Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Council Remains "Committed to Liveable Crouch End" Project
With £4.8m towards the Liveable Crouch End from Transport for London burning a hole in their pocket, Haringey Council remain committed to a scheme of some sort. Feedback from the recent Crouch End street closures trial may influence whether such closures end up forming part of the plan.
Ann Cunningham, Haringey's Head of Operations, said: 'We are committed to Liveable Crouch End and will be developing concept designs in the New Year, building on the results and feedback from the trial. We have committed to working on the project with local people and so we are gathering as much information from residents as possible to ensure that their views are represented in future plans." It added the trial had "provided valuable traffic data".
The council will release the results of the consultation over the closures trial on December 13.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Justin Guest on
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Pity they are not as committed to a Living Harringay too.
While Ann and co were busy kicking into the long grass any material efforts to raise the living standards of folks on this side of the railway lines (with the cost and lack of investment capital factor one trotted out to justify any inactivity on the Council's behalf), an active effort was being made to identify millions for Crouch End... Go figure.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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...or did it come from the same civic energy that led to the formation of the Crouch End Forum?
I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find out, but I don't know what drove the development of this project initially. I might be wrong, but I'd assumed that it started with locals who persuaded the Council to get on board. Isn't that what's happening with the St Ann's project?
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Permalink Reply by Adrian Hackney on
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Thank you for the compliment to the Crouch End Forum. Luckily/unluckily (delete as you think appropriate given the response to the Middle Lane Trial) the Forum did not drive this initiative.
The first anyone in Crouch End knew of it was when the former CE councillors claimed it for their own https://crouchendlabour.wordpress.com/2017/11/30/5-8m-secured-for-a....
But even this is not quite the source of the project. A Freedom of Information request (answered in March 2018) from one of the Haringey Cycling groups revealed a set of documents submitted to TfL https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparency/freedom-of-information/fo...
A simple reading of Doc A will soon show that this was no bag of a fag packet application, but something which had been in gestation for months, secretly, in offices at Haringey HQ. Without the FoI request who knows how long it would have been before the supposed beneficiaries were told of it.
I say 'supposed beneficiaries' as there is now a large body of thought in Crouch End that believes this is something which is being done to them, rather than for them.
Justin Guest is a little selective in his perception of relative spending on the Eastern and Western parts of the borough. My perception is that Tottenham and Wood Green have the edge. I think there is also a 'thin end of the wedge' exercise going on here. There is a page on the Haringey website which links Turnpike Lane and Liveable Crouch End. There is also the stub of a cycle lane running just a very few yards under the railway bridge from Turnpike Lane to the one way system in Hornsey. Perhaps its purpose is to support a further Liveable Streets bid to raise money for Turnpike Lane.
I have seen little of the ST Ann's project lately. To begin with it held out hope of being a genuine community led success. I hope that is the case.
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That's interesting. Thanks Adrian. Then it's very strange that given the choice of where to site a 'liveable' project, they chose somewhere that's already a pretty pleasant place to live. You think they'd pick somewhere deprived.......wouldn't you?
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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Having been involved in Crouch End for a couple of decades and spending a few years more recently within the St Ann's project (StART - 800 homes, 50+ community-led, plus 100+ the council will buy to let at Council rents) I see if anything more 'civic energy' East of the Berlin Wall that separates our borough in deprivation than in the West.
A virtual barrier is that our civic systems generally have the middle class pulling levers, for the middle class.
Real change is brought about where there are 'civic-minded' older (often retired) people with the time and resources to really get involved and a conducive atmosphere. Older people are getting more involved as there are becoming more and more of them. From the Council's 'Haringey at a Glance'.
There are more of them in wealthier areas, where a higher proportion of 'activists' are older white people like me. For 'children are the future', insert 'oldies'
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