Dear neighbour,

We hope this finds you well and that you had a restful Easter bank holiday weekend. There is still plenty going on locally, so read on for:

1.     Stop press – our new Northcote Library opens this Thursday 13th April!

2.     Wandsworth Council confirms that Northcote Road pedestrianisation will not come back in 2023 – but we can still save it in future years

3.     Direct trains from Clapham South to Battersea Power Station – join our campaign

4.     Lime Bikes are again obstructing pavements locally

5.     An update on Christmas tree collection chaos

6.     Local events coming up – A local history walk, Bolingbroke Academy Parents’ Association Spring Fair, and (save the date) Wandsworth Arts Fringe and Northcote Road Summer Fete

Please help us spread the news about our local campaigns by forwarding this email to friends and family who live in Northcote ward – it really helps our work as local councillors. New subscribers can sign up to receive these emails regularly by clicking here.

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

Best regards,

Cllr Aled Richards-Jones

Cllr Emmeline Owens 

Our new Northcote Library opens

this Thursday 13th April

The library’s new dedicated teen section. Credit: Wandsworth Council.

We’re proud to see the new library open this month. Back in 2018, bringing a new library to Northcote ward was a Wandsworth Conservatives manifesto pledge. Just over four year later, despite the pandemic and rising costs of construction materials globally, this project has been delivered.

We’ve reported on the progress of this exciting new building in our previous newsletters. The new space replaces the old 1950s library across the road with a modern three-storey building. As well as housing plenty of books and computers across three floors, the new library will contain a new woodland themed children’s library with sensory wall, a dedicated teen area, seating, meeting rooms, public toilets, enlarged study accommodation, self-serve kiosks for book loans, upgraded computer and digital learning areas, and an events space.

The new library will also be bigger than the predecessor library, providing 848 square metres of usable floor space compared with the existing library’s 728 sqm. And it will incorporate eco-friendly energy measures including solar panels, reducing its carbon footprint and making the new building more sustainable.

Work is also nearing completion on a new community centre at the back of the library, which will offer space for community groups and a nursery.

See you at the opening!

Wandsworth Council confirms that Northcote road summer pedestrianisation has been scrapped for summer 2023 – despite 5,000 signing petition 

But there’s still time to sign the petition and bring the scheme back in future years

Regular readers will be familiar with our campaign opposing Wandsworth Council’s plans to scrap the Northcote Road summer pedestrianisation scheme.

The Northcote Road summer pedestrianisation scheme was introduced in 2020 by Wandsworth Council under a Conservative administration. The scheme saved over 120 jobs and several businesses after the economic hit of COVID-19, and it transformed the road during the summer weekends into a haven of safe, fun shopping and dining for the whole community.

To make this scheme viable in the long term, Wandsworth Conservatives set aside a ringfenced budget – funded entirely by developers’ contributions, at no cost to Council Tax payers – for infrastructure changes to the road to allow weekend pedestrianisation in future years.

In May 2022, Wandsworth Conservatives lost the Council to Labour. Labour then scrapped the ringfenced budget and cancelled the whole pedestrianisation scheme –without any credible justification. Labour did not mention this plan in their local election manifesto.

In response, 5,000 residents signed a petition against scrapping the scheme. We brought this petition to Council in October 2022, and in response the Labour Cabinet member promised to investigate “alternative infrastructure proposals” for weekend pedestrianisation. However, at the most recent Council meeting, the Labour Cabinet Member was forced to admit that, 5 months after her promise, the Council has worked up no alternative schemes whatsoever – so this was an empty promise, and Labour have admitted that the scheme now cannot come back this summer.

Although Wandsworth Council has now abandoned the scheme for 2023, it could still bring the scheme back in future years – if enough of us show our support.

If you haven’t done so already, please sign our petition here to ask Labour to think again, and do forward this email to any neighbours who you think would like to sign. 

Direct tube trains from Clapham

South to Battersea Power Station

Join our campaign

The Battersea Power Station and Nine Elms redevelopment project has brought thousands of new jobs, businesses and homes to Wandsworth. A part of this was the first new Northern line stations for a generation.

At present, those wishing to travel to the Power Station from stations south of Kennington – such as Clapham South – must change trains and platforms at Kennington, and are often then faced with long waiting times for a connecting service. This impacts negatively on residents’ ability to easily enjoy the leisure and retail opportunities at the Power Station.

There is no technical reason why there can’t be direct trains from Morden to Battersea Power Station – it’s a question of timetabling. That’s why we’re calling on the Mayor of London to introduce direct tube services running to and from Battersea Power Station from the initial/end terminal at Morden, passing through tube stations in Tooting, Balham and South Battersea and Clapham. A direct service of this kind would bring benefits not only to the people of Wandsworth but neighbouring boroughs too.

If you support this campaign, please sign up here. 

Lime Bikes are again obstructing pavements locally

We’re calling on Wandsworth

Council to adopt a long-term solution

Many of you have been in touch with us recently to complain about the re-emergence of Lime bikes obstructing pavements. We’re as frustrated as you are, and we fear that the problem will continue until Wandsworth council adopts a long-term solution.

Lime bikes first arrived in Wandsworth last year. We welcomed them as a new form of convenient and environmentally friendly transport for many, but called for Lime to work with the Council to identify suitable parking locations so that we could avoid a pavement-parking free-for-all. We suggested a three-point plan to deal with obstructively parked Lime bikes:

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.

This plan was rejected by Labour councillors at the meeting of Wandsworth’s Transport Committee on 3rd November 2022. However, shortly after the meeting, the problem of accumulating bikes on Wandsworth’s pavements became so severe that the Leader of Wandsworth Council was forced to override the views of his Labour colleagues on the Committee and instructed Council officers to impound bikes (although the Council picked up the bill for this, and not Lime).

We welcomed the fact that the Council had listened to our campaign and taken these steps. However, we said at the time that we do need a long-term solution – Council officers cannot be on permanent deployment to round up dangerously parked bikes, when they have other pressing things to do, and it’s not right that residents should have to pick up the bill for this exercise. This is why we need the Council to go further and agree to our full plan, which includes point 3 (issuing fines to companies which fail to do enough to prevent the obstructive bike parking). At the Transport Committee, Labour councillors voted down this recommendation – but we hope they will now reconsider this stance in light of the action that the Council’s Leader has had to take.

It's funny (and frustrating) how history repeats itself so quickly – at the end of March 2023, Wandsworth Council impounded another 42 bikes when, once again, too many accumulated on the pavement. Again, this was a one-off, isolated action from the Council – Lime were not charged in this process, and the Council does not seem to have a strategy for ensuring this loop of accumulation-then-impounding is broken and Lime bikes are found proper locations to park safely, with companies fined for not ensuring their customers park responsibly.

We will keep campaigning on this issue. You can help us by signing our petition calling for Wandsworth Council to adopt our three point plan for hire bikes. 

An update on Christmas tree collection chaos

We received no answers for why the service was so poor this year, but found out that the costs have more than doubled!

We also promised an update on the chaos of Christmas tree collections this year.

It has been difficult to get answers from Wandsworth Council about exactly why the Council missed its tree collection deadline for more than three weeks this year, and why the service was so bad that we received a record number of complaints. We have received assurances that this poor service won’t be repeated new year, but we’ve not been told what the strategy is for ensuring that.

However, thanks to a Member’s Enquiry by a Conservative councillor, we discovered that the cost of tree collections had risen from £16,774.48 last year to £41,696.28 – a year-on-year increase of 149%! That doesn’t fill us with confidence for next year. 

Local events coming up

A history walk, Bolingbroke Academy Parents’ Association Spring Fair, and some Save The Dates

On 22 April between 12-4pm, Bolingbroke Academy Parents’ Association are holding their Spring Fair at Bolingbroke Academy. There are some exciting things planned – as well as the usual stalls, tombola, raffles and games, we’ve heard there’s going to be an assault course! All money raised goes to enhance education at Bolingbroke Academy.

On 23 April between 2.30-4.30pm, local historian Sue Demont is running “From Cradle to the Grave”, a guided walk that takes in the sites and buildings that span every stage of life - homes, schools, hospitals, play spaces, places of worship, memorials and burial grounds. Learn more about how and why this small stretch of road and common became the go-to location for architects, builders, philanthropists, educators, religious leaders, politicians and campaigners from the 1770s. The walk covers sites from Thurleigh Road & Bolingbroke Grove to Battersea Rise. The walk is free, but please register your interest.

To finish off, here are two Save The Dates. The Wandsworth Arts Fringe returns this year from 9-25 June. The Northcote Road Summer Fete is due to return on Sunday 16 July – more details when we have them!

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