for the good of all local children, and it would be a shame, in these days of an apparently resurgent co-operative movement, to abandon this good will.

But in the meantime, there's some good news... Cllr Robbins has advised the Triangle Association that it is his intention not to close the playground. However, the Triangle Association have requested a meaningful lease from the council in order to enable them to raise funds, and have requested that the council withdraw its proceedings agaisnt the Triangle's voluntary trustees.  The Triangle Association also wish to discuss the option for pupils at the Archbishop Tension School to use the playground at break times (geat idea).

Also, it has been suggested to me that there's an alternative option for expansion of the Archbishop Tension School, and for releasing more place space for them.  The car park on the school site could be immediately converted into playground space, and the school could take up an offer (from the Metropolitan Housing Trust) of one of the secure underground car-parks on the Ashmole Estate.  This would immediately release approx. 600m2 of playground space.

The Ongoing adventures of the Triangle Adventure Playground... (Lambeth Council still seeking to evict)

I received a highly informative poster from the Triangle Association last week, updating us with the current status of the Triangle Adventure Playground.  Unfortunately, Lambeth Council are still seeking to evict them, but the case has been adjourned until February 2011 (great news).

This little thorn in the flesh has the potential to become quite embarrassing for the Council because, as you might have noticed, Cllr Edbrooke name checked the Triangle Adventure Playground as being a "well run" example of a co-op style project at the last Kennington Oval and Vauxhall forum meeting.  This is great (I think) because it demonstrates that she has the guts to resist the Council's line on the matter.  Consequently, the Playground is now /finally/ receiving support from the three Councillors of Oval Ward; Jane Edbrooke (Lab), Jack Hopkins (Lab) and Ishbel Brown (Lib Dem) and I'm hoping that they're making strong representations to Cllr Robbins against closing it down (see below).  In addition, they've promised to fund the playground from the Oval Ward purse.  Now that's fighting talk, and it's a demonstration of the resistance that might be needed in the up and coming months....

There's other good news in the pipeline...

The Triangle Association committee have found a fund which might match funding from the Ward Purse, and would potentially pay for a solar power electricity system.  Heads up to the Triangle Association for their pioneering (and green) co-operative work!  Unfortunately, the solar power system requires a minimum lease of 10 years, so Lambeth Council will have to agree to cease eviction proceedings.  In addition, the Triangle have gained potential access to further funds for the next 18 months, but they'll need a longer lease.  I hope the Council do the right thing...

Is Mutuality privatisation by the back door? Co-operative Council Q and As - (KOV meeting update - Part 3b)

This post is a commentary and write-up from the KOV meeting that took place on 1st November at Vauxhall Gardens Community at which the Council Officer, Mike Wiltshire, was present to explain the purpose and end of the proposed co-operative Council for Lambeth.  The first post (which is basically the Council's elaboration of what the Commission have been reviewing) can be found here.  This post is a compendium of questions that were put forward by bemused Kennington, Oval, Vauxhall forum audience members (otherwise known as the Kennington Massive) to Lambeth Council about how the co-operative council might eventually appear.

Questions are often unclear and mumbly, and like in all public meetings, consist of the half-baked views of some quite strange people.  I've ruthlessly cut, summarised and de-waffled so that broad summaries are in single quotes, and direct quotes are in doubles...

Qn: 'I'm concerned... There was a lot of jargon....  You're consulting on things you should really be doing any way... You're looking at spending money on consultation on answers that should be relatively obvious...'

Mike Wiltshire:  'I wouldn't disagree that we should be doing this as a matter of course.  When we speak to people from different parts of the Borough, the ways they want to be consulted are different.  The point of this piece of work is to find the ways that people want to work.  Some prefer using area forums. Others want something more innovative eg. a local community group to come and manage a process.'

Questions: 'It would be useful to have more information about how this will run in practice and how we could contribute to the ideas about how it could be run... Could we hear about how local people get involved?' and 'We can organise collectively in neighbourhoods, but what does the council think we can personally and collectively contribute... What sort of interaction do you want between the public and yourselves?'

At that stage, you can see that the questions above (and more) concerned what a co-operative Council might look like, with all of these services effectively sub contracted-out, and poor Mr Wiltshire, who had suffered at the hands of the Kennington-massive was looking a bit drained, so Cllr Jane Edbrooke jumped to the rescue...

"These Co-op ideas were in our Labour manifesto.  This officer is taking a lot of questions, and I hope to come in with some answers... We're trying to say that we don't assume that services are run in the best way that they can be run.  We know that there's some great expertise out there.  We're saying that if you can run a service better, we'd like to catch that... It's about making people realise that services might not be run by the Council any more or that they can run them themselves...."

And then, controversially, Cllr Edbrooke went on to note that we have an excellent co-operative venture in our midst, at the heart of the Oval Ward...

"I know that people have been speaking to those that run the [Triangle] Adventure playground.  It's a controversial subject at the moment, but the playground is run very well.  How can we run that elsewhere?"

Controversial subject?!  Well, yes.  For those that don't regularly read this blog, you ought to know that Lambeth Council are currently taking legal action against the Triangle Association to evict them from the site, in order to make room for a school expansion.  So, that might not have been the best example to choose re. co-operative working!

But before anything further could be said, Mike Wiltshire grabbed the reigns again:

MW: 'At the moment, we provide youth services through youth clubs in the Borough.  The new process would be to review available funding and decommission the service if it's ineffective.  We'd then begin a new commission process and say to residents; "This is what's currently provided.  This is how it's working and these are the problems with it.  What expertise and what knowledge do you have to improve youth services, and how would you like youth services to operate in this area?"'

And then a question about whether any of our services are protected...?

Qn: At what point would the Council welcome applications?  Are there any no-go areas, or is any Council service open to that?

MW: Lambeth Council are currently drawing up a list of pilots to commence in February 2010.  The mechanisms of applying haven't been worked out in detail, but each year the council should be looking at specific service areas as part of the Council's budgeting cycle.  The last word from Steve Reed was that there are no no-go areas, including social care.  If you have an idea as to how a service can be delivered better, the Council want to hear about it...

And then somebody raised the question about whether the Emperor was wearing any clothes...

Qn:  What if the community don't step up, and they say "we'd like to see the Council continue to provide the service they have been providing.  We don't think, on any given matter, that we can do any better".

MW: 'Then that's fine.  That's part of the conversation."

But I wonder... is it fine?  If the community don't step up, and the Council don't have any money, then we're not going to have any local services.  Could we end up, I wonder, in a position where 3rd sector organisations (or, more likely, the private sector) run everything with just a thin layer of accountability connecting them with the Council?  I'm astonished that this move is coming from a Labour Concil since I cannot see how it's any different from Conservative/Lib Dem central government policy.  Today's Financial Times notes Unison's position on public sector workers being given the "right to provide" by selling back services. "Unison, the health union, attacked the ideas as a route to 'backdoor privatisation', claiming big business was likely to take over mutuals that failed or move in as contracts were renewed".  Well, precisely.  Here's what I think will happen.  Lambeth Council will make all (or most) youth service (or whatever) employees redundant.  The employees will be invited to form not-for-profit mutuals and put together ad-hoc youth provision.  The on-the-ball types will form small organisations, sell their services back to the Council, but won't have to pay their workers anything like minimum wage, and will have to reduce their services to skeletal because the Council will end up under funding them.  If the mutuals fail to perform (or make a living), the Council will not be easily held responsible, but will re-tender and the service will privatise.  Naturally, larger providers will be preferred because they're better able to keep costs  low.  I hope I'm proved wrong.

Mike Wilkinson clarified that the move towards co-operative working is more complex for statutory services eg. education.  Non-statutory services such as arts, culture and sports services offer more co-operative flexibility.  One of the "big ideas" that the Commission undertook to review was "time banking".  Apparently, in Cardiff, you become involved in the local children's centre, health service or youth service and then, as a result of giving time, you accrue credits on discounts for leisure services, cinema and theatre, "so you can have a menu of rewards to choose from.".

Val Shawcross who was also present (not sure why, but we had no Hoey) stood to made a quick comment.  She acknowledged her membership of the Co-operative party, and added that she felt the word "mutuality" had been absent from the conversation. She added that the presentation had been wrapped up in traditional "officer style speak" about consultations (she was right there).  But then she amusingly noted, "There are lots of goods models of how people run things amongst themselves.  Some of them are officer models.  Greenwich Leisure, one of the most well known leisure providers in Lambeth was set up from amongst the staff of Greenwich Leisure Services department, and was set up as a co-operative..."

At that point, I couldn't believe my ears!  The second suggestion for a co-operative (after the Triangle, which Lambeth are trying to close) was Greenwich Leisure, who are not exactly flavour of the month at the moment.  A quick glance at their website reveals... the Astroturf in Kennington park is still not fixed.  The Onionbag was not happy, having bought their leisure card, only to find many GLL leisure centres closed.  It might not be GLL's fault, but leisure would not have been my first choice to illustrate how co-operativeness might work..

Val Shawcross finally added, "We've got some great models of co-operatives in Lambeth."

I think here that it might be worth highlighting a piece questioning the co-op that I glimpsed back in the Streatham Guardian in August.  I quote, "...Jeff Jeffers, chairman of Lambeth co-operative development agency, said of 49 co-ops formed in the borough in 1971, only three still existed."  I don't necessarily doubt Val's word, but we probably need to ask questions about longevity.  Perhaps 1971 is too far back, and institutions aren't meant to last that long.  Perhaps the co-op route is a reasonable option for short-term initiatives.  My fear is that co-operative groups and mutualisation is just privatisation by the back door.
I don't want to throw a spanner in the works.  I'm not against co-operative working or co-operative societies.  The Council may well be /opting in/ to a very positive model of working.  It would be great to have local people taking additional responsibility for the wellbeing of their communities, but...  I don't want the Co-op Council or Big Society rhetoric to prevent people campaigning against cuts.  I'm afraid that the word "co-operative" is being used to cover up a covert privatisation without even those who are passionately involved realising that they're on a hiding to nothing.  Take a look at the words of.the Chief Executive of the Co-op group, Peter Marks, who admitted to the Guardian last year that he was a capitalist...

"At heart I am a capitalist as we have seen that other systems don't work. But the trust in banks has gone. The Co-op was not deemed sexy - we were old-fashioned because we took deposits before loaning money. But old-fashioned is the new cool in banking."

With one breath, it seems that "old fashioned" is cool again, both in banking and in local authority government, but in the next breath (same Guardian article)...

"If another person says to me 'I can remember my granny's divi number', I could get arrested for physical violence.  That's old baggage, people are always looking back. We are a modern business now."

The question is, can Lambeth Council be "cool" and "old-fashioned" without "looking back" at "old baggage"?  Cam Lambeth be a modern co-operative Council, or will it end up ushering in a greater era of privatisation under the noses of an unsuspecting public, who think that co-operative means, well, co-operative.

How Cllr Steve Reed let down local children and Kate Hoey or The Triangle (ongoing saga), Part 3 or

So, you'll know (if you've kept up with the Triangle Playground saga) that the Triangle Adventure Playground is a community playground, whose removal is desired by Archbishop Tension School because they wish to use the land to expand their premises. Lambeth Council seem to have made it their goal to evict the Triangle Association from the playground (see Part 1 here) in anticipation of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) expansion at Archbishop Tenison.  Unfortunately, many BSF projects have since fallen through (ConDem cuts) and so the school expansion can't take place, but the Council still wish to evict the Triangle Adventure Playground.  Why?

In part 2 of the saga, I explained that of the six school expansion options drawn up by Atkins architects for Lambeth Council, the Council had opted for the only plan which involved the removal of the Triangle Adventure Playground.  The playground site did not need to be used to expand the school, as the 5 alternative options attest. The playground is a much loved play space and resource for local young people, desperately needed, I'd argue, in an area with high levels of urban deprivation where there isn't much room for creative, adventurous play.  (It needs also to be made clear that much of Archbishop Tenison's intake is drawn from the borough of Southwark, so whilst it's a good local secondary school, it doesn't /necessarily/ benefit its Lambeth neighbours).  Again, I'm not convinced we've got to the bottom of the matter of why Lambeth Council chose option 6, the playground removal option.

Today we are going to move on to part 3 of the saga.  This was the very interesting piece of news that I mentioned on Twitter last week.  I agreed to allow the South London Press to print it first, so you can go and read the full article (it's not behind their pay wall) just here.  But it boils down to the fact that local children from the Triangle Playground went with their parents and Kate Hoey MP to present a petition to Cllr Steve Reed (the leader of Lambeth Council) against closing their playground.  And Cllr Reed failed to show up.  So the children (who had received permission to leave school early) stood on the steps of the Town Hall with their parents to present their petition.  And yet no Council leader appeared in order to receive it.  Shame on him.  It was Steve Reed's office that had specified the time of the meeting and he gave no explanation or apology for his absence whilst he left everybody waiting for half an hour.  Kate Hoey was kind enough to tell the SLP that she didn't see it as a snub to her, considering the children and their parents to have been the ones snubbed, but make of that what you will.

Feel free to try and defend the name of the good Councillors of Lambeth (and we do have some), but letting down local children who've been let out of school early to meet with you is unacceptable behaviour.  If Mr Cobb is right that Cllr Reed is climbing the greasy pole to stand as the next Labour MP for Vauxhall, his failure to receive something as simple as a petition from the community should be highlighted on account of what it says about him as a politician.  The odd thing (no surprises there) is the slant given to the whole matter by the South Lambeth Press.  No mention there of the lovely leader's absence.  Oh, no, October's Lambeth Life (p3) just reports; "Parents and children from the Triangle Adventure Playground have been collecting signatures for the petition and handed it over to the Council Deputy Leader Jackie Meldrum last month."  Wonder why that might have been, then!  Lambeth Life even has the temerity to argue that there's another adventure playground in Kennington Park, with no mention of  their proposed reduction in the size of the One O'Clock club or closure of Kennington park's Children's Centre.  This is where accusations of Lambeth Life "propaganda sheet" rightly abound, (and I'm no fan of supporting the SLP's sex ad rag either).  Thank goodness for local blogs :-) :-)

But Lambeth Life seem to assume that the Triangle Adventure Playground has actually closed.  Cllr Pete Robbins says "We appreciate that this is a much-loved play area, so it was a difficult decision to close it.".  I was unaware that the Triangle had closed (there'll be protests before that happens, no doubt).  But more importantly, I don't understand why the Council are claiming that the Triangle Playground has closed all the time they do not have any money to expand Archbishop Tenison School.  There is no longer any BSF money, so there's no reason to evict the playground.  There was and is no "difficult choice" to be made in light of the fact that the school simply cannot expand at present.  But the Lambeth Life article also seems to invent a kind of double speak.  In Cllr Robbin's mind, the Triangle has closed, since "it /was/" a difficult decision to close it", but Lambeth Life's anonymous columnist maintains it's still open, after all, "A spokesman said there were no immediate plans to close the playground down...".  So what's it to be?

We still have no explanation from  Lambeth about why they can't use any of the other 5 designs by Atkins that do not require the eviction of the Triangle Playground.  Answers on a postcard, please.
 

The Triangle continued. Why are Lambeth Council seeking to evict the playground in the face of alternative options?

In early August I wrote an article, The Triangle playground vs. Archbishop Tenison School, on Lambeth Council's refusal to renew the playground's lease, despite the fact that Archbishiop Tenison has had its Building Future Schools project scrapped by the ConLib government.  In that article, I mentioned that the Triangle Playground have set up a petition that readers could sign to support the playground, but I noted that I couldn't understand why the Triangle Association thought the Council wanted to turn the site into a car park, when the Council had denied their intentions in this FOI request.  I have now obtained a little more information to make sense of the issues.

In the meantime, there have been further developments.  Clare Casey of the SLP has covered the story pithily.  The SLP noted on 26th August that Jim Clancey was summonsed to court in August and asked to return in October this year.  According to Casey's article, Lambeth Council are "determined to press ahead with plans" and Cllr Robbins has added his view to the mix, 'It’s sad that the pupils at Archbishop Tenison’s do not have enough space to play in.'.  I can't understand why, if the school expansion has not yet taken place, the pupils don't have the space to play in.  Does that mean that the school has increased its intake without first ensuring that they had enough space?  The Evening Standard picked up the story a week or so ago in a paragraph here, so it seems an apposite time to explore the the matter further.

In July 2008, when Lambeth Council were considering how they might expand Archbishop Tenison, they had architects (Atkins) draw up a number of documents to show what the expansion might look like.  (All of the drawings are shown below).  As you can see, out of 6 options (including the control option), only the final version of the drawing requires the swallowing up of the ground upon which the Triangle playground sits.  So the question is why the Council opted for that version and not one of the others...  Why did Lambeth Council choose option 6?

I've received information that suggests that one of the incumbent Oval ward councillors (one who is said to have close ties with Cllr Steve Reed), has not responded to any of the letters sent on the issue of the Triangle playground.  Is there anybody on the Council prepared to stand up and defend the borough's playgrounds?  The One O'Clock club in Kennington faces losing land, the Triangle faces eviction and Lollard Street Adventure Playground have had to set up a Friends group to ensure that it is well supported.  In the meantime, I'd be particularly pleased to hear from anybody that could point me to a report on when the Ethelred Youth Centre was last inspected?  Who owns the lease on that piece of land?

Perhaps somebody (councillor or otherwise) could shed some light here on why the BFS (Building Future Schools) team chose option 6 when there were 5 other perfectly good options for the school expansion?  Perhaps I'm wrong.  If the Council do not intend to turn the Triangle playground into a car park, as they remarked here, then why exactly is the Triangle land needed for the expansion of the school?  I think there are probably more questions than answers on this particular matter.

Triangle Adventure Playground vs. Archbishop Tenison School

Cast your mind back to the Parliamentary hustings, held back in April in St Mark's Church and you might remember that the "Triangle" featured briefly in questions to the candidates.  The Triangle is an Adventure Playground that sits just outside of the SE11 border in Ashmole Street.  The site is leased to the Triangle Adventure Playground Association (who are a charitable foundation) by Lambeth Council.  The Triangle is the oldest Adventure Playground to have remained on a consistent site in London, but was founded at a similar time to Lollard Street Adventure playground.  (It's worth noting at this point that residents must keep a close eye on the Lollard site since its future is potentially tied up in the future of the former Lilian Baylis School, and all of our adventure playgrounds are very valuable community resources).

Mention the Triangle to local councillors, and you might receive well-worn looks of despair.  Essentially, Archbisop Tenison School needed space to expand their play facilities.  The school /was/ due to receive money from the Building Future Schools programme which would allow them to provide schooling for an additional 150 boys, and Lambeth Council were left in the slightly awkward position that they would essentially need to sacrifice the Community Playground in order to turn it into a school playground that could be used on an out-of-hours basis by the community.  A shared solution was being sought (as at 15/10/2009) according to this FOI request, but since mention of the site still seems contentious, it would appear that no joint solution has been found.  I've also found that wading through the documentation on the matter is confusing.  The FOI email seems to suggest that Archbishop Tenison needed the space for a car park (Lambeth Council firmly refuted this) and reports from elsewhere seemed to suggest that the site would only be closed temporarily in order to allow the school to complete some building work (which is what seemed to be at issue during the hustings).  I am going to assume, unless somebody says to the contrary, that the plan was to give the Triangle Adventure Playground to Archbishop Tension School, and it is this that the Playground committee are objecting to (particularly since many students at the school are not resident in Lambeth).

At the hustings, Kate Hoey appeared to blame Council Officers / council machinery for some of the decisions taken on the project.  More recently, the South London Press published an article (KA news blog has a copy here) which suggests that Kate Hoey has written to the Council, asking them to "save" the playground.  This is an interesting request, but is perhaps not unachievable, given the recent Lib/Tory pact to abolish the Future for Schools program.  If the Archbishop Tension School can't expand, then there's not really much reason to absorb the playground (as Kate Hoey noted) and she has called for the Council to reconsider their decision to close the Triangle.

What's important to note though, is that Kate Hoey has been campaigning for a shared solution (which does appear on the face of it to be common sense).  Ms Hoey doesn't want to see the Triangle disappear, nor does she want the school to be deprived of extra play space.  But the SLP article notes that,

"a council spokesman said the local authority would still not be renewing the lease when it expires in November."

Now surely anybody can see that that is not a good decision.  The school cannot expand due to the failure of the Building Future Schools program (which is a very bad thing), but the Triangle Adventure Playground cannot continue because the Council are refusing to renew the lease.  Are the Council attempting to de-facto hand the playground to the school, ousting the good work put in on behalf of local children in the 344th (out of 354) most deprived area of child deprivation in the UK?  Yes. Councillor Pete Robbins maintains that Lambeth Council are committed to expanding the school and that more space is needed for classrooms and play space (how they'll do this without any money is unknown).  I'm not sure whether Lambeth Council fund the Triangle at all, but it's quite clear that Lambeth Council will be cutting youth services, which might have something to do with the decision.

It seems to me that this would be a very good opportunity to start practicing all of this Co-operative Council malarky.  I'd have thought that Polly Toynbee (who will sit on the co-op's board), who has always been an advocate for the disenfranchised ought to be concerned about the removal of the playground.  Has anybody written to her?  I wouldn't personally wish to take on a Toynbee-Hoey coalition!  The Triangle are talking about organising a sit-in in November and waiting for forcible removal by bailiffs.  Surely it needn't come to that?  But if it does, perhaps we can arrange for some of the members of the venerable associations, organisations and adventure playgrounds in the area to at least organise a large enough sit-in that the bailiffs have a difficult task on their hands!  If you wish to sign the Triangle Association's petition, you can do so here, but they seem still to be using the misleading information that the site would be turned into a car-park, which from what I can discern is not quite true.

Schools in Lambeth will have to expand, but why not add secondary school places to the borough by using the already existing empty Beaufoy building?  A situation in which schools are having to compete with youth facilities for space is completely unacceptable, and I do wonder whether, perhaps led and arbitrated by Kate Hoey, the Triangle Adventure Playground Association might not be able to meet with the governors of the Archbishop Tension School to come to a mutual arrangement?

Part 2... continued here.