Our track record in Harringay

Hi everyone,

With the local election soon upon us, I have been reflecting on the past four years of service as your local councillor.

Zena and I have made a dynamic team, working relentlessly together to deliver for Harringay ward – and becoming good friends in the process! We were delighted to be joined by Olly as a new candidate: he has brought new energy, commitment and local government experience to our team.

Looking back on the past four years, this is what we are proudest of delivering:

Making Harringay a great place to raise a family:

• We’ve secured £5 million for the upkeep of South Harringay Junior School and North Harringay Primary School, creating a positive learning environment that contributed to their respective ‘Outstanding’ and ‘Good’ Ofsted ratings.

• We’re securing funding for new playgrounds for our little ones: we've just won a £150,000 Government grant for a new playground in Ducketts Common and convinced the Parks team to apply for a grant to improve the playground in Fairland Park. We’ve also secured self-closing gates at Fairland Park to ensure children are protected from running out onto the roads.

• We’ve delivered new outdoor amenities for adolescents, including the new basketball courts in Ducketts Common, the new Skate Plaza in Finsbury Park, and chess tables in both parks.

• Both Zena and Anna served on the core team that delivered the Mayor of London’s Free School Meals policy across the Borough – ensuring no child went without a nutritious meal during the school day.

Fighting crime and antisocial behaviour:  

• We’ve co-designed a Harringay Action Plan with residents that contains Key Performance Indicators to measure the Police and the Council’s progress on tackling antisocial behaviour.

• We collaborated with the Police to secure a dispersal order to stop intimidating behaviour on Falkland Road, arrest an individual who broke into multiple cars, and obtain closure orders on premises used by criminals for the cuckooing of vulnerable people.

• We’ve routinely opposed gambling shops’ applications to operate until the early hours of the morning on Green Lanes, by making representations before the Council’s Licensing Committee and appearing as witnesses before the Magistrates Court.

• We’ve successfully opposed planning applications by entertainment establishments with a track record of causing public nuisance.

Keeping Harringay clean: 

• We’ve taken a tough stance against flytipping: we installed a horizontal black bin at a dumping hotspot on Cavendish Road, secured flytipping signage on Mattison Road, and took enforcement action against serial flytippers on Beresford Road and Raleigh Road.

• We asked for a late-night enforcement operation this year which resulted in 21 individuals each receiving a £1000 fine for flytipping on Green Lanes, Turnpike Lane and neighbouring areas.

• We’ve taken action on dog fouling in the Harringay Passage, by securing warning signage, requesting jet washes of the Passage, and have escalated a request for a CCTV camera on the Passage to the Council’s Partnership & Problem Solving Group.

• We’ve established a working group with Haringey Council's Director of Public Health to deliver a plan to address emissions from Green Lanes restaurants’ wood and charcoal-based ovens.

• We successfully advocated for a stronger street cleansing contract from 2027 that is expected to lead to more frequent sweeping of the Harringay Ladder's residential roads.

Delivering safer, healthier streets:

• We’ve resurfaced 10 pavements and 7 roads in Harringay and delivered a sustainable drainage system on Hampden Road to minimise flooding during heavy rainfall.

• We’ve installed 20 new bike hangars in Harringay to increase bike storage spaces.

• We’ve made our roads safer, including by introducing slow road marking and anti-skid surfacing on Endymion Road, improving car visibility at the junction of Allison Road and Wightman Road, and securing funding for a scheme to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety on Green Lanes.

• We successfully opposed the proposed abolition of daily parking permits.

Serving Harringay ward has been a responsibility we have never taken lightly – and we hope residents feel we have earned the trust you placed in us in May 2022. We have taken pride in being accessible and visible councillors, by attending community meetings and swiftly resolving (often complex) resident case work.

There is still a lot more we want to achieve – not least, our plans to deliver segregated cycle lanes on our busiest roads, install living walls to purify the air in the two Harringay schools, and clamp down on rogue landlords.

We would be honoured to be elected to represent you as Harringay's Labour & Co-operative ward councillors on Thursday 7^th May.

Best regards,

Cllr Anna Abela – Anna.Abela@haringey.gov.uk

On behalf of:

Olly Bennathan – OllyBennathan@haringeylabour.org.uk

Cllr Zena Brabazon – Zena.Brabazon@haringey.gov.uk