Quietways engagement – next steps

On 12 June, Lambeth Council’s website showed that a decision had been published regarding the design of Quietway 7 – the route along Rosendale Road and Turney Road.

This Quietway has been a fraught process since the outset, and we have worked closely with residents and community groups over the last two years to work towards a design that makes the road safer for residents, people shopping and working nearby, pedestrians, cyclists, pupils walking to school, and other road users.We organised a number of workshops and consultation events and have met with many residents on and near the route.

When the decision was published, we were concerned that the public feedback during the consultation and our contributions on residents’ behalf had not been taken into account. We therefore decided to call in the decision – this is a formal challenge to the decision and should only be used as a last resort, so we made sure to meet with the cabinet member and officers first.

Thanks to our willingness to engage with Lambeth stakeholders, and the ongoing work we have been doing with local residents on this, they have now agreed to withdraw the decision in order to take on board our points. They have committed to work with us to –

revisit the design, giving greater consideration to the responses to the last consultation
revise the project plan and timeline to include a 4-6 week public engagement period
put in place a process so that as your local councillors we have greater input into designs
review the engagement process for future transport projects so that this problem doesn’t arise again

We are pleased that this means, instead of time consuming and confrontational scrutiny meetings, we can get on with working with you to improve the scheme.

Next steps
Last week we met with the cabinet member and officers to discuss potential next steps. We shared these and listened to feedback at a public meeting we organised last Tuesday, which over 60 local residents attended.

Now to the end of July
Officers will revisit designs to look at where the most concerns and comments were raised during the consultation and from meetings with councillors, and will redesign sections to accommodate these.
We have requested that officers meet with important local stakeholder groups such as the Allotments and the Rosendale Road businesses, to ensure that new proposals are developed collaboratively and that their specific needs are met in the redrafted designs.

We, as your local councillors, will also meet with any residents or community groups wishing to discuss the designs. We will also keep our online survey open for residents to feed into and pass on any feedback received today. All contributions will be fed into the design process.

End of July/ early August
Officers will meet with councillors with completed new drafts so that councillors can ensure that feedback from residents and community groups has been fully incorporated, and request any further changes.

September
A public consultation will open, with a mixture of exhibitions, workshops and online feedback opportunities. We welcome any suggestions on how to make this as meaningful as possible. Officers and councillors will be on hand at all events to ensure any questions can be answered and that feedback is captured properly. This will also be an opportunity to contribute to the detailed design – this will include things like greening.

As a result of our public meeting, we have already started organising workshops between officers and the allotments and Rosendale Road businesses. We have also asked that the communication plan is shared so that residents can ensure it goes far enough to engage everybody.

Our support for the Norwood Planning Assembly

Today, Lambeth Council will consider the application from the Norwood Planning Assembly to designate West Norwood and its surrounding neighbourhood as a neighbourhood planning area. This means local people get a greater say in how the area develops.

As your local councillors, we have been very proactive in working with the Norwood Planning Assembly volunteers and the wider community to develop the proposal – in particular, in his role as Norwood Area Lead, Fred has been busy liaising with officers, providing feedback from residents, helping to agree boundaries with other neighbourhood planning groups in Herne Hill and Tulse Hill, involving stakeholders like Brockwell Park and providing support in developing the final plans.

We have submitted the following statement on behalf of the West Norwood councillors in support of the final proposals being considered by the council today –

Norwood Planning Assembly Application for Designation

Introduction

1. This is a combined submission from all Norwood Councillors in the three wards making up the Norwood area – Gipsy Hill, Knights Hill and Thurlow Park wards – to the application for the Combined Neighbourhood Area and Forum Application submitted by the Norwood Planning Assembly (NPA) on 8 March 2017 for designation for a local plan under the 2011 Locality Act.

The NPA and its composition

2. The NPA is formed of two longstanding local groups the Norwood Forum and the Norwood Action Group (NAG). These groups have a strong local presence and have since the summer of 2015 engaged in constructive work to make the plans for the local community known to the wider area. This has included a range of activities including public meetings and engagement through different networks and they have work closely with the Masterplan refresh process from 2015-2016 and used the data gathered in this process to inform their application, which as a consequence has a strong evidence base.

3. They have a presence across all three wards and Councillors have worked with members from this group. The requirement that membership be drawn from different places in the neighbourhood area concerned and from different sections of the community in that area has been fulfilled by the NPA in the preparation and submission of this application. All other requirements for designation under the Town & Country Planning Act 1990 section 61F(7)(a) are met by the text of this application.

The area for designation

4. Part of the process described in paragraph 3 above was the negotiation and confirmation of precise boundaries of the area beginning in 2016. This took the administrative unit of the Norwood Ward boundaries as a starting point and then worked to assess whether these related to planning considerations and the public identification of the area. The boundaries represent an accurate picture of the Norwood Area.

5. After consultation the and public engagement the following boundaries were agreed with other neighbourhood forums

a. In the South of the area – the boundary traverses a significant part of the South of Gipsy Hill Ward, which falls into the Upper Norwood and Crystal Palace forum. This boundary reflects both surveys of the area and the work that other forums. It also would pose no real impediment in planning terms.
b. In the North of the area – this area covers the streets in the Brockwell Park and Rosendale Road area of the Ward. Door knocking, residents association consultations and survey data placed this area in Herne Hill and as a consequence will come within the Herne Hill local plan.

6. The NPA has agreed MOU’s with the Tulse Hill forum who are working on a neighbourhood plan to the west of the proposed designated area and with Brockwell Park Community Partners (which given the final boundaries is no longer relevant).

7. The boundaries represent an area that would be known and recognised as West Norwood and the final boundary has been arrived at through a process characterised with high levels of public engagement.

Conclusion

8. Norwood Councillors support the designation of the NPA and the boundaries of their local plan set out in their designation documents.

Making West Norwood’s streets cleaner

We are disappointed that despite the investment in new pavements, in some areas Norwood Road is impacted by dumped rubbish. Flytipping and commercial waste left on the pavements sometimes stains them and is unpleasant when people are shopping, living, working and travelling locally.

We have been working with residents to identify the hotspots and have organised for Lambeth’s commercial waste officer to visit businesses to make sure they have the right arrangements in place for rubbish collections. We are also looking to get particularly damaged areas of new paving jet washed.

If you regularly see an area on Norwood Road or the Tulse Hill gyratory where rubbish is dumped, please do get in touch.

Another Thames Water update

There has been another burst water main under Thurlow Park Road which is now being repaired.

Thames Water have said that they’ll be working day and night this weekend to complete the repair. They will need to dig through thick concrete to get to the pipe, so this will add to the time the work will take, and expect to continue into the start of next week but will do everything we can to get the road reopen as soon as possible.

Local residents should not expect to see an interruption of water supplies, however there is a small chance some properties may have lower water pressure than normal. Thames Water engineers will be managing water flows in the area to reduce the risk of low pressure as much as possible.

Consequently, there will be a traffic diversion in place as the road has been closed westbound between Croxted Road and Gallery Road. The diversion is via College Road, Burbage Road, Turney Road and Croxted Road. This will remain in place over the weekend and into the start of next week while the pipe is fixed. A separate diversion route for heavy goods vehicles will be signposted.

Quietways design decision withdrawn to take on board our concerns and ensure public engagement

We are pleased to announce that thanks to our intervention the Quietways design decision has been withdrawn to allow for designs to be revisited and full consultation with residents.

We have been working hard for the last two years to ensure the designs meet the needs of residents and the local community, whether they live, walk, work and/ or cycle locally. Our approach has been consistent – to work with you and ensure there is opportunity for local residents to shape the design.

We have emphasised throughout to officers, colleagues and TfL that proper consultation is the only way to ensure a scheme which people want and will use, and which makes the roads safer and more pleasant. This is why over the last two years we organised public meetings, met with resident groups regularly, and pushed officers to take on board concerns. We have listened to your feedback and agreed that the designs weren’t good enough, which is why we submitted our call-in.

A call-in is a final resort, so we did not rush into that without meeting with officers and the cabinet member first, where we expressed our concerns and asked that we work together to resolve issues.

Thanks to our willingness to engage with the cabinet member and officers, they have therefore agreed to withdraw the decision in order to take on board our points. They have committed to work with us to –

– revisit it the responses to the last consultation
– revise the project plan and timeline to include a 4-6 week public engagement period
– put in place a process so that as your local councillors we have greater input into designs
– review the engagement process for future transport projects so that this problem doesn’t arise again

We are pleased that this means, instead of time consuming and confrontational scrutiny meetings, we can get on with working with you to improve the scheme.

We are meeting officers and the cabinet member tonight to discuss the next steps, so we will also be going ahead with our public meeting tomorrow, on Tuesday 27 June at Rosendale School from 6.30-8pm to hear your concerns and contributions and share the details of those next steps.

If you cannot attend, or would like us to come along to discuss this at your local resident or community group meetings, please reply to this email and we would be happy to meet with you separately.

Quietways call-in FAQ

We have been asked a number of questions regarding the
call-in and thought it would be useful to circulate answers. We will continue
to update these as more residents email with questions.

What does a call-in mean?

From time to time, the Cabinet may take a decision that
causes concern to some councillors to such an extent that they believe the
decision should be changed. The Local Government Act 2000 requires every
council to establish a mechanism which allows for executive decisions made but
not yet implemented to be ‘called in’ for consideration by scrutiny. This
includes decisions taken by Cabinet (collective or individual) or decisions
delegated to Chief Officers.

In Lambeth, a call-in can be made by councillors to ask
Overview and Scrutiny to send the decision back, or let the decision stand but
make recommendations, or approve the decision.

The call-in will be considered by members of the Overview
and Scrutiny Committee. If they deem it valid, a public meeting will be
organised to discuss the decision and the reasons given for calling it in.
Members of the public can also take part.

How can I take part?

Call-in meetings are public events and anyone can attend.
Members of the public can also request to ask questions or make short points at
this meeting.

Your local councillors will be representing you at the
meeting too, and would value your input. You can provide this input in a number
of ways –

Email your councillors on abirley@lambeth.gov.uk fcowell@lambeth.gov.uk and mdeckersdowber@lambeth.gov.uk
Attend our public meeting on 27 June at 6.30pm at
Rosendale Primary school
Invite us to join a meeting of your local
resident group or community organisation – for example we met with Turney Road
residents and the Rosendale Allotments this weekend
Complete our survey here

Who called in the decision?

Your local councillors, Anna, Max and Fred, called in the
decision.

Calling in a decision should be a last resort, so we waited
until we had held a meeting with the cabinet member and senior officers to see
if there was a quicker way to resolve the various issues and outstanding
questions without escalating the matter to Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

We found out after the call-in deadline had passed that the
councillor for Clapham Common, Cllr Briggs, also called in the decision,
although we are unclear why a representative from a different part of Lambeth would
take a new interest in West Dulwich and West Norwood without the courtesy of
discussing with the cabinet member or local councillors, given a lack of previous
interest shown to any local or cycling matters.

Why are local councillors calling in the decision?

We want Rosendale Road, Turney Road, and the surrounding streets to be safe for pedestrians, cyclists, and children walking to school or crossing the road. It should be a pleasant environment to live and work in, and the local community should have some say on, and ownership over, how this is developed.

We think the plans fail to take into account the feedback that residents gave in the consultation last year – and as a result do not achieve the safety and environmental improvements the community need. We do not want to cancel Quietways but we do want to make sure that local changes are as good as possible. We have asked for the proposals to be improved and for a full final consultation before the plans are signed off.

In particular, we want a much safer proposals for the junction at Parkhall,

to ensure good access to the Rosendale Allotments,

better safety at the junction of Turney and Rosendale for children travelling to school, and sufficient greening the length of the route.

Why does the call-in focus on the design rather than the
overall route chosen?

The route was decided in 2013 by Andrew Gilligan, the then
Cycling Commissioner. A call-in must be specific to a particular decision, and
taken within a very limited time period after that decision is made (5 working
days). At a local level, councillors at the time report that they were not
included in this decision, although Cllr John Whelan was the leader of
Lambeth’s Conservative Group at the time and will have had the ability to have
questioned the choice of route had he chosen to.

This call-in is to challenge the decision made on 12 June
which is about the design. We think that the route along Rosendale Road means
there will be a unique investment in our local neighbourhood – which we would
welcome should the proposals deliver genuine improvements in safety for
residents, cyclists and pedestrians, and should the community have genuine
input into the design.

Therefore, the scope of the review by Overview and Scrutiny
will focus on the design as detailed in the decision published here.

Does this delay improvements to Rosendale Road?

Yes, inevitably it takes time to review a decision and make
recommendations. However, we hope that any delay to works starting will be
mitigated by a much improved design which will deliver greater local benefits.
We will be working closely with the cabinet member and officers to ensure
delays are minimised.

Our Quietways call-in

On 12 June, Lambeth Council’s website showed that a decision had been published regarding the design of Quietway 7 – the route along Rosendale Road and Turney Road.

This Quietway has been a fraught process since the outset, and we have worked closely with residents and community groups to ensure that we achieve a design that makes the road safer for cyclists and pedestrians, but that is acceptable to people living, shopping and working nearby too.

We ensured the original proposal to close Rosendale Road to through traffic was taken off the table and organised a full consultation in 2015, with public meetings, co-design workshops and exhibitions of proposals. There was an online consultation on plans in March 2016 and we have continued to push for changes since – in particularly to retain parking near to Turney School, to ensure continued access to the Rosendale Allotments and to ensure the Parkhall/ Rosendale junction does not change in a way which speeds up cars or causes additional traffic queues.

When the decision was published, we were concerned that the public feedback during the consultation and our contributions on residents’ behalf had not been taken into account as plans appeared unchanged except for the reinstatement of parking on Turney Road. And as cyclists, we don’t believe the scheme delivers the safety improvements that cyclists and pedestrians need either.

We met with the cabinet member and lead officers to express our concerns and discuss how we can address those, and will continue to meet regularly. We are meeting with TfL officers regarding the route and the junction on the South Circular too.

We have also decided to request a “call in” on the decision – this is a formal challenge to the decision and could result in the decision being sent back to rethink, or modified before it can be implemented.

Our “call in” asks for plans to be changed so that they reflect our concerns and community feedback, and for a full consultation on new plans – both online and in public workshops. Scrutiny committee are meeting in a few days to consider our request, and if it is accepted there will be a public meeting to discuss the decision and make recommendations.

Lambeth Council in partnership with the Friends of West Norwood Cemetery (FoWNC) has been successful in obtaining a Round One grant under the HLF Parks for People programme.

The grant of £241,000 represents 52% of the development costs of a Round Two bid of £4,804,800 towards the total project cost of £7,165,333.

The bid envisages capital investment in drainage, footpath, and roadway improvements, boundary wall, railings, and entrance gate repair/maintenance, landscape restoration, signage and furniture improvements, and works to monuments, perhaps including some of those in the Greek Cemetery.  

In addition, the possibilities of building a visitor centre and of a second, pedestrian entrance to the cemetery at eastern end of Robson Road will be evaluated.   The bid will also explore new ways of interpreting the history of the cemetery and also includes provision for training for staff and volunteers, and for apprentices in horticulture and in stone/monument repair/conservation. All-in-all then a comprehensive programme of works is envisaged that, together with an agreed way forward on monument restoration and grave re-use should ensure the future of the cemetery for years to come.  

Project manager, Joahanne Flaherty has been appointed. Along with another officer Joahanne spoke to many local residents at the recent June 2017 WN FEAST about the project and its possibilities.

In addition, Harrison Associates have been appointed as Consultants to the project.

Cllr Max Deckers Dowber is on the Project Steering Group along with members of the Scheme of Management Committee, the FoWNC, the local community and the Cabinet lead, Cllr Sonia Winifred.

If you have any questions please visit – https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/births-deaths-marriages-and-civil-partnerships/deaths/the-south-metropolitan-west-norwood-cemetery-a

Norwood Road southbound, from Tulse Hill station to Elmcourt Road, will be closed from the evening of Monday 12th June till 30th July.

This closure is for Thames Water to complete its work to reline the water mains for our local area. Southbound traffic from Brixton & Herne Hill will enter West Norwood via Lancaster Avenue. Southbound buses from Herne Hill (196, 322, 468, 690 & N68) will diverted along Croxted Road to Thurlow Park Road to turn into Lancaster Avenue.

https://westnorwood.wordpress.com/2017/06/04/norwood-road-closure/

Helen Hayes was returned as our MP in the recent General Election with a majority of 28,156. Helen was first elected in 2015, and at this election increased her majority with a 15.6% swing, receiving 69.6% of the vote. Turnout was 72.8%.

If you have an issue you need to discuss with Helen, you can contact her in the following ways:

Email: helen.hayes.mp@parliament.uk

Write: Office of Helen Hayes MP, House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA

Phone: 020 7219 6971. Phone messages are checked regularly, and a member of the team will get back to you as soon as possible.

Advice Surgery: held around Dulwich and West Norwood on the first, second, third and fourth Fridays of every month.