A resident’s response to dog fouling

The two big issues that came out of the Shaftesbury Let’s Talk were dog fouling and fly-tipping. Poos and dumps.

These were unsurprising, several had written to us before to raise the issues and they are running problems. I often report fly-tips and have raised the issue of dog fouling repeatedly. But these are problems that just don’t seem to go away.

They are also interesting because they are indicative of a particular type of problem, where the council get a lot of the blame for someone else’s misbehaviour. Somewhere in the act of an owner letting their dog foul the pavement or someone illegally dumping their rubbish the fact it needs cleaning up becomes the council’s responsibility. It is, however, worth remembering that responsibility would never be needed if people were just a little more considerate of their neighbours.

I take a fairly hardline view of both. A lot of the discussion on the night featured ideas like spring cleans, when the council would offer a once a year collection and invite everyone to dump on that day. But while superficially attractive I wonder how many people would change their lives to fit in around it. Would everyone buy a new bed the week before so they didn’t fly-tip their mattress? Would fridges and washing machines only break down and need replacing to the council’s spring clean schedule? And if they didn’t would (or could) everyone store their rubbish for up to a year?

Others highlighted the cost (which can be waived in some instances) but again, I’m fairly hardline. In most of these cases we happily pay the cost of delivery for something new (which may be included in the price), but some balk at the cost of disposal for the old as if the decision that something is trash somehow removes responsibility for the item.

Finally, some believe the council collects rubbish from certain spots or from certain groups for free. One person said it was unfair home owners and housing association tenants had to pay when council tenants and leaseholders could have their rubbish collected for free. This is not the case, but if you see the council regularly collecting rubbish from a fly-tipping hotspot it’s easy to see how the misconception starts. I have spoken to several who have, totally innocently, fly-tipped because they thought the fly-tipping hotspot was a legitimate collection point.

But if there is confusion and different opinions on fly-tipping, I suspect few would be forgiving of dog fouling. Occasionally being responsible for a push-chair and a child on a scooter I know of some patches I avoid simply because the stress of making sure all the wheels and feet avoid the faecal land mines is just too much.

The fact that there are particular roads and pavements with a problem rather implies it is an issue with a few owners (were all dog owners irresponsible the problem would be more uniform). It also suggests that they and their dogs have developed fairly consistent toilet habits. Yet, even with this intelligence it’s hard to do anything.

The council has traditionally had one of the largest dog teams of any council and at times been responsible for most of the prosecutions in the country, let alone London. The difficulty is that most people tend to behave when being watched, so however big our dog team is they will struggle to catch anyone in the act and, therefore, be unable to take any action.

In both cases the council is largely reliant on education in an attempt to change behaviour; while we will attempt legal action it will only ever get a small minority of offenders. Sadly this is a slow process, even when the overwhelming majority of people are responsible, the impact of the irresponsible few is disproportionate.

The council’s website provides more information about the dog control team including contact details should you wish to report anti-social behaviour involving dogs, including fouling. The street cleaning section also provides contact details should you witness any fly-tipping in the borough.

So it is a refreshing change, if not outright relief, to be able to talk about the council’s six-month pilot of reduced parking fees in Tooting. The scheme will see half price (well, £1.10 and not £2.30 per hour) parking in seven roads near Tooting Broadway. The roads currently have spare capacity and the town centre is one that we know does have shoppers travelling significant distances to visit.

I’ve always been fairly agnostic about the impact of parking on business. If you look at places like Westfield, or even Southside, it’s clear that people will pay to park in the right destination and in some cases pay a lot. The centres seem to use parking charges as a way of managing demand (encouraging shopping on quieter days, for example) than increasing demand.

There is always a steady flow of research on the impact of parking policy (the most recent I’ve seen was the British Parking Association’s Re-think! Parking on the High Street (PDF). Generally they have tended to conclude parking does not make that much difference in most cases (although it’s probably the edge cases in which we are interested). Sadly, however, the value of their insight to Wandsworth is limited by the comparative rarity of town centres reliant on on-street parking in residential roads rather than large off-street private or public car-parks.

It’s these residential parking areas in Tooting that are the focus of the council’s latest trial of reduced parking fees. What remains to be seen is what effect this will have on shoppers’ habits. Will more people come overall, or will it merely cause a change in their choice of transport or parking spot?

However, rather late in the day I discovered that there is a London-wide scheme, The Big London Energy Switch. Although Wandsworth is not listed as a participating borough, anyone in London can register; it accepted my registration without complaint.

The concept is fairly simple; if you assume people are paying around £1,000 a year on energy at the moment, gather a group of them together in, say, a five-year deal and you create significant amount of purchasing power. I first heard the idea being promoted in Cornwall by the Eden Project’s Sir Tim Smit, but I know there are other examples and I’m sure many that I’ve not seen.

Having just switched I’m probably not going to be able to do anything with it (as an aside, my switch got me a free energy monitor, which has turned me into a monster constantly hunting down unnecessarily left on appliances when I see the energy consumption anything above normal) but given how many people pay over the odds because they are bewildered by the options, or never change because they can’t find the perfect deal, thought I would post the link for residents who might be interested in exploring the option.

The Big London Energy Switch obviously has more details. Although registration carries no commitment, the registration period closes this Monday evening.

Some of the early arrivals at Shaftesbury’s Let’s Talk

Having posted about the behaviour of the crowd at the Shaftesbury Let’s Talk event I have remained silent on the issues raised, in part because there were some I wanted to cover in a bit more detail, in part because – despite being there – I had formed the opinion it would be a harder task that it actually is.

In fact the issues raised, with the exception of Nightingale Square, were largely those we’d expected and those raised with us before the meeting (and, indeed, are raised with us regularly). The Nightingale Square issue was something of a surprise: mainly because it isn’t in the ward, or even the neighbouring ward.

The following is a quick run through of the issues I noted. I hope this is complete and reflects the issues raised as the meeting progressed but are from my notes, rather than the council’s official record, so there may be errors and omissions. On a few I have added some comments, to clarify, expand, respond or simply note something of interest.

1. Making the Gideon Road estate a residents only area
2. Dog fouling. I fear I’m going to return to this. As a councillor I’m well below my quota of dog poo posts.
3. Poor state of repair of pavements
4. Speeding in the Shaftesbury Park estate. One of the problems of 20mph zones is that they don’t seem to work. I was looking at the results of one scheme elsewhere recently and rather surprised that while the overall speed reduced fractionally, some roads saw some fairly hefty increases in speed. The real problem with these is that the police (nationally) will not enforce them.
5. Controlled Parking Zone costs
6. Nightingale Square. A range of issues, from lack of playspace to lack of wi-fi, from a temporary accommodation hostel in Balham. I can’t help but see this as a bit of political showmanship by the organiser since, despite their claims the council had ignored requests for a meeting, a meeting between the council and the hostel to discuss these issues was taking place the next day. They pop up again later.
7. Gritting
8. Access to Nine Elms during the works and the suitability of the last expo venue
9. Fly-tipping. Something to which I want to return (along with dog fouling). In fact several of the topics below could be included with this as a general waste collection discussion.
10. Boris bikes
11. Nightingale Square
12. Litter after a refuse collection. This was concern about the lack of alignment between refuse collection and street cleaning. This did surprise me since my experience of the new contract, once everyone had adapted to the new collection day, is that it has been very good.
13. Bulk collection costs
14. Spitting
15. Closure of Cringle Dock
16. Nightingale Square
17. NW bulletins
18. Difficulty of getting housing
19. Being spied on by MI5
20. Elsley School development. There were some concerns about the impact of the building work and the effect that an influx of new residents would have once the development was complete. I suspect the latter is related to the suggestion of making the Gideon Road estate residents only.
21. Fly-tipping

If there was a disappointment for me it’s that some of these issues could so easily be resolved by us as councillors. While I sometimes wonder what the point of a councillor is, one thing I do know they can do is get those niggling little problems fixed (although I’m powerless when it comes to the massive hole caused by a water leak in my road, which is into the fourth month of waiting repair by Thames Water).

To balance that disappointment I have some satisfaction that the standards of Wandsworth and Wandsworth residents is high. My run the following Saturday morning took me out of Wandsworth, through Lambeth, Southwark, the City of London, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea and while I took some pride that it was only in Wandsworth that I ran without the perils of deep puddles it didn’t do much to warm feet soaked from Lambeth onwards. Of course, people do not get to choose their council, so such a comparison is not relevant to most.

If there are any issues, mentioned here or not, you want to raise with me then get in touch and I’ll do my best to help.

The other thing about crowds: they always fill from the back (also, note the name-plates are recycled from previous meetings)

Last night was the Shaftesbury Ward Let’s Talk event. I’ll confess surprise at the turnout, especially as it was not the most clement of evenings, and should perhaps review my previous scepticism to this type of meeting because of the way the meeting self-managed.

I will save most of the topics raised for another post because I want to focus on that self-management aspect.

While I think the turnout was good, that is a relative term. It was good compared to previous meetings, but I think using the maths I applied to our last meeting the attendance was still 0.00% of the ward. When you have small numbers it becomes easy for a small number of people to dominate.

Last night it was a group of residents from the Nightingale Square temporary accommodation hostel. This is a council facility for the homeless in Balham. They came , led by Pastor Des Figueiredo, to complain about issues there – lack of wi-fi, play facilities and poor relations with neighbours were the ones I noted – and that they had not had a meeting with the council to discuss these. As it turns out such a meeting was taking place at the hostel today, which does call into question their attendance last night.

In even criticising them here I’m aware I’m attempting to tread a fine line of concern about their tactics without appearing unsympathetic to what may be legitimate concerns. But they repeatedly tried to interrupt other discussions and cut in before Shaftesbury residents who had been called could speak. They also used the presence of their children, for whom it was late, to justify a platform (this I particularly disliked, since it was little more than emotional blackmail, despite it being their choice to bring children to give “testimony” at a meeting scheduled for 7.30-9.00pm). The more I think back, the more I think it was deeply irresponsible and reflects badly on Des Figueiredo’s motives.

But if I run the risk of appearing unsympathetic in detailing it here, imagine how much harder it is to handle in a live meeting. Do you take an easy approach and let them have their say? Do you take the hard-line and insist it’s a meeting for Shaftesbury residents and local concerns? Both approaches have their pros and cons.

In fact, mob rule took over, and mob rule did a superb job. Every time there was an attempt to interrupt the meeting, local residents reminded them it was a Shaftesbury meeting and moved the business back to local issues. There was remarkably little need for a chairman at all, when it came down to it the crowd were self-chairing.

Even when the Nightingale Square delegation persevered the audience suggested giving them one opportunity to speak and say their piece, since they had come up from Balham, but would then have to allow residents their meeting back.

It was a fine example of the wisdom of the crowd in action, and I’m not sure any individual chairman could have handled the situation as well as a few dozen residents did.

I haven’t fully changed my views on public meetings; I still think they are often used when other forms of communication or consultation would work better. However, having seen and reflected on last night I can’t help feeling that I’ve been deeply unfair in underestimating the ability of an engaged audience to make a public meeting work in spite of its drawbacks.

Let’s Talk (previously Listening to You, but that’s probably a bit close to The Thick of It‘s ‘Here to Hear’)

The Shaftesbury ward ‘Let’s Talk’ event takes place a week today, Thursday, 21 March from 7.30pm at Shaftesbury Park school.

The meetings are an opportunity for residents to come and tell local councillors and council officers what is important to them. There’s no need to register so you can just come along.

Having advertised it I am, as I did last time, going to say that I’m not a great fan of them. They seem somehow dated and not representative of the way I think councils and councillors should do business. Is a public meeting really the sort of place that people want to come to raise their concerns? Or would they prefer more direct contact where there is dialogue and the opportunity to discuss detail without everyone else in the room having to listen in?

As I wrote after the last meeting:

The large (or small, in this case) public meeting … is probably the best way to handle a single issue with significant public interest and are useful when the flow of information is largely from the platform to the public. However, in my opinion it just doesn’t work for the sort of session Listening to You [the old branding for the sessions] should be, a dialogue between council and residents, and an opportunity for people to raise specific issues … But I can’t help reflecting that, with around 30 people attending, it represented 0.00% (rounded to 2 decimal places) of the ward population [and] we are missing some tricks in the way we engage (or don’t engage) with residents and that leaves the council poorer: because if last night was a positive experience with around 0.0025% of the population, imagine what could come from 99.9975% of the population.

But having dealt with my negativity, there is always the opportunity to talk directly with councillors or officers before or after the meeting, and if numbers permit I would hope we follow the pattern that happened last time with a short formal session followed by a much longer, and much more productive, session of mingling, talking about and dealing with the issues and concerns of local residents.

There are some (but not much) more details on the council’s flyer for the event.

Staff and Victorians at Clapham Junction’s 150th birthday

I attended the small event held to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Clapham Junction yesterday.

It is remarkable to think about the impact it has had on the millions of people who have worked, lived by, used and travelled through the station in those 150 years. Indeed, it defies comprehension. Having to say a few words at the event I was forced to think much smaller, and consider my own experiences of the station.

Like many, Clapham Junction, then a sprightly 133 years old, was my introduction to Battersea. And like many (I hope) I ended up leaving through the wrong exit and spending a cold, wet, winter night seeing a part of Battersea I probably wouldn’t have visited by choice that evening. But somehow, I found myself returning and realising Battersea was where I wanted to make my home.

After that, Clapham Junction punctuated my life. It was the start of unhappy commutes, and the end of happy commutes back home. But it was purely functional. A means to an end.

It was only after I had children that I started to see what it really is: a magical gateway. The hustle and bustle became exciting, and journeys were no longer drudgery, but adventures.

Whether it was the Overground to Westfield and the Lego Store, South West Trains to Waterloo and the London Eye and South Bank or – as we’ll be doing later this month – a pilgrimage to Wembley once we go through the barriers we become explorers. London and beyond is in our reach and the trip has untold potential.

And Clapham Junction’s metaphorical journey is the same. Over the past 150 years it has had a massive impact on Battersea; not least in confusing itinerant residents and corporate headquarters. It has driven change, allowing residents easy access to jobs and leisure, and bring others easily into the area. It plays a vital rôle in the local economy and with each improvement (and I will not pretend the station doesn’t need improvement) it creates even more potential for the area.

We’ve seen the physical improvements to the station and the arrival of the Overground in recent years. Soon we might be adding Crossrail 2 and, one day, maybe even an extended Northern Line from Nine Elms. Despite it’s imperfections, it serves as a wonderful heart of Battersea.

Similar meetings used to be held in Wandsworth (I did a few of them myself, and if you were so inclined you can watch a series of three videos of my presentation from 2010. It’s worth noting that despite the low viewing figures of those videos, they were still seen by far more people than actually attended the meeting.

The MOPAC meeting might be a little more interesting, however, since it is attended by somewhat more senior figures than me.

The Wandsworth meeting is being held on 26 February in the Civic Suite in Wandsworth. If you want to attend you can register at the london.gov.uk website or you can complete the questionnaire online.

The vacant parking shop on Lavender Hill: Johnny Fly-to-be. (Image from Google Street View.)

The council have received a licensing application from Johnny Fly, 145 Lavender Hill. They are seeking a licence to sell alcohol for consumption on the premises between 10am and 11:30pm seven days a week, and to provide late night refreshment between 11pm and midnight seven days a week.

It is difficult to know what to make of the application; you don’t often get applications for entirely new premises. When it’s for a licence extension you know what and can take a guess on whether it is good or bad. Sometimes you will have an idea of the type of pub because you will know the pub company (as was the case with Battersea Mess and Music Hall). But I haven’t a clue who or what Johnny Fly are. Google can only suggest a US clothing company, which I suspect wouldn’t need an alcohol licence on Lavender Hill. However, I don’t particularly see that section of Lavender Hill as unsuitable for bars and the hours do not seem at all excessive.

If you want to make a representation you have until 5 March. Representations must relate to the four licensing objectives:

• The prevention of crime and disorder
• The prevention of public nuisance
• Public safety
• The protection of children from harm

The council’s licensing pages provide more information.

If you wish to make an observation you can do so by writing to:
Head of Licensing
Licensing Section
London Borough of Wandsworth
PO Box 47095
London
SW18 9AQ

or by emailing licensing@wandsworth.gov.uk

That really looks like fun, doesn’t it? (Photo from Royal Parks Half Marathon website)

I was lucky enough to get a ballot place for this year’s Royal Parks Half Marathon and, at the risk of annoying those who failed to get a place, am feeling strangely ambivalent about it.

I entered the ballot largely on a whim having been told it was open by a friend who ran it last year. And I entered fully expecting I wouldn’t get a place. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve failed to get a spot in the London Marathon (something I really do want to run at least once) and imagined my record of losing the random lottery and then being bombarded with offers to get a place by raising a huge amount of cash for charity would continue.

The problem is not because I have any problem with the distance. For a large part of last year my weekly long run exceeded the 13.1 mile half marathon distance. Nor am I concerned about the training, although I can’t help but wonder how on earth I will fit it in.

Instead I am troubled by the knowledge I’m an incredibly anti-social runner.

As an adult I have only run with other people on three occasions. Once in the Roehampton 10k, once with the Nike Run Club when they had the FuelStation on Clapham Common (and I do think its a shame it was removed, though recognise it was not universally popular) and once with my wife. I am an anti-social runner; the prospect of sharing a few miles with several thousand other people does not appeal.

While I found Haruki Murakami’s part-memoir, part-running diary What I Talk About When I Talk About Running slightly disappointing (perhaps because my expectations were not well-managed) his view of running as a solo challenge did resonate. I care little about my performance compared to other runners, but I care deeply about my performance compared to my past efforts. It is deeply troubling if my pace and stamina are not steadily improving. And my current form, suffering the impact of a bad chest infection at the beginning of the year is downright depressing, however much I tell myself it’s an understandable blip.

In addition the almost meditative nature of running provides an appeal. Murakami comments “Somerset Maugham once wrote that in each shave lies a philosophy. I agree … No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.” I can see how exercise, or at least running, is often cited as beneficial to mental health. And I can even see the attraction of running to the likes of Sri Chinmoy devotees (even if my lack of spirituality leaves me viewing such groups with suspicion).

But how does that work in a large organised run? How can your performance be your own when pace will often be dictated more by the size of the pack and the road they are trying to fit? Or inner peace sought among the hubbub of runners and supporters?

So, I have eight months to prepare physically – and I have no concerns about that at all – but also mentally. I hope to divine some meaning to the undertaking of collective exercise, but I’m terrified that eight months just isn’t enough.