William Gardens: squatters out

Like many local residents, I've been appalled to witness how William Gardens, just behind St Margaret's Church in West Putney, has been taken over by squatters in recent weeks.

I cannot believe that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) - who own the estate and who have been decanting families from the blocks in order to renovate and make them fit for housing Servicemen and women and their families - did not imagine that leaving a derelict estate unsecured would not be a massively tempting target for squatters.

My anger with the MoD is that the legal action they will now have to pursue to reclaim William Gardens will delay the start date for the much needed renovations and therefore the date by which soldiers will be able to take up residence. And the costs of such action will, in all likelihood, far exceed the costs of some secure fencing, barbed wire and a few padlocks.

And equally, while some among those now squatting in William Gardens may or may not have some other recourse to avoid sleeping rough, I find it hard to believe that they are more deserving of space in this development than those who have fought - and in some cases been badly injured - in service to their country.

It has taken the MoD far too long to decant families from William Gardens - the last family left in July but the process has taken almost two years. While families need to be moved to suitable equivalent homes and be supported during the moving process, there is little more soul-destroying than being left behind as your neighbours and friends are moved out and you're left in an isolated estate on your own.



When the MoD decided to renovate William Gardens they should have decanted residents quickly; they should have had a schedule of works ready to commence as soon as the last family left and if that was unachievable they should have secured the site effectively until they were able to start works.

More website improvements

My team has continued to upgrade and overhaul this website. As I mentioned when we launched the improvements last month, it was always going to take a little time to get everything working smoothly as there are hundreds of pages here that need improving.

Today, however, I can announce that the news section is now fully operational: if you hold your mouse over the Issues button you'll see some new drop-down options including a new compilation of my stories on the Conservatives' overdevelopment of Putney.

There is also a new Armed Services archive.

And the menu bar is now visible on every single story in the news section.

The final major stage of the overhaul relates to the campaign section: the main page of this section has been brought into the new corporate look of the site but there remain some pages that still need to be improved. They'll be fixed in the coming days, so again, please bear with us as we make those changes.

Tories press on with Danebury development with just 21 supporters

The Conservative Council - in one of the biggest blunders I think it has made for a long time - is trying to steamroller through plans to redevelop the top end of Danebury Avenue despite the most risible response to their so-called consultation.

In a report being discussed by councillors tonight, they will admit that out of 10,000 newsletters they claim to have delivered to the local area inviting residents to visit an exhibition at Roehampton Library held at the very end of July, just 35 bothered to respond.

Of these, a measly 21 (that's 0.2% of the voters of Roehampton) were in favour, but from the Alton estate itself, only 12 supported the Conservatives' plans. I can't help but pose this question: if the plans aren't supported by the Alton estate, what or who exactly is the Council doing this for?

I've been appalled at the way the Tory Council has handled this matter. I outlined my concerns here.

Now, the Conservatives have taken the very first opportunity after the Summer to steamroller their untested and unsupported plans through the Council. What's the rush? Why the hurry? What are they so afraid of?

Because residents weren't properly consulted by the Council, I've been surveying residents myself. I'm sending out over 3,000 surveys to Roehampton - surveys that set out the Council's plans impartially, then state my views, and then ask local people what they think. And the replies I'm getting - already, far more responses than those the council can cite - are completely at odds with the figures the Conservatives are claiming.

For example, just as the original council consultation found, an overwhelming majority is against building on the green. People want more affordable homes, not less. They want more family homes - under the new Tory plans, not a single three-bedroom council flat for rent will be built. And people are divided on whether or not a supermarket is a good idea, but they're strongly against the traffic access for it being in Danebury Avenue - a residential area that should be the focal point of the community, not a motorway for huge articulated lorries bringing stock to the supermarket and hundreds of customers in their cars every day. And we haven't even touched on the tiny amount of space allotted to community groups, the height of the buildings proposed and the needlessness of building a new library when people love the library they have.

I'll write more about the results I'm getting as surveys come in over the coming days - and once people have had a reasonable amount of time to reply, I'll share the results with the council.

But my message to Conservative councillors before tonight's meeting is this: put aside your partisan desire to railroad plans just because we have a difference of opinion. Think about the consequence of your action. Bear in mind the ridiculously low response you've elicited. Listen to the views of residents - they DO NOT support your new plan. And if you have any question at all that I may have a point all I'm asking is that you hold off a decision until you have all the evidence at your disposal. There's no need to bounce Roehampton into a multi-million pound development. This isn't how Wandsworth got it's reputation for financial prudence.

Defer the decision tonight.

Thanks for voting!

A few weeks ago, I asked you to consider voting for this blog in the Total Politics magazine ranking of political websites.

Clearly lots of you did, because the new list has just been published and we've gone in at N0.91. And among Labour blogs, we're the 15th most popular in the country.

Thank you so much if you took the trouble to register your vote for this site - I really appreciate it. It's important to get the balance between especially local stories which will only interest Putney residents and wider policy stories which have attracted national interest on occasion right and I'll continue to work on that over the coming year.

You can view the top 100 blog listing here on Iain Dale's site.

Housing help with Labour: a good first step

As someone who has made housing my No.1 priority I am delighted with the measures announced yesterday by the Labour Government.

They're a good first step with several more needed. I'm really pleased they build on several of the points in my housing action plan that I presented to Housing Minister Caroline Flint MP at the House of Commons earlier this year.

The level at which Stamp Duty becomes payable has been raised to £175,000. That's not enough to apply to that many homes in Putney and I've said the minimum level it should start at should be £250,000 in high price areas like London. But there are lots of homes in our area that do cost less than £175,000 and this will make things a little easier for those first-time buyers.

Next, the Government, working with major housing developers will provide loans of up to 30% of the value of a property, which don't need to be repaid for five years. This is a variant of the HomeBuy scheme I've been calling for - under my plan the loan would only be repaid when the property is sold but this is a fine alternative.

Third, Councils like Wandsworth will now have the ability to pay off someone's mortgage debt and in return set an affordable rent instead. This is a massive test for the Conservative Council which has more than halved the number of affordable homes for rent in Wandsworth - something that has massively worsened our local housing crisis. I very much doubt the Tories will suddenly u-turn and step in to help those under threat of losing their homes - but they should.

And finally the restrictions on councils being able to build new affordable homes have been lifted. There is now no excuse for the Conservatives to start repairing the damage they have done to affordable housing in Wandsworth.

In contrast, we learnt today that the completely unchanged Tories plan to spare the very richest Inheritance Tax - which will now apply to homes worth £2 million or less.

This is one of the key choices you will face at the next election: help for hard-pressed workers with Labour or tax breaks for the very richest under the Tories. Days like today, and choices like this are what make me Labour and proud of it.

Tell me your housing priorities with my local housing survey.

What is it with Putney Bridge?

A few weeks ago I highlighted the appalling state of Putney Bridge; in particular the bus lane, which had simply disintegrated. Wandsworth Council - who are responsible for Putney Bridge - got onto that one a good deal faster than they've dealt with some of the other potholes around the constituency - and the bridge was resurfaced.

But whether they used the wrong sort of tarmac, or there's some underlying erosion within the bridge, or their contractors aren't up to the job, there are already potholes in the new road surface, exacerbated by today's heavy rainfall.

Yes, a bus lane carries heavier vehicles than the rest of the bridge generally - but equally it is a far less used lane. There is no reasonable reason why newly-laid tarmac should last just a couple of months before needing to be repaired.

Saving local gardens

An issue I predict will become massive in the coming years is the loss of green space in urban environments like Putney's. In the past 20 years, two thirds of front gardens in London have been paved-over. Just think about that stark statistic for a moment.

Throughout the constituency, concern has been growing about the loss of front and rear gardens due to three factors:

• Turning front gardens into hard standings to park cars on
• Excavating basements, which also involves the loss of a large chunk of front and/or rear gardens
• The more recent phenomenon of residents with large gardens selling off chunks to build new homes on

Pressure from all three of these factors is certain to grow as the credit crunch reduces the likelihood of people to be able to move home, and financial pressures encourage us all to look at new ways of utilising our assets to make more money.

This isn't exactly a new issue: residents on the Dover House Estate in particular have been concerned about the loss of front gardens for several years now and basement excavations have been increasingly common throughout the past decade.

You may have seen London Mayor Boris Johnson recently discover the wonder of roof-top gardens, as if they're something he's invented. They're important; and they'll become more so, but they're no compensation for that two-thirds loss of front garden green space.

But what does this really matter? There's actually a really serious consequence to this loss of garden space - and not just some aesthetic impact that cutting down a few trees and bushes and concreting over some lawns will have.

Over the past three or four years, parts of the constituency - including Roehampton, the parts of Southfields alongside the Wandle and parts of central Putney - have all been affected by flash flooding caused by sudden very heavy downpours that the drain system locally can't cope with. Gardens help drain this water away. Without them, the impact of flash flooding worsens - and bear in mind that ours is an area liable to flooding from the Thames, Wandle and even Beverley Brook. And because ours is a hilly area, those who live at the foot of hills have to absorb the cascading water pouring down upon them as well as their own share of heavy rainfall.

People have a right to expand their living space within reason. But I am against allowing front gardens to be turned into car parks and back or side gardens to be sold off to cram another unit of housing into our already densely populated community, however much a nice little earner that may be for the landowner.

This month's crime stats

I'm not publishing crime statistics for July because, to be frank, I don't trust the figures. According to the Met Police, the figures in four of Putney's six wards are exactly the same as they were in June, and in Southfields and West Hill the figures have declined - in exactly the same areas - by 0.2 points. The London and Wandsworth-wide figures are identical to June's as well, so either we've all been in suspended animation for the past month or someone's uploaded the wrong figures.

My Southfields survey

I grew up around Southfields - I lived just the other side of the Wandle; my first summer job was in the Arndale where my mum worked for over 30 years; I won my first school football medal in King George's Park.

Southfields will be one of the first parts of London to benefit directly from the 2012 Olympics. Plans are in the advanced design stage to add a passenger lift, ticket hall and generally upgrade the tube station ready for Olympic tennis at the All England Club. A fully accessible station will benefit Southfields far beyond 2012 and I know how long the area has waited for this work.

But there remain challenges. I'm really concerned about plans for massive overdevelopment in the Southfields ward. A new tower block above King George's Park is nearly finished. Skyscrapers of up to 42 storeys are planned for the Ram Brewery. Hardwick's Way and the 16-floor Cockpen House plan in Buckhold Road will add hundreds of people to the area. These plans threaten the area's character and set a precedent for future overdevelopment.

Southfields can be even better. Are there ways we can improve road safety throughout the grid? Find a way to prevent overdevelopment and the loss of garden space while enabling families to expand their homes? Crime is low, but where do you think improvements can be made?

Tell me what you think. My new Southfields survey is live - click here to tell me about your concerns and priorities for Southfields.

All the fun of the festival

Yesterday, as I mentioned earlier, I visited the Roehampton Festival organised by local charity Regenerate.

The weather held - in fact it was really pleasant day - and that brought hundreds of people to the green at the bottom of Danebury Avenue to enjoy the music, the stalls, the food and drink, the kids activities and each others' company.

The festival is just right for the estate, not too crowded, not too much going on; not lasting too long: and it's great that Roehampton has such an event - something other parts of the constituency could well emulate. In fact it reminded my election agent - whose father used to help organise it - of the Fulham Carnival that used to take place in Bishops Park, preceded by a long procession of floats from Sands End.

That Carnival did what the Roehampton Festival does: bring together a community and create a great day out for the family. I hope the Festival goes from strength to strength.

Why does Putney have so few Open Houses?

Open House weekend, the annual opportunity to get inside some of our most historic or intriguing buildings and landmarks comes around again on 20th and 21st of September.

But as I commented last year, there is just one Open House building in Putney: Brandlehow School extension.

Surely a place with the history and heritage of Putney can do better than this? There are all sorts of innovative buildings from throughout the ages and while there may be some practical issues to overcome in enabling the public into them, could I suggest:

• Elliott School: of it's time a cutting edge design which, from on the top of Putney Hill and from its sixth floor offering fantastic panoramic views of London
• An architectural tour of the Alton Estate: regardless of your personal views on the estate there's a reason it has been listed - not least of which it's le Corbussier inspired design. It's time we started talking up, not running-down the Alton.
• Roehampton House, formerly part of the Queen Mary's Hospital complex, soon about to be reopened as apartments - and while we're at it, why not a tour of the rebuilt Queen Mary's?
• The Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability in West Hill: the grandest building in Putney
• Sir Edwin Saunders' house on Wimbledon Parkside - another grand building, home to Queen Victoria's Dentist, currently being refurbished
• Some of the Roehampton University buildings - Mount Clare and Parkstead House amongst them but also the new halls of residence they've built in Holybourne Avenue
• The Lawn Tennis Association National Tennis Academy in Priory Lane - one of our newest buildings

We also have several historic and more modern churches and schools, rowing clubs and much, much more that, with a little imagination and leadership could put Putney on the Open House map.

But therein lies the reason why Putney is putting forward just one Open House venue: local leadership, or the lack thereof from our Conservative Member of Parliament and Conservative-run council. In fact there are just 15 Open House venues in the whole of Wandsworth borough. Even a tiny borough like Islington, at least five times smaller than Wandsworth geographically, has come up with 26.

You can find out more about this year's Open House events at http://www.openhouse.org.uk/

Roehampton Festival

Tomorrow, Saturday, I'll be attending the Roehampton Festival. The festival, organised each year by local grassroots charity Regenerate takes place on the green at the bottom end of Danebury Avenue, where the 170 and 430 buses terminate (not the green the Tory Council wants to concrete over...yet). It runs from 12 noon to 8pm.

You can find out more about the event here, but there will be music, stuff for kids and families, stalls and more serious stuff like a sexual health clinic - and an opportunity for local teenagers to get involved in Regenerate.

Conservative Club - going to the dogs?

I reported a couple of months ago about the drugs shame of Roehampton's Conservative Club which was shut down and boarded up following Police raids because narcotics were being dealt from the premises.

Since then, the "nightmare in Treville Street" as it's been dubbed because of its resemblance to Freddy Krueger's house in the horror films has been empty - a blight on Roehampton Village.

However, word on the grapevine is that negotiations are under way to sell the property to a veterinary surgeon looking to expand. A bigger vets surgery for Roehampton would be a benefit to the area so I wish the negotiations well. Getting the Conservatives out of Roehampton once and for all is just an added bonus.

Putney Place plans now out for consultation

The owners of Putney Place, the site opposite East Putney tube where they want to build two massive tower blocks, have at last submitted all the documentation to enable Council officers to begin deciding whether to recommend that councillors grant planning permission.

This includes a 52-page "planning statement" which is produced by contractors of the applicants rather than an independent and impartial agent, but which is supposed to represent an objective assessment of the impact the development will have on the area and a justification or mitigation for that impact.

The EIA is a detailed document and I haven't yet had the time to plough through it, but the basic application is as follows:

• Two blocks: one 26 storeys (84 metres high) and one of 21 storeys (67.5 metres high)
• 300 residential units, approximately a third of which will be what the developers call "affordable" housing
• 3,439 square metres of office space
• 114 square metres of retail space
• 443 square metres of restaurant, retail or office space
• 84 square metres of space for a cafe
• 2,862 square metres of what they call "public amenity space"
• and "New public art"

You can find all the relevant documents about this application - the reference number for which is 2008/3321 here

Our new-look website

by Stuart's campaign team

While Stuart's on holiday, we've been overhauling his website. Not every new feature is functioning yet but here's a brief guide to the changes we've made.

The first thing you'll notice is that the site's bigger on the screen. We're using the industry standard of a 1,000 pixel width compared to the old site's 900 width. This means we can fit more in, and also space the site out better. Apologies to anyone who is using a screen resolution of less than 1,000. We're also using light background colours which also help make the site feel more spacious.

The next important upgrade is to the menu bar - you'll see that we've added drop-down menu items as you move the mouse over each of the main menu options. From now on you should be able to get to every aspect of the website from the front page - or from any page using this new look menu bar.

In respect of our news section, the wide-screen format has enabled us to use larger images and make posts appear shorter.

And we've also made the map on the constituency page larger - remember that you can zoom in or out, or move the map around as you like using the navigation tools on that page.

We've a lot of new features: the issues menu option will help you find Stuart's views on key matters of local and national interest and by the end of the month you'll be able to access Stuart's photo gallery, a diary of local events and links to local, regional and national sites of relevance.

Please bear with us as we change the site over - there will be some pages that don't necessarily work immediately, and some that may still have the old design but we're on it!

Putney's Grand Designs

Last week I asked you to identify this local building and said I'd reveal its identity shortly.



Well, that time has arrived!

This is a roman-esque out-house right on the edge of Richmond Park behind Minstead Gardens in Roehampton. It lies right behind the residents' club, in a small patch of fenced-off abandoned land. In fact it's really easy to miss it entirely!

It's a shame that such buildings - remnants of Roehampton before the Alton Estate was built - are neglected and not made features to treasure. A few days ago I wrote about the possibility of building some new hidden homes in Minstead Gardens - land adjacent to this small villa. It would take a little imagination and a bold architect, but this building could also be turned into a home; or for some other community use.

Ten years of the minimum wage

One of the most significant things Labour has done since 1997 was to introduce a national minimum wage. We've now had a statutory minimum wage for a decade, and it's one of those policies that's become so accepted that it's now hard to remember what life was like before Labour introduced it.

So let's travel back in time 10 years. In 1998, when the Conservatives were aggressively opposing the introduction of the minimum wage; claiming it would lead to a million workers being sacked (this from the party that drove unemployment up to almost 4 million, incidentally), employees were earning as little as £1.20 an hour (1.38 in today's prices). That's little more than £55 a week.

Today, the minimum wage guarantees an income of at least £220 a week - and that's for all employees: agency, short-term contract, casual and part-time staff included.

But we're not resting on our laurels because there's more work to eb done on fair pay. One of the things I think we got wrong when we introduced the NMR was setting a differntiated, lower rate for the under-21s. To me, an equal amount of work deserves a similar amount of pay, regardless of the age or gender of the worker. So I'm pleased that as a result of the Labour Party Policy Forum held in Warwick last week, we've moved towards correcting this.

And, just as important, we're about to act to close the loophole that allows companies like Starbucks to discount an employee's tips from their pay - driving their basic pay below the minimum wage. This too is wrong - tips are the equivalent of performance related pay and should not be used as a sneaky way for greedy company executives to pay their frontline staff less.

This is another reason why we need a Labour Government. The Tories voted against the minimum wage. They tried to scare people that it would cost jobs. They were wrong. There's no reason to imagine their judgement is any better a decade later.

You can find out more about Labour's National Minimum Wage here.

July visits - (just) up again

Despite the start of the holiday season, visits to stuartking.net increased in July for the tenth consecutive month.

We had 3,630 unique visitors compared to 3,579 in June, who returned 7,508 times (7,384 in June), and viewed 21,874 pages. 469 unique visitors alone turned up to follow my reporting of the stabbing on Putney Heath at the start of the month.

More recently, my views on green taxes drew - and continue to draw - interest, not least because they were picked up nationally by Tory blogger Iain Dale, who rather desperately tried to portray them as support for Conservative Party policy (a nice try but to do that the Tories would actually have to have some coherent policies!); and the Adam Smith Institute.

I'm off on holiday shortly so forgive me for not posting for a couple of weeks; but in the meantime you'll have a new look website to play around with in a few days' time as the changes I wrote about a few weeks ago are nearly complete.

And, if you haven't yet voted for my website in the Total Politics Guide to Political Blogging, there are still a few days before nominations close and I'd really appreciate your support. Click here for more on that.

Veterans' Badges: do you know someone who hasn't claimed theirs?

This is a photo of me with Alex and Queenie Green, who live in Glenthorpe in Putney Park Avenue. Alex and Queenie have been married for 61 years, although the reason I visited them recently was not to mark that considerable achievement but because both of them served in the armed forces during the Second World War and neither had yet claimed their Veterans' Badge.

Alex and Queenie are lifelong Wandsworth residents: they spent most of their lives in Battersea before moving to Skeena Hill in Southfields and then to Glenthorpe.

They contacted me after receiving the recent edition of my special newsletter for senior citizens, The Putney Pensioner, which mentioned my campaign to encourage everyone eligible to claim their Veterans' Badge to do so. I was more than happy to drop application forms round to them and hear some of their tales of service life.

If you or a relative served in the armed forces, including service on the home front, I hope you'll take the time to download a veterans' badge application form - it's pleasingly short and straightforward - or contact me and I'll happily send you one.

Follow Boris - axe BrightSide

One of the things many of us did welcome in Boris Johnson's first few weeks as Mayor was his axing of "The Londoner" newspaper and using the proceeds on more useful things.

I think it's time Wandsworth Conservatives learnt from that and chopped their dreadful "BrightSide" publication.

BrightSide has long trod a dodgy line politically: a one-sided promotion of the Conservative administration in Wandsworth paid for by taxpayers. If the Conservatives want to tell us how wonderful they think they are, so be it - but they should fund that from their own pockets, not ours.

In recent months BrightSide's stopped even printing stories that could, under the most generous interpretation be considered "news": they seem to be publishing it just for the sake of publishing it. It contains very little information of any use to anyone - pretty much its only purpose is to get photos of Conservative Councillors into print. It wastes huge amounts of glossy paper. And it's just another piece of junk mail flying through the door...straight into the recycling bin. In fact, possibly the biggest contribution BrightSide makes is to boost Wandsworth's recycling rate.

Council Leader Edward Lister is now working with Boris Johnson on his so-called "waste audit". He could demonstrate that he's serious by copying his boss and scrapping BrightSide.