Southwark has recently consulted and then voted upon a series of bye-laws. This includes stopping cycling on a particularly narrow part of the Thames Path (not the Sustrans cycle route but the Thames walkway).  

I now read in the South London Press that Councillor Jenny Jones is threatening to defy this cycle ban.

There is a very honourable tradition of peaceful protest and civil disobedience in the UK which I wouldn’t wish to denegrate. From the Chartists to the 1990s road protests – it plays an important part in a free society.

But Jenny Jones has already had an opportunity to make her case on this issue. As I recall it she was at the Council meeting that discussed the bye-laws but didn’t make a stand against this measure. She neither spoke against it nor recorded a vote against it.  This seems strange for someone who is so incensed about the issue now.  I wonder what the explanation is.

Today, I have written to the Leader of the Council informing him of my intention to  resign my post of Executive Member for Regeneration on 22nd February in order to take up full time employment with a public affairs and communications firm.  I have greatly enjoyed my six years on the Council’s executive. It has been incredibly rewarding but also demanding on my growing family.  It is in the interests of my three young children that I have decided to resume my career in public affairs and so will be leaving the Executive.  Improving our area through local politics remains my passion and I will continue to work as hard as I can in East Dulwich.  The Liberal Democrats have an exciting agenda to deliver the much-needed new school, a refurbished Leisure centre, better street lighting and improvements to Lordship Lane. With James Barber and Jonathan Mitchell, I am determined to deliver on this agenda.

Huge congratulations to Anood on winnning the riverside by-election up in  the Bermondsey ward of Riverside.  She didn’t just win either but achieved a swing towards the Liberal Democrats. Usually, you’d expect a swing away from the party defending the seat as the opposition exploit a chance to campaign they might not normally have.

Right from the start of the campaign, Labour were bullish about the election and the Labour leader said the election would be fought on the council’s regeneration  policies. Bermondsey Spa is a key regeneration programme in the ward where hundreds of new affordable homes are being built – a key part of Anood’s appeal to the electorate.   Many new homes have been completed but there is still much work on going which brings disruption to everyday life.  To receive this endorsement during the process of change is a real boost.

The other area of policy disagreement was on the issue of how we spend planning gain – or section 106 – money. This is money given to the council by developers to lessen the impact of new developments and to ensure that in areas of growth we can provide the facilities that make for a sustainable community – like youth centres, or health facilities for example.

The Labour leader has argued that this money should be directed to areas that do not have such large developments.

 We argue that it is absolutely right that this money should be focused on small local projects providing the infrastructure required to support our growing communities and relieving pressure where that pressure exists – be it in Bermondsey, Walworth or Camberwell.  To suggest that money given in respect of a development in one area should be spent instead on unrelated projects somewhere else would be both unfair and illegal.

So the Labour leader has been caught out.  He invented an illegal policy of ‘redistributing’ money gained through section 106 from big development to fund his pet projects in his own patch in Camberwell. Back then, he was desperately trying to shore up support in his own backyard. The Riverside  by-election result shows that Labour’s idea of transferring this money out of the areas affected by development was deeply unpopular. 

I am pleased that they were not able to get away with saying contradictory things to different people in different parts of the borough.