Tag Archive | Formula E in Battersea Park

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere June, 2016, Newsletter (# 85)

1. May was a pretty amazing month, starting with my old friend, Sadiq Khan’s, great election victory as the London Mayor on May 5^th. Sadiq became a Wandsworth Councillor in 1994, and

served on it for 12 years. He was Deputy Leader of the Labour Group of councillors for most of the last four years he was on the Council. Clearly he had a spectacular victory as Mayor, although that was partly due to the awful campaign fought by Zac Goldsmith. However, whatever your political persuasion, I think that most of us would agree that he has had an excellent first month as Mayor. I am sure we all wish him the best for the next four years. The picture is of him and me in the Labour Manifesto for the 1998 Borough Election!

2. Leonie Cooper, a Latchmere councillor (2006-10) and chair of Chesterton Governing Body until a couple of years ago, was also elected on the same day as the London Assembly Member (GLAM) for Merton and Wandsworth. I am sure there are quite a few Latchmere residents, who will remember her. Congratulations to her and best wishes for her next four years.

3. A couple of days later, I went to the Youth Club in Petworth Road to talk through Battersea’s 20^th century history with a group of youngsters putting a play on about the subject. They performed it, called Fight, a couple of times at the Arts Centre. If it does return to the stage around here do go and see it.

Battersea Park

4. Afterwards I went for a walk round Battersea Park. And what a beautiful day it was. This picture of the Park on 8^th May shows it in its finest spring finery, a great place for family fun. Not that it is only the Park that can look at its best in spring. Here is a canvassing session at Shepherd House, Winstanley Estate! (NB. I cant get this picture to appear!)

5. And so it was another great moment when later in the month, Formula E decided that enough was enough and that they should find somewhere else in the city for their London Grand Prix. So this year’s event in July will be the last in the Park for this major, but highly disruptive international event. Although the Battersea Park Action Group can claim much of the credit for forcing this change of heart, I can’t help feeling that the real motivation came from Formula E’s organisers themselves. From my experience at the event last year, there are just too many trees in the Park to make the Grand Prix a really good televisual experience and not even Wandsworth Tories could imagine cutting down all the trees in order to improve the camera shots.

6. That however is jumping ahead of myself. On 10^th May Wandsworth Labour Group had a reshuffle. Our then Labour Leader, Rex Osborn, stood down because of health problems and my fellow Latchmere ward councillor, Simon Hogg, was elected our Leader. It will be interesting to see how he takes on the still powerful Tory controlled Council.

7. The next day I went to the Council’s “Academies and Free Schools Forum”. It was a fascinating glance of just how the establishment operates if it has its way. The Forum is not a public meeting. There is no press access and the agendas are not public – it’s just rather important. The man from the Ministry came and told us in no uncertain terms what I guess we all know. Namely that, whilst the Government may have backed off the public commitment to force all schools out of local councils and into privately led academy chains, there is no question that such a route is the so-called “direction of travel”.

8. In case you ever had any doubt, this Government is clearly set on abolishing the public sector – bar perhaps the armed forces and the police. One would have thought education was difficult to privatise but they are well on their way to achieving that end. How long for the NHS? Hazard a guess!

9. One other interesting straw in the wind, I think, is the potential tie up between Chestnut Grove secondary and Chesterton primary schools in some kind of academy trust. Meanwhile, it seemed to me from the discussion that one special interest group in the current established educational set-up to have protected itself from the Government is the Roman Catholic church, whose schools seem to have avoided all threats – at least so far!

10. Went away for a week-end with our grandchildren on the 14^th – had a great time and here are mother and Jamie, dad and Scarlett.

11. On the 18^th we had the Annual Council Meeting, where my other fellow councillor, Wendy Speck, was appointed/elected Deputy Mayor. The formal position is that she is appointed by the Mayor, but in practice she was elected by the Labour councillors. Here she is celebrating with a glass of red wine and wearing the old Battersea Mayoral chain. For historical interest, when Battersea and Wandsworth were merged to become the modern Borough in 1964, the Wandsworth Mayoral chain became the new Mayoral chain and the Battersea one became the Deputy Mayor’s chain, making it rather grander than any other Deputy Mayoral chain that you will see anywhere. I think we might see quite a bit of it this year, starting with the June 25^th Falcon Festival – see below!

12. The next day I had the Planning Applications Committee (PAC). By recent standards this was a relatively light agenda – is the London property market taking a breather? One application affects Latchmere and that was on the corner of Chesney Street and Battersea Park Road. It is for an OK development of a fairly scruffy site and should not be too contentious. Two others might interest Battersea residents, one being for the development of a very thin, 11-storey block of flats in Elcho Street, which might be considered as a step towards completing large developments on the river-front between Albert and Battersea Bridges or an over-scale, over-dense calamity, depending upon your perspective! The other was the refusal of an application to re-develop the old British Lion Pub. Interesting that one – PAC much to the surprise of some, I am sure, decided that the applicant was just trying to get too much on to too small a site and was trying it on.

13. On the afternoon of the 20^th I went to St. Marks church, Battersea Rise, to hear a presentation from Wandsworth Foodbank on Food Poverty in Wandsworth. It was frankly shocking. They told us that the Trussell Trust, which runs foodbanks across the country, calculates that the use of foodbanks has increased by 2% this year, that in London it has increased by 5%, and that in Wandsworth it has increased by 25%. It is perhaps particularly ironic that St. Marks’ Foodbank, which is used extensively by quite a few Latchmere residents, is just a couple of hundred yards from Northcote Road, a street devoted to plentiful, and on occasions excessive, consumption of food and drink!

14. In the last week of May, and no doubt in the first two weeks of June, I will be spending time trying to ensure that another of my colleagues Councillor Rosena Allin-Khan wins the Tooting by-election, following Sadiq’s win, and then, as will we all I trust, I will be concentrating on the European Referendum, but just before that I spent the last May week-end at the Hay-On-Wye Festival – very enjoyable and great weather unlike here these last few days! I am the one in all red!

My Programme for June

1. On Sunday, 12^th, I am leading one of my history walks from the Latchmere pub to Battersea Arts Centre. This event is part of the Wandsworth Heritage Festival. If you are interested, then do come but it would be helpful if you could drop me an email first and I will let you know time and details for meeting. It costs £10, which I hope will not put you off.

2. Then on the 16^th is the Tooting by-election and on 23^rd the Referendum.

3. On the 25^th we have the brand new Falcon Festival, centred on Falcon Road and Este Road, with special mention for Coppock Close. The whole show will be opened by Wendy Speck, our Deputy Mayor, at mid-day, and there will be lots of food and drink, of course, but also other entertainments and stalls. If you see me, I will be doing a Battersea history show in conjunction with the Heritage Library and Battersea Society. Do come up and introduce yourself.

4. With all this going on, and the traditional close down of Wandsworth Council for elections, we will not be getting back to the Planning Committee (PAC) until 27^th, immediately followed by the Education Committee on the 28^th, the Passenger Transport Liaison Group on the 29^th and the police Special Neighbourhood Team on the 30^th!

Did you know?

The horse trough, I highlighted last month, is of course in Cabul Road, opposite about no.11.

I have to thank my good friend, Christine Eccles, for this difficult one. Here is a photograph of a grand building that stood on the north-side of York Road, just east of Lombard Road, until demolished in the 1960s, having been bought by the Council in 1963. It was replaced, on a different but nearby site, by a building many residents go into on every election day. Can you guess what it was and where its replacement is?

Another picture, discovered by

Christine, was this great c. 1882-5 picture of the shop run by Arthur & Lucy Layzell, at 80 Maysoule Road.

The prices, you can clearly see, for eggs, bread, etc., are 2 shillings and sixpence, 2/-, 1/8d, etc. Which in modern terms would be the equivalent of 12.5P, 10P and 8.4P. How very different Battersea looked back then!

March 9, 2016

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere March, 2016, Newsletter (# 82)

On February 2^nd, I was briefed on the plans for, what I called last month, the Tesco block on Falcon Road, though strictly speaking neither of the two planned retail units are definitely going to be Tescos – that is yet to be decided. The intention is to do a comprehensive re-development, between Khyber and Patience Roads, with retail on the ground floor and four storeys of residential units above. How many of these will be affordable (in the modern jargon definition of affordable) is up for negotiation. These indicative drawings of the development show the intention: it will have an adverse impact on 1-15 Patience Road and maybe on sunlight in 2-8 Patience Road. However, by the standards of some of the giant developments nearby this is unexceptional. OK, I hope you agree.
I went to the SNT Meeting, on 4^th February at the George Shearing Centre, in Este Road. SNT is police jargon for the police Special Neighbourhood Team and they have quarterly meetings with a number of local representatives of resident associations and tenant groups, where issues of ”Latchmere interest” are discussed. Unfortunately, because of clashes with other meetings, I often cannot get there. The police told us that there were 8 more crimes in January than there had been in January last year but that there had been a fall of 28 in December compared with the previous year. The good news is that on the whole the trend across the Borough has, for some years, been downwards.
One minor pleasure of being a councillor for many years is that occasionally someone, usually a student of politics or journalism, wants to come and write an essay based on your experiences. On 10th February, Andri, a Roehampton student of journalism came along to quiz me on the nature and significance of local politics – so that he could write a paper on the subject. It gives one a chance to indulge in the kind of self-centred ramblings that constituents would never put up with. Fun – and it ended far too soon! I hope that Andri’s essay got a good mark!
On 11^th February I had the first of two Education and Children’s Services Committees. Two important items were under discussion, namely the Schools Admissions system and Pupil Place Planning. However, as the transfer between primary and secondary schools seems to have happened quite smoothly this year there was not much to say on the admissions system except “steady as she goes”. Since the Committee met, the potential shortage of secondary school places across the country has been national news. It has been said that the country may have a shortfall of one million places in 5-10 years’ time. And certainly local authorities have protested about the absurdity created by the current Government, whereby local authorities are responsible for providing a sufficient number of school places but are not actually allowed to provide them directly. The academies, it is hoped, will just expand or contract appropriately but without being part of any planning system. The Tory party’s daft reliance on the market could be the cause of much heartache. However, here in Wandsworth we were re-assured that there would be sufficient secondary places even if there might be a tight squeeze in some years. But you may remember that last month I commented that the Chestnut Grove Academy is embarking on the demolition and redevelopment of the school – one Council paper says that there will be 88 extra places and another says there will be none! How we are meant to plan on that basis beggars belief!
There were also a number of cuts, as seems inevitable these days. One was the effective closure of the Alton Activity Centre for youngsters – regrettable as that is, it will have no impact on Latchmere. Perhaps more relevant is the closure of the Accredited Training and Assessment Centre (ATAC), which currently operates out of Battersea Park Road Library, with the loss of half a dozen trainer jobs. But although it is very local to Latchmere I don’t know much about ATAC, which perhaps says something about its significance, or lack of, in the community.
On the 18^th there was the Community Services Committee, of which I am not a member, but which I will mention because there were a number of issues of importance to Latchmere, namely the possibility of extending the parking control zones (cpz) in Eltringham/Petergate Road area and Wye Street and installing a zebra crossing in Ingrave Street near to Falconbrook School – a mixed bag! The recommendation to extend the parking zone hours in the Eltringham/Petergate area was deferred until June, thanks unfortunately to the intervention, as I understand it, of Tory St. Mary Park councillor Rory O’Broin. The extension of the cpz was agreed in Wye Street and the zebra crossing refused, even though the Committee agreed to “improve” the road signs about the school.
On the 22^nd we had the second of the two Education and Children’s Services Committees and this was a far more dramatic occasion. You may not have heard but in December Ofsted gave Wandsworth’s Children’s Services Department a damning report on services for disturbed and vulnerable children and services for young persons, which it said were either inadequate or in need of improvement. It is many years since Wandsworth last had such a stinging rebuke from central government and the Committee discussed how we should recover from this position and make the services as good as they should be. I must make it clear that these services serve a very small minority of Wandsworth’s children, so if you have kids in the school system here in the borough it almost certainly does NOT affect you or your kids. However, if they are in the Council’s care or severely disadvantaged in some way then it is just possible that you (and yours) are affected. If you are concerned that this may affect you, then please get in touch and I will see if I can help.
But in terms of making generic reforms we changed the staffing structure, introduced new management and monitoring procedures and worked out a longer term plan to make sure that the Department improves its practise. You may also have heard that I, in effect, moved a vote of no confidence in the Leader and the Executive member of the Council for Children’s Services. I knew, of course, that this was not going to be accepted by the majority (Tory) party and so in a sense it was “gesture politics”. However since at least one senior officer decided to resign, I think that the politicians in charge at the time should also take the rap – but here in Wandsworth, sadly, they did NOT.
The Planning Applications Committee was on February 24^thand what a busy night it was! First up we had the application for Formula E in Battersea Park I can see that this is going to be an annual occasion! This time the event is scheduled for early July and, as best I could understand it, it was for more of the Park to be closed to the public for slightly less time. There is no doubt that the event is both immensely popular with many and very unpopular with many others, some of whom are pictured demonstrating outside the Town Hall. My fear is that all the commercial operations that surround Grand Prix racing will slowly but surely take a greater and greater grasp in the Park and that with time the very nature of the Park will change. It is also significant, at least to me, that the date has been put back a couple of weeks into the very heart of summer – what a time to close great swathes of the Park. You will have guessed that I was against and I know many of you will have been for – but that’s the way it goes!
There were many other interesting potential developments, but not particularly near to or relevant to Latchmere. One example was the plan to demolish and reconstruct Cringle Dock in Nine Elms Lane. This was imaginative! Can you imagine one of London’s largest refuse transfer stations essentially being rebuilt under a canopy, on which 500 flats are to be built, with the refuse barges appearing out from under rather like a James Bond villain’s underground attack base. Is this really going to happen? Well the completion date is in 2030! Another mega-development was planned for Nine Elms Lane and there were many others and the Committee did not end until about 2 minutes past midnight!
On the 25^th my fellow Councillor Simon Hogg and I had another discussion with officers on the Winstanley regeneration programme, though as you know it largely affects the York Road estate and not Winstanley. It is difficult to report anything specific about that other than that work proceeds and that the Council hopes to start work relatively soon on Penge and Inkster Houses.
The Finance and Corporate Services Committee met on 25^th Again I am not a member but I thought it worth mentioning that it was decided to increase Council Tax by 3.9%, the maximum allowed by law without triggering a referendum. But to compensate for that increase, the London Mayor’s budget has now been reduced as the costs of the 2012 Olympics are dropping out of his budget, and so we will all see a reduction in our own tax bills.
In this newsletter, I have never ever referred to an internal Labour Party meeting, largely because I don’t think that they are of public interest but last Thursday, 25^th February, our meeting was an exception. We organised radical readings from a number of famous radicals from the past, from Gerard Winstanley to Charlotte Despard, from Labour’s first leader Keir Hardie to Clem Attlee, PM from 1945-51. The readings were inspirational and led by Prunella Scales and Timothy West. Here is Tim in full flow.
Finally I thought I should put in a picture of the Latchmere Recreation Ground. On 23rd October the messy tarmac was ripped up and the area re-seeded and landscaped. Some of this work had to be done twice because of the wet winter but the Town Hall hopes to open up the Recreation Ground in time for Easter. It will be a welcome extension of green space in Latchmere.

My Programme for March

I have a meeting in Portcullis House (that’s a twentieth century annex to the House of Commons next to old Scotland Yard) on 2^nd March, when a cross-party selection of London MPs and councillors will discuss the Government’s cuts to schools’ budgets, and later the same day a SERA think tank. SERA is the Labour Party’s green lobbying organisation and we will discuss our plans for the coming years.
There will be the regular Labour Group meeting: that is Wandsworth’s Labour councillors, on 3^rd.
There is an Education and Standards Group on 7^th
An old friend of mine, Anita Pollock, who was also the MEP (Member of the European Parliament for Wandsworth, 1989-99), is launching a book on Europe in Westminster – that should be pleasant.
The Council Meeting is on 9^th
On 10^th March there will be the opening of the Winstanley/York Road estate office in Pennethorne House, followed not long after by the opening of a new Citizens’ Advice Bureau at the main library on Lavender Hill.
I hope to be able to attend a Mayoral hustings with Zak Goldsmith face to face with Sadiq Khan and candidates no doubt from the Greens, Lib/Dems and UKIP.
The Planning Applications Committee is on 23^rd

Did you know?

You may remember that in January I went to the Design Awards Panel and challenged readers to guess, which of the designs received a commendation and why? Well, I must confess that I was a bit surprised because of those who responded most got it right!. And the winner was this very discreet extension (it’s the bit on the top!) to a residential block in Nightingale Lane. It is extremely quiet and under-stated. It adds 5 or 6 flats to the block and just walking by most people don’t even notice it. All the councillors and laymen supported it and all the professionals hated it.

The professional architects and designers wanted a building that “made a statement” or “expressed the architect’s personality” – perhaps rather like this glass roof extension, which was another of the entries. All very interesting but I think a little bit more important than that. Doesn’t it raise the question as to whether architects are in the business for their own gratification and not really very interested in whether their creations suit the surrounding environment?

Meanwhile for next month can anyone come up with a direct link between Latchmere and George Bernard Shaw or GBS? GBS was a very famous playwright of the first half of the twentieth century with plays such as Man and Superman, Major Barbara and many, many others. For those of you for whom the first half of the twentieth century is another world, then he will be best known for Pygmalion, the play at the heart of the musical My Fair Lady.

February 4, 2016

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere February, 2016, Newsletter (# 81)

I guess that you could say that January started (as opposed to 2015 ended), for me, with the Battersea Arts Centre, New Year’s Eve Party. Do you have a problem with 31st December? It should be a wild party but it seldom is for me. 1999 was good and I had a great NYE many years ago on a semi-tropical beach, but most turn out to be disappointing. This one was OK but nought special and I think BAC needs to think it through. Is a Rap session, if that is what it was, really quite right for an essentially trad evening? I am not sure that it is.
We had all the neighbours, well about two dozen round for a Twelfth Night Party on the 3rd – OK a 9th night party. That was very nice and well appreciated, but it was the start of a quiet month – council-wise.
My first “political” event was a meeting of the Labour Group of the London Councils Children’s Services Forum – what that means is a meeting of all Labour’s leads on education for all the London Boroughs. There was much internal discussion of, one would have to say, not much interest but there was a great deal of concern about two matters of real public debate. The first was discussion about the Government’s plans for re-allocating money for schools across the country. No one knows all the details but it is clear that the Government’s main intention is to re-distribute money away from the big cities and in particular away from London. The scale of this re-distribution is also not known in detail but Wandsworth schools, including Chesterton, Falconbrook,Christchurch and Sacred Heart, could be facing up to a 10% hit. I will try and keep you up-to-date on that front.
The second really important discussion was about the future of Further Education and FE colleges in London. Again the Government is initiating a review of FE colleges across London. It is hoping to complete the job in a very short timescale – this summer perhaps – with a view to implement changes as from 2017. Again the Government intend to achieve massive savings and the future, at this stage, looks grim for some London FE colleges – it sometimes seems that this Government is almost Maoist – it seems to be looking for permanent revolution in our public sector services!
On 14^th January I did an inspection of Falcon Estate (that is the Council’s Falcon Estate in Fownes and Este Roads and not the privatised Falcon Estate – the one that used to be called the Livingstone Estate) along with some residents and officers. Actually it is in pretty good nick and, although there were individual complaints, the only general thing commented on really was the state of the raised paving in Falcon Road itself. But whilst we were there we made a diversion into so-called Falcon Glade. You may remember the rather shabby little space, which was next to the busy bus-stop at one of the worst spots for air pollution in the whole of London. Well I am not sure that the new open space has done much for the air pollution but it has certainly made waiting at that bus-stop slightly pleasanter than it was just a year ago. The landscape work was done by a combination of the Council and an organisation called Groundwork, under a London-wide initiative called “Pocket Parks”. I have a friend, who works for London Sustainability Exchange, who was measuring pollution right there a year ago. I must ask her whether the improved greenery has made even the slightest difference to the air pollution there.
On January 15th I went to a meeting of the Battersea Park Action Group (BPAG), which is organising opposition to the planning application for the use of the Park for the next five years as a Formula E racetrack. It was a cold Friday evening and in the circumstances they did well to get 50 or so people there. The picture is of BPAG demonstrating outside the Council in December.
Personally I found their main speaker Paul Ekins both very persuasive and impressive. His argument was basically that the annual Formula E event in the Park is merely a first step in the rampant commercialisation of the Park. First Go Ape and Formula E, tomorrow Disneyland!? He has a point. The new planning application appears to ask for the closure of most of the Park for longer than last summer – 3 weeks instead of 3 days and that at the height of summer! The application will go to the Planning Applications Committee (PAC) on 24th February. I will be happy to report any comments from all, or any, of you, so please send me your views.
The January PAC meeting was on 18^th January but there was not one application of anything other than very local interest – back extensions, etc. but three days later, on January 21^st I went to the Design Awards Panel – that was much more interesting. This panel looks at last year’s new developments in the Borough and awards prizes to the best. There is no money involved – it is simply recognition of good design and construction – and encouragement to maintain the best standards. It was a first for me and it was certainly an interesting occasion. The Panel consisted of a handful of councillors, all of whom sit on the Planning Applications Committee, representatives of amenity societies such as the Battersea, Putney and Wandsworth Societies, and various professional and practising architects.
I was told that the standard was not as high as it has been in some recent years but, be that as it may, I was interested in the different views taken by the “professionals” and the “laymen”. Let me give an example. There were 13 entries in the residential extensions category and in the end we awarded a “commendation”, or a merit without being exactly a prize, to one of the examples I show below. Here is my challenge to you. Which one was it? Let me know your views and I’ll tell you the answer we came too and, more seriously, make a comment about how we came to the decision next month.
Over the 22-25^th week-end, my partner and I went for a city break to Oporto, home of the Portuguese Port industry. Here is a picture of the Church of Saint Ildefenso, which was yards from where we were staying. The picture is rather gloomy – no sun – I am afraid but the blue and white tiles are very striking in the sunshine and a common feature on Oporto’s many churches.
Meanwhile, during the whole month there was much shenanigans in Wandsworth Council. Everyone knows, don’t we, that Ofsted conducts inspections of schools. What perhaps is not quite so well known is that it also does inspections of local authority education and social services departments. Well in November there was an inspection of Wandsworth’s Education & Children’s Services Department and the draft report has concluded that the department is “less than good”. Wandsworth, of course, does not like getting reviews like that and indeed with over 92% of its schools getting recent inspections concluding that they were good or out-standing, it was also unexpected. One fairly senior officer left the next morning!
Anyway, the upshot was a Council Meeting on 27^th January, which discussed emergency, recovery reviews, staff changes, etc. At least two Labour councillors called for the resignation of the Cabinet Member responsible. Like the rest of the Labour councillors, and the two independent councillors, I strongly deplored the Council’s processes. The procedures were inadequate – the very comment that Ofsted made about the department. In other words it was one of the more dramatic Council meetings.
Outside of the politics, let me re-assure everyone that the schools should not be affected at all and there is no record of any child having suffered as a consequence. What I understand to have happened, although I have not seen the report, which does not become public until February 15^th, is that some of the procedures have been found wanting – if you like, some of the monitoring systems have proved inadequate.
The other matters discussed at this Council Meeting related to Council Tax and rents. The good news for Council tenants is that rents will be reduced this year by 1%, that is £1 reduction for every £100 of rent – not an enormous amount but better, as they say, than a kick in the teeth. As for Council Tax, although this will not be finalised until March, it rather looks like we will all face an increase of about 4%, which for most Wandsworth residents will mean an increase of approximately, and I mean approximately, £20-£30 a year.
On the 29^th I went to see Peter Pan – a pantomine, starring my fellow Labour Councillor Candida Jones, as the evil Captain James Hook. It was organised by Furzedown Community Project and had a cast of hundreds, kids, mums and dads, grans and grandpas. It was great fun and clearly very good for the community. It made me think that it would a good idea for Big Local to organise a similar show in say York Gardens Library – it would be fun.

My Programme for February

On February 2nd, I was briefed on the plans for the Tesco block on Falcon Road. The owners of the whole Falcon Road frontage between Khyber and Patience Roads wish to do a comprehensive re-development, of which more next month.
Two days later on Thursday 4^th I will be going to my first police Special Neighbourhood Team for quite some time. Usually it clashes with other commitments but it will be good to get back to it.
There are several briefings and emergency meetings taking place as a result of the Ofsted review I have already mentioned – important, of course, and I hope quietly and effectively productive.
I have the Education and Children’s Services Committee on 11^th February. Important items under discussion are Schools Admissions, a subject that affects all of us at least once in our lives; Pupil Place Planning or do we have enough school places to cope with London’s burgeoning population; school budgets and some individual school matters but not affecting any Latchmere schools.
Then another Education and Children’s Services Committee on 22^nd February, when hopefully we will be winding up the changes introduced after the Ofsted Report!
On the 24^th there is the Planning Applications Committee, which will be deciding amongst other things whether to agree to further engineering works in Battersea Park and an extension to Formula E’s permission to run the Grand Prix in the Park. I expect quite an argument!

Did you know?

Last month I asked where is there a memorial to all those Battersea residents, ordinary citizens (men, women and children) – not soldiers, who gave their lives in the second World War? The answer was of course the Christchurch Gardens. In August a Council press release said that it was granted, Grade ll, listed building status by English Heritage, “The memorial consists of sheltered public seating in the contemplative setting of a small neighbourhood green space off Cabul Road where people can quietly pay their respects to civilians from Battersea whose lives were mainly lost in Second World War bombing raids.”

The monument was first unveiled in 1952, next to the ruins of a mid-19^th century church which was itself bombed and destroyed during the war.

The replacement church that now stands at this location – Christ Church and St Stephen – was built in 1959. Christchurch Gardens was the original churchyard but converted to a public open space in 1885.

Council leader Ravi Govindia said: “This is a monument to the ordinary men, women and children of Battersea whose lives were lost mainly as a result of air raids.

“There are of course many memorials to the servicemen and women who fought and died in the war but very few exist to commemorate victims of the German bombing campaign which took so many civilian lives, not just in London but in towns and cities across the country.

“It is very touching that this special memorial in Battersea has been recognised in this way.”

This month, however, I am asking you to guess, which of these designs we gave a commendation and why? I know its difficult just on the basis of five photographs but give it a go!

January 6, 2016

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere January, 2016, Newsletter (# 80)

1. On December 9th I had a Council Meeting, when the main debates were about Formula E racing in Battersea Park and what the Council calls “Aspirations”.

The Formula E debate was nowhere near as dramatic as the Committee discussion two weeks earlier. Committee discussion two weeks earlier. This was partly because there was so little public interest. At the Committee there had been a packed public gallery and five deputations – at the Council meeting there was a little procedural chaos – and I made a poor speech. Not that the Council Meeting is totally dependent upon me! But you know how it is. If you don’t perform well it rather takes the gilt off the occasion! But in any event, the Council approved the use of the Park for Formula E racing for another 5 years, Labour voting against.

STOP PRESS We have just had notice of a new planning application (29/12/16), which asks for permission for Formula E to do civil works on the Park’s Carriage Drive starting on 16th June and with re-instatement of the Park as normal by 12th July 2016. We are, therefore, being asked to accept an application for the use of the Park by Formula E for 2 days short of 4 weeks, which is rather more than the few days first promised. Residents have until 19th January to comment on this application to planning@wandsworth.gov.uk.

This will be a highly contentious application and I will be on the Planning Applications Committee when it is decided, so I would appreciate it if you also copy me in on any comments that you may send to the Planning Department.

The Aspirations debate was essentially about the Council’s hopes for the Borough, which meant Tory boasting about all the new developments along Nine Elms Lane and along York Road. Unfortunately the Tory councillors do not appear to recognise that building tower blocks of expensive properties does very little, if anything, to resolve the real need in London in general and Battersea in particular for genuinely affordable housing.

2. On the 15th we had the Planning Applications Committee (PAC), which had several interesting developments, including one significant one in Latchmere, namely the development of 6 “social rent” houses, on the site of disused garages are in Rowditch Lane. These are what used to be called council houses and should be genuinely affordable!

Other significant applications that were approved were for the demolition and reconstruction of Chestnut Grove Secondary School and for the further development of sites in Nine Elms. The school application is particularly interesting. Such a site and such a development could never have occurred five years ago without the very considerable involvement of councillors. But this application seemed to come out of the blue unbeknown to councillors. This is very strange as Councils have the legal responsibility to balance school places against demand. Yet here comes a new application, adding capacity to the school system but unknown and unplanned by the Council. Surely this is no way to run an education system! The law is, in this case, an ass!

3. I and my fellow councillors, Simon Hogg and Wendy Speck, spent quite a bit of time delivering Christmas cards to all our constituents. We like to think that it was appreciated but a couple of people have complained about it as “a waste of money”, so I need to make it clear that the cards were paid for by the three of us and the delivery was also done by us and several volunteer helpers. There was absolutely NO public money spent on them.

Delivering the cards reminded me of just how many Latchmere homes are almost unreachable by ordinary mortals! I can think of at least 500 properties, which are almost inaccessible. Gated communities are, of course, becoming more and more common but surely something is lost in the community as a whole when you cannot call on a neighbour without knowing the entry code. There are even a couple of the developments where, if you tailgate your way in, then you can’t even get out unless you know the code. Strange!

My Programme for January

1. On January 7^th, Thursday, I have my first meeting of the London Councils’ Childrens Forum, which should be interesting given that the Government seems to be intent on making schools totally independent of any external scrutiny, except of course its own. Just what will we discuss?

2. Then on 11^th January there is the Council’s own Schools Forum, and the Education and Standards Group on the 14

3. On the 18^th, I have the Planning Applications Committee and on 21^st I am one of the judges at the Design Panel, when we will be giving awards to Wandsworth’s best new buildings of the year. I hope that we have some exciting entries!

4. We have a Special Council Meeting on the 27^th– it’s special because the diary says that it is special! I think that means we will be deciding the Council Tax and rents for the coming year.

5. On the 29^th I will be attending a pantomine, starring my fellow Labour Councillor Candida Jones (Tooting) – that should be fun.

Did you know? Last month I asked why is there a York Road, clearly heading east and north to London and south and west to Portsmouth – and going nowhere near York? Well quite a few people got that right. Vanessa wrote saying: “Battersea Creek was used as a dock for the Price’s Candle Factory built in the early 19th Century in York Road. Price’s factory was once the largest maker of candles in the world and still supplies candles for many Royal State occasions (from their factories which were relocated outside of London in the late 1990’s). The candle factory replaced a late medieval moated house which was built by the Bishop of Durham in 1474. It was later given to the Archbishop of York. This might be the reason why York Road is named so.”

Thanks Vanessa; that was a more complete answer than others. To add to that: the southern side of the Archbishop’s Palace was recorded during excavations by Pre-Construct Archaeology at the site of Prices Patent Candle Factory, Wandsworth, in 2002. The palace was actually built in 1474. It survived until the late 18th century and included a moat, five rooms, two courtyards and a tower.

Interestingly Robert Holgate (1481/1482 – 1555) became the Archbishop of York (1545 – 1554). He had an exciting life, spanning Henry Vlll’s Reformation, starting in Catholic England, converting to the Church of England and marrying at least twice – once to a seven year-old girl. Why do I mention that – because Holgate Avenue is less than 100 yards from the site of the Palace. I don’t know whether the connection is deliberate or accidental but surely it must have been deliberate.

And this month’s question? I have covered this before but a long time ago and one reader has asked me to repeat the question: Where is there a memorial to all those Battersea residents, ordinary citizens (men, women and children) – not soldiers, who gave their lives in the second World War?

Finally Happy New Year to everyone.

December 3, 2015

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere December Newsletter (# 79)

November highlights

On November 1st, I spoke at a meeting at York Gardens Library about the Borough’s plans for the Lombard Road/York Road area, along with Cyril Richert of the Clapham Junction Action Group, Philip Whyte, of the Wandsworth Society and Andrew Duncan, a resident of Plantation Wharf, in Trade Tower. The first thing to say about it is that thanks ought to go to Cyril for his efforts. The Council claimed to have an exercise in consultation on these plans and claims to have had 30 or so responses. Cyril from his own efforts, pretty much single-handedly, got 90+ people attending this meeting and they were pretty evenly matched between those from the north-side of York Road and those from the south-side.The second thing to say is that the over-whelming majority of the public were clearly against the march of the high rise developments all around the area. We didn’t take a vote but it really wasn’t necessary – it was absolutely clear what the public mood is. If you would like to see a longer description, and video recordings of what we said, then look at Cyril’s (I mean Clapham Junction Action Group’s, of course) very detailed website at http://cjag.org/2015/11/07/public-meeting-york-area-the-videos/#more-5931.
I attended a Wandsworth Council seminar on trees on 3rd November! It was actually very interesting and showed just how much effort is put into maintaining and increasing the number of trees in both London and the Borough. And of course, it is not just because they are beautiful and provide shelter for birds, insects and some mammals but because, with our increasingly polluted air, they are essential to our very existence – thanks to their air cleaning properties. Two matters of interest re trees. First, Sadiq Khan, one of the candidates to be London Mayor next year, plans to get 2 million planted in 2016-20 if he is elected – see paragraph 13 below. Secondly, following requests from one of the residents of Wayford Street (behind Little India), expect some new silver birches to be planted there this December.
On the 4th I had an Education Standards Committee, when we reviewed Somerset Nursery and Garratt Park schools, both of which got a clean bill of health.
On the 5th we had the Wandsworth Civic Awards Ceremony when councillors recognise the contributions of local people to the life of the Borough. On this particular occasion there was no one with particular connections to Latchmere, although some will know Antony Coker Poole who organises the Battersea Police Ball. There is a fuller description of the Awards Ceremony on the Council’s website at http://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/news/article/13090/civic_awards_for_local_heroes.
And on the Saturday 7th I had the Councillors’ surgery at Battersea General Library, when a couple of local residents came along to lobby me against Formula E racing in Battersea Park. I was told off last month by a couple of you for not mentioning this crucial issue and for talking about rugby and trees instead; but as I said to them, this newsletter is about what I do on the Council and doesn’t pretend to be, and indeed could never be, a total record of everything that the Council does. Anyway, I hope I do justice to the issue in para 10 below.
On the 10th, I had the Planning Applications Committee (PAC) Just as a footnote on planning applications, Cabul Road residents will recall the application for a 3-storey development on the corner of the public gardens, where ages back there were public conveniences. You may also know that the developers appealed against the PAC’s decision to refuse permission – well, I think you’ll be pleased to know that the Secretary of State agreed with us and that permission has now been refused by him too.
I went to the Education Committee on the 19th. There were a few mundane items on the agenda but the two that really mattered were a deputation from Balham Nursery and the so-called “Early Years Review”. ‘Early years’ is how the bureaucracy describes care and education for the under 5s and their parents. It is also the most uncontentious and clearly agreed major success of the 1997-2010 Governments, with the growth of nursery education and the introduction and explosive growth of Children’s Centres.Children’s Centres have been spectacularly successful in improving life chances for all, but particularly for kids from the least affluent families. However, the Government’s cuts are attacking all elements of local government services, not least early years services. And on the 19^th we were asked to cut the budget by £1.3 million and, effectively, to close Balham Nursery’s Children’s Centre.The Balham Nursery was chosen because, by some criteria, it was the least successful of the Council’s 14 Children’s Centres (one of the criteria being that it was not in one of the 14 most deprived areas!) but the fact of the matter is that it amounts to a cut of nearly 10% in centre provision. How can one support such a cut; but, if you accept the Government’s arguments about austerity how can one oppose it either? Not a comfortable position! I think it’s time for Labour to oppose both the closure and austerity.
I spent the morning of the 11^th, Remembrance Day, at the service in Battersea Park. at the war memorial. In this rather dark photograph the Mayor is returning from laying a wreath at the memorial, with two Chelsea pensioners in the foreground.
On the 21^st I was at the London Councils annual conference, which takes place in the splendour of the Guildhall. The conference is a London-wide gathering of councillors, which this year did not start with a rant from Boris Johnson, which rather made a change. It was instead a more serious discussion of the issues facing local government in general and London, in particular. I suppose it is the case that those, who have been crying wolf about the future of local government for some years now, deserve to be ignored a little. But now almost everyone, regardless of political party, academic expert or councillor, seems to be unanimous that our local government system is in serious danger of collapse, with the government imposing cuts of 30%, 40% and even 50% in various areas.
And so on the 24^th November to the debate on Formula E. The discussion started with 5 deputations from Battersea Park (BP) Formula E Action Group, the Friends of BP, the Battersea Society, the Prince of Wales Mansions residents and the Warriner Gardens and Alexandra Avenue Residents Association. They were very effective and by the end of the evening very few other than the Tory members of the Committee could have been in any doubt about how unpopular Formula E is with the immediate neighbours of BP. Formula E was, however, accepted by the Committee and it is now very likely to take place in early July, 2016. NB I know that some of my readers supported Formula E and will argue that the Council cannot afford to miss out on the (let’s say) £1million it brings to the Council. Labour, however, opposed the continuation of Formula E racing.
On 25^th November, I gave a presentation on the Role of Town Halls in the Community at BAC (Battersea Arts Centre) together with Dr. Michael Short, a Senior Fellow in Planning at UCL. I didn’t give it advance notice last month, partly because I had very little notice of the event. It was part of a monthly programme of lectures, BAC is running, about old Battersea Town Hall. It went well and the fairly small room was packed tight. I may repeat this presentation in the new year. I picture here, alongside each other, the old Shakespeare Theatre and the Town Hall much as they looked like on Lavender Hill on either side of Theatre Street for all the first half of the 20thC.
On the 27^th November, I went round a number of sites in Nine Elms along with the planners and other councillors. The speed of change is staggering and much of it is very impressive – look at this picture. But I remain totally unconvinced that any of this development is going to do much for Battersea’s, or even London’s, housing crisis, or that it is appropriate for the built environment of London. When visiting one marketing suite, the young sales lady I spoke to was very clear that much of their sales strategy was aimed at the Near and Far East.
On Saturday, 28^th November, I had the Annual General Meeting of an organisation called SERA. Despite its clumsy name it is the Green Lobby organisation, whose aim is to move Labour policies in a green direction. So we are in favour of re-cycling, energy conservation, are concerned about global warming, etc. I am the Treasurer of it. But my purpose in mentioning it here was that Labour’s Sadiq Khan, once my deputy in Wandsworth, and now Labour’s candidate for London Mayor, presented his green agenda for London. Sadiq was on good form. His agenda included: a larger low exhaust emission zone for London, pedestrianisation of Oxford Street, traffic-free weekends in London, 2 million new trees, the phasing out of diesel buses, super-fast electric car charging points and being a pro-business Mayor.
Stop press. I have just heard that the final legal and bureaucratic hurdles have now been signed relating to the redevelopment of the Prince’s Head pub in Falcon Road. Hopefully we will soon see action on this site.

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere October Newsletter (# 77)

September highlights

At the start of the month, I went for a week to a little fishing village in Croatia. There is nothing to do there, except swim and eat fish. I don’t do sun bathing but I do like fish. I also did more swimming than ever before in my life – some attempt to make up for an otherwise sedentary life-style. I also read Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the Twenty-first Century”. OK, it’s not everyone’s idea of holiday reading and it clearly makes me a nerd. But actually I enjoyed it as well as finding it stimulating. It clearly put me ahead of the curve as later in the month John McDonnell, Labour’s new Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced that he was setting up an economics workshop starring half a dozen international economists, including Piketty. By the way, if you are not a nerd but want to read a left-winger’s view on wealth and poverty in the modern world, then I recommend it.
On my last day in Croatia, Jeremy Corbyn was announced as Labour’s newly elected Leader. I am not giving away any party secrets by saying that not all of my colleagues were delighted. Indeed I rather think that I was the only Wandsworth councillor to vote for him – I even got described by one colleague, in a good humoured aside, as “an old leftie”. As it happens, no one who knew me in the 80’s fighting Militant in Wandsworth would ever describe me as such – indeed, they would have rolled around with laughter.
But if I am not a “leftie”, I do think I probably owe it to Latchmere constituents to explain just why I voted for someone, who at the moment most people think cannot possibly return Labour to power, perhaps not even return the party to a role of significance. So here goes: I supported Tony Blair from the off and originally I supported his war on Iraq; But I was disillusioned by the “weapons of mass destruction saga” and believe that Labour is very damaged until that war is repudiated: I am frustrated by Labour’s failure to tackle the Tory spin about austerity: I am concerned that Labour is not opposing strenuously enough the cuts, which the Government is making across the board: I didn’t think that the other leadership candidates had any better ideas about how to tackle the cuts programme. Given the public cynicism about politicians I rather like Corbyn’s image of “Straight talking: Honest politics” – the thing is, I am not a cynic. That very briefly is why I voted for Jeremy. And why I believe he will be good for Labour’s approach to politics, even if he doesn’t look like a winner – did his opponents look any more likely to be winners?
Sadiq Khan was also, of course, elected as Labour’s candidate to be London’s Mayor. You may recall that I said Sadiq had been a fellow councillor of mine in Wandsworth for 12 years, indeed he was my deputy as Labour Leader in Wandsworth. I actually voted for Tessa Jowell on the basis of her track record of achievement over the years (the Olympics), and as a woman candidate I thought she was better placed to beat Zac Goldsmith. However, congratulations to Sadiq – I am sure that he will make a great Mayor – he will certainly be an assiduous campaigner.
On 5^th September my fellow Labour councillors, Simon Hogg, Wendy Speck and I, went on a Latchmere ward Walk-about, making notes of fly-tipping, graffiti and pot holes, noting waste land and traffic hazards and reporting our concerns to the Town Hall. We intend making this a regular event. On this occasion we took particular note of this flamboyant graffiti in the Falcon Park/Latchmere Road pathway. We thought it rather Banksey but were not too keen on its rather cynical view about politics!
The Planning Applications Committee (PAC) was held on the 16th September, and again there really was nothing of any great significance on the agenda. Although with Homebase nearly empty and work starting on the 28 storey block in Lombard Road, we will soon begin to see the impact of recent PAC decisions
I was booked into the Labour Party Conference from 26^th September to 30^th, but had a disastrous time! Nothing to do with the Conference but I booked into 2 separate hotels and one after the other they cancelled out on me because they had done the old trick of over-booking. So I ended up spending only two days at the Conference. The weather in Brighton was, of course, fantastic. Everyone, well everyone I met, was in a good mood and the leadership speeches (McDonnell’s as well as Corbyn’s) at least had the merit of being refreshingly new.
The Princes Head’s, Falcon Road (pictured right), failed to have its licence renewed in June, much to the delight of some residents I could name. That must be some kind of statement of just how badly it was run – pretty rare for pubs to fail to get their licences renewed. The question now is what will happen to the site. There is planning permission for a block of flats, but when will work start? How long will it be left as it is now?
In September, councillors were expecting to make the decision on whether Battersea Park would be used for another 5 years of E-Racing. However, the Council has had so many public responses that it has decided to take another few weeks considering exactly what to recommend councillors to decide. I still await to discover what all the consultation amounts to. Does the delay mean, for example, that the Council is surprised by the weight of opposition to the idea? Or not? Surely a decision is going to have to be made in October. (PS It has just been announced that the decision will be taken on 24^th November).
On 24^th September, I was invited to talk to Battersea Park Rotary Club about Battersea’s history. They have their lunch upstairs at the Albert Pub, opposite the Park entrance. Here is a picture of club President and Latchmere resident, Senia Dedic, and I at the lunch. (Because of the occasion I had postponed my history walk into October – see my October programme below.)
On one sunny Saturday, I went to the unveiling in Vardens Road of a blue plaque to Hilda Hewlett. In 1909, Hilda was the 10^th Briton and the first woman to be
Pauline Vahey, Chair of BritishWomen Pilots’ Assoc, Gail Hewlett, Hilda’s granddaughter-in-law, Cllr Nardelli

granted a pilot’s licence. She is commemorated along with other Battersea notables in the mural in Dagnall Street. Perhaps even more unusual then, and even now, was that she was an engineer, interested in building aircraft and indeed she had her own factory in Vardens Road where some 500 World War 1 aircraft were built. In this picture Pauline Vahey, Chair of the BritishWomen Pilots’ Association, the Mayor (Cllr Nardelli) and Gail Hewlett, Hilda’s great granddaughter-in-law are sharing a joke.
Many of you are very interested in the future of Falcon Park and the proposed astro-turf pitch “planned” for the Park. The latest position is that the Council is considering the results of the consultation, but is unlikely to put in a planning application until early 2016. It was never, by the way, the Council’s intention as some people seem to believe that this pitch would be in any sense temporary – the Council doesn’t do that kind of thing temporarily for £1+ million.

My Programme for October

On October 6^th, I will be attending the Covent Garden Market Authority’s AGM. The centre point of the occasion will be a presentation of their massive plans for redeveloping Covent Garden Market. We know the outlines, of course, but there are still many incomplete details about what will be one of the largest developments in London, perhaps only second to the Power Station developments.
The next day I will be at the Katherine Low Settlement’s AGM. KLS is one of Battersea’s largest and most active community centres and I look forward to being there.
And on the 8^th I will be touring Battersea Arts Centre to see progress on the “recovery” from the March fire.
On the week-end of 10^th/11^th October I will be joining a group of councillors on a trip to the First World War battlefields at Ypres in Belgium – and just to re-assure the cynics, councillors will be paying for the trip out of their own pockets – there is absolutely and quite rightly no public money being spent on the trip!
The Council Meeting is to be held on 14^th October. I do hope that we have a decent debate but on recent performances I am afraid that is unlikely!
On the 15^th, I have the Planning Applications Committee and the day after that the Education Committee.
At 3 pm on Sunday 18^th October, I am doing my “history walk” from the Latchmere pub to the Battersea Arts Centre. It takes about 2 hours and is pretty well guaranteed to show you a new side of Battersea, even if you have lived here for years and years. All-comers are welcome and so if you are interested please let me know by email – though I should make it clear I charge £10 as a fee, which goes towards my election expenses!

Did you know?

No one answered last month’s question: “how many places and names can you think of in Battersea named after Lady Di’s family, the Spencers, Lord of the Manor of Battersea. I wonder whether I will get a better response this time by asking which local (and I mean local and not Chelsea or Fulham) soccer team won the FA Cup and when?

Meanwhile back to last month’s question: what place names are associated with the Spencer family. Well, the story of the intertwined Spencer and St. John families is so massively complex that I can’t possibly write it all here – books have been written about them. But here are just some of the many, many connections between the families and Battersea! Spencer Park (both the park and the road) and Spencer Road – until 20 years ago there was also a Spencer Park secondary school; and just maybe the Spencer Arms; Althorp Road, named after the Spencers’ Northamptonshire country home; Marcilly Road named after the second wife of Viscount Bolingbroke, Beauchamp Road, named after Margaret Beauchamp a family ancestor; Bolingbroke Grove, and the Academy, Bolingbroke Walk, the Bolingbroke Pub (both the new and the old), St. John’s Road, St. John’s Hill, Sir Walter St. John’s Sinjun school. There are many more!

August 27, 2015

Public accountability vs commercial confidentiality

The case for and against E-Racing in Battersea Park

Amidst all the political events of 2015, the General Election, the impending demise (or is it revival? and actually probably neither) of the Labour Party and the build-up to the London Mayoral elections, one local event stands out for displaying political and even moral issues with extraordinary clarity. That event was the final race of the inaugural season of Formula E racing.

The race took place on 28^th June in Battersea Park. The winner, appropriately enough, was local Wandsworth boy Sam Bird. Look him up on Google and, until you refine the search a bit, you get nothing, nada, zilch. This tends to justify those, and there were plenty, who described the race as a trivial event for Dinky toys, with none of the speed, noise and glamour of the real thing – Formula 1.

But the top three racers, crowned in Battersea Park as 2015 World Champions, were Nelson Piquet Jnr., Sebastien Buemi and Lucas di Grassi, all of whom have been involved at the very top of motor racing and must be described as top rate drivers. In addition, the location of the season’s races reads like a compendium of some of the top world destinations. They were, in sequence, Beijing, Putrejaya (a suburb of Kuala Lumpur), Punta del Este (a Uruguayan seaside resort), Buenos Aires, Miami, Long Beach, Monaco, Berlin, Moscow and London’s Battersea Park.

To state the obvious motor racing is trying to expand into a new area, perhaps merely just a new commercial opportunity but maybe just possibly the “petrolheads” recognise that they need to present a more ecological image and a more family focused, less “macho” image. It doesn’t take much imagination to see that London Mayor, Boris Johnson, and Wandsworth Tory Council might want to jump on that bandwagon.

Well, maybe, you might say but what has that got to do with using a major public park over a long week-end in high summer, more or less to the exclusion of all other park users? Indeed, it was more than the week-end, with barriers and lorries, minor road works and “offensive” security staff getting in the way of normal park users for much of June.

Local opinion is clearly divided, but, not surprisingly, the nearer you get to the Park the greater the majority against the use of it for such purposes, and the further away the less the opposition. Indeed, there was quite a large number of supporters for the race in some of the major estates a mile or so away from the Park.

However, the most interesting arguments about the race centre on the issue of what people perceive to be appropriate uses for a public park.

There is a substantial core of people, who argue that a publicly provided facility, such as a park, should never be used for private profit, even to the extent of excluding ice cream vendors or park cafés. I imagine that municipally run ice cream vans and cafés might be acceptable to this minority, but this seems to be complicating the argument rather in today’s climate (of privatisation and private provision of services)!

But once the absolute principle is breached then it becomes, as so often, a case of drawing lines. In Battersea Park, for example, there is a privately run café; ice cream vendors do ply their trade; there is a privately run Children’s Zoo; and more contentiously there is a big tent, where beer festivals, art fairs, commercial and charitable entertainments are frequent occurrences. None of this would happen, however, if these events were not fulfilling a need, or responding to a demand.

But there is no doubt that the Formula E-race, and the threat of 5 more years of such racing is more than just a step change from the other examples. Let’s assume, as is clearly the organisers intention, that the disturbance to the Park will not be on the same scale in future years – they have learnt lessons about the barriers and the staffing. Nevertheless, for at least 2 and probably 3 or 4 days in high summer, use of the Park will be severely curtailed. Should it be allowed?

My argument is that it is a matter of degree, a matter of drawing lines. Should we or should we not allow Formula E a 5 year extension in Battersea Park? As a Wandsworth councillor I will be one of 60 making that decision. But there is a problem! I know, or can easily find out, how much the café business pays for the benefit of using the café building. I know the income that the Council gets from the other operations and, more importantly, I can tell my constituents and the public at large what that income is and why I think that justifies use of the Park for those operations.

I don’t know the income from Formula E, or more honestly I am constrained from telling the public because of “commercial confidentiality”. In other words, I am (and 59 other councillors are) saying to the public it is my (our) judgement that use of the Park for 3 or 4 days is (or is not) worth, say, £1 million. Now I don’t mind making that call. I was elected, I believe, to take such decisions. But what is problematic is that the public is not really in a position to judge my (or our) decision because the public is not allowed to know whether we are talking about an income of £1million or £10million. Or to make the same point a different way, whether we are talking about £1million or £10million’s worth fewer cuts in other Council services – that being the reality of local government finance today.

It is a matter of “commercial sensitivity”, because the Council bureaucracy has said it is. Indeed, I have received the following eloquent response from the Town Hall. “The reasoning that we are using and quoting is that disclosure into the public domain would be deemed prejudicial to the commercial interests of both the Council and Formula E. If the Council decides to continue with the event, it is likely that there will be competition to provide a site for Formula E after five years, and at that point (subject to experience of the first five years) the Council may want to bid against other interested parties to continue to host the event, and so the sum agreed would be of interest to commercial competitors. Equally, Formula E would not want their other venue hosts, world-wide, to know details of the financial deal with the Council. It’s therefore our view that there is a greater public interest in maximising the Council’s ability to compete for the right to host the event beyond the current contract (if such is decided)” than [my phrasing] for councillors to be able to justify their decision to the public.

So the argument is posed: is the perceived “commercial sensitivity” of this decision more important or not than the accountability of councillors to their electorate? Should the electorate simply take their elected representatives’ judgement on trust? Or should they have all the information so that, whether or not they agree with the councillors’ judgement, they can at least see the case and the grounds for the decision.

Two recently Tory but now independent councillors, Cllrs Cousins and Grimston, have made their position clear and voted against the use of the Park for E-Racing. But actually is their position any more defensible than any others of us. Without knowing how much money they are prepared to forego for the sake of keeping the Park untouched, how can we/they argue the rights and wrongs of their case?

I suspect that there will always be conflicts between the demands for “commercial confidentiality” and democratic accountability, and once again it will be a matter of drawing lines, or of making judgements. But surely, in the last analysis, democratic accountability has to have priority over “commercial confidentiality”?

November 21, 2014

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere November Newsletter (# 66)

October highlights

I went to a Covent Garden Market Authority reception at Brunswick House on 2^nd October. I wouldn’t normally comment on such an occasion, which was a wine and canapés reception designed to keep corporate Wandsworth happy with the Market’s plans for development but for two things. First because Brunswick House is that rather grand, isolated house on the corner of Nine Elms Lane and Wandsworth Road, which, although in Lambeth, must be well known to many Wandsworth residents. It was built for the Duke of Brunswick in 1759 and is a posh restaurant and reception facility. If you recognise the picture here then you know that it sticks out like a sore thumb in the traffic and architectural hell of Vauxhall.The second reason that I mention it is because of the massive planning application going forward to the Planning Applications Committee on 12^th November, of which more next month. However, the essence is a very large scale reconstruction of the market, which will not in the market traders’ view be to their benefit. Many of them come from generations of old traditional traders, who operated out of the (real) old Covent Garden of My Fair Lady days. The proposals also include very large scale residential developments – watch this space next month.
I visited a couple of schools in October. I went to Holy Ghost RC primary school, Nightingale Square, on 14^th and Westbridge primary school, Bolingbroke Walk, on 15^th October – what an interesting contrast! Holy Ghost is in the heart of rich South Battersea, where every house is worth a million, well that’s the image anyway. The school is very pleasant and very rich, and Ofsted says outstanding. The parents were asked to fund a £100,000+ adaptation of a classroom and they did it – no sweat – and here is a picture of the end result. Westbridge, previously known as Bolingbroke, however, did not get a good Ofsted report. So Michael Gove insisted on it becoming part of the Chapel Street Academy Trust. At the Education Standards Group on 22^nd October we met with Chapel Street. I am afraid that I was not convinced that Chapel Street Academy Trust had any record in achieving success with its schools. If you want to read my views on this process then have a look here in my blog.
Early in October, Labour councillors got hold of a confidential discussion paper produced by Town Hall officers for the Tory majority party in control in Wandsworth. Essentially the paper says that, if the Government goes ahead with the expected scale of cuts in local government expenditure, then Wandsworth is going to have to cut lots of services in order to make ends meet. Here are some of the cuts (or as the Council will say “savings”) the paper suggests amongst others:-
- access to parking permits, benefits, council tax queries, etc. online only – NO paper, post or counter service (just imagine, even if you do not agree with me about the scale of benefits, telling the poorest in our community that they can only get benefits if they go online!);
- closure of one of the Battersea day centres for the elderly, Randall Close or the Gwyneth Morgan centre;
- closure of Tooting Bec athletic track and Hope Street’s Battersea Sports Centre;
- closure of York Gardens, Northcote Road and Battersea Park libraries; reduced frequency of street cleaning.
This is NOT to say that these cuts will ALL take place but there is a very high probability that most of them willI think the Government is pursuing a disastrous policy and that austerity will not work. It is not working in the EU and I don’t see why anyone should expect it to work here. From my point of view what is even worse is that the Labour Party is not really challenging this Tory view. We are prepared to bail out bankers at enormous public expense. It would cost far less to increase the minimum wage, not by measly 20P an hour but, by several pounds an hour. We need the public to have pounds in their pocket and to start spending in the high street.
One of the big stories of the year, and next year, must surely be the possible arrival of Formula E motor racing in Battersea Park. The race would be round the perimeter road of the Park. The road would need some slight re-shaping and re-surfacing, which would be paid for by the race organisers. In future years the Council would get a large injection of funds, probably several £millions. Given the scale of cuts the Council is facing this is clearly a plan which a responsible Council must consider. However, there is much to be said also against the scheme and the inevitable disruption it would cause to the Park at the height of summer. It is expected to attract roughly the same number of punters as does the Fireworks Display, which, by the way, is on 8^th November this year. It is, however, interesting that Formula 1 racing is aware that the sport must face up to a wide range of environmental issues – e-cars will be very quiet and fuel efficient and there is little doubt that it is likely to appeal to many in Battersea’s very young population.English Heritage, which funded much of the Park’s refurbishment, will be consulted and will have to agree and so will the Council. There is going to be a public meeting at All Saint’s Church, Prince of Wales Drive, on 6^th November when we will see to some extent what the Battersea public think about it.
Talking of English Heritage imagine my surprise when I saw a copy of their members’ magazine for October. It includes a picture of last year’s Mayor unveiling Latchmere’s blue plaque to John Archer, accompanied by me and Wendy Speck!
Talking of Mayors, just a quick update on the Boris bikes. In summary use of the bikes in Wandsworth has increased from approximately 10,000 a month in January to 44,000 in July. Unsurprisingly usage is down from July but still much higher than earlier in the year (January-July statistics are attached). We will be able to make serious comparisons when we have a full year’s statistics.
On 27^th October I, and several other councillors, visited the newly opened Caius House Youth Centre in Holman Road, which has many Latchmere users. You may remember I went there a few months ago before it was finished. It’s a superb facility with an excellent sports hall, a recording studio, a well equipped kitchen and plenty of other facilities. This women’s’ basketball game illustrates the quality of the facilities.
On the 15^th there was the full Council Meeting, but I am afraid that there is not much to say about that. It was all very predictable and, if I am honest, we have allowed the Tory councillors to take all the meat out of Council Meetings. Prime Minister’s Question-time is not the great stage for the House of Commons that MPs like to think it is but Wandsworth Council meetings have become bloodless, uncontroversial, uninteresting occasions, which is evidenced by the absence of the press and almost any members of the public.
The day after I attended the Planning Applications Committee. There were two major decisions with Borough-wide implications. One was approval for a new residential and shopping development in Parkgate Road but the really massive application was the “final” approval for the Battersea Power Station site. The picture is of a model that displayed the final scheme.I am unhappy with these developments and voted against both of them. It is not that I do not want development – I have been pressing for action on the Power Station for 30 years! However, I am unhappy that all of these developments and the residential accommodation that comes with them is targeted at the super-rich and will do nothing to help the crisis of affordable housing facing the average Londoner. Indeed these developments will continue to force up the price of all other housing in Battersea and make it more and more an enclave for the super-rich.
On 30^th October I went to Burntwood School to see (and hear) the students of Wandsworth’s National Opera Studio singing a selection of songs from great operas by Donizetti, Puccini, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Offenbach. Here is the ensemble taking the final curtain call. If you ever get a chance to hear these students give a free rehearsal then jump at it – they are terrific. The Opera studio gives frequent, free concerts, usually at All Saints Church in Wandsworth High Street. They are magnificent and if you are interested let me know and I will tell you the dates of their next concerts.

My Programme for November

I will go to the Fireworks Display in Battersea Park on 8^th November.
On 9^th and 11^th I will be at the Remembrance Day services in St. Mary’s, Battersea, and in Battersea Park.
On the evening of the 10^th November there is the Civic Awards presentation.
On the 11^th I will be part of the appointments panel for the Deputy Director of Education at Wandsworth Council
The Planning Applications Committee is on the 12^th.
On the 22^nd I will be attending the London Summit, which is Mayor Johnson hosted Conference about all the issues facing London.
On the 24^th I will be leading the Labour councillors on the Education and Children’s Services Committee.
On the 25^th I will be visiting Alderbrook primary school.

Did you know Latchmere in 1912? Of course not.

Here is an extract from an Ordnance Map of London, published in 1912. Sorry about the reflected flash light in it – must improve my tech skills! But it does show most obviously that the road pattern has not changed that much except for where the Winstanley and York Road estates are and where Trinity Road has been linked up to Wandsworth Bridge.It also shows the string of industrial plants along the river-front, which made this area such a strong working class area. It also shows the mouth of Battersea Creek, where the Heliport now stands, and the aptly named Creek Street, running into Lavender Road. I hope you find it interesting!

Tony Belton

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere June, 2016, Newsletter (# 85)

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere March, 2016, Newsletter (# 82)

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere February, 2016, Newsletter (# 81)

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere January, 2016, Newsletter (# 80)

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere December Newsletter (# 79)

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere October Newsletter (# 77)

Public accountability vs commercial confidentiality

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere November Newsletter (# 66)

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Cllr Tony Belton

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