Hooray for Crystal Palace!

At last they have announced the 'potential' training venues for the Olympics and thank goodness the National Sports Centre at Crystal Palace is one of them.

It's been quite difficult to find out about this over the last couple of years and my only hope of a consolation prize for our fantastic park being completely ignored as a potential events venue. Still, I reckon that out of the 96 potential training venues in London we, with 20 different sports on offer, have more variety and scope than any of the other training venues.

Now, rather like signing up to a dating (I assume ;-)) we have to wait for some attractive country to come and choose us as their training venue; I wonder what they'll be like...more to the point, how much hanging around the telephone will we have to do before we find out?

What Blair is also responsible for in the Met Police.....

Will Sir Ian Blair, survive the week?

I think not, I think that once the IPPC report comes out, unless something truly remarkable happens, then Sir Ian Blair will probably have to resign. If it wasn’t for that then I’d think he’d probably survive. But then it really rather suits the Government, the MPS and the MPA for Blair to hold on and take chop for both convictions/results – rather in the manner of a burglar asking for several other offences to be taken into account at the same time.

And, I do accept the arguments that such was the catastrophic nature of the mistakes made on July 22^nd that it is already outrageous that nobody is putting up their hand to be accountable for it. I do not accept the argument that anything that happened on the 22^nd was somehow understandable because of the extraordinary position that the Met found themselves in that morning. It is absolutely how people or organisations behave when the pressure is on that tells us if they are working.

However, if Sir Ian Blair goes then it will not be without concerns for other parts Met Police activity that he has had a considerable positive effect on. The Stockwell Shooting may have been the most catastrophic mistake but there were other pretty high profile ones and other gaffes that when taken together could have felled another police commissioner. But they didn’t; and this has to be because Sir Ian’s batting average must have been high enough for the Government to want to keep him on.

A couple of weeks ago we held the latest meeting of the Crystal Palace Safer Neighbourhood Residents Panel, where I have been the Chairperson for the last 2½
years. I love this meeting and it is always a joy as well as a welcome challenge to chair it. It is here that we get to set the priorities of our Safer Neighbourhoods Team (SNT) and woe betide them if they do not report back and take action on these priorities. I may look all nice and smiley but I can get quite scary and as for Linda, from the St Hughes Residents Association…..!!

The change I have seen in our area and the cultural change I have seen the Police and the SNTs has been amazing. And as someone who has spent their professional life attempting to plan and implement transformational change in all sorts of organisations, both large and small, private and public, I am simply amazed by what he has managed to achieve. I believe in terms of community policing, particularly in urban areas, the Met Police is the envy of many other forces.

The other week we had finally moved on from prioritising graffiti & fly tipping and there was no persistent antisocial behaviour on the St Hughes Estate; even the residents of Anerley Vale believed that things were now ‘manageable’. There are still problems, compared with the rest of Bromley Borough we are a crime hotspot, and one particularly opportunist burglar had managed to make our burglary rates peak for the year in just one morning. We have to focus on tackling drugs in the ward. But Haysleigh Gardens Neighbourhood Watch for the first time in its 8 years of existence had no crime to report at their last meeting and that is an event worth celebrating.

These are not headline grabbing achievements, they are small but important steps and I am not sure that we have had time to prove the case for community policing once and for all. How a police force reacts at times of terror is very, very important and I am not overlooking it or seeking to downplay the death of Jean Charles de Menezes. However, most of the policing that takes place in London is of a different type and on that, in my experience, Sir Ian Blair acquitted himself well. He is a talented leader of transformational change and crime in London has gone down.

Of course, the test of change is that it outlasts its instigator and we need every layer of the Met Police and the Home Office to buy into the idea that the police are there primarily to serve and protect the community and not drive around in fast cars with a blue flashing light on. What I want to be sure of is that the funding and focus that the SNTs require remain in place beyond Sir Ian’s departure. I am nervous, that if he goes, those who don’t have the patience to wait for community policing to pay its dividends, will scrap it. If they do that, then my and my fellow residents’ quality of life will be diminished.

What's our Story?

One of the things that I'm enjoying most about this leadership content is the discussion, on blogs and elsewhere, about creating a Liberal Democrat vision for Britain and how important it is for our new leader to be able to do that.

Every now and then there's a spurt of discussion on the blogosphere about what a narrative is; have we got one? If not, why not? Do we want one anyway? And, what's wrong with freedom, fairness and green..or whatever it is?

As I mentioned on Charlotte Gore's blog the other day, I'm at the point of 'concious incompetence' when it comes to understanding what a narrative is: I can recognise when something is not a narrative and in fact just a list of policies or a slogan but find it hard to define what one is.

So, when I came to trying to work out what subject to discuss at the Crystal Palace Pizza & Politics that I'm hosting in December it seemed a good idea to have a debate about what our vision might be.

In other words I want to get a whole load of people round to my house, feed them with wine and pizza and get them to provide me and my fellow activists with a pithy, vision type, answer that we can all agree on, to that doorstep question: 'Why should I vote for the Liberal Democrats?'

Neil Stockley (from the FPC and Greenwich, but we're not holding that against him, it's still south London, after all) has very kindly agreed to come and sketch out what a narrative is, what it isn't and why we might want one. And then the debate about what that narrative is can begin!

If you would like to contribute to the debate whilst being bribed with food and wine in the glorious corner of south London that is Crystal Palace (we have our very own Eiffel Tower), then please do come along.

Strangely, I wont be posting my address up on the internet but you can find out details on the Flock Together website...it's on the 15th December, the day the leadership polls close and is filed under Pizza & Politics (Crystal Palace). The details and entry fee are all there.

Crystal Palace Park: the masterplan

I went to a very interesting meeting at the Penge Forum on the LDA masterplan for Crystal Palace Park last night.

The plans for the park look really exciting – I’m particularly interested in the ‘rooms’ and tree planting at the top space (where the park is all scrubby and horrible now), the removal of the massive car park which is just a honey pot for car thieves and vandals at the moment but most of all by the Energy Towers, the glasshouses which might have a café in them and the tree top walk around my end of the park. I am intrigued by the idea of removing the fencing from the park and having it open, a la Blackheath, but only if it is adequately policed. I’m a little disappointed about the vagueness of the plans for the sports centre; the only mention of the Olympics that was made that there would be more money available afterwards and nothing about the potential for the site to be used as a training ground.

If we can get all this funded, it will be so exciting. It will make the park a local, regional and national resource. Such things as the energy towers and the tree top walkway would bring in international tourists – it could become a stop of the London mini-break trail and that would help not just the CP triangle but the economies and high streets of Penge, Anerley and Sydenham as well.

Of course, there is a possible price to pay in that a potential funding stream of £12m will mean that 1 acre of land where the current caravan club is (currently taking up about 4 acres) will have flats built on it and another three blocks of flats will be built on the site of the St John’s Ambulance building and the Rangers big ugly shed on Crystal Palace Park Road. My concern is that some of this land is technically Metropolitan Open Land and then the whole ‘thin end of the wedge’ turns into a slippery slope and before we know it there’ll be no park land at all. If I am honest, the land they are looking to build on is not parkland at the moment, is not really providing good value to Londoners and local people – I just wish it wasn’t MOL.

Frankly I won’t be sorry to see the Caravan site go – far from being any sort of resource for local people it has always seemed to me to be filled with tourists from outside of London getting straight on the No3 bus and heading into town. I’m not sure they spend any money in the CP triangle and certainly not in Sydenham or Penge!

If we can fund the improvements without building the flats then so be it, but only today, there has been discussion on the radio about the affordability of housing and the desperate shortage which is most acutely felt in London. I think, frankly, that more housing would be a better resource for London than a caravan park. I suspect the conclusion that I am coming to is that the land under question should not really be designated as MOL.

But what frustrated and irritated me most was the internecine warfare and arguments between the various groups claiming to represent various residents and interests, who took up half the audience and the vast majority of questions. Most of which were not questions but rants that they’d already given in a meeting the previous Friday and seemed to be concentrating on arguments that went on around who really defeated the multiplex and with how little money i.e. the past!!!! So, I only got time to ask a question on security measures if the park was opened up (as I chair the Crystal Palace Safer Neighbourhoods Residents Panel, it was my priority) and no time for a question about how we could contribute as a training ground for the Olympics.

Crystal Palace Park has been waiting for redevelopment for 80 years, let’s look to the future and please, please let’s get on with it!!!

The trouble with targets

The police federation is complaining about targets and saying that this is not what they all joined the police force for.

OK but all organisations that are spending someone else’s money, whether shareholders or tax payers, should be accountable and transparent in showing what they’ve done with the money.

BUT, lets face it, the government has a real blind spot when it comes to setting targets.

You get what you measure and when setting targets, you have make sure that you actually want what you’re measuring.

Too often, government departments set out to measure activity rather than outcomes. So, what you get is a lot of activity. In the example of the police’s you get a lot of arrests being made rather than serious crime being reduced; in education, you get good test results but kids who get to university unable to spell and in health you get short waiting lists but a rise in hospital acquired infections.

The trouble is, this government, does trust people to deliver those outcomes, it is unconvinced that it will be done their way and so, in the manner of a control freak (and Gordon isn’t even in charge yet) it sets out to measure what actions are taken as opposed to as what outcomes are achieved.

Outcomes are invariably harder to measure and often subjective and qualitative rather than easy numbers but it can be done. I have filled in enough Lottery and other Grant application forms to know that it can be done; it just takes more work and a bit more vision…or…..trust, even.

That said, one concern I have about the call from the Police Federation is their suggestion that dealing with small crimes isn’t what they all joined the police service to do and they should be focussing on large, serious crimes. Well, maybe they didn’t, but an awful lot of money been spent on a new focus, particularly in the Metropolitan Police Service, on community policing and dealing with low level crimes.

Safer Neighbourhood teams are the physical incarnation of that focus and they are as much about the perception people have of crime and dealing with their fear of it as they are about dealing with the big things – there is definitely no rushing around in police cars with the sirens on allowed – our PSCOs, in Crystal Palace, have bikes when they’re not on foot!

Key to this is dealing with signal crimes like graffiti, fly tipping, unruly teenagers and unruly adults and crime prevention. It is slow burn stuff but here in Crystal Palace Ward (where I chair the resident’s panel that provides direction to the team) we are just beginning, after two years, to reap the benefits. The police are starting to get more information about the drug dealing that goes on in the car parks of one of our estates because the residents are starting to know and trust the beat officer. This kind of success will eventually be measured in terms of arrests but in them mean time we need to protect and support the activity. Because what it seems do is change people’s perception and fear of crime and above all improves the quality of their lives.

This approach to community policing and its focus on dealing with low level crime is important and over the last 40 years the direction of the police, particularly in London has oscillated between the ‘Bobby on the beat’ and dealing with the big, ’important’ crimes that the Police Federation and John Denham (Chair of the Home Office Select Committee) seem to want them to go back to pursuing.

However, the model of community policing that is being implemented by the Met and funded by Londoners has not been made up on the fly…it is based on a model developed in the US and the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy that has been in place and successful since 1993.

What it really needs is consistent funding and a belief that successful outcomes will be delivered in the long term and not necessarily in the short term; although, I have to say our experience in Crystal Palace is that it is a bit of both. The Government, the Select Committee and the Police Authorities all have to hold their nerve and not veer back to measuring just large scale crime detection.

I know that I am beginning to sound like a broken record on this, again, but the government and the centre has to trust locally accountable organisations (although not as accountable as I’d like them to be) to deliver and not force them to use just one method of getting to the right outcome.

We must stop measuring just activity; a good start would be to measure levels of satisfaction with the service provided or perception of crime or quality of life.

Sydenham got there first...

This morning Radio 4 did a piece on a pilot scheme in Middlesbrough where anti social behaviour is be dealt with by the use of ‘talking CCTV’.

So much for Middlesbrough being first; this has already been happening at Sydenham Station, although I don’t know how frequently! One evening last summer, I came into the station to go into town where a couple of young lads were sitting on the back of a bench on the platform, with their feet on the seat. All of a sudden a voice came over the platform speaker, saying something like ; ‘Will the young men on platform one take their feet off the bench. Yes, YOU!’

The effect was immediate, they got down and the rest of us in the station just sort of smirked at them; minor piece of anti social behaviour dealt with.

But as I crossed the bridge over to the London platform I was aware that, although instantly very effective, this did not bode well. It’s also not so hard to extrapolate from John Reid’s latest plans a world where our behaviour is monitored and controlled by the state. If that’s the case, we’re not really that far from 1984, are we? The thing to remember is as well, how easy to implement state surveillance is in this country, as we have more CCTV cameras per head than any other country.

However, it is not enough just to demonize CCTV; I know from my work with the local Safer Neighbourhoods Team in Crystal Palace that a CCTV camera, well advertised and pointing at the right place can transform the quality of lives of residents on estates. And let’s not forget that it can also serve the defence of human rights and civil liberties as Liberty’s calls for an IPCC investigation of the treatment of a woman by the police in an underground car park in Sheffield illustrate.

It is, though, a very typical response from the government, in the face of antisocial behaviour, to resort to a centralised state delivered solution; and how much more centralised do you have to get than a faceless voice over a loud speaker?

If however, we want a solution to low level anti-social behaviour we need to look to ourselves.

If we don’t like the behaviour of our fellow citizens such as putting feet on seats or littering we actually have a choice. We can either leave it to the government to sort out and hence not be surprised when we find ourselves being treated like children, or we can start to set examples and take responsibility as individuals and a community for the behaviour of our young people.

I’m not suggesting any sort of vigilantism and it is for the police and the safer neighbourhood teams to deal with violent, threatening or criminal behaviour.

But many times the situation is quite benign, so, instead of tutting (or as often happens with me ‘fuming’) to ourselves because someone has dropped litter or a young person has their feet up on the seat in the train, we should say something, do something, just provide a different model of behaviour for them to follow. It may not always be successful, our request may be initially ignored but even a failed request will have a bigger impact on future behaviour than none at all.

Anyhow, in many cases with teenagers it is a lack of awareness that such behaviour is antisocial than any deliberate intent. And OK, so maybe their parents should be teaching them how to behave, but that doesn’t absolve us from our community responsibility. That is certainly not an excuse that would have entered our heads 30 or 40 years ago - or even 20, if you happened to be an adult in the village where I grew up!

If each one of us just undertook one action, provided some sort of role model just once a week, then we would surely start to make a difference. This is not a policy but grass roots action, that I am advocating and it is a slow burn not an overnight solution - obviously!

I firmly believe that people don’t drink and drive as much now, not because they think they’ll get caught by the police, but that it is no longer socially acceptable – I’m looking forward to when speeding becomes an equal taboo.

We have an opportunity as individuals to have an impact on our community and I am convinced that the world most of us would prefer to live in is one where the community regulates itself rather than leaving it to someone a bunch of private security employees to bawl at us through a loud speaker.

I just don’t want naming and shaming; I want a strong, supportive and free community.

Do you feel safer now?

Over the last few days, on the pathway out of Sydenham Hill Station the Safer Neighbourhood Team for Southwark’s College Ward have put up notices about a mugging that took place on many of the commuters' route home.

As a Chair of an adjacent Safer Neighbourhood Team Residents Panel (Crystal Palace, of course!!), I probably recognise more readily evidence of community policing that goes on and am always heartened to see the teams are reaching out to the residents.

Part of the rationale behind the creation of the Safer Neighbourhoods teams is to try and close the gap between perception and fear of crime and the actual crime on the ground. You know the kind of stuff: elderly people terrified of going out when in fact the group most likely to be victims of crime are young men between 15 and 25 or the belief that crime is on a continuous upward spiral when in fact it is down on previous years figures.

We want our police to be visible and back on the beat; not in cars zooming from one emergency to anther with a flashing blue light on top.

But I did wonder, as I read about the muggings and the team’s warnings to commuters, whether notices like those actually made me feel safer.

In the 18 months or so that I have been involved in the Safer Neighbourhoods project I have watched our team change from a group of police who seemed to have come into the force to drive police cars fast to a group that have chosen community policing and care passionately for the area and the quality of life of the residents.

This, I believe will be Sir Ian Blair’s lasting legacy, as this switch to community policing is an enormous cultural change for the Metropolitan Police Service and as always, cultural change can only come from the top. Policemen and women will want to work on these teams only if community policing is valued by their bosses.

After reflection, I think I do feel safer – because the police are there, on the case and making efforts, not just to arrest the criminals, but to prevent it happening again and being on the side of the law abiding resident.