Lynne Featherstone

Bounds Green Tube Station has been designated a Grade II listed building by the Government, as the result of a two-year campaign by Liberal Democrats and local residents.

In July 2008, Cllr John Oakes wrote to English Heritage, requesting that Bounds Green Tube Station be put forward for listing by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport , in order to protect the much-loved local landmark.

Cllr  Oakes, Liberal Democrat councillor for Bounds Green, comments:

“I have long admired our tube station, and the way its Art Deco style makes it an ornament and a focus for the area’s residents.

“After a tour with local MP Lynne Featherstone, to examine its excellent restoration by Transport for London, I was surprised to find that it had not been listed in the same way as Turnpike Lane and Arnos Grove, two other stations dating from 1932/3 and influenced by the legendary architect Charles Holden.

“So I asked the Bounds Green and District Residents’ Association and the Hornsey Historical Society if they would support my application, which they kindly did.

“I am delighted to say that the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport has now recognised  Bounds Green Tube as an historical gem and a very worthy addition to Haringey’s protected buildings by giving it a Grade ll listing.  This effectively limits any changes or extensions, so that its clean lines can be  enjoyed by many future generations.

“The Minister echoed my application, by drawing attention to the station’s ‘special architectural interest…which responds appropriately to its suburban setting, while boldly announcing its presence.”

Lynne Featherstone, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, adds:

“Well done to all those residents who helped this wonderful campaign, to ensure a key piece of Bounds Green history is preserved.”

Following a successful campaign by Liberal Democrats to improve police services in Wood Green, the local police have agreed to re-open Wood Green police station 24 hours a day. The news was revealed in a question to Liberal Democrat crime spokesperson, Councillor Ron Aitken, in this week’s Full Council, after Lib Dems expressed concern about the High Road police station front counter only being open until 9 pm.

Lynne Featherstone MP and the Liberal Democrat team have been campaigning for better police services for Wood Green residents and launched a survey in the Autumn to understand residents’ priorities on policing in the area.

Lynne Featherstone MP comments:

“This is fantastic news for Wood Green residents. A lot of crime happens at night, but for some time now, local people have been poorly served by a barely operational police station.

“It’s so important just to know that the police will be there for you at any time, day or night, if something should happen. I think this will make a huge difference.”

Cllr Ron Aitken, Liberal Democrat crime spokesperson, adds:

“Being out on the streets, talking to local people, it’s clear having a 24 hour police station is high up on the wish list, so I really welcome this terrific news!”

What’s happening with Wood Green police station? As my film shows, it’s not all good news…

(Also on YouTube here.)

Finally, after a long campaign to get Oyster Pay As You Go (PAYG) to work from tube to overground trains – we have lift off. To test the reality of Oyster being extended on Haringey’s train services, I went to Alexandra Palace Station to have a go (before the snow!). It worked – I tapped in and I tapped out! Here’s the clip:

(Also on YouTube here.)

So that’s the very good news at long last. However, the bad news is that if you have a Travelcard with limited zones and you want to go beyond them, you will need another electronic card – an Oyster Extension Permit.

This is unnecessarily complicated and First Capital Connect should have been able to come up with another solution. But given it is the system – and whilst I don’t wish to be overtly rude – First Capital Connect must be mad. You have to purchase an Oyster Extension Permit, but they are not going to be sold from ticket offices at overland stations!

Yes, that’s right – if you want this sort of ticket to use the trains, the train company won’t sell it to you.

Instead you will have to buy them at tube stations or at corner shops which carry the Oyster sign. It’s as if First Capital Connect doesn’t actually want people to get hold of the card!

Anyway it’s a New Year, and this is basically a good news story, so I will temporarily stop railing at First Capital Connect and end on that bad pun.

I sent out an email to my email list to inform local people (hard copy will follow more widely) of the threat to close or reduce services at the Whittington A & E and about the threat to the North Middlesex A & E too. Both contain petitions for people to sign up to: The Whittington petition is here and the North Mid petition is at http://bit.ly/northmid.

The responses are pouring in. In the first 24 hours, since yesterday afternoon, 745 people have already signed the Whittington petition and 89 the North Mid.

It is already quite clear that local people don’t want to lose their local A & E nor see it reduced. That is why it is so important that local peoples’ views are heard loud and clear NOW. Otherwise when the Health Authority ’options’ finally come to public consultation – we may find that there are no options that keep the Whittington A & E open and that in reality the decisions have actually been made. That goes for the North Mid too.

I support improved clinical outcomes, obviously, and there are lots of health services that may be better provided by one or other hospital. But A & E is one of the services that needs to be local and 24 hours – that’s the point.

As one constituent wrote to me who works at one of the hospitals (not the Whittington) ‘there is no more logic to an   A & E unit at University College Hospital than the others.  Medical staff will adapt to what is decided.  UCH and RFH could easily become even more specialist than they already are and would flourish without an A & E.  The Whittington on the contrary exists to provide a local and emergency service and is at risk of having its lifeblood sucked away’.

Couldn’t have put it better myself!

Here’s my latest Ham & High column:

A few days ago I met the new CEO of First Capital Connect, the train company which services much of Haringey. I talked to Jim Morgan in particular about the issues arising from their cut backs to ticket office opening hours at Hornsey, Bowes Park, Alexandra Palace and Harringay stations.

Although the previous campaigning by myself and residents helped reduce the extent of the cuts, the opening hours have still been severely reduced. A local resident contacted me about long queues at ticket machines when the ticket offices are closed. Imagine how cross it makes you when you are running for a train – and you have to miss it because of even one or two people buying tickets at the machine. Mind you, that is when the ticket machines are working – and as if on cue when I turned up to film a clip for YouTube about the problems, the ticket machine at Harringay was out of order and the ticket office closed!

When the machine is out of order you’re forced to travel without a ticket which means at best having to explain at the other end that the machine is not working and at worst that they try and give you a penalty fare. It’s a far too common bane of contemporary life – people who want to obey the law find obstacles put in their way because the authorities (rail company in this case) doesn’t do its end of the deal.

Please watch the YouTube clip at www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWMbZAxF4U8 – it really demonstrates the problem. In it I also highlight the problems with signs at Alexandra Palace Station. At both Alexandra Palace Station and at Harringay station there aren’t signs in the places that you need them to tell you where to buy a ticket – whether from the ticket office or machines. If you know the stations and know where to go, that is fine. But woe betide the irregular or new traveller, particularly in the dark. You can be left hunting around, up stair and down stair, over platform and along platform for the place to hand over your money – with buggy, children, luggage. How helpful is that?

Imagine a shop behaving like that – hiding away without signs where you pay your money!

So – one message to Mr Morgan was to get the signs improved. On the reliability of the ticket machines – he told me that they were very expensive and didn’t break down very often. Given my visit to film the YouTube video found that the only machine was indeed ‘out of service’ I have asked him to supply me with figures for numbers of hours / days when the Harringay Station ticket machine has been out of service over the last year. We will see whether I just had bad luck or whether ‘not very often’ is actually rather often!

More positively on the signs, for Alexandra Palace Station he agreed with me about the problem and is going to investigate what can be done – including repairing the only sign that is easily visible from one direction – but points completely the wrong way! On the Harringay signs – well, that is really a symptom of the ticket machine being on one platform and so out of the way for people using the other platform. So he’s going to first look at the location of that machine.

When First Capital Connect reduced the opening hours of the ticket offices, they agreed to monitor how the changes at the stations in Hornsey & Wood Green were affected during an eight week period. That time is now up – and I asked Mr Morgan for the results of that monitoring. He did not have the figures to hand but said that they had ‘monitored’ queuing times and volume of sales were still in steady decline. However he said they would not be reducing the hours any further. I should hope not! He said the report would be finalised by the end of next month.

Finally, of course I asked him how Oyster Pay-As-You-Go was going. We’ve been long promised that it would be made available for the train services that serve these stations – but we’re still waiting. Jim Morgan told me, “I am very optimistic that the Train Operating Companies will start accepting Oyster PAYG early in the New Year”. Let’s hope his ‘optimism’ is well founded – but I will be nagging between now and then to make sure that doesn’t change! We’ve waited (as have the installed machines) far too long for TfLand First Capital Connect to get their act together on making life easier for us passengers.

If you’ve got any views on these issues – or other ones related to those train stations – do let me know, particularly as I will be regularly checking with Jim Morgan to make sure the promised progress happened. You can email lynne or write to me at House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA

Haringey Council should take swift and firm action to halt the surge in betting shops in the Wood Green area to limit crime and anti-social behaviour, local Liberal Democrats have said .

Speaking out against applications to Haringey Council for three new betting shops in Wood Green High Road and Green Lanes, Cllr Ron Aitken, Liberal Democrat Crime spokesperson, has said that Haringey Council needs to urgently lobby the Government to change the law to enable councils to limit the number amount of betting shops in an area.

Recent statistics revealed by the Liberal Democrats show that 735 incidents of criminal damage occurred in Haringey’s betting shops in the past two years as well drug related and public order offences.

Cllr Ron Aitken, Liberal Democrat Crime Spokesperson, comments:

“Statistics indicate that Haringey’s betting shops are a source of significant crime and antisocial behaviour, as well as being a nuisance to local residents.

“We are not against people having a flutter but enough is enough. Haringey Council needs the power to declare that no more betting shops should be allowed in Wood Green or Green Lanes.

“Labour need to lobby their own Government to give local communities the power to curb the ever increasing numbers of betting shops.”

Cllr Fiyaz Mughal (Noel Park) adds:

“The explosion of gambling and gaming venues blight Wood Green’s main shopping street and they do little to support the local economy

“It is time to call a time out and say that enough is enough. Such venues cannot be allowed to grow exponentially whilst the local authority is virtually powerless to stop them. I would be delighted to hear from any Noel Park residents who would like to help us take this campaign forward.”

Lynne Featherstone MP adds:

“I will be contacting the Government Minister responsible for the planning laws that leave Haringey Council and local residents powerless to stop betting shops taking over our high streets.”

I was invited to give out some of the certificates yesterday and make a short speech at the celebration of 5E being awarded Beacon Status by the Learning and Skills Council. 5E is a local provider of education and training to employment for those groups in the community who struggle against various barriers. The litany of who those groups are is familiar: black and ethnic minorities, refugees and asylum seekers, women, those with disabilities or health or mental health problems, lone parents, long-term unemployed, older people, ex-offenders and others –  who so often find they are not even in the running for getting jobs that others take for granted. And there are so many people who for one reason or another – don’t start anywhere near a level playing field.

For me, the recipe for a better and happier world is a fairer society. And what I really mean by that is a more equal society.  But Britain has steadily become a less equal and a less fair society, rates of social mobility have actually fallen.  And your educational chances are strongly correlated to your social class – setting the prospects for children even before they reach school. And that affects everything in life – because inequality begets inequality.

In fact, a whole host of studies across different countries have consistently shown that not just in terms of education and health, but also in terms of crime, social respect, trust and participation – the outcomes are linked to the degrees of inequality in wealth and income. So narrowing that gap benefits everyone.  

So the work that Raj Doshi (the head of 5E) and his committed, energetic and enthusiastic team do and their brilliant track record with of achievement with 5E having been awarded Grade 1 (outstanding provision) three times by OFSTED – who are the inspection authority for this – is vital.

With support, training and skills – everyone can and should have the opportunities that others take for granted. Congratulations to all who have taken the courses and all those who have made them so successful.

That’s the point of receiving Beacon Status – so they can shine a light for others to follow.

If I ruled the world I would ………….. that’s the challenge I have set local children in Hornsey & Wood Green schools to tell me in 200 words for Local Democracy Week.

I launched my mini-writing competition today at Alexandra Park School – where the amazing Jo (Citizenship teacher extraordinaire) had agreed to set up to undertake this project with the Citizenship and the English classes working together. So today I was attending the Citizenship class where Jo was brainstorming with the children to get them involved and engaged in beginning to think what sort of things might need changing or what worried them – and then – how that might be changed.

The first round of ideas were just brilliant – from the young girl who wanted to make life better for young carers, to world peace and beyond. I’m not going to go through the list – but suffice to say – that it is completely fascinating to to listen to the ideas they had about what worried them – and recognise where the input came from. Some clearly came from school work, much from television and newscasts  – but Jo was really clever – and as well as those sort of universal issues tried to move them onto a more personal level of what worried or concerned them in their own lives.

So I am greatly looking forward to reading all the submissions when they come in. I always feel very uplifted when I come out of a school visit like that.

I was just listening to the radio – Nick Ferrari – to be precise. Bridget Stevenson, Brown Owl leader in Hammersmith to 24 brownies is being forced to retire (after 20 years) having reached Girlguiding UK’s mandatory retirement age of 65.

Given that Girlguiding UK says this policy is under review - and having listened to Bridget (who skis, plays tennis and is much loved by the girls) surely this is an opportunity for Girlguiding UK to use common sense and suspend their policy pending the outcome of that review.

It is so hard to find enough good people to volunteer for guides, brownies, scouts, cubs whatever – when you have someone this good and this popular – and the threat of closure of the group if another leader can’t be found – surely this is a time for Girlguiding UK to lead by example and banish ageism.