Councillor team holiday cover

Andrew's now away on holiday until the 7th, please contact Don or Roger for any ward or casework issues.

Street signage: Farmers Market, Tescos etc

A couple of updates:

The Farmers Market only have permission to put four posters (see above) on the corner of Adelaide and Winchester roads on Wednesdays - they are supposed to take them down after the market but are clearly just leaving them up. After I raised it, our street officers will chase the Market organisers to do so.

Tesco Local, Belsize Road. Despite a number of interventions by Camden enforcement staff at our urging, new banners seem to keep popping up. The latest is a 12'X3' "two for one" banner that looks awful. Cllr Roger Freeman has already asked the manager to take it down, and has asked our enforcement team to get on the case, as it seems likely this would need planning permission which it doesn't have.

A Perfect Day event, 13th September, Avenue Road. This is a great community event with Avenue Road closed for the day, and the commercial sponsorship helps it happen and helps Swiss Cottage Special School. I must admit I did have some concerns though with the increasing number of banners on the corner of Avenue and Adelaide (see above), which have been up for several weeks already on one of the only bits of greenery around the Swiss Cottage gyratory. Council officers have explained that they have given permission for these, as in previous years, but they see no reason for Winkworths to have two banners so will get one taken down. In addition there will be some signs going up in people's gardens advertising this event, nearer the time, but these will not appear in the areas where estates agents boards are banned, and will have limited commercial branding only. We'll be along supporting the event, any views on the signage most welcome.

Camden A Level results

Congratulations to all those in Swiss Cottage ward and across Camden who have been been successful in their A Levels. Here's the Council's release on the results:

Camden sixth form students are celebrating today after achieving the best ever set of A Level results.

The 2009 results, which have raised the bar even higher than last year, are testament to the hard work put in by the students and their teachers.

Students achieved a pass (grades A to E) in 98% of exams taken, compared to the national (England) figure of 97%. This is 1% higher than the excellent results achieved last year by Camden students.

More than half of all entries achieved grades A or B - in Camden this was 51.5%, compared to the national figure of 49.0%.

The proportion of A to C grades was 75.8% compared to 73.4% nationally, whilst the number of entries graded A was 25.0% compared to the national figure of 25.4% Camden Council's Executive Member for Schools, Councillor Andrew Mennear said:“Congratulations to all our hard working students and staff whose dedication and commitment have been rewarded by these results. I am delighted that Camden students have pushed standards up yet again and it shows what potential we have in our sixth formers. Well done to everyone.”

Camden issues 20% fewer parking tickets

Solid evidence of our more responsive approach to parking controls in new figures, here's the release put out by the Council today.

Almost 85,000 fewer parking tickets were issued in Camden last year - a drop of more than 20 per cent - new figures out this week show.Parking penalty charge notices (PCNs) dropped from 404,675 in 2007/8 to 320,304 in 2008/9, figures released by London Councils show.

Improving parking services in Camden to make the system fairer and easier to understand for residents has been a top commitment for the Council. Cllr Chris Knight, Camden Council’s Executive Member for Environment, said: “We said that we wanted to make parking in Camden fairer and easier to understand and the fall in tickets shows this is working. Camden is one of the busiest boroughs for traffic in London with extreme competing demands for parking."We have a responsibility to enforce parking rules to make the borough's roads safer for everyone who uses them, to protect scarce parking spaces for those who have a right to park there and to reduce congestion and keep traffic flowing."

The number of motorists penalised in Camden for moving traffic offences, such as entering box junctions, also fell from 113,718 to 90,343 last year.The number of motorists caught driving in bus lanes dropped from 11,481 to 9,019.The total number of PCNs issued overall, including bus lane and moving traffic PCNs fell from 529,874 to 419,666.

The number of tickets issued by all London boroughs fell by the smaller margin of 11 per cent last year.

Centre Heights Car Park planning application appeal

Centre Heights Car Park development application - off Belsize Road by the tube station

Roger Freeman brings this follow up to our December 7 2008 story: Council Officers refused permission for this application. This was good because if implemented it would have had very unfortunate consequences for local residents. The developer has lodged an appeal. We would encourage those of you who objected last December to lodge your comments with the Planning Inspector. If you lodged a comment and have not heard from Camden in the last 10 days, contact Roger Freeman. All three of us councillors objected in December and we will be following this very closely.

Police stations victory!

I'm delighted that my colleague Chris Philp and the local Conservative team, backed by many people across the community, have been successful in saving our local police stations - Hampstead and West Hampstead. The Metropolitan Police Authority has now withdrawn its closure plans for nearly all London boroughs, including Camden. Now the council should work constructively with the borough police to ensure all our police stations are working as effectively as possible to provide genuine and visible local policing.

Huntly Spence RIP

I'm sad to report that our former colleague Huntly Spence has passed away after a long illness. He was 84.

Huntly served as a local councillor from 1971-78, from 1982-94 and 1998-2002. For most of that time he represented Belsize ward, and he made a major contribution to the Conservative group on the council, leading for us at various times on housing, policing and social services. He greatest passion however was improving the training and employment opportunities for young people, particularly those without an academic bent. He was a longstanding board member of local training organisations Camden Jobtrain and ITEC, and when was awarded an MBE in 2004, it was for services to disadvantaged young people.

Our thoughts are with his family.