Sydenham Police Station—Potential Closure

The Mayor of London Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) has been consulting over changes to policing across London. There are two issues that will impact policing in Forest Hill.

The Metropolitan Police have been told to make cuts of 20% to costs, whilst at the same time cutting crime by 20% and increasing public confidence in the police. A challenge for any organisation, but MOPAC believe they have a plan that will do exactly that.

The first aspect is a reduction in their property portfolio by reducing the number of buildings and concentrating their activities in fewer properties. Part of this includes the sale of New Scotland Yard, but no part of London is untouched by this sell-off of property. They propose to reduce the number of front counters across all of London, with each borough (except Westminster) having only one 24 police station open to the public, there are also proposals to close most other front counters across all of London. The main reason for this is that front counters are no longer the first point of contact between the public and the police, with much more done by phone, email, or at people’s homes.

In Lewisham the  proposals are to keep Lewisham police station as a 24 hour front counter, with daytime only front counters in Deptford and Catford. Two other police stations would be closed in Brockley and Sydenham. In addition East Dulwich police station would also be closed as part of the plans in Southwark.

Chief Inspector Stuart Bell spoke to the Forest Hill ward assembly at the beginning of February about these plans and made it clear that Lewisham police force favours the retention of Sydenham police station as a front counter. It is currently used as a base of operations by safer neighbourhoods teams in three wards; Forest Hill, Perry Vale, and Sydenham. There is a suggestion that Sydenham police station could be closed and a front counter open in a police building located on Catford Hill, on the edge of Perry Vale ward. This would provide some local facilities for the police and would avoid the cost of building works required to keep Sydenham police station maintained to a decent standard, but it is not as well located for the three wards it would serve. Other discussions are taking place about sharing facilities with other emergency services, most notably the fire brigade which could possibly be able to accommodate a police front counter. But all these alternatives are in the early days of being investigated.

The Forest Hill Society believes that keeping Sydenham police station open is in the interests of the local community and will help to keep them anchored in the area. 

Beyond the physical location of police stations is another important change to policing. There are plans to increase the number of police officers across the Metropolitan police while reducing the number of senior ranks. In Lewisham the proposal is to increase the number of police officers from 593 in October 2011 to 647 by 2015, a 10% increase in the number of officers.

One important difference to the current structure would be the spread of safer neighbourhoods teams. At present most wards have one sergeant, two-three PCs and three Community Support Officers (PCSO). This would be reduced to one PC and two PCSOs, with a sergeant overseeing multiple wards. However, there would be a significant increase in the total number of police officers in the safer neighbourhoods team, to respond across the borough where the most crimes need to be tackled. The proposals are to increase the number of police in the safer neighbourhoods teams from 53 to 162. Chief Inspector Stuart Bell is one of the few officers who has experienced the restructured safer neighbourhoods teams in action, when he was based in Lambeth, and his opinion was that the new structure would provide greater flexibility and improve community relations.

Vote for the Horniman Museum - Museums at Night

From Horniman Museum on Facebook:

Seen the Rain Room at the Barbican?

We're in the running to host the artists behind this - rAndom International - at a Museums at Night in May this year.

For this to happen, we need you guys to choose us in Connect 10's vote.

Please vote for us here: http://www.culture24.org.uk/places%20to%20go/museums%20at%20night/art420741

Horniman has gone from 15% to 26% of the votes cast in the last two days, but we need Horniman to push past the top two at 37%.

Please take 30 seconds to vote for the Horniman for this exhibition and ask others in your family/household to vote as well. Voting closes on Tuesday.

Call for artists

This year, the 5th annual Sydenham Arts Festival will run for 16 days from Saturday June 29th 2013. The Sydenham Arts Festival, Artists Trail team are looking for people who want to be involved in this year's Artists Trail. They really want to have as many artists and places to show art in and around Sydenham and Forest Hill this year.

The Artists Trail will be held during the three weekends of the Festival: 29th/30th June, 6th/7th July and 13th/14th July. You can choose to exhibit for one, two or all three weekends, but note that the Wimbledon finals coincide with the second weekend (6th/7th July) and this might deter visitors, especially if Andy Murray reaches the final again! The last weekend (13th/14th July) coincides with the annual Horniman Museum Art exhibition.

The last few years’ experience shows that houses and studios showing more than 2 or 3 artists’ work attracted more visitors and created more of a buzz, so the Artists Trail team would urge you to be more inventive this year. If you have space to share with other artist friends please do so. If you would like the Trail team to match your home / studio with a "homeless" artist please let them know - there is space for this on the entry form.

The entry fee this year, which includes the cost of advertising and public liability insurance, has been increased to £40 per artist with a cap of £160 where there are more than 4 artists at the same venue. The increased entry fee will allow the Trail team to design something imaginative and appropriate to physically advertise each open house / studio and to attract more visitors to all the Artists Trail venues. They plan to print 12,000 Artists Trail broadsheets at the same time as the Festival brochure and to distribute them together. There will also be a website and they hope to take advantage of social media outlets such as Twitter to highlight Artists Trail activities.

The Festival brochures and Artists Trail broadsheets will be printed and ready for distribution early in May. In order to give them time to design the publicity material and to meet print deadlines they need to receive your completed entry form by Thursday, 7th March. You will then have until 18th March to pay and send the words and images for the broadsheet and website. Late entries will NOT be accepted.

If you are not an artist but would like to offer your home or studio as a venue for artists to show their work they would be very grateful. There is no entry fee for hosts.

If you wish to enter the 2013 Sydenham Arts Festival Artists Trail as an artist or a host, please fill in the online entry form. The Sydenham Arts Festival Artists Trail team (Alan Taylor Russell, Annabel McLaren, Anne-Marie Glasheen, Bruce Harrison, Mireille Galinou, Nick Haseltine, Pippa Stacey and Yoke Matze) would like to thank you for your continuing support of the Festival and the Artists Trail.

March Food Fair - Sunday 3rd March

A Lift for Honor Oak Park

The Department for Transport announced a few years ago that lifts would be installed at most stations on our line. Forest Hill already has lifts, and 2013 is the year for lifts to arrive at Honor Oak Park, Brockley, and New Cross Gate.

We have seen the proposed designs for the lifts (see below), and the plan is to place them at the top of each flight of stairs, to the outside of the stairs. They will take people straight down to either platform, where they will arrive underneath the stairs.

This won’t be a simple task as it will involve excavation of the embankment, the removal of three trees, and there is a possibility of having to deal with asbestos in the footbridge roofing, all while keeping the station open for passengers.

This work is expected to be completed by the end of this year, allowing easy access to the platform for wheelchair users, parents with buggies, and others with mobility difficulties. The only problem remaining will be the huge height differential between the platform and the train doors, especially at the south end of the platform, where the lifts are to be installed.

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

Saturday 23rd February - Bring and Take Day, Devonshire Rd Nature Reserve, 1:30pm-4pm
Saturday 23rd February - Friends of Albion Millennium Green AGM, at FH Pools Community Room 11am

Sunday 3rd March - Forest Hill Food Fair, Station Car Park, 11am-3pm
Saturday 16th March - SEE3 Makers Market at Forest Hill Pools will offer handmade food, craft and vintage treats by local and independent traders.
Saturday 16th March - Dacres Wood Nature Reserve Open Day, from 12 noon
Saturday 16th March - Big Dig Day - Albion Millennium Green, 10am - 6pm
Tuesday 19th March - Sydenham and Forest Hill Youth Forum AGM, 2pm-4pm

Sunday 7th April - Forest Hill Food Fair, Station Car Park, 11am-3pm
Sunday 21st April - Spring Walk, starting at the Horniman at 11am and heading north

1st – 4th May  - Little Ecological Arts Festival at Albion Millennium Green
Sunday 5th May - Forest Hill Food Fair, Station Car Park, 11am-3pm

Lych Gate in Devonshire Road Nature Reserve

As the first snowdrops poke their heads up and thoughts turn to the new season at the Devonshire Road Nature Reserve, its time to start planning the next project. This time last year we were ordering timber and drawing up plans for a new Green-Oak building in the garden; it’s now complete and the team of volunteers that learnt to shape timber, cut joints, dig foundations and install a living roof can be really proud of the beautiful building they have created.

We had so much fun and learned so much, we’ve decided to do it again! The new project, funded once again by the Forest Hill Ward Assembly Fund will see us re-create the earliest church Lych-gate in the country; the original is situated in nearby Beckenham. We’ll be using our building as a shelter for an outside oven, but the design will be close to the original, involving more complicated joints and the use of curved timbers. It will allow our experienced volunteers to hone their skills and new volunteers to discover the thrill of working with traditional tools and materials.

Workshops are open to adults and children over 10 yrs and will take place on weekends in March and April (dates to be confirmed). If you would like to get involved, please contact Jake Twyford (jake [at ]foresthillsociety.com).

Come along to one workshop or all of them, we’d love to get you involved!

Fancy a bug?

Visit the Co.Futures project at Jill, the SEE3 Sydenham hub at 27 Sydenham Road on the 19th, 20th, 22nd and 24th February between 10:00 and 17:30, to experience how insects might become a part of our future diets.

Discover how a shop can be a farm, factory and food store all at the same time. Drop-into the hub to see more, perhaps even make something with our metamorphosis factory.

Bring something good, take something better

This Saturday, 23 February, sees our sixth Bring and Take event (which is slightly misnamed) take place at Devonshire Road Nature Reserve, 170 Devonshire Road, SE23 3SZ - you can just take if you so desire. Simply Bring any good quality items for somebody else to reuse and Take anything you fancy; all for free.

We cannot accept the following items:

• NO Electrical items larger than a toaster
• NO DVD/VHS/CD recorders / players
• NO TVs, PCs or monitors
• NO printers or scanners
• NO VHS or cassette tapes
• NO vacuum cleaners
• NO Furniture or carpets
• NO Jumble or broken items

as Lewisham Council will not be taking away the unwanted items this time.

On your bike!

Widehorizons and Sainsbury's Forest Hill are attempting to break the Guinness World Record for the most people riding 1km on an exercise bike in a 24-hour relay.

There will be a bike outside Sainsbury's Forest Hill from 7am on Saturday 18th May until 7am on Sunday 19th May and they are inviting as many people as possible to come and ride 1km. If 300 people come along and cycle then you will have set a new Guinness World Record!

As part of this amazing adventure, Widehorizons are asking participants to raise as much money as they feel able to support their work providing life-changing adventures for children and young people. Please donate £5 or more via Virgin Giving