Issues raised at the meeting and reported in the minutes plus one other raised on WhatsApp group. This page will be updated as information comes in.
The next residents meeting is Wednesday 26 October. It was agreed to invite Veolia, as well as the councillors and police.
| Issue | Action |
|---|---|
| Gulley Cleaning Raised on WhatsApp group, some residents reported that the gulley cleaning, where people were required to move cars and some fines were issues, that the cleaning did not actually take place. | Cllr Barbara Blake followed this up and here is the response: Thank you for your enquiry in relation to Cleaning of the gullies on Vartry and Heysham Road I have checked our records and all gullies in Heysham Road we cleaned back in March between 08-03-2022 – 10-03-2022 where parking suspensions were in place, All gullies were reported as clear and running by our contractor and photographic evidence has been provided to support this. I have also checked our records in relation to Vartry Road and found they were last attended back in June 2021 and will be due for another cyclical cleans in the near future. (dates to be confirmed) You also stated that Residents say that they were informed the gullies on these roads were going to be cleaned but that this did not happen. Please can you provide me with dates as to when your residents were notified of these works and I will investigate the matter further. |
| Housing Development on Greenspace Proposed housing development at the junction of Seven Sisters and St Ann’s, part of the Sir Frederick Messer Estate | What are the plans? How far along is the development? Greenspace concerns Amenities concerns, eg, doctors, dentists, schools, nurseries, libraries, etc |
| Housing Development Space from St Ann’s Road up to Wickes store, called the ‘Gourley Triangle’ by the council. Currently it is occupied by a variety of businesses and is now loosely earmarked for a mixed residential and commercial development at some unknown point in the future. | What are the plans? How far along? Amenity support? |
| Street Lighting Faulty street lighting in Vartry Road | A neighbour reported on 16 July that there was still a problem with the street lighting on Vartry Road: a least 2 not working on the school side of the road. —— Our Councillor Barbara Blake raised this issue with the Council and got the following response: “The fault on the lighting was recorded by our night patrol on the 20th May 2022; our maintenance contractor investigated the problem and found that the electrical supply was faulty. This was referred to our Engineer and this was then issued to UK Power Networks (UKPN) to repair. They have 28 days to investigate and repair this and unfortunately there was a delay due to other ongoing faults in the area, but we anticipate that this fault should be rectified in the next few days.. Please accept our apology for any inconvenience caused by this delay.” Haringey Council Senior Lighting Engineer on 24 June 2022 |
| Crime – increase of drug dealing in the area, in all parts but especially around the Church/St Mungos/Seven Sisters Rd. – anti-social and petty criminal behaviour was constant, breaking car windows, taking number plates, congregating in drinking groups in Manchester Gardens and Paignton Park lack of patrol officers was noted Neighbourhood Watch (NW) door stickers were requested | PC Mahomed (attending the meeting) asked that everyone who witnessed or noted a crime including drug dealing to please report it, as the more reports there were the more action would be taken. Call 101, or go to Crimestoppers. Use the OWL system PC Paz has ordered the NW door stickers and will bring them as soon as he has them. |
| Controlled Park Zone Is Monday to Friday 8 – 6 too long? Some areas had shorter periods of time, perhaps two or three short periods in one day. This would allow households to have service vehicles doing works such as plumbing etc without having to purchase permits. | The meeting was split as to whether it was a good idea to have the CPZ changed or not. Overall, people felt it had worked and felt that businesses such as builders etc were able to buy their own permits through the online system and pass on the costs to the customer, so changing the parking scheme just for that reason did not make sense. Others said that they knew of other areas that had shorter periods and it seemed to work there. Charles said that it was particularly onerous on people attending the church during the CPZ times, and no option for assisting the church was available. |
| Parking Permits Problems obtaining parking permits using the website (only means now as no paper permits) reported at the meeting and on the local WhatsApp group including by people who felt technically savvy. Concern about people who have no online access. | 1. Could the parking permit/council website be improved and tested for usability? 2. Could paper permits be available again? 3. Why is proof of id so complicated and difficult when the council has so much info about us? |
| Bike Hangars Long waiting list for a space in the (4 local) bike hangars – Many cyclists – Healthy way to travel encouraged by council and government – Hangars ‘seem’ underused’/to have spaces | – Ask council/hangar providers to do a survey as to how many spaces were actually being used within each bike hanger on a regular basis – Apply for more bike hangars. There was some dissent in the meeting about this as a bike hangar took up parking space. However not all spaces were OK for car parking has the council checked whether there are areas that could be useful for a bike hangar that would not take up a parking space? -Could the company that manages the bike hangars could do an audit? If they only contact the users once per year to ask if they would like to renew, the hanger may be underutilised. Cllr Barbara Blake raised this issue and here is the response: Your enquiry about Bike Hangars Reference LBH/12674522 Thank you for your enquiry. We are committed to improving the condition for cyclists to encourage the uptake of this sustainable transport mode and acknowledge that secure cycle parking is essential for our residents. I can confirm that the council has received 9 requests for cycle hangars to be installed in Vartry Road, these have been logged and are in our waiting list. We have received over 2000 requests for cycle hangars to be installed within the borough, some applicants have been on our waiting list from as early as 2018. Unfortunately, as our funding is limited there is more demand for cycle hangars than we can supply. We therefore priorities requests and select the sites using the following criteria:- • The date a request is received • The level of demand in an area • Equitable distribution throughout the wards in Haringey Based on the above criteria, a point scoring system has been set-up which provides officers with a priority list. For our 2022/23 Cycle Parking works programme, funding has been secured to install additional 38 cycle hangars across the borough. We now have a priority list of 40 locations, from the list of requests we have received, which we will be taking forward for investigation. To help us install more cycle hangars in the borough and to meet the demand, we will also be exploring the possibility to install more cycle hangers as part of other Parking and Traffic safety schemes, like Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTNs) and Controlled Parking Zone projects. |
| Disabled Parking Dedicated ‘disabled’ parking spots that had been put in place for a particular resident. On at least one spot on Vartry Road, that resident had not lived there for years, yet the spot remained unusable | – Remove disabled parking spot where disabled resident had moved |
| Street Cleaning Street cleaning literally just before a waste collection is a waste of resources. The street needs cleaning after the lorries had gone as there is a river of litter following them. We then had to wait surrounded by litter till the next street cleaning a week later. Also, Veolia needed to be more careful ensuring the litter went into the lorries and not the street. | – Please confirm street cleaning can be done after waste collection |
| Dumpers at Railway End of Vartry Road An attempt had been made to solve what had been a serious problem at the bottom of Vartry Road, the junction with Holmdale Terrace. The Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMO) had had insufficient number of bins, even though there had been bins lining that part of the pavement making it inaccessible for pedestrians. Because there were insufficient numbers, these bins had constantly overflowed. Now, two large receptacles had been put in place instead, one for waste one for recycling. This decreased by a significant amount the amount of space available for rubbish, which had already been inadequate. Now around those two receptacles there was constant rubbish including food and nappies. The outcome of the solution is possibly worse than the problem it tried to address. Additionally, waste gets trapped at the bottom of the receptacles, which is unhygienic and unsightly. | – Invite Veolia to next residents meeting Cllr Barbara Blake raised this issue and here is the response: Your enquiry about Community bins at Holmdale Terrace N15 Bins are often full, overflowing and area dirty. Reference LBH/12670122 Thank you for your enquiry. I am sorry that the resident feels the services for waste are insufficient. Following your enquiry, I have spoken to Veolia and can confirm the following: In April 2022 all the wheelie bins that remained on the footpath were removed inline with the Council’s policy and two MetroStore units were installed to house 1x1100l refuse bin and 1x1100l recycling bins for 20 -25 flats on this stretch of the road. The bins are collected daily which is more than enough capacity for this amount of flats We have to date received no other complaints about the bins The bins have been emptied following this complaint Veolia have confirmed there is a nearby trader who is dumping commercial waste in these bins which is leading to capacity issues. Subsequently our commercial and enforcement team will be visiting nearby premises to check contracts are in place and monitor/enforce for fly tipping offences |
| Bins Left Out on Pavement Bins being left by residents on pavements, cutting down the space for walking on the pavement. Some homes have no front gardens so cannot be criticised, but those who do should put their bins out the night before collection, and take them in after. It is unpleasant for people to have to brush or push past bins, and some people struggle to get by these restricted areas with buggies and children and shopping. | Haringey Council asks: – Put bins out before collections start at 6am unless you have a timed collection – Put bins close to the edge of the property but not on the highway. – Take bins back in as soon as possible. – Shut bin lids and tie up sacks. https://www.haringey.gov.uk/environment-and-waste/refuse-and-recycling/bin-collections/how-put-your-bins-out |
| Anti-Social Behaviour Concerns were expressed with the ongoing problems of groups of people meeting in Manchester Gardens to drink, day and evening, and now the gardens are not being locked up, concerns about ant-social behaviour and drug dealing at night. | PC Mahomed said that ASBOs were being given out where complaints were made. Charles replied that this could not be a solution, that the problem was that there were vulnerable and needy people who needed somewhere to go to be able to socialise and they had few options. |
| Traffic and speeding Vartry Rd was used as a rat run to avoid Amhurst Park Rd traffic and lights. Cars sped down and it was both dangerous and disruptive, especially when they banged on speed bumps. Motorbikes screeched down the road in the early hours of the morning. | It was agreed to put this item for a fuller discussion at the next meeting and to invite council officers responsible for road traffic calming measures. This area could be explored as a Low Traffic Area. Cllr Barbara Blake raised this issue. Here is the response: Your enquiry about Speeding traffic on Vartry Road Reference LBH/12670522 Thank you for your enquiry dated 26th June 2022. Summary of enquiry and outcome sought Residents concerned about an increase in vehicle speeds and that Vartry Road is not meant to be a through road. They are concerned that the road will become dangerous. You have asked if this could be investigated. Our finding For information, Vartry Road is a residential street linking Holmdale Terrace and Seven Sisters Road. It is part of a 20mph zone and benefits from a number of traffic calming measures including raised junction tables, to help reduce traffic speeds. I can however assure you that Haringey regards road safety, particularly pedestrian safety as a high priority and actively promotes road safety measures across the borough to reduce vehicle speeds, the number of road traffic accidents and to enhance the environment for all road users. Therefore, the viability of introducing additional traffic calming in Vartry Road to improve road safety, will be explored and considered for inclusion in future works programmes. For information, as we have been receiving a number of requests for speed reducing measures and measures to address traffic collisions (accidents) or danger hot spots, we undertook a boroughwide study looking at collisions over the last few years and together with local information on areas of concerns, we have arrived at a priority list of locations where we need to focus our funding on first. This will help provide the evidence on where we are spending our budgets and identify areas that we need to seek additional funding to really target areas of greatest need including areas where it is vital to reduce danger even if the collision numbers are low. We have recently concluded this study and will be working on delivering the actions from the 22/23 financial year that are contained in the associated report, which can be found here. In the interim, you may wish to report dangerous, illegal, or antisocial road user behavior directly to the Police via their online reporting tool, RoadSafe London. Every report helps the Police and Transport for London (TfL) to understand where and when bad road user behavior takes place. The information and intelligence gathered via this tool is used to inform the activity of the police and partners. The tool is available online at https://www.met.police.uk/ro/report/rti/rti-a/report-a-road-traffic-incident/ |