Lib Dem Education spokesperson Cllr Gail Engert has demanded that Haringey Council investigate how parents of prospective secondary school children were left confused after the Council omitted the secondary school DfES codes from their 2006 school prospectus.

The issue was brought to Lib Dem councillor Jonathan Bloch’s attention after he attended a meeting of parents at Fortismere School. The omission of the codes, which are required to complete the admission application form, resulted in the Council and local schools being inundated with calls from anxious parents desperately seeking the codes.

Confirmation of this error has been made by the Council following initial enquiries from Cllr Engert. They have now printed a correction sheet containing the codes however many parents have yet to receive the slip.

Cllr Engert says that it is essential that Haringey Council gets on top of the issue and is seeking assurances that action will be taken to avert a future oversight like this.

Cllr Engert comments:

“The transfer from primary to secondary school is a worrying enough time for parents without having to chase around for the correct codes to complete the application form. “

Note: If you have not received the update, the DfES number of any school can be found on www.edubase.gov.uk.

Lib Dem councillor for Highgate ward, Bob Hare joined other residents from Haringey and thousands from all over the country in central London on Saturday for the latest anti-war protest march.

The march, organised by the Stop The War Coalition, began near Parliament and took protesters along Whitehall and into Piccadilly before reaching Hyde Park for a rally.

It came just days after the Lib Dems claimed that Tony Blair’s blind support for George Bush was costing lives and called for the government to establish a coherent exit strategy leading to the eventual withdrawal from Iraq.

Cllr Bob Hare paid tribute to the dedication of the anti-war protestors and vowed to continue to support the movement until the occupation was over.

Cllr Hare comments:

“We went to war on a falsehood, and have produced a situation of desperate insecurity and unrelenting violence. The human and financial costs of the conflict have been enormous.

“We have a moral obligation to the Iraq people to leave a stable and democratic country, but we should have a coherent exit strategy which sets out the criteria and milestones for the withdrawal of British troops by the end of 2005, as security conditions allow.”

Lib Dem councillors have welcomed the decision by Haringey Council’s Executive not to give £380,000 to the Tottenham-based Haringey Business Development Association (HBDA) to deliver the City Growth Enterprise Village. However Lib Dem concerns remain over the Council’s secrecy regarding the proposals.

The proposal had been provisionally accepted by the Executive back in June. However the funding was questioned strongly by Lib Dem councillors and Labour members of the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee, who agreed unanimously to send the decision back to the Executive for reconsideration in July.

Following an appraisal, the Council was advised not to fund the project. An officer report catalogued a string of shortcomings in the proposed development plans some of which showed a worrying lack of planning and organisation on the part of HBDA.These included:

Poor value for money – proposed purchase price of building higher than the valuation

High risk – a number of private sector partners have failed the basic due diligence checks

Poor planning – more space has been allocated to private sector partners than is available in the building

Despite welcoming the decision, Haringey Lib Dem regeneration spokesperson Cllr Wayne Hoban questions why it took a call-in of this decision to see the glaring shortfalls in the HBDA proposals. They are also deeply concerned at the continued secrecy over the Council’s handling of the HBDA funding request after a large section of the papers on this issue were once again made exempt.

Cllr Hoban comments:

“We welcome the decision not to hand this large sum of money over to the HBDA. However the need for a training organisation to help upgrade the skill base in some of the poorest parts of the borough still remains. We shall be asking the Council’s Executive Member for Regeneration how he intends to plug this gap.”

Lib Dem councillor for Highgate, Bob Hare has welcomed the installation of flower planters outside the shops in Archway Road, N6.

Cllr Hare has taken a key role in driving the idea of the planters forward. They were installed last month and have been welcomed by residents and local traders. They were one of the projects chosen by residents and councillors at the Muswell Hill Area Assembly and were paid for by the Assembly.

The initial idea had been for hanging baskets. However, Transport for London, who are responsible for Archway Road, said that installing baskets on lamp-posts, and the automatic watering devices and piping inside them, cause corrosion that greatly shortens the life of the lamp-posts.

Councillor Bob Hare then took photos of shops in Hornsey High Street which had set up elegant-looking planters of their own, and showed them to the Archway residents and businesses association, who agreed they would like a similar approach.

The planters contain a selection of flowering and leaf plants designed to look good for a long time, but plantings will be ‘refreshed’ in Spring. They are being watered by business owners. Paul McLean-Thorne, Chair of the Archway Road Residents and Businesses Association, is very pleased with the results. He says a couple of planters had their contents stolen early on, but these have been replaced.

Councillor Hare comments:

“It did take quite a while for Haringey Council and local people to sort out all the details and for the planters to be put in place, but the effort was well worthwhile.

“Archway Road is the A1, and carries a huge amount of traffic and heavy vehicles. All the restaurants, shops and other businesses on this road have to work extra hard to survive, and we need to do everything we can to help make the area look better for them, to help attract customers, and for residents.

“In addition, many people come to Highgate to visit Queens Wood and Highgate Wood, the Village and the famous Highgate Cemetery, so it’s important that this part of Haringey looks attractive for these visitors too.”

Lib Dem councillor Bob Hare has expressed anger that Haringey Council is doing little to curb fly-tipping in one of Haringey’s beauty spots after consultation with Friends of Queens Wood, other Lib Dem councillors and Lynne Featherstone MP revealed that many reports of fly-tipping in Queens Wood, N6 have gone unanswered.

The news comes just over a week after Cllr Hare wrote to the Council expressing his concern that two lorry loads of rubbish had been left unremoved in Queens Wood. He was away for a week, but spotted and reported the dumping immediately on his return. He was horrified to find to learn from local residents that been trying to get the dumped rubbish removed since the 27th August.

More seriously, a resident had actually spotted the tipper lorry dumping the waste, and had immediately phoned Haringey Council with a description of the lorry and its registration number. Nothing was done, and little or no response was received by her, or by numerous other residents who also called.

In fact, when Cllr Hare began investigating the case, the Council told him that the first report was just after midday on 7th of September. The result of this misinformation was that when Cllr Hare called for a scan of the video recording from the CCTV, it was for completely the wrong period.

He is now asking for a scan of the recording for the exact time of the dumping although residents believe the camera in Queens Wood is a dummy, and that there will not be a recording. Cllr Hare is still awaiting answers on this point.

Cllr Hare, who is the Lib Dem Environment Spokesperson, had already been contacted by another resident who had witnessed an earlier fly-tipping incident. Again they had recorded details and immediately contacted the Council and once again, Haringey Council did not respond to this resident’s repeated attempts to get action.

This week, yet more cases of unaddressed fly-tipping in Queens Wood have been brought to Cllr Hare’s attention. The catalogue of Council failures in this area include two burnt out motorbikes that were still in the woods last week, six weeks after they were first reported.

Cllr Hare (Highgate) comments:

“It is rare to obtain details of the perpetrators. Other authorities would treat these like gold. On two separate occasions this year, residents have witnessed fly-tipping in progress and given detailed reports to Haringey Council, yet they have failed to follow them up.

“These total failures to respond to residents even when they have given fully detailed reports, much less to follow up and prosecute offenders, means that fly-tippers are treating Queens Wood and Haringey as an open house for their activities. The Council and its waste contractor Accord must take urgent action to show that Haringey borough is not a soft touch for fly-tippers.”

Following pressure from Lib Dem councillor for Stroud Green Laura Edge, Haringey Council has finally taken the first steps towards improving its management of a hostel for homeless people in Stapleton Hall Road N4. However, more needs to be done to compensate for years of neglect.

A local resident contacted Cllr Edge in June to complain about various aspects of the management of the property including:

Health and Safety – Bulky rubbish dumped outside property
Security Risk – No lock on side gate of property allowing access to back garden to non-residents
Water Damage – Pipe on the side of property broken for many years causing water to stream down the side of the building
Structural Concerns – Visible subsidence

The resident said that he had reported these issues to Haringey Council on countless occasions over many years without any result.

Now, following the intervention of Councillor Edge, Haringey Council has cleared the rubbish outside the property and reminded tenants of their obligation to keep it tidy. It has also agreed to fit the side gate with a lock so that only tenants can access the back garden.

Details of the damaged pipe and subsidence have been passed to the repairs team and Cllr Edge is keeping up the pressure on the Council to ensure that action is taken as soon as possible.

Cllr Edge comments:

“Local residents have suffered long enough. I am pleased that the Council finally seems to be taking its responsibilities seriously.However, I am determined to ensure that these long-overdue repairs do not slip through the net and will continue to keep a close eye on the situation.”

Lib Dem Environment Spokesperson and Highgate ward councillor Bob Hare has called on Haringey Council to probe its CCTV records to find those responsible for dumping two large loads of rubbish in Queens Wood, N6.

He has also requested that the two lorry loads of building rubbish and rubble, which remains a week after they were originally reported, be removed immediately.

Cllr Hare, along with local MP Lynne Featherstone, has for many years lobbied Haringey Council to ensure that its contractor Accord removes fly-tipped waste quickly and that greater efforts be made to catch those responsible for causing this problem.

He is hopeful that CCTV installed last year and situated less than 50 metres from one of the two dumping sites will lead to a successful prosecution.

However Cllr Hare adds that Haringey Council and Accord must respond quicker to reports of fly-tipping in blackspots like Queens Wood to ensure other would-be fly-tippers are deterred.

Cllr Hare comments:

“Queens Wood is one of this borough’s true beauty spots and it needs to be retained and looked after. Over the last couple of years we have successfully pressed for the wood to be made a priority route for street cleaning and litter collection.

“However fly-tipping remains a problem in this area that the Council must address and we will make sure that they do.”

Highgate’s Liberal Democrat councillors have welcomed the news that the Transport for London (TfL) has agreed to fund safety improvements to the zebra crossing at the junction of North Hill and Broadlands Road, N6.

The news comes almost nine months after they sought action from Haringey Council to improve pedestrian safety in this road following a serious accident at the zebra crossing at Christmas.

Action from Haringey had been delayed pending the funding bid. The plan is to raise the zebra crossing to improve the visibility for both pedestrians and drivers as well as physically forcing vehicles to slow and has been supported by Lib Dem councillors and local residents ‘ groups.

Although pleased with the new safety measures, Lib Dem councillors, who have been campaigning for speeding restriction on the road for many years, say that more needs to be done to reduce the speed of the busy traffic on the road.

Lib Dem councillor Bob Hare comments:

“I am pleased that the funding bid has been successful – but it has meant delays in taking action on what is a very dangerous crossing, so the works need to press ahead as soon as possible. I would also like comprehensive measures to reduce speeding on North Hill, something that local councillors and residents have been demanding for a long time.”

Haringey Liberal Democrat Health Spokesperson Cllr Ron Aitken has been appointed by the Local Government Association (LGA) to its mental health task force. The body is working to produce a vision for mental health for the next 10 to 15 years.

The task group is made up of representatives of all political parties, as well as the Sainsbury Foundation for Mental Health, the Association of Directors of Social Services and the NHS Confederation.

The remit of the Task Force has been to produce a report for the autumn that will seek to influence policy makers at national, regional and local level to develop new policies for the treatment and prevention of mental illness. It also aims to improve implementation of existing policy and ensure that the profile of mental health issues is raised at all levels, particularly to combat stigma and prejudice against those who may have suffered from mental ill-health.

Cllr Ron Aitken (Crouch End) comments:

“One in six of the population will at one time or another suffer from mental health difficulties and almost every person will know of a family member or partner who suffers from mental illness.

“We must therefore treat this issue seriously and avoid the difficulties experienced by many people who have no access to help and support until their condition becomes critical.”

Lib Dem councillor for Alexandra ward Susan Oatway has called on Haringey Council to demand that Transport for London (TfL) investigate complaints by residents that Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs) are using residential roads late at night.

The call comes following correspondence over the last few months from residents around Alexandra and Muswell Hill, in particular the Dukes Avenue and Palace Gates area, who have endured HGV traffic at night.

In previous meetings with Cllr Oatway the Council had confirmed that the Greater London Authority had a London-wide night-time ban on HGVs. However they added that TfL were the only body with resources available to monitor and enforce this policy.

Cllr Oatway, who is pressing Haringey Council to investigate the feasibility of enforcing complete HGV bans from some residential areas of the borough, says that the Council must act quickly to end the night-time misery for many residents in the borough.

Cllr Oatway comments:

“It is clear from the residents’ letters I have received that these noisy vehicles are speeding around our roads at unsociable hours. It is essential that the Council take this problem seriously and demand action from TfL.”