Southwark Council crowdfunding for green projects

[Spartacus]

A £5 investment (in southwarks Green plans) wager says that the council will spin the different funding pots wheel when you ask why the 11.5 million wasn't invested in the green projects 😉

Guess they think their residents are stupid and we all have wool over our eyes.

[Rockets]

5 hours ago, Charles Martel said:

Southwark is not a poor area where problems with council finances are obviously linked to a low, and declining, council tax base. In the last 20 years or so billions upon billions upon billions of pounds of investment have poured into Southwark to transform areas that were derelict in the 80s and 90s into acres and acres of “luxury” flats. The council tax base in Southwark must have been vastly expanded by these developments.

This is a very good point - I wonder how council tax revenue has increased over the years due to the regeneration and gentrification in, mainly, the north and south of the borough.

 

I do wonder whether Southwark's problem is not with funding but with spending. Remember the proposal they put in for Dulwich Village/Square that was going to cost something extortionate and was laughed out of the room for the ludicrous cost associated with it, How many times have they had to re-run consultations for various vanity projects (the aforementioned DV junction being one that has a lot of consultations linked to it) - none of this comes for free. 

[tiddles]

Could they not just invest in things like filling in the potholes their beloved cyclists come acropper on, investing in the dog kennel hill playground buildings, instead of these bonkers vanity projects? 

[heartblock]

I walk down East Dulwich Grove and see messy, littered and unsafe pavements, holes in the road and blocked drains that cause huge puddles when it rains - making it unsafe for cyclists and an unpleasant walk when cars go through the puddles, litter and waste not cleared for days - Southwark really needs to sort out the basics so we can live in safe and clean areas.

I say this as a Green Party member - all for environmental and green policy, but priorities please!

[first mate]

Has anyone else noticed the xmas lights hooked up to lamp posts down NX road. They were on today at 4pm?!

[Dogkennelhillbilly]

9 hours ago, Charles Martel said:

Southwark is not a poor area

Southwark is like the UK in miniature: there are Dulwich Village mansions with 5 cars parked in front, but there are also people living in abject poverty across much of the borough. People generally should be careful not to extrapolate their own experience too widely.

The idea that Southwark is bathing in an ocean of Council Tax from new builds is just wrong. It's taken years to redevelop the Heygate Estate - and those were the years of austerity. Southwark's finances are all freely available - check them out for yourself, and see how much money has been cut.

https://www.southwark.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/fairer-future/fairer-greener-safer-southwark-s-council-delivery-plan?chapter=2

[Jules-and-Boo]

Funding has been cut, that’s not disputed. Councils should have balanced budgets, and they should prioritise what they spend money on. The £11.5m “waste of money” is unfortunate but let’s not forget it happens on a wider and larger scale… Boris spent £50m on consultants to design the Garden Bridge, and the government have handed out huge contracts to private companies.

There is clearly a bigger problem than Southwark asking for crowdfunding.

 

[ianr]

> The £11.5m “waste of money”

What are the known facts and where can they be examined?

[Dogkennelhillbilly]

11 hours ago, Jules-and-Boo said:

 The £11.5m “waste of money” is...

...a fake claim based on a real number made by a tiny group of obsessives who confuse banging away endlessly on here with real life. 

[Jules-and-Boo]

Hence “quotes”

[alice]

The Southwark News article is very clear. What am I missing?

Edited March 2 by alice

[Charles Martel]

On 01/03/2024 at 21:52, Dogkennelhillbilly said:

Southwark is like the UK in miniature: there are Dulwich Village mansions with 5 cars parked in front, but there are also people living in abject poverty across much of the borough.

We are not talking about the income of individuals in Southwark, where everybody knows there is individual poverty and wealth.  We are talking about the income of Southwark council from council tax and business rates.  If you consider what the area around Tower Bridge looked like in the 80s compared to what it looks like now it is impossible to believe that the income of Southwark council has not increased as derelict warehouses were turned into shops, restaurants and multi-million pound properties.  

 

This same process of renovation and renewal has been happening across the borough.  In most cases this process has been driven entirely by private capital so this increase in taxable property and new businesses has come about with no effort from or cost to Southwark council.   We can all see that there are now new build properties in many parts of the borough.  Although not on the scale of Shad Thames, if a derelict plot of land on Lordship Lane has two new houses built on it that increases the council tax income to Southwark council.  The disposable income of the new residents supports local businesses which in turn pay Southwark council a fraction of this income as business rates.

I am not saying Southwark council must be awash with surplus cash, but what I do observe is that there should be a very large and steady income stream into the council. In the 80s, with large areas of the borough derelict, Southwark council had no problem sweeping our streets daily.  Now those areas are covered in million pound properties and we can literally wait weeks for leaves and litter to be swept up.  

If we can see public money being spent on absurd schemes, seemingly at the behest of a handful of activists, then we should all be questioning the spending priorities of the council. 
https://southwarknews.co.uk/area/southwark/traffic-warden-contract-worth-11-5-million-branded-appalling-waste-of-money-after-southwark-councils-cpz-u-turn/
This contract is essentially an engineered wealth transfer from ordinary people in Southwark to the shareholders of APCOA Parking Ltd.  

The fact that there is poverty in Southwark should be front of mind when public money is being allocated to nice to have, but totally unnecessary,  “Streetspace measures” in areas like East Dulwich where many private households already have spacious gardens.
https://consultations.southwark.gov.uk/environment-leisure/streets-for-people-in-the-east-dulwich-area/
While at the same time there is apparently no money to complete needed social housing projects in Peckham.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/09/london-council-rips-out-playgrounds-then-runs-out-of-cash-southwark

The latest post from the Oppose the CPZ group states that £43,801 of public money has been spent on CPZ consultations.
http://opposethecpz.org/2024/03/02/were-still-here/
Perhaps the activists who are so keen on these repeated, pointless, consultations can now  put their hands in their own pockets to pay for them.

[Dogkennelhillbilly]

5 hours ago, Charles Martel said:

...but what I do observe is that there should be a very large and steady income stream into the council. In the 80s...

Luckily you don't need to draw inferences from your observations about new flats on Shad Thames in the last 40 years. Just read the Council's budget documents. They're published in extreme detail and linked above.

[Rockets]

On 01/03/2024 at 22:56, ianr said:

> The £11.5m “waste of money”

What are the known facts and where can they be examined?

 

Here: https://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/s115170/Report GW3 Parking and Traffic Enforcement and associated services contract.pdf

 

This is the report submitted to Southwark Cabinet meeting by Cllr McAsh and  that was the trigger for the Cabinet agreement to extend and expand the APCOA contract.

 

Some key snippets (the total contract is actually £12.5m with £2.5m to provide an extra 48 enforcement officers - which is why there are so many of them circling Lordship Lane all the time now).

 

• That cabinet approves the variation of the parking and traffic and associated services contract with APCOA Parking UK Ltd to utilise the available contract extension to extend the term of the contract for a period of three years from 1 June 2024 to 31 May 2027 in the sum of £4,150,611 p.a. and £12,451,833 across the three-year extension period.
• 2. That cabinet approves a variation of the existing contract with APCOA Parking UK Ltd for parking enforcement and associated services as outlined in paragraphs 10 to 11 in the sum of £2,578,309 p.a to provide an additional 48 civil enforcement officers (CEO) up to a total value of £9,668,660 for the period from 1 September 2023 to January to 31 May 2027 (three years and nine months - 45 months).

Interestingly in the Southwark News article (https://southwarknews.co.uk/area/southwark/traffic-warden-contract-worth-11-5-million-branded-appalling-waste-of-money-after-southwark-councils-cpz-u-turn/) Cllr McAsh claims that this contract was not pre-empting the borough-wide CPZs yet in the document he submitted to cabinet last July it said (is he being economical with the truth to Southwark News?):

• The contract is based on enforcement of the whole borough albeit 32% of the borough does not have controlled parking.
• There is a need for additional civil enforcement officers to be deployed within the contract in order to provide the capacity to enforce the controlled parking zones that are to be implemented by August 2024.

 

If you can spend over £12m on a parking enforcement contract (to ultimately raise more money from constituents) and then spend the suggested £50,000 on a single "consultation" for the failed DV junction redesign, then don't come pleading that you don't have the cash for cycle hangers and street lights.....it might be a good soundbite but when you scratch beneath the surface you realise something isn't adding up and that there might be more than just a little bit of spin/smoke screening going on from the council.....