February 2010

Someone in Hook has warned me about a scam.

A few days ago, I got one of those charity collection bags through the letterbox. I threw it away without looking at it because I always take my old stuff to the Debra shop in Hook Parade.

But someone locally took the trouble of checking one. Now some of those charity collections are completely genuine - but some are bogus. The offending one is claims to be for a charity called Helping Arms and boasts the charity number 5995054.

Mike Christie checked this out at Companies House and found that the company was registered in Tottenham Court Road, but has subsequently been dissolved. The charity number is false.

I have also checked Helping Arms through Google and you can see that they have a ruling against them by the Advertising Standards Authority, and complaints from other parts of the country.

The problem with bogus charities, apart from the illegality, is that they reduce the supply of second hand clothes to genuine charities. So do check any bags that come through your door, and if you are at all doubtful don't leave out any goods.

We have a number of charity shops in the area, including The Queen Elizabeth Foundation in North Parade, Fara in Tolworth Broadway and Debra in Hook Parade, so the best advice is to take your wearable clothes to one of these. If they cannot be worn again them pop them in your green box where they will go for recycling.

Charity shops, and genuine door to door collections, are a valuable part of the local economy. They help us all to meet the second target in the Reduce - Reuse - Recycle mantra, they provide a source of cheap clothing for those on limited incomes, and they raise funds for important charitable purposes. The last thing we want is to undermine what they do.

When I first got into politics back in the 1970s the buzz word among Liberals (as we then were) was 'pavement politics'. This cleverly referred both to the issues we should be concentrating on, and our method of campaigning. Indeed, Focus was born back then, and was a radical approach to doing politics on a micro-local scale.

I mention that because at South of the Borough Neighbourhood last night we were talking about - pavements.

The Committee had just £104,900 to spend in 2010-2011 on relaying roads and pavements across the whole Neighbourhood. That amount does not go far. Road resurfacing costs anything from £10,000 for a short stretch of road, up to £100,000 or more for a long road. Pavements, oddly enough, can be even more expensive.

We decided to put the whole sum towards pavements. The highways officers had carried out a complete assessment of all the pavements, and had gone back again after the bad weather. They had ranked the pavements in order of priority.

The outcome is that only the four stretches of pavement which emerged as most in need of replacement will be treated. They are Frimley Road (evens from 18 to 86), Gilders Road (between Filby and Billockby), Frimley Road(between 19 and 63) and Stormont Way (both sides).

It doesn't mean that roads themselves will not be repaired.

This fund was for 'planned highways maintenance' that is, for pre-planned large scale projects. There is also a fund for 'responsive highways maintenance' which deals with all the repairs, potholes etc. In another part of the agenda we also agreed to transfer the Neighbourhood's budget underspend of £37,400 to responsive maintenance so that it could be used immediately to deal with problems caused by the snow and ice.

£58,000 is sitting in the Grassroots Fund for voluntary organisations in Kingston, and the money must be distributed before September. Anything not used reverts to the Government - and we wouldn't want that, would we?

One of the Chessington-based charities that I am involved with has successfully bid for a grant, and it is pretty simple to apply, with up to £5,000 on offer. The Grassroots Fund is administered in Kingston by Thames Community Foundation.

You can read everything you need to know here, but I thought I would entice you to apply with a quick summary.

To be eligible, your group does not have to be a registered charity, but it must:

• Be a small not-for-profit, third sector voluntary or community group, active in their local community for not less than twelve months before the date of your application.
• Have income of less than £30,000 per year taken as an average over the last three years.
• Be volunteer-led
• Be connected with and/or meeting the needs of the local community
• Have a governing document (constitution or a set of rules).

They can't fund schools, police, national organisations, party political or religious activity, or organisations that solely benefit animals or plants. But that still leaves a lot of small local organisations and clubs who could benefit. So please pass this information on to anyone who you think might be interested in applying.

Last night I attended a meeting at the Hook Clinic, on the corner of Gosbury Hill, about the proposals for a walk-in clinic on the site.

It wasn't a public meeting, but one called to share the proposals with councillors, council officers and patient participation groups.

Since NHS Kingston announced their plans just four weeks ago there has been a great deal of interest, to say the least. In fact, I've received loads of emails and phone calls about it, and I know that many letters have been sent to NHS Kingston as well as the Council planning department.

So what's it all about?

There are, in fact, two stories here that have become intertwined.

The first story is about the two GP practices in Orchard Gardens - the Orchard Practice (with Dr Siva and Dr Bala) and the Grays Practice (with Dr Gray). Everyone agrees that the premises they share are totally inadequate. For some years people have been on the look out for new premises for them, but in spite of several suggestions nothing has worked.

Next door, with an entrance in Gosbury Hill, lies the Hook Clinic. This used to be a busy place with baby, family planning and dental clinics, plus toddler groups, amongst others. However, for the last two or three years it has acted as a base for the District Nurses, but nothing else.

So I was very pleased when NHS Kingston offered to sell both the Hook Clinic and the current GP premises to the two GP practices. I was expecting them to bid jointly for the leasehold, but they decided to submit rival bids. In the end, Dr Gray was awarded the lease on condition that the Orchard Practice continued to operate from the site.

Dr Gray then started working up some plans to use the two buildings (which are physically linked) in the short term. In the long term he wanted to demolish both buildings and build a completely new facility on the combined site. All sounded very positive and exciting.

The other story is about a GP-led walk-in clinic. Now NHS Kingston is obliged by NHS London to open one of these in Kingston by April. They have been working on the project since summer 2008, and had identified a need in the area south of the A3. We don't have enough GPs, for a start, and there appears to be evidence that local people have more health problems than elsewhere in the borough.

A GP-led walk-in clinic would essentially be a small GP practice, which would also offer a service from 8am to 8pm, 365 days in the year. Anyone, wherever they lived, would be able to drop in and receive medical care. It was hoped that this would help relieve A&E of less serious injuries and ailments.

I have come round to seeing that a new GP practice was needed, and a walk-in clinic could be a useful resource for the local community, provided it was located sensibly.

At that stage I had arranged for the Neighbourhod to convene some meetings to include all four practices in the area (the Gosbury practices and the two at the Merritt Centre), plus the patient groups and NHS Kingston. Everyone was expecting the Merritt Centre to house the clinic, and I was keen that the four practices should work together to support it. Indeed, the 'new' GP practice could simply mean growth of one of the existing practices.

Then things started going wrong. The first invitation for bids was simply issued to the local practices. But then NHS Kingston was told by their seniors that they had to open it to anyone who might be interested. I still tried to encourage the four practices to work up a bid together, or even separately, but in the end the bureaucracy was overwhelming and they all decided to drop out.

After a puzzlingly long wait, NHS Kingston finally announced last summer that it had awarded the contract for the walk-in clinic to a consortium in Kent, called Malling Health.

Malling then started to look for suitable premises. They were seriously considering the Woolworths store in Hook Parade, but the landlord decided to lease it to a carpet company instead. By late last year NHS Kingston was clearly under heavy pressure to find a site, because they were obliged by NHS London to open the clinic by April this year.

The two stories merge from here on.

I was completely taken by surprise when NHS Kingston announced - in a press release - that the new GP practice and walk-in clinic would open in April in the Hook Clinic. They had done a deal with Dr Gray to share the premises with the existing two practices.

At that stage there had been no consultation at all with local residents, and we local councillors had not been informed, in spite of our involvement earlier.

There has been a storm of protest since then, both from people living near the site and from patients at the practices. The main concerns have been around parking, given the level of congestion that already exists in Orchard Gardens, Gosbury Hill and Elm Road, and the opening hours. They are worried about what it might mean for the community if people were able to descend on this suburban side street from anywhere, 12 hours a day, any day of the year.

It has, I must admit, brought out some fairly extreme views (someone told me that people who moved in from north Kingston were 'garbage'), but there is a genuine fear that drug addicts would make their way here to ask for their supplies. In the absence of real information all kinds of stories develop.

As soon as I saw the press release on 19th Jan, I contacted the Chief Executive of NHS Kingston, and also had a conversation with him the following week. I particularly wanted to talk about two things.

The first was to find out whether planning permission was required for the changes proposed for this April. Obviously planning permission will be needed for the new build, but this year they want to install a new service, which will be open for far longer hours than anything that has happened in the Hook Clinic before.

It seems that the use of the Hook Clinic as a walk-in clinic would not count as a change of use, since the building had been used for medical purposes before. But it could possibly be considered to be an intensification of use, for which planning permission would be needed - as indeed would be the case if a restaurant wanted to open for longer hours.

So I advised NHS Kingston that they should have a conversation as soon as possible with the Neighbourhood Planning Officer, and I supplied her name. That advice was passed on to the Grays practice, but no-one followed my advice. They did place a phone call with the duty officer who correctly answered some questions about possible change of use, but they did not explore the full ramifications with the Neighbourhood Planning Officer.

By last week the planning officers had received many letters and phone calls about the proposals so they decided to contact the Grays practice directly. They are now gathering the information they need in order to decide whether planning permission is required.

If the professional advice is that planning permission is needed, then NHS Kingston have probably left it too late to complete all the formalities and be able to open in April.

But planning permission is only a tiny part of all this, and the second thing I talked to NHS Kingston about was consultation. What NHS Kingston must do now is to hold a proper face-to- face consultation with the local residents and patients. This is what I am insisting must happen. The Neighbourhood would be happy to help facilitate this if that would help.

There is a strong tradition of consultation in Kingston, and people expect to be consulted on local proposals that might affect their lives, from school expansion to road improvements.

So, yesterday evening, we said that NHS Kingston and the Grays practice must consult properly with local people, and not simply push this through regardless. Today I have written once again to the Chief Executive of NHS Kingston and asked him when that will happen.

Elm Road - that is, the road surface itself - has suffered quite badly in the freezing weather recently. So much so that the traffic engineers have decided to carry out an emergency investigation.

The contractors will be drilling bore holes in the road between Moor Lane to Rhodrons Avenue on Monday, so the road will be closed along that section during the day.

The idea is to find out the exact nature of the problem, before the road is repaired and resurfaced.

So on Monday the K2 will be sent on a detour. Instead of turning left at the Hook Centre they will carry on down to Bridge Road roundabout, along Bridge Road to the Chessington Oak, then back along Moor Lane to Gosbury Hill.

My advice - keep well clear of Elm Road on Monday, unless you live there, of course.