Woodside ward Lib Dem Focus Editor Annie Faulkner has hit out at the state of street lighting in Ringslade Road. She said:

“We have been monitoring these lights in Ringslade Road for over a week now. It is simply unacceptable that this has been allowed to continue to happen.

“It is a particular concern to residents given the dark mornings and evenings.

“We have contacted the Labour-run Council, as have some local residents and they have still failed to repair them.”

Nigel Scott, Woodside Lib Dem Focus Editor added:

“Haringey Council is not only failing residents in Ringslade Road and in Woodside, but actually across the whole of Haringey, it is obvious frontline services are being affected by the massive £10.5 million overspend on the “Tech-Refresh” project by the Labour Council.”

The average length of time it takes Haringey Council to repair a street light is 23.49 days, against their target of 10 days. The Council has admitted, “The target will not be met this year and will need to be revised for 2006-07.”

New figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show that schools across England have accumulated a combined debt of more than £121 million.Primary school debt accounts for £34 million, and secondary schools for £86 million.

The figures, which are broken down by Local Education Authority, were uncovered by Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, Lynne Featherstone.

Commenting, Ms Featherstone said:

“These figures are deeply worrying.

“Children’s education must not be compromised because of these shocking levels of deficits across the country. We need to get to the bottom of why so many schools are struggling.”

In Haringey, the total debt is £904,556.

Commenting on the report on the Electronic Monitoring of Adult Offenders by the National Audit Office, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson, Lynne Featherstone MP said:

“The Home Office obviously need to go back to the drawing board on this one.Delays in both fitting tags and responding to breaches clearly undermine this system, which makes a valuable contribution to reducing sky-high re-offending rates.

“The point of releasing prisoners early on a tag is to help them to rehabilitate and integrate back into society while maintaining a basic level of security.Public confidence is seriously undermined by the kind of hiccups highlighted in today’s report.”

Residents in Haringey are regularly being prevented from accessing information about Haringey Council due its long-running website problems, according to Cllr Jonathan Bloch who hopes to get answers from the Council on Monday.

Cllr Bloch, along with many residents, has been unable to access the Council’s website regularly since the beginning of January. He is concerned that many people who need to access information on Council-run services often can’t get access.

At Monday’s Full Council he expects an explanation as to why the website has been inaccessible for so long and what they plan to do to prevent this happening again.

Cllr Bloch (Muswell Hill) comments:

“We are keen to get to the bottom of this website debacle. It is essential that the Council reassures residents that this kind of failure will not reoccur, and that adequate back up procedures are in place in the event of the site going down.”

On Monday (6th February) Haringey Council will be called on to hold Executive members to account over the wastage of £10 million of public money through a massive overspend on the Council’s IT upgrade project (Tech Refresh).

The motion tabled by the Lib Dem opposition also calls on the Council to acknowledge the findings of the damning Audit Commission report into the project, released earlier this month.

Opposition Leader, Cllr Neil Williams, who has tabled the motion says that the Executive must be held to account over the ‘negligent’ handling of the case.

Cllr Williams comments:

“To allow a budget to slip by £10 million is a totally unacceptable waste of public funds. I hope that on Monday members vote as responsible, elected representatives rather than whipped party members.”

Local residents and campaigners from Creighton Avenue (N10) went home from Monday night’s planning committee with mixed feelings.

Some were celebrating success, having seen the plans for six four-storey houses to replace 14-16 Creighton Avenue rejected. Others were left extremely disappointed by the Committee’s failure to accept their objections to the proposed care home at 79 Creighton Avenue.

The plans for 14-16 were the second version, an initial attempt to get permission for seven houses having been recommended for refusal last year. The new plans were recommended for approval, but having heard the objections of residents and ward councillors the committee agreed to throw the proposals out.

Local ward councillor Matt Davies (Liberal Democrat, Fortis Green) comments:

“I am delighted for the residents of Creighton Avenue and Pages Hill that these proposals have been rejected. Campaigners have worked hard to show that this development would be unsuitable for the site and this is their just reward.”

However, the proposal to build a three storey care home at 79 Creighton Avenue, where Strathlene House currently stands, was approved. This approval came despite strong concern – and objections from more than 100 residents – based on issues of overlooking, traffic, size and design.

Matt Davies comments:

“I am disappointed the committee failed to take the concerns of local residents seriously on this application. The planned demolition of Strathlene House is highly undesirable and the new building will be both ugly and far too large for the site. The impact on neighbours, especially those in Ringwood Avenue, will be extremely overbearing. The general impact on the area of the cheap looking design and increase in traffic will also be very high.”

Lynne Featherstone MP, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson, commenting ahead of the lobbying of MPs by the Association of Police Authorities today over Home Office plans to merge police forces, said:

“The Government’s proposals are a double whammy for local communities.People will be expected to fork out more Council Tax to pay for the cost of the mergers, but at the same time they will have less of a say in how their police force is run.

“The Home Secretary should look carefully at the alternative suggestions on the table. He can deliver improvements in policing without severing local links.”

Commenting on the publication of the Police and Justice Bill, Liberal Democrat Policing Spokesperson, Lynne Featherstone MP said:

“The Bill gives the Home Secretary carte blanche to meddle in the composition of police authorities without having to ask for Parliamentary approval.It gives absolutely no reassurance to those of us who fear the loss of local accountability under the police merger plans.

“The proposal for the police to be sent a list of every passenger on every domestic UK flight is a deeply worrying intrusion into people’s private lives.It adds another building block in the construction of surveillance society.

“This Bill would have been a golden opportunity to reform the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act which currently bars many ex-offenders from finding work.The Government has been promising action on this since 2002.Instead of taking an important step to cut reoffending, they have chosen yet again to focus on centralising power.”

An astonishingly damning report by the Audit Commission on Haringey Council’s handling of its controversial Tech Refresh project has heavily criticised the Labour-run council.

The shocking report, sent to councillors this week, details a massive £10.6 million projected overspend on the ‘Tech Refresh’ IT project . The overspend alone amountsto some 11% of all the money Haringey charges in Council Tax this year. Tech Refresh was originally due to be completed by October 2004 at a cost of £9 million, and the Audit Commission has written to Haringey setting outits stinging criticism over the Council’s handling of the project.

The Audit Commission’s reportdescribes the failureof Labour-controlled Haringeyin many areasof the project’s development, commenting thatsome project board membersfailed to regularly attend meetings andthat there was inadequatemonitoring by Corporate Finance of either budget setting or budgetary control.

What has really alarmed the Lib Dem opposition is the criticism of the Labour-run Council for showing little evidence of ‘timely, transparent and accurate reporting of project slippages and overspends’ or ‘clear audit trails’.

Haringey’s ruling Labour councillors, supposedly in charge, did little or nothing to address the problems. Lib Dems also say that they have been giving misleading answers by Labour bosses about the scale of the disaster. In the most recent case, Cllr David Winskill, who is one of the Council’sOverview and Scrutiny Board members , requested details from the Executive Member for Organisational Development, Cllr Takki Sulaiman, at a scrutiny meeting last Octoberaboutthe original Tech Refresh budget, what the current budget is and how any “potential slippage” will impact the budget.

To Cllr Winskill’s amazement, Cllr Sulaiman claimed that the current budget was £5.5 million and the original budget was just £5 million. Yet, by then, Haringey Council knew of the scale of the problems. Cllr Neil Williams is writing to the Council and the Audit Commission to raise this and many other concerns.

Cllr Neil Williams (Highgate) comments:

“The staggering scale of the mismanagement of this project and its extraordinary cost, simply beggars belief. There is no doubt also that there has been a catalogue of attempts, at almost every level, to conceal the scale of this financial catastrophe for the Council. Costscould escalate further. Haringey Labour must be held to account for this utter shambles.”

Cllr David Winskill (Crouch End) adds.

“This whole project has been a fiasco and the Haringey Executive should hang its head in shame. I will be asking Overview and Scrutiny to demand that Cllr Sulaiman comes and explains his grossly misleading answers to my questions. I feel that there should be a full review of this project to see whether it is capable of delivering what it was originally intended to do. I wonder if we have passed the point where we are now throwing good money after bad.”

Lib Dem councillor for Stroud Green, Laura Edge has written to Haringey Council to express her deep concern at its decision to extend parking restrictions to 8.30am-6.30pm Monday to Saturday in the Finsbury Park area, and to include Oakfield Road, N4 in the CPZ.

The decision was made at the Council’s Executive meeting last month and despite Cllr Edge’s involvement in the consultation process as ward councillor, Haringey Council failed to send her a copy of the report prior to the meeting.

One of the main concerns Cllr Edge has lies with the potential impact on the local economy that the CPZ could have, with many shoppers opting to shop in other areas with car parking, rather than spend time finding a parking space amongst all the restrictions. She is also concerned at the amount of bureaucracy faced by local residents in getting visitors’ permits and alike and does not understand why the Council could not have imposed a two-hour restriction in the middle of the day to deter commuter parking.

Furthermore, Cllr Edge is angry at the news that Oakfield Road has been included in the CPZ plans. Having turned down proposals for an extension of the CPZ to cover their road, residents were re-consulted by the Council. They were given to understand that this was a statutory consultation in case an extension of the scheme was later approved by residents and that the scheme would not go ahead at the present time if residents voted against it once again.

Cllr Edge who has been contacted by a number of concerned residents in the area is awaiting a response from the Council.

Cllr Edge comments:

“I am deeply concerned at the Council’s handling of the consultation and its failure to keep me informed. This CPZ could be detrimental to the regeneration of this part of the borough and is being imposed in Oakfield Road against the will of residents. I will be looking at what options are available to fight this decision.”