I’ve spent a fair chunk of today at an inward investment event for Putney Town Centre. Although Nine Elms and Tooting have been getting a fair degree of attention recently, the council has continued to promote the rest of the borough as a destination to businesses, retailers and investors. Today’s event was aimed at attracting people to invest in Putney, highlighting both the opportunities for retailers and the consequent advantages for those seeking to establish offices in the area.

It is, of course, coming to the time in the cycle when a lot of the borough is talked down for political advantage. I recall Stuart King’s rather negative campaign as Labour leader four years ago that was little more than a litany of complaints and criticisms that – in fact – most people didn’t relate to (and may have contributed to him losing his own seat; if things were so bad, why hadn’t he done anything in his eight years as a councillor).

In fact there’s a lot to be positive about in Wandsworth and Putney. The high street has weathered the recession remarkably well and managed to attract new investment during it. And today, the area was still enough of a draw to attract 70 or 80 people from developers, retailers and businesses who might be the ones investing in SW15 in coming years.

Category: Regeneration Tags: investment, Nine Elms, Putney, Putney High Street, SW15, Tooting, Town Centre.
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The council and police won the Metropolitan Police’s snappily titled Problem Oriented Partnership Award last night for their work talking problems in Strathan Close, Putney.

A great example of how effective targeted work can be in solving, rather than just moving a problem, the area has seen reports of anti-social behaviour drop from one per day to just one per month.

The council worked at improving the area, re-designing aspects that caused groups to congregate, while helping residents form a residents’ association and Neighbourhood Watch. And while this was happing the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit, Youth Offending Team and police targeted the ring-leaders while Youth Services did work with the others.

Congratulations to all concerned.

Category: Community Safety Tags: partnership, police, Putney, SNT, Stathan Close.
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The next of Wandsworth’s town centres to start getting the festive spirit is Putney, who are holding their annual festive market today.

The event starts at 3pm, with the Christmas lights turned on at 6pm by Paralympian and TV presenter Ade Adepitan MBE.

The market and events all take place in Church Square, near the northern end of Putney High Street.

Category: Regeneration Tags: Christmas, market, Putney, town centres.
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Politics are about hope. Or, at least, the best politics are about hope. Politics can represent a way to find freedom from tyranny, or simply highlight a future with a higher disposable income and more security. Entire campaigns can be run on hope and little else (President Obama’s, for example).

Politics should be about inviting the electorate to see your particular vision of tomorrow, and asking them to help you get there.

And that’s why I’m enjoying the Labour Party conference so much. I always felt this would be the main event and I haven’t been disappointed. Admittedly, they haven’t really outlined a vision of how a fourth term Labour government would look. But maybe they have provided hope to their supporters.

It was meant to be a wake. A last gathering of the party faithful to rally them for the coming massacre. But is it, instead, providing a glimmer of hope?

Andrew Marr’s popping of the anti-depressant question may have been the turning point. Instead of questions about the PM’s competence there was a mood swing; such questions are, rightly, inappropriate and instead of leading to further questions of the PM, it resulted in investigation of the rumour’s source and questions about the journalistic merit of the interview.

And while there have been some depressing polls for the government (even seeing them in third place), there have been some far more heartening polls undertaken more recently. YouGov’s daily tracking has already given them a 5% conference bounce. Another poll (and I apologise for the News of The World link) suggests that half the population can still envisage a Labour win.

Given that the electoral system has a significant built in advantage for the Labour party (a Conservative victory would break a number of records) maybe the faithful in Brighton needn’t be so glum.

Brighton has seen a few good performances by Mandelson and Darling, and if Brown can follow it up later today then the election starts getting interesting.

Of course, the next election has never been taken for granted by the Conservatives – either locally or nationally – but it was clear that Labour activists were not enthused. So while in Tooting Labour’s Sadiq Khan is clearly fighting hard to hold what has become a marginal seat, in neighbouring Putney you get the feeling Stuart King’s game plan is for the Tooting nomination in 2014.

The biggest danger any party faces is when its most loyal supporters give up hope. It’s the equivalent of turning off life support. It happened to the Tories in ‘97; activists suddenly found themselves otherwise engaged, supporters just didn’t have the time to vote.

Until now exactly the same was happening to the Labour party, but maybe there’s life in the old dog yet: and where there’s life, there’s hope.

AND AFTER BROWN’S SPEECH… The problem with expressing opinions that are, basically, dependent on a future event, is that if said event let’s you down you are screwed.

Having watched the big speech I just don’t think Brown rose to the pressure. A lot of recycled policies, but no passion or even much of a sense of purpose beyond not letting the Tories in. If I were a Labour activist, I don’t think I’d be describing myself as enthused. What do you think?

Category: Politics Tags: Brighton, conference, Labour, Putney, Sadiq Khan, Stuart King, Tooting.
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First of all I must congratulate Chloe Smith everyone involved in the Norwich North by-election on their victory. It is no mean achievement to see a 16.5% swing, which would be more than enough, if repeated across the country to see a Conservative government.

The numbers geek in me wondered what this would mean for Wandsworth.

This needs prefacing with lots of caveats. Swing is a very imperfect measure. It is never uniform and local issues and campaigns mean it’s dangerous to draw conclusions from it. The method I’m using (the Butler Swing) only takes account of the top two parties, so it also ignores the impact of a strong campaign from minor parties. However, since Norwich North and all the Wandsworth seats are fairly straightforward Labour/Conservative fights, it’s not entirely unreasonable to put the numbers in and see what happens.

The Butler Swing basically takes the average of the change in vote share for the top two parties. So in Norwich North the Conservative vote share increased by 6.29% and the Labour vote share dropped by 26.70% – an average swing of 16.49% from Labour to Conservative.

In Wandsworth this would mean, very simply, all three seats would be Conservative – a 16.49% swing from the 2005 result would see:

• In Battersea Martin Linton’s 163 majority would easily be overturned, becoming a 13,374 vote majority for Jane Ellison.
• In Putney Justine Greening would see her 1,766 majority increase to a 13,828 majority over Labour’s Stuart King.
• Even in the ’safe’ Labour seat of Tooting, Sadiq Khan would see his 5,381 majority turn into a Conservative majority of 8,328 for Mark Clarke.

Even at half the swing, 8.25% from Labour to the Conservatives, all three seats would return Conservatives (majorities of 6,610, 7,801 and 1,477 in Battersea, Putney and Tooting respectively).

I’ve compared the current situation to 1997, which I saw from the losing side. Twelve years later the Norwich North result is almost a mirror image of the Wirral South by-election in 1997, which saw a 17% swing from the Conservatives to Labour and preceded the landslide Labour victory in the general election when they got a national swing of over 10%.

There’s no doubt that the Labour candidates in all three seats will be looking at the results and making the same comparisons. There’s going to be some fierce campaigning over the next year.

Category: Politics, Wandsworth Tags: Battersea, Jane Ellison, Justine Greening, Mark Clarke, Martin Linton, Norwich North, Putney, Sadiq Khan, Stuart King, swing, Tooting.
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The council’s business advice sessions have been proving incredibly popular with local businesses, filling the venues and providing lots of useful advice.

The next two are now scheduled:

5.45pm on Thursday 16 April at Munai Nepalese Restaurant, 393 Upper Richmond Road, for businesses on Upper Richmond Road, Dover House Road and Tildesley Road.  This session will cover how to trade in difficult circumstances and have a session on business rates.  If you want to attend email sdwallace@wandsworth.gov.uk.

5.45pm on Thursday 30 April at Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill.  This session will include advice on reducing overheads, improving efficiency, effective marketing and customer retention.  There will also be the opportunity to get on-going mentoring from oneLondon.  If you want to attend email lfreint@wandsworth.gov.uk.

Category: Regeneration Tags: advice, Clapham Junction, Dover House Road, Lavender Hill, oneLondon, Putney, recession, Tildesley Road, Upper Richmond Road.
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If you had the choice of hiding in a number of UK cities, where would you go?

Google’s Street View launched in the UK yesterday with a Wally character hidden somewhere.  And it seems that given the choice of a number of major UK cities (and Scunthorpe) Wally decided that hiding out in London was the best bet… And if you are in London where would you want to go but Wandsworth?

Wally decided to do a bit of shopping on Putney High Street, and was spotted outside the O2 store:

View Larger Map
While I’d say our other town centres, Balham, Clapham Junction, Tooting and Wandsworth provide competition, I’m not that surprised he chose Putney over Scunthorpe.

Category: Wandsworth Tags: Google, Putney, Putney High Street, town centres.
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If you have followed my crime mapping posts you will know there have been a series of problems in the transmission of data between the police and the council.  These are now resolved and this is a catch-up map.  It covers two weeks of data, but is for street crime only (although for the burglaries that took place we do not have the location data for these two weeks).  It will return for the next map.

I have been producing these maps for some time, and have some ideas for how they should develop. However, I know they are a popular feature on the site and I would be interested in hearing your thoughts. If you have any comments or ideas, please drop me a line at cllr@jamescousins.com.

The map is hosted by Google, and occasionally will not load, or will not load the flags, especially if you are on a slow connection.  If it does not display correctly, try refreshing the page or following the link directly under the map.  As usual there are some health warnings following the map.

View Larger Map

1. Yellow flags represent burglaries and red flags represent street crime reported between 16 and 30 December, 2008.
2. The briefing only contains details of burglaries and robberies. Other crimes are not included.
3. You can see more detail by following the link to the Google website.
4. The flags are not placed precisely (it would be irresponsible to advertise victims of burglary) but instead are spaced roughly equally on the roads they took place. The idea is to give a visual representation of the spread and range of crime in Wandsworth, rather than pinpointing crime locations.
5. While I try to ensure the data is accurate it is reliant on the information I receive, and I’m only human, so it may be mistakes have crept in. Please let me know if you think you’ve spotted one.

Category: Community Safety, Wandsworth Tags: Battersea, crime, crime mapping, police, Putney, Tooting.
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Last night’s Regeneration and Community Safety Overview and Scrutiny Committee was something of a blast from the past, since the Labour Party spent a lot of time presenting a paper prepared by Stuart King.  Stuart was a councillor in Wandsworth from 1998 until 2006 when he lost his seat.  He was also the Labour group leader and served on a lot of the same committees as me before his defeat.

Stuart’s latest hobby has been representing the Labour party in Putney, and as part of this he has, as is his right, been campaigning against our plans to create employment, quality housing and businesses and a pleasant environment in Roehampton.

The Labour group brought one of his misleading surveys to the committee last night.  Despite admitting that the council had conducted extensive consultation in the area and that King’s report could be said to be biased they suggested the council should spend more money to ask people, for the fourth time, what they thought.

In fact, I think it represents a total failure of the Labour group to provide community leadership.  It’s the fourth different position they have taken in four meetings.  First of all they supported regeneration.  Then they weren’t sure.  Then they opposed it.  Now they want to ask people what they should think.

What leaves me most disappointed is Tony Belton’s stance, since it seems his group is now, rather than serving the Wandsworth community, just dancing to Stuart King’s tune.

Roehampton has the borough’s highest unemployment rate.  It has higher than average crime.  It has a disproportionately high take up of non-work related benefits like incapacity and lone parent benefits.  It is badly served by public transport, so people face difficult journeys to work or learn.  Hence the scheme, designed to create employment in a refreshed centre at Danebury Avenue and Roehampton Lane.

It is one of the few times I have really been saddened by Wandsworth politics.  The political groups will always have different solutions to problems, but this is one time when Labour have shown a poverty of ambition and, in doing so, seek to remove the hope of Roehampton and Alton Estate residents.

Category: Regeneration Tags: consultation, crime, Labour, Putney, RCS OSC, Roehampton, Stuart King, Unemployment.
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A map of the Putney crime briefing (covering Putney, Southfields and Roehampton) is below. Like Putney, this represents 2 weeks data, so there is – obviously – more than usual on there.
The map is hosted by Google, and occasionally will not load, or will not load the flags. If it does not display correctly, try refreshing the page or following the link directly under the map.

View Larger Map

1. Yellow flags represent burglaries and red flags represent street crime reported between 16 and 30 December, 2008.
2. The briefing only contains details of burglaries and robberies. Other crimes are not included.
3. You can see more detail by following the link to the Google website.
4. The flags are not placed precisely (it would be irresponsible to advertise victims of burglary) but instead are spaced roughly equally on the roads they took place. The idea is to give a visual representation of the spread and range of crime in Putney, rather than pinpointing crime locations.
5. This map is only for the Putney parliamentary consitutuency – which is different to the police’s Putney sector.
6. While I try to ensure the data is accurate it is reliant on the information I receive, and I’m only human, so it may be mistakes have crept in. Please let me know if you think you’ve spotted one.

Category: Community Safety Tags: crime, crime mapping, police, Putney.
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