Forest Hill ward town meeting 30th April - summary

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 15th May 2007

The Forest Hill ward town meeting took place on Monday 30th April 2007 at the Christian Fellowship Centre on Honor Oak Road. The larger part of the evening centred on community safety and crime reduction - members of the local Safer Neighbourhoods Team and the Council's Community Safety Team were present and led the discussion.

PC Andy Renno from Forest Hill's Safer Neighbourhoods Team outlined their work on reintroducing Neighbourhood Watch schemes to the area. These schemes were popular in the 80s, but had withered a bit, and the SNT are keen to get them back up and running again as they are a useful source of local intelligence and contribute to reducing the fear of crime. As an added bonus, an active NW scheme in your area can also reduce home and contents insurance!

NW schemes work by establishing two-way communication between the police and the local community. A volunteer co-ordinator acts as liaison between the police and the NW scheme and receives the regular updates from the police for dissemination to residents. The local SNT are committed to making NW schemes work in Forest Hill and are keen to hear from people who would be interested in starting one (see contact information at the end).

Dave Cass, from Lewisham's Community Safety Team, summarised for the meeting the work of his team. Their work covers anti-social behaviour, drugs strategy, youth offending and managing the reparation / restorative justice scheme in the borough.

Dave noted that crime in the borough had generally fallen in the past year, though robberies and muggings were up with young people in particular as victims and perpetrators.

The CST work with young people to change their behaviour and, where appropriate, ASBOs, Dispersal Orders and other tools were used. The key to successfully dealing with crime, however, was effective partnership working between the Council, Police and the community, of which Neighbourhood Watch schemes are a good example.

The speakers took questions from the meeting on crime and community safety issues. Subjects covered included:

• a recent incidence of young people fighting in the town centre at 4pm - what can be done? PC Renno responded that PCs on duty will always pass through the town centre at that time; Dave Cass pointed out that schools must be involved with dealing with the problem.

• Help Point and notice outside the station doesn't work? The SNT, Dave Cass and councillors agreed to look into this;

• how to get in touch with the SNT? The SNT can be contacted on 020 8721 2723 or 07768 178308; this will be more widely advertised;

• staffing of the SNT in Forest Hill: why lower than Perry Vale ward? The staffing levels are based on ward populations; but recent increases in ward population should mean that Forest Hill ward is eligible for a larger team - the councillors agreed to take this issue up and apply pressure for a larger SNT.

The meeting moved on to discuss other issues of interest in the ward

• Pedestrian crossing opposite WH Smiths

The was general agreement in the meeting that pedestrians get a raw deal when attempting to cross the South Circular from WH Smiths across to near the laundrette. Of particular concern was the visibility of pedestrians to traffic coming down London Road, and the timing of the 'green man'.

The councillors agreed to take this up with Transport for London, and also through the London Assembly members, as previous experience of trying to get TfL to deal with similar issues had met with a poor response.

• Localities Fund

The quality and timing of consultation concerning the selection of projects for spending the 2006/7 Localities Fund monies was raised, with additional concern about the projects that had been selected. The councillors agreed that the consultation would ideally had been more extensive, but that late changes in the arrangements for the Fund left little time for an ideal consultation. Nevertheless, there had been a leaflet drop asking for suggestions and a public meeting where suggestions were solicited and discussed, and the councillors, particularly Cllr Russell, had worked hard to bring in £5,000 of matching monies to make the £10,000 Localities Fund money go as far as possible.

It was agreed that the councillors would strive to achieve a more extensive consultation if the Localities Fund was available again in the current year.

• Traffic calming

Various questions about the road safety schemes were raised.

Road humps were used extensively because they were cheap and allowed 20mphs zones to be established (under TfL guidelines). The police regularly ticket drivers who go down Manor Mount the wrong way (though the meeting felt that this didn't happen enough).

Rat-running down Ewelme and Benson Roads was raised as a long-standing problem, and there was discussion about the related issues of the timing of traffic lights at the junction of Honor Oak Road and London Road, and traffic build ups on Devonshire Road. It was suggested that the problem lay in drivers coming down off Lordship Lane and trying to by-pass congestion on the South Circular, and that the counter intuitive solution might be to add further delay for the traffic joining the South Circular at Devonshire Road as this would discourage the rat-running.

Traffic speeding down Kirkdale was also brought up and everyone agreed that some form of traffic calming near the junction with Thorpewood Avenue would be ideal. The SNT agreed and would be happy to support such a move, and the councillors agreed to do some more work on this following on from earlier representations they have made to the council and TfL.

• Town Centre

A discussion about the general state of the town centre included points about the street signs, street furniture and bins, greenery and planting beds. These are a complicated series of related issues, and the councillors reported that they had been taking up a lot of these points with the Town Centre teams and the Regeneration Department, and would soon be meeting with Southern and the Horniman as well.

• Post Office

It was noted that Royal Mail intended to move the Post Office into WH Smiths. After a brief discussion, the meeting agreed that this was unlikely to be desirable, but that the councillors would seek more information before taking further action.

The meeting closed at around 9.30pm, with the next meeting scheduled for early September.