I’ve been producing these weekly reports for a few weeks now, you can read why and some of my thoughts about it. As I commented in there, it’s far from complete, it misses out a lot of the ‘private’ meetings and casework but you may find it interesting…

Lavender Hill Street Party
I take no credit for the Street Party, as I posted on Monday, all the credit belongs else where – but it took up a good chuck of my Sunday and was a truly fantastic event, if you were there I know you’ll agree, if you weren’t then make sure you don’t miss it next year.

Local Strategic Partnership
I attended, as one of the council’s representatives, the Local Strategic Partnership on Wednesday. The Partnership comprises bodies like the council, police, local NHS as well as representatives from local business, the voluntary sector and community groups.

Wednesday saw us spending a lot of time discussing the services we provide for young people, which provided a great example of the importance of partnership working. The council has a target of reducing the number of young people entering the criminal justice system, but the police are meant to increase their arrests – meaning that, unless we co-operate, we are undermining each other’s work!

John Burns School
As posted earlier today I went along for the opening of John Burns School’s new playground. Which is also a new community playground! It is really well equipped, so worth popping along if you have children in the 5-12 age range. It was also great to have a look around the school. I was a school governor there up until around 2002, so it was also good to see how the school had changed and improved over the years.

Lavender Hill Street Party 09Anyone who was on Lavender Hill last Sunday will know how fantastic the street party was.

I don’t know how many people attended, but it seemed much busier than last year’s event and there were certainly more businesses and stalls participating.

The event is very much driven by the local traders, and a great example of what can be achieved with a little vision – few would look at Lavender Hill and think that style of event would work given the amount of traffic the road carries and the stretches of residential separating business parades.  But if you were like me you had a great day wandering up and down Lavender Hill savouring the carnival atmosphere and a little too much of the food and drink on offer.

Congratulations to everyone who was involved in the organisation and management of the event on the day – but especially Anthony Laban, Emma Jane Clark and Lorinda Freint.

They’ve certainly set a high standard for next year!