Report on the Mayor meeting with the residents of Lewisham Central
About 40 people attended this meeting. It took place on Thursday 3rd
February 2005 at 7 pm at the Methodist Church in Albion Way SE13.
An interesting aspect of these meetings is that they are chaired
by the Mayor himself, and therefore it is possible to see him "live" as
he tries to relegate the arguments (discussions) to a time of the
meeting when they are more convenient for him to deal with. As
chair, he can also easily skip on uncomfortable questions and keep focusing on
the less controversial and less strenuous items on debate.
Unfortunately, for him, the audience wasn't having it and at one point he seemed to be losing his rag.
The meeting started with the Council being challenged strongly on
the new plan for traffic in Lewisham. We will surely hear this again
many times in the next future.
One of the key and recurrent items on discussion was consultation.
This week's news is that a consultation on the interim site for the new
secondary school has been presented to him and the cabinet.
The result of this consultation is that the 64% of the consulted disagrees with the council choice of site for a new school.
22% of the consulted used the form to protest about the closure of the LLC before an alternative is provided.
38% of the consulted argue that a school is needed in the north of the borough.
10% argued that the Ladywell Leisure Centre site is too small.
5% of responses expressed scepticism as to wether the consultation would have any bearing on decision-making.
The Governing Body of Edmund Waller Primary School further argued that there was a long recognized difficulty in meeting the demand for places in the most northernly area of the Borough, which it described as one of the most deprived with the highest concentration of black and ethnic minority children. It contended that the Council in pursueing this proposal was guilty of giving a poorer service to areas with high black and ethnic minority populations.
38% of the consulted argue that a school is needed in the north of the borough.
10% argued that the Ladywell Leisure Centre site is too small.
5% of responses expressed scepticism as to wether the consultation would have any bearing on decision-making.
The Governing Body of Edmund Waller Primary School further argued that there was a long recognized difficulty in meeting the demand for places in the most northernly area of the Borough, which it described as one of the most deprived with the highest concentration of black and ethnic minority children. It contended that the Council in pursueing this proposal was guilty of giving a poorer service to areas with high black and ethnic minority populations.
But the Council disregarded these opinions and decided to push ahead with the plan. So the council has consulted and then ignored the results of the consultation
One person reminded the audience that the Council only has a duty to consult the people but doesn't have any duty to follow the opinion expressed by the people. The Mayor didn't comment.
This document also contains this paragraph:
The balance of funding was to be delivered by an assumed £2.25m capital
receipt from the disposal of the property interests that will now not
be required. A contribution of £1.8m once-off revenue savings, (3 years
at £0.6m per annum in the years 2007/08, 2008/09 and 2009/10) by the
temporary closure of a town centre leisure facility. Because it is
known that these revenue savings will occur, the timing of this £1.8m
expenditure could be phased earlier if necessary by means of prudential
borrowing. In effect the ongoing budget for Ladywell Leisure Centre
will be used to fund the leisure development at Sundermead with effect
from 2010/11; but the 3 year gap in provision will generate once-off
resources that can be used to bridge the present capital gap.
This paragraph shows quite neatly how convenient it is financially for the Council to switch from the Playtower site to the Ladywell site. The Playtower site is described in this paragraph as "the property interests that will now not be required" and that will give an assumed receipt of £2.25m at their disposal. The Ladywell Leisure Centre, in this financial analysis, ceases to be a community facility and has become "a contribution of £1.8m once-off revenue savings".
At the meeting, another Council document was quoted, this time it was the Mayor and Cabinet meeting report of 20th October 2004 - supplementary agenda.
The provision of a combined wet and dry leisure facility on Loampit
Vale adjacent to the transport interchange is crucial to attracting the
residential and office development needed to make the SRB funded scheme
work.
We argued that by the reading of this paragraph it is possible to understand that the Council is building a new Leisure Centre at the Sundermead development to boost the profits of private investors in housing and office space, as if the proximity of the Station and the Shopping Centre wasn't enough, and that leaving a gap in provision of years the residents of Lewisham were paying for this scheme with their provision of community facilities.
The Mayor nodded but didn't utter a word about it.
Also, the Mayor was challenged on the shrinking size of the new Leisure Centre to be built on the Sundermead Estate site.
This development, that had been called a "state-of-the-art" facility, will contain only one 8 lanes 25 mt. pool and a teaching pool. Therefore, it will have the same size of Ladywell, just more rational with the pool being a 25 mt. (25x8 lane s= 200) instead of a 33.53 mt. (33x6 lanes = 200).
But with the same total length 200 mt., and with an additional amount of users, deriving by the new office and housing of the Lewisham Gateway development, this will result in less available swimming facilities for the residents of the centre of Lewisham.
The Mayor decided to answer to this quoting the ASA requirements for swimming pools.
We told him that the fact that there are minimum requirements doesn't mean that you can't try to do better. There are also other recommendations around, asking Councils to provide more than the minimum, but evidently Lewisham Council has decided not to look at them.
This argument led to another one. Forest Hill Baths!
And this because, if funds to refurbish the place are not allocated urgently, this other popular swimming centre of our borough could suffer some fatal stab.
The state of repair of this otherwise beautiful old Victorian swimming centre is a sorry tale of the interest of the Council in Sport and Leisure facilities.
It is now 9 years since the Council first showed interest in closing it, and only a local campaign prevented them from doing so.
We quoted to the Mayor the answers that the Council gave us on questions regarding this pools:
No decision has been taken as yet on the long term future of Forest
Hill Pool although it is in a poor state of repair. In particular the
'plant' cannot be guaranteed to continue to function safely and could
fail without warning. There are however no plans to close Forest Hill
at present......The capital spending programme is planned ahead, and
includes spending on sports and leisure facilities as well as other
Council priorities. The needs of the Forest Hill complex will therefore
be considered in the light of other competing claims on the Council's
capital funds.
We compared this attitude with that of Pontius Pilate and urged the Council to be proactive to save this place that is at present a vital provision for sport and leisure in our Borough.
We didn't get any commitment though.
Another questioner asked about the transparency of the Council focusing on a letter to the local press in which the Deputy Mayor had used in support of the argument for the demolition of the Ladywell Leisure centre informations that later revealed to be not completely true.
We refer here to the famous £1.8m refurbishment.
The deputy mayor had said that these money had been spent on the removal of asbestos and therefore would have been spent anyway to demolish the building. It later emerged that only £535k was spent on the removal of asbestos, and that the remaining £1.37m had been spent on re-instatement and maintenance.
The Mayor here defended his deputy calling this a smearing attempt.
And that was the last question relevant to the Ladywell Leisure Centre issue.
From here on things really started to heat up, as another person from the public asked about some recent controversial spending of the Council and on the record of a particular councillor that moved to Scotland 18 months ago and since then turns up at Lewisham only to fulfill the minimum requirements for not being de-selected.
On this last issue the Mayor said that it was not in his powers to deselect a councillor that doesn't want to go, but goes to his credit that he didn't defend him either.
Then the discussion moved on to other items of interest for the public.
