Herne Hill Forum AGM & Public Meeting
Herne Hill Baptist Church
22 February 2017
Chair’s report
Giles current chair of the Forum gave a review of activities undertaken by the Forum over the past 12 months
The story so far:
Some wins.
1. Waste Collective
We have kick started the Waste Collective for Herne Hill – driven by everyone’s disgust at how bad the local streets were looking and how annoying the huge metal wheelie bins were scattered around the area. It is now self0financing and has got rid of a whole range of unsightly street bins.
2. Derelict Railton Road shops
We have finally got Lambeth to enforce a section 215 notice. This will require the landlord to carry out repairs and improvements. We are still negotiating with them about getting the premises back in to commercial use.
3. Piano crowdfunder
We did an amazing crowd funder for the piano, raised the funds in record time.
4. Piano Academy crowdfunder
We followed it up with a crowd funder for the music academy – aimed at children ion the wider neighbourhood who would not normally get the opportunity of piano lessons.
5. Piano Party
The followed up with a party for the piano, local musicians, mayoral candidates and general fun.
6. Brockwell Passage
Mural organised by Victor and done by St Judes’ school – over 200 children took part. Lighting and seat changes the ambience around the area. Drastic reduction in use as a public urinal. People sitting there and having lunch.
Done with a few thousand in budget compared to the £120K that Lambeth were going to spend and abandoned after spending £20k on legal fees.
7. Green up clean up
Various green up and clean up the square events. Including hosting Network Rail and Southeastern away day for their management. Building tree pit protection, decorating our free library that we recently installed in the station waiting room.
8. Turney School
Started working with Turney school to get the children there to look after the planters and tree pits in the centre of Herne Hill.
9. Bundle of Joy with Hubbub
We did a hugely successful project with Hubbub – the Bundle of Joy. Swapping outgrown children’s clothes between families. It promoted the circular economy and built bridges between different social groups.
10. Halloween Party
Halloween event in the square – nearly managing to top 900 people during the evening. Free to be involved, fun and all inclusive across diverse local communities.
11. Neighbourhood Plan
Work on neighbourhood plan – mainly on researching the boundary.
12. History Hear
History Hear – on-going – get an update on this project later.
13. Network Rail & station underpass
On-going liaison with Network Rail about developing the station underpass. Bringing in section 106 funds to leverage more funds from Network Rail to transform the underpass that is the most used pedestrian area in Herne Hill.
14. Network Rail hoardings with 198 Gallery
Working with the 198 Gallery to do an art piece on the Network Rail hoardings in front of the shops being redeveloped.
15. Thames Water compensation fund
Thames Water compensation fund – pictures in underpass, business development, street architecture (more later) and more in the pipeline.
16. Trader liaison
Providing a liaison between traders to encourage cooperative working to promote Station Square and Herne Hill.
17. Herne Hill website & social media
Developing the Herne Hill web site – more changes soon. Providing the social media promotion – Twitter across all our accounts now well over 10,000, newsletter circulation now around 7,500, web site gets a regular 200-500 visitors a day.
18. Funding proposals & Council liaison
Endless background work in bid writing, dealing with Lambeth and Southwark councils (expensive and slow), attending conferences and seminars, being part of Southwarks business initiative network
19. Volunteers, Committee and team
We have built a really strong local team – Lucy, Tricia, Charlotte, Keziah and an expanding number of skilled and enthusiastic volunteers and the best committee ever.
However….
You will hear next up our financial position for the year end 2015/16. On the whole OK.
Things are not that way any more. Why?
Lets take you back a few years.
Many volunteers worked very hard to build a centre for Herne Hill, somewhere for events, for people, music, film, markets, somewhere to sit and chill. Draw people in to the area to create a sustainable local economy.
We managed to get at least most of the through traffic stopped in Railton Road and what we now call Station Square was created.
Not a great design, more car park than people place but despite the poor design we started to put some life into it, to turn it from a space into a place.
Ideas that we had to make it work:
· We trialled a free film in the square – from which the amazing HH Free Film festival was born, run by a host of locals,
· We put on events in the space to encourage different use.
· We took over the management of the tables and chairs licences for the traders as well as the shop front licences.
o It encouraged traders to do more in the space, flexible approach to how it would work.
· We installed the Piano – now with a new one and a piano academy.
· We greened up the square, planters and decorations.
· We researched, liaised, lobbied, planned and launched the Sunday market. It was planned to be a key component of the local area and to provide a recurring revenue surplus that would get re-invested in the area, no strain on the local authorities, not needing to apply for grants and to be the base for future projects and enterprises.
o We had various contractors providing services to the area in general and the market in particular – marketing, social media, events, and we chose CCFM to provide the stalls, additional expertise and deal with the logistics of collecting the stall holders rents.
The surplus funds from the market have paid for a wide range of activities and improvements to the area:
· The 68 street lamp banners around Herne Hill – the majority was paid for from market funds.
· The Brockwell Passage mural and lighting
· Our Town Centre Champion and events manager – much of their time was paid for by market funds and directly resulted in getting the Thames Water community grant of £300,000.
· The Christmas Fairs were subsidised by Market funds
· The Halloween parties for 900 children – market funds
· Liaison with Network Rail about station development – market funds
· Network Rail away day for their management to get them to clean up the immediate area round the station – market funds.
· Anti-pigeon spikes installed in the underpass – market funds.
· Poster frames and signs in the underpass – market funds.
· The waste collective has needed over £3,000 of investment to get it up and running – market funds.
· Storage of and provision of marquees and gazebos, lighting, tables, chairs for local events such as street parties, Fun Palace and other events – market funds.
· Piano party – market funds
· Planting in and around Station Square – market funds
· The ballot bin cigarette butt container – market funds
The first year of the market was OK.
However after the first year it was apparent that CCFM were changing things.
We had problems with getting them to keep the square clean, a lack of litter picking and tidying. The pavements were blocked and local residents had stalls blocking their gates. The parking plan wasn’t being enforced and they were not managing the collection and checking of stallholder licences and insurance details. They then started to change the publicity copy for the market, removing the community market logo and details and replacing it with CCFM logo. It was obvious that they did not want the market to be a community led and managed one but to be a standard CCFM market.
We raised this on numerous occasions with them to no avail.
In 2015 Lambeth had instigated a system of evaluations for all the market operators. We had to complete an assessment; not a cheap process but we had no choice. They scored us way above average but failed to indicate how their scoring system actually worked, hard to improve when they don’t tell you their marking criteria.
Lambeth promised to issue the licence, as per previous years, a routine process but they failed to send it through.
It then transpired that CCFM had gone behind our backs direct to Lambeth, complained that we were making it tough for them and threatened legal action against Lambeth if they didn’t issue the licence directly to CCFM.
The Lambeth officer in charge did state very clearly that he thought CCFM were “trying to pull a fast one”.
However, our Lambeth Herne Hill ward councillors decided, for some strange reason to pull the plug on the community led and managed market and hand the licence direct to CCFM, cutting out the community that had done all the hard work over the previous years to make the market happen in the first place.
Lambeth then, without any forewarning took back all licencing of the shop fronts and tables and chairs for Station Square. The first we knew of it was when traders showed us a letter from Lambeth stating what they had done. Lambeth then, again without warning, debited our account for a backdated change of the licence. To this day they have been unable to explain how they calculated the amount, they just went in to our bank account and helped themselves.
In one simple decision by the councillors and officers they undid years of hard work by dozens of volunteers. They removed the income that the local community was getting from the market, ironically they also reduced their own income from the tables and chairs licences as their system was far more restrictive and so the take-up was far lower. The market income now remains with CCFM, not the local community.
Since November 2015 CCFM have doubled the number of hot food stalls, we had restricted the number to give a better balance between the stallholders and Herne Hill traders. CCFM charge £75 per hot food stall compared to around £35 for a standard stall.
We now get rubbish bags dumped in the square after the market has gone, before we had a zero waste policy, every stall holder removed their own rubbish to leave the place cleaner than when they found it. There are few events, no real social space.
But hey, CCFM did pledge £500 towards the piano academy, a shame that they never got round to actually paying it.
If you want to know what other markets CCFM run – they do the Oval market which is still going but they also used to do the one in Dulwich College – closed down, Streatham, closed down after a huge investment in the infrastructure by Lambeth and they recently lost the Hammersmith market.
But we wanted our market to be far more than “just another market”.
We wanted to instigate an apprenticeship scheme for local people to get experience in various trades related to the market, from food growing to sales and marketing.
We had wanted to work with local start-ups to get them exposure to the retail environment, organisations like Tree Shepherd, working with disadvantaged young people to help them get a leg on the employment ladder.
Offering advice and expertise about food provenance, how to prepare and cook to a budget, the seasons and what to look for and when.
We wanted to expand the ideas behind the Bundle of Joy project we ran – a swap shop for children’s clothes, toys, books.
We wanted the music to be a key part of the social scene at the market in Herne Hill, new musicians, different styles, a wide range of tastes.
We wanted to extend the market over to Norwood Road to bring footfall to the traders on the Southwark side.
We wanted to get events and activities happening on the Saturday and maybe a few weekday evenings.
You may have noticed that there was no Herne Hill Christmas fair last year, no music festival in the market either.
We have lost all of this and so far the financial hit is now over £52,000 – finance that has been removed from the local area by the decision of the councillors to hand the licence to a private operator who is pocketing the balance.
It means that the finances of the local area have taken a beating. You will get a financial update from Kenton in a moment but that is just up to the end of the last financial year – end of March 2016.
So todays picture is very different.
We will not have resource to invest locally, to have the paid resources of the team working behind the scenes to make things happen, to raise additional funding, to do the heavy lifting to get projects to happen.
Few or no projects can be sustained or started, the waste collective is potentially threatened just as it is getting up and running. Ironic really as it has been independent external revenue that is helping Lambeth and Southwark do the work that they should be doing, keeping the streets clean.
The resources that the community had built up over the years through huge investment in volunteer time and effort, getting independent finance, expertise and experience has been wrecked by a decision that I still cannot decide if it was just plain incompetence or deliberate.
The community have been mugged by their own councillors
The next council elections are not until May next year.
Questions
· Who owns 200 Railton Rd shops which have been standing empty for so many years? A Two brothers from Birmingham who have fallen out and hence the lack of action to improve/use /sell these properties