#lovelambeth

Throughout our time as your local Labour Councillors in Thurlow Park we have worked hard with residents and local community groups to create safer, cleaner and more accessible streets. 

Having held individual resident meetings, attended resident association meetings, organised walkabouts, worked with our MP, arranged for Lambeth officers to visit streets in our ward, andlobbied the Cabinet lead responsible for streets, we are pleased to have been able to secure various resurfacing programmes to a number of streets across the ward - some of which had not been resurfaced for over 20 years despite residents’ best efforts!

Some of the roads or pavements that have undergone resurfacing so far include; Lovelace Rd, Carson Rd, Lavengro Rd, Idmiston Rd, Chatsworth Way, Deronda Rd, Trinity Rise , Brockwell Park Gardens, Guernsey Grove, Arduli Rd, Norwood Rd, Barston Rd, Tulsemere Rd, Towton Rd, Chancellor Grove, Thurlow Hill, Turney Rd, Rosendale Rd, Lancaster Avenue, and most recently, Hawarden Grove.

Despite deep Conservative Government cuts to Lambeth Council, we will continue to find ways to bring about the change that residents want, while continuing to work hard to ensure all parts of the ward have safe streets - streets that we can all be proud of.

In Lambeth’s forthcoming budget we have set out our plans to exempt our care leavers from paying Council Tax until they are 25, to help give them the most stable start possible to their adult lives. 

We know that many young people leaving council care are less likely to be in full time employment and more likely to struggle to manage their finances and fall into debt. This small step is at a relatively low cost to the council and will help hundreds of care leavers from April. We have worked closely with the Children’s Society on this issue.

We want to do everything we can to ensure our children leaving care have the best possible start to their adult lives, and we hope to set out plans on how we can do that in the coming months and in the manifesto.

Lambeth Council announced a new wave of tree planting in the borough, including various roads in Thurlow Park. We've always championed the planting of trees in the ward and are really pleased that this further programme will bring the overall number of trees Lambeth wide since 2009 up to 4,000. 

This is good news for our community and continues our pledge to make local streets cleaner and greener for residents.

The planting of new trees will include:

Ardlui Raod Lancaster Avenue Romola Road Rosendale Road Thurlow Hill

Whilst contributing to creating a more attractive environment for all, tree planting will also improve the overall environmental quality, (including air quality and noise reduction), of our roads and local community. 

The tree species will be carefully selected and will be appropriate for their locations. 

Work will shortly be starting to resurface the pavements along Norwood Road, as the first phase of Streetworks, the community led project to improve West Norwood and Tulse Hill. This includes both sides of Norwood Road between Leigham Vale and Elmcourt Road.  It will start in early August and will be carried out in phases as follows:

• 1st Phase: Norwood Road (east side only) opposite Leigham Vale to Avenue Park Road - approximately one week

• 2nd Phase: Norwood Road (east side only) between Avenue Park Road and Elmcourt Road – approximately three to four weeks

• 3rd Phase: Norwood Road (west side only) between Leigham Vale and  opposite Elmcourt Road – approximately five weeks

In the letter sent to residents /businesses Lambeth states; 

We are aware that many of you live or work near the affected roads and we will do our best to minimise disruption.  We will have signs to inform the public that businesses are open as usual and to ensure that there will always be access to premises while improvement works are progressing. There are no scheduled road closures as part of the work however the parking bays outside Elmcourt Pharmacy will be suspended during the works on the west side of Norwood Road (the last phase of works).

We appreciate that these improvement works will cause some short term disruption however we will ensure that access and servicing needs are catered for. Should you have any queries regarding these works please contact Debbie Parker on [email protected] or contact one of your local councillors

In our last blog piece in April 2016 we talked about the resurfacing works on Arduli, Guernsey, Trinity Rise, Deronda, Chatsworth and Idminston. 

As an update we wanted to inform residents that we have continued to campaign for further resurfacing works to be conducted on roads /pavements such as Eastmearn, Tulsemere and Chancllor as it’s a key issue for residents in our ward.

Working with the Cabinet lead, Cllr Braithwaite, we can now share an overview of the criteria involved in Lambeth's decision making about which roads /pavements require resurfacing. 

The roads and pavements selected for an upgrade are dependant on the scores given following an assessment of every road and pavement in the borough.  The scores (out of 10) is based on a number of factors; 

In terms of roads, they are measured against a set of criteria, taking into consideration, the level of usage of the road, whether it’s considered to be a key network link, if its condition poses a health and safety risk, and a host of other aspects in order to work out the priority level such as; the road traffic sensitivity, planned engineering works and the local profile (i.e., near a school, church, leisure centre, hospital, park, museum and /or library). 

In terms of pavements, it is much the same for roads though they will also take into account the deprivation of the local area, its usage, the local profile, planned works and its linkages to other main pedestrian networks. 

From June 2016 Lambeth will begin a programme which will will convert 12,981 of Lambeth's street lighting stock from SON-T (sodium) bulbs to LED (Light Emitting Diode) bulbs. The work will be carried out over a 18 month period. 

The existing lamp will be re-used with a new LED fitting being installed into the lantern. The programme of works will start in the North of the borough with Thurlow Park ward being visited in mid-October this year, and Parks, Footpaths and A Roads being visited across Lambeth between Feb-April 2017.                            

What are the benefits of carrying out this work?  LED  The two main benefits of converting to LED are a reduction in Lambeth’s CO2 emissions and reduced energy bill for the council, thereby fulfilling our manifesto pledge to protect the environment by reducing the amount of energy the council uses and saving up to £600,000 per year.