The Future of our hospitals - A way forward

I would agree with the recent comments that BHCH programme, seems to have been a waste of money for what we have got so far. Let's not forget that part of it was the designed to split opposition into different boroughs and facilitate the unfair downgrading of Epsom, so they seem to have achieved one objective they set themselves.

The main reason for most of the waste is that is has been led at acute level and focussed on the Critical Care Hospital (CCH), with the PCT being frankly hopeless in developing the Local Care Hospital (LCH) network.

In Sutton it would make sense to agree in principle within the next six months:

1. That the Epsom and St Helier Trust will set up an LCH at St Helier.

2. That the new Shotfield Clinic will the first stage of a larger GP operated LCH on that site.

If we could get that agreed by all the relevant partners we could have a "Sutton LCH Network" established as part of the integration of health and social care and we might even see the first LCH established by 2009.

After that a second phase might be the selling off for Executive homes (with a nice large commuted payment for affordable homes elsewhere) on part of the Sutton Hospital site (I think Peter G and Nick Cull would be happy with this compared to a CCH) with a new LCH built on that site, along with new mental health facilities on the site and the spare money used to help with the ongoing phased rebuild of St Helier.

There you are, some free consultancy from me on this and a proposal that is much more practical than the pie in the sky BHCH proposals.

The Planning Choice facing Sutton!!

Councillors have been invited to a seminar on the developing Core Planning Strategy of the Council.

This is important as the Council will face choices as to the quantity of development it wants to accept in the coming years. For example if we are still keen on Tramlink, we will send the message that we want more intense development in some areas.

The document going to the Strategic Planning SCAG hopes consensus can be achieved.

I am not convinced that will happen as this issue was a key subtext of the local elections.

Global and techological changes are having a rapid impact on suburbs like us. In addition the only likely way to improve suburban infrastructure is through private-sector led initiatives (Ken's view and not just mine). For example the "new sports centre in the west of the borough", we were going to build seems less and less likely as the private sector seems to be filling the niche (5 a side football in North Cheam, sports facilities as Nonsuch etc).

All this pressure will inevitably lead to existing residents seeking to secure the £60,000 premium on their properties for more intense development. Other residents will not be happy with these changes and this will create an inevitable dividing line, which parties will take sides on.

You can now tell why Tories nationally are getting less keen on big business and the markets nowadays and moving on to wellbeing and quality of life issues in a rapidly changing world.

However I do suspect some pragmatism as local Councillors themselves are probably in the same position as residents who want to benefit from intensification of their capital through exploiting the current land scarcity in the suburbs.

Instead of the simply saying we are just managing this process, the Council should directly communicate with all residents and pose them the honest question, do they want to make more money from their homes or do they want to resist this?

Perhaps as well as a "planet pledge", the Council might want to ask whether residents will sign up to a "low development pledge".

Somehow, I don't expect many takers for all the talk of protecting the local enviroment!

Sutton Market Traders - Shields v Kennedy?

Interesting to see the recent comments on the trading account debt by John Kennedy on the front of the Sutton and Epsom Advertiser today.

I can't see the GLA closing the markets down as Sutton can demonstrate the debt is as a result of a clearly required previous action.

What is interesting to note is that John says: "They moved market traders while Asda was being built and lowered their rent because of this. The revenue is not coming in, so there is no evidence the account canh be balanced by the end of the year."

Perhaps he should talk to his colleague Tony Shields, who I recall was strongly in favour of reducing rents for hard pressed traders (or at least the two who turn up to the public gallery)!!

"So very 33% Core vote" as Cameroonians would say!!

Proposed Closure of Sutton Bereavement Service

Some bad news from the Bereavement Service. I assume this item will be put on the agenda of the next Health Scrutiny Committee.

For your info, this service was part funded by Sutton Council until we palmed all of it off to the PCT. I voted against the original change. It strikes me it is better to joint fund facilities like these as it embeds institutions like these further into the integration agenda of the Council and PCT.


MESSAGE FROM THE BEREAVEMENT SERVICE

Dear Sir

This organisation is about to be closed down by our local PCT.

The ending of years of funding will result in the closure of this charity that provides 3000 hours per year of one-to-one counselling to your constituents. We note from the recent speech by Rt Hon Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Health of 12 May 2006 entitled 'End of the 'prozac nation' that: "Millions of people suffer from mild to moderate mental health problems, and treating them takes up about a third of GPs' time. Too many people are prescribed medication as a quick fix solution, but talking therapies work equally well and patients prefer to receive them. THIS IS WHAT WE DO, every day of the week with 65 volunteer counsellors. The local reality is that our community is about to be robbed of a valuable service for the want of some high level joined up thinking by our local PCT. Any ideas about how to influence Caroline Taylor, Chief Executive of Sutton>& Merton PCT (Caroline.Taylor@smpct.nhs.uk) will be gratefully received. We are keen to meet you to provide you with all the facts of this potentially disastrous situation. I regret the informality of e-mail but time is of the essence in this situation. I look forward to your reply. Peter Vreede. Director. The Bereavement Service. Grief Counselling in Merton & Sutton. 336-338 London Road. Mitcham. CR4 3UD 020 8648 9628 peter@thebereavementservice.org.uk www@thebereavementservice.org.uk

Urban Myth Time

It really is time to kill the urban myth that:

a) St Helier Hospital was built back to front - utter rubbish.

b) St Helier Hospital is sinking - it had foundation problems in the 1960's and was underpinned, but there is nothing to stop a modern rebuild from using the site.

As stated earlier, there is a sensible way to build a modern new hospital on the site as well as separating building traffic from the Ambulance traffic and without touching any MOL land.

If only the majority of Councillors on the Council (we know they are a majority on the Council, but are they a majority in the Lib Dem Group - we shall no doubt find out over the next 4 years?) came out and supported this option the local NHS would start seeing sense.

The danger still remains that Sutton Council will miss its chance to influence events and it will be left to MP's to talk about the issue, when they have much less actual clout on this issue compared to Councillors!!

Areas, Forums and Ward Panels

Now we have the Ward Policing Panels, what is the betting Council officers will start wondering whether we need both Area Committees and Neighbourhood Forums.

A few points to consider:

1. Area Committees are well established. We should enhance them with the ability to cover pre-planning issues in much more detail, such as allowing Councillors to raise potential site issues well in advance. Now most ward Councillors are not fettered on planning issues, this should be much easier.

2. Forums have organically grown over 16 years to cover about 40-50% of the borough (depdends whether you include the Roundshaw Community Board as a Forum?). It may be better at this stage to keep what we have. but not rush to expand, if there is no current demand.
3. More effort and money (through devolved budgets) should be put into developing Ward Panels as the "local Parish Council" for each ward. In due course it might be worth widely debating whether existing Forums would then disaggregate into the ward panels and for each panel to send a non-voting resident rep to the Area Committee. However at present, it is best to develop the Ward Panels in varying ways to see what works best. In a year or two it will be interesting to see how they have evolved.

Show us the (Rosehill) Money!!

Just a reminder to Strategy Committee Members, we are still awaiting Fiona Ledden's report on the Rosehill Triangle Section 106 money.

For new Councillors you should be aware there has been dispute over how the Section 106 money for the above development was spent, with previous ward Councillors adamant that it should be spent in the Rosehill Area. As this is the only District Centre not mentioned in the Lib Dem 2006 manifesto it would be a good statement of intent if the total sum was re-invested in the area.

Assuming this goes to July Strategy, I hope there is an actual discussion at Strategy Committee on the lessons learned.

I will comment further when I see the report.

Keeping the Gardens in Belsize

Walking past Belsize Gardens yesterday, I saw that the original sheltered housing has now been demolished but the orchard behind was still intact. Lets see if the developer ensures the trees are protected during the building of the new extra-care facility??

This new facility was heavily promoted by the Lib Dems during the local elections and is actually a good idea (however it's not that new an idea as it will add to the existing facilties in Wandle Valley and Worcester Park), nevertheless we should never forget the way it was developed. Councillor Janet Lowne quite rightly gave a commitment in writing in early 2002 that previous elderly residents could move back to the rebuilt site, but was overturned by her own group on this issue 2 years later.

One of the current lessons is that new Ward Councillors should ask about any future plans for changes to sheltered Council accomodation in their ward. I supported changes to designation in St Helier ward in the last review, but there other areas (Cheam, Carshalton Central, Beddington North) where a loss of sheltered accomodation might be less appropriate.

Current Housing Issues

A few outstanding housing issues that Councillors and relevant officers may wish to ponder:

1. When will the report on anomalous Housing Revenue Land (ie stuff that should probably be transferred from the Housing Revenue Account to the General Revenue Fund) be published and go to the Housing SCAG? John Kennedy and co will be pleased that the Roundabouts of Clockhouse (sounds like a French Art-house movie!) have beem sorted out. Within the Lib Dem Group, St Helier and Wandle Valley Councillors should watch out if Sutton Central Ward Councillors (and we know who they are!!) pull rank and get their area (ie Rosebery Gardens) sorted out first!

2. When will the new Tenant Compact resolve the following two issues:

a) The arrangements by which tenant reps to the Sutton Housing Partnership Board are sorted out?

b) That the Federation can appoint 2 or 3 reps on the Social Care Performance Committee. I heard that this is still not resolved at the recent meeting of the Committee. On other performance committees we have a range of stakeholders. If we can have Patients Forum reps on Health Scrutiny we can have tenant reps on Social Care Performance Committe to aid the overall scrutiny process. Let's hope this is sorted out in the next few months.

3. Heating Charge Increases.
One of the points I made before the elections was that we needed to ensure we were clear who the winners and losers were if we moved away from bulk purchasing. Generally the move will benefit younger or middle aged residents over the elderly. Perhaps Simon Latham and/or Peter Dolan might want to arrange a briefing for all Councillors on this to explain the current rise and the possible future changes.

BedZed v Tesco's??

Just seen the draft Planning Guidance for Hackbridge. Perhaps Council officers should indicate whether they are having any approaches from any large retailers for the Kelvin House and Felnex and Restmor sites.

I can see us creating a situation where Bedzed residents are leading the campaign against one of the larger retailers, so lets have a serious debate over the imrprovement of the Hackbridge retail centre, before any mistakes are made!!

Manifesto Report - Part 1 - The Lib Dems

This is a two part report on the Manifesto's of the two Party's represented in the Council chamber.

This posting concerns the Lib Dem manifesto and in Part 2 will cover the Tories.

The 2006 Lib Dem manifesto is a substantial improvement on the 1994, 1998 and 2002 manifesto's which mainly set out what the Lib Dems had done rather than what they would do. You may be aware I was complimentary towards the latest manifesto at the April Council meeting.

Key points to note are:

1. Develop local residents asociations.
This could be something local ward Councillors are encouraged to develop in their representative role. We could set local targets to cover two-thirds of the borough by a Resident Assocation by 2006. We could also work with the Police to get groups to double up as Neighbourhood Watch Groups as well as Residents Associations, thus building community cohesion.

2. Devolved Area Budgets.
I hope this receives all-party support and we get a move on with our own local scheme. This could also lead to Areas then develving some money to Ward Councillors to recommend spending on within their ward, perhaps consulting with local residents Associations and the local Safer Neighbourhood Team. Surrey County Councillors each get £20,000 a year to spend, why can't we develop something similar.

3. Become a Museum Authority.
If we doo this perhaps we could then bring in free admission to the Heritage Centre and thus bring it attendance up to the much better attended, free admission Ecology Centre.

4. A New Theatre for Sutton.
I welcome the commitment to retain the Secombe until a replacement is built in a more promient place in the High Street. No reference to the Charles Cryer Theatre though?

5. Twin with a town in the developing world.
Let's hope we can develop a local consensus on this. Perhaps a number of South West London Council's can jointly twin with a place to maximise the benefits?

6. Campaign for Tramlink.
I suspect the same wording witll be in the 2010 and 2014 manifestos!!

7. School Bus Services
Good to see we want to increase the number of outborough pupils in the borough by making their bus journeys more comfortable by increasing the bumber of double deckers coming in from South Croydon!! Presumably Tom Brake through his bus campaigns now seems to support the Greenwich judgement.

8. Policing
I think now we have 18 Safer Neighbourhood Teams and ward Panels, we should let them get on with it for the next four years. In particular, we should allow each local area to develop their own local priorities and to share good practice.

9. Hospital Provision.
Lacks any detail on what the Lib Dems would like to see at LCH level let alone the CCH where unlike their MP's they are sitting on the fence. This is a big weakness of the manifesto and lets the local NHS off the hook.

10. Children's Centres and Extended Schools.
This is very important and I hope gets all-party support. One way to do this is to get local Councillors involved with their local Centre at an early stage.

11. Education Spending
Rather amusing how the manifesto says the Council has always spent above the minimum set by the government on education, especially when under the Don Brims era, the Council kept trying to reduce the amount spent on education by up to half a million a year. I am glad that in recent years, that this budget policy has been dropped.

12. Older Peoples Day services.
This is an important area and I have set out in an earlier posting some criteria as to how this might be effectively conducted.

13. Upgrading and modernising old peoples homes.
Surely this should be in the singular as having failed to sell them off to London and Quadrant and Hexagon Homes in the mid 1990's the Council looks likely to sell off the Bawtree, Ludlow and Franklin sites for housing in the coming years, leaving them with just Oakleigh to run and the purchasing of places probably at a presumably GP led Carshalton War Memorial Hospital.

14. Extra Care Housing.
The Belsize development is a good idea in principle, but was achieved by misleading existing residents, much to the embarrassment of Councillor Janet Lowne (who had made some perfectly reasonable commitments in 2002) at the time. I will cover this development in more detail in a future posting.

15. Revitalise Sutton Town Centre.
I am not convinced there is any local consensus on this and I think we need more debate on this issue. I will also cover this in kore detail in future.

16. District Centres
No reference is made to Rosehill as a District centre. Let's hope we get the money owed from the Rosehill Triangle Section 106 agreement.

17. Planning
Against "overdevelopment" but in favour of Tramlink which inevitably increases local housing density. How will we square this circle?

18. Affordable Housing.
Laudable sentiments but no detail. I hope my suggestion of developing a Sutton Tenant owned Community Land trust is taken up over the coming years. Then instead of affordable properties being "lost", we get permanent rented housing in sensible mixed developments. We could then have the Suttonh Housing Partnership working as an agent on behalf of the Community Land Trust. This is the sort of local policy that should get support from Brown, Cameron and Campbell, so lets get ahead of the game. I will cover this idea in more detail in the future.

World Cup Policing!!

The England match yesterday, seemed to be very well Policed in Sutton High Street.

There were loads of Police and PSCO's wandering around and under the new licensing regime, most pubs were not letting anyone else in after the match started and warning those who left early that they would not be let back in.

Well done to Sutton Police for their efforts. Will Peter Geiringer and Tony Shields be saying the same in the coming weeks??

On the Buses

I am pleased to see the S4 bus route extension is being recommended for approval by the Transport SCAG. This will provide a service in an area without a current service.

Some of you may be aware that I raised this issue at the last Council meeting, where I noted that Sutton North Lib Dem Councillors were showing a lot more backbone on this issue than the 3 Sutton Central Councillors who decided to sit on the fence on an issue where there was a petition of just 22 in Thicket Road which has 400 residents living in it!!

Having secured that improvement, here are a few other ideas to improve local bus services:

1. Consider new bus routes for the Kimpton Road area and Beddington Lane.

2. Extend the 470 Bus later in the evening.

3. Increase the frequencies of some of the "S" routes.

4. Extend the N155 from Morden to Rosehill and then past St Helier Hospital and on on to Wallington, where it can interchange with N213.

5. Have more double decker 151's at peak times.

All of these minor changes are much more likely to happen than the almost mythical Tramlink extension, which people seem to be investing so much time on and which will bring with it higher housing densities to drive Lyn Gleeson into apoplexy. Perhaps Lib Dem Councillors should listen to local member Tony Wallace. He has some very interesting views on the issue.

Well Done SHP - Only the SCAG left to sort out!!

I am pleased to note that the Board minutes of the Sutton Housing Partnership (SHP) are now available on their website: www.suttonhousingpartnership.org . Well done!

The only outstanding issue regarding public assessibility of meeting documents is that unlike all the other Strategy Committee Advisory Groups (SCAGs) the Housing SCAG is not yet on Sutton Council's calendar of meetings on their website.

Let's see if that is sorted out in advance of the Housing SCAG planned for 29 June??

No Joy at Pobjoy!!

Walking along Stayton Road, today, I came across Councillor Cliff Carter wallking home. He had just been at a site meeting regarding the Pobjoy Mint and rubbish dumping there.

He agreed with my point, that why don't we just redesignate the site for housing.

I cannot believe that Lyn Gleeson and Ruth Dombey would really disagree with this. Pobjoy is already a 3 storey block and we could get quite a lot of flats on the site, thus taking a little development pressure off other parts of the borough.

Why the hang-up with employment use for the site when Ken Livinbgstone is really keen on the Kimpton Road site (which we should all remember is currently expanding) and the Beddington Lane site (which we should revise our LDF to expand for "green industries" as part of a revised BMAO boundary).

In view of the potential to expand elsewhere, why are we so hung up about the Pobjoy and Paynes sites. The only person who seems in favour is Colin Hall. Perhaps Sutton North Councillors should have a chat with him about it?

The St Helier Gherkin!! - A "Health Observer" Special

The "Health Observer" is an integral part of the Sutton Council Observer. Some of us would of course much prefer the Council to be fully part of a Health and Social Care Partnership Board to jointly commission primary care in the borough.

The day before that Acting Chief Executive of the NHS, Ian Carruthers in a national Guardian interview (see Guardian Society section Today), was talking about less A&E's to reduce the NHS deficit, I was fortunate to have a public meeting on the future of St Helier organised by Tom Brake MP, with St Helier Ward Councillors and Caroline Taylor, Chief Executive of the Sutton and Merton PCT present.

I pointed out that the Sutton Hospital option was 4th choice in the consultation and runner up with just 27% support in Sutton, that Royal Marsden had left the BHCH Programme Board and there was no evidence these was any finance available to support a £350 million project.

I asked Caroline about the potential LCH in Wallington and she confirmed this was likely to develop from the proposed clinic in Shotfield. I welcome this and hope that it has all-party support. Caroline noted my view that if we had the LCH's first, we wouldn't be having so much of a row over the CCH site.

Caroline also confirmed in answer to my question, the development of Intermediate Care at the Carshalton War Memorial site. This may well be partly funded through the disposal of the Ludlow Lodge site. I suspect this may also involve the Franklin House site as well. Perhaps an early consultation is required with Ward Councillors and familes affected. This will then just leave Oakleigh run by the Council and no doubt Eleanor Pinbfold and Mike Broad will keep a close eye on that.

What Caroline and others in the local NHS are not at present able to answer is:

a) Who will run the LCH's. This is likely to slow the whole project down as much as the uncertainly over the sites. I am a supporter of Epsom and St Helier Trust running the St Helier site as it makes logisitical sense. I assume a GP consortia will run Wallington. The other site in terms of where it is (though Ruth Dombey wants the Sutton Hospital site) and who will run it, is completely unclear. We may like Merton only end up with 2 LCH's as the Sutton site may be required for part disposal. I have no great problem with posh homes on the site (and a big commutted sum for affordable housing) if that will make Paul Burstow and Peter Geiringer happy.

b) The abysmal amount of money (£53 million) allocated in the SOC to the 5 LCH's for Merton and Sutton. That is less than £11 million for each site. When you think about their preference for just a St Helier LCH, £11 million is only a part rebuild and not a new full hospital at St Helier. Another good reason to have a CCH there as well.

I asked Tom Brake whether he would join me in objecting to the revised Sutton Local Development Framework to ensure it did not prevent a taller building being built on the site. Tom came across as broadly sympathetic, but said he preferred to issue a formal written statment to this blog, which I will be happy to print.

Note to Tom Jeffrey, Jeff, Sally and other planning staff and Lyn Gleeson - how about saving some time by recognising what is probably a majority view on the Council (presumably Jayne McCoy and Brendan Hudson will join Sue Stears in declaring interests and when you add in the likely support of a majority of Lib Dem Councillors and the Tories, I believe the tall building option does actually have majority support in the chamber. The only assumed supporters of the Sutton Hospital option in the past were Don Brims (stood down) and John Leach (a former St helier Trust Director - but he also wants a big swimming pool built in the middle of Rosehill Recreation Ground as well and who is listening to that!!) .

Rather amusingly Tom Brake described my suggestion of a taller St Helier Hospital as "The St Helier Gherkin".

I am actually quite proud of this recognition as what we need is a bit of vision. If it were left to our planning department (as surrently interpreted by NHS employed consultants), it seems we will will end up with a squat 3-4 story building on the Sutton site, whereas I would be arguing for a landmark building with "ocean liner" features at St Helier that could be seen across all of South London - a superb competitior against St Georges in an era of patients choice, and one that Royal Marsden and ICR might want to dispose their lucrative sites for to lease a few storeys. However instead we get the Princes Trust coming up with a 3 storey "boanx" near the edge of the downs.

Let's see what happens, but if we leave it to the local NHS establishment I currently predict: No vision and and no imagination. Thats why they probably won't in the end secure any finance for their "compromise" Sutton scheme!! The alternative is to build a consensus in Sutton for a landmark hospital site. Over to those parties who are represented in the Council Chamber??

An Afternoon Consitutional!

Went to Community Leadership SCAG to see the discussion on the amendments to the constitution. A few quick comments:

a) As stated before, I disagree with a single party Strategy Committee. I am not convinced that all issues will in future be properly covered before decisions are made, especially when there is still no serious pre-decision process apart from the publication of the Forward Plan and it only gets 10 minutes at Scrutiny Co-ord, when instead it should be the main part of that Performance Committee, with the opposition given the opportunity to comment.

b) Delegated Decision Notices. The option to choose where it goes seems sensible. No doubt officers can advise on consequences if there is too long a delay.

c) Requisitions. This is fine.

d) Questions. Peter Geiringer will be disappointed that the Tories missed a trick over getting a second 8.1 Question for each item. The increase to 4-4 in 8.6 questions is about right.

e) The new 4-3 speaking convention makes sence, especially as we now have 1 minute interventions - an idea originally proposed by Mike Cooper, and now seen as essential part of debates.

f) The Chair limitation debate seemed a bit pointless to me. Things have massively changed since the days when Chairs of Committees were also lead Councillors. In many ways SCAGs are more important than Performance Committees, so we should not be too hung up about it. Indeed if a party group does not have enough talent that it can share out such chairs as wide as possible, then that is its own problem. The new "only one chair of performance or an Area Committee" amendment seems sensible enough, but to be honest there are much more important things to concentrate on!

Waste Charges - A Poll Tax on Younger, Poorer Families

The Times today (page 1) refers to some early conclusions of the Lyons Review on Local Government Finance and the idea of additional waste charges.

I think it is the wrong approach and there are better ways to encourage recycling.

It is wrong because the largest waste generating households are inevitably those with young families. In an affluent borough like Sutton the youngest populations live in St Helier and on Roundshaw. Inevitable such charges wouyld actually reditribute wealth away from those areas to more affluent and lower waste/higher recycling areas of the borough.

It is wrong because it will create a perverse incentive to flytipping. Inevitably this will end up in the back-alley's of more affluent areas and thus a demand will arise from residents for the Council to fence these. Thus we end up creating a redistributive "lose/lose" situation with the Council caught in tyhe middle.

There is a better approach and it is to adopt other forms of taxation (London airport and hotel tourist taxes) and then use these to subsidise incentives (ie money off your Council Tax) for increased recycling. Thus low recycling areas will not feel they are being disadvantages and fly-tipping may even be reduced.

As a 2002 GLA scruitny showed an incentive approach is a much better market mechanism than an unfair charge that will be perceived no better than a Poll Tax on younger, poorer families!!

Roundshaw Community Board - Changes

Another thing not discussed at Strategy Committee was the fact that the composition of the Roundshaw Community Board, will change after transfer to:

8 Tenant reps (up by 2)
2 Council reps (down by 2)
2 Housing Association Reps (down by 2)
2 Independent Reps (up by 2)

Whilst the increase in tenant reps is very welcome, I think there should have been some debate in Sutton Council on the other changes, especially as the Board was supposedly the equivalent of a Local Council Forum for the area it covers.

The actual responsibilities of the Board, also seem very limited compared to the role of the ALMO Board and the opportunity to debate that issue did not occur either.

More demonstration of the weaknesses of the single party Strategy Committee.

World Cup Special!!

Do you remember when the Daily Mail was leading the campaign against the new licencing laws?

Do you remember that after a month of the new rules, they said, "watch out for all the trouble at the World Cup"?

Do you also remember that local Tory Councillor, Tony Shields was also prophesysing doom!

Well, after 8 months of the new rules, do you detect the breakdown of civilisation?

Most people wanted the extra hour or so in the pubs and as a result, I nowadays notice people just drifting of after 11.30pm.

It is also much easier for local Police to manage the dispersal process on Friday and Staurday nights. Their latest leaflet in local pubs advertising "The Lock-em Inn" is very funny, but gets a serious message across. Well done and congratulations ot our local bobbies!!.

Watch this page?

The URL listed below is supposed to show the details of the Board meetings of the Sutton Housing Partnership (ie Sutton's ALMO), but it is not working. Let's see how long before the link is properly set up?

http://www.suttonhousingpartnership.org.uk/

Planning News

A regular look at planning applications in the pipeline:

1. Herald House at 17 Throwley Way is up for redevelopment as a mixed retail, office and housing development. It will be interesting to see what residents in Manor Place think about it?

2. Residents in Boscombe Way may not be happy with the redevelopment of garden land in their road.

3. Its is good to see the planning application for a new building for Carshalton Girls that has been long overdue.

4. St Helier Hospital is proposing the erection of a second floor extension to provide additional consulting rooms and office accommodation to pathology out patients department. Is this the start of the phased rebuild over many years?

For more details go to: http://www.sutton.gov.uk/environment/suttondevelplan/

Whats coming up - The Council Forward Plan

A very useful document is The Forward Plan of the Council (URL is
below) which has some interesting items:

9. Kimpton Project - Disposal of Land for Industrial Development, Strategy Committee 10th Jul 2006
I assume a specific proposal is on the table for some of the Council owned land (note some if owned by Tesco). This will be subject to a further full planning application, though many of the main decisions were covered in the outline application.

10. Policy for the Operation of the Re-use and Recycling Centre, Strategy Committee 10th Jul 2006
Is this about the management of the site or is it about the way it currently operates as there has been some criticism in the local papers.

13. Future Procurement of Waste Services, Strategy Committee, 10th Jul 2006
An important issue as we are likely to see a long-term contract by a number of south-west London boroughs including Sutton. I assume the newly formed SCAG will consider this in more detail.

14. Hackbridge Supplementary Planning Document, Strategy Committee, 10th Jul 2006
The broad outlines for the likely redevelopment of the Felnex industrial estate.

15. Local Development Scheme - Recommendations for Review, Strategy Committee, 10th Jul 2006
An important document setting out the likely levels of development in the borough. Local residents enjoying the fruits of high house prices combined with low retail prices (thanks China), must also recognise the collective downside that it adds a premium of up to £60,000 on the value of an average Sutton house, if it is sold with redevelopment rights. Does anybody wish to speculate as to how many local Councillors will be selling their houses for redevelopment over the coming 4 years?

17. Draft Affordable Housing Supplementary Planning Document, Strategy Committee 10th Jul 2006
I saw an early draft of this and it looked ok. The key thing is to aim for parity of esteem in any mixed development.

18. Review of Day Services for Older People, Strategy Committee 11th Sep 2006
My views on this at this stage is that there should be continued direct provision of older people day care provision and grant funding of voluntary day care. Council policy should be based on the following approach:
a) accessible services, distributed across the borough.
b) Early intervention rather than a service led by eligibility criteria which means a resident is only dealt with when their health is already poor, rather than seeking to delay this.
c) A mixed economy of provision (ie we provide some of the day centres and also commission or fund the voluntary and private charged sector).
This would not prevent our own current direct provision being part of the integrated health and social care and managed at "Arms Length" by the Care Partnerships.

19. Roundshaw Stock Transfer, Strategy Committee, 11th Sep 2006
In view of this item, I would assume that the Council is likely to hold the ballot within the next month or so. Have they told the new ward Councillors - I wonder?

For more details go to: http://sutton.moderngov.co.uk/mgListPlanItems.asp?PlanId=111&J=10

Cameron Country??

The interesting question over the next few years will be whether Sutton comes to be seen as prime "Cameron Country" - a phase I first mentioned to Sean Brennan last November in the Members Room.

Whilst the electorate may be warming to him, will his local Tory Councillors?

Look at the newly relaunched New Statesman magazine, published yesterday where in an interview Cameron demonstrates support for both "equality and "redistribution" as well as saying he likes Bob Dylan and Billy Bragg - though he prefers Kirsty McColl's version of New England!

It will be interesting to see whether local Tory Councillors demonstrate such views and good taste in the coming years??

http://http://www.newstatesman.com/

Public Email Addresses

It is interesting to note that currently 11 Lib Dem and 11 Tory
Councillors have public email addresses. Obviously a lot of
Councillors are new, but I will be regularly updating this total to
see whether the public can email at least one Councillor in every
ward.

Even Councillors who don't want email could arrange with a ward
colleague to have their email address as a default email address for
them.

National Guardian Article

I see that yesterday's national Guardian has an article referring to Sutton as a top Tory target.

No great surprise when you look at the demographics. More importantly the Lib Dem vote has essentially risen (from 94 to present) and fallen (77-79) with the national Labour vote. The periods where that wasn't so was the 72-74 period which was due to the Sutton and Cheam by-election and the 82 to 86 period which coincided with the rather unique Liberal-SDP years.

As the Lib Dem MP's have spent so much time concentrating on the Labour vote (just look at the bar charts they regularly deliver to Tory voters), they have in effect reduced their "vote reach" mainly to the Labour vote plus about 10-15% of the Tory vote, which may not be enough for a long-term maintenance of their hegemony.

In addition the Lib Dems are now suffering from a cap on their vote due to:
a) The rise of small 4th parties which take part of the protest vote they used to solely get;
b) Their membership base being small (70,000 in total, with half in their top 100 seats), which means they can only target a certain number of more promising wards. You only have track the movements of Chris Maines from Bromley to Lewisham to see they are in effect creating a maximum level of seats for themselves.

If they are targetted by the Tories in Sutton there will be targets elsewhere they hope to gain. In other words the Lib Dems have in effect organisationally expanded the space for a viable third party under a first past the post system from their minimum 13% if they had contested all seats in the 1950's up to 20-23% now. That is an achievement they and particularly the ALDC should be proud of, but it is definitely not a realignment.

I will return to the impact of these scenarios in much greater detail in the future.

http://http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Strategy Committee - 5 June

Went to Strategy Committee on Tuesday. A few quick comments:

1. General

I just don't think the single Party Strategy Committee works for the following reasons:

a) There was minimal discussion on some key decisions as I will outline below and the consideration of alternative options was not considered

b) It is a recipe for delay as more items are likely to be requisitioned to full Council by the Tory opposition

c) It is clearly against past Lib Dem principles for multi-party cabinets and I know for a fact some Lib Dem Councillors prefer them, so why the change? My own view is that the Lib Dems should offer the Tories one place for them to choose 1 person with 4 substitutes to fill. If the Tories choose not to take up the offer, that is up to them.

2. Specific

A few comments on certain items:

a) Sheltered Housing Review

I am pleased that this has been handled in such a sensitive way. However there was no reference at the meeting to the current position regarding negotiations with staff.

b) Roundshaw Stock Transfer

I am very concerned that this item was scarcely debated and the alternative option of the stock being managed by Sutton Housing Partnership was not debated. The big issue is that many tenants are concerned with the actual performance of Roundshaw Homes. What will happen to the Sutton Council representation on the Community Board if the transfer goes ahead? None of this was discussed on Tuesday.

c) Local Area Agreement

The Lib Dems missed a trick here. They should have agreed to ask the LGA to develop performance indicators on the speed of government departments in dealing with issues like this. The potential additional £5m funding will help with the modernisation of services as we move towards greater efficiencies in what is the post-expansion period we are now in.

d) Sutton Town Centre Action Plan

I disagree with the Tories and have no problem with spending what is after all Section 106 monies on this. However, I think we really have to consider whether all the fuss over Tramlink is worth the bother. After all it is frightfully expensive and we could see much more bus infrastructure at a much smaller price. Bus services are also quicker to develop. I also think Sutton residents voted in 2006 for efficient services not grand projects and local politicians should ignore that at their peril. The other fundamental reason is that Tramlink will also lead to greater planning pressures in the centre of Sutton. In other words you can't argue for Tramlink for the town centre without accepting greater housing density. I am not sure the Lib Dems (especially Lyn Gleeson) are prepared to accept the latter, thus it might be better to spend any money after the study confirms this point, on simply subsidizing a few more bus routes instead of going on about a grand project that will contradict other policies in the Lib Dem manifesto.

e) Tenant'sHeating and Hot Water Bills

I suspect there will be a great deal of dismay from tenants about the 46% increase (especially in Sean Brennan's and Graham Tope's ward), but there was no debate at Strategy Committee. This shows the weaknesses of the new system as there would have been some debate on this issue.

f) Carshalton War Memorial Hospital and Intermediate Care Provision

This was a confidential item, but as I am not on the Council anymore, I can free speculate on the issue. Under the 2005 BHCH Sutton Hospital CCH option, I believe the preferred proposal was for the PCT to flog off the Carshalton War Memorial site and for the Council to flog off Ludlow Lodge and for intermediate care to have gone in 2010 to a St Helier LCH along with the mental health services that would have been dumped there. However the collapse of the BHCH proposals, mainly due to the fact they have overtaken by events such as a reduction in PFI spending and patients choice being allowed to work it way through the system, now means it is much more likely the War Memorial Hospital site is likely to be reused forintermediatee care as St Helier will still be needed as a CCH, (even if it only gets a phased rebuild, whilst Epsom is slightly downgraded). In other words the Council will get a tasty capital receipt form the sale of Ludlow Lodge and a joint facility will be developed in the correct place. Let's hope I am proved right and this is the first good example of Sutton Council taking the lead, I have always advocated it should, on the whole issue of local acute and community health services.

Welcome to The Sutton Council Observer

The Sutton Borough Observer has been set up by Charlie Mansell to:

a) Provide a useful area to cover issues that local residents may want to be aware of;

b) To also provide a space for the views of some Labour voters (8% of the the 2006 borough vote) to be represented to the Council, where there is no current voice for them.

Charlie Mansell's 20 years experience and tacit knowledge is such that he can interpret much of what goes on in Sutton Council and also its partner organisations as well as commenting on the local media coverage of issues and perhaps saying things that need to be said.

Hopefully you should find it useful.