In case you haven't already heard the news, we're pleased to tell you that the people of Peckham Rye elected three Labour councillors on Thursday.
Victoria, Renata and I are incredibly grateful for the trust that's been placed in us. We know the real hard work starts now and we promise that we won't let you down. On a night of dramatic election results in Southwark, we are also delighted that Labour now has enough councillors to run the council.
Victoria, Renata and I would also like to thank the candidates from the other political parties in Peckham Rye for what was a very hard fought but honest campaign, giving people living in our area a real choice of strong candidates for their councillors. The overall turnout in our ward was high (67%). It was very pleasing to see so many people coming out to make their voice heard in the election.
If you'd like to see the full results you can see them here.
If you'd like to listen to a recording of the results being announced, click here.
Once again, thanks for your support. Please keep coming back the blog for more news on our activities as councillors for Peckham Rye.
Can you comment upon this, which brought our little neighbourhood onto the street on the Saturday before the elections. It involved an altercation between one of my neighbours and one of those Council traffic wardens on a scooter. This is a quiet street which does not require parking wardens at all. We all know one another and quite tolerate our neighbours parking across our driveways whilst we load and unload. In this case the council is wasting our money patrolling back water streets which require no outside intervention to work properly. They have also designed a trap for the unwary - go and look at the east corner of Kelmore Grove and The Gardens, where the coverage of the double yellow lines does not include the ramp for pushchairs and catches perfectly good people out all the time.
ReplyDeleteI work as a management consultant advising many organisations including various unitary authorities. Local government seems to have got the emphasis between income and expenditure completely wrong. Whilst Southwark Council dreams up ever more Machiavellian schemes and industries to make law abiding citizens into local byelaw violators and penalising them for their victimless violations, they probably apply very lax criteria and control over expenditure.
At one London Borough it took me as a consultant to point out that they were summonsing 40% of their principal householders for council tax payment violations, when 90% of them were willing to pay. Their arcane, net income generating and draconian collection methods caused the problem.
At another council they exert little or no control over how social care is assessed and paid for, leading to over-specification and consequent over expenditure which is further compounded by delaying subsequent case reviews to well over a year after assessment. Not only is this a waste of money, it delivers poor customer outcomes such as a dependency culture.
Can you assure me that this patrolling of quiet streets by revenue generators who do nothing for us will stop whilst the Conncil gets on with real added value work which benefits us all.