Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere April Newsletter (# 48)
March highlights
1. There was a Council meeting on Wednesday, 6th March. The headline debate was on the Council Tax but I guess that most will know that there has been a small increase, an increase which Labour opposed. I think more important was a further debate about the next round of cuts, which look like causing mayhem with Council services. I am sorry to say that in my view we, Wandsworth Labour councillors, have been a bit supine in accepting the pressures on the Council. We all know that national government holds all the cards and that a Labour Council would have to be cutting almost as savagely as the Tories, but I do think we should be making a noise about it all.
David Cameron and George Osborne have got the economy seriously wrong and everyone, except those blinded by Tory publicity, is beginning to realise it. Wandsworth Tories have little alternative but to support their government but Labour should be shouting from the rooftops that these cuts are damaging the country and destroying the economy both nationally and locally. The bedroom tax alone will take £3million a year out of the Wandsworth economy.
2. I went to the Big Local meeting at Providence House on the 7th and a couple of Battersea Park School governor meetings but on the whole I have had a fairly quiet month a little handicapped not only by the appalling weather but also by a bit of poor health, happily now on the mend.
3. There was not much to excite at the Planning Applications Committee on 12th March, although we did see the first reaction to the invasion of Boris Bike docking stations. An application for a docking station in Lavender Gardens was due to be considered but I put a spoke in the wheels and got the application deferred. We will see in April just what the Committee decide to do but public opposition is mounting.
I realise that some of my cycling friends will be a little peeved with me for this but I have no regrets. I think that TfL are going very much OTT (over the top) on Boris bikes. We will see whether I am right or not but a large bike docking station every 300 yards might well be appropriate for central London but it seems a bit much here in Wandsworth.
4. On 4th March there was a small celebration of Clapham Junction’s 150th birthday as a major station. I know some constituents were keen to be there. My real regrets are that I was not feeling well enough to
get there!
5. On 25th March I went to a small “arts theatre” in Camden to see a play called,“The Briefcase”. 
Here is a picture of it, why? Because it is mine and was centre stage! The play was written by Timothy Turner, who is the son of my fellow Labour councillor, Billi Randall from Tooting. I won’t fill this newsletter with the details but you can see a review of the play in my blog at https://tonybelton.wordpress.com/.
6. I noticed one day in late March that the mock Tudor gatehouse to the Peabody Estate had disappeared, that is the one at the corner of Boutflower Road and Strath Terrace. The demolition of the Peabody Estate had begun. I decided to visit that afternoon and take some photographs of the old estate before it was just a fading memory. I know it was not much to write home about but it is amazing how quickly memories fade and so here is a quick selection of photographs of the Peabody.
Three views of the Peabody, including the Eckstein Road gatehouse
My Programme for April
1. There is a Planning Applications Committee on the 11th April, on the same day as the police Special Neighbourhood Team.
2. I am going to a guest lecture from the poet laureate at Roehampton University on the 12th.
3. On the 23rd I have the Strategic Planning and Transportation Committee followed on the 25th by the Housing Committee.
4. On the 30th all councillors are having a teach-in about Children Looked After. This very important session is, I guess, almost unknown to most constituents. It is about councillors personal and collective responsibility for children looked after by the Council. Ever since the dreadful case of Baby P, when you may remember a small boy died through hopeless parenting and inadequate social service support, the Government has made it clear that in principle councillors are in loco parentis, i.e. we are in the position of being parents and have their legal responsibilities. What a responsibility!
Do you know?
Senia Dedic? I first met Senia as Secretary of the Falcon Road estate residents association (FERA – the little known estate behind Falcon Road on the opposite side from Grant road). It was obvious that she was a special person with a very special history, so I decided to interview her for my newsletter.
Senia was born in Sarajevo, then in Sarajevo but now the capital of Bosnia. Do you recall the Yugoslav wars and the bombing of Sarajevo in the early 1990s? Well Senia was there. She tells me, “It was devastating to hear the Soviet built MIGs flying overhead. I remember being in a basement cellar hearing the bombs explode above us. In one night I counted 586, before I stopped counting. My fiancé (now husband) was in the newly formed Bosnian army and to my despair went to the front line.”
“Then water, electricity, telephone and food ran out. Bread queues were bombed and thousands of hungry people were killed every day. I spent 4 months in the local communal basement with my parents and our neighbours and Mum and Dad were begging me to leave the city and the bloodshed. I left the city on the last available bus to the Croatian border. From there I had to hitchhike to Zagreb and get the train to Zurich where my sister lived. After further adventures I decided to come to London and settle in Battersea. These 20 years here are the longest, most stable period of my life”.
Five generations of her family lived under five regimes in Sarajevo, from old empires, to the Soviet Block, to today. The family history is a microcosm of the turbulence and warfare that swept through the Balkans in the 20th century.
Here in Wandsworth, with her family pictured, Senia founded the Women of Wandsworth
(WoW), and the Parents’ Forum, a drop-in centre where parents bring their issues and worries.
WoW also formed a voluntary community organisation called SpaceMax to tackle overcrowding in Wandsworth by helping people make shelves, fold down desks and beds, help with de-cluttering homes, making partition walls, etc.
WoW runs an intergenerational project and a Kids project, which organises educational and residential trips for urban children to a working farm in Devon.
Senia is a Governor at Christ Church School, a Katherine Low Settlement Trustee; and a member of Battersea Rotary Club. She started the PTA and was a founder of Positive Parent Action, representing the voice of parents with disabled children. (One of her own children is a patient in Great Ormond Street, where Senia is a Member of the Hospital Trust).
Appropriate, I think, that Senia was awarded the Mayor’s Team Award for her outstanding contribution to improving London and the quality of life for Londoners.
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 