Camden Council is failing

It is not unusual for Liberal Democrat councillors to criticise the performance of Camden, especially when we think we ran the Council better during our time of leading the Council between 2006-10. However two entirely separate issues this week demonstrate our criticisms are not at all fanciful.

The West Hampstead Safer Neighbourhood Team asked the council to set up a dispersal zone covering the Lymington Rd and Lithos Rd areas of the ward in September. I attended a poorly advertised meeting at the West End Lane offices to discuss the boundary and helped to persuade the Council to accept a small change on the proposed boundary to include the area around Rowntree Close. A dispersal zone once in place gives the police extra powers to disperse gatherings of youths who are committing Anti Social Behaviour.

The zone was set up to run until mid-November and I secured a promise in September for a further consultation on a possible extension of time when we hit November.

Well November came and went without any kind of message from the Council, and last week's Safer Neighbourhood Panel meeting demonstrated that the police were not aware why the zone had ended in mid-November without consulting them.

It appears that the zone was a relative success because the extra powers were only used once. Local and no so local youths had read the notices displayed and decided not to cause any more trouble.

Nevertheless there was a need to evaluate the apparent success of the zone with local people. So I have today sent the following message to the Council -

"I want a full explanation why the Council officers feel it was appropriate to end this dispersal zone without consulting the Safer Neighbourhood Team, the local councillors or local residents groups. We have "policing by consent" in this country and if we are to use powers like these the Council needs to offer full engagement with the community so that we can all evaluate the relative success or failure of the dispersal zone and have a mutual agreement on a way forward."

My second concern is that I have been urging Council officers to work with Thames Water and Network Rail to find the source of a leak that has led to puddling water in Medley Road for over a year.

Two local residents and myself have had extensive e-mail correspondence with the Council and Thames Water for all this time trying to secure an answer to the problem.

I have discovered only today that the case file was closed at the Camden end last March with an officer failing to respond to an email from an affected resident. However, in the last couple of days Thames Water have identified a leak in West End Lane which is impacting on Medley Road. The leak is losing three litres of water per second!

This is now judged by Thames Water as an emergency (after a year of trying to shift blame onto Network Rail) and will involve the temporary closure of West End Lane, although as I write it is not known when this will take place...

The Council has a duty of care to its residents and should be making sure other public utilities carry out their responsibilities. Sadly Camden is simply not doing its job properly...