A view on the work of the Community Council by Bill Higman
The Dulwich Community Council has been a popular recent innovation towards achieving more effective local democracy, and its meetings have been well attended. It works because it comes close to a New England -style 'town meeting', is open to all local residents, and regularly attended by our local councillors and the Southwark Council officers who carry the work out on our behalf. The officers can be asked to report on specific matters and are present to receive comments and account publicly for what they do. Meetings of the Community Council have been effectively chaired by Kim Humphreys.
During its first year, the Community Council has inevitably had a 'fire-fighting' role to perform with a backlog of some topics overdue for attention. There have also been some major new proposals to report on and discuss, including large cash investments in Dulwich Park and the Dulwich Community Hospital. There have been some memorable protests to Transport for London over changes in bus routes and services.
Local residents have also been going through a learning process about how to increase the effectiveness of their representations, and in realizing increasingly what the Community Council is able to achieve. One novel feature is that it does have local decision-making powers and the finance to actually achieve local amenity improvement. As residents, this is where we may be able to organise our approach more effectively. We could, for example, keep before us a more coherent picture of where we should like money to be spent in Dulwich.
In the autumn Southwark Council did in fact declare that it had a useful sum of money available to spend on improvements in Dulwich * and asked the Community Council to make proposals. Residents then took some time to decide what their amenity priorities for the area actually were, and to piece these together into an expenditure programme. The Dulwich Society presented its own shopping list but the Community Council probably did not give itself time to evaluate these items in relation to suggestions made from other sources. There were many remaining uncertainties as to the total of what could be afforded, the length of time projects would take to complete, possible overlaps or duplication of existing projects and the existence of other public funds which could be more effectively used. The complexity of decision making was added to by traditional pressures on the Council to budget expenditure within a particular financial year.
Some of this could be simplified if we were to draw up, in advance, a more considered expenditure 'wish list', properly costed, to be taken in stages if some items were to large to be carried out all at once. This would enable us and Southwark Council to make and keep current a more coherent medium-term plan for what would materially improve the amenity of Dulwich area. Major items which require detailed co-ordination, such as road and traffic improvements, probably require the longest advance planning period and consequently the most difficult to implement. For example, although we have been successful in getting a number of traffic calming schemes, we still need to make better provision for protected cycle routes as well as reducing unsightly road and signage clutter.
Fitting all this into one sensible plan and carrying it out in the right stages will require closer co-ordination among all the parties and different interests involved. A local plan presided over by the Community Council would help this process. Our response should be to encourage this and to use the Community Council as a tool to enable this to be done more effectively. Everybody stands to benefit.
* Dulwich Community Council was awarded £316,000 in July 2004. Grants made to projects in the Dulwich Society's area include:- £10,000 to improve Dulwich Library Gardens, £25,000 to Streatham & Marlborough Cricket Club for ground improvements and community access, four grants to Kingswood Estate for art & recreation,health and youth projects totalling £35,000, £5000 for signage rationalisation between Stradella and Burbage Roads, £4000 for handrails and traffic speed restrictors at Giles Coppice, £25,000 for new security fence at Sydenam Hill Wood, £18,000 for pedestrian safety around the Court Lane entrance to Dulwich Park, £23,000 for Jasper Road traffic calming, £18,000 for traffic calming in Dulwich Wood Avenue, £13,750 for additional lighting in front of Dulwich Village shops, £3000 for safety improvements at Court Lane/Calton Avenue, £2000 for renovation of the historic bus stop on Alleyn Road.
(Source - Dulwich Community Fund Progress update January 2005)
