Forest Gate North – Rachel Tripp's councillor blog

Seyi writes…

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Seyi Writes….

You may have noticed in the latest edition of the Newham Mag (distributed on 19th June) that more changes are coming to Forest Gate and Maryland… a new cycling route! And there is an opportunity for you to have your say via an informal consultation.

The Aldgate to Hainault Quietway route (will be known as Quietway 6) will run from near Mile End through the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford, Forest Gate, and Manor Park before heading east to the London Borough of Redbridge. The 9 schemes proposed are for location in or bordering Forest Gate North ward (Boundary roads: Sebert Road,Capel Road, Leytonstone High Road and Janson close).The route will begin in autumn 2015 and finish it by summer 2016.

The initial consultation is informal asking you for your general views on the concept designs. Following this the designs will be changed where appropriate from consultation comments and in order to provide as good a Cycling Level of Service (CLoS) as possible, particularly at the junctions of the busier roads.

A statutory consultation will be carried out later this year and will be a more localised consultation for those schemes which will have potential impact as appropriate to local residents, key stakeholders, and any residents who requested to be kept informed during the first phase.

Important Info
The web link is : http://www.newham.gov.uk/quietways
There are some consultation drawings and a few posters at Stratford Library, the Gate Library and Manor Park Library from the 19th of June for 4 weeks. You are also more than welcome to email us and/or come to one of our surgeries on Saturdays, 10:30am.

Ellie wrote…

It may not be very sexy but one of the important things the Council has responsibility for is licensing. Newham has a licensing panel made up of Councillors which meets to agree or refuse licensing applications, or call in for review a license where the license holder is working outside the agreed conditions.

Recently, Seyi, Rach and I have all taken trips to East Ham Town Hall to make representations to the licensing committee either speaking in favour or against licensing applications in the ward.

Earlier in the year Rachel spoke against an application for a stall outside a shop on Leytonstone Road – we have been trying to tidy up the area both physically and addressing anti-social behaviour and we felt the proposed changes weren’t in the best interest of other businesses, residents and the local environment.

I went to speak against an application for another premises on Leytonstone Road which wanted to increase the hours it could sell alcohol. We have been aware for a while of the street drinking that happens in the area and our enforcement team is working hard to tackle it but this was clearly another route to prevent the problem getting worse. Both applications were successfully refused.

Seyi went to support the Pizza Pyramid application (on Woodgrange Road) which hundreds of you emailed in support for (go you!). This building has an interesting licensing background (if you are into this kind of thing…). The premises has a long, chequered history with the police and the licensing team. The venue was run as a restaurant in the day and a nightclub in the evening, often in breach of license conditions and permitted hours.

As a result the licensing team used the range of tools within their power – eg. issuing noncompliance and S19 notices, and calling it in for review (which resulted in additional strong conditions and a reduction in hours being applied) and eventually the premises license was surrendered meaning no licensable activities could take place at the venue. However, the venue was still being used and as a result the police licensing team applied to the court for a closure order under a very new piece of legislation (S80 of the Anti Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, if you were wondering!). At the end of December the Court agreed with the police and Newham and issued a full closure notice.

After all of this hard work by our officers, it was a relief to hear in the spring that it was under new management and a pleasure to receive the new application and see it was intended for a much more community friendly use (unfortunately I have seen on Twitter that they are having some issues with the building and are unlikely to open, I do hope they, or someone else responsible will be back soon).

If you have managed to not get bored by now, I hope this post goes some way to highlight the importance of licensing and please do get in touch if you have any concerns about any applications in the future or if you believe a premises is not sticking to their licensing agreement. As you can see from the above three examples, we are keen to represent residents’ views through this forum so please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Rachel writes…

I have been trying to experiment recently with a bit more tweeting ‘in real time’ about Council work. So when on my way to a meeting, I pulled out my phone, and tweeted, ‘Off to a briefing on the consultation for upgrading #forestgate as part of Crossrail. Will take notes and tweet / blog info!‘ Various retweets and favourites quickly showed me that this is an issue that Forest Gaters are as keen on as I am, so I am keeping my promise of a quick blog post, and following up with some more information.

The meeting was at the Gate library (quick aside – have you been in and sampled the CoffeE7 pop-up there?) and was a Community Neighbourhood meeting to which all the Forest Gate North and South councillors were invited. Murray Woodburn from the Council was there, taking us through the plans for Forest Gate station, with a very thorough presentation.

I immediately homed in on some interesting but possibly ultimately irrelevant details, including a picture of the upholstery fabric that will be used on the Crossrail trains.
Me, “Is this public? Can I tweet this?”
Other people, with understandable incredulity, “You want to tweet a picture of fabric?”
Me, “Yup.” (Good people of twitter. You did not let me down. You did, as I had predicted, love it. Thank you for being just as into your transport geekery as I am.)

I also pricked my ears up at a discussion about the coaches that currently use Forest Lane, and contribute to making the road busy and sometimes unpleasant for pedestrians and other road users. All I have for the moment is that discussions are ongoing about rerouting the coaches, but I have my fingers firmly crossed that we can find a solution here. It’s something that bothers local cyclists, and others. And I have a selfish interest here, too – when I walk along Forest Lane on my way to Magpie Park with my youngest on her scooter, it doesn’t feel safe to me.

But back to the Crossrail plans. Ellie wrote a great introductory post, which you can read here. Our meeting was to give us some more information on how the project was developing.

Firstly we learnt about what will happen almost immediately (next week!) as the Abellio contract comes to an end, and the service is taken over by TfL. This is music to the ears of frustrated residents who have had a pretty raw deal over the last few years, and especially the last few months as the contract has been coming to an end. Lyn Brown and Ellie have been putting some serious pressure on Greater Anglia (read more here) but the levels of service have been lamentably bad. To summarise what I took away from the meeting last week: our train station will be better, the service will almost certainly be better, and the fares will be cheaper. The station will be maintained to TfL standards, which means it will be staffed (from next week), and the ticket hall will be refurbished in July this year. This is all such great news that it’s almost hard not to feel suspicious of it.

There will be some disruption, too. The fitting of the new lift will be straightforwardly brilliant for people with mobility restrictions, not to mention people with buggies, but when that takes place, in around a year’s time, it will be over a weekend and may require the closure of some roads.
(edited to add, I have had a question on twitter about whether this can be right, since lift installation normally takes much longer. I made a note in the meeting myself about the ‘over a weekend’ bit, so any error here is mine and no one else’s. It’s possible that the officer said it will be done at the weekends, meaning over many weekends, making the point that weekday services aren’t anticipated to be interrupted, or weekday road closures part of the plan. Either way. I wanted to highlight this as it’s quite possibly not correct. If I find out more I will put it here. My apologies. – RT)

Murray talked us through some of the existing issues around Forest Gate station, which include architectural features being lost in the general ‘clutter’,  difficulty of pedestrian access, no drop-off facilities for vehicles, a pretty hostile environment on some of the key access ways to the station, the need to improve cycle access to the station, and more.

Moving on to some of the opportunities, we discussed the main aims of the scheme: to improve the interchange between different forms of transport and the station, to improve road safety, to improve people’s sense of personal safety, and an overall aim to improve what is termed the ‘public realm’, or the look and feel.

As Ellie mentioned in her post, there will be a consultation where local organisations and people are invited to contribute. This is planned as a two-stage process, an ‘informal’ consultation followed by a formal one. What this means in practical terms is that some local residents and organisations can have some input at an early stage, so that the leaflets and proposals that are consulted on have already benefitted from some local ideas and feedback. The formal consultation is then a chance for anyone at all who has an interest in the area to contribute. There is definitely a genuine desire to hear from people, too: although there will be proposals suggested, these will be drawn up by an external consultant as one possible way of using the funds available, and will be entirely open to amendments to ensure that we get the best scheme we can.

We discussed as well how we might use this scheme and the TfL money as a catalyst for the area, and off the back of it we could apply for additional funding from other places to make some other improvements to areas that aren’t immediately close to Forest Gate station. Murray mentioned the Mayor of London’s high street fund, which was responsible for the improvements in Waltham Forest which I think many of us in Forest Gate are quite jealous of. Some potential here for future work, I hope.

So what next? The consultation process will take place over the summer, with the aim of agreeing the scheme at the end of the year. We will blog about this when it starts and will be encouraging everyone to participate who is interested. There will be plenty more to come on this, I am sure. But in the spirit of my live-tweeting, I wanted to get a quick blog post out reasonably quickly to update anyone who is interested.

Forest Gate is one of three stations being improved as part of this project, the others being Manor Park and Maryland. (Either Ellie, Seyi or I will be back with more information about the Maryland project as and when we get it.)

My final thought to share is that in a time of austerity, where almost everything is being cut to the bone due to lack of funds from central government, it’s sadly now extremely rare to be in a situation of deciding the best way to spend money rather than the least worst way it can be cut. It is really exciting and invigorating to see something so positive being done, and to think of Forest Gate residents being part of improving our environment in such a direct way. I left the meeting really impressed by Murray and his team, both for successfully bidding for the funding from Transport for London, and also for the plan they have put together, and as I walked home I felt quite buoyed up by the opportunity this gives us all to make some tangible, and appreciable changes to an area we all use and love.

As ever, if you have questions or comments then do contact us. Either via our ‘contact us’ page, or using the comments below.

Ellie writes…

I speak on behalf of Rachel, Seyi and myself when I say we are still reeling after the election result 10 days ago. I personally feel like there is a huge weight in my chest, terrified for the prospects of residents who need our support. Subconsciously I think I was working towards a time when things would get better for our community, counting down the days left of this government. (It’s 1815 days now btw).

But there is little point in dwelling on what has happened, we need to understand what this means for Newham and what can we do to together to make the best of it? Since 2010, government grants to town halls have been cut by more than a third, the most savage in the public sector. By the end of this government, in Newham, we will have £91 million less than we have now to spend every year. That’s more than we spend on street cleaning, collecting the bins, street lighting and running libraries – twice over. In addition, the Tories have pledged £12bn annual cuts to welfare, £120m through axing housing benefit for most 18- to 21-year-olds. Their commitment to lowering the benefit cap on top of extending the right to buy to 1.3 million housing association tenants will make it even harder for families to find an affordable home in Newham.

But that is democracy, and while Newham may have overwhelmingly voted Labour the rest of the country did not. So what can we do?

1. We promise to protect services that matter:

I didn’t come into this role to chose between the least worst options, and I don’t intend to do that. We will protect the frontline as far as possible with even more efficiency savings. Despite the challenges of the past five years we have strived to protect the services which matter. My portfolio covers our back office shared service called oneSource which has been in place for one year. In that time we have met our savings targets of £4.1m. We will need to go further, and be more imaginative.

2. Help us make these ‘tough decisions’:

Join in the debate. Soon we will be launching an exercise to engage, listen, discuss and consult with residents in Newham so everyone gets a say in what services you value most (we will keep you updated on this). Make sure you join in and encourage your friends and neighbours.

3. Be nice!:

As users of public services as well as 20% of Newham residents who work in the public sector, this is going to be a tough five years for us all. (To coin a phrase – we are all in this together…). Let’s smile in the street a bit more. Please be patient with us and try to see the big picture. I am not saying that you shouldn’t moan when we don’t deliver the service you are entitled too but please do note that we are trying our best in very challenging circumstances and have to prioritise; be constructive critics!

4. Join us:

So, how does the Labour Party move on from here? I don’t pretend to know what the answer is for the Party but I am sure it isn’t to fall back into the old arguments, perhaps we should ‘move more to the left’, or ‘appeal to the right’, perhaps we should have won more green votes or UKIPers. What we can do is start the fightback now, the government won’t wait for us to stop looking inwards, we can build from the ground up in Forest Gate. The Labour Party clearly needs to get better at listening but we also need a wider range of voices to listen too. Nearly 77,000 people voted for the Labour Party in Newham, don’t stop there.

Join the fightback. We need your voice now more than ever.

Are you with us?

You can join the Labour Party here.

Ellie and Seyi write…

This is a very belated post, but hopefully still interesting and we hope will spark some discussion. Before Christmas we put on our warm coats and boots and headed out into the night to join Operation Alabama.

Operation Alabama started in January 2014 in response to the increasing levels of street homelessness we were seeing in Stratford town centre, which was up to 50 people per night. This isn’t an issue isolated to Stratford, across the Capital street homelessness has increased due to the horrible effects of the welfare benefits cuts and lack of housing supply.

By August 2014 Operation Alabama had identified and supported 145 rough sleepers just in the Stratford area alone and has since been rolled out across the Borough. It has helped over 80 individuals from the street into various accommodation, including homeless hostels, private rented or re-engaging them back to family or tenancies they thought they had lost. It has also ensured 30 people needing access to drug and alcohol treatment could gain access to these services.

The team consisted of us, Newham’s West Quadrant Enforcement team who set up and manage Operation Alabama, the UK Border Agency, Thames Reach  (a charity helping homeless and vulnerable people to find decent homes, build supportive relationships and lead fulfilling lives. They have been funded by Newham Council to support Operation Alabama) and the police.

We visited a number of sites, including a small encampment under a fly over and Stratford town centre (where there was now only one person sleeping). The team from Thames Reach were incredible, when we arrived at the site they were the first people to talk to the homeless people. They spoke a number of languages which was helpful and in a number of cases they already knew the homeless people. They had access to hostel accommodation and acted as advocates taking up their cases to try to get them longer term accommodation.

The homeless people tended to fall into two different types of people with different needs. The first were those who were well known to the team, with long-term serious mental health needs and/or addiction issues, who had been supported by them before but falling in and out of accommodation. The others seemed to be predominately young people who had recently arrived in this country from Eastern Europe looking for a better life. The Police then check everyone as on occasions individuals wanted for a range of offences have been found to be rough sleeping. The ASB Officers from the Enforcement Team also serve everyone a warning letter. The UKBA then had questions for the homeless people, asking them where they came from and how long they had been here. The law is that if they are unable to support themselves they can be issued with a warning letter and are asked to report at a later date to update on their progress. They were also offered free return to go home to the place of origin. Although this is not for everyone when talking to the young girl you could see how some people may have imagined moving to the UK to be very different to how the reality turned out and would appreciate the chance to return.

Between the visit we did and the other one that took place before Christmas they located and engaged with 19 rough sleepers across borough. Out of these there was one voluntary reconnection back to their home country the rest were assisted from the street.

We got home in the early hours of the morning. It was a truly humbling and eye-opening experience seeing the terrible situations people are facing. But very reassuring to see the council and partners helping them off the streets, out of parks and into long term accommodation.

Rachel writes…

Newham is currently consulting (actually, approaching the end of a consultation) on the Detailed Sites and Policies Development Plan document. It’s a bit of a mouthful to say, and even more to read! If you look at the link above you’ll see there are a fair few documents linked to, and enormous amounts of information to read.

Even after six months on the Strategic Development Committee (which I have been finding tremendously interesting, have been meaning to blog about, and mention here only in order to make myself accountable) I still consider myself very new to planning. The more I learn, the more I find that I know very little, and am endlessly thankful to the many far more learned people than me providing detailed professional information to the committee about such diverse topics as policy, the legal framework, transport, design, air quality, and much more.

This particular consultation seems important, not only for the obvious reasons, but also because people in Forest Gate seem particularly interested in their physical environment. We see this not only in queries that we get about litter, and dog fouling, but also in resident reactions to planning proposals, and of course collective memories of the proposed Obsidian development on the high street, which provoked very strong reactions.

At our recent Community Neighbourhood meeting (a meeting of Forest Gate North and Forest Gate South councillors, led by our Community lead councillor Rohima, and supported by some of the staff who work in the Community Neighbourhood structure) we had some officers from planning policy attend to talk to us about the consultation. They focussed on only a couple of aspects of the consultation and gave more information, and asnwered our questions. We all listened closely, asked questions that we thought residents would want to know, and the information below is very imperfectly reproduced from notes I took. Needless to say, any inaccuracies are all mine and not the fault of officers, or anyone else!

Officers explained that the Core Strategy is the document which underpins Newham’s approach to planning, and is the main basis for planning decisions. There is a local plan, which forms part of the Core Strategy. In practical terms, this means that when an application is received, it’s judged against local policies, which form part of the plan.

The core strategy has been overall reasonably successful in promoting the Council’s planning objectives. But on reflection, some parts need strengthening, and that is what the current consultation seeks to do.

At this stage, this is an issues and options paper. It highlights various issues, looks at the evidence available, and presents different possible ways forward. In doing so, it pulls together issues that have come up since we adopted the Core Strategy. This includes comments from residents, and members on issues like betting shops, takeaways, and further protection against houses of multiple occupancy. The consultation runs until the 27th February. The consultation is asking whether people think all the issues are included, which option is best way forward, and whether other options might be a good idea.

There are two main sections to the consultation. First is thematic policies, and second is spatial allocations.

One part of the consultation looks at revising the boundaries to town centres. Effectively, outside town centre boundaries, housing is often prioritised in order to help meet the demand for housing. Inside the boundaries of town centres, you can protect town centre facilities. But defining town centre boundaries can be a difficult balance to strike. For example, you don’t want to draw boundaries too wide, because this ‘distills the effects of regeneration’.

The consultation also looks at ‘community facilities opportunity areas’. Currently policy states that community facilities (health, schools, etc.) should be inside town centre boundaries. But this can be difficult as town centre sites are often not available or are too expensive. Therefore some suggested secondary sites have been identified where planning applications for community facilites could be encouraged, provided that the applicants have looked at town centre sites first. Officers explained that a few issues have come up with applications, and this seeks to provide more detail to strengthen current policy.

Other issues being consulted on regarding community facilities are that we might make requirements of developments regarding their design, specifically that they should be ‘welcoming and inclusive’, and open to all members of the community (with some protection for sacred spaces that form part of places of worship). The consultation also looks at being more specific when talking about the ‘need’ or ‘demand’ for facilities, requiring more evidence of need, and wanting at least 67% of users to be ordinarily Newham residents. The consultation suggests that where post-16 education is proposed, should be about our growth sectors, providing recognised qualifications, with links to local employers.

The consultation also looks at what happens when one community group leaves a site, and needing more evidence before it can be released from community site designation.
Recognising that some sites are needed more than others, the documents suggest prioritising health, childcare and education.

Overall, officers described Forest Gate as, ‘not designated for growth, but maintenance and regeneration using the existing floor space, and the arrival of Crossrail’.

We asked about Maryland, and were told that a ‘local centre’ is proposed for there.  We need to find out more about this but hope that this would facilitate more facilities and a greater sense of place in this area.

The other main area that we discussed from the consultation was about proposed ‘areas of townscape value’. This means highlighting a particular area that has characteristics that are worth preserving through planning, and was described as a kind of ‘conservation area lite’. Officers said that Newham has hardly any protected heritage areas compared to other boroughs (for example Islington, or Hackney). Apparently there is evidence that if you live in a conservation area, you are more likely to take pride in the area.

In Forest Gate North, the south side of Sebert Road has been suggested as an area of townscape (ATV) value due to the large quantity of attractive Victorian housing.  If this goes ahead, it is intended to help to maintain the quality of the area. In practical terms, this means that people who want to carry out improvements to their home may find it costs more, but on the other hand an ATV creates a more decent environment overall and should help to make the area more pleasant.

We asked specifically about the Obsidian application (which has now been withdrawn and does not seem likely to reappear). Officers told us that the site of previous Obsidian application is designated for regeneration, which is already in core strategy. The framework for decision making essentially remains the same, and what’s being proposed here would not make any substantial difference to how an application like that would be considered. The Obsidian application was out of character with the existing high street, and anything similar would still be out of character.

We wondered how the public were being consulted, and officers told us that the consultation was launched on the 16th Jan. They had an advert in Newham Recorder, and a feature in Newham mag. With this consultation they haven’t held exhibitions, as they have found previously that responses are not huge.  We invited them to come along to the next Forest Gate networking morning (which is tomorrow, as I type this up, the 25th February, at the Gate library). They said that anyone – including us! – has until midnight on the 27th February to respond.

I am aware that even this, intended to be an easy to read summary of some areas of the consultation, has turned into a blog post of massive proportions, and is itself not enormously easy to access.

In any case, I hope that the information above is useful. Do respond to the consultation if you’re able to. Do contact us if you have questions or concerns. We will almost certainly have to liaise with officers to get a proper answer, but we can definitely do that and get back to you.