Lewisham Central Hither Green

The Parliamentary Academy places young people in Parliament to work as apprentices. It has cross-party support and places apprentices with MPs from across the political spectrum.

It aims to make Parliament an inclusive environment for 16-24 year olds, from a large variety of backgrounds, the ten-month (42 week) apprenticeship scheme combines ‘on the job’ training, working in the Westminster office of an MP and college based training.

The responsibilities usually held by an apprentice are responding to constituent letters, government research, maintaining press and media databases and general administration duties. The apprentice will work in your office for 3 days a week, with Thursday spent on ‘off the job’ training. This is a total of 32 hours a week. The salary is to be met by the MP. For this scheme we are requesting that all apprentices are paid a minimum of NMW, which is £6.08 per hour. Total salary to be met is £8171.52.

You can apply here from 20 February.

Many people will have been held up at Hither Green station this morning (Mon 9 January 2012) as a trackside fatality meant that the power had to be switched off and normal service was not resumed until 13.40.
Don’t forget that you can claim compensation under the delay-repay system.

Social media is allowing local government to respond to citizens in a more responsive and accurate manner.
It’s hard to underestimate how much technology can revolutionise the way that public services can be delivered.

One local resident in Lewisham spotted a zebra crossing on Hither Green Lane had one of its light’s covered. Instead of calling me, or writing to me, they tweeted a photo from their mobile of the covered light and asked me to investigate.

Because I had a photo, Council Officers could show this evidence to our highways contractor, Conway. Who in turn, with the address, knew exactly what they needed to fix the problem. Within 3 days the light was fixed.

We can respond even quicker to litter and graffiti thanks to the Love Lewisham application. In 2002, it took two and a half days to clean up reported graffiti, now it takes on average half a day. And graffiti is down by 73 per cent. How? By trusting the public. People don’t want to live in an area blighted by litter, and they’re prepared to tell us when we’re not doing enough. So by giving every citizen with a smartphone the ability to report litter or graffiti to us, we’re able to plot where our teams need to go in a more joined-up way – saving time and energy. And as the smartphone app can also upload a photo of the offending detritus we can deal with the worst stuff first. And people really do seem to like taking responsibility for their home.

But we can also deliver services differently.

Hilary Renwick, our Head of Cultural Services, has told me:

We are acquiring two ‘digital shelves’ from Bloomsbury’s e books collection which include the Arden Shakespeare, specifically the ten plays that are on the GCSE National Curriculum and a collection entitled ‘Our Environment’ comprising ten books including The Hot Topic by Gabrielle Walker and Sir David King. The project is sponsored by Google and run by Public Library Online.

The Service will be launching a new App for I Phone and Android phones that will enable library card holders to search the library catalogue, reserve a book and interact with their borrower record.

Soon, we will be able to offer more and more of our collection on portable devices. We know that 60% of the workforce of Lewisham has to commute to work in the morning. If we can offer our library services on Kindles, or iPhones, we can ensure our libraries service is more used by more people.

Finally, we need to break open our datasets. We hoard too much information – data that could be used by local residents to challenge the way we run public services. By opening up data we will find ourselves open to serious scrutiny by voters. But – people want to help – and there’s huge added value in getting people to challenge our assertions. We used to spend a significant amount of money on consultants to guide our policy process. We’ve halved this in a year, and we’re going further (as I’ve been pushing in my role as Chair of the Audit Panel). Now, we need to embolden the ‘citizen consultant’ using our data to aid their analysis. In the same way the Freedom of Information Act has opened up local government in a spectacular way – access to data can be challenge us in a far more productive way.

Further reading / resources:

London’s datastore
Nigel Tyrell (Lewisham’s Head of Environment) has a great blog on Love Lewisham
Public data’s Desert Island challenge: which dataset would you pick?

There was a heartening response to the request for help in cleaning up the town centre but amazingly the street cleaning teams, including their managers had been there at 6.30 a.m. and by 8 a.m. Lewisham Town Centre was ready for business, so the volunteers were not after all needed. However, a big ‘thank you’ to the 20 or so people who turned up at 9 o’clock. Fortunately the task was not as vast as in Croydon or Ealing as the police had successfully limited the damage caused by the rioters. Shops and the market were operating though with a few gaps in the stalls and some shops with shutters down. Some people I spoke with were outraged at what they had seen on their tv screens and others were stunned at the extent of the lawlessness and criminality.
Mayor Steve Bullock and other London local authority leaders are meeting this afternoon with Ed Miliband, Labour Party Leader, to brief him on what has been happening. Police locally are readying themselves to cope with any further disturbances and the management of the Lewisham Shopping Centre has decided to close at 1 p.m. as a precaution. Let us hope that will prove to be unnecessary.

Come and show your support to the local businesses affected by last night’s disorder. Join your local councillors and others, starting at 8.15 a.m. at the Town Hall and/or 9 a.m. at Lewisham Town Centre. Come ready with gloves and strong plastic bags.

Steve Bullock, the Mayor of Lewisham, has made a statement on the violence today:

“I condemn these acts of criminal violence which are being carried out by a minority of law breakers. Nothing can justify this behaviour. I am deeply concerned about the impact on individuals and businesses in Lewisham. Police and other public servants have acted to deal with the issues our city faces but are being stretched to the limit. The Council will do everything it can to support the police and emergency services to protect the law-abiding community in our borough. We must not forget that the vast majority of our young people are decent, hard working individuals who will be appalled by the damage that is being done to our communities.”

From Together for Transport:

Eye-watering rail fare hikes: will you help us stop them?

On 16 August, Britain finds out the figure for the official rate of inflation in July. Why does that matter? Because from this year, all train operating companies are allowed to hike their rail fares from January 2012 by whatever that figure is plus an eye-watering 3%.

This means that rail fares may well go up by a minimum of 8% from January – and unregulated fares will go up by even more. For commuters and regular rail passengers, this means hundreds of pounds more a year at a time when household budgets are stretched to breaking point.

Together for Transport is backing the demonstration, called by our friends the Campaign for Better Transport, outside Waterloo station in London on the day of the inflation announcement to make the call for fair fares. The demonstration has the backing of environmental campaign group Climate Rush, trade unions TSSA and RMT and others.

Will you stand with us? A respectable turnout on 16 August will send a message that rail passengers are fed up with year after year of extortionate fares: we’re not prepared to put up with them any longer.

Find out more about the demonstration
If you can’t make the demonstration, there’s still plenty you can do:
Sign the Campaign for Better Transport fair fares petition here
Together for Transport can help you set up a community transport group to raise awareness about the threat of higher fares and organise meaningful opposition. If you’re interested please email info@togetherfortransport.org
Look out for more activities taking place on the 16 August and over the coming months – we’ll be sending out details next week

From the Lewisham Council website:

Whether you are a young person wanting to fill those long summer holidays, or a parent trying to amuse the kids, we have a full programme of events and activities to suit everyone.

Documents

• Early years activities
  Type: pdf I Size: 0.83Mb
• Music, dance and the arts
  Type: pdf I Size: 0.72Mb
• Sports and activities
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• Swimming
  Type: pdf I Size: 0.73Mb
• Summers Alive 2011 full programme
  Type: pdf I Size: 3.60Mb

Luke Sorba, local CLP member in Telegraph Hill has suggested and it has been agreed that the following message be sent to our comrades in Norway at this difficult time.

“Following the tragic events in the city of Oslo and on the island of Utoeya, Lewisham Deptford Constituency Labour Party, of the British Labour Party, would like to express sincere condolences and solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the Norwegian Labour Party and Workers’ Youth League. In your grief and in the undeterred pursuit of your ideals we stand by your side.”

The ideas of the far-right are as perverted as ever. You can read about Lewisham’s own history of neo-Nazi violence at EastLondonLines. Here’s the Guardian’s original report of the “Battle of Lewisham“, where local people stopped a National Front march through Lewisham and Deptford.

This month, I asked these questions at the full Council meeting last night:

Question by Councillor Harris to the Cabinet Member for Resources

Does the Council expect the government’s adoption of the Sir Justice Jackson Review of Civil Litigation Costs to have a significant affect on our overall legal costs?

Question by Councillor Harris to the Cabinet Member for Resources

Does the Council have any guidelines around investing in authoritarian regimes whether through our prudential borrowing or pensions investments; if not, is this a policy that could be developed?

Question by Councillor Harris to the Cabinet Member for Resources

In light of the defamation action funded by South Tyneside Council on behalf of individual members; does Lewisham Council allow for individual members and or officers to be funded using taxpayers’ money for taking legal action for slander or libel? And if so, will officers remove this provision from the Council’s constitution and working practices?

Question by Councillor Harris to the Cabinet Member for Customer Services

How many complaints have been made to the Council about the Family Mosaic housing association; how many tenants does Family Mosaic have in our borough, and how does this compare to the ratio of complaints against tenancies received by the Council in regards to Lewisham Homes?

Question by Councillor Harris to the Cabinet Member for Customer Services

To the Cabinet Member for Customer Services, in each of the following years, how much has the Council charged traders for our various administrative costs, against the number of stallholders:

And what is the predicted charge for the current financial year?