Northcote E-Newsletter February 2022



Working hard for you in Northcote Ward

Dear neighbour,

Happy New Year, and welcome to our February 2022 e-newsletter.

Firstly, we’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who completed our recent Northcote Councillors’ Survey. Two of the items in this newsletter are updates about our fantastic new Northcote Library and the planned summer weekend pedestrianisation of Northcote Road, both of which we asked for your views about in the survey.

We’re also pleased to announce that Cllr Aled Richards-Jones and Emmeline Owens have been selected as the Conservative candidates for the new Northcote Ward at the Wandsworth Council elections in May. See below for more details about Aled and Emmeline, as well as a map of the new ward boundaries. 

Our petition about speeding along Bolingbroke Grove has attracted lots of support, so do add your signature – and forward on this email to a neighbour who you think might like to sign too – before Aled presents it at the Council meeting on 9th March.

After the record complaints which the music festivals held last summer on Clapham Common attracted last year, we’re disappointed that Lambeth Council has made an application for repeat events this year – with an application to fence-off 20 acres of the Common to host four music festivals of up to 40,000 festival-goers a day. Find out below how you can have your say on this proposal.

As ever, if there is anything we can do to help with an issue locally, please get in touch.

Best wishes,

Cllr Aled Richards-Jones       

Cllr Louise Calland

Emmeline Owens                 

Cllr Peter Dawson

New Conservative candidates for Northcote ward: Aled and Emmeline

Cllr Aled Richards-Jones

Regular readers of our e-newsletter will be familiar with Aled’s work as one of the Northcote ward councillors for the last four years.

Aled has lived locally for nearly 10 years and loves our part of Wandsworth. He is a Governor of Ark Bolingbroke Academy, a member of the Friends of Wandsworth Common (and avid litter-picker), and an advisor to the Clapham Junction Business Improvement District, which supports our local businesses in Northcote and Clapham Junction. As a member of the Council’s executive group of councillors, he oversaw payments of business grants to local businesses affected by covid and led the successful implementation of the Northcote Road summer pedestrianisation scheme. When he’s not doing all that, Aled works in central London as a barrister specialising in commercial and intellectual property law.

Emmeline Owens

Emmeline has lived locally for over 15 years and is a passionate champion of Northcote. She spent ten years as a governor and chair of a Wandsworth ‘Outstanding’ school. Both of her children go to school in the Northcote ward and play for Broomwood Football Club. Emmeline is a business consultant and following her degrees in economics and initial career in the EU, she spent seven years in industry and ten years working for financial services institutions.

Thank you and farewell to Louise and Peter

Louise and Peter are standing down as councillors at the next election.

Louise is standing down after 8 years as a councillor – the first 4 years as a Lambeth councillor for Clapham Common ward, and the latter 4 years as a Wandsworth councillor for Northcote ward. In her time on Wandsworth Council, Louise has chaired the Grants Committee, which has supported many fantastic community and voluntary organisations, as well as the scrutiny committee, which oversees the Council’s progress towards its net zero emissions by 2030 target.

Peter is retiring after a fantastic 16 years on Wandsworth Council. As well as being a dedicated ward councillor, his main interests on the Council have been education and children’s services. Peter chaired the Education and Children’s Services Committee for many years and was one of the founding governors of Ark Bolingbroke Academy, having been instrumental in securing the building for the Academy when the Bolingbroke Hospital was closed.

The new Northcote ward is shown on the map below.

An update on our new library and community hall

We are delighted that Wandsworth Council is building a new library and community hall fit for the 21^st century on Northcote Road, at a time when other councils are curtailing services to save money and closing libraries. Do drop in to the current library to look at a display of ideas for the new library’s layout and facilities. We want to hear your views so that the library delivers for all residents - not only books but also study areas, a larger children’s section, work and important meeting spaces. A library can be the heart of a community which is why we are so excited by the opportunity this development offers. Alongside the new library, there will be a new and improved community centre, able to offer much better accommodation to the local groups that use it, as well as a nursery. The exhibition will run until 12th March 2022 and include several opportunities to discuss ideas with Council officers.

Further details are available at: www.better.org.uk/library/london/wandsworth/northcote-library/northcote-library-new-build

Wandsworth Council also has plans to build new libraries in Wandsworth Town (currently under construction) and, as part of major housing regeneration projects, in Roehampton and York Gardens. 



Summer weekend pedestrianisation returns in 2022 for Northcote Road

Our survey showed overwhelming support from residents for our efforts to see the summer weekend pedestrianisation return to Northcote Road. So we’re delighted that, later this month, councillors will discuss proposals for the 2022 pedestrianisation to start in mid-April as well as a capital budget proposal to invest in more permanent solutions of attractive bollards and gates. We want to thank the Northcote Road Business Network for all their efforts to ensure the success of this initiative by Wandsworth’s Conservative-run Council.



Bolingbroke Grove speeding – sign our petition for 20mph speed activated signs

Thank you for your help and support with our campaign to calm traffic on Bolingbroke Grove. After our success in securing a 20mph speed limit for all of Bolingbroke Grove, we are really pleased to have followed this up with the new larger 20 mph roundels you can now see painted on the carriageway. However, too many vehicles are still exceeding the 20mph restrictions, so we are asking for your support to petition Wandsworth Council to install speed-activated 20mph signs along Bolingbroke Grove. 

These signs effectively reinforce the 20mph speed limit on longer roads, including locally on Broomwood Road, St John’s Hill and Burntwood Lane.



Don’t delay as Aled will present the petition at the Council meeting on 9 March. Many residents have signed our online petition already. Please support our online petition here, and send the link to any neighbours who you think would be supportive too:

www.wandsworthconservatives.co.uk/form/petition-to-wandsworth-council-b?fbclid=IwAR0nUb9qQcvtmkEMI55iMmImPox6TT4EXiqTcfnwq3NdmXse-TeTISEqZRU

Lambeth Council’s application to fence off part of Clapham Common for a 4-day music festival with 40,000 visitors per day

The Friends of Clapham Common are campaigning against Lambeth’s planning application to fence off 20 acres of Clapham Common with over 1km of solid steel fencing for 18 days and host 4 festival days (one extra day compared to last Summer) with 40,000 visitors per day. The Friends say that if Lambeth Council gains approval this year, it will set a precedent, and Lambeth will be free to sign the five-year contract that it has lined up with the Festival Republic to hold 10 festival days per summer with up to 40,000 people per day.

The consultation period is now open, and the Friends want all residents with concerns about these proposals to voice their objections.

Last year, as Wandsworth Councillors, we received a record number of complaints from our residents about the excessive noise from the events, as well as the environmental damage to the Common that resulted from this intensive use. In many areas on the Common, even today, the grass still hasn’t recovered and is unlikely to recover before the next proposed festival fully. We wrote to Lambeth Council, calling for a stop to these large-scale, environmentally damaging events and better consultation with local residents on any future proposed events. The Leader of Wandsworth Council, Ravi Govindia, also wrote to the Leader of Lambeth Council. Disappointingly, Lambeth Council did not reply to any of us.

Below, we’ve shared the ideas that the Friends have put together for possible objections. Objections (or, indeed, any comments) can be sent to the Planning Inspectorate at commonlandcasework@planninginspectorate.gov.uk, with “Clapham Common” in the subject header. We would encourage everyone to do this.