Dear Liz,

Whilst it has been an eventful time in national politics, in Battersea we have been getting on with the job as your local councillors. And it’s been quite eventful on the local scene too! Please read on for updates about:

1.     Our campaign to save the Northcote Road summer pedestrianisation

2.     An update on the Arding & Hobbs building

3.     Peabody Clapham Junction regeneration

4.     Speeding on Lavender Gardens 

5.     Lime bikes – our campaign to make our pavements safer.

Please help us spread the news about our local campaigns by forwarding this email to friends and family who live in Lavender ward it really helps our work as your local councillors.

As ever, if there is anything else we can be of help with locally, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Best regards,

Cllr Jonathan Cook

Cllr Tom Pridham 

Our campaign to save the Northcote Road

summer pedestrianisation

Thank you to everyone who has supported our campaign. Launched only a few weeks ago, our petition to save the Northcote Road summer weekend pedestrianisation scheme rapidly hit 5,000 signatures from local residents, mainly in Lavender and Northcote wards, but also from further afield – reflecting the widespread popularity of the scheme. The petition was presented at a meeting of the Full Council, which means that the new Labour Administration must formally respond.

The Northcote Road summer pedestrianisation scheme was introduced in 2020 by Wandsworth Council under the earlier Conservative administration. The idea was to provide the businesses on the road with a post-lockdown lifeline. The scheme saved over 120 jobs, and many businesses, and transformed the road during the summer months into a haven of safe, fun shopping and dining for the whole community. It also demonstrated how it is possible to gently shift the balance between vehicles and pedestrians, at appropriate times, and with the support of the local community.

It was so popular that the Council brought it back in 2021 and 2022. The scheme was funded jointly by the businesses and covid-recovery funds from central Government.

To make sure the scheme was viable when covid-recovery funds were no longer available, Wandsworth Council set aside a budget – funded from development levies – to install attractive gates and bollards on the road so that the road could be closed at weekends (but open during the weekday) in the future, at no cost to council taxpayers.

In May 2022, Wandsworth Conservatives lost the Council to Labour. Labour then published plans to cancel the infrastructure works and the whole pedestrianisation scheme. Why?

The new Labour Council gave three main reasons: they said the scheme was not popular with residents, that businesses objected to the first design of the gates and bollards, and that the scheme (which had a budget of nearly £2.5m) was not value for money in a cost-of-living crisis. But none of these reasons stack up (and sorry, here is where it gets a bit technical…).

Firstly, last year’s Council consultation found that 88% of residents either supported or strongly supported the scheme, and 74% of the road’s businesses were in favour. Secondly, it is true that the businesses objected to the first proposed scheme of gates and bollards on practical grounds; however, the Northcote Road Business Network said that they wanted to discuss alternative pedestrianisation schemes with the Council. Extraordinarily, the Business Network gave live evidence to the Council’s Finance Committee saying that the Cabinet Member had told them that no proposed alternatives would be considered and that she did not even want to see them. Thirdly, the proposed budget of £2.5m (less than 9% of the yearly capital budget) would be funded from developers’ levies, which are legally ringfenced for infrastructure spending – so they cannot be spent on “cost of living” measures such as top-up benefit payments, school uniform vouchers, and so forth.

Indeed, we think this scheme – which would be a lifeline to Northcote Road’s businesses and the staff they employ, as inflation and business costs continue to rise – is a perfect way to help in the current crisis.

To cap it all off – the Administration hasn’t even found an alternative project to spend this budget on. The budget now just sits in a pot.

At the recent council meeting, every Labour councillor present voted to scrap the scheme, whilst every Conservative councillor voted to keep it. This means that, unless the Administration rapidly changes its mind, the scheme will not return in future years. 

But we’ll keep campaigning. There’s still time to add your voice to the petition here.

An update on the Arding & Hobbs building

Refurbishment of the listed Arding & Hobbs building continues apace, with completion of works expected by July 2023, with sections released to early leisure and retail occupiers in the preceding months, ahead of opening to the public in the autumn.  

One of these will be a well-known restaurant in May, in preparation for opening for business along with the rest of the building. Other tenants include leisure and fitness brands, to be announced soon, as well as tenants for the building’s office space – all arranged around the imposing central atrium.  

Scaffolding has recently been removed on the west façade (St John’s Road) revealing the renovated windows and cleaned stonework (and removal of the 1970’s era street level canopy) – as originally constructed in 1910. The remaining scaffolding, on the corner with Lavender Hill, unavoidably rested on the narrow pavements and has been awkward for pedestrians, but should be removed early in the new year.  

The hoarding around the site will have to be retained a little longer for security and safety reasons but will be removed as soon as possible. As your councillors we hugely welcome this project after so many years of decline for this remarkable building, and hope that with its highly visible location at the heart of Clapham Junction, and one of London’s major crossroads, we will see something of a ‘mini Battersea Power Station’ effect as it re-emerges as a focal point for our neighbourhood.

Peabody regeneration Clapham Junction

Peabody is making good progress on the 2nd phase of the rebuilding of the St Johns Hill Estate. In October the first 50 homes in Sawyers Apartments were finished with new residents now moving in.  

The 2nd phase will be completely finished early in 2023 and will provide a total of 163 homes for social rent and 35 homes for shared ownership. This phase includes a specialised building tailored for elderly residents who require extra care support - the facility being run by Peabody in conjunction with Wandsworth Council. Phase 2 will provide a new community centre for estate residents and a new public square, called Monarch Square, which will be open to all.  

After Phase 2 completes Peabody will start work to demolish the last of the old estate buildings and start building their replacements. When finished the whole scheme will have provided a total of 658 homes – of which 50% are affordable. The scheme will also provide new public routes from Wandsworth Common through to St Johns Hill and Clapham Junction station, making the area much easier to walk through.  

Speeding along Lavender Gardens

Our campaign for a traffic survey is successful

At November’s full council meeting, Jonathan and Tom presented a petition signed by over 70 residents of Lavender Gardens calling for measures to address speeding and ‘rat-running’ along this one-way street.  We’re pleased that a study is now underway by council officers, who will quantify the problem with speed and vehicle counters, and then recommend possible remedies; these might include signage, the installation of speed indicator devices and additional enforcement of the 20 mph limit.

Hire bikes

Making our streets safer to walk down

You can’t have failed to notice the huge growth in abandoned hire bikes which have in recent months come to clog our streets. While the increase in cycling, and other forms if active travel, is to be welcomed, the proliferation of ‘abandoned’ bikes at the end of a hire session is problematic, especially for residents with mobility difficulties. Pedestrians are being forced off pavements and onto the road as cycle hire bikes are abandoned randomly on footpaths.

Our streets have become an obstacle course and people are fed up with finding these bikes dumped. They make it very dangerous to navigate local pavements, especially for anyone with small children or a buggy, older people, and anyone with a disability such as those using a wheelchair or with a visual impairment.

Transport for London's (TfL) hire scheme requires bikes to be docked, but the cycle companies, like Lime, allow them to be left whenever and wherever the user's journey ends.

As local councilors, we have been raising this issue with our new Labour-run Council for months. The Council initially chose to do nothing, but we launched a petition and suggested they adopt our three-point plan to deal with the problem, and are pleased that this more realistic approach has now been adopted:

1.     Council officers should remove rental bicycles left dangerously blocking pavements around central London and charge the rental companies for doing so.

2.     Wandsworth Council needs to collaborate with local residents to come up with locations for designated bays in which the bikes can be left safely.

3.     Wandsworth Council should introduce new byelaws with fines of up to £500 for those rental companies whose bikes are abandoned dangerously, with all the money raised being used to reinvest in our cycle infrastructure.

Cycle hire schemes are great for those who use them, especially when other transport options are limited. This campaign was about stopping our pavements from being made unsafe. It is not about stopping the use of hire bikes.

Published and promoted by Harry Todd on behalf of the Wandsworth Conservatives, contactable 1 Summerstown, SW17 0BQ.