Community Council Highways Unallocated Capital Investment 2017-18 and 2018-19 – East Dulwich Ward allocated their funding to pavement repairs in Lordship Lane and to the Lordship Lane/East Dulwich Grove junction. Village Ward committed their balance of £27,200 to pavement repairs in Court Lane.
Peckham Rye to Dulwich Quietway 8 – Johanna Lesak presented a report on the Quietway which is intended to run from Peckham to (eventually) Wimbledon. She reported that the current design had been assessed to result in additional congestion. The design was currently being re-worked to improve this. A question was asked regarding traffic speed figures for Barry Road. These were not to hand but it was promised that they would be put up on the relevant web-site.
Fair Trade Fortnight – an announcement was made that this would be held in May. The Fairtrade shop at Christ Church, Barry Road, would be open Monday/Friday from 10.00am to 4.00pm.
Little Village Southwark – Sarah Ross spoke about this new Charity which is operating rather like a food bank…but for clothes and toys. Money had been raised by crowd funding and a storage facility was operating next to the Ivy House at Nunhead.
An announcement was made regarding the planting of many flowering trees over the past few years. Winterbrook Road in particular was looking spectacular and a group viewing had been arranged for 10.00am on 25th March when the blossoms should be at their best.
Thames Water – Mark Matthews from Thames Water gave a long presentation explaining the problems over many bursts caused by the recent very cold weather, resulting in the loss of supply over several days for some Dulwich area residents. He apologised for this and stressed that the company had several teams of engineers on standby to make repairs asap. He told the meeting that 500m litres of water per day were being lost…and airlocks in the main distribution network had been responsible for cuts. The company was working towards reducing this leakage by 50% over the next few years. They were looking to increase their emergency teams, and to increase and improve their communication with customers via social media. Several questions and comments from the floor were made about rudeness and unhelpfulness from the company’s switchboard operators when customers were trying report leaks/outages/or to obtain information. He apologised and promised that this would be addressed.
Dulwich Area Traffic Management Study – representatives from Steer Davies Gleave presented a snapshot of the feedback on the results of their recent consultation. The scope of their work was outlined and it was stated that as a result of feedback received, their initial report had been updated to take account of emerging evidence. 460 responses had been received…176 from individuals. COLAR’s input was mentioned…Resident Association’s comments had tended to be more general than specific to individual proposals, but were nevertheless included in the report. Main areas of concern were (1) Traffic calming and (2) Air quality and (3) Parking. All concerns had been included and analysed. Broadly, the package of recommendations were:
1) Minimise the imact of School travel. Four interventions were proposed.
2) Encourage the use of ‘clean’ vehicles. More electric charging points will be required.
3) Improvements for pedestrians. Lordship Lane/Alleyn Park/College Road, etc.
4) Improvements for cyclists. Improve junctions. Provide more parking for cycles, etc.
5) Improvement in public transport. Engage with Network Rail re station access also with TFL.
6) Traffic Management (many, many responses). Monitor the new Dulwich Village junction. Assess rat-running problems. Explore traffic calming measures.
7) Car parking. A cpz around Dulwich Village raised many negative local concerns. A cpz across the whole area of the study received a more positive response. It was recommended to engage with neighbouring Boroughs over this.
It was promised that a consultation on all proposals would be carried out before any implementations were to be made.
Councillor Mitchell was incensed that concerns over rat-running in Ruskin Avenue with proposals for a one-way system in adjoining roads had been omitted completely from the report, Steer Davies replied that this had not been included in their brief.
A question from the floor was raised over who had paid for all this…three sources of funding were cited – Southwark Council/ TFL/ plus some central Government funding.
Ian Rankine 10/03/2018