Car Free Day
Once again Car Free Day in Leytonstone on 22 September was a fantastic success. The sun shone, the streets were full of people and everyone had a great time. Particular highlights this year were the bungee jumping in Church Lane car park, the climbing wall in George Tomlinson school playground and the excellent range of live music. Waltham Forest Council fund this event every year and it seems to go from strength to strength. Councillor Jenny Gray had the particular honour of presenting the prizes in the George Tomlinson School samba costume competition.
Bulbs
Waltham Forest Council is giving away 33,000 bulbs to local community groups or voluntary organisations who want to improve their local area. If your community group, residents association or voluntary organisation would like to plant the bulbs in a public area then please get in contact with your local councillors. We will be planting bulbs and clearing up various flowerbeds and if other organisations could also help out we can really make Leytonstone bloom in the spring.
Walk the Walk
In late July local councillors Marie Pye and Clyde Loakes spent half a day in Leytonstone town centre with the new senior council officer in charge of keeping the streets clean and improving our public areas. They were also joined by a senior representative of Keir, the company responsible for street cleaning in the borough.
Marie and Clyde were able to highlight a number of problem areas which these senior officers agreed to sort out urgently including:
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Rubbish on the footbridge near Harrington Road. Not only will this now the cleaned more often but the mechanical cleaner will be utilised to scrub the floor of the footbridge.
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The standard of street cleaning on roads just off of the High Road (including Burghley, Harrington, Harvey, Grove and Mornington. It was agreed that the street sweeper for the High Road will also clean up 100 m down these roads. They will also look at increasing the amount of street sweeping the whole of these roads get.
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Fly tipping and dumped rubbish, particularly the problem we have with mattresses. Regular fly tipping sites were highlighted (i.e. Mornington Road) and these will be cleared and checked regularly.
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The poor state of our flowerbeds, including Harrington Road, Mornington Road and John Drinkwater. These will be sorted out ASAP and officers will look at how we can turn these back into flowerbeds rather than either shrub beds or weed beds. Consideration will also be given to other measures in the town centre such as hanging baskets.
Many other issues were also discussed and all of this should make the environment in our town centre and the roads adjacent to the town centre much better. Watch this space for updates on progress....
Harrington and Harold Road 20 mph zone
We are pleased to announce that the 20 mph zone officially came into force at the beginning of July. All of the one-way systems, the traffic restrictions and the 20 mph limit are now in place. This should make the journey to school for children at George Tomlinson much safer and also improve the safety for residents walking around the area.
Talking Schools with the Minister
Local councillors Clyde Loakes and Marie Pye recently had opportunity to meet up with Ed Balls the Labour Minister for Children & Families. They had a discussion with the Minister about key issues for Leytonstone including provision of facilities for young people and the Building Schools for the Future programme and the plans for refurbishment at Leytonstone School. Ed Balls was impressed with the new schools building programme and particularly interested in Leytonstone, he also has some suggestions for how more money may be forthcoming for youth work. Watch this space...
