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I had a response from Asda following my complaint about them branding their Lavender Hill store ‘Clapham’.

Hello James.

Thank you for contacting ASDA about the name we have given to our ASDA Clapham store.

I’m sorry to learn of your disappointment at ASDA naming the store Clapham instead of Battersea. I can assure you ASDA welcome all customers, whatever there background. We certainly don’t want to offend anyone with the name of the store.

Having spoke to the General Store Manager, he confirmed the store is in Clapham, this is the reasoning for the name of the store. Also if we were to change the name of the store it would lose it’s identity in the local area.

Again, I’m sorry to hear of your disappointment, I hope all your points have been covered in this email. If you require any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind Regards

Will Hayton
ASDA Service Team

I only moved to Battersea 13 (fourteen, if you round up) years ago so I’m quite happy to admit I’ve been wrong all this time and have somehow fooled myself into…

Hold it. No. Of course I’m not wrong. Even as a relative newcomer I have seen enough evidence, both objective and subjective, to know I live in Battersea and the Asda store is in Battersea. Of course areas change, but not at the whim of one person (unless Wal-mart have staged a coup d’etat I missed and their manager is now some sort of regional governor). I could pretend I’m typing this in Manhattan. Or on the moon. But that doesn’t make it so.

Happier times: 2008, when people knew where they were
I will be replying to Asda, but decided to hold off my reply to calm a little. The odd thing is that the more time passes the angrier I get about Asda’s attitude.

I’d love to know the manager’s connection with the area prior to managing the store. Very often in retail the managers (because of the nature of their career progression) manage stores some distance from their home – this is particularly true in London where moving can be expensive. But even putting that aside…

Has he had a chat with one of my neighbours who obviously mistakenly believes she has lived in Battersea for the best part of 80 years – all that time a few hundreds yards from the store (or the railway yard that preceded it).

Or perhaps he’s raised it with the council, who – in 2008 – mistakenly passed a motion that highlighted SW11 is Battersea (opens PDF).

I’m sure he’s popped into the Royal Mail delivery office next door to the store and told them how wrong they are to call themselves the Battersea Office. And while he was at it had a word with Battersea Library and Battersea Arts Centre. I can only imagine how foolish they must all have felt having the wrong names all these years.

And I’m sure they’ve had a chat with their press office and the previous store manager. Pointing out their total ignorance when in 2008 they changed the name of the store to reflect it’s true location of Clapham Junction, Battersea.

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It seems an age ago, in the early days of this blog, that I celebrated Asda ‘moving’ to Battersea. Unfortunately it appears they have decided Battersea isn’t for them, and have moved back to Clapham.

Following the lead of a few on Streetbook I’ve complained to Asda about this using their contact form. Here’s what I said:

I’m disappointed that following your recent refurbishment of your SW11 store you decided it brand it Asda Clapham.

It’s unfortunate because it isn’t in Clapham, it’s some distance from it. In fact the SW11 postcode puts you firmly in the heart of Battersea (the post office neighbouring your store, or the Battersea Delivery Office, would be happy to confirm, I’m sure).

What makes it doubly disappointing is that it’s less than two years since you responded to local complaints and named the store ‘Clapham Junction, Battersea’ to accurately reflect its location.

While I understand the confusion, being near to Clapham Junction, there are several other local landmarks that give away the true location; you can see Battersea Library from your car park. Then there’s Battersea Arts Centre just up the road (it used to be Battersea Town Hall).

‘Clapham Junction’ was a marketing decision. At the time it was built Clapham was seen as more up-market than Battersea, so the Clapham label was attached to help attract development to the area.

But today people are proud to live in Battersea, it’s a much nicer neighbourhood than Clapham. Given the history behind the naming, I can only assume that if you don’t rename it’s because you believe the community you serve is so downmarket you want to avoid association with them! Surely this can’t be true and you have plans to correct the name.

I’ll post any reply I get.

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The Tour trophy: I'm troubled he (she?) doesn't have a name.
The Tour trophy: I'm troubled he (she?) doesn't have a name.

Although I usually use this last post of the week to witter on about the past week I’m going start off with an event two weeks ago.

Battersea Police Ball
I can’t believe I forgot to mention this last week, but on Saturday 28 November I attended, along with about 1,500 other people, the Battersea Police Ball. This is a fantastic annual event organised by the Battersea Crime Prevention Panel to raise funds for their work throughout the year.

As ever it was held in Battersea Park, and was a truly fantastic evening. It’s my 13th year of going and in all the time have never had anything but a great night out.

My congratulations to everyone involved in the organisation of the event.

Community Safety stall
Returning to the past week I spent some time on Saturday with the Community Safety Team who were manning, with the Shaftesbury Safer Neighbourhood Team and London Fire Brigade, a stall at Clapham Junction Asda. The purpose was to get out and offer advice (and a few freebies) to local residents. I posted earlier today about one incredibly positive aspect of their work and this is another.

Wandsworth Employment and Skills Partnership
In the middle of the week I chaired the Wandsworth Employment and Skills Partnership. The Partnership was set-up to try and improve joint working between everyone and to achieve some very challenging targets for getting people off benefits and into work.

Frankly, the recession has had a massive impact (the body and targets all pre-date the recession) but the body still serves a purpose. For example, during the meeting we discovered that Jobcentre Plus is ‘poaching’ people from a service we use to help long term unemployed people people back into work.

There’s nothing sinister about it, Job Centre Plus are now required to work more closely with the long term unemployed. But while that is a positive it means that the work that had already been done is lost as the Job Centre start from scratch. We’re now looking at whether we can prevent the poaching altogether, and if we can’t how we can ensure the unemployed person sees a progression, rather than getting halfway through one service to then have to start afresh with another.

Full council
Wednesday was the year’s last full council, and the year ended not with a bang but a whimper. It has to be said that the formal meetings of the council can be a bit, well, dull!

I’m tempted to suggest that it’s because the council is so well run it’s hard for anyone to disagree with what we do. But that isn’t the case. Despite only having one-sixth of the council seats the Labour group get, effectively, half the time of the council meeting to ask question and debate their issues. I don’t think the lack of spark at these meetings is for want of opportunity – but am at a loss to suggest why it isn’t there at the moment.

Police Borough Commander
I also had one of my regular meetings with Chief Superintendent Low, the borough police commander. These are useful catch-ups, making sure we both know what’s on each others minds and both sides are working together as well as they can. I believe (and I hope that he would agree!) the working relationship between the council and police has continued to get stronger over the years, and the fact that we are inner London’s safest borough reflects that.

Architectural Tour
And finally, last night was the council’s ‘Architectural Tour’. I did ponder whether I should include this or not, since it could be seen as cliquey or worse – but decided transparency is by far the best way to avoid that. Besides, on reflection I’m rather proud of it. I was one of the people who started it in 2002 and since then it has raised thousands for various supported by the Mayor each year, this year’s beneficiaries were the Boys’ and Girls’ Brigades, Scouts and Guides

The evening is, fairly simply, a tour combined with a quiz around various sites of architectural merit in Wandsworth, which all happen to be pubs. The council divides into tribal loyalties, with department pitting themselves against department (and councillors) and being able to host the trophy – and even the wooden spoon – for a year has become quite an honour to a department.

Congratulations this year go the Housing Department, who are not only one of the country’s biggest social landlords, but also fairly hot on music, literature history and able to take a good guess on how many animals in London zoo are of unknown sex!

(Incidentally, the zoo don’t know the sex of 13,811 of their 14,665 animals at the time of writing.)

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The Lavender Gardens playground (the small playground between Dorothy Road and Asda) is closed for nine days from today.

The playground is being refurbished by the council, who will be installing some swings, a wooden activity trail and a climbing frame and slide and will be re-opened on Wednesday 28 October.

This follows on from the landscaping work that had been carried out in the area to prevent it being used anti-socially and will hopefully enhance the facilities available for local residents as well as making the area nicer for people using the short-cut to Asda and through to Clapham Junction.

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I’ll confess I was surprised to get a letter today from Asda telling me that they are about to submit a planning application to Wandsworth to build a mezzanine level in their store at Clapham Junction.

Their plan, apparently, includes the creation of 1,229 metres of new retail space, extensive refurbishment and a new customer cafe – making it a significant development.

The main reason I was surprised was because the council would usually hear about something like this fairly early.  However, so far, the first anyone I’ve spoken to has heard about it was from me!  Of course, it might all be fairly straight-forward and good news – they reckon it will create 30 jobs – but we don’t know until the plans are submitted.

The store are running a display over the next three days (Thursday 6 – Saturday 8 August), so if you are in the area and concerned about the potential impact of a development you might like to pop along.

Update As a commented points out, saying Asda have a display probably overstates it somewhat (I took their letter at its word). In fact they have a pile of leaflets on their customer services desk. While I suppose you could call it a display, it’s being a bit generous.

Having said that, it seems the work is largely contained within the existing structure, makig it – I imagine – a fairly uncontentious scheme.

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The council’s Community Safety Division, in partnership with the police Safer Neighbourhood Team, are running their crime prevention roadshow at Asda Clapham Junction tomorrow (Saturday 18th).

Staff from Community Safety and the police will both be on hand to offer assistance or advice on all matters relating to crime prevention.  There’s usually free balloons for children too, and often a councillor unable to resist playing with the helium!

No appointment is necessary, so just pop along to the main entrance to Asda between 11am and 3pm.

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PCSO Steve, part of the local Safer Neighbourhood Team
PCSO Steve, part of the local Safer Neighbourhood Team

The Council and Police’s Safe and Secure Roadshow was at Asda, Battersea today, handing out crime prevention advice to shoppers and balloons to the children (who also had a chance to meet PCSO Steve).

It is, unfortunately, a good time for criminals as people often have fairly expensive, and brand new, gifts around – so it pays to make sure you aren’t giving the gift to the wrong people!

The council’s community safety team partner with local police Safer Neighbourhood Teams around the borough to put on the roadshows.  If you don’t see one there’s lots of useful advice to be found on the council’s Community Safety website.

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The Asda store on Lavender Hill re-opened today as ‘Asda Clapham Junction Battersea’ in response to the SW11tch campaign to make sure the area is properly named.

Celebrating the 'opening' of Asda Battersea
Celebrating the 'opening' of Asda Battersea

Asda was one of the biggest offenders (Wal-Mart is the world’s largest company).  So it’s a real coup for the campaigners to get them to recognise where they live.

A common question is ‘why is it important’?  I think there are two answers.

First, you need to know where you are!  When Waitrose announced they had bought some Woolworth’s stores and would be opening new shops there was a real buzz on a Clapham web-forum.  Until, that is, they realised that Waitrose had made a mistake, and were moving to Battersea, not Clapham High Street.

But the second issue is branding.  Wal-mart do not allow each Asda store to create their own brand, perhaps focusing on different products, or creating their own logo.  It is important to have a distinctive brand that people recognise and can trust, especially when times are hard.  And it’s no less important for Battersea to have it’s own brand, so people know where and what it is – a high quality, diverse and distinctive destination.