It’s been another week I’ve ended out of Wandsworth. This week the child in me has been excited by a trip on a sleeper train in which my knowledge of sleepers, derived entirely from Agatha Christie and Hart to Hart (a show surely due a remake) was confounded as no-one was murdered). If that wasn’t enough, it was topped by a tour around an airport – and not just the passenger side, but the driving around the runways side.

But, of course, Wandsworth is the purpose of my blog, and Wandsworth will be the purpose of the remainder of this post.

Mastermind
The YouTube of the Mastermind round on Wandsworth has to be the highlight of my week. Having felt a little saddened by my score, the honesty of others has made me feel a lot better about it. Indeed, one councillor, who shall remain nameless, confessed he only got four. Smugness isn’t pleasant, but I just can’t help it.

Regeneration and Community Safety
The Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Tuesday night was the major meeting I attended as a councillor this week. It wasn’t, if I’m honest, a meeting to set the world on fire. Unfortunately Tony Belton, the Labour leader couldn’t attend the meeting, and his absence brings home what an excellent opposition councillor he is – despite leading a small group, he makes sure we keep on our toes. Proof that size is not everything!

Much of the agenda was fairly uncontroversial, although some concerns were raised by the opposition councillor present, I think Labour voted with the Conservatives on all but one paper. The sole paper being on action taken to control street drinkers in Roehampton. The council has taken some very targeted action to help street drinkers where possible, but empowering the police to act where the drinkers aren’t responsive to the help offered.

This seems to have had the desired effect, although the situation needs to be monitored. However the Labour group wanted to call this an Alcohol Exclusion Zone (which it is not, since that has a strict legal definition) and therefore voted against. A slightly odd vote, I thought, since the problem has been tackled, but clearly image and spin still remain more important to Labour than substance.

Neighbourhood Watch
Much of the rest of my time has been taken up with various community safety meetings. One of the most pleasing with a researcher who was looking into how Neighbourhood Watch worked in various boroughs, and was examining Wandsworth as an exciting example of how it could be developed.

I’ve long held a deep respect for the Community Safety team (as well as all the other council officers!) for their dedication to their work, but it’s also good to see that work recognised elsewhere and be able to give credit to them to external bodies.

Category: Community Safety, Regeneration, Weekly report Tags: Alcohol Exclusion Zone, Mastermind, Neighbourhood Watch, OSC, Roehampton, street drinkers, Tony Belton.
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I’m posting weekly reports as an experiment to see how well received they are. You can read some of my thoughts about it in a blog-post I wrote before commencing the reports. My main concern is that these reports will, by necessity, have to omit so much routine council work they are not a good representation of my work.

Tooting
Picking up from last week’s report, after posting I headed down to Tooting for the town centre police team launch publicity. While there I also took the opportunity to catch up with the Town Centre Manager and Town Centre Partnership Chairman.

Neighbourhood Watch
Saturday didn’t provide a break. The morning saw the Neighbourhood Watch Conference. Rather shamefully I have not posted about it. It was an incredibly successful event, organised by the council’s Community Safety team for Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinators. The session saw presentations on subjects ranging from art and antiques to dog control and bio-diversity. The conference was attended by representatives from the National Neighbourhood Watch Trust, and it was pleasing that they commented it was one of the best events they’d attended.

Devas Club
On Tuesday I visited, along with Peter Dawson in his capacity as chairman of the Children and Young People’s Service OSC, the Devas Club in Stormont Road. The visit took us from their commercial standard (and hit making, some number ones have been recorded there) music studios in the basement to the sub-standard basket-ball court on the roof (which has a spectacular view that my camera phone just couldn’t do justice).

The club does some great work in engaging youngsters in a building designed for a 1960s, rather than 21st century, youth club. And that shows. First, not all the facilities are what they should be for the users. Second, it means it causes problems for neighbours and coincidentally I’m also dealing with noise complaints from the club.

Wandsworth Business Forum
Last night was the Wandsworth Business Forum in Balham. I posted about it earlier today, so rather than write about it again, will refer you to that post.

Shaftesbury Park School
Finally, this morning, I went into Shaftesbury Park, the school I serve as a governor. For the second time to meet Peter Dawson, who was making an official visit along with David Walden. We spent time looking around the school and chatting about some of the challenges it face and successes it has had.

Category: Community Safety, Regeneration, Shaftesbury, Wandsworth, Weekly report Tags: Balham, Devas Club, Neighbourhood Watch, police, Shaftesbury Park, SNT, Stormont Road, Tooting, Wandsworth Business Forum.
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This is my first weekly report-back on the blog.  It is currently a trial, and you can read some of my thoughts about it in a blog-post I wrote before commencing the reports.  It is not intended to be, nor can it be, an exhaustive report of what I have been doing during the week as a councillor, above all, the nature of a councillor’s work means a lot of the work done for ward residents remains confidential. It is very much a selected highlights of the week.

Neighbourhood Watch Strategy
Much of the start of the week was taken up with final preparations for the Neighbourhood Watch strategy – which combined with an unsettled baby – managed to dominate much of the bank-holiday weekend.  I’m rather proud of Neighbourhood Watch in Wandsworth, which has been a key partner in making Wandsworth inner London’s safest borough.  The new strategy will be launched next week, and enhances the role of Neighbourhood Watch as well as, for the first time, setting out what Watches, the council, police and other partners can expect from each other to help make Wandsworth even safer.

Meeting with Wandsworth Chamber of Commerce
Along with the Leader of the Council I regularly meet with the Wandsworth Chamber of Commerce to chat about issues in the borough. Perhaps unsurprisingly the biggest topic of discussion was the recession. I have tended towards the bearish when discussing the recession – thinking it will be long and hard. However, a lot of the anecdotal evidence I’ve heard suggests the recession is focussed on the retail sector and while property and construction are showing signs of recovery the retail sector is going to be struggling for some time to come. What was pleasing, however, is that Wandsworth’s businesses still seem fairly optimistic about the future.

CompeteFor London 2012 event
On Thursday I attended and said a few words at a CompeteFor event in Wandsworth. Almost as evidence of business confidence in Wandsworth around 150 businesses attended the event in Wandsworth Town Hall to hear how they could bid for work associated with the 2012 Olympics. When you often assume businesses are struggling to think what they will be doing for the next three months, it was great to see businesses keen to bid for work for the next three years and beyond. If you are a business interested in bidding for Olympic related work then you should visit the official Olympic site at london2012.com/business and CompeteFor.com which is handling the online bidding process.

Campaigning
One of the drawbacks of starting these reports now is that the council tends slow during summer, while we don’t have a ‘recess’ as such there a few formal meetings over summer. In addition, the council enters a purdah during election campaigns which means many meetings and events have to be cancelled. And, of course, that gap gets filled by campaigning by those of us unfortunate enough to be political animals. When I’ve not been at the town hall this week I’ve been on the doorstep (maybe even your’s). It has been an interesting campaign, perhaps for the wrong reasons with the expenses scandal. I hope to find time to post some reflections on it next week.

Category: Community Safety, Regeneration, Shaftesbury, Wandsworth, Weekly report Tags: 2012, Chamber of Commerce, European elections, Neighbourhood Watch, Olympics, recession.
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I’m very proud of the work the council does in support of Neighbourhood Watch (unlike most other areas the council, rather than the police, provide support Neighbourhood Watch in Wandsworth) and particularly proud of the opportunities we’ve given for co-ordinators to take on enhanced roles.

Much of this is provided through extra training for volunteers on how they might assist authorities, like the council, police or fire brigade in the event of an emergency.  For example, one of the first training sessions was on flooding – large parts of Wandsworth are in flood risk areas.  The training taught volunteers some basics which would help them safely tackle floods – meaning they could help out their neighbours and take some of the pressure off emergency services.

Pandemic training has already been offered, but in light of the small outbreak of swine flu, and potential for it to resurface later in the year, the primary care trust – NHS Wandsworth – are offering another couple of sessions on pandemics.  This time they are open to any Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator, and not just those who have previously volunteered for the additional training.

The first session is next Thursday, 14 May at the Salvation Army Citadel on Ram Street, Wandsworth SW18 starting at 7pm.  A further meeting will be organised in June.  Any Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator is welcome to attend.

Category: Community Safety Tags: Neighbourhood Watch, NHS, pandemic, Ram Street, swine flu, Wandsworth.
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The Regeneration and Community Safety OSC meeting on Monday spent a lot of time discussing the proposed priorities for the Partnership Strategy Group for the forthcoming year. And it was quite right to do this, these are going to be the priorities that the police and other partners have in their work for the next year.  I’ll be putting some stuff on this site about them in due course.

However, it did mean that other items on the agenda perhaps didn’t get the attention they deserved, partly because of the time, and partly because council meetings often focus on where there is disagreement between partners – most of these items were good news.

In an attempt to redress that I’m just going to briefly outline some of them (and link to the associated council report).

Junior and Safer Citizen Schemes
Council report
Junior Citizen schemes are commonplace now and few council’s don’t run a scheme of some type.  However Wandsworth was one of the first, and this year it celebrated its 20th year.

The  scheme involves exposing 10 year olds (there are 2,000 places a year) to a variety of scenarios to teach them about safety.  The scenarios are delivered by a range of partners and not just the council, so children meet fire fighters, police and ambulance staff as well as council officers.

It has recently been accredited by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents for its quality and in November the Safer Citizen scheme (which focuses on young disabled people) won a Safer Community Award from the Suzy Lamplugh Trust.

Neighbourhood Watch Strategy
Council report
It isn’t a very sexy title, but I think this is a very exciting project. Wandsworth has long been a strong supporter of Neighbourhood Watch (NW), the council is something of a rarity since in most places NW is run by the police rather than the council.  Here, it has meant a very strong NW community has developed and can get support from a dedicated group of council officers.

However, we did perhaps concentrate on quantity rather than quality.  And this makes sure this isn’t the case in the future.  For a start it sets out what everyone can expect from a NW scheme, so co-ordinators know what they have to do, but also what support they can expect from the council and their local Safer Neighbourhood Team.  It will also develop some of the innovative schemes like the training we offer to co-ordinators on flooding.  It very much turns NW into NW+ and strengthens and consolidates NW as part of the borough’s crime fighting partnership.

‘Not in my Neighbourhood’ Week
Council report
‘Not in my Neighbourhood’ Week is a Home Office scheme the council has participated in since its creation in 2007.  Wandsworth has been one of the most enthusiastic participants, organising a series of events for the week which promote and assist in crime prevention.  There were too many events to list here, but they ranged from a barbecue for students (to get across specific messages about student safety) to tea parties for the elderly (to teach them how to avoid suffering distraction burglarly) and a whole load of street stalls that you probably passed in one of the town centres.

None of it would have been possible without the dedication and enthusiasm of the council’s Community Safety Division who deserve congratulating for the work they do all year round.

If you have any concerns it might be worth taking a look at the council’s Community Safety website.

Category: Community Safety Tags: award, Junior Citizen, Neighbourhood Watch, Not in my Neighbourhood, RoSPA, Safer Citizen, Suzy Lamplugh.
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