Goose Green councillors - how can we help?

[ab29]

The same on the pavements from Dulwich Library all the way to LL / Wood Vale - this is a stretch of the road that it's always forgotten. Some clearing took place yesterday but only on side of the road for some reason.

[Nigello]

And fallen leaves = blocked drains (whcih are rarely unblocked unless you call and complain about huge puddles that form after heavy rain).

[Mrs D]

Hi James

Do you know why the council is refusing to release the data from the Dulwich LTN review even though they promised they would do? What?s your view on the transparency of the decision making which has such a big impact on the community you represent?

Thanks

[Rockets]

Cllr McAsh - there has been some clearing of leaves on the affected part of Lordship Lane so thank you for escalating. It looks like some clearing has been done as it is not as bad as it was before (it may also be that more leaves have fallen since any clearing was done) - it is certainly much better than it was.

[legalalien]

Hi James, I wonder if I might ask a general question about ward meetings. The empowering communities page on the website says this :

?Once the COVID-19 pandemic is over, each ward will be required to participate in at least six meetings per year (including the two multi-ward forum meetings). For the time being, the ward meeting requirement is reduced to two. Councillors may decide to use any of these opportunities to meet together with other wards, especially where a local matter affects residents across ward boundaries. All meetings will be held online until further notice.?

When this first went up I assumed the COVID reference was shorthand for lockdown / restrictions on gatherings. But these have been lifted and there is still no sign of any ward meetings locally other than the multi ward forums (it looks like some ward meetings have been happening online for the North of the borough and I can see a couple of Dulwich Hill ones in the online calendar). Is it at the discretion of individual ward councillors?

Is there a plan to go back to having ward meetings?

[jamesmcash]

Hi all,

Glad to hear that the leaves are all sorted.

Mrs D - no data are being held back, it just takes a while for each tranche to be processed. I've not yet seen the September data but I understand it will be published relatively soon.

legalalien - we've done quite a lot of local community meetings: a few through the Dulwich Review, one about supporting Lordship Lane businesses, another about supporting Melbourne Grove and Grove Vale traders. None of these were organised through the Empowering Communities banner though. We do have an upcoming multi-ward meeting for the South area on the 8th December (details: https://www.southwark.gov.uk/engagement-and-consultations/empowering-communities/empowering-communities-south) and there is a Goose Green one in the pipeline for January/February.

Hope that helps

Best wishes

James

[Mrs D]

James, thanks that?s great they will share the underlying raw data. Do you know where data has been published to date please? (Sorry I can?t find it!)

[CPR Dave]

Lol. They won't be publishing any raw underlying data.

[jamesmcash]

Hi all,

There's a lot of data published here: https://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/mgIssueHistoryHome.aspx?IId=50027352&Opt=0

As I say, September data should be available soon.

Best wishes

James

[legalalien]

I think people are keen to see the ?unmassaged? data, James.

Back on the council meeting point, I?m not in your ward (in a neighbouring one with less meetings or engagement), but I really do think it?s a good idea to have open ward meetings without specific agendas where constituents and councillors can have free and frank discussions, and also to facilitate communication between different groups in the community - chance meetings at this sort of thing can be really useful. Zoom calls are fantastic in terms of getting more people to attend (people with family commitments find it hard to attend physical meetings in the evening I think) but have the disadvantage of allowing those running the meetings much more control over who is allowed to speak and what the agenda is. I?m not suggesting that?s your responsibility or that you?re personally failing in that regard - just throwing it out there as that was the point of the Empowering Communities initiative, if it comes up maybe you could mention or something. Presumably the minimum number of ward meetings was set for a reason, so I wonder what has changed.

[Mrs D]

Hi James. To clarify: I meant the raw data. And what is your view on it not being released? (As it doesn?t look like it has been?)

[Rockets]

I wonder whether the council will be updating the reports Cllr McAsh linked to now the Turney Road "mistake" has been identified and whether that will be included in the September data that is released?

Cllr McAsh - BTW I think the leaf clearing may have been done by a change of wind direction as when I walked down there today it now seems to be massing further towards Colwell Road.

[jamesmcash]

Hi both

Re meetings, we 're looking at doing one in Jan/Feb but I was thinking it would be online. Most people seem to appreciate the convenience of online meetings but I do take your point about in-person meetings having their advantages too.

Not sure what you mean by raw data. The raw data would be hundreds of thousands of individual instances of a vehicle driving over a traffic counter - I don't think this would be very useful to anyone! As for being "massaged" I don't know what this means either, are you suggesting it has been fabricated in some way?

If there's a specific question about the data that you'd like me to find the answer to then let me know and I will see what I can do.

Best wishes

James

[legalalien]

Others have spent more time on this than me but I think there is a need for raw/ more granular data eg split out by time of day, weekends vs weekdays, direction, school holidays vs no school holidays, exactly what adjustments have been made to enable various months to be compared with other months? etc.

Maybe have zoom calls with the chat function enabled and someone relatively independent in charge of picking up issues from the chat to be put to councillors? Having chat function enabled would also enable attendees to touch base with each other and give a record of issues for council : councillors to follow up on.

[Mrs D]

Hi yes agree with legal - sounds like a sensible approach.

[Rockets]

Yes Legal - the stats being presented by the council are just the headline summaries and Cllr Williams has promised to release the supporting data so people can properly understand what has been measured, where and when and compared against (depsite Cllr Williams' assurances some months ago that it would be shared it has yet to materialise). People, understandably, want to look at the data - especially in light of some of the "oversights" that have been uncovered (like the Turney Road mistake).

Let's hope this all gets shared with the September analysis rather than just the redacted/incomplete/summary headlines versions that have been shared previously.

[CPR Dave]

"There's a lot of data published here:"

🤣 🤣 🤣

[jamesmcash]

Hi all,

Meetings

I agree that we should have more community meetings. We've used the chat function at legalalien suggests in the Goose Green High Street Forum meetings I mentioned above and it worked well. Cllr Simmons disabled the chat for the Dulwich Review meetings after the first couple because some people were sadly using it to be incredibly abusive to fellow residents. When some cases escalated to involve the police, greater restrictions were put in place in the meetings. I would like to avoid this in the future.

Data

I have to disagree that there is not a lot of data published, or that it is just "headline summaries". The link above (this one: https://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/mgIssueHistoryHome.aspx?IId=50027352&Opt=0) includes 22 documents, most of which include lots of data. As far as I can see, most of the forms of data requested in the posts above are already available.

I'll draw out two examples. Appendix C3 has traffic counts at 23 locations, broken down by vehicle type and time of day, and at between 5 and 8 points in time. Appendix C5 has average bus times every week for over 2 years, in both directions, on 8 roads. From this you can get a very good idea for how traffic has changed in the area in terms of both vehicle counts and congestion (for which bus times is a good proxy).

The vast majority of this is not adjusted whatsoever - it clearly states the month where it was collected so does not need to be adjusted to take into consideration season factors. The exception is the "baseline data" which for obvious reasons could not be collected specifically for this project. So instead the council had to use data it already had, which were not all from the same month. Hence the adjustments.

This was all done by an independent analyst.

None of this is to say that there aren't pieces of information that some would like to have but which are not available. But it is to put these requests in the context of the large amount of information that is already published. And providing this information comes at some cost. When the council publishes data it needs to go through rigorous checks first. As mentioned above, sometimes these do not catch errors but the more data there are the more likely that these errors will come through. So requesting more data means more time spent on it by council officers and external parties.

Best wishes,

James

[Penguin68]

Not sure what you mean by raw data. The raw data would be hundreds of thousands of individual instances of a vehicle driving over a traffic counter - I don't think this would be very useful to anyone! As for being "massaged" I don't know what this means either, are you suggesting it has been fabricated in some way?

Nice try, but no coconut.

Raw data would be a list of sample sites, the actual dates when samples were taken (i.e. when the sampling was working - the one outside my house had one link untethered for a number of days) and the 'hole count' of 'hits'. If the sampling allows it by time slot (i.e to distinguish rush hour from midnight). It's what is often called a 'hole count'. The 'raw data' isn't each individual log but a count. If you see what data is actually there (site 'x' has 2043 vehicles passing on (date/ time slot)) then you can start to understand what valid conclusions can, and cannot, be drawn. Data is collected (stage 1) and then analysed (stage 2) and then interpreted (stage 3). We get at best a wild summary of stage 3 - with no knowledge what, from stage 2, is being suppressed or focused on. We want the stage 1 data.

[CPR Dave]

"The vast majority of this is not adjusted whatsoever"

Appendix C3 contains 44 footnotes explaining how the data has been adjusted. Appendix C3 is only 105 pages long.

The footnotes saying the data has been adjusted appear on almost every third page.

[Rockets]

July 2021 Cllr Williams: "Clearly there are questions about methodology and just about people being able to be clear what methodology we're using, is it accurate, is it transparent?"

"So we've done some work to present that, but we absolutely take away there's more to do to make sure everyone's clear on the numbers - where they've come from - so that you can have trust and faith in them."

November 2021....still waiting.....

Cllr McAsh - your constituents aren't requesting more data, just the raw data and a explanation of the methodology used to create the numbers the council put into their report.

It seems that when people start looking more deeply the numbers don't add up so they are, quite rightly, asking the council what methodology was used to generate the numbers they have presented.

Cllr McAsh given there are some glaring errors in the report (Cllr Andy Simmons has told residents that the claim of a 61% reduction in traffic along Turney Road should have actually been reported as a significant increase) would you support, in the name of full transparency, the full report being republished and methodology shared?

Maybe this would be a good opportunity for a cross-ward public meeting where all of the local councillors shared this with their constituents so there can be no doubt as to the validity and reliability of the data being presented and some faith in the process can be restored?

This could be an online meeting but you really need to re-enable the chat function as a matter of urgency as the optics of disabling the function are not at all good as it appears you are just trying to mute anyone who wishes to voice an opinion. BTW at which meetings did things deteriorate on the chat as I attended a lot of them and nothing untoward was said on either the Dulwich Hill or Goose Green ward meetings?

[heartblock]

Quite a few Goose Green and Village residents are experts in or use statistical analysis and data science, they are very well aware of the holes in this piece of work.

Consequences from improperly collected data include the inability to answer research questions accurately, the inability to repeat and validate a study, distorted findings resulting in wasted resources, misleading other researchers to pursue fruitless avenues of investigation and importantly for this report - compromising decisions for public policy.

[edanna]

James, I?ve noticed that the bins along Lordship Lane and on roads off it (eg North cross, Upland and Frogley)and in Goose Green are frequently full to overflowing. It?s a bit disgusting and when they are that full it makes it harder for people to dispose of litter responsibly and easier for foxes to pull out rubbish and make a mess. Do you know if they are being emptied less frequently than before? It seems they really need emptying more often or the bins need to be bigger.

[rachp]

Ed Anna, they are definitely being emptied less frequently and it seems to be getting worse. The one outside coop is always a complete mess.

[Nigello]

I agree that bigger bins or at least a doubling would be useful. And, sounds trite but isn't - if you put litter in a bin, push it down or crush it before you put it in to help. That will help reduce overflowing.