Park events strategy scrutiny – public meeting

Each summer sees applications from event organisations to hold festivals, sports events or other activities in Brockwell Park. In the last few years, some of these have been of particular concern to the local community because of anxiety about noise, antisocial behaviour or the impact on the park. Many of you have also been in touch about the long term financial sustainability of the park, as it’s an invaluable local asset.

Last year, we worked very hard to mitigate these concerns with regards to Love Box and Field Day applying to come. We held a public meeting and knocked on many of your doors to listen to your concerns. We developed some red lines and put these across strongly to colleagues, officers and licensing committee. Some concessions were won, and we will continue to do this with the application from Mighty Hoopla this summer too.

However, there were some issues raised which couldn’t be dealt with via individual event applications because they were reflections on the wider framework policy for events in parks. We committed to campaigning for a review of the events strategy and to giving you an opportunity to input into this.

With that in mind, we are holding a public meeting on reviewing the events policy and the future of Brockwell Park on 11 March at 6.30-8.30pm at Rosendale Primary School.

Deadline extended: Lambeth private renters’ survey

Calling all private renters in Thurlow Park and beyond – you have until 3rd March to have your say on renting and the kind of support you’d like from the council to improve the sector and help you resolve issues with your landlord!

It doesn’t take long – there’s a short online survey which you can fill out here. If this is a topic you’re passionate about, you can contact Cllr Anna Birley who as well as being a Thurlow Park councillor is also the Lambeth policy lead on private renting, on abirley@lambeth.gov.uk, or you can sign up to our Facebook group for private renters in the local area.

New play equipment at the West Norwood Health & Leisure Centre – consultation open

In a consultation last April, residents in West Norwood said that there should be more play equipment installed on the grounds of the West Norwood Health & Leisure Centre to provide more for the growing numbers of children using the outdoor area.

Having listened to views, the council has drawn up some proposals on new equipment that they hope to progress soon. These include:

Resurfacing
Fitting an embankment slide, steps and rope ramp
A jungle walk
Striding stilts
Swinging steps x 3
A gravity rider (can be used by children with mobility impairments)
A Quad Rider in the under 5’s area
An inclusive orbit (a roundabout, designed to be inclusive of wheelchair users and aimed at all ages)

The council hopes to go ahead with all of these suggestions, however, officers would be interested in the level of popularity each item receives, as it is possible final space planning may mean the need to exclude an item or two from the proposals at the final stages.

The consultation is open until 1st March and you can respond online here. You can also express interest in being part of a ‘friends’ group – a community group of users who help to protect and champion the facility.

Reminder: meeting this week about Mighty Hoopla in Brockwell Park

As we blogged recently, Mighty Hoopla and a new funk, soul and jazz festival called Cross the Tracks have applied to hold events in Brockwell Park this June.

A reminder that they are holding a community drop-in session this week on Wednesday 27th February. They have two times you can visit, during the day and in the evening:

Time: Midday-3pm and 5-8pm
Location: The Half Moon pub, 10 Half Moon Lane SE24 9HU

There will be an additional community engagement session on Wednesday 13th March 5-8pm at Jubilee Community Hill, Tulse Hill Estate, London SW2 2LY.

If you can’t make either but would like to ask the organisers a questions, they say residents, businesses and community groups are welcome to email them at community@mightyhoopla.com

Private renters – have your say!

Private renting is an important issue for us – in the borough roughly a third of residents live in privately rented accommodation and in our ward we have dealt with many pieces of casework relating to the private rented sector, from damp and repairs to security of tenure.

Last year, we organised a survey and meeting for private renters in West Norwood. Many of you who attended told us that you weren’t always confident in asserting your rights to landlords, or that landlords weren’t aware of all of their responsibilities. Renters have told us in the survey and at our surgeries that rents are increasing and getting harder to manage.

We have been working hard to champion the private rented sector, so that the council makes fuller use of its powers to intervene when landlords don’t meet the standards they should, and provides the information and support that good tenants and good landlords need to improve the sector.

We’re proud that Lambeth Labour recently voted to call on the Government to end Section 21, and you can read Councillor Anna Birley’s blog about her experiences of Section 21 and renting locally. She is now the Private Renting Policy Lead for Lambeth. As part of this work, we have introduced tougher fines on rogue landlords, recruited more enforcement officers to drive up standards and moved ahead with a licensing scheme for landlords for flats with five or more renters.

But there’s more to do – and currently we are consulting on renters’ main priorities and challenges are to help shape the council’s next steps. The first outcome will be to draw up a private renters’ charter, to set out renters’ rights, give advice, support and guidance, as well as detail the council’s powers to intervene and will be published later this year.

Please share your experiences and views here >> https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/lblrenters

Advice drop-in: Field Day in Brockwell Park

Field Day will be beginning to set up their event in Brockwell Park soon, so we have organised a drop-in advice morning to show you the maps and plans, discuss any concerns, take your comments back to the event organisers, and make sure you know how to get in touch.

Brockwell photo

When? Saturday 19 May, drop in anytime between 10.30 and 12.30
Where? Norwood Lodge – the building in the corner of Brockwell Park by Norwood Road and Brockwell Park Gardens

RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/769095176811997/

Cemetery consultation

West Norwood Cemetery – the story so far

One of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ London cemeteries West Norwood Cemetery was opened in 1837. In 2016 a grant of £241,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund was awarded to Lambeth Council in partnership with the Friends of West Norwood Cemetery, to develop proposals to conserve and protect the cemetery for future generations.

Through out 2017 extensive specifically survey works were carried out in the cemetery to develop proposals to restore and provide improved access to historic monuments, to manage and conserve the natural and built environment, to improve facilities for visitors and develop an activities and volunteering programme.

Together these results have helped shape new, and exciting proposal that inform how further investment could be utilised.

Cllr Max Deckers Dowber has been part of the Steering Group set up to organise this work and we are keen, along with Lambeth Council, to share the progress made so far, to gather more views so that we are in the best possible position to incorporate such feedback into the official bid submission which we plan to submit in August 2018.

There will be a number of feedback sessions across SE27 between March 22 and April 22 2018 and you can access the public consultation questionnaire at www.lambeth.gov.uk/consultations

Lambeth website is here – https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/births-deaths-marriages-and-civil-partnerships/deaths/the-south-metropolitan-west-norwood-cemetery

Project website is here – https://www.westnorwoodcemetery.org/

UPDATE –

To offer your comments:

· Complete the online West Norwood cemetery survey
· Send your views by email to the team at norwoodhlf@lambeth.gov.uk.
· Complete a paper survey, available from the West Norwood Cemetery office (located at the Cemetery entrance).
· Go to one of the feedback sessions across West Norwood to meet the Project Team and see how the bid proposals are evolving:

Date Time Place
Sunday 1 April
12noon-2pm FEAST: West Norwood Cemetery (main entrance)

Thursday 5 April 10am-12noon West Norwood Cemetery, The Lodge (located near the main entrance)

Saturday 14 April 10am-12noon West Norwood Cemetery, The Lodge (located near the main entrance)

Tuesday 17 April 4-6:30pm West Norwood Health & Leisure Centre, Devane Way

The gathered feedback will be incorporated into the official bid submission to the HLF in August 2018.

Brockwell Park – Field Day festival update

In January 2018 Lambeth Cabinet gave the provisional approval for the Field Day festival to go ahead in Brockwell Park on the first weekend of June, and we have been working hard as your local Councillors to ensure that this festival, if it were to go ahead, is properly managed. Since these event proposals for Brockwell Park came to our attention we have been talking with the community to make sure that resident views are taken into account, and held a public event back in December 2017 for example to make sure residents could engage in the process and allow for them to have an opportunity to put their views forward.

After consulting with local residents we made an extensive submission to the Licensing Committee – the independent statutory body tasked with deciding whether Field Day has the permission to get a license to sell alcohol and host live music. In the main, we have made the case that the closing times need to be significantly reduced, that noise issues remain a concern and that we also have concerns about disturbances and anti-social behaviour. We will be at the Licensing Committee on the 4th April 2018 to represent residents.

Otherwise, we have also started on a provisional basis working with the community team from the Field Day event organisers. In the event the festival goes ahead we have already managed to secure agreement from Field Day for the protection of parking spaces in the area around the festival, for extensive rubbish clearance on all roads around the park and a commitment to attend initiate meetings with local businesses around possible opportunities the festival can bring to them. The plans are a long way from being ready but some constructive work is being under taken on this.

Furthermore, we have also secured a high level agreement to look again at features of the events policy relating to Brockwell Park. This would include setting a maximum cap on numbers in the park for any event, tighter noise controls and a trigger for public scrutiny. We are looking to set out a timetable for these reforms to govern any events in 2019 and reduce the overall events burden in Brockwell Park.

Finally, Cllr Fred Cowell will continue working with Brockwell Park Community Partners towards ensuring that Heritage Lottery funding can be used to improve Brockwell Hall as a basis for a more secure future for the park in order to develop long term funding, and investment security for Brockwell Park.

Our response to the consultation on the new low emission zone

Soon after his election the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, called for new proposals to urgently help tackle London’s lethal air pollution. The Mayor has already introduced the T-Charge in central London, bought forward the start date of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) for central London to 8 April 2019 and announced a series of measures to clean up London’s bus fleet.

TfL are now consulting on detailed proposals for two further initiatives to improve London’s air. These involve:

Tightening the standards of the existing London-wide Low Emission Zone from 2020, which affects heavy vehicles – buses, coaches and HGVs and other heavy specialist vehicles
Expanding the ULEZ for light vehicles (cars, vans and motorcycles) from central London to inner London up to, but not including the North and South Circular roads in 2021 so that all vehicles in this area are subject to emissions standards

The full proposals can be found here: https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/environment/air-quality-consultation-phase-3b/#our proposals

In Thurlow Park, they involve a new low emissions zone extending up to but not including the South Circular.

As your local Labour councillors, we have responded to the consultation calling on the zone to be wider, covering all of London rather than stopping at the South Circular.

Air quality is a very important
issue for us and our residents. Thurlow Park ward straddles the South Circular
and has a number of other strategically important roads that experience heave
traffic, including Norwood Road and Lancaster Avenue.

These roads, and the
streets leading off them, experience high volumes of cars, buses, lorries and
vans. As a consequence, the air that residents living, working, walking and
cycling in our ward, and especially on these roads, is damaging their lungs.

We are therefore
very supportive of actions which TfL and the Mayor can take to tackle air
pollution and welcome a large Ultra Low Emissions Zone. We agree with proposals
that there should be tougher emissions standards, particularly given this will especially
impact the heavy vehicles that we experience disproportionately.

We also support
the expansion of the existing Low Emission Zone. However, we are very
disappointed that it is being proposed to go only as far as the south circular.
As shown by this map displaying data from the London Air website compiled by
Kings College London, the South Circular is the worst road in our
neighbourhood. It’s a residential road, and in just Thurlow Park goes past two
schools and very near to two more.

On any given day,
these homes and schools have around 15,000 vehicles driving east and a further
12,000 vehicles travelling west past their front doors, according to data
collected by TfL which we have published here: https://thurlowparklabour.org/post/166566971597/progress-made-in-our-campaign-for-a-safer-south

Other pollution
hotspots would be missed off the new zone too – in our ward, Norwood Road sees
higher traffic and pollution, as do Robson Road, Rosendale Road, Lancaster
Avenue and Croxted Road, for example, thanks to buses, delivery vehicles and
other traffic.

The current
proposals, up to and not including the South Circular, fail to take action on
the road in the greatest need of action and does nothing to tackle the
pollution hotspots south of this boundary. They create a situation which sees
only half of our residents breathing cleaner air, while some of the worst
affected areas see no change in regulation. We are also concerned that the new
zone will push the most pollution traffic south as drivers of vehicles affected
look for alternative routes that avoid the charge. We don’t want to see the
southern half of the ward become a rat run for London’s most polluting traffic.

By extending the
zone to cover the whole city, this scenario can be avoided. We would
therefore like to see the new zone expanded to cover the whole of London,
including the South Circular.

Field Day Licensing Application for Brockwell Park – we want to hear your views

Brockwell park is host to Field Day from the 1-3 of June. This is a much larger commercial event than the park has previously hosted and we are currently working with the organisers on managing and controlling the event.

We understand the concern about large events in Brockwell Park. We fought to block another larger event, Lovebox, from coming to the park, have refused permission for previous events that have not met the standards required in the park to return, and will
be having a post event consultation on whether Field Day comes back to the park next year.

As part of the authorisation process, Field Day has to go through a licensing application. This determines whether under the 2003 Licensing Act it can be granted a licence to sell alcohol and host live music. The Council’s licensing committee then has to review the application. This is a statutory process which is independent from political considerations. The committee is required to take the following four things into account.

the prevention of crime and disorder
the prevention of public nuisance
the promotion of public safety
the protection of children from harm

Field day are currently applying for a licence which runs from midday each day of the festivals and ends at 11pm on Friday and Saturday and 10:30pm on Sunday.

As your local councillors, we have been consistent in engaging with local residents, listening to views and concerns, and working on your behalf. Since Field Day and Lovebox first applied to come to Brockwell park, we have met with many residents’ groups, worked with community and park organisations, doorknocked local streets and organised a public meeting for Thurlow Park residents to have their say. We published our view on this website here before Christmas and lobbied hard to stop Lovebox from coming, and for Field Day to reduce the size of the event.

We are currently drafting a submission for the licensing committee to consider, on behalf of Thurlow Park residents, though we would also like residents to make their own submissions on the application itself, and how the event should be managed.

In particular we would like your views on:

We are concerned about the lateness of the times on all evenings. In particular, we are concerned about the Sunday close time given that GCSE exams are the next day. We would like to move these hours back. What is your view on appropriate hours for the events to finish?
How the dispersal should be managed in order to maximise public safety? – at the moment the plan is to exit largely through the Herne Hill entrance.
Should there be a lower upper limit on the noise than the festivals last summer? There were a number of complaints about the noise and we want to get it right.
Field Day have made some extensive commitments about immediate clear up as
well as a general clear up. Where should there resources be targeted?
Under the terms of the Licensing Act, is there anything else we should take
into account?

To tell us what you think, you can email Cllr Fred Cowell on fcowell@lambeth.gov.uk or respond using our online survey here.