Savings and pressures

There’s a big item discussed at Overview and Scrutiny committee tonight, it’s about over £4 of savings in the Council’s budget and some arising extra expenditures not considered at the time of the last budget.
In the Pressures document one item struck me:

Homeless Accommodation 16/17 year olds (Budget Pressure Risk of £800k)
5.2.4

The consequence of the Southwark judgement and how it should be applied is still being assessed. However, 16/17 year olds in Homeless Accommodation will have to be reassessed under the looked after children criteria. There are about 50 of these children. At this stage it is difficult to identify how many of this group will fall under Looked after Children and become the financial responsibility of children’s social care rather than housing. With one case costing around £50k the impact could be considerable and be as much as a £1m. A number of London Boroughs are indicating the costs will be between £800k and £1m. Some of the costs of the judgement are currently being borne by the Customer Services Directorate. The figure above reflects that the judgement requires care expenditure to be undertaken that was previously not required and there will be a net pressure on the Council’s overall budget.

Reading this made me want to understand what this Southwark Judgement is and here it is.
It’s a landmark judgement about a 17 year old who Southwark Council assisted with housing support but nothing else. As the Community Care website summarizes:

The ruling could mean that many more homeless 16 and 17-year-olds receive social care support, and not just accommodation, from councils, and a number of 18- to 21-year-olds become entitled to leaving care support.

Some fundamental questions about the level of support that a lot of young people in need receive arise.
The young person at the centre of this ruling was evicted by his mother at 17, a gigantic personal tragedy, as such he was in need of care, not old enough and lacking the stability that would allow him to make considered choices about his life. Obviously in great need of comprehensive support to surrogate his non existent family. Only that he didn’t find support other than housing. Important as it is in cases like this it’s surely not enough.
I think that savings on these kind of care are false economies, only if the person in question becomes a successful adult then social care costs will cease, but a lack of support at this stage is quite likely to inflict a damage to those chances of success.

In the post before this I mentioned the homeless hostel, its guests are a very visible component of this neck of the wood and on a daily basis the thought “what happened to you that made you like this” comes to my mind. For some of them part of the answer may be found in the Southwark Judgement and the document on discussion at tomorrow’s O&S tells us that probably in the past few years in Lewisham alone there always were about 50 young people in big need that were not supported enough.

Objection to 24 hour off-license application

I just sent this objection to an application for a 24 hours off-licence, you can also write in objection to licensing@lewisham.gov.uk.

Dear officer,

I here write in objection to the request of a 24 hour license to sell alcoholic beverages for the supermarket at 258-260 Hither Green Lane.
The area is home to St Mungo, a very large hostel for the homeless and such an establishment would have a very disruptive effect on all the work done by those residents of the hostel that are trying to overcome their addiction and improve their lives.
I therefore ask you to reject this request for license.

Kind Regards

Many thanks to Joanne Hall for raising the issue.

Oysterlessness

Lewisham Station, c. 1900, passengers were already unable to use Oyster Cards!

If you want to get lost looking at old pictures of the area you can’t do much better than visit the wonderfully named IDEAL HOMES: SUBURBIA IN FOCUS.

Hither Green Community Association public meeting tomorrow

When? Tomorrow Wednesday 21st October 2009 at 7:30.
Where? Hither Green Baptist Church.
On the corner between Theodore and Radford road SE13 6HT (map)
Who? The Hither Green Community Association.
What? Public meeting.
Why? To make this place better and make us a functioning community rather than the inhabitants of what’s around a non description railway station in commuter belt, which is what we’d be if we let things be.

I’ll be there. It’s actually a quite important meeting. Until a couple of years ago there was no residents’ association whatsoever in Hither Green. Then the HGCA was set up and a few visible improvements to the area have been brought forward, the notice boards outside the station, tidying up and planting on green yet grotty patches like the now marvellous little garden around the bus stop in Springbank Road, then hanging baskets on Hither Green Lane, the lovely Hither Green week that took place this summer. Just a few examples of what HGCA has done that spring to my mind now.
Now thanks also to the HGCA we were able to set up the Hither Green Community Hall and Arts Society group focusing on cultural events like the Hither Green Cinema day and trying to rescue the former Park Cinema building to make it into an Arts and Community Centre.
Things are moving, but they don’t just happen, you have to make them happen. Don’t leave it to someone else, get involved.
Come down if you live around Hither Green, care about your area and can make it.
If you can’t come you will be able to read what happened here on this blog but it’s not like the real thing.

Spectacular success for Hither Green cinema day

Great thanks to all those who yesterday came to the Hither Green cinema day.
For those that weren’t there here’s a run down of what happened:

- 250 people paid to be there providing living demonstration that the area needs cultural activity;
- in the morning the two drama workshops for children were great, lots of happy faces and possibly a follow up as a regular drama club for children may start to take place in the neighbourhood (contact here if interested);
- people from all walks of life collaborated in a spontaneous and harmonious way to make the event happen. Each according to their abilities, some could run a bar, some others could design leaflets, some others could make spreadsheets, some other again could drive a van, all equally necessary. We showed to 250 people that things can happen and we got many of them to join us to make it bigger and better the next time round;
- three great films were enjoyed on a big screen, one with live piano accompaniment from a truly great pianist;
- we had a busy foyer with a well provided bar and an exhibition about the history of the area. There people got to know each other (including guest of honour Sally Cooper, daughter of Gladys Cooper, the greatest star Hither Green ever conceived);
- at the final count we broke even which was not something we could take for granted since the operation involved considerable set up costs.

Yesterday the newly formed Hither Green Community Hall and Arts Society started its activity with a resounding success, may it continue like this.

Objection to the Timber Yard development

Last night I submitted my objection to the proposed development of the Springbank Road Timber Yard.

Dear officer,

I’m writing to object to the planning application DC/09/72316/X for the development of the Timber Yard site on Springbank Road into a residential develpment of 33 flats.

My main concern is the nature of the proposed development that as purely residential does not include any commercial space.
The site in question is next door but one to a busy entrance to Hither Green Station, an important commuter approach and as such is highly suitable for substantial commercial development.

It is my opinion that the shopping offer on Springbank Road does not reach that critical mass that makes it a viable option for shopping or entertainment for the large number of commuters that daily walk by and that one can safely assume would appreciate being able to buy their shopping on their way home from work.

The redevelopment of this site could offer the opportunity to remedy to the inconvenience that this lack of provision involves, but not with this proposal.

I quote from the Planning, Design and access statement (Ref L/LEW/525/SC/JA/CL67):

The Council concluded that although the site does have potential for redevelopment there are concerns over the loss of the commercial use from the site. It was suggested that a mixed use scheme would be most appropriate. However it is not considered a commercial use would be viable on the basis of demand.

I assume that the ending sentence of this paragraph are considerations of the developer and I disagree with them.
This is a site outside a busy commuter station and provided of a bus stop placed on a very generous widening of the pavement, a small piazza in its own right, a remnant of the time when this was a station entrance.
If that is not commercially viable then nowhere is.

In paragraph 2.23 the developer refers to a rather inconclusive survey of local availability of light industrial premises as a justification to move away from the current use, and in paragraph 2.25 it refers to the vacant units at Meridian South as a reason for not including a commercial component.
Well, a mix development would not include light industry and unlike the units at Meridian South this site is not enclosed in a residential development, a location that makes it hard to derive trade from beyond the immediate surrounding.
Both arguments don’t justify the choice of a purely residential site.

Regarding the visual impact the point of view of the prospective drawing provided gives an image where the highest point of the development is in the drawing lower than the nearby houses, despite this development reaching 5 storeys and the nearby houses only 2, one wonders if these drawings express the impact adequately. The side views appear to be very bulky and the drawing k57/09/09 shows a relationship with the nearby building that is not particularly harmonious.

Another concern is the car park provision. It is obviously a perfect site for non-drivers but 5 parking places for 33 dwellings sounds very low especially when the development includes 16×2 bedrooms and 13×3 bedrooms, suggesting a presence of families and a total count of 75 bedrooms.

Kind Regards

Monster 99p store to dominate Hither Green Lane

Hither Green Lane, 1913.

Hither Green Lane, circa 1930.

Hither Green Lane, October 2009.

When a cinema building is transformed into a 99p store you can legitimately say that the area is going to the dogs and something must be done about it.
It surely doesn’t bring the area up and it’s a gross misuse of what once was a great community asset, but let’s look at the positive, at least it’s not being converted into 6 flats, it has planning consent for conversion but due to the known issues with the housing market there probably wouldn’t be any profit in it.
A couple of months ago me and other 48 residents successfully objected to an especially inappropriate planning application for a modern block with 9 flats on the site and now the developer who is not extravagantly wealthy and is stuck with this particularly ill-judged property investment probably needs to make some money to stay afloat, so a commercial tenant may do the job, let’s try to make this new shop only a transition towards something much better and that this area desperately needs.

Let’s free him from his burden! Let’s acquire the building and make it into an Arts and Community Centre. I’ve been in touch with the developer, he said he’d sell it to us. We’ve involved the Council as well as well as other potential funders, including private groups. If the stars align correctly it could be done.

There is a very big argument in favour of this initiative (it started here). That corner is the most important location on Hither Green Lane, as in 2006 the Hither Green Urban Design and Development Framework also found out.
It’s the site of the original ‘Hither Green’ that gives the name to the area and still holds the key to the success of it.
The area doesn’t have any cultural offer and doesn’t have any space for performances or any community activity apart from the Church.

In support of the initiative to transform the former Park Cinema, now 99p store into an Arts and Community Centre this Sunday 18th October we have organized a cinema day, with added free drama workshops for children in the morning.
Come along, there’s a smashing program and a rare opportunity to meet your neighbours in a relaxed foyer in between films. We’ll also have a fully licenced bar. Doors open at 2:30pm with tea and cakes from the Golden Afternoon Tea Company, this will be followed by a screening of My Fair lady.
At 6pm there will be Buster Keaton’s the Balloonatic with live piano accompaniment, that will be followed at 7pm by a recently reissued Ealing production of great interest (I proposed this film), Pool of London (1951), a murky noir in the fascinating setting of post war Docklands and that broke a taboo with the first ever interracial relationship in a British Film.
This event takes place at the Firemaster building, 174-176 Hither Green Lane, entrance from Lanier Road.

One final point, this initiative is not something coming from the Libdems, it’s a community initiative, in fact people from all sorts of political persuasion are involved. I started it in my personal capacity before taking a final decision to run for Council and did it because I thought that it was necessary for the area.

Timber Yard seeking planning consent for housing

A planning application for a residential building on the site of the Timber Yard on Spring Bank Road, just a few meters from the entrance to platform 1 of Hither Green Station, has been submitted. The designs are not available yet but what details there are of this outline planning application can be seen here.  The proposal is for:

The demolition of existing buildings on the Builders Yard site, Springbank Road SE13 and construction of a five storey building comprising 33 residential units (4 x 1 bed, 16 x 2 bed and 13 x 3 bed) incorporating balconies/terraces and landscaping, provision of refuse/bicycle store and 5 car parking spaces. (Outline Application, but with only landscaping treated as a reserved matter).

This is an important change of use for the site, it’s  currently designated for employment and there isn’t much going on around here. Hither Green is becoming more and more a purely residential area and this is a trend that is not really appealing and that once established is very difficult to invert. A local economy is a precious thing and shouldn’t be dismissed lightly. On the other hand I’ve been told that recently  trade has been terrible for them, it’s a sad state of things when businesses want to throw in the towel, but can you blame them for trying to make an exit landing on their feet if things are so bad that they risk to go down altogether?

But putting these considerations aside I don’t think that this proposal makes the best use of this site. It’s a sizable plot in a rather strategic location and I think that at the very least it should incorporate some commercial space at the ground floor. Being just outside a station entrance makes it highly suitable for some form of retail to serve commuters coming back from work and Springbank road would surely benefit form having an enhanced variety of shops outside the station. If a critical mass of shops would form then the whole street could take off as a well functioning shopping parade, as it is now it’s a bit patchy and lacking some basics, and that’s the reason why despite being a very busy commuters’ approach it struggles to fulfill its potential.

As for the protection of  employment areas, that’s another thing that need to be considered, but in a wider view. What is the Council’s policy about employment areas? It seems to me that all that’s happening is that they are being converted into housing. How can trades and businesses prosper if a policy to help them succeed is not deployed? There are a lot of big speeches made about apprenticeship schemes and trainings for people to go into plumbing of other trades, but once you’ve been trained what are the opportunities for employment if those businesses don’t have space to grow?

Again, the critical mass, if trades move out of the area then suppliers like the timber yard stop working, then cafes lose trade and so on and on and the whole area becomes poorer.

The space around Hither Green Station is now very valuable if converted into housing, and it can be a positive for the local  community if converted into an appropriately balanced mixed use, but these conversions should not come at the cost of the destruction of the local economy. Maybe employment areas should be protected, just like green spaces, if a site is being converted into housing then another of equal size must be found nearby for the same use.

Thanks to the ever alert Biccy (second mention on this blog) for posting about the application on the Hither Green Forum.

The Kitchen Waste Budget #2 and other considerations multipost

In the Mayor and Cabinet document about waste management proposals dated 9th April 2009 (link) at paragraph 3.7 one can read that:

Unfortunately, the investment in recycling services is not sufficient to roll out a borough wide garden waste service.

Paragraph 3.20 says that:

The Council is also keen to assist people through this recession and a further way in which this can be done is through the Love Food Hate Waste campaign. The WCA showed that the dominant category in the residual waste was organic catering amounting to 29.8%, or 3.54kg per household of food waste being thrown into the refuse bin each week. For Lewisham, this equates to 405 tonnes a week costing the Council nearly £20,000 for disposal. In annual terms this is 21,060 tonnes costing over £1m. On average the food that is wasted accounts for approximately £420 per household per year / 0.8 tonnes CO2 equivalent per household – £610 for households with children. In addition there is the environmental cost in terms of food production, transportation, refrigeration and disposal, all contributing to green house gases.

And so it is, they think this costs £1m when instead it costs £4m.
In the last sentence the argument of the cost of disposal is touched but only as a general consideration about the green house gases produced.

This is a spectacular example of disjointed thinking, they own an incinerator that produces energy by combustion and by bringing there their kitchen waste they feed it with lots of water. Which of course doesn’t burn that well.

They waste millions each year and apparently they don’t even know about it.
And even going at Council to try to explain to the Mayor that the Council is missing on a major trick, as I did last week, doesn’t seems to work much.

(you may want to read my previous post the Kitchen Waste Budget)

__________

A consideration about the figures.

This document evaluates Lewisham’s kitchen waste as 29.8% of the total and 21,060 tonnes in weight, this clarifies how much is kitchen and how much is garden waste of that 35% of the total of the waste of Lewisam that is compostable. It looks nevertheless quite likely that this figure doesn’t include commercial waste so the total figure could be higher.

Anyway, even with 20% deduced from the £3.1m that I had calculated as loss of earnings at the incinerator we would still remain with £2.5m, with still about £1.2m of savings in gate fees at the incinerator to be added to it, that’s £3.7m that could indeed pay for a decent collection and composting service.

Another thing to be considered is that compost has a value, once all those thousands of tons of waste are converted you’re left with something that can be sold. And as previously mentioned bin lorries traveling a third lighter represent a further saving.

____________

That’s my kitchen, my Italian coffee machine, a coffee cup, a small scale and on top of the scale a bowl of kitchen waste. Peels, some leftovers of pasta, some stale popcorns, half a lemon that’s gone mouldy, the usual. That bowl holds a day of compostable kitchen waste and according to my calculations that’s about 15p of tax money quite literally burnt if it would be sent to the incinerator.

_____________

Other Countries have laws that force incinerators to charge different gate fees for different materials, this to discourage incineration of unsuitable materials like… kitchen waste.

In Britain we don’t have a law to that effect, SELCHP charges a flat fee, no matter what you bring to it.

______________________

Another beat that the current Council’s policy misses is the collection of oil, as Cllr Milton reminded us you can bring your used oil to the recycling centre in Landmann Way, and you should, because it is illegal to pour it down the drain, but don’t do it all together because in making an effort to avoid clogging the drains you’ll clog the transport arteries of the borough.

Seriously, who’s going to Landmann Way to bring their used oil?

If a separate collection of compostables was set up maybe adding used oil to the list of materials collected would provide a further source of income for those green jobs. There are money there, but I don’t know why used oils from households are not collected, and to be fair to Lewisham Council it’s not just here, this is true for pretty much anywhere, I searched but I couldn’t find any example of a local authority collecting used oil from households.

Maybe it’s not done just because there isn’t a regular door to door collection of compostables or recyclables, like what I’m envisaging could be done with the savings on the incineration of kitchen waste.

Anyway, one thing Lewisham Council did right was to provide us with the best ever analogy to explain how much energy can be extracted out of used oil:

Just one litre (that’s about a third of what’s found in the average chip pan) of used cooking oil can be converted into LF100 to produce enough clean electricity to make 240 cups of tea.

____________________________

And finally, let me close this megapost with a straightforward personal position on incinerators, because I recognize that this proposal of mine can be seen as controversial by many. Incinerators are one of those things that many people oppose with vigour, and with arguments that I agree with.

They are ugly, they pollute and they must be phased out. They are yesterday’s news and we should all produce a lot less rubbish than we do and pretty much everything should be recycled in a way or the other, not burnt.

But the fact is that we do have an incinerator in Lewisham and it processes tens of thousands of tonnes of waste a year, the unrecyclable, non-reusable and uncompostable byproducts of the lives of those millions that live around it, it currently performs a useful function and we better make the most out of it until we find a better way to deal with waste.

But that will take many years, and as the incinerator in Lewisham holds the key to the waste management budget I don’t think that there’s a conflict between environmentally sound policies and a proposal about the incinerator that is not just “let’s shut it down” but that instead looks at ways to shift some of that budget into local green jobs.

The Kitchen Waste budget

Here’s the answer I received yesterday to a question I submitted to Lewisham Council about kitchen waste:

Question

Please provide a breakdown of the energy produced by the SELCHP divided into energy produced by incineration of kitchen waste and that of other kinds of waste. What share of this energy production belongs to Lewisham Council and what share of this energy is produced by the incineration of waste produced by Lewisham?

Reply

The total energy output of SELCP is 220,000 MWh per annum.

Lewisham waste provides approximately 23.8% of this = 52,360 MWh

From SELCHP’s waste analysis approximately 6.9% of the energy comes from putrescible kitchen waste.

Therefore energy recovered from Lewisham kitchen waste is about 3,600 MWh per year (after deduction of a contribution to the total parasitic load of running the plant) or 1.6% of the total energy output.

This isn’t the first post on this blog about this or the fist time I question the Council on the matter of the incinerator, the revenue it provides and the appropriateness of what’s fed to it, read more here and here.

We know that kitchen waste forms about 35% of the incinerated, and now we also know that it only produces 6.9% of the energy (the 35% is the figure we have for both kitchen and garden waste combined, but I think that we can safely assume that the weight of the kitchen waste in this mix represents the overwhelming majority with the garden waste being in comparison almost negligible. So, let’s live with this small approximation in the know that we’re only looking for a ballpark figure here).

Using the figure provided by DirectGov of 14.0p/kWh as the price for bulk purchase of electricity at domestic or small industrial scale in July 2009 we can put a MWh (unit of the answer) at £140 and this means that 52,360 MWh is therefore sold at approximatively £7,330,400.

Of this amount the kitchen waste, that is about 35% of the incinerated, produces only 6.9% of energy – 3,612 MWh (the answer says 3600 after deduction of a contribution to the total parasitic load of running the plant, the difference with this calculation is so marginal that I’m not even going to approximate all calculations for that) -  at £140/MWh this bring in £505,797.

The remaining 65% produces instead 93% of the energy – 48,695 MWh – at £140/MWh this bring in £6,817,300.

This means that 1% of Lewisham waste at the incinerator earns in energy produced:

-  £14k if kitchen waste;

- £104k if non kitchen waste.

For each percentage point of kitchen waste swapped for non-kitchen waste Lewisham Council would make over £90k, and given that there is enormous demand for the use of the incinerator it would be possible to take out the kitchen waste from the mix and allow non-kitchen waste from other boroughs or other clients to be incinerated instead, this would produce an extra profit for Lewisham Council of well over £3m through increased energy production.

The reduction of 35% of Lewisham’s incinerated waste would also bring a saving in gate fee at the SELCHP of  £1,211,268 for Lewisham (see here).
This would be revenue-neutral for the SELCHP (of which LBL is a partner) as the fee would be replaced that for waste from other clients.

It looks to me that there is therefore an untapped budget for composting of well over £4m available year on year to be derived from the removal of kitchen and garden waste from the incinerator (without even counting the savings of fuel for the fleet of bin lorries that would always travel with a load about one third lighter than they currently do).

These savings could be able to fund a labour intensive composting operation that would provide a large number of local jobs to collect and compost kitchen and garden waste in microsites around the Borough.

For quite some time I wondered if those savings would be able to pay for a replacement collection and composting service, I’d now say that yes, they probably do. The figures need reviewing and I welcome opinions on this proposal.

Yesterday I used my opportunity for a supplementary question to try to explain this to the Mayor, I tried my best to be clear but it’s not an easy thing to do in a Council meeting. I had with me a sheet of paper with these calculations and wanted to give it to him, I explained him “look, I found over £4m for composting in your budget”, but he wasn’t having it, no one came to take the paper to bring it to him, so I sat down and I now write it here.