Forest Gate North – Rachel Tripp's councillor blog

A guest post on forestgatenorth.com today, from Sarah Mbatha who is actually a resident of Manor Park ward, but whose sterling work (alongside Misty’s) organising volunteer litter picks helps to get people together, and to improve the condition of our treasured Wanstead Flats for everyone to enjoy.

Sarah shared some good news on social media recently, so I asked her if we could help publicise it on our blog:

‘I think that everyone has noticed that recently there seems to be a lot more rubbish on Wanstead Flats, with many of us expressing our frustration on social media.

Wanstead Flats Pickers also noticed that we were collecting more rubbish recently – 21 of us collected 89 bags in early September. Some people on social media questioned whether the existence of volunteer litter picking groups, meant that the City of London was reducing paid staff resources on the Flats.

While we didn’t think this was the case, we did begin to feel that resources weren’t enough to keep the Flats in the condition it deserves to be.

Earlier this year we started to meet with the City of London every two months, to see how we can work together more effectively. Other volunteer ‘friends of the flats’ groups attend and we focus on our different areas of interest – nature and conservation as well as litter, anti-social behaviour, bins, improving communication, use of signs etc.

Recently, we’ve spent a lot of time in these meetings talking about staff resources and we’re absolutely thrilled to confirm that the Flats now have TWO full time litter pickers – we previously had one shared picker who covered other parts of the forest too.

Credit to the City for listening to local concerns and providing us with the resources we had asked for.

The volunteer litter picks go on – Wanstead Flats Pickers meet last Sunday at 11am outside Golden Fleece. We hope it will soon start to get a lot more difficult to find rubbish to fill our bags.

In the meantime, join us and make some rubbish friends.’

Thanks so much Sarah, for your organising, but also for such a great result from working positively with the Corporation of London.

If you have some local news or an issue that you’d like to share on our blog then please get in touch with Rachel, Seyi or Anam using the contact us tab at the top.

Rachel writes…

A few years ago I was idly reading nonsense online – I mean ‘doing some important research’ – when I first came across the concept of Guerilla Gardening. I immediately loved it. The website explains it all much better than I can, but in essence it’s about planting in spaces that you don’t own. Maybe it’s my childhood… I have a hazy memory of my Mum either planting on the roundabout up the lane from my childhood home, or perhaps pointing out approvingly where someone else had done so. Clutches of bulbs. Flowering plants. Fruit and vegetables. It’s all brilliant.

When I was very briefly part of the Steering Group of the wonderful Forest Gate Community Garden we were discussing how to manage the increasing number of ideas we were receiving for other areas we could plant and maintain. We quickly realised that the barrier wasn’t locating possible spaces, the barrier was finding the people who were willing to organise, plant and maintain. So together we established a process that we called ‘Green Shoots’, where if someone wanted to work alongside the garden committee on their own area, they could do so, whilst the committee focussed on bringing the garden itself (then seemingly a pipe dream, now here and flowering in all senses) to fruition.

Perhaps the best-known example of guerilla gardening that we currently have in Forest Gate is the Women’s Institute’s planting of the water trough by the station. I find this glorious: both beautiful in an actual way but also somehow metaphorical as well. In my more poetic moments I feel as though the multi-coloured flowers growing there say something about our past, our present, about variety and multi-culturalism, about tenacity, and new growth. (But that’s probably just the English Literature student in me. On a practical and more measurable note, they look lovely. And any planting of course encourages wildlife, bees, butterflies and more.)

Since then I have noticed some guerilla planting going on in other places: a lamp post in Odessa Road, a little space on Cranmer Road. I also heard on the grapevine that a certain councillor might have planted some snowdrops on the verge of Wanstead Flats, though I can’t confirm or deny anything about that. So when I was contacted by someone wondering about doing some more in the conservation area, I started to wonder whether we might have a mini-revolution on our hands.

So I suppose I am blogging now to ask a couple of questions, firstly whether any has noticed any other examples of guerilla gardening? I’d love to see pictures if so!  Tweet them to me using #fgguerillagardening and I can share them here and on twitter. Are other people as childishly excited by this as I am? And is anyone interested in doing any more? Can I do anything to help if so?

I would be really grateful to hear from you. If you’re not a gardener, then it is more than enough to just enjoy, point out these little areas of illicit joy when you see them, and pass on our thanks to the people around us who are taking the trowels into their own hands to make Forest Gate a nicer, more beautiful and greener place, little by little.

Rachel and Seyi writes…

After we’d both had various complaints from residents, some impassioned discussion on Facebook groups, reporting on LoveNewham, taking more photos of the area than I care to remember, chatting with the ward enforcement officer, raising the area as a hotspot at a meeting with a senior enforcement officer…. Seyi suggested and organised a site visit on the junction of Sebert Road and Woodgrange Road.

This area has always been blighted by fly tipping, but over recent weeks it seems to have got significantly worse. It seems to have got worse with the warmer weather (warm weather sadly always seems to mean more litter and more fly tipping), and also we think the road works at that junction aren’t helping as litter from the street is flying into the road works, which makes the place look tatty, which in turn attracts more rubbish as it makes leaving rubbish there seem ‘ok’.

Looking closely at the bags left there, seemingly nightly, they seem to us to be largely residential waste, with a small amount of commercial waste left there too. This means they are probably from the nearby flats above the shops. These flats are ones that have no outside space for a wheelie bin and so are on ‘timed waste collections’. You might notice there is a sign about this up in the middle of the market place. If you have a timed waste collection, this means that you CAN actually leave your rubbish outside… but only in a black bag, on Woodgrange Road (not on Sebert Road) and only from 10 – 11am, or 6 – 7pm, Monday – Saturday (which is to say not all night and all day).

A few weeks ago we spoke with the local enforcement officer, who went and visited the flats to deliver letters reminding them about these arrangements. We also arranged for an additional litter bin to be placed there in response to a resident request. But we were aware that we seemed to be skirting around the edges of a seemingly intractable problem without actually making any progress. Hence Seyi’s plan for a ‘site visit’, to get everyone together in one place to agree some actions.

When we saw the bags of rubbish were there and worse than ever, we had mixed feelings. On the one hand – how awful that it was so bad. On the other hand, – it was difficult not to feel very slightly pleased and justified, as it would have been highly embarrassing to have absolutely  insisted that officers from street cleansing, waste management, and enforcement all attended an urgent meeting, only to find the space clean and pristine.

We were really pleased that Mic and Daniel from CoffeE7 came along too, as they have been active in trying to improve this area, and are keen to work with us.

After some discussion we agreed some action points, which we wanted to record here for you:

• The ‘drop off point’ for the street sweepers’ bags of litter will be moved from here to elsewhere. Although these bags should be collected within 24 hours, the bags are obviously exacerbating the problem.
• 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)
• 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)
• 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.
• Enforcement will visit the flats above shops again to remind them about timed waste collections and what they need to do.
• 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)
• 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.
• 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.

Basically we think there are several problems here:

– people in flats not knowing when and where they should put their waste…. the visits from enforcement and in the medium-term, the visiting team which is going out across the borough should help with this.
– commercial waste (bins overflowing, some commercial waste being fly tipped)… checking out the local businesses will help here.
– litter (which is more likely to be dropped when the area is untidy to begin with) ….the clear-up that has been promised, plus the additional bin that’s already there may help with this.

We have also arranged a follow up meeting for 3 weeks’ time, to report back to each other and see if we’ve made a difference. We don’t necessarily think we can solve this area entirely, but we do hope that we can make a bit of a difference, and we will keep trying as we are as frustrated by the rubbish here as everyone else is.

As ever, we’ll keep you posted on here and on twitter.

Rachel writes…

One of the unexpected pleasures (ahem) of being a councillor is being added to every organisation’s email list, ever. Meaning that when I sit down to get on with my casework or other ongoing bits and pieces, I first spend some time unsubscribing from lists, sending my apologies to obscure events happening all over the UK, weighing up whether I will really ever get time to read X organisation’s highly vital newsletter… and of course summarily deleting a large quantity of unsolicited messages.

So I am sorry to admit that my finger hovered over ‘delete’ as I read through a campaigning email filled with customary phrases like ‘important campaign’, ‘can you help raise awareness’. Then, rather in the manner of one who awakes from sleep walking, I re-read it, and realised – ‘hang on, this really IS important’.

The topic, unglamorously, is cooking fat. I once saw some news coverage where they were talking about the frankly disgusting topic of the ‘fatbergs’ that are accumulating in our sewers in London. These are huge lumps of congealed fat, mixed with baby wipes, that are the result of many people pouring away said cooking fat, and flushing said baby wipes down the toilet, which build up, cause blockages and cost us all time and money.

Obviously no one wants to think about such things (I politely declined Thames Water’s offer to take me down to have a look at them). But there they are, under our feet. Not getting any smaller. I remembered this campaign when I was pouring some cooking fat into a jar, so that I could bin it, and thought I would pen a quick post as a reminder.

Bin it, don’t block it. Or next time I will share pictures of fatbergs, and believe me no one wants to see that… 😉

Rachel writes…

One of the things I was most excited about in this year’s Council budget was the idea of ‘Keep Newham Moving‘. We want to improve all of the borough’s roads, pavements and lights, and make a real and noticeable difference to the quality of our physical environment.

This is good news for all kinds of reasons. Firstly, and not insignificantly, it’s novel and great to have a positive proposal for something new. Just because everyone is sick of hearing local government talk about how much their funding has been cut doesn’t mean  it’s not shocking and true that budgets have been cut, cut and cut again. (In fact, the proposal from central government that local councils should keep more of their business rates is in fact a proposal that all money in the future that local councils get should be raised by them. It effectively removes any idea of ‘need’ from how much cash you get. No matter if you have an elderly population, for example, or a largely rural area with limited prospects of raising cash through businesses, or a diverse population with high levels of poverty. But that’s probably a topic for another day.) So investing in the borough like this is unusual, and it’s nice to be the bearer of good news.

Also, I do get complaints from residents about what I have now learnt through my planning committee membership to call either ‘the streetscape’ or ‘urban realm’ but which is more commonly called ‘roads and pavements and all that’. I think it’s important to be honest that we have concentrated in Newham on people and jobs, and tried to make a difference to people by linking up with employers, by providing free school meals, by encouraging local links between people through the Community Neighbourhoods, by providing free swimming and instrument tuition to children. That has been and remains very important, but I think it’s fair to say the corollary to that is that the physical environment hasn’t been our top priority. This programme of improvements has the potential to make a real difference to that, alongside the other things we will continue to do.

Better street lighting is an obvious win: it makes our roads and pavements safer at night, helps people to feel safer, and can help to discourage some crime and anti-social behaviour. The LED lights we are putting in will save energy and save money as well.

Perhaps my next thought is a bit of post-holiday optimism speaking, but I also hope very fervently that improving the appearance of our environment will help contribute to all of us taking more care of it. I obviously don’t think we can stop litter or fly-tipping just by resurfacing a pavement, but I am often reminded by one particular resident (you know who  you are!) that if something starts off clean, people are more likely to keep it clean, and I believe and / or hope that there is truth in this.

Finally, I find myself more and more interested in roads and streets, and our physical environment and how we can make them into safer, healthier places, how can we encourage walking, how can we improve the air quality, can we encourage people to interact with each other, can we design out litter and ASB –  and this programme may well provide an opportunity to make some changes. There is an organisation called Living Streets which is the charity to promote walking and vibrant streets. They don’t currently have a Newham branch but would love us to set one up. If you are interested in this too, please email me on rachel.tripp@newham.gov.uk and let’s see if we can make it happen.

So the Keep Newham Moving work is starting. The reason I started what has turned into a bit of a rambling blog post was to let anyone interested know that various bits of work (including, depending on the road, new street lights, pavement and / or road resurfacing, and improvements to drainage) are being done this month in our ward, in Leonard Road, Norfolk Street, Suffolk Street and Macdonald Road. I thought it was a shame for only residents of those roads to know, so wanted to blog about it. I will tweet other roads as and when they come up, to try to keep you informed.

Rachel writes…

I feel as if I should write a standard opening paragraph for all my blog posts which says ‘I have been meaning to blog about this for ages’. But that would be tedious in the extreme. I will just begin then by saying that as I get more (and more) stuck into this role I am finding that the ratio of things of which I think ‘Oh! I should blog about that!’ and things that I actually get around to blogging about is currently standing at about 10:1. Still. I read some wise words once about how you will always have more ideas than you will have time, and how that’s ok, and I keep coming back to those.

As I mentioned in my recent post about using planning by-laws to smarten up Woodgrange Road and Upton Lane, Seyi and I have been having lots of discussions with people about how to make some physical improvements to Forest Gate. When we held our drop-in session at Maryland, one of the things that people were quite interested in was whether empty shops could be used as temporary premises or ‘pop-ups’ for businesses or initiatives that are looking to find their feet, to use a space as ‘proof of concept’ or similar.

In Forest Gate, we want to do more work with local businesses generally, and officers from the Community Neighbourhood have been making contacts with local retailers, introducing themselves, planning for this year’s Small Business Saturday, and planning a local businesses networking event later in the year. We are keeping a record of empty premises, and want to start keeping alongside that a record of people and organisations who are looking for spaces, to see if we can do some linking up, and see if we can make something interesting or exciting happen.

So if you are a local business or a local organisation and this sounds interesting to you, could you please drop me a line and let me know? My email address is rachel.tripp@newham.gov.uk and in your message it would be great to know a little bit about you, and what you hope to do. There are some local people who I already know and have had conversations with who are actively looking for retail space, but it occurred to me that our local networks (whilst excellent of course!) are not exhaustive, and it wouldn’t be fair to exclude anyone whom we don’t know, for whatever reason, hence this blog post.

I need to add that this is all highly caveated, and I wouldn’t want to raise any false hopes. All Council-owned retail properties in Forest Gate are currently let, so I would envisage doing some brokering, like an online dating service, putting you in touch with any landlords we can find who may express an interest. Which is to say, in essence, no promises! But if we don’t know who you are, then we can’t help, so please do get in contact if you are interested and let’s see if we can make it happen.

Rachel and Seyi write…

Congratulations, Anam Islam! It’s with great pleasure that we welcome Anam to the Forest Gate North team. He was elected last Thursday and we can’t wait to get to work together, to continue Ellie’s good work in Forest Gate.

We would like to thank everyone who voted for Anam. It was a tiring by-election campaign (especially coming so soon after the Mayoral election and the EU referendum) and we are so appreciative of all those who turned out to vote, as well as of course the members and activists who came out to campaign with us.

Anam is a long-standing Labour member, with experience in his union, in government and IT, and in campaigning, he is currently chair of the ward / local party, and is an excellent addition to the Newham Labour team. We look forward to helping him to settle in, and learning from him and his experience. We will get Anam set up on this blog as soon as we can, so that you can hear from him yourselves, but in the meantime we hope you’ll join in helping him feel welcome.

Rachel writes…

After housing / homelessness, and of course the dreaded parking, one of the most common things that people contact Seyi and me about in our roles as councillors is about the physical appearance of Forest Gate. Whether that is about litter and fly tipping, or asking for more planting, or letting us know when pavements and roads need repairs, or often talking about the high street and what we might do to improve it.

I should start by saying that I love Woodgrange Road. Obviously that’s a politician’s line, but it is genuine. When I lived elsewhere I found the lack of choice in local shops very frustrating, and I love being able to buy cheap fruit and vegetables, I love the range of different things for sale, I find the local Co Op to be something of a tardis; though small, it sells almost everything I ever need. I love the new cafes and eateries that are opening (I am in fact writing this from CoffeE7 which functions as my unofficial local office). I love the market. Ok. You get the picture.

But even I will admit, in my fervour, that there are a few things that could be improved. Though my knowledge here is small and still growing, I am sure I could already write a short novel on high streets and the potential for and the limits of local government influence, and I will come back to some other common issues and blog again – I promise. What I want to focus on today is the appearance of buildings, particularly shop fronts.

Last year I did a ‘walkabout’ with an officer from Regeneration and we were discussing some areas of potential for improvements. One thing that she pointed out to me was that many shop fronts were not complying with local bye-laws. For example, they had advertising in their windows that took up more than 20% of the space, they had over-sized signage, they had stickers and advertising on the pilasters between the shops. I have to admit I had no idea that there were restrictions on this kind of thing, but once she’d opened my eyes to it I realised that the cumulative effect of these things was that they cluttered up the high street, did not look attractive, and generally, to use planning parlance, had a detrimental impact on how things looked. And that’s without the obvious things like crumbling upper storeys, and buddleia growing out of window ledges etc.

I already knew that there was a project on Romford Road which was part of what is termed the ‘Linear Gateway’ project, to improve the main routes into the borough. So we asked Planning Enforcement whether there was any scope to do something similar on Woodgrange Road. I have to admit to being really pleased and more than a bit surprised when the answer was – yes.

So officers are now working on a project, which extends from Wanstead Flats down over the Romford Road, into Upton Lane. The first stage was an initial survey done in person, accompanied by an information letter and leaflet to the properties. The next is a detailed letter, with photographs, which is sent to every property that needs attention. All affected properties have now been written to outlining what actions need to be taken. (If you have received one of these and have any questions, you can email planning.enforcement@newham.gov.uk )

Obviously this comes at a cost, not only from the time spent by Planning Enforcement Officers, which is considerable. There is also a cost to our small businesses in bringing their buildings up to the required standard, and I know some businesses will not welcome an additional expense. However, I am reassured that in most cases the work required can be undertaken cheaply (removing offending advertising stickers, for example, is free) and weighing it up, it seems to officers and to me that not only does the benefit outweigh the cost, but also that there a is as positive benefit to Forest Gate as an area for local businesses if the street is smarter and better cared for. When added to the physical work that will take place around the station, and the road resurfacing that will take place as part of Keep Newham Moving, this should make a real difference.

So we are really hoping that this is going to be really positive, and have a visible impact on Forest Gate. (Please let us know if you notice this… or indeed if you disagree!)

Rachel and Seyi write…

Occasionally, but regularly, residents email or tweet us with a picture of on-street bicycle parking, usually from Waltham Forest. Normally accompanied by a friendly message saying, roughly paraphrased, ‘How about having this in Newham?’

Now, we hate to disillusion anyone under the impression that being a councillor is all about wielding unlimited power, and cutting ribbons at smart events with lavish canapes, but it is our experience that being a local councillor is all too often, as Rachel has sometimes joked with her friends, all about ‘saying no to people, but nicely’. So it is with great pleasure and some surprise that we can report that actually – yes – we can have some on street cycle parking. The first ‘bike hangar’ is being installed in a road Forest Gate as soon as all the various legal road permissions have been gained, and there is some money available to install a small number more.

But what is it? Essentially, it’s parking for bikes, but on the road rather than on your property. Exactly as you might park your car in the street. It’s a bike ‘hangar’ which takes up approximately one car parking space, and includes space for 6 bicycles. Each space (up to two per household) is rented for a small amount per year, and each person has a key to open and lock the storage.

In practical terms, it does several things. It encourages people to cycle by making access to bikes easier. Many people in Newham live somewhere with no direct access to outside space,  whether that be a terrace (where they need to lug the bike through the house, hoping not to wheel mud onto their floor), or a flat (where they might store their bike on their balcony, or in a shared hall). This type of storage means you can leave your front door, go onto the road and access your bike just as easily as you would step into your car.

But also storing bikes on the roads makes a broader point about who the roads are for. Roads and pavements exist for all forms of transport: for pedestrians, bikes, cars, buggies, wheelchairs, scooters, and any other form of getting about that you can think of. We do tend to think of roads as space where the car reigns supreme and all other modes of transport must be subservient, and making space for cycling amongst car parking not only uses the space more efficiently, but is a visual reminder that bikes are here to stay, and deserving of space, resources, and infrastructure.

If you are interested in having on-street bicycle parking outside your house, contact Richard and Joseba at Newham on cycle.training@newham.gov.uk  Of course, we need to add that simply being keen isn’t a guarantee that it will happen. You’ll need to speak to your neighbours and find out how they feel about it – are they keen and would like to rent a space as well? Or are they worried about the impact on their space for parking, or maybe have some other objection? Richard and Joseba will keep a list of places where there is sufficient interest, and we will find the fairest way of allocating the resources available.

If this has piqued your interest, there is some more information in the documents below.

Bike hangar document

Cyclehoop-FAQ

Dear friends,

As you know our party suffered a terrible lost yesterday with the murder of our comrade Jo Cox MP.
All national campaign activity will be suspended this weekend, resuming on Monday.

We’ve therefore decided to hold an short morning vigil tomorrow with Mary Honeyball instead of just cancelling our campaigning session. We’re meeting in her memory, to keep alive her amazing spirit of courage and determination and to show that as her family we wish, we want to join together against the hate.

Key information:

11:30am, Saturday 18th June.
Wanstead Flats, by the Bandstand on the corner of Capel Rd and Woodford Rd.

We will lay flowers, say a few words and observe a two minute silencw with Mary Honeyball MEP and Lyn Brown MP. Some flowers will then be taken to Parliament by Cllr Veronica Oakeshott.

All members, supporters and local residents wishing to pay their respect to comrade and Jo Cox are welcome.

Local campaigning is suspended today and tomorrow, low-key local campaigning will resume on Sunday.

In Sisterhood,
Seyi

West Ham Women’s Officer
Chair of West Ham Women’s Forum