1. What a month! Two funerals, a death, a wedding and a “50 years as a councillor party” in the first fortnight; Council candidate selections amid confusion during the whole month; petrol queues and empty supermarket shelves at the end of the month; a new undergound station (or two) for all of us; a new baby for fellow Councillor Kate Stock; and entombment in a Sporle Court lift for me – and those are just the headlines! Oh, and a pro football games.
   

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2. 3^rd September was the day of Kathy Tracey’s funeral. Kathy was a strong Tory councillor and therefore wicked – but actually not on every issue. She of course supported, what to me, were some fairly outrageous Tory policies, but, as boss of Wandsworth’s Children’s Services, she genuinely cared for “children looked after” (or “taken into care” in lay language). She was a passionate supporter of girls’ education and of sex education – perhaps particularly for boys! I well remember an epic battle she fought with some hard-right young Tory councillors on that particular issue. I suspect that she might well have become the Leader of the Council, if she had been a man. Here she is after the refurbishment of the Doddington Activity Centre. I certainly respected her.
   

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3. On 4^th September, fellow councillor Annamarie Crichard invited me to join her and her husband, Steve, at Wimbledon AFC’s new Plough Lane stadium for the league match against Oxford United. I had been to the old Plough Lane stadium, with my parents, in the 80s – but what a difference. The new ground is very neat and well organised and there is clearly space for the expansion required if the club were to be promoted (unlikely this year but they were in the Premiership equivalent forty years ago). One startling difference between new and old was the playing surface. It was like playing on a carpet as opposed to the mud that used to pass for a football pitch in the 80s. As for the game itsrlf, Oxford United started well and took a 1-0 lead into the second half. But then the Dons came good and ran out 3-1 victors.
   

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4. The 9^th September was the day picked for the Celebration of my 50 Years as a Wandsworth councillor. It seemed to go well; and I am delighted to record again my thanks to all who put so much effort into its organisation. And to those of my fellow councillors who funded the event (no Council-paid-for junketing here!). I greatly appreciated the engraved beer tankard presented to https://www.msn.com/en-gb/feed me by the Mayor and which I am holding close to my heart in this picture.

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6. And then on 10^th September I attended the Quaker funeral of an old friend, Ron Elam. Ron and I were “flat neighbours” in the 1960s and worked together in County Hall from then until the abolition of the Greater London Council in 1986. Away from County Hall, he became a very senior and experienced school governor, travelling the country inspecting and monitoring school governing bodies. Although a Labour Party member, he was frequently used by Tory Wandsworth Council to help and advise on the recovery of failing schools. The Quaker funeral service was very moving, very restrained and very comforting. In general, I’m not one for religious occasions and find some positively off-putting but I must say that the Quakers are in a different class! Plain speaking from the heart is hard to beat.
   

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7. To complete the week, on the Saturday, Penny and I were off to the delightful village of Aynho in Northamptonshire for the wedding of one of my colleagues from University – Yes, you read that properly – one of my colleagues from college in the 60s. Mind you it was his third wedding and a very cheerful, happy day it was – lots of dancing, including by me!
   

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8. The following day, Penny and I explored the village. It didn’t take long. It’s not very big but it is spectacular, with a magnificent seventeenth-century mansion (Aynho House), which is used for wedding parties, but not by our party. The most spectacular of the village sites is St. Michael’s Church. It was originally fourteenth-century, but it was destroyed by fire in 1723, except for the tower. Amazingly enough the church was rebuilt in the mid eighteenth-century to look like a country house of the period, but with the church tower standing rather incongruously at one end of it.
   

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9. It really was a turbulent fortnight.
   

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10. The Planning Applications Committee (PAC) on 16^th September included one fascinating decision regarding yet another massive application in Nine Elms. To be honest, I didn’t quite understand it as we were asked both to defer making a decision and to delegate it to the officers. That procedure was very strange and I don’t recall a similar case in all my years’ experience. After all, if there was no urgency, which a decision to defer seemed to imply, then logically there would be enough time to come back to the Committee for due consideration and therefore no need to delegate. It looked frankly odd to me and to most of my Labour colleagues, but the resolution was passed by the Tory majority. I will certainly keep my eyes open to see what follows from their decision!
    

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11. One of the biggest events in Battersea in 2021 has to be the opening of the Battersea Park underground station. I didn’t go to the actual opening but I did travel from the station to the new Nine Elms station just a few days later. What is so noticeable is how clean, fresh and empty the station and the platforms are. It is a timid commuter’s delight but the impact on TfL’s finances is too dreadful to contemplate. Of course, the line needs to continue to Clapham Junction. That would transform the pattern of usage but the money just isn’t there (without government intervention), despite what some critics are claiming. As a result it does run the risk of becoming a massively under-used facility. One fascinating indicator of this is the lack of business at mid-day in the massive Sainsbury’s lower car park at Nine Elms and its usea as a training ground for these young in-line skaters!
    

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12. If you are not interested in the minutiae of politics, you should skip this paragraph because much of the rest of September was taken up by Labour councillors and newcomers competing to be the party’s candidates in next May’s Borough election. The process has been delayed by Covid, and complicated by the ward and boundary changes. So, to take an obvious and personal example, the old Latchmere ward will cease to exist in May 2022 and its three councillors, Simon Hogg, Kate Stock and myself, are competing with two newcomers for the two Falconbrook councillor positions. By definition we cannot all win. It’s a tense time in Battersea Park, Falconbrook and Shaftesbury & Queenstown wards but we will know our candidates by 10^th October.
    

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13. Meanwhile, life continues! On 19^th September, fellow Latchmere Councillor Kate Stock gave birth to a 10 lb 4 oz baby boy, named Jude. Congratulations to Kate and her husband, Tom. Kate doesn’t, by the way, believe in half measures. As well as coping with Jude, and his young sister Edie, and with ward reselections, she and Tom moved house on 30^th September and became very near neighbours of ours.
    

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14. On September 23^rd Kambala Cares, one of the two main volunteer groups helping to cook, shop and care for the vulnerable during the Covid lockdown, organised a party for its volunteers. I went as did Cllr Hogg and, most significantly, Mayor Richard Field. The party organised by Chair Donna Barham was well deserved by the many volunteers and very enjoyable for all.
    

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15. As a councillor, I make regular tours of Latchmere. On September 25^th, I visited a constituent in Sporle Court (pictured here), the old high-rise, giant of north Battersea before all these new higher developments. As it happened, my constituent lived on the 19^th I was alone in the lift, thank goodness, because as it started there was a great clunk, which worried me rather. The lift continued but, when it stopped, just inches short of the 19^th floor platform, the door would not open! Have you ever been trapped in a lift, regardless of which floor it was on? An interesting experience! It was a warm day, so the first thing I did was take off my vest. It was getting hot in there. A few years back I had a bad attack of claustrophobia when in a long dark tunnel. It is essential to keep calm. So, it wasn’t great to be told by Penny, when I rang through to her, “Don’t panic!” She sounded like a government minister on speed!
    

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16. Actually the alarm system worked as it should and, after about 40 minutes, a team of 5 fire-fighters arrived and prised the doors open. Phew! I now have first hand experience of what many of our residents fear on a daily basis; and, whilst incidents like mine are not that frequent, minor lift malfunctions are. Is this the result of poor maintenance? Or a function of age and/or cheap original products. By the way I did visit my constituent!
    

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17. Talking about not panicking, What do you think about the Government’s performance during the petrol crisis, during the food delivery crisis, during the never-ending Covid crisis? Perhaps there is no need to panic about petrol, food or Covid but there certainly seems to be good reason to panic about our government and its competence levels!
    

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My Programme for October

1. Well, of course, Labour councillors in Battersea are pre-occupied with the tense, process of selecting candidates for the council election in May 2022. Thankfully the decision day is not now far off and then normal life can resume!
2. In terms of regular, scheduled meetings I have the full Council on 12^th October, and the Planning Applications Committee (PAC) on the 19^th.

Did you Know?

Last month I asked, “where I was in Latchmere ward when I took this picture of more than 100 solar panels?”

Plenty of you had an answer to this and many were nearly, but not quite, correct – such as the response that I was on the train pulling into Wandsworth Town station. The actual answer was on the 10^th floor of Oxborough House, which is the tallest of the new blocks on the “newish” development in Eltringham Street.

And this month a different teaser:

Which ward will be abolished next May and take with it the proud record of being the only ward in Wandsworth never, ever to have been anything other than represented by Labour councillors? And don’t say that is a difficult question!

1. I realise that, more than once, I have started my newsletter with the less-than-startling comment that the previous month had been quiet but, in this case, August really was a quiet month – as you perhaps would expect. But I did have a meeting on Friday, the thirteenth (not that I am superstitious), with the current developers, Balance Out Living, of the site on the corner of Culvert and Battersea Park Roads – the one surrounded by a blue hoarding, which forces pedestrians onto the road. I say the “current” developers, as the previous ones disappeared at some point after getting planning permission. Don’t ask me whether they were Covid-burnt or market-roasted but, one way or another, they have gone.
   

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2. The new developers plan to build a “community living” space. Interestingly it will be the third planning application for such a development in Wandsworth, that I can recall over the last few years. Work on the other two, one near Earlsfield Station and the other in Chatfield Road, just off York Road, is quite advanced. The concept is to build blocks of living spaces, supported by a host of communal activities, such as workspaces, film and TV rooms, kitchens, and a cafe/restaurant. The end result would be like the best student apartment blocks but in a more luxurious style than that usually associated with students. The age range of the projected residents is wider than you might imagine (based on a couple of similar developments built in West London 10 years ago) though, of course, this kind of block is not very suitable for either families or the elderly.
   

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3. A consultation leaflet was distributed to the immediate neighbourhood in the last week of August describing the proposed development. Here is a CGI (Computer Generated Image) of the original and this one is not very different. It is going as high as 13 storeys, which, in my opinion, is still far too high for this site; but, as the previous permission is still valid, there is nothing we can do about that. There is though the hope of work starting on the site soon and a promise that the school’s sports hall will be built as soon as permission is granted, which could be in October or November. So it is broadly good news for the school, its pupils and the residents of Dagnall Street, who have had to put up with a building site for far too many months, even if the development is still in my view too high and too large for this site.
   

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4. On the 19^th August, I had the Planning Applications Committee (PAC) Only three of the applications were for sites in Battersea and two were of only very, very local interest, but the picture shows the third, a new 8 storey building, on Battersea Bridge Road, opposite the Union pub. It includes 24 residential units, of which 9 are, so-called, affordable units, above some offices and most interestingly a community/church hall on the ground floor. The development is part of a controversial re-generation of the Surrey Lane estate. By the way, on this occasion only 54 members of the public watched the PAC online but, interestingly, another 80 viewers tuned in later to the podcast, no doubt to catch up on what happened to applications of relevance to them. Interestingly enough, one of the local Tory councillors, and the Battersea Society, objected to the height of the building and thought it out-of-character. Is this an indicator of the “Tory worm turning” against Battersea’s incessant upward development?
   

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5. Unfortunately the Committee was held on the same evening as the Battersea Society’s summer party at St. Mary’s church. I was sad to miss that party, as it is one of the nicest social events of the summer. My regret was compounded by the rain which forced Battersea Labour Party to abandon its Battersea Park picnic on 21^st August and re-locate it in the pub, the Magic Garden – pleasant enough but not the same as a picnic, nor as Covid secure!
   

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6. On one of my ward walkabouts, I came across the 3 security men guarding the Battersea Methodist Chapel. At some time in August, some protestors occupied the chapel building with the intention, they claimed, to take it and turn it into a community resource. They had thought that they were occupying a “council property” and were quick enough to repent and leave when they discovered it was still a church property. Good for them BUT isn’t it worrying that they clearly did not think that council ownership was, in any sense, good for the community? The trust between publicly elected bodies and the public, so strong when I was a kid in the immediate post-war years, is today dangerously torn asunder.
   

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7. I also came across this development site, which is the start of the Council’s building work on the new Northcote Library, right across the road from the current one. (For those who know it well, it is the site of the old Chatham Hall, scene in the past of jumble sales, political meetings, tenants associations and more recently of a day nursery). The old, much liked but totally inaccessible library building (you try it with a wheel-chair!) is likely to be replaced in 2023/24 by shop-fronts and housing in a style no doubt appropriate for Northcote Road.
   

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8. On 30^th/31st August Penny and I visited family in Winchester……very pleasant, lousy weather, nothing special.
   

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My Programme for September

1. September (and maybe October) will be occupied with the very intense, nervous process of selecting candidates for the council election in May 2022. The process is the first step towards the Council Election and is in some ways the biggest hurdle to overcome. If you get selected in a “safe Labour” ward, then you are halfway to being elected as a councillor in May. The same is, of course, also true for Tory candidates in “safe Tory” wards. But the problem is that, after the ward boundary changes and redistribution, no one quite knows which wards are safe. So, if your local councillors are a bit snappy and nervous, then forgive them – they are probably having a trying time in selection meetings!
2. In terms of regular, scheduled meetings I have the Conservation Advisory Committee on 2^nd September, the Crematorium Board on 7^th and the Planning Applications Committee (PAC) on the 16^th.
3. Meanwhile, on the 12^th September, we are going to the wedding party of an old college friend, who got married a year ago and has planned about three other Covid postponed parties. Tony (yes, another Tony) has given up waiting on an official end to Covid and has decided to go with the flow. The party is in the lovely little Northamptonshire town of Aynho.
4. The following week is the week of the Labour Party Conference, which of course is followed immediately afterwards by the Tory Conference – something tells me that there are going to be some hard battles during that fortnight!
   

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Did you Know?

Last month I asked, “Which Olympians from this year’s Tokyo Olympiad either live in Battersea or were said on TV to have had family watching the event on TV in Battersea?” Quite clearly none of you were interested in that question as not one of you even attempted an answer. All I can say, is that one athlete, a member of the equestrian team and a silver medallist, name of Tom McEwen, was said by the TV commentator to have parents watching at home in Battersea.

And for this month can you tell me where I was in Latchmere ward when I took this picture of more than 100 solar panels?

PS. In the summer I gave an hour’s zoom talk to the Battersea Society, called Battersea, 1801-2021, the history of this London suburb. It went quite well – I am told, so I just wondered whether any readers would be interested in hearing a repeat. Let me know at tonybelton99@gmail.com and I will timetable a repeat zoom session.