Green Guardian Awards

I've been judging the first round of Sutton's entries for the Green Guardian Awards today.

The quality of the entries from businesses to households and schools to green champions, has been incredible and my fellow judges and I had a really tough job picking the best entries in each category.

All the winners from each borough will be invited to the gala evening at the Queen’s Stand, Epsom Racecourse on November 21 when the regional Green Guardian winners will be announced.

Thank you everyone who entered or nominated someone.

http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/green/greenawards/awards2008/

Smart and safe at school

I’m fortunate enough to meet people who are making a real difference in our community as part of my job as Deputy Leader of the Council.

Today was no exception. I met Liz Wilson, Head Teacher at Sutton High Junior School and we talked about how she is working with children and parents and the Council’s parking team to make the roads safer for children on their way to and from school.

Mrs Wilson has welcomed the council’s high-tech smart car as a deterrent to dangerous parking. The car is fitted with a CCTV camera and it patrols the roads near Sutton High Junior School and other schools in the borough, monitors parking on zig-zags or yellow lines.

Over the past 18 months anyone that caught parking dangerously on camera has then been sent a warning explaining that his or her parking is dangerous. But from 1 October people parking in this way may get a £100 fine.

To help parents the Council has provided a number of special ‘park and stride’ bays in nearby roads to encourage parents to park a little further from the school gates.

This and other driver friendly ideas in Sutton led to the Council issuing the lowest number of parking tickets in London last year, and receiving the fewest appeals according to figures release by London Councils in August.

Tory changes announced

Senior Tory Opposition Councillors have confirmed that they have appointed a new Shadow Finance Councillor. Tim Crowley will take over from Terry Faulds who had himself recently replaced his predecessor.

To date Sutton’s Tory opposition have refused to prepare any kind of annual budget and hidden behind excuses that it isn’t their job to say what they would do with the borough.

I find this hard to understand. If they want local people to take them seriously they need to say what they stand for – but then their national Leader seems to be having a similar problem at present too - so perhaps it’s catching!

Let’s hope Councillor Crowley will take Sutton’s residents more seriously than his predecessors and let them know what his party stands for by preparing a budget for the council – but I won’t be holding my breath.

EDF to improve services

We have had a lot of power cuts in the borough in the last year. Wallington and Carshalton have been most badly affected by these with some of these power cuts lasting for to 20 hours and some areas suffering from repeated cuts.

I asked EDF Energy's Head of Customer Operations, Colin Barden to meet me to discuss what they are doing about this and I met with Mr Barden today.

Mr Barden apologised to local people on behalf of EDF for the cuts and explained that they had been down to a mix of problems with their high voltage supply, which had led to parts of Carshalton and Wallington being 'islanded' (cut off from the power network) and to a number of substations failing.

A lot of work has been done to upgrade the power network as a result, including major rerouting of power cables down Bridges Lane in Beddington. And I got a commitment to EDF completing an upgrade of all of the affected substations within the next 12 months.

I also pressed Mr Barden on whether EDF will sign the new Service Level Agreement that has been drafted by OFGEM the energy regulator and I am pleased to report that they will now do this.

And I have asked EDF to work with the Council on its sustainability policies and get involved in the Emergency Planning exercises that the Council carries out regularly with partners such as the police and health. More on these and the future of UK energy and EDF's role in this in a future blog.

Sutton is highest performing council in the capital

A report by respected consulting firm PriceWaterhouse Coopers found that Sutton is the highest-performing borough in London. The report looked at performance data from 2007-08 and compared Sutton Council’s performance with that of other boroughs. The draft report also found that Sutton is top of the league when all unitary authorities outside London – the big cities and mainly urban areas – are included.

This is good news especially considering the financial pressures under which we have to operate. But my colleagues and I are not complacent and we are determined to continue to offer you good services in future.

GARDEN WASTE COLLECTION CHANGES PROPOSED

I chaired the Waste Collection Advisory Group today. This was our first meeting after the summer and a very important one because we discussed the results of the consultation meetings that the council has been carrying out across the borough over the summer about the changes to our waste collection services. It was our job to review the details of the consultation and make a recommendation to the Council’s Executive about changes to the service.

On the whole the new waste collection policies are supported by local people and the amount of waste going to landfill is down by over 8 per cent and glass recycling is up by over 60%. But the new garden waste collection charge was very unpopular.

My colleague Councillor John Drage proposed a number of changes to the scheme on behalf of the Liberal Democrat’s on the Council including scrapping the £35 charge per bag for garden waste collection. This change is supported by an overwhelming majority of local people who responded to the consultation and in the current financial climate with rising food and fuel prices putting so much pressure on family budgets we feel that this is the wrong approach.

In brief the new proposals are:

A. To retain all of the changes introduced in June except the Garden Waste charge of £35 per bag.

B. To make the following changes to the garden waste collection arrangements:

* To wind up the current charging scheme at the end of October;
* To give an appropriate refund to those who have bought jute sacks;
* To return to a ‘free’ fortnightly collection for November and December, but with a limit for each household of two 120-litre plastic sacks, or three 75-litre jute sacks;
* To introduce a ‘free’ fortnightly collection from April to December each year with a limit of two 120-litre plastic sacks, or three 75-litre jute sacks for each household;
* From April ’09 households wanting to dispose of more garden waste than the free service limit will be able to buy extra sacks for £1 per bag per collection.

We are grateful to everyone who has taken the time to respond to our consultation. Here in Sutton we all have a proud record in recycling but sometimes we can get things wrong and when we do it is important to say so and listen to you and take action. We hope that you will agree that this is the best way to respond to the wishes of local people.