Dear neighbour,

Whilst it has been a tumultuous 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 scheme – our petition hits 5,000!

2.     Our new library on Northcote Road.

3.     Wandsworth Grant Fund – community groups can apply for Council funding by 7 November.

4.     Speeding on Bolingbroke Grove – our campaign for a Speed Indicator Device is successful.

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

6.     Battersea Ball – Battersea’s largest charity ball is back this year.

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.

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 Aled Richards-Jones

Cllr Emmeline Owens 

Petition to save Northcote Road summer weekend

pedestrianisation scheme hits 5,000 signatures 

Thank you to everyone who has supported our campaign. Launched only a month ago, our petition to save the Northcote Road summer weekend pedestrianisation scheme has hit 5,000 signatures from local residents. Last week, we presented the petition at the meeting of Full Council, which means that the new Labour Administration will have to 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, many businesses, and transformed the road during the summer months into a haven of safe, fun shopping and dining for the whole 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 developers’ levies – to install attractive gates and bollards on the road so that the road could be closed at the 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 unform 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 meeting last week, 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.

Progress on our new Northcote Road library 

If you’ve passed the site of the former Chatham Hall on Northcote Road recently, you’ll have seen our new state of the art library taking shape.

Work is progressing on the new library, which will offer a dedicated and improved children’s section complete with buggy parking space, enlarged study accommodation, workspace for local entrepreneurs, self-serve kiosks for book loans, upgraded computer and digital learning areas, an events space and restroom facilities. Once built, the new library will provide 848 square metres of usable floor space compared with the existing 728 sqm. Alongside the new library will be a new community centre for use by local groups and a nursery.

The current opening date is expected to be sometime in the new year. We’ll keep you updated as and when we know more. 

Wandsworth Grant Fund

Apply by 7th November for community grant funding

Established in April 2015, the Wandsworth Grant Fund (WGF) supplies small grants (£500 to £10,000) for community and voluntary sector organisations in the borough to undertake activities for up to 12 months.

The fund aims to support projects under six themes:



1. Arts and culture
2. Environment and attractive neighbourhoods
3. Children and young people
4. Citizenship and civic engagement
5. Achieving aspirations and potential
6. Health and wellbeing
7. Recovering from the impact of COVID-19

As ward councillors, we have a long history of supporting and sponsoring successful local projects for funding. Earlier examples include securing grants for the Wandsworth Mediation Service, the Community Gospel Choir at St Michael’s Church, and the Sea Cadets!

Community groups can find out more about the scheme here. If you’re a local group looking for funding, and you think you may qualify under the WGF, let us know and we’ll be happy to help.  

Speeding on Bolingbroke Grove

Our campaign for a Speed Indicator Device is successful

Back in May, Aled presented a petition signed by local residents on Bolingbroke Grove calling for the installation of a Speed Indicator Device (SID) on Bolingbroke Grove. SIDs have been shown to reduce traffic speeds and the installation of a SID will make the road safer for residents travelling to and from their homes and the Bolingbroke Medical Centre, and pupils travelling to and from Ark Bolingbroke Academy and other local schools.

We’re pleased to announce that council officers at Wandsworth Council have agreed that the petition meets the threshold for intervention and have promised us a SID when one becomes available. 

Hire bikes

Can you help us make 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.

Pedestrians are being forced off pavements and on to the road as cycle hire bikes are abandoned 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 abandoned whenever and wherever the user's journey ends.

As local councillors, we have been raising this issue with our new Labour-run Council for months. The Council has so far chosen to do nothing. So, we’re suggesting they adopt our three-point plan to deal with the problem.

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.

We have launched a petition calling on the Council to enact our three-point plan. Please sign it here.

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

If you are a Facebook user then we’d encourage you to share the petition link with family, friends, and neighbours. If you are in a street or neighbourhood WhatsApp group, please do share the petition perhaps with a picture of an abandoned bike locally. If you are on a community platform like NextDoor then please do the same. Each click, like, or share really does increase the likelihood that someone else will see it. Each name added to the petition makes it more likely that the Council will act.

It only takes seconds to share this petition with others. Together we can make a real difference.

The Battersea Ball is BACK!

The Battersea Ball has been held for over 30 years and it’s become known as the Biggest Charity Fundraising Party in Battersea - for many people, this event has always marked the start of the festive season. The last ball in 2019 saw over 1,300 people raising a record £62,000 to help important local charities, including the Battersea Crime Prevention Panel fund, Battersea Summer Scheme and many other projects.

The pandemic has sent the Ball into hibernation for the past three years, so we’re thrilled to see it return this here.

You can find out more, and purchase tickets, here: https://www.batterseaball.org.uk/

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