George Allan

Last week I went to a “cleaner, greener” day run by Islington’s street environment service.  The idea is to educate the public into good habits when it comes to disposing of litter, chewing gum, dog ends etc. 

This time, it was aimed at the students of City University and was based outside the main entrance in Northampton Square.

The venue was well chosen.  The pavement was strewn with dog ends and chewing gum in all directions and there was a haze of cigarette smoke. 

Council officers gently pointed out that dropping dog-ends, or other litter, was an  offence attracting a £50 fixed penalty (which goes up to £80 if not paid within 14 days) dished out by any of a growing number of council officers, including red-uniformed Street Wardens.  They gave out free personal ashtrays, worth £1.99, as an alternative.  Many students had never seen these before.

The scale of the chewing gum problem was graphically demonstrated when council contractors demonstrated their chewing-gum removal equipment.  I had a go on this.  It consists of a mobile boiler and petrol driven pressure hose mounted on a trolley.

First you blast the offending lump of hardened goo with steam for about 30 seconds, then at a key moment you hit a button which blasts it with detergent.  Then after another 30 seconds of steam and detergent, the stuff gives up and converts itself into a puddle of detergent-rich slime which can then be blasted towards the nearest drain. 

Who knows what this costs but what with the petrol motor, steam and detergent-pressure-blasting, it can’t have been less than about 10p per blob.  And there were hundreds to deal with.  What an avoidable use of energy!

What was most interesting was the views of the students.  Most of them didn’t, up to then,  think that throwing away cigarette ends or gum was in any way unusual or unacceptable.  In this I expect they are no different from many other people. 

Let us hope that events like this, and in due course, the fixed penalties, attitudes will at last change.  In the meantime, residents can sign up to the excellent “Eyes for Islington” environmental problem-reporting system here.

I’m just back from our party conference in Bournemouth.  Although the socialising and the big debates are stimulating, it’s the fringe meetings I enjoy most. 

Lots of organisations put on speaker meetings outside the main conference hall, and it’s quite a task deciding which to attend; it’s possible to go to 5 a day.

So this year, I went to fringe meetings about how consultation in the planning system, dementia, transport in London, flooding and resilience, the skills young people need in cities, Citizen’s Advice Bureaux, climate change, slavery and knife crime.

The most moving were the meetings on knife crime, dementia and slavery.  At the first, organised by Kids Count, Ann Oakes Odger told us how her son had been stabbed to death.  Another, Jennifer Blake,  told how she had physically separated two teenagers trying to shoot each other, and what her Eternal Life Support Centre was doing to prevent teenage violence.  Others, including a number of young people, told us of a variety of other projects to deal with the problem. 

A carer told the dementia meeting how she had not had more than 3 hours sleep at a time for the 10 years she had cared for her husband, almost without respite. One in 3 of us is likely to get dementia if we live long enough.

I heard from Pete Pattisson how slavery was alive and well, 200 years after everyone thinks it was abolished, in the form of indentured labour in much of the India subcontinent, forced domestic service among diplomatic families in London, and the trafficking of women for the sex trade, virtually everywhere.

All of this, while much our financial system seemed to be heading for collapse.  Scary, but in the context of all the other problems I’ve been hearing about, survivable.

The Pentonville Road/Penton Rise junction is notorious.  There have been two cyclist fatalities there in the last 3 years, and dozens, perhaps hundreds of non-fatal collisions.  I estimate that a dangerous incident happens there every half hour and I have personally witnessed two. 

Cyclists wanting to go down Pentonville Road are routinely hit by lorries and cars doing a (compulsory) left turn into Penton Rise, sometimes at excessive speed.

To avoid this, it is necessary for a cyclist either to weave across two fast-moving lanes of heavy traffic, including a lot of buses and lorries; or to dismount and cross at the traffic lights.  The former is not for the faint-hearted.

Yet it has taken Transport for London (who control the road) years to admit that this junction was in need of urgent treatment.  To keep the pressure up,  my ward colleagues and I gathered a petition to Boris Johnson, and improvements are at last in sight - but only next March.  Probably. 

I’ve just been to City Hall today to present the petition to Caroline Pidgeon, Lib Dem assembly member and Vice-Chair of the Transport Committee. 

She and I visited the scene last week with a TfL engineer and we issued a press release about it here.

The TfL solution is to offer cyclists a choice between weaving earlier into a much-extended bus lane, or crossing at an upgraded “toucan” crossing.  It may not be ideal but it will be an improvement - if it happens before another heartbreaking fatality.

Now we are turning our attention to the getting things done about other longstanding problems on TfL-controlled roads in the area, including the problematic “five-ways corner” where Kings Cross Road meets Calthorpe St, Margery St and Lloyd Baker Street.

One official-looking envelope which just arrived on 4,500 doormats in Clerkenwell needs your serious attention: it’s the annual canvass for information on who lives at each address for the purposes of electoral registration.

It looks a bit tedious but it’s well worth taking the trouble to deal with it.  We are all legally obliged to register if we are eligible.  We don’t have to exercise our vote, but non-registration is an offence.

More importantly, perhaps, is that this information is used as the basis for various official communications during the year, for jury duty and for communications from political parties, and (unless you opt out) the Council is legally obliged to divulge it to commercial users and credit-reference agencies.  So if you want to avoid getting letters to long-departed occupiers, or visits from Council canvassers in the autumn, or the risk of a fine, you should respond. 

If there are no changes, you can use the free automated telephone response system that takes about 30 seconds to do.  If there are changes, you have to send back the form duly completed. 

In the 19th century, there were huge Chartist demonstrations in Clerkenwell and nearby, for universal suffrage; so let’s not betray the work of generations of activists for democracy by failing to register to vote!

On 13th August, Islington Council’s Licensing Committee refused an application for extended hours for Murphi’s karaoke bar in Clerkenwell Road.

The controversial bar, just opposite Britton Street, had applied for an extension of its hours from 1.00am on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, to 3.00am, and from 3.00am to 5.00am on Fridays and Saturdays. 

This was Murphi’s fourth attempt in four years to extend its hours.  Three were refused (one on appeal) and one granted, in 2007, for the current 3.00am cut-off on Fridays and Saturdays.

Its owner, Mr Murphy Okojie, made a last-minute offer to add a series of conditions to the licence, but the Licensing Committee clearly felt this was not the answer. 

Local residents and I told the Committee that these new conditions - covering the key issues of noise, disturbance, mini-cabs etc - were simply not credible in view of the long history of non-compliance with existing conditions amply evidenced by the 65 pages of objections from residents nearby.

These objections were a catalogue of instances of ear-splitting noise in the early hours, disturbance from patrons standing outside and leaving, mini-cab chaos, poor door security and an off-hand and intimidating attitude to residents who complained.  Mr Okojie had been making extensive use of the iniquitous “Temporary Event Notices” which allow licensing hours and conditions to be by-passed under the Licensing Act 2003 to enable licensed premises to hold extra events for up to 72 hours twelve times a year.

I am now helping to co-ordinate moves by local residents to apply for a review of the premises licence under the Licensing Act 2003 which could see the licence suspended, curtialed or even revoked. 

If you would like to support this application, by making a witness statement, please contact me either by e-mail or at the contact numbers on this blog site.  A preliminary meeting to take this forward is being planned for early September.

Refusing the application, the Licensing Committee cited the Islington Licensing Policy Statement, notably policies 10 (on the high standards of management required by licensed premises) and 19 (particularly the past compliance history of the current management). 

Mr Okojie can now appeal to a magistrates court, although his appeal in 2006 was refused by Highbury Corner magistrates, citing ” a very low standard of management of these premises.”

Clerkenwell’s pubs and clubs do much to create the unique atmosphere of the area.  But the atmosphere is changing, and not for the better. 

Too often, residents tell me they have been repeatedly kept awake by loud music, inconsiderate behaviour, karaoke, fights, mini-cabs or just the noisy departure of patrons in “high spirits”.  They are then ignored, patronised, intimidated or even in one case, assaulted, when they try to complain.

But there is hope.  The system introduced by the Licensing Act 2003 can be made to work, despite all its nonsenses. 

A few weeks ago, the City Pride pub in Farringdon Lane had its application to have karaoke until 2.00am refused. The Licensing Committee heard that in 18 months running the Fullers pub, its tenant and designed premises supervisor Marco Baiardo had received 2 formal warnings from Islington Council, 6 verbal warnings and had been summoned to an interview with the Islington licensing officer panel, all for noise-related breaches of his licence. 

Even while Fuller’s application was pending, further breaches of the licences were observed by Council officers.  I represented two residents who felt too intimidated to attend the hearing in front of the Council’s Licensing Committee.

Following the refusal, Fullers have now sent local residents invitations to two meetings at the pub on 19th August and 9th September at 7.30pm to present plans “to prevent any further nuisance,” including a noise limiter.

Meanwhile, about 200 yards away, Murphi’s karaoke bar in Clerkenwell Road is applying to extend its licensed hours by 2 hours to 5.00am. 

This has provoked a furious reaction from nearby residents who tell a grimly familiar tale of noise, disturbance and loss of sleep, in the course of about 70 pages of objections.  Once again, I am representing two residents who feel too intimidated to appear at the hearing.

Nearby, at the Jerusalem Tavern in Britton Street, residents are complaining about the way in which drinkers obstruct the street and create unacceptable levels of noise.  Attempts to meet the management of the pub have so far drawn a blank, and its owner, St Peter’s Brewery, has now written to residents threatening that if it is forced to reduce its weekday trade, it will start opening at weekends to make up the revenue.

On the positive side, the Crown pub on Clerkenwell Green, and the nearby Three Kings, have voluntarily agreed to end drinking outside at 10.00pm.  So not all the licensed trade is as inconsiderate as the City Pride and Murphi’s.

Let’s remember that we can complain to the Council’s Noise Patrol 7 nights a week, via the Contact Islington number, 020 7527 2000.   It operates closely with the Licensing Service which also mounts surveillance patrols to monitor compliance with licence conditions.  There is an information page here.

Residents can also initiate a “review” of the premises licence, at which the Council’s Licensing Committee can revoke or suspend the licence, change the hours of operation, the conditions to be observed by the premises or require a change of management.  Islington regularly does this at the request of the police or trading standars, but residents have been slow to take up these powers.  That may be about to change.

Further advice on reviews can be found on the Council’s web site.

So the message is - don’t suffer in silence.  Complain, engage with the management and if necessary, get together with neighbours to initiate a review.   Ask me for help. 

So, I have a feeling that the Last Chance Saloon has opened in Clerkenwell, and that several of its less responsible pub managers are now, shall we say, drinking there.

Good news doesn’t often come quite like this.  On 6th August, Hazel Blears handed down a landmark decision to stop the City Corporation demolishing the west end of Smithfield for a massive redevelopment.

This development - feet away from the Clerkenwell border - would have swept away a number of characterful Victorian market buildings, dating from the 1880s and later, which were originally built to replace a street market.  The pretext was the alleged need to renew the roofs of the Thameslink railway tunnels  which run underneath them. 

This was disproved by engineers acting for SAVE, which mounted a vigorous campaign against the proposals, and even Network Rail admitted these roofs or “lids” are not unsafe and are in no worse condition than many others.  So the case for sweeping away a whole Conservation Area to repair them looked pretty thin.

The design of the new scheme was horrendous.  See for yourself  at Building Design’s coverage of the story.

For the Corporation, surely Britain’s most backward public body when it comes to conservation, this is just another in a whole series of defeats in its attempts to flatten distinctive historic buildings in pursuit of wall-to-wall office building and road-widening. 

It was in 1986,  when I ran the local conservation group the Smithfield Trust, that I campaigned successfully to get the west end of Smithfield designated as a Conservation Area, which was done by the GLC at the last-ever meeting of the its Planning Committee. 

The Corporation must now act quickly to appoint new developers capable of seeing the conservation opportunities of the area.  In its relentless pursuit of redevelopment, it had rejected offers from other developers who wanted to repair and re-use these distinctive buildings.

I’m heavily involved in trying to mitigate the impacts of two major rail engineering projects on the area around Farringdon Station. 

The Thameslink Programme project has just started and will involve complex engineering operations and road works in the area for 4 years,  then Crossrail starts digging two mainline railway tunnels under it. 

In 2017, after 9 years of disruption, residents of the area will enjoy being able to get direct trains to Heathrow and…er.. Shenfield.

Network Rail (who are running the Thameslink project) are now circulating occasional newsletters with somewhat basic information about what is going to happen in the next few months. 

Mostly, they will be spending until December replacing a footbridge across the tracks, with about six weekends of closures, after which they then start building a big new concourse on the Turnmill St side, and then cut up and replace the bridge carrying Cowcross St over the tracks.  Then they close the Moorgate Branch and extend the platforms southbound.  There will be an additional entrance in a rebuilt Cowcross St which will be shared with Crossrail. 

All of this means a lot of construction traffic, mobile cranes, noise, night and weekend working etc. Sadly, the promised noise insulation works are behind schedule; NR has banned all parking in Turnmill St for the duration; the impact on the travel plans of clubbers in the area is unclear and the information hasn’t been detailed enough to help residents and businesses plan their activities around the works. 

My main priority is now to improve the flow of information between Network Rail and local residents and businesses, and NR has promised to set up a “forum” to help with this.  Judging by the way it has started, Network Rail has a long way to go before it reaches an acceptable standard.  

If you would like to join the e-mail group I have set up to keep people in the area informed of what’s going on, and deal with other issues in the area, please e-mail me. 

There is an official Network Rail website on Thameslink here, and a rather more informative one from FirstCapitalConnect here.

Welcome to this, my first tentative step into the world of web sites and blogs. 

The general idea is to explain what I do, along with my ward colleagues Kelly Peasnell and Marisha Ray, and how in particular we can help people in Clerkenwell to interact with Islington Council, and any of the large number of other agencies which influence the quality of life in our historic and characterful part of London.

It’s not going to be a “blog” so much as a signpost to what’s going on in the area, and to sources of information about it, maybe with a few bits of local history and other items of interest along the way.

Please feel free to contact me with any comments or suggestions about it, or indeed anything else.

kind regards

 George Allan