Author: Cyril Richert

I apology for the delay on this report. As usual when I attend the Clapham Junction Town Centre Partnership (business associations) meeting, I give a quick feedback on some specific points that were discussed.

End of funding for the business organisation

The main and starting point of the meeting was the Economic Development Office explaining that decision has been made by Wandsworth Council to remove funding for the business organisations of each town centres in the borough.

The financial year 2014-15 will be a transition time for the Town Centre initiative as the financial cover provided by the Council (about £100,000 for each of the 5 town centres per year) will stop after April 2015.

Due to financial restrictions the Council has decided that the different town centre business organisations needed to move to self funding. In order to achieve that, several solutions are suggested:

1. Setting up of a Business Improvement District (BID) for each area where 1-2% of the business rate value of each business participating will go to fund the organisation.
2. Voluntary membership scheme / Voluntary contributions
3. Nothing

Business votes will also be counted in portion of the business rate contribution (therefore big business will have more weight in the vote).

The Council is going to contract a firm to provide support for a BID within the next couple of months. The first step will be the need to demonstrate what a BID can achieve (security, marketing, public realm…).

Pavement

The state of new paving on St Johns Road was already discussed last August. Again business and residents are complaining about the very dirty state of the paving (see our article). The Council says they have no budget for water pressure cleaning (and therefore no progress was made). However they are trying the possibility of applying a sealant on the new pavement and could spread it on large areas if trials show good results.

Implementation of the “Behave or be Banned” proposed by the police

With the scheme, people arrested (not convicted!) for shop-lifting and criminal offence will be automatically banned from shops (their photo will be displayed on a website and shops will be able to consult who is on the list to ban them from entering the shop). The maximum sentence could be a life-ban!

Filed under: CJTCP

Author: Cyril Richert

I apology for the delay on this report. As usual when I attend the Clapham Junction Town Centre Partnership (business associations) meeting, I give a quick feedback on some specific points that were discussed.

End of funding for the business organisation

The main and starting point of the meeting was the Economic Development Office explaining that decision has been made by Wandsworth Council to remove funding for the business organisations of each town centres in the borough.

The financial year 2014-15 will be a transition time for the Town Centre initiative as the financial cover provided by the Council (about £100,000 for each of the 5 town centres per year) will stop after April 2015.

Due to financial restrictions the Council has decided that the different town centre business organisations needed to move to self funding. In order to achieve that, several solutions are suggested:

1. Setting up of a Business Improvement District (BID) for each area where 1-2% of the business rate value of each business participating will go to fund the organisation.
2. Voluntary membership scheme / Voluntary contributions
3. Nothing

Business votes will also be counted in portion of the business rate contribution (therefore big business will have more weight in the vote).

The Council is going to contract a firm to provide support for a BID within the next couple of months. The first step will be the need to demonstrate what a BID can achieve (security, marketing, public realm…).

Pavement

The state of new paving on St Johns Road was already discussed last August. Again business and residents are complaining about the very dirty state of the paving (see our article). The Council says they have no budget for water pressure cleaning (and therefore no progress was made). However they are trying the possibility of applying a sealant on the new pavement and could spread it on large areas if trials show good results.

Implementation of the “Behave or be Banned” proposed by the police

With the scheme, people arrested (not convicted!) for shop-lifting and criminal offence will be automatically banned from shops (their photo will be displayed on a website and shops will be able to consult who is on the list to ban them from entering the shop). The maximum sentence could be a life-ban!

Filed under: CJTCP

Author: Cyril Richert

As usual when I attend the Clapham Junction Town Centre Partnership (business associations) meeting, I give a quick feedback on some specific points that were discussed. This time the Chair invited us to Battersea Power Station. As it was our last meeting festive refreshments were provided (and enjoyed!).

For the first time (maybe the last one too as it is a bit time consuming), I provided a live-tweet of the meeting with #cjtcpb (click on the hash tag to see it). I remind everyone on Twitter that they can follow us on @c_j_a_g.

The Junction: There was only 20 lights to put for the heart of Clapham Junction, so a difficult choice to make. But at least there will be something this year again.

Northcote Road: The event organised to turn the Xmas lights on, on Thursday 28th, was a big success. An enormous success. In fact it was so successful that it will be necessary to arrange barriers next year in order to manage the crowd.

St John’s Hill: No lights and Xmas trees this year. The business association decided to save the money and organise a bigger event next year.

Battersea High Street: We managed to plant 25 Xmas trees with lights along the street off Battersea Park Road.

Lavender Hill: There is a major on-going complaint from the business of Lavender Hill which feel completely neglected by the Council and ignored by the local councillors (Shaftesbury ward – all of them members of the Council’s cabinet!). They plan to send a letter to the leader of Wandsworth Council about “Lavender Hill Rejuvenation“. Their main concerns are:

• PARKING: need uniform parking restriction, extra bays, banning of vehicles from parking on pavement, directive to mini-cab firms.
• ROAD TRAVEL: Removal of the “No Right Turn” restriction from Clapham Common to Lavender Hill (causing 20% drop in trade!)
• SIGNAGE: removal of surplus and un-necessary signage
• EMPTY SHOPS: encourage business along the street
• CRIME: greater police presence
• STREET CLEANLINESS: enforce directive for refuse sacks.
• COMMUNITY events.

The Clapham Junction Town Centre Board has been asked to endorse the letter (decision at the next meeting).

The Battersea Society also commented on the consequence of the right turn and road amendment at Lavender Hill-Falcon Lane Junction (Asda): as a consequence it created a sort of rat-run with many car speeding fron Lavender Sweep to Falcon Lane and a large increase of difficult traffic at that crossing.

The Police wants to promote a scheme where people arrested (not convicted!) for shop-lifting and criminal offence will be automatically banned from shops (their photo will be displayed on a website and shops will be able to consult who is on the list to ban them from entering the shop). There was a long discussion as whether this is “ethic”, will not lead to mistakes (sanction is applied before sentencing) and abuse. Apparently questions such as the possibility of appeal against the ban, and whether that appeal will defer the ban are not very clear (or at least I did not understand clearly).

Battersea Power Station: amongst the daily news, inspection of the chimneys is underway and they have decided not to use Palm oil for their energy

Planning: The most noticeable are dealt here in articles:

• Platform 17 will be extended and barrier entrance enlarged
• Large digital advertising board for Clapham Junction withdrawn

Next meeting will be in February 2014.

Filed under: CJTCP

Author: Cyril Richert

As usual when I attend the Clapham Junction Town Centre Partnership (business associations) meeting, I give a quick feedback on some specific points that were discussed.

Employment Brokerage: there is a new body supporting people into job (and helping local business to recruit): Wandsworth Work Match, located 207 Lavender Hill (back of Winkworth). This is a free service run and funded by local authorities (Economic Development). Official launch in September.

Contact: Andrew Harland

Access to Employment Officer
Economic Development Office
Wandsworth Borough Council
Tel: 020 8871 5199
E aharland@wandsworth.gov.uk

The Battersea Art Center is continuing its major renovation. The bar is going to be refurbished and the place has many facilities for hire.

We had a major plea from the Lavender Hill business association representative regarding 3 major issues that are currently putting down businesses in the area:

1. Issue with the no-right turn in many streets along Lavender Hill that is making the place incredibly difficult to access (some businesses have lost 20% of their activity!)
2. Quality of parking (some places are monitored, some others completely forbidden… etc)
3. With signage, lamp posts every few meters (they could remove half of them!) , bins… the amount of “metal” in the street is excessive and unreasonable.

The Clapham Junction Town Centre Partnership board has decided to support the complaint to Wandsworth Council.

The state of new paving on St Johns Road has been discussed: Wandsworth Council has cleaned with water pressure all the area and the officer in charge provided photos before/after. However he also confirmed that this was a one-off decision taken by Wandsworth Council. They are currently trying to assess how often this process of water pressure cleaning needs to be applied and they are building a case to get funding from Transport for London, as TfL funded the new paving for the town centre. More news to come…

Other news without any order: The Battersea Mosque is organising a street party on September the 1st, Debenhams has got a new manager and they will refurbish their café facility.

Filed under: CJTCP