Forest Gate North – Rachel Tripp's councillor blog

Rachel writes…

I have been wanting to write a post for ages called ‘report it’, and was prompted to start it today when I was going back through casework.

Sadly, other councillors and I spend a lot of time talking to residents about problems they are experiencing, from pot holes, to loud noise, to fly tipping. I forward this information on to officers, who will whenever they can follow it up and deal with it. More and more, though, I find myself saying to people ‘please report it’ and so I wanted to write a bit more about why.

I have a few ongoing cases at the moment, which are at very different stages. One of them concerned ongoing noise, litter and ASB, and seems (fingers tightly crossed) to have been stopped. One of them concerns noise and disruption, and I am cautiously optimistic that it will be stopped soon. One of them concerns noise and disruption and I’m currently not that optimistic.

And what’s the difference between these cases? Reporting. In the first case, the neighbours all got together and decided that they weren’t having it. They contacted their councillors, they contacted the police, they even formed a little local whatsapp group to share information. They ensured each and every time they were disturbed, that they reported. Result? The police and the Council both had information that showed a repeated disturbance, over a period of time. It was taken seriously, and the police showed up, and now the problems of noise and litter aren’t happening in a place that was showing all the signs of becoming a trouble spot. (Of course there are a number of caveats here. One is that an ‘enforcement only’ approach can often just move the problem around rather than solving it, and that may well be what’s happened here. But prevention is a bigger issue than I can deal with here! I will come back to it. For the moment, rest assured that I know things are complex, and am not complacent.)

In the second case, I heard from a resident about persistent noise and disturbance from a local building. My heart sank a little, until I found that the Noise and Nuisance team at the Council had such an ongoing record of complaints and problems that they were already pursuing it. I therefore contacted them to add my concerns, advised the resident to speak to neighbours, and he has got together a petition as well. All the information will be looked at soon by the Licensing Committee, who are considering whether this venue should continue to have an alcohol licence or whether their licence should be changed. Seyi and I both formally sent in a joint objection to how things currently are (she’d had casework from around this venue too), and one of us will try to attend the hearing to make our residents’ case.

In the third case, similarly there is a problem with ongoing noise and fumes and disturbance which has been disrupting the lives of residents for some considerable time. However, without going into the specifics of this particular case, the residents have been collecting information about it, but due to the involvement of an external organisation who are the landlord (and with whom I’m extremely frustrated), there isn’t the ongoing record that we need at the Council in order to be able to take action. I’m therefore going back to the residents now, who are understandably dis-spirited, to encourage them, as I am encouraging you now, to report, starting from now, so that we can collect evidence from this point onwards.

I know that reporting can feel annoying. I also know it can feel pointless, especially if you are reporting the same thing. Reporting fly tipping at the same spot, again and again, feels like throwing information into the abyss…. but the more reports the Council receives the more we can make the case that the data shows this is a ‘hotspot’ and deserving of special attention by the local ward enforcement officer and / or the fly tipping team. Reporting noise again and again feels like it achieves nothing, but the Council has legal powers to take action against people and businesses who are causing an ongoing nuisance … but to do that we need ongoing information. Reporting that your street hasn’t been swept is frustrating, but if you contact us to tell us your street is regularly unswept, and when the officer assures us it always is, we can refer them to a series of Love Newham reports where, every two weeks, it is reported as unswept, we can be much firmer about requiring a solution!

I was also very struck once by meeting a resident who had lots of ideas for the improvement of her street and area, and also a list of problems that she wanted resolved. She reported regular ASB and noise and trouble, and also small scale flooding. When I asked (tentatively) if she reported it, she told me confidently, “They know.”

“They know.” Honesty, I felt a bit despairing. I wanted to say, “Um, *I* didn’t know!”

Of course, I am not denying that reports get lost, and I am sure this resident was in touch with all the right people a long time ago, and nothing happened, and she now feels ignored. But it’s very hard to know what we can do now, when Seyi and I go back to Enforcement and to the police, who tell us that this particular area isn’t a trouble spot, as far as they’re concerned, because they have received no complaints.

At risk of talking myself round in circles, I can’t round off this paean to reporting without acknowledging that there are structural issues with reporting, which I’m always aware of. I know some people aren’t able to report, or are unwilling to, or find it more difficult, or are frightened of the consequences, and that issues of socioeconomic background, race, disability, gender, and deprivation will always mean that some voices are heard more loudly than others. And I remind myself (and Seyi reminds me) that the loud voices aren’t always the neediest ones. As councillors we are always looking for and thinking about ways that we can help to amplify voices that won’t be heard otherwise. I also think there are things we could do structurally to ‘close the loop’, so that people who send in information can hear about what happens as a result, and be motivated to continue to do so.

But if you’re reading this, and if you have easy internet access, and a phone, please do keep reporting, and don’t be disspirited. Please help us to direct the Council’s resources to the places where they are needed, help us to have accurate information about how things are, and we can make a difference.

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Report it – useful contacts

Love Newham
This is the single best and easiest way to report a huge variety of different things to the Council. There are a number of categories including fly tipping, but also dog fouling, graffiti, problems with the road or kerb, broken road signs, and much more.

Use the Love Newham app which you can download to your phone.

Reporting online
There is a ‘report it’ page on the Newham Council website, with a big long list of different things that you can report. This includes I think all of the categories on Love Newham, but also noise, possible breaches of planning, and unlicensed rented properties.

Regarding reporting ongoing noise, the team says:
‘Before you complain about noise, please take these steps.

– Try to solve the problem in a friendly way by talking to the person or company causing the noise if you feel comfortable with this.
– If this does not work, you could try taking other informal steps such as mediation – for more information go to the Problem Neighbours website.
– If you still can’t solve the problem, complain to us.’

If the noise is happening right now, you can report it to Newham 24 hours a day on 020 8430 2000. You may need to leave a message, and a member of the team will endeavour to call you back within an hour, depending on the volume of calls they are receiving.

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I really hope that this information is useful, and that the reports you make are acted on. As ever, if they’re not please contact one of us and we’ll chase it up for you.

Rachel writes…

Happy new year, Forest Gaters! I hope that those of you who could take a break had a happy and restful Christmas, and those who couldn’t were still able to soak up some festive spirit, and to see their family and loved ones.

I wanted to post very quickly today to remind you about a great event that is happening at the Gate library this coming Saturday. Called ‘Kick Start Saturday’ it’s a way of finding out more about what is going on locally, and finding ways to ‘kick start’ your year, and to back up those new year’s resolutions that we all make so fervently, but then begin to fade from our minds as the nights continue so dark and depressingly.

There will be masses of great stuff there, and opportunities to try activities out, and to sign up for some of the activities we have coming up.

– Join the community garden in helping to plant our new raised beds at The Gate

– People of all ages are encouraged to try their hand at knitting and if keen to join our Knit a Bit group starting the week after Kick Start Saturday

– Get creative and help Forest Gate Arts to design a mural for our children’s library

– Meet our special guest (ex apprentice candidate and food critic to give you a clue) who will be helping to officially launch our new coffee shop

– Learn about and sign up to our new life drawing class

– Join in some African dance and get those hips moving

– If you are +50 and want to develop your artistic talents then sign up to our new over 50s art class

– If you were inspired by Newham Heritage Week why not join East Side Heritage and learn about how to research your families past and develop your family tree plus sign up to a new ancestry course being run at The Gate

– Learn about the new 1000 days project being run by Newham NCT in partnership with the Forest Gate Community Neighbourhood team in which children up to the age of two years and their parents will develop themed art works, culminating in an exhibition in out child friendly coffee shop

– Learn about our new independent film club for adults running onchosen Saturday evenings until April

It should be a huge success and we hope to see lots of you there.

Seyi writes…

At the last few full Newham Council meetings I’ve asked various questions from how the Cabinet Member for Crime and Disorder is planning to address the spike in gun violence in Forest Gate, to can the #MarylandZone2 campaign  be included in the Mayor’s priority agenda and on the cost of the new Special Purpose Vehicle pilot. As a councillor the council procedure rules part of the constitution*1 says I am able to ask two questions to the Mayor, a member of Cabinet or a Chair of Committee. Inspired by our Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn’s excellent use of the public questions , I’d like to trial asking Forest Gate North residents… “What question would you like me to ask at full council.”

The next full council meeting is on 30th January and questions have to be submitted by Tuesday 24th January, 5pm to the Chief Executive.

Following my visit to Emmanuel Church on Romford Road on Christmas Day I was stunned at the number of homeless and vulnerable members of Forest Gate and also with the new government grant awarded to Newham  I will be asking a question around homelessness, our plans and how we will partner with third sector in delivering services and support. So that leaves me with one question I can ask on 30th January.

There are just a few rules to make this pilot work

• Questions from Forest Gate North residents only.
• Questions have to be about Newham/local government policies and decisions.
• Questions suggested may be modified or put with another similar question.
• Questions have to be submitted via the form below by Sunday 22nd January at 23:59pm (this will hopefully give me enough time to go through them all (assuming I will get any responses lol). I understand this alienates people who can’t access/use the computer so those residents can write to me or in future pop into my surgery and we can fill out the form together.

Please feel free to share this post using the hashtag #FGQ (like FAQs? Get it?) I’d like to reach as many people as possible.

If you have any constructive feedback please do get in touch. I’d really like to make this work, I’ll trial #FGQ for the next 3 full council meetings, (next one is the Monday 20th February 2017) and will decide if I should continue.

*1 Rules on Member’s Question time

24. MEMBERS’ QUESTION TIME 24.1 A Member may ask the Chair of a Committee any question about an item in the report of that committee when it is being considered. 24.2 A Member may ask the Mayor, any Member of the Cabinet or scrutiny chair a question about any matter affecting the Borough, provided that three clear days’ written notice has been given to the Chief Executive. The notice should indicate whether the Member requires a written answer only. Recipients of questions have the right to delegate them to other Members for response if they deem it appropriate to do so. 24.3 With the Chair’s permission, a Member may ask the Mayor, any Cabinet Member or scrutiny chair a question relating to urgent business affecting the Borough, provided that written notice is given to the Chief Executive by noon on the day of the meeting, if possible. 24.4 The provisions of 23.2 and 23.3 above also apply to questions about the business of a joint authority of which the Council is a partner or questions about the activities of a company or external organisation to which the Council nominates and in these cases the question is put to the Member or Officer who has been appointed as the Council’s representative. [Note – This is a statutory requirement and in respect of questions about the activities of a company or outside body the Member must give 21 clear days written notice to the Chief Executive] [Local Government Act 1985] [Local Government and Housing Act 1989] 24.5 Questions are limited to two per Member per meeting, plus one supplementary question unless the Member has indicated that only a written reply is required and in these circumstances, a supplementary question is not permitted. 24.6 For questions requiring a technical or information based response, the response will be in writing. Written responses will be available to Members one hour before the start of the meeting. Oral responses will be time-limited to three minutes. Supplementary questions and responses will also be time-limited to two minutes each. 24.7 There will be a time-limit of forty minutes on Members’ questions with no extension of time, and questions not dealt with in this time will be dealt with by written responses. 24.8 The Chief Executive, in consultation with the Chair of Council, may apportion part of Members’ Question Time for questions to the Mayor and may introduce a rota for Cabinet Members and scrutiny chairs to answer questions if the number of questions warrants this. 24.9 If the Member asking a question is not present at the meeting, the question shall fall unless the maker indicates at least 3 clear days before the next meeting that they wish the question to be put to the next meeting.

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.

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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.