Forest Gate North – Rachel Tripp's councillor blog

Seyi writes…

It’s the little things that make a difference… literally! We had a few Cann Hall ward residents living on a part of Dames Road that is actually in Forest Gate North ward so a road belonging to Newham Council. I had an elderly lady come to my surgery last month who was worried her visitors for Christmas wouldn’t be able to park and stay with her. Weeks went by and we were still stuck on this issue and this lovely elderly lady was now face with spending Christmas alone. We finally were able to get around the technical challenge and give those Cann Hall residents on Dames Road a permit. I was so so pleased to tell her and her neighbours the good news!

Parking is not an easy issue, it is very emotive and also very strict and bureaucratic however….there are times when it has to be about applying common sense to do the right thing and this was definitely one of those time.

Seyi writes…

You may recall that we consulted with residents and businesses in the area on the Forest Gate Crossrail scheme towards the end of last year. Since that time, the scheme has now gone through various stages of design and a number of approval processes.

We are fast approaching the implementation of the scheme (during the early part of next year). As an update for local stakeholders, officers have drafted a letter and prepared a plan for distribution to local residents and businesses. Please note this letter will be distributed to the frontages at Woodgrange Road only from tomorrow, considering the original distribution was around a vast area and this is not practical at this time. So this letter and the plan will available on Newham’s Crossrail web site and we’ve shared this on our blog page.

Rachel writes…

Tomorrow is Small Business Saturday, and is also the switch on of the Forest Gate Christmas lights, and ALSO is Woodgrange market’s night market. So after the success of our mini campaign last year it seemed the perfect chance to do something even better to celebrate the small businesses that make Forest Gate so special.

Last year we did our social media campaign on a bit of a shoestring, this year we were fortunate enough to have some money through the Regeneration department at Newham, and planned a project that would encourage people to support local small businesses, and to try out new ones.

We are very fortunate in Forest Gate to be benefitting from some Council-led physical regeneration, with the Crossrail station improvements, plus additional improvements planned with ‘LIP’ money from Transport for London, plus the planning enforcement work currently being done around smartening up shop fronts and enforcing by-laws. This project is intended to help amplify the effects of this investment and work, to support our small retailers in Forest Gate, and encourage local people to spend money locally not just on December the 3rd, but all year round.

#fgshoplocally is the result! Look out for the posters or stickers in participating shops, and pick up a loyalty card. Collect a sticker with each purchase, of whatever value.

Collect two stickers of different colours, and get a free coffee from the Gate. Collect all three different colours and pick up your free canvas shopping bag from the Gate (while stocks last).

You can read about it on the Newham website, and also see the full lists of participating shops. The team at the Gate have worked tirelessly, visiting shops and explaining the plan, and giving out the information, and we now have an amazing 90 shops signed up, so are looking forward to a successful day tomorrow.

Please do take part, and tweet us pictures of the things you buy, using our hashtag #fgshoplocally. There is also a Snapchat geofilter (thanks to Seyi).

Seyi and I will be out and about, with Lyn Brown our MP, visiting shops, and generally tweeting up a storm. Please do join us, and create as much buzz as you can. Pop into the shops you love, and explore those you haven’t been to before. (I live right at the northern end of Forest Gate, and am looking forward to spending some more time in the shops south of the Romford Road.) Share pictures of your bargains and treasures using the hashtag, and get hints and tips about where to visit.

Whe you’ve made your purchases and are modelling your bag, come to the market place for the lights switch-on (lights are coming on at 5.30pm, switched on by me, which I am trying to be all nonchalant about, but am now feeling rather childishly excited by). Then stay for the night market, which will have entertainment, and food and drink.

There’s even a complementary campaign in Maryland, where you can make any purchase in a Maryland small business, bring your receipt to Nooks, and pick up your free bag.

However you spend it, have a wonderful weekend.

Rachel writes…

As I mentioned last time, I plan to carry on sharing my councillor reports on this blog. Although written specifically to feed back to Labour members in Forest Gate North, it contains lots of information that is relevant to anyone who lives in the ward.

Casework
After the steep spike in casework I described in my last report, the numbers of people’s cases I am taking forward has, if not actually decreased, certainly levelled off a little. Looking at my current open cases shows no particular trends, but the topics that other councillors are also used to: homelessness, overcrowding, fly tipping, parking, planning, etc.

As ever, if you speak to residents that have any issues that they might need help with, please encourage them to email us, or to come along to the Gate library at 10.30am where Seyi, Anam and I hold our surgeries.

Parking

I am hopeful that this might be nearing the end of parking taking up so much of my time, but that may be optimistic. All the formal processes have completed, the signs are in or going up and the markings have largely been completed on the roads, meaning that on the 5^th December all of the ward will be in a Residents’ Parking Zone or RPZ.

Right from the beginning of the process, we have been determined to be as open as we can about a topic that can be controversial. Most recently, after a spate of some queries and discussion about the rolling out of the project (particularly concerning the decision on the hours of restrictions), Seyi and I worked together to do some blogging: publishing the full results of the consultation and also publishing more explanatory information about next steps. This seemed really helpful, and some of the background ‘noise’ about parking calmed down very quickly. For me it was also a good example of what we originally hoped that the blog would be: a chance to communicate more detailed, lengthy information to an audience who want more of the ‘nitty gritty’ on an issue than, for example, a letter to all residents can supply.

https://forestgatenorth.com/2016/10/24/parking-update/

https://forestgatenorth.com/2016/10/27/forest-gate-north-resident-parking-zone-consultation-results/

The only thing remaining on my radar is to respond to individual comments and queries as they come in about specific road markings, and also to pursue the question of the cost of permits. Because our restriction is from 8am – 6.30pm, this is 10.5 hours in length. Visitors permits are available to purchase and the cost depends on the length of time required. Permits are available for 10 hours, or for 24 hours, meaning that a FGN resident who had someone staying with them for a few days would need the 24 hour permits. Along with Seyi, who first flagged this issue up, I have asked if it’s possible to increase the period of time of a slightly cheaper permit from 10 hours to 10.5 hours.

After a couple of queries from representatives from places of worship, and some comments at meetings, and some casework,  I organised a meeting of ‘Faithful Friends’ (religious leaders from across Forest Gate) to specifically discuss parking and religious organisations. This was really helpful. I had the chance to ‘set the scene’ generally about parking, to talk about demand and competing demands and the difficulty of pleasing everyone. I also heard from a wide range of religions and faiths in different places about the particular issues they were facing. Some of those can be solved (for example the new parking arrangements will include free permits for funerals, which was a common request from all those attending). Some are more difficult. I also encouraged, gently, the people there to think about what it was they wanted and what their solutions would be (one person wanted free permits but did concede that probably everyone would want them. Another was effectively asking for a free car park) and also challenged them about people using public transport, which was well received.

Next steps:

• Remind residents to apply online for their permits (or to go to the Gate library on a Friday in termtime, from 2 – 3.30pm when volunteers are available to help people with online applications)
• Monitor feedback about how it functions
• Discuss with officers when, how and whether it might be useful to revisit the hours of restriction (disclaimer – I am personally in favour of shorter hours, but the results of the consultation were clearly for longer hours)
• Deal with casework regarding tickets, etc.

Fly tipping

In my last report I described how I attended the public meeting arranged by @sitesofnewham, a twitter account dedicated to chronicling Newham fly tipping. As a result of that, I met with the officer responsible for LoveNewham and for bulky waste collection. I wanted to follow up some feedback about times when the app has reported items as cleared when they are not, and some casework on incomplete (and in at least one case just plain shoddy) bulky waste collection.

I was told about a design fault meaning often people were not clicking ‘add’ for additional bulky waste items, which accounts for most incomplete collections (though interestingly not the particular case I was chasing up!). An improvement to this should already have gone live. I also checked that the free Christmas tree collections will still go ahead – which they will.

I also arranged for us to have an ‘Environment’ themed networking event at the Gate, on which I’ll write more below, under my lead councillor section.

Sebert Road

As Seyi reported last month, she and I did some detailed work with officers on fly tipping on the junction of Sebert Road and Woodgrange Road. The detail of what was done can be read in the two blog posts we wrote which are linked below. But in essence, this site is particularly important as large numbers of people walk past it to get to the station, and because of it being the site of the market.

We found that there were several contributing factors:
– local residents on timed waste collections not leaving their rubbish out correctly;
– local businesses not managing their commercial waste bins well
– local businesses with inadequate waste arrangements fly tipping their rubbish
– very local residents with ‘normal’ bin collections leaving their bulky waste there, alongside existing rubbish.

Through some hard work by Enforcement, and help from Street Cleansing and from Waste Management, we all managed to make a visible difference at this site. It was both encouraging but also a little depressing to see how much co ordination was required just to make a change (not even to find a solution) in one place!

https://forestgatenorth.com/2016/09/19/site-visit-to-tackle-fly-tipping/

https://forestgatenorth.com/2016/10/17/fly-tipping-update/

I began to wonder after  this about ‘place based’ problem solving for fly tipping, and spoke to the Mayor specifically about this, worried that our approach of Enforcement, plus the Visiting Team, would perhaps miss out this process: looking at one place in detail and figuring out where the waste comes from and how it could be stopped. I was reassured that the dedicated fly tipping team (who I believe are now in role) will have this brief, and will consider any and all solutions to the hot spots identified by Community Neighbourhoods, which could include covert cameras, signage, community skips, or any other kind of ‘designing out’ that can be done. I’ll keep asking about this, and will report back further.

Keep Newham Moving

It has been so encouraging to see the roads residents have complained about now being resurfaced and mended. Leonard Road, Norfolk Street, Essex Street, Suffolk Street and more have now been resurfaced and look much better than they did when we did a walkabout there with officers last year and were all frankly a bit appalled. Interestingly, one resident told me that she felt litter and fly tipping on her road had improved since the resurfacing, which was great to hear. Sebert Road is also going to be improved once the gas works are completed.

I am very keen to make sure that Keep Newham Moving is not just about roads and yellow box junctions, but instead lives up to the promise of making the borough an overall nicer and pleasanter place to be. I am therefore making myself a nuisance asking what the process is for collecting resident ideas about, for example, traffic calming, tree planting and greening. I don’t think that there is an established process yet, but there is definitely political buy-in for making this happen, so I plan to continue making myself a nuisance until I’m clear how it’s done! In the meantime, if Labour members have ideas for physical improvements to their roads, now is a great time to talk to a few neighbours about your ideas, and to email us.

Greening

One of my longer-term aspirations for Forest Gate is to support more ‘greening’, so I wrote specifically about guerrilla gardening on the blog here, which was picked up by the Newham Recorder:
https://forestgatenorth.com/2016/09/21/guerilla-gardening/

I wrote it hoping to encourage people to do more ‘guerilla gardening’, knowing that there is already some around, and perhaps more than people realise. I am going to meet with Greenspace to try to improve the way that we as a Council interact with informal planting, hoping we can set up an agreement that where there is planting we at least won’t cut it down.

I also met with the Forest Gate Community Garden and the Womens Institute who are interested in setting up a Forest Gate Garden Trail. I specifically hope that doing this might encourage more people to do gardening, for various reasons which include the health benefits, and the visual appearance of maintained front gardens, but also because of the positive impacts on flooding risks, and the importance of plants for wildlife and especially bees.

Thorogood gardens

I have been supporting Seyi in her desire to make some improvements to Thorogood Gardens, an area that has been on our radar for a while, and especially since we collected so much casework the last time we canvassed there.

Since we have a small pot of money available for ‘winter works’ to do planting on housing land, Seyi’s idea was that we should make the most of this by engaging residents, and amplifying the effects. We held a pop-up surgery in the car park (the picture above is us warming up in Seyi’s car, where a resident brought us out a thermos of tea!). I am reluctant to give more detail as this is something Seyi is running, but so far repairs to bin sheds have been started, and highway resurfacing has been agreed, and there is some interest from residents in augmenting the planting with some planting of their own, which is brilliant news.

Interestingly, given my comments above about gardening, one of the specific complaints of longer term residents there was that the private front gardens, which they remembered being well maintained and attractive, are now largely unkempt and, they feel, making the whole place look unloved.

Crime and group offending

There has been some concern from residents about shootings and violence in Forest Gate over the past months. As a result of this, Seyi and I arranged for a couple of meetings (this is in addition to liaising with the police and attending the Safer Neighbourhood Panel which Seyi has done lots of work on over the past two years). Firstly we asked the Council Enforcement to come to our Community Neighbourhood meeting so we could all understand more about current hotspots and issues. Then we met with two key representatives from the police, who specifically deal with gangs or ‘group offending’.

The overall message from these meetings was that due to an increase in violent crime, there had been a significant input of London-wide resources into Newham, and that residents should see more police officers and should be reassured that this is happening to keep them safe. Also that this has been effective, and that there has been a decrease in gun-related activity in particular, and incidents have been stopped due to the additional presence. Forest Gate remains a safe place to be, with most violent crime being linked to group offending and to drugs, so residents not involved are unlikely to be harmed.

That said, the corollary to this was a message that was not at all reassuring: an insight into how organised and damaging gang culture is, and how powerful and entrenched this world is, and what a risk it poses to our young residents. We had a really sobering and useful discussion about prevention and diversion, and shared some initial ideas that Seyi and I are going to work up together and look at with officers. As with so much else, there are no quick or easy answers, but there is definitely the opportunity to target some existing resources and initiatives, and to try to make a difference to our residents’ lives.

Engaging with Eastern European residents

I have been thinking for a while about our engagement with Eastern Europeans in Forest Gate, both in the Labour party and also from within the Council. I met with Ayesha Chowdhury who is the lead councillor from Beckton, who told me about some of the community activity going on in her Commuity Neighbourhood. Based on that, I’m going to visit St. Mark’s community centre, and also hope to hold a pop-up surgery at the gymnastics school run at Forest Gate Community School, and at the Saturday art club run at the Lodge. I hope that by going where people are, we’ll have a chance to meet people, hear about their concerns, and chat about what their aspirations are for their families and the area.

Forest Gate lead councillor

It’s sometimes hard to untangle what work is done in my role as lead councillor and what is done as ward councillor! But for clarity, I’ve separated out the following projects.

Networking events

I described in my last report how I’d tried to take the required, and I felt slightly tired, ‘coffee morning’ format and to turn it into a themed event based on particular outcomes. We have held two networking meetings over the past three months. The first was a Business Networking meeting, the first time we specifically invited local small businesses in to meet with us and to discuss their concerns and their aspirations for their businesses and the area.

We had a presentation from Gianluca who runs ‘Stratford Original’, the Business Improvement District or ‘BID’ in Stratford. It remains a medium-term aspiration of mine that we might have one in Forest Gate, but based on the feedback that evening I feel that setting up a trade association, as Seyi described in her report, is probably a more realistic aim for now. We also used the evening as a chance to talk to businesses about our plans for Small Business Saturday (on which more to follow). We had some robust conversations about the Linear Gateway Project (https://forestgatenorth.com/2016/07/11/smartening-up-woodgrange-road-and-upton-lane/) at the end but overall it was a really successful evening, and felt like the beginning of a new piece of work to think about how we support businesses.

After the fly tipping meeting in the summer I was thinking about a comment from one attendee that the Council has an important role in providing community leadership to encourage and support residents who want to set up their own litter picks and groups to help take care of Newham. Partly based on that, our next networking meeting was themed around the Environment, aiming to provide a space where people interested in improving Newham could come along and find out about existing initiatives (both community and Council) and think about whether they wanted to set up their own. The event was only I think a measured success, if I am honest. There was some foot fall, and some interesting conversations. People signed up for a West Ham Park project, and the Community Garden got new members (and there was some enthusiastic bulb planting). But I think I wanted it to be something more, and am discussing with officers and others how we could do this.

Small Business Saturday

Last year, Seyi, Ellie and I ran a small but successful social media campaign on Small Business Saturday which you can read about here: https://forestgatenorth.com/2015/12/03/forestgateshoplocal/

In essence we asked people to share their local purchases on social media using our hashtag, and created a bit of a buzz about supporting small businesses locally.

This year we are going a few steps further, with a rewards scheme, stamps, and freebies for people who make purchases. This is supported by the Regeneration department at the Council, who are working with our Community Neighbourhood to support our local small retail businesses on Woodgrange Road.

The purpose is to encourage people to make purchases in a variety of shops, to venture up and down Upton Lane and Woodgrange Road, to discover new places and to support their old favourites. We have been signing up shops by visiting them individually, which has been time-consuming but worthwhile in terms of making contacts and communicating about the project.

At the time of writing this has not taken place, but I hope it will be a success. Please do collect your card from a participating shop (around 90 are signed up), collect your stamps and collect your free coffee and / or free canvas bag from the Gate.

Meeting the Minhaj mosque

I also had a really positive and useful meeting with the Minhaj mosque at their Islamic Centre, which they aspire to build on their existing work and create a buzzing community centre. I saw the medical facilities they have made there, and had some really interesting conversations about people and organisations we can link up with to help publicise their work.

Crossrail improvement works

Planning continues on the work that will take place around Forest Gate and Maryland stations as part of Crossrail. The initial ideas that we have been looking at look so positive that it’s hard to describe them without sounding breathlessly over-enthusiastic. That notwithstanding, some of the ideas that I’m especially keen on include:

• Painting the Wanstead park bridge, perhaps to include the lettering ‘Forest Gate’
• Signage directing people to the Flats, to the market, and other local places
• Very attractive and high quality granite pavement and road surfacing
• Traffic calming measures
• An increase in the number of car parking spaces available to support shoppers
• Additional planting
• Bike racks to spell out ‘Forest Gate’

Perhaps the most exciting bit of the project is the public art that will be included. This is being run as a separate project entitled ‘Mural Land’. You can sign up to receive updates on this, which will include the opportunity to apply to be part of a steering group, and to participate in workshops and events that will determine what kind of art we have. We’ve already had some really good conversations with the Maryland community group about how art there could contribute to a sense of place, and reflect some of Maryland’s history.

(I’ve concentrated this report on my work in Forest Gate, as it’s a ward report, but if you have any questions about my cabinet role on Equalities I am very happy to discuss that with you either as a group or individually.)

I will finish by saying, as I hope I always do, that this is an overview of what I do and I apologise for anything I’ve left out. And of course almost none of it is just me, but a combined effort of councillor colleagues and officers.  As ever if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me, Anam or Seyi.

Rachel

Rachel.tripp@newham.gov.uk
020 32897808
@rectripp
http://www.forestgatenorth.com

Rachel writes…

I was invited by the Community Garden to come along with the Forest Gate WI to an initial planning meeting to think about a ‘Garden Trail’ in Forest Gate. Such is my enthusiasm for such things that I signed up before I was entirely clear what a garden trail was, but certain that the combination sounded promising.

I was right! Myanah from the Community Garden had seen a garden trail in another town which functioned like a cross between an open garden and a jumble trail (remember the jumble trail? Wasn’t it great?). Adzovi from the Forest Gate Women’s Institute was there too, along with Sophie and Kate also from the Garden Steering Group, and together we fleshed out some ideas about how a Garden Trail might work.

It’s all at the very early stages at the moment, but in essence we hope that holding it will encourage people to garden and to green Forest Gate (which in turn encourages wildlife and helps with urban drainage), and will encourage people to meet and get to know each other, may raise some money for the Community Garden and for other local charities and above all might be a wonderful, fun weekend to add to the various community events and activities that we already enjoy here.

We talked about encouraging people to open their front and / or back gardens, and how people could think about planting up their front gardens with orange flowers, as orange and green are the ‘colours’ of the Community Garden. We also discussed a range of ideas for talks and events that could take place at the Community Garden to support the Garden Trail: a ‘mini-garden workshop’? A talk on urban drainage? A session on planting up pots and window boxes?

The reason for blogging about it now (when there is no further detail existing) is to encourage anyone reading this to think about whether they might open their front or back garden to the public. If your garden is not ready to face the public now, might it be by next summer? Might that give you the impetus you’ve been looking for? The dates will probably be the 24th and 25th June 2017. We think we will need around 10 gardens to make this a possibility. There is no need to sign up now, but do consider it, and if you know someone with a beautiful garden then please give them a gentle nudge.

More information to come from the Community Garden (are you a member? If not you know what to do…) and the WI. Watch this space!

Rachel writes…

I read Seyi’s councillor report recently with a mixture of pride and awe (feelings that those of us who work with Seyi are more than accustomed to). It reminded me that I had done my own first ward report in July, which I gave to the Labour members who came to the ward meeting, and which I always intended to publish on the blog… but then, well, it was summer, and then… well.

Although I realise that this is now partly out of date, I thought that just as part of being transparent I should still publish it here. So here is my report from July this year, with apologies for lateness. Some of it has now been overtaken by events, but this is the report as I presented it in July and I hope it’s interesting, or if not that, that it provides an insight into what we do.

———————————-

Introduction
Although Seyi has regularly given written reports to the ward, councillor reports have previously tended to be verbal and more informal. Given the increase in membership recently, we thought it was probably now appropriate to become a bit more organised, to introduce some more accountability. So this is the first of my written reports to the ward, which I will make every three months from here on, taking it in turns with Seyi and with Anam, once he is as we hope successfully elected. I won’t go into everything here, but will aim to give any big current trends or pieces of work. More information on our work is available for all residents on our joint blog, http://www.forestgatenorth.com

Casework
I have seen a steep increase in casework recently. As with all other councillors, there is a large amount concerning housing, where increasing rents and the short supply of social housing are putting pressure on residents, especially those who have lived here for some time in rented accommodation, and whose landlords wish to sell or to increase their rent.
I have also seen some planning enforcement casework. The planning enforcement team are very good at acting where building has taken place without permission, but they need to know about it first. I forward emails I get through to them, but reports can also be made online here: https://www.newham.gov.uk/Pages/Services/Planning-enforcement.aspx

Other common topics for casework include litter and fly tipping (which I have given its own section below), and parking (ditto).

Fly tipping
I attended a meeting organised by the person behind the twitter account @sitesofnewham which was intended to allow residents from across Newham to give their ideas about how to tackle fly tipping. There were 6 councillors in attendance, and it was chaired by Stephen Timms. Although I didn’t count I think there must have been 30 or 40 people there, and although there was some representation from other political parties, and a strong voice from people who had moved to the area relatively recently, overall the attendance seemed diverse and pretty representative.

I took several things away from it, partly that we have traditionally in Newham not been so strong on education and prevention, and that although we are now doing this, we need to be more clear about how and where. I was also struck afresh by how little residents know (indeed, how little I knew before I started finding out about it) about the action that can be taken against fly tipping, and the prosecutions and fixed penalty notices that are issued. There was also some very helpful discussion about the end about how the Council can facilitate community action to keep the place clean.

As part of Keep Newham Clean the borough is introducing a whole package of measures to try to improve litter and fly tipping, so after that meeting I went to see Jon Hastings who is in charge of the visiting team, who are visiting houses in the borough. There is still lots to do there, but I was interested to know:
– The team are now visiting Forest Gate (they knocked on my door in fact)
– They are visiting ‘standard’ houses first, then will be moving on to flats above shops which are a particular problem in terms of waste
– That the figures for fly tipping do not show an increase in tips since the £20 bulky waste charge was introduced (I found this fascinating, as my experience looking around and also from talking to residents is the opposite of this. I am asking for some more information, not out of disbelief, but just to check)

What I plan to do next is:
– Get hold of the minutes of the meeting and make sure we follow up.
– Speak to officers about the idea of Community Skips (as mentioned to me by a resident and Labour member) and how and whether we can use these at particular problem spots.
– Speak to an officer who works in the website about making the data from fly tips open and available to residents, as suggested at the meeting.
– Think some more with officers about how we communicate about CCTV, which is something residents often ask for. It can be part of the answer, but isn’t actually a panacea. I would like to make the process for requesting new CCTV more transparent.
– Hold a networking event in Forest Gate on the environment, specifically about cleanliness, to allow residents who want to find out more about recycling and disposal, to sign up with a community litter pick if they wish, or create one if they want to. We already have #tidyourflats, and there is a group at Manor Park, and an initiative just starting called ‘Love Our Lanes’.

Parking
I have given parking its own section – it’s a constant surprise to me how time-consuming it is. There has now been a decision to create parking restrictions across the whole borough, which in my opinion is very sensible given the transport pressures, and given the time and energy otherwise spent on piecemeal changes, which just move the parking pressure, road by road, incrementally, creating disruption and distress for residents.

Although controversial, on careful reflection with colleagues I strongly felt that when the east of the ward (basically the area bounded by Sebert, Woodgrange, Capel and Tylney Roads) became an RPZ, it was not at all fair to leave the area west of Woodgrange Road as the only small ‘island’ of unrestricted parking. We are therefore consulting on creating a new controlled parking area for all of the rest of the ward.

In a break with the normal process, Seyi and I insisted on, and held a drop- in session at the Gate library one evening. This was hard work, as people’s feelings were running strong. But I spoke to everyone there, and interestingly the majority of the people there were in favour of restrictions, even though those who spoke most forcefully were those who were strongly against. There are a number of rumours and mis-information about parking restrictions, but the easiest to combat in this report are that parking isn’t money-making (in fact, I believe there is legislation to say it can’t be, and that if any money is made it must be ploughed back into roads), and also that the first permit per household is – unusually – free under our system and councillors and the Mayor are committed that it should remain so.

Lead councillor for Forest Gate
As well as being elected for Forest Gate North ward, I am appointed as the Community Lead Councillor for Forest Gate, which is the name of our ‘Community Neighbourhood’. Newham is split into 8 community neighbourhoods, each with a designated councillor who takes a lead politically, Liaising with staff in the Neighbourhood Centre (ours is the Gate) to get things done.

Some of the things I have been doing include:
– Working with Planning Enforcement to think about how we can physically improve Woodgrange Road. Opportunities here include the ‘Linear Gateway Project’ where local shops are asked to comply with bye-laws around the condition of their buildings, and their shop fronts
– working with Transport on the plans for the remodelling around Forest Gate and Maryland stations, and thinking about how to include more art and ‘greening’ in our streets.
– Holding themed networking meetings around key improvements we want to make to Forest Gate. Our latest one was about cycling, held jointly with Newham Cyclists, with information about how to maintain a bike, local bike routes, and more. Others in the offing include business networking (also to explore whether there is local appetite to create a Business Improvement District), the Environment, and Play Streets.
– Working with colleagues and the market to support it and any future alcohol licence application.
– Thinking of how we can encourage community activity in specific areas. Seyi and I held a drop-in small grants session in Maryland, we are planning another, and I plan to hold one in Upton Lane too.

Planning
Planning, like parking was an unexpected part of my councillor role. But unlike the other word beginning with P, it’s been immensely enjoyable as well as hard work. I sit on the Strategic Development Committee, which looks at applications for larger developments right across the Borough. This has meant a pretty steep learning curve about planning, and lots of 100 page + documents to read through.

The perpetual issue with planning is to work within the guidelines laid down by national legislation, but within that to exert the maximum pressure on developers to ensure the best outcomes for residents, whether that’s in terms of affordable housing, community space, money for schools and other infrastructure, transport improvements, or some combination of the above.

Recently the economic uncertainty after the referendum has led some of us to worry that many of the agreed developments across the borough may not go ahead, although we are reassured that the ABP business park in the south is unaffected as their business is not orientated towards Europe. The legislation coming up will change the definition of affordable housing entirely, into subsidy for ‘starter homes’ which is highly problematic to say the least as it won’t offer anything to people on low or even average (or above average!) incomes, and may inflate house prices further.

There is a development coming to the committee on 39 – 49 Woodgrange Road. With other councillors I want to hold a meeting where residents can come along to learn more about the planning process, its opportunities and its limits, and speak to their councillors about their views on the proposals. As always, people will have strong opinions and the spectre of the old Obsidian application looms large in memories, meaning this will be a difficult topic. My aim is to provide a forum to assist those councillors who are not on the committee in representing their residents, to genuinely and openly hear views, and to start the process of empowering residents so they can make good submissions to the planning process which enable officers to negotiate better outcomes from developers. Lofty aims, and certainly the latter can’t be achieved in the short term.

Equalities

I have also just been appointed onto the Cabinet, in a one-day-a-week role, with responsibility for Equalities. I am really pleased at this, and in fact have a bit of professional experience as I used to manage the Equalities team in another borough, on the officer side.

Although too early to make any definite plans, I want to find out more about:
– Access to flexible affordable childcare for women on low incomes;
– Work opportunities for people with learning disabilities
– How to encourage a wide range of people to get involved in politics and democracy
– Housing allocations and homelessness, including vulnerable people
– Voluntary organisations in the borough and their views
I am aware that the scope of a role like ‘equalities’ could be limitless, so want to do research and listening initially, then focus on one or two areas. As the list above makes clear, I am not yet sure what those areas are.

That͛s just a flavour of some of the work I have been doing, and of course almost none of it is just me, but a combined effort of me, Seyi, councillor colleagues and officers. As ever if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me, or to come along to a surgery at the Gate where one of your councillors will be there every Saturday at 10.30am.

Seyi and Rachel write…

Tweeted by @rectripp

We understand that creating the Forest Gate North (FGN) Residents Parking Zone has caused a lot of questions, and some confusion, and also that some parts of the process haven’t been communicated as clearly or as well as we would have liked.

So we’ve decided to publish two blog posts on parking, the first outlining the processes that we’ve all gone through in order to get to where we are now, and the second (that’s this post) to give full information on the results of the second stage consultation about the hours and days of restrictions.

The main reasons for this are to:

• increase transparency between the Council and residents
• hopefully alleviate some concerns residents have about the restrictions
• publish more information here than can be published on the Newham Councll webpage, the design and structure of which mean we can only put brief information there.

In particular, we know that the question of what hours and days the RPZ should run for is a controversial one. Opinions are strongly held on whether the hours should be as short as possible, or as long as possible, with people in some cases feeling very passionate about their view. That is why we wanted to publish the results of that consultation in full, to show the data behind the decision making process.

During this consultation,  residents and businesses in roads within the proposed area of restrictions were invited to send in their views by filling in a questionnaire. This gave residents and businesses the opportunity to share their views on how parking demand should be managed in their area and to comment on the design of Forest Gate North RPZ.

Forest Gate North Stage 2 Returns-  -Summary table

The consultation on hours and days was undertaken between 6th June and 1st July 2016. A total of 3500 consultation packs were distributed to all addresses within the area.

A total of 677 valid completed questionnaires were returned before the closing deadline, giving an overall response rate of 19%. The results of the consultation by road are shown in the table above.  Of the total valid responses, 57% agreed with the design, 43% were against.

The process of agreeing how the operational days and times for the new FGN zone was tricky. Whilst Monday to Friday had 249 returns, the weekend, Mon-Sat  (187) or Mon-Sun (194) had a total of 381 meaning that the majority of residents wanted at least some of the weekend included. Having considered this in conjunction with the need to protect residents closest to the shops on a Saturday, and bearing in mind that there was also significant support for the shorter days it was recommended that the most suitable time would be Mon-Sat, taking into account the competing views and  the majority results. This will also protect the area from the controls in adjacent zones that also operate Mon-Sat and prevent the area becoming swamped at the weekend. The results and recommendations were discussed with Rachel and agreed before being formally agreed with Cllr Ken Clark (who’s the Cabinet portfolio holder).

Of those of the residents who were against the design 21% were against the zone but also asked for more parking spaces and some extra  double yellow lines (especially along the north of Capel Road). Based on these comments we revised the design drawing and recommended that the scheme, be implemented. The final map design can be found here, here and here.

Forest Gate North Stage 2 Returns-  -Full table*

*(I’m afraid we aren’t able to this any bigger) Alternatively you can view it on scribd which is a bit fiddly.

One final note: earlier this week there has been some comments about the physical work to create the restrictions: the poles and signs etc. Obviously restricting parking does create more of what is called ‘street furniture’ and to a certain extent we all have to live with it. Seyi relayed our concerns about the new poles in the ward for the RPZ to the Head of Highways in Newham Council. Seyi received this feedback:

The posts would normally be put to the front of footway, but due to statutory undertaker apparatus [this basically means something under the pavement] in the footway this has not been possible and the posts have been installed further back.

2. Our contractor RMS, were instructed yesterday to install the posts to the back of footway where there isn’t a statutory undertaker problem.

But if you are concerned that a pole or a sign has been put in incorrectly, or is blocking the pavement, or if you have other worries could you please email us, ideally with a picture and with the exact address of the place that you’re concerned about? We can then pass this on to officers and make sure it’s been done as it should be.

Rachel and Seyi write…

Parking has been and remains one of the most popular and controversial processes we deal with as councillors. As we write this post, all the rest of the ward is becoming part of a Residents’ Parking Zone or RPZ. It’s taken a while, and the process can appear a bit convoluted, so we thought a quick recap would be helpful. This blog post aims to walk through the stages that got us to where we are now.

The beginning: after many impassioned requests and much unhappiness, we had a consultation to ask people in the area roughly bounded by Woodgrange Road, Capel Road, Ridley Road, and Sebert Road whether they wanted to have some form of restricted parking on their roads. The answer to this was a clear ‘yes’.

Subsequently, as part of the Council’s budget and various announcements for this current financial year, Newham announced as part of Keep Newham Moving that the whole borough would be subject to some form of residents’ parking zone. So the question then became ‘what hours of operation’ rather than ‘yes or no’.

Something that was difficult, then, was to decide what to do about the area of the ward we hadn’t included in the previous consultation. That is, the part of the ward on the western side of Woodgrange Road, sitting between the restrictions of Waltham Forest, the restrictions of Stratford, and the proposed restrictions in the eastern area of the ward. We met with the parking design team, with Cllr Ken Clarke who is the Cabinet member with responsibility for parking, and discussed it together.

We decided in the end that although it was difficult, it just wouldn’t be fair to exclude this relatively small area at this stage. If we’d moved ahead with restrictions in one area but not another, we would effectively leave the roads west of Woodgrange (Dames Road, Field Road, Essex Street, and more) as a small isolated island of no restrictions. Every vehicle that wanted to park for free would move onto those roads, some of which are amongst the narrowest in the ward. We felt it wouldn’t be right to let those roads become clogged up and to leave them out, so we decided, very slightly with gritted teeth, that it was the right and honest thing to do, to include them now and move on to the next stage.

So the next consultation was about the hours of operation. This is very far from straightforward. For every person who lobbied us strongly saying that problems (commuters, abandoned vehicles, cars for sale, and second vehicles from other RPZs) could be adequately managed by the shortest hours possible, and who felt strongly that we need to help local businesses with as much free parking as possible, there were others that who told us that even longer hours we required: all day every day, and right into the evening (particularly from residents living near Churches).

We also insisted on having a residents’ drop-in session as part of this consultation, at the Gate library one evening. I’d be lying if I said this was the most pleasant evening I’ve ever spent, but I do think it was important to give residents the chance to speak face to face about something that people felt so strongly about. What really struck me about that drop-in was that although the overall ‘noise’ from it was very anti-restrictions, when I made the effort to speak to each person who attended individually and to ask them what their comments and concerns were, most people came along with relatively minor queries or proposed amendments, and the majority of people were in favour overall of restrictions.

The results of that consultation came in, and the majority of people clearly expressed a preference for longer hours of restrictions. We discussed how we could help to make this rather controversial part of the process more transparent, and Seyi is currently working on another blog post to try to publish the responses received and the data in full. We also received a number of detailed suggested changes, and the parking design team spent some time accommodating as many of these as they could, where reasonable and practical.

The next required stage, which needs to happen I believe in order to actually have the power to enforce any restrictions, is the statutory consultation. When we heard about this stage my heart sank somewhat, “Aren’t people going to be very frustrated when we ask them once, ask them about the hours, and then consult with them again?” I asked firstly, and then, “Can’t we combine the statutory consultation with the  second consultation to save time?”

Er, no, is the short answer. The reason this is separate is that you have to do the statutory consultation on the final design – in effect there is no opportunity to affect the design (hours, bay lengths, where the double yellows are, anything at all) at the statutory stage. The only opportunity is to accept or to reject entirely. So we were reluctantly persuaded that yes, this final stage was necessary, but probably on balance not as important  as the earlier consultations as it asked a question we’d already asked, and didn’t offer a chance for residents to affect the design as the previous consultation did. So this stage went ahead, with a notice in the Newham Recorder, and notices on lampposts.

And now here we are. The lines are going down. The signs are going up. The start date is the 5th December. The hours are 8am – 6.30pm Monday to Saturday.

Some things about the implementation have not been ideal. The letters arrived a day or two later than they should have done. The website wasn’t updated quickly enough with the results of the consultation, the letters advised that we could apply for permits immediately but actually this wasn’t possible for another couple of days after that. Whilst recognising that parking design are a busy department trying to bring in RPZs across the borough, with expanding workloads and a small team (not to mention a slightly thankless job with lots of abuse hurled at them) we’ve felt frustrated by this too, and are taking residents’ feedback on this back to the Council and we are aiming to make things better in future.

But we do honestly really believe that in the end this is going to all be much better. We should see around a 30% reduction in cars parked on our roads. The new double yellow lines around junctions should make our roads safer and reduce scrapings, not to mention reduce some of the angry stand-offs that can come about. It’s likely there will be a period of settling in, and then it should all start to run quite smoothly. Certainly feedback from other areas has been that once the RPZ is in place, things improve dramatically.

If that isn’t the case, we are sure that we will hear about it very quickly! But do let us know how things go, either electronically or in person. All our details are on the contact us page.

In the meantime, that rather mammoth post could perhaps be summarised as ‘parking, where we are now’ and whilst it was a bit more lengthy than anticipated, we hope you found it useful.

Rachel writes…

Last week I met again with officers on the junction of Woodgrange Road and Sebert Road to talk with them about the actions we all agreed last time. Avid readers of this blog (hi Mum) might remember that after some feedback, some frank exchanges of views on social media, and finally a pile of bin bags of frankly appalling proportions, Seyi arranged a site visit there between the two of us, and officers from Enforcement, Street Cleansing, and Refuse collection. You can read all about that in our earlier post here.

This time it was a shorter and a smaller meeting to see how we’d done and follow up on the actions agreed. After we last met, there was a tantalising period of a few days where there appeared to be no fly tipping at all on that corner. Now, obviously one knows that these problems are complex and time-consuming, and I did tell myself sternly every time I passed it (and tweeted an excited picture of it all lovely and clear), “Don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t think you’ve fixed it. DO NOT think you’ve solved it.”

But human nature being what it was, I’m ashamed to admit that a little optimistic piece of me did think, ‘supposing we’ve actually solved it?’ And of course that little piece of me was absolutely crushed when more bags of rubbish appeared and it was revealed that, shockingly, no we hadn’t just solved the problem entirely and made it go away forever.

However, if I had to summarise I’d say that this particular hotspot is now ‘better than it was, but not solved’ which given where we started from seems pretty good to me.

For transparency, I’ll go through each of the action points we agreed last time and update against them.

Action points from actions from September 19th site visit

1. The ‘drop off point’ for the street sweepers’ bags of litter will be moved from here to elsewhere.
This has been done. Although the bags themselves aren’t fly tipped, and are picked up (or should be) within 24 hours, we all felt that rubbish left there was encouraging other people to leave rubbish. Bags of litter left by street cleaners are now left at a different, less problematic location.

2. The rubbish bags there when we met would be picked up immediately (pleasingly, this happened whilst we were having a wrap-up and a coffee afterwards)
As we said, they were picked up almost eye-wateringly quickly. I also think that the cleansing team made a particular effort to clear the area in the following days, which was partly what made the area so much visibly cleaner so quickly.

3. The people who drive the ‘cage’ vehicles to pick up fly tips will be reminded to clear up the litter that is left behind as well (less pleasingly, as I write this, the bags are gone but the litter remains. Something for us to improve here).
After we wrote the original post we were in touch with the officer in cleansing who confirmed that cleansing are told to pick up the fly tips as quickly as possible, to move on to the next one, and do leave litter behind, though this should be subsequently picked up by the street cleaners. We are a bit perturbed by this, as several residents are, and Seyi and I will pick this up with officers. I know we’ve seen and heard residents being frustrated that a fly tip has been picked up, but the area is still left in a mess. We will find out about this, find out what other councils do, and let you know if we can change anything here.

4. Street cleansing will arrange for a ‘proper’ litter pick around and inside the road works which is not usually cleared of litter. This should make a visual difference and make people less likely to contribute to the litter.
This was done, and immediately looked much better. Since then the road works have finished (and we are assured that once the gas works are complete, the resurfacing of Sebert Road can go ahead) so this is something to be optimistic about.

5. Enforcement will visit the flats above shops again to remind them about timed waste collections and what they need to do.
This action was actually taken up by the waste team, who followed up a letter delivered by enforcement earlier this year with another letter reminding residents of those flats about the times for their waste collections, and that rubbish should be left on Woodgrange Road, not on the market square by the commercial bins. Interestingly, I have noticed since that although bags of rubbish are still left out at the wrong times, they are more often on Woodgrange Road now, or in a location a bit closer to Woodgrange Road, which seems better than it was before although still not perfect.

6.Enforcement will also visit the nearby shops and check that they have a trade waste agreement (which is to say, they’ll check they have proper arrangements to dispose of their waste)
7. There is a commercial bin that is left out on the marketplace, unlocked, over the weekend. Enforcement will speak to the business concerned and make sure this doesn’t happen.
This was perhaps the most useful of the action points. Enforcement are visiting the local businesses and have found several areas that require further investigating. Businesses are required to have an arrangement to dispose of their waste, either by purchasing a service from Newham or by contracting with a private provider. Whilst we can’t and won’t name the businesses involved, there are definitely some fruitful lines of enquiry that are being pursued.
One business in particular didn’t have a trade waste agreement at all. Other businesses didn’t have sufficient paperwork to reassure the officers, and will be visited again. Enforcement reassured me that they have ‘gone in softly’ and given businesses the opportunity to show evidence of having arrangements in place. They can ask to see details for up to 2 years, but instead will typically ask to see paperwork for the previous 3 – 6 months, to be sure that rubbish is disposed of properly and not just left outside.

We are really hopeful that commercial waste may represent one of the main sources of fly tipped rubbish at this spot, and that checking the local businesses’ arrangements will help to stop this.

8. We are going to collect some intelligence about exactly when the rubbish at this spot is dumped so that we can ask the night team to visit and do some enforcement. We have a tentative plan about how to do this by collecting info via social media, but if you have an idea about a good way of doing this, then please let us know.
Seyi and I joked about camping out in her car for a night, with recording equipment and snacks, and then I think we both had a moment where we realised neither of us were joking… it hasn’t quite come to that, but so far we haven’t needed to collect information by social media. I walk past that spot at least once a day, and have been collecting evidence and pictures and the ward enforcement officer (new, but very keen and a very active part of this plan) has been doing so as well. We’ve picked up some addresses and some other information that has helped to do some enforcement as well as the prevention. 

What else?

I found a few boxes from an Amazon collection point further up the road. After a visit, it seems that some people are collecting their Amazon parcels from a collection point, walking down the road towards the station opening them, and then sometimes dumping the cardboard on the existing pile of rubbish. The shop in question was apparently very helpful – we will ask them to remind their customers to put their rubbish in a bin. (The bin, let’s not forget, is right there on the marketplace…)

We also have some intelligence from one of the shops there about where some of the waste may be coming from. I can’t share much more about that (not because it’s especially salacious, but just I need to allow enforcement to do their job) but we will pursue that as well.

In the medium-term, I think we’ve mentioned before how the Visiting Team that is going around the borough will look specifically at flats above shops and how to communicate with those residents about timed waste collections and disposing of rubbish. So I’m also hopeful that this will help as well, but we’ll carry on with all this in the meantime.

Whilst long-winded, I hope that’s been useful. Big thanks to the officers who’ve been looking into all this, and also to Seyi who couldn’t make the last catch-up due to illness, but nevertheless was the person who got this all off the ground and made it all happen.