Cabinet starts working, Community Safety Priorities and Millwall at Wembley!!!

It was a long hard week last week taking over control of Southwark Council and taking on my role as Cabinet Member for Community Safety with lots of Briefings on my Portfolio as well as the pressing matter of the Elephant & Castle Regeneration!! In terms of community safety my priorities are developing a coherent Violent Crime Strategy, upgrading and extending CCTV coverage around the borough where it is needed, taking action on dangerous dogs and adopting a zero tolerance approach to anti-social behaviour on the streets and on the Estates!
We will upgrade the CCTV Monitoring Centre to make it digital and then extend our network and we should have this all up and running over the next few months! There is also possiblity of linking in with other existing systems to increase the coverage further and so delivering quiickly on a key Labour Manifesto Pledge!!
We also need to focus our ever more limited resources in areas where it is needed therefore reorganising the Community Wardens to Town Centred Teams seems sensible to me!
I am keen to see significant progress on all of these fronts over the next 3 months and want to take a cross departmental approach to Youth Crime looking at Education, Youth provision as well as regeneration and the environment to tackle the causes of crime at source. I do support the use of ASBO's and ABC's to deal with offenders and think that they have been and remain a useful tool in tackling Youth Crime. I am also keen to develop better victim support in all areas of crime including domestic violence!
I do think that we need to work on closing the gap between the publics perception of crime and the reality so that people feel more safe and that may include more CCTV, more visible police presence and even better street and Estate lighting.

I went to a couple of Election Celebration Parties at the weekend, one for DAWN arranged by new Councillor Sunil Chopra of a fantastic hot day in Dulwich!!
The second was for South Camberwell at Councillor Veronica Ward's and a good time was had by all!!

Another busy week ahead including a Tour of the Borough with the Cabinet on Friday!
Saturday and off to Wembley again to see if Millwall can do it this time and beat Swindon to get a richly deserved place in the Championship!
The pic is from last year when they had it snatched away from them by Scunthorpe in virtually the last minute!! COME ON THE LIONS!!!!

Labour take over at Southwark Town Hall, Community Safety Priorities and Millwall back at Wembley!!!

Well it has been quite a week with the Labour Group taking over the reigns of Southwark Council following the Mayor making and Constitutional Council on Wednesday!!


It was fantastic to see my good friend and Labour Group Colleague Tayo Situ become Mayor of Southwark with Lorraine Lauder as his Deputy, they will both be a credit to us and Southwark!!



The new Labour Cabinet took control and I became the Cabinet Member for Community Safety, a role that I have shadowed for the past 7 years!!!
The Labour Council Manifesto can be seen through the link below:
http://www.southwarklabour.co.uk/uploads/089d69db-87f0-2284-d51c-883ead9cffae.pdf

I spent much of yesterday meeting Officers and we are already making good progress on a number of our community safety manifesto Commitments such as :

1. Improving, upgrading and extending our CCTV coverage around the borough in areas where it is most needed,

2. Developing a wide ranging Violent Crime Strategy to link up work across Departments in a coherent way,

3. Targeting drug dealing on Housing Estates and the associated Gang culture and crime that comes with it,

4. A Zero Tolerance approach to anti social behaviour in areas like dog fouling, noisy neighbours and improving the ASB Helpline

5. Continuing to support more 20mph speed limits in the borough

6. To protect Police numbers against cuts and to organise our community wardens where they are most needed.

I am getting used to working in Tooley Street on the 4th floor and meeting the staff who will help us!


My University Office is just across Tower Bridge so no more than 10 minutes apart!!

Good Southwark news article:
http://www.southwark.gov.uk/news/article/36/new_leader_sets_out_his_vision

Great Result for Millwall in the week and another Wembley trip beckons a week on saturday!!
Richard, Fiona and I plan a repeat trip just hoping for a better result: COME ON YOU LIONS!!!!
Highlights of Play Off semi:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_div_2/8691781.stm

Labour Win Southwark Council and Hibs get 4th SPL Spot and Europa Cup Place!!

Great images of a Fantastic night as Labour took back Southwark Council with a majority of 7:

LABOUR 35, LIB DEMS 25, CONSERVATIVES 3

Details at Southwark Council link below:

http://www.southwark.gov.uk/info/1000/election_results/1618/council_elections_2010

Election day was spent in East Walworth on a sunny day and a brilliant group of people fighting for every vote!!
It was a great if long and tiring day and we took all three seats as well as seats in South Camberwell, Chaucer, Newington and even College Ward!

Prior to the Election Gordon Brown came to Inspire at Walworth Road at a really inspiring Rally!!
Hibs get Europa Cup Spot after a great away 2-0 win at Dundee United after a very up and down Season!!

Next Season a new Stand and European Football and hopefully some beter defenders and goalkeepers!!

Dundee Unt. Game report below:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/scot_prem/8666200.stm

That incredible 6-6 game against Motherwell:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/scotland/8668079.stm

VOTE LABOUR ON THURSDAY MAY 6TH 2010 IN GENERAL AND SOUTHWARK COUNCIL ELECTIONS!!!

We now enter the final few days of the General and Southwark Council Elections Campaign!! After an unforeseen absence I am getting back into it Campaigning, leafleting and attending Hustings!
We have some very good material for the Campaign, our Introductory Leaflet, a fantastic Manifesto Leaflet and of course our Election Address!

The Camberwell Hustings were great and we all agreed we should do more of that in between Elections!!!

On Sunday i went to a Gordon Brown meeting at Inspire Crypt in Walworth Road. Fantastic speech and a great boost for Southwark Labour Party members!! More Pics and videos on Facebook!!

So we are now at the sharp end of the campaigns with no one really clear on the outcome of either so it is simply a case of working as hard as possible over the next few days and on Thursday to keep the Tories out of Westminster and the Lib Dems and Tories out of Southwark Town Hall!!! VOTE LABOUR ON THURSDAY MAY 6TH!!!