Dear Neighbour,

Please see below for a community update on all things Nine Elms, including:

• A tribute to Queen Elizabeth II
• Energy bills help
• Battersea Power Station grand opening
• Local policing
• Making Nine Elms a graffiti free zone
• Our roles on the council
• Council tax

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

Kind regards,

Cllr Matt Corner and Cllr Mark Justin

Your local Nine Elms Conservative Councillors

cllr.m.corner@wandsworth.gov.uk

cllr.m.justin@wandsworth.gov.uk

A Tribute to Queen Elizabeth II

Her Majesty The Queen served our nation for seventy glorious years, earning the respect, admiration and love of all her people.

The expression of thanks from people across the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth at the Platinum Jubilee earlier this year was a testament to that heartfelt affection. We will all cherish our memories from that very special moment for the rest of our lives.

Her Majesty had a special connection to Battersea, and a well known fondness for Battersea Cats & Dogs home. She served the charity as a Patron from 1956 until her 90th Birthday and visited the centre many times over her long reign.  

Wandsworth Council’s Energy Bills Help

The energy bills crisis is hitting households hard everywhere, and unfortunately Nine Elms is no exception.

Some help is at hand. It is well worth checking to see if you are eligible for help from the Council’s Energy Rebate Scheme. We have already been able to help residents secure hundreds of pounds of support.

Full details of the scheme including details of how to apply and the eligibility criteria can be found here: wandsworth.gov.uk/discretionary-energy-rebate-scheme/.

If you believe that you fulfil the necessary criteria and do not want to wait for the Council to get in touch then please apply on-line here: wandsworth.gov.uk/energy-rebate-payments/ to submit an application.

Battersea Power Station opening

We are hugely excited to be able to tell you that the long-awaited opening of the Battersea Power Station shopping centre and high street will be on Friday 14th October!

There will be over 100 shops, bars, restaurants, office space venues and leisure facilities opening, bringing with them over 2,500 jobs.

The Power Station’s two Control Rooms, which managed the distribution of power across London, including to Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament, have also been fully restored. Control Room A is set to become a unique events space and Control Room B has been transformed into an exciting new all-day bar concept!

It will be amazing to see the Power Station reopen almost 40 years after it was shut down. This is due to over a decade’s hard work and leadership by the previous Conservative leadership at Wandsworth Council.

Nine Elms Policing and Ward panel

On 17th August Cllr Matt Corner attended the inaugural Nine Elms ward panel. This is a resident-led forum where residents, businesses and building managers can work with the police and other agencies to make Nine Elms a crime free zone! Let us know if you want to attend the next one on Wednesday 23rd November at 18:00.

Local Nine Elms police also hold regular ‘Coffee with a Copper’ events in Nine Elms. We aim to attend these so you can meet local police and Councillors together.

Clearing Graffitti

We are on a mission to make Nine Elms famous for being a graffiti free zone!

As your local councillors we can send examples of these unwelcome eyesores to the Council’s graffiti busting team for clearing. See examples below and here. Now you see it - now you don’t!

Council work and committees

A large part of our role as councillors involves representing you at Wandsworth Town Hall.

Our core role is to represent you and get things done for Nine Elms, so get in touch if you see any graffiti, potholes, overflowing bins, broken street furniture and lighting, and so on. If you take a picture and send it to us we will be able to get the relevant Council teams on the case ASAP.

The rest of our time is spent on Council committees, helping to hold the Council to account on your behalf.

Matt serves on the Childrens & Education, and Joint Pensions committees, bringing his experience as a former maths teacher and qualified accountant to the workings of the Council.

He is also one of the Council’s reps on the board of the Wandsworth Pupil Referral Unit, which is responsible for educating some of the most challenging and vulnerable children in our borough.

Mark serves on the Licensing and Planning committees. This allows him to use his experience as one of the country’s longest serving pub landlords to make sure that we support the hospitality industry in Nine Elms and across Wandsworth!

Planning is obviously a huge issue in Nine Elms with the ward being one of Europe’s largest regeneration sites. So it is great that we have a Nine Elms councillor sitting on the planning committee.

Labour’s Council Tax broken promise

At Full Council this July, we were disappointed that the new Labour Administration’s first major vote was to backtrack on their commitment to cut Council Tax next year by 1%.

Council Tax was a key theme at the local elections, with Wandsworth being famous for having the lowest Council Tax in the country following 44 years of Conservative administration, and Conservative-run Wandsworth was the only London council last year to actually cut its share of Council Tax.

Wandsworth Labour must have thought that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and pledged to cut Council Tax next year by 1% in their campaign. Wandsworth Conservatives brought a motion to Council asking Labour to formally commit to this promise – but Labour voted against it. This is obviously bad news, not just in a cost of living crisis, but for trust in politics generally.

It's not the best start to the new Labour council, to say the least! We’ll continue to make the case for low tax and for local politicians to keep their promises to the electorate.