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.
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:
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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.
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.
Yellow flags represent burglaries and red flags represent street crime reported between 16 and 30 December, 2008.
The briefing only contains details of burglaries and robberies. Other crimes are not included.
You can see more detail by following the link to the Google website.
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.
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.
Laverstoke Gardens, one of the areas that would be improved in the council's regeneration
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.
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.
Yellow flags represent burglaries and red flags represent street crime reported between 16 and 30 December, 2008.
The briefing only contains details of burglaries and robberies. Other crimes are not included.
You can see more detail by following the link to the Google website.
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.
This map is only for the Putney parliamentary consitutuency – which is different to the police’s Putney sector.
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.
Since my council cabinet role doesn’t just cover Shaftesbury or Battersea I’ve prepared a similar crime map for Putney (and Tooting, which will follow later today). Below is the map, one thing I think it illustrates is how little crime there actually is – just seven burglaries and four robberies. As usual the health warnings follow the map.
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.
Yellow flags represent burglaries and red flags represent street crime reported between 9 and 16 December, 2008.
The briefing only contains details of burglaries and robberies. Other crimes are not included.
You can see more detail by following the link to the Google website.
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.
This map is only for the Putney parliamentary consitutuency – which is different to the police’s Putney sector.
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.
