London Borough of Waltham Forest Community Ward Forum Forest Community Ward Meeting Meeting Minutes Meeting date: Wednesday 13th September 2017: 7:00pm – 9:00pm Location: Leyton Sixth Form College, Essex Road, Leyton, E10 6EQ Councillors in attendance: Cllr Kastriot Berberi Cllr Shabana Dhedhi (Chair) Cllr Gerry Lyons Clerk to the Meeting: Maddie Hall 20 resident attendees No Minutes 1. Welcome and Introductions The chair welcomed everyone. Apologies were given due to refreshments not being already organised. Directions to the toilet were given and instructions on what to do if there is a fire alarm. Minutes were discussed, there were a few matters arising; The last question on Page 2; people want a fuller answer, it doesn’t really cover the question; has anything been done? Answer at the top of page 3 – go back to licensing team and ask if they can give a better answer to that question; had 7 months to sort this, when will it happen? Details to be provided Last question on page 3 in regards to Visitors Permit Question- has there been any clarification on this? There is no proper answer to this question. Could someone email Cllr Clyde Loakes or someone from Highways? (Dr Khan asked this question) Page 4 – the last item. There were suggested items for this meeting. Is there an update on the street lighting? Why do we have some on all day and some evenings nothing on at all? Could we get a written response that could be circulated around? There was a suggestion that there was a problem with the contractor but this never comes out as an official statement. We want to know how this is going to be resolved. 2. London & Quadrant Sue Gatrell, Assistant Director from London & Quadrant London Quadrant is a very large housing association which covers seven regions. Sue’s are Tower Hamlets, Barking & Dagenham, Walthamstow, Southend, Havering and Redbridge. Sue has a team of property managers, team leaders, and lettings team and community development. These are all people who can provide services for our residents. We are currently going through a merger with East Thames. East Thames is a fairly medium sized association based in Newham. This was all agreed some time ago, and we are currently going through structures. HR has been organised, next it will be finance, then development department to central services, then policies and procedures, then the help desk. Now we have come to neighbourhoods, we are now looking at the possibility of 4 new regions. The structure will be different to what we have now, but there will still be dedicated officers working with you. We are trying to get used to different ways of working and are trying to amalgamate IT. The whole point is to ensure that the systems are bought together and run smoothly so that you get the best possible services. We want to work closely with residents to ensure that this happens. We work very closely with Senior Management Team and police and we hope that we can work with everyone to improve resident’s lives in the areas that we work. We are passionate about making a change. We wouldn’t be where we are without the residents, and we would not be having dialogue. The point is that our organisation is very much about the learning. Every complaint is like ‘gold dust’; we look, and review issues and look at how and what we deliver which enables us to make the change. Questions Are your housing group going to put up cladding in properties? Answer Some of the new builds, one of which is at Walthamstow Stadium, were inspected when the Grenfell Tower incident occurred. Landlords had to go and inspect whether any of their buildings had cladding. Waltham Forest monitors this very carefully. Sue has to report back on a regular basis if cladding is found and report what the actions are. Two of the tower blocks in Walthamstow are being checked for precautionary measures. They are going to residents and checking if there are any issues, checking whether the fire alarms work, and are keeping residents updated. Residents have reported back that they feel everything is in hand. London & Quadrant do everything they can to make sure everyone is happy. Resident’s safety is the upmost priority. Any cladding that they came across has been sent to scientists to make sure that it isn’t dangerous. Question How often do you check the safety and security of buildings? Answer Under Health and Safety we have to do inspections and make sure that everything is secure. We have to make sure there is no fly tipping and hoarding in buildings, and that all the lighting etc. is checked. Property managers do these inspections on a regular basis. They conduct daily checks around the building. Question A lot of concentration has been on fully clad tower blocks. Are you going to be testing on other uses of cladding? There is a new block behind Tesco’s at Bakers Arms that have accent panels on the landings, which are to do with cladding. There is an L&Q property on Oliver Close which is only 3 storeys but is covered in cladding. Answer The priority when the Grenfell Tower fire happened was towers 18 metres and above, however these smaller blocks were checked. There is more work to be done but we have gone out and checked anything believed to be ACN cladding and they have sent off what needs to be done. Question There is a lot of fly tipping at the back of Market Parade, are there any plans to tackle this? Answer Sinder is working very hard with the local authority to come up with a strategy regarding local shops. We have identified particular shops where they are storing things that they shouldn’t be. This is where local authority has the power to address this. There is a strategy that has been put together to manage rubbish. Sinder did a lot of research when looking through the best practice when people put their rubbish together and there has been a lot of work to develop this strategy for example changing bin frequency. This has seen an initial reduction but it is hard to tell unless it is over a 6 month period. From what she has seen, there is a different from 2 months ago. Daks Neighbourhood officer and Sinder are working together to see what they can do. Sue has said it was a pleasure to come alone, and will do future presentations if anyone wishes. Sue’s contact details are: Sue Gatrell Assistant Director North East Neighbourhood 10 Grove Crescent Road, Stratford, London, E15 1BJ Tel: 0844 406 9000 Fax: 0800 619 0213 Mobile: 07824 431 465 Email: [email protected] 3. Safer Neighbourhood Team (SNT) Sergeant Emma Leader Emma and her colleague Jim will talk about problems in the neighbourhood. Jim most recently came over from the first response team. Another PC, Frankie, will be at the next meeting. A report was put together with information on what the team have been doing. Most burglaries that have taken place in the past eight weeks have taken place through rear patio doors. This has happened down Maple Road, Nottingham Road, Canterbury Road and Chesterfield Road. There have been three burglaries in the past week and police have tried to see if there was any evidence. There was a lot of shed and garage burglaries in the first three quarters of the year. Police manages to get evidence against the person who was committing this crime, and they have received nine months in prison. Since he has been in prison, there have been no shed or garage burglaries, and he will be watched closely when he comes out of prison. There have been vehicle crimes around Whipps Cross roundabout and near the colleges. This is always a peak area. There are no specific roads, just scatters of incidents everywhere. Police have looked at other wards in comparison to ours and they are similar to us. CCTV and repeat offenders are being watched carefully. Polices advice is to not leave anything valuable in cars and park in well-lit areas. Question We have been burgled, and have the perp on CCTV. We do not know how to get the image off of the camera onto a form the courts ask for. Has the team that help with this been dispended? Answer When we get calls about burglaries, we try to dispatch a car asap. The call may go unanswered for a long period of time if they get a call Monday about something that happened on the weekend. There are so many different CCTV systems out at the moment which makes the Video Intelligence unit very busy. They can still come out and have a look at your CCTV but this may take a little while due to them being so busy. Jim can come down and have a look at the CCTV if he needs too. When looking into Chesterfield today, the common theme seems to be access through back doors. We will need to find out how they are getting into back gardens. Question Is it true if you put spikes on a fence you need to warn people? Answer No this is not true, contactors who put the spikes up would need to put signs up, but no one is penalised for not displaying a sign. Question Do you work in the areas where cars are broken into? Answer We can work in various shifts so that we can target these people committing these crimes.