As I write a personal blog for our site, the last for 2007 and also the 100th of the year I wanted to briefly look back at the year 2007. It has certainly been an interesting 12 months.
We started the year with the loss of Martin and Alexandra Smith, your former Mawneys Councillors who moved to Australia to start a new business venture, running a café and restaurant for ex-pats in Melbourne, aptly named the “Britannia”. There loss was filled by Karen Price and now Joe Webster, I am pleased that we have a full team working in Mawneys Ward.
It has been a busy year for us, we started with the continued petition to Havering Council for CCTV for Collier Row and we ended the year in January with it almost up and running and in place.
I was pleased to be able to attend the opening of the Surestart Centre in Collier Row with the Mayor of Havering, Cllr Wendy Brice-Thompson. We also welcomed new residents to the area in Bushey Close in the new Gobions Estate.
I spent a day out on patrol with the Havering Park ward SNT trying to get a better understanding of how our local Police team works and seeing first hand the work that was taking place on the crackdown of illegal motor bikes in the Country Park.
Spring saw us launch our petition against Car Park charges in Collier Row, by the time the autumn had come round we had over 3500 in Collier Row and over 18,000 across the Borough, did the Conservative run Council listen, no they did not, the charges are set to arrive at a car park near you soon.
We continued our support of the “Friends of Park groups” in North Romford, we had a team at the King Georges Playing Fields Quiz Night and both myself and Graham have attending meetings or events of both King Georges Playing Fields, Lawns Park and Havering Country Park.
In June, Graham Price was awarded a Honorary alderman award in recognition of his 16 years service as a Councillor on Havering Council. I also attended the Planet Havering Show, which is always a most. The Residents Association also won the St Andrews By-Election, with Mike Winter returned to the Town Hall.
Building Work continued at a very rapid pace at the Forest Row Centre, the old sixth form block was knocked down and the work was finished by December with the hand over to the new Forest Row Centre. We also saw Bedfords park being awarded a green flag, for being an excellent park.
We saw over 1000 Scouts from around the World descend on Bedfords Park for the World Scout Jamboree, who took part in Environmental clean up work. We also saw the park over-run with travellers; they spent almost 3 weeks at the park, destroying all the good work done in making it a green flag park.
We also saw the Council CCTV car set loose on the streets of Havering, over 10,000 tickets have now been issued and we have been inundated with horror stories from residents who been caught on camera. I estimate that the car will make over £1.7 million in its first 12 months.
We continued to help residents fight un-wanted planning development around them, such as 101 Clockhouse Lane, more flats in Essex Road, 92 The Drive and 66 Clockhouse were the Conservative Councillors over-ruled local opinion to approve flat conversations.
We also saw the sell off, of our park land across the borough, in particular at King Georges Playing Fields, with no commitment to ploughing the money back into the parks, this can not be a good thing for residents.
We saw a new road being laid in the village behind the church; residents have campaigned for years to get the Council to take this matter seriously. We saw continued improvement in our exam results at Bower Park School and we also saw Frank Bruno open the new astro-turf pitch, which has to be one of my highlights of the year.
We also saw the Tory Council announce plans to cover the Borough in Billboards to try and recover the £5 million it over spent in social services, another one of there rash decisions.
We have also seen the introduction of our booklet style newsletter, which is delivered to over 11,000 houses and shops across North Romford; it went down so well, that after the first issue we were able to increase it in size from 12 pages to 16 pages. The comments we receive about the newsletter have been fantastic, we have proved that you do not need to send out a full colour glossy leaflet with nothing in it but super imposed pictures of people pretending they are working for the people of Collier Row !
Well that said, if you are still reading, may I wish you a very Happy New Year and I look forward to meeting you whilst out and about during 2008.
Best Wishes
Cllr Andrew Mann
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