Head Banging and a Ground Floor Strategy

[Adrian Richard Essex]

I have been a member of the WDCO board for more than three years. I've tried to do two things:

1) Improve the workings of the board

2) Interest a wider number of residents in the proceedings of the board, which is the official mechanism for expressing residents' views to the regeneration partnership.

 A brick wall with minor successes

By and large, improving the workings of the board is like beating my head against a brick wall. Which, as we all know, is lovely only when it stops.

But there have been one or two minor successes.

A Community Forum

WDCO held A Community Forum last year. The WDCO constitution demands that one be held every year. This was the second in 16 years, and held almost entirely at my instigation. This points up a characteristic of the WDCO board. They have been very selective about which parts of the constitution they choose to honour. Any well led organisation would not have seen this particular requirement as onerous, but as a crucial means of staying in touch with its electorate. When some of us on the board pointed this out the board appointed a sub-group to make the arrangements for the forum, this group held some meetings. Another characteristic of WDCO. Its sole purpose seems to be to hold meetings, rather than actually do things.

A website

WDCO now has an up to date website. Previously there was a dated, unmaintained and unattractive site based on the Wix platform. The current site is primarily notable for the publication of board papers and a contacts page. The proceedings of the board are carried out for the benefit of the residents of the estate. Most of the meetings of the board are held in public and making these documents readily available is an important step in making the board accountable.

The contacts page will provide a means for anyone wishing to do so, to contact board members. Given WDCO's currently low profile the feature is rarely used.

 Vice Chairs who actually serve a purpose

And we do have another minor triumph on the horizon. Another section of the constitution, honoured so far entirely only in the breach, states the numerous vice-chairs on the Executive, should each take responsibility for a subject area, these areas to be determined by the board.

The four policy areas agreed by the board are:

•  Individual Case 
• Ground Floor Strategy 
• Residents Association Liaison
• Constitution Reform 

and given any luck these will be allocated to Vice-Chairs at the next board meeting (Thursday 17th October).

Ground Floor Strategy 

In what might be an interesting development, there is already competition for the "Ground Floor Strategy" role, with two VCs having put their names forward.

The counterbalancing not-such-good-news is that this is an area of policy where we have been badly let down by the regeneration partnership process. The time for strategy seems to be past, and some urgent rehabilitation work is needed, here and now.

Taking a look at what we have on Seven Sisters Road, Woodberry Grove and around Spring Park, a generous judgment would call it uninspiring. If the rumours are to be believed a lot of the tenants are having trouble paying their rent (Berkeley have published figures saying that rent collection percentages at Woodberry Down are low, compared to similar sites).

It is certainly true that The Naturalist is up for sale, with one price reduction so far.

Woodberry Grove is mainly a windswept canyon, of bland , undistinguished frontages.

 

And the Redmond Centre persists with its forbidding window of aging posters, and access only for pre-arranged events.

 And the so called "Block D" stands empty 7 years (soon to be 8) after it was first given over to community use. A well led community would have had this sorted out years ago so that the building could function from the day building work was complete. As things stand we still don't know what's going in there.

 

Riverside Gardens is hardly a thoroughfare, which the Nar Cafe brightens up, but an estate agent and a dry cleaner are workaday at best. Again the problem with the wind.

And the premises on Seven Sisters Road have one major propblem to deal with. Their location. I wonder what happened to this vision of Seven Sisters Road published by consultants SNC-Lavalin-Atkins in July 2018.