November Newsletter

November highlights

1. On 1st November I spoke at the Boundary Commission Hearing, in the Town Hall. The Commission’s recommendations for the new Parliamentary boundaries are very extensive and involve massive changes across the country. As far as Battersea is concerned the plan is to divide it in half, with the railway lines as the approximate boundary, with the north joined to Vauxhall in a Battersea and Vauxhall constituency and the south, including Clapham Junction itself, being joined with parts of Tooting and Clapham in a new Clapham Common constituency.

This change is due to the need to revise boundaries across the country as some areas grow, in population terms, faster than others. The problem is largely caused by the Government’s insistence that no constituency should deviate from the norm by more than 5% – it used to be 10%. As it happens, the current Battersea constituency is more or less the right size but when you start changing boundaries right across the country then clearly there is a ripple effect. The result is just about “All Change”.

I opposed the changes for all kinds of reasons but the most important is that the planned growth in population in Nine Elms over the next few years will require the boundaries of Battersea to be changed again before the end of the decade. It is a recipe for constant change and constant confusion. It will weaken people’s identification with their constituency and will therefore, in the end, weaken deomocracy.

For those of you, who are really interested, my actual presentation to the Commission is also on this blog.

2. On the 10th November, I had dinner with Ken Livingstone at a fund raiser for the Putney Labour Party. This picture was taken a couple of years back.

3. On the evening of 1st November I attended the York Gardens Library re-launch. Clearly this was a grand occasion for some celebration, as the work of all those volunteers, who have done so much to save the library, came to fruition. The only really galling thing about the evening is that Tory M.P. Jane Ellison and Tory Cllr Jonathan Cook – the ones who had done most to put the library under pressure – got to have the pleasure of speaking and opening a library that owes almost nothing to them. Really galling for this Labour councillor, and for some of the activists involved in saving the library!

4. On the 3rd November I went to a debate in the Council Chamber on “How Green Wandsworth Council is” with new Transport Minister and Putney MP, Justine Greening, and Wandsworth’s Deputy Leader Jonathan Cook. It was largely about the Government’s new “Green Deal” initiative. Last month, I said that I was sceptical about the Tory party being green – I was not wrong!

The purpose of the “Green Deal” is, in effect, to persuade the energy companies to lend money to domestic customers, so that they can buy insulation and other energy conservation measures. In theory, the utility bills will then be reduced and the customer can re-pay the debt by continuing to pay the old level of bills until their debt is paid off.

It all sounded ok in theory, with repayment made through utility bills on the basis that, as the energy content of the bill declines, then the repayment content of it will increase until the loan has been paid off.

It sounds reasonable in theory but whilst it is clearly not the “Big Solution” that the Government seems to think it is, it also seems to me to have a myriad of problems. Who says a particular investment is going to pay off? Who guarantees the quality of the job done? Who picks up the bill if the energy bills do not come down significantly? How is this all going to be calculated in a period of energy inflation? As they say, the devil is in the detail and details are what this Government is notoriously bad at.

5. On November 5th, I joined Jane Ellison at the formal opening of the Mercy Foundation’s computer training facility at 64 Falcon Road. Jane and I were there to present certificates to “graduates” of their word processing and other courses. You couldn’t say that they were high level qualifications but the comments of some of the graduates were quite moving. One lady said that she was basically illiterate, and I mean illiterate and not computer illiterate, before she started the course but now, three months later, she had just made her first on-line grocery order. She was rightly thrilled – quite an achievement for the Foundation – I thought.

6. Later that day I went to the Fireworks Display in Battersea Park. Did you go? And if so what did you think? The chat where I was, was that it was not as good as in recent years. I took a couple of Japanese academics I know – and they certainly enjoyed it!

7. At the Finance and Corporate Resources Committee on the 16th there was a great deal of solid but largely bureaucratic content but there were two items of real interest to plenty of people in Latchmere and especially right down by Wandsworth Bridge. The first was the decision to declare the Eltringham School site surplus to requirements. The school is in Eltringham Street off Petergate and everyone will know it even if they think they don’t. It can be seen on the left as one approaches the Wandsworth Bridge round-about. It is in the Council’s books as an asset worth more than £10 million. I think at that kind of price we are going to get another very expensive block of flats with not many affordable homes!

The second item was about the Council’s acquisition of Putney Hospital for the purposes of creating another so-called Free School in the Borough, though on this occasion at primary level. I think there is little doubt that Wandsworth Borough Council wants to break up what it sees as the monopoly state schooling system.

8. The following evening the Planning Applications Committee had a record 350 page agenda! Bit of a sweat that was! But despite the size of the agenda, the only matter of any great interest to Latchmere was the application for what effectively will become half a dozen very expensive town houses on the site of the old Labour Exchange in Beechmore Road. If you do not remember it here it is on a wet November day in 2009, when I was canvassing for the then forthcoming Council elections.

9. I am the only Labour representative on the Heliport Consultative Committee, which was held on the 21st. The Heliport is so big and busy that it has, by legislation, a consultative committee just like all major airports in the country. It is, of course, the only heliport that large, but actually we don’t do a great deal other than monitor noise levels and try to keep the disturbance it causes to a minimum.

10. I went to the Battersea Police Ball on the 26th, which as ever was a hoot! Not a cheap evening out but, if you can afford it, I do recommend it at least once. It is so wonderfully naff, or do I mean camp? But it raises plenty of money for the Summer Play Scheme for the children of Battersea – so it’s all in a good cause.

11. I am afraid I couldn’t make the Wayford Street Residents association meeting on 24th November – apologies!

My Programme for December

1. A meeting on the Doddington Estate on 5th December about the Council’s cuts.

2. The Council Meeting on December 7th.

3. The continuing Court Case against a Wandsworth tenant’s son on 12th.

4. The Planning Applications Committee on the 15th.

5. And Christmas! Talking of which A Very Merry Xmas to you and yours!

Did you know?

This rather dashing picture is of Alliott Verdon Roe, the first Englishman to make a powered flight, and founder in 1910 of the AV Roe & Co. aircraft manufacturer (better known as Avro). I am writing about him as the last person pictured in the Haberdasher Arm’s Mural, of whom I have not yet written.
His connection with Battersea and Latchmere, apart from being in Barnes’ mural is rather tenuous. He used the stables at his brother’s house in West Hill to design and model planes including his ‘Bulls Eye’ duplex triplane, which was put into production in an arch beneath the nearby railway. (The Council has very recently, 28th October 2011, unveiled a plaque at the site of Roe’s first workshop in West Hill.)

He was the founding genius of the British aerospace industry, his planes being the first to take part in a bombing raid on German lines in the First World War. But by far his most famous aircraft, betraying his Lancashire origins, was the World War Two bomber, the Lancaster.
See http://www.londonmuralpreservationsociety.com/murals/battersea-perspective/ for Brian’s own description of his mural.

Yours sincerely,
Tony Belton
Latchmere Councillor