The biggest concern among the local residents who filled out the survey was road safety in Poet’s Corner and surrounding streets.   Being a Railton Road resident myself, I asked the council to take action.

Unfortunately, they refused to address the problem.  There are currently no road safety measures planned for Poets’ Corner, so I’ve put up a petition here, for local residents who agree with us to sign.

Please Support our campaign for Lambeth to investigate Road Safety Measures in Poets’ Corner and Railton Road.

Find out more about why this local resident wants to represent the people of Herne Hill and what she plans to do for us if elected to Parliament. This is a fantastic chance to ask her about local and national issues that matter to you.

A photo of the Cambria, courtesy of Ewan-M at Flickr.

Details

Where: The Cambria Pub, 40 Kemerton Road, London SE5 9AR
Date: Wednesday 17 February
Time: 7:30pm to 9pm

We have asked Lambeth Council to tackle this issue by putting up fixed penalty signs on the most severely affected streets and robustly enforcing them.

 Research in other London boroughs has indicated that fixed penalty notices are an effective deterrent; reminding irresponsible dog owners that it is against the law to leave dog faeces in public spaces. 

Lambeth’s current response is handing out bags to dog owners, distributing educational information and sending letters to local residents. We believe more can and should be done to address this problem now.

We are demanding that they put fixed penalty signs’ where required, supported by proper enforcement of this law.

We live in Herne Hill and feel it is failing to realise its potential. Dog fouling is just one example of the small scale persistent anti-social behaviour that holds this area back. It is filthy, annoying, and ruins the streets for everyone else.

I used to regularly take the train from Herne Hill into central London but had to stop because of
- the non-existent service at the weekend
– the shortage of carriages from the station which meant that several times I was unable to catch a train into work because it was too crowded.

The chaos during the snowy weather in December and January was the last straw and I now make the longer journey to Brixton tube station which is further away but more reliable.
Members of the Conservative Shadow Transport Team are working on this First Capital Connect issue too and an early day motion about First Capital Connect has been signed by 16 Conservative MPs, This morning I sent a letter to the Chief Executive of First Capital Connect (FCC), Mary Grant, requesting a refund for everyone who used the service during these months and not just Thameslink/FCC season ticket holders.

Those of us who buy travel cards because we are continuing our journey after the FCC service, but who rely on the service to get us there from Herne Hill, Tulse Hill and Loughborough Junction stations – should not be denied compensation simply because we buy a travel card. We rely on that service too, suffered the same inconvenience and deserve the same compensation.

Click here to read the letter I sent to Ms. Grant

Kemi Adegoke, our parliamentary candidate for Dulwich & West Norwood is campaigning
for Transport for London (TfL) to provide Herne Hill with new bus countdown signs for buses P4, 3, 322 37 and 196.

The new signs will be based on GPS technology making them more reliable than existing radio based signs.

As local residents we need to show Tfl that there is support for this measure.
Please sign the online petition for the new countdown signs and email or write to us if you have any information or concerns about buses that you would like us to feed through.

What The New Countdown Signs Mean For You

• No more standing in rain or cold not knowing if or when a bus is coming
• No more waiting ages for a bus only
• No more blank countdown signs

Please sign the petition here

 A 1000 Lambeth owned properties are being left vacant, resulting in £3.5m lost rental income every year.

 “I am shocked by this level of mismanagement,” says Conservative Parliamentary Candidate, Kemi Adegoke. “The £3.5m in lost rent is just the tip of the ice-berg in Labour’s failed management of our housing, locally and nationally. This could be spent on reduced rent and service charges. Local residents are punished for Labour’s incompetence.”

These properties could have been redeveloped to create homes for the 14,000 people on the housing waiting list. If they sold the properties this would have raised up to hundreds of millions of desperately needed funds.

 Letting properties become derelict makes streets ugly and increases antisocial behaviour. The council will not invest in developing these properties and refuses to sell them off swiftly, just leaving them there to rot.

“The Audit Commission has rightly fingered Lambeth Council and Lambeth Living,” says Kemi, “but the real problem lies with a Labour government obsessed with new and shiny things. Their high taxes on refurbishment have made it cheaper to build new than fix derelict properties and they restrict funding to new buildings.”

 Labour Lambeth Rewards Incompetence:

• Director of Housing Management – £100k per year + benefits
•  Director of Lambeth living £120k per year + benefits
• Consultants earning between £500 to £900 PER DAY – up to £4,000 per week!

The scandal in figures:

• 1,000 empty homes worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
• £3.5 million lost in rent EACH year.
• £9.9 million in uncollected tenant arrears.
• Doc1£20k added to postage costs this year after huge blunders with all of the borough’s leaseholders.

 “There are great things about Herne Hill. It is a shame that persistent issues of crime and antisocial behaviour are holding our community back” says Kemi.

 There are no quick fixes for addressing issues of violent crime. Already the Met’s Safer Neighbourhood Team is doing a great job.

 Many of the problems we face here are a result of failed licensing laws brought in by Tessa Jowell. Unfortunately for us, she does not live in the area and does not feel the effects of her policy decisions on local people.

 Many people feel helpless that there is nothing they can do to stop the increase in gun and knife crime in this community. The law does not allow local councils to reject applications even where there are too many late-night bars in an area. It is extremely difficult to change licenses even after complaints from residents and the police.

One way to address the problem is to give local residents direct control over the types of businesses that open up locally in order to ensure we develop a local night culture that is welcoming to all the people who live in Herne Hill.

 A Conservative government would give people the power to instigate referendums on local issues such as this and give more freedom to the local councils who are accountable to the people.

With nearly 20 local volunteers coming out to support the campaign it is great to know that there is so much support in the community for the Conservatives as the only viable choice for national and local government.

Unlike Tessa Jowell, Kemi Adegoke, our local parliamentary candidate doesn’t have a tax payer funded communications allowance to help fund her campaign.

Whereas Labour are using professional delivery services to distribute their political materials, Herne Hill Conservatives rely on the support and commitment of a growing number of local volunteers.

To find out more about what we are doing locally and how you can get involved email conservatives@myhernehill.com

What they failed to mention is that according to council officials “there is no funding available to take this feasibility forward in a greater detail. There may not be opportunities in the future within our LIP process given that this could cost above £1m.”

Given the terrible state of Lambeth’s finances after years of Labour mismanagement (they don’t even have enough money to build much needed primary schools and keep our library properly funded) this is nothing more than an cynical political stunt by a discredited administration desperately clinging to power – which we are paying for!

A £100,000 feasibility with no chance of future project funding is pouring our hard earned money down the drain and could be better placed to funding much needed local services.

Exactly 2 months after we put out our newsletter, where we had articles on
Leaseholders
Primary Schools and yes, you guessed it
Carnegie Library.

It’s a shame that they have only started communicating with constituents after noticing all the activity by Conservatives in this ward.

I am still puzzled by the £100,000 they want the council to spend on a feasibility study . At a time when everyone is being urged to cut costs, Labour is still thinking of new ways to fritter away our money.