Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere November Newsletter (# 54)

October highlights

1. First of all a big thank you to all those who sent me good wishes for a speedy recovery from streptococcal G poisoning. I am making reasonable but not exactly speedy progress as some of you will have seen as I struggle around, but now on one and not two crutches!

2. Second an even bigger thank you to all those who responded about the possible closure of the CJ Grant Road exits at an earlier time than currently. I got 40 responses between when I put the message out at about 11.30 am and 5 pm on Day 1. I immediately sent those responses off to the Town Hall and then onto the railway companies. I have heard nothing since – hopefully we have nipped that one in the bud.

3. The Battersea Park School (BPS) saga rolls on. You may remember that I suggested that the Government was intending to make the school into an Academy sponsored by Harris (the carpet people). Well this month the Governors were invited on a trip to see two Harris academies in Merton. I am afraid that I thought that I could hardly manage to stumble around a couple of schools in one day and so I did not go. But nothing definite has happened since then and indeed the Government has sent a relatively “soft letter” about the school’s reactions to the original Ofsted Report – perhaps the rather good GCSE results announced in August have resulted in a couple of second thoughts.

I would still bet on the Government pressing on with their dogmatic policy of moving BPS out of local democratic control and making it a sponsored academy. But given the pressures on the Government and the very public failures of their policies in a couple of recently well-publicised cases, there is just a little chance that they might back down.

4. The 8th October Planning Applications Committees had a number of interesting applications, most particularly for the Prince’s Head and the one-time Chopper or @Battersea pubs/clubs. Both of these pubs have been the centre of considerable local concern over the years but now it seems as though both are going to be re-developed. There have been a number of applications, which have reached an advanced stage of consideration on both sites but finally applications came to Committee and were approved.

The Prince’s Head application was for 19 flats (16 two-bed and 3 three-bed), of which 5 would be of a shared ownership type, and therefore classified as “affordable”. These would be built above commercial lettings on the ground floor. Given the nature of the Falcon Road shopping frontage I am not absolutely certain that the shopping units will work – for a start most of the shops in Falcon Road are on the opposite side of the road. But I guess it rather depends upon the nature of the shopping. If it is one of those Tesco/Sainsbury locals then I am sure that it will be a success – but we will have to see. I know that for some of the residents almost anything would be a plus when compared with the Prince’s Head at its worst!

The Chopper application was similar but slightly larger with 29 flats being built above commercial properties, including a new pub. 6 of these flats would be of a shared ownership style tenure. Hopefully the pub will replace the rather belligerent character of the old pub with a pleasant recreational but modernised pub. Both applications were accepted.

I thought three other applications were particularly interesting. One was for 157 flats and houses to be built round the old Elliott School site just off Putney Hill. I mention it because I know lots of kids from Battersea went to Elliott. I couldn’t help noticing the outraged protests of Putney residents. The sale of the land and the use for private residential housing was to pay for the Council’s costs in building the new Ark Academy to replace Elliott. The point was that these were luxury housing built to low densities and costing, well we will have to wait and see, but my guess is north of £2 million – and the locals were protesting!

Another application for a 7 storey building, providing 12 flats, on a miniscule site opposite the Battersea Dogs’ Home provided an interesting contrast. Seven storeys squeezed in on the space of a tennis court as opposed to spacious large properties, two contrasting sites, one in Battersea and the other In Putney – I hardly need to say more!

But I was surprised that the one application that was refused was for a large (13 storey) commercial and residential development on the Upper Richmond Road near to East Putney station. Surprised because the Council has appeared to allow applications of almost any scale in “town centre” sites but on this occasion the recommendation was for refusal and refuse it we did. Was it because it was in the Council Leader’s own ward and his own constituents were protesting?

5. On Thursday, 17th October, I managed to drag myself around the Caius House  (Caius is a latinised word for keys and is actually pronounced KEYS) development just behind Badric Court. Caius House will mean nothing to many of you because the “old” Caius House youth club was demolished in about 2008. (See below for the history of Caius) The new youth club, and the residential properties above, which are paying for the development, are due to be handed over in spring, 2014. I and several other councillors went round the site and although it is difficult to tell from this photograph it is obvious that we are soon going to have a splendid new club right next to York Gardens, the Kambala and the Winstanley. We were told that it will be the largest youth club in the UK. Let’s hope that it is also the best. The top picture is of the new sports hall at the club and the bottom one is of the old building demolished in 2007/8.

6. The 16th October Council meeting did consider the cuts that the Council is going to make in the housing department (and others). Currently the Housing Department is taking the brunt of the cuts, but we will see many more. It is a little difficult to describe all the arguments for those of you who wonder what Council meetings are like look at this link http://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/info/200318/decision_making/1606/council_meetings_online_16_october_2013/4. showing a U-Tube stream of the housing cuts debate. If you don’t want to watch it all – which I could well understand then Cllr Hogg’s speech is 12 minutes into the stream and mine is at 21.20 minutes!

7. On Sunday, 27th October, I attended the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Eid Celebration in York Gardens Library, where I was asked to give a speech on peace!. I am hardly an expert but I did to an audience of about 50 Battersea residents. The Ahmadiyya mosque in Putney is the first in London and was built in 1913 and their Merton mosque is the largest in western Europe. Some of the local organisers live on the Winstanley estate.

8. Finally a grudging congratulations to Jane Ellison, our MP, who has just been made Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Public Health). Despite our pretended enmity across the party divide, Jane and I get on quite well and if this appointment is recognition for her work opposing female genital mutilation then it is well deserved even if I hope she loses the job at the next General Election!

My Programme for November

1. Once the clocks go back we are in to the busiest time for councillors, especially in the winter before the next Council Elections – Yes, they are next May and so the rounds of canvassing and leafleting will be starting up soon. I do hope you accept me knocking on your door with patience and humour!

2. On 7th November I have as ever the Planning Applications Committee. On the 19th I have the Strategic Planning and Transport Committee, followed on the 21st by the Housing Committee.

3. The Borough Residents’ Forum, a committee of Council tenants and leaseholders, meets on 13th and I am the Labour Party’s representative on that.

4. The 15th November marks the 120th anniversary of the opening of what was Battersea Town Hall, now Battersea Arts Centre (BAC). BAC is laying on some kind of an event, which I will be attending. I look forward to seeing what exactly they are going to do – fireworks? A theatrical review? An exhibition? I will report back!

5. For my pains I am also the Treasurer of an organisation called SERA, which is a “green lobby” group with the Labour Party. SERA has its annual general meeting in Manchester on 23rd November and so on that Saturday I will be in Manchester.

Do you know anything about Caius House? I guess not.

Caius House is a charity and youth club which has been serving the community of Battersea for over a century.

Gonville and Caius (see picture and pronounced Keys) College, Cambridge, is a 14th century foundation created by Edmund Gonville, a Norfolk cleric, and refounded two centuries later by John Caius, a successful and very wealthy student from the college. In 1887 some undergraduates and fellows from the College rented a house in what was then the very poor London industrial suburb of Battersea. They started a College “settlement” where former undergraduates from the College lived and ran a range of clubs for local residents. Shortly afterwards they started a boys club (and later a girls club) and found that it attracted members from the poorest and least educated young people in the area.

By 2008 the Caius House youth club building (located on Holman Road) had served the local the young people of Battersea well for about a century but was badly in need of renovation; however the layout was thought to be totally unsuitable for a modern youth club. The Trustees decided to sell the plot of land to a developer who would build residential accommodation with space for a modern youth club on the first two floors. After consultation with youth members, the community and the Council, the derelict old building was demolished and the process of re-building a modern state of the art youth club began.