News and campaigns | Local news and issues
In a reversal of that New Labour maxim, 'August may be a good month to bury good news' - for rats that is. Labour Lambeth has just cut more than £300,000 from the housing estates' pest control budget, giving rise to fears that rats will be rampant in the hottest summer on record.
Worse than that the news follows a warning from newly elected Councillor Dr Neeraj Patil that conditions on Stockwell's Springfield Estate...
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Conservative councillors in Lambeth and Southwark have slammed proposals to slash the amount spent on local health services by more than £20m. The cuts, which are set to affect the most vulnerable and needy residents in the area, have been rushed through with inadequate consultation in order to bail out neighbouring areas that have run up huge budget deficits in the latest chapter of the NHS cash crisis...
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Town Hall red tape has failed to stop campaigners who want the right to name a street in Lambeth after former Prime Minister Sir John Major. Earlier this year the dead hand of council bureaucracy threatened to stop the proposal in its tracks when the likelihood of an objection from the London Fire Brigade was raised on the grounds that there is already a Major Close in London SW9.
Councillor John Whelan, Conservative Group Leader and a member of the London Fire Authority, decided he wouldn't take no for an answer...
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Conservative councillors are backing campaigners planning to demonstrate in the streets of Brixton to stop cuts to mental health services.
The 24-hour emergency clinic at the Maudsley Hospital in Denmark Hill for mentally ill patients is under threat as South London and Maudsley (SLaM) NHS Trust plans a series of cost-cutting measures as a result of the NHS cash crisis.
"It's important our community does not lose these vital resources..."
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New Labour introduced a "sofa government" where Tony Blair made major decisions during informal meetings around a coffee table and now Lambeth's New Labour administration is following suit. Earlier this month they splashed out on a set of four 'royal blue' armchairs for Council Leader Steve Reed's office.
"Lambeth Labour seem to be swapping agendas and minutes for cups of tea and biscuits," says Cllr John Whelan...
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The size and massing of buildings proposed for the new £30 million Elmgreen Secondary School in West Norwood have run into significant local opposition from local residents. Nearly all residents support the principle of a new school, as do local Conservative councillors, but many people living near the site consider that a 1,100-pupil establishment is too big.
Current plans are now out for consultation and involve the destruction of 74 out of the 108 trees on site...
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Lambeth's Labour councillors have been slammed after failing to pass a motion, backed by one of the borough's Labour MPs, during a recent Council meeting. The motion supported the introduction of a Bill through Parliament that will enable local communities and local councils to have more decision making powers over local issues...
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Users of Lambeth libraries have reacted with fury following a 'stealth cut' of one third in the current year's library books fund and a moratorium on buying new books. The Labour administration has reduced the annual spend for the current year on books from £500,000 to £360,000 and won't buy any more books until so-called "crisis budgeting" has taken place...
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Earlier this year Lambeth Council announced plans to relocate 50 refuse and recycling trucks from a site in Shakespeare Road to an industrial estate in the east of the borough. But following their election in May, Labour asked for this decision to be reviewed and adopted a 'not in my back yard' approach by putting forward several different options. Two of the new options involve siting 17 huge recycling trucks in Norwood's Vale Street depot...
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Anthony 'Tony' Emmanuel Jones, who has died aged 61, was well known in Herne Hill and the Loughborough Junction area as a newsagent, former school governor, and Conservative Party activist.
Born in Nigeria, Tony came to the UK in his early 20s and worked as a compositor on national newspapers. He used the proceeds of his redundancy to buy a newsagent's business in Milkwood Road...
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