Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
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 7th 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
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Barbara
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Thanks Zena and Anna for all your hard work in improving our ward and services throughout the borough.
It's not easy seeing projects through in response to resident's needs and it takes time and dedication to establish good solutions to full implementation. To be fair regarding cyclists and dedicated bike lanes…TFL policy dominates all of the London boroughs to keep Londoners moving of course ! There are other bike routes available with lesser traffic (ie unofficial LTN in the Gardens). TFL determines London’s bus services for everybody – young and old, fit and disabled to keep London moving.
Luckily here we have councillors who are highly principled and dedicated to solving the numerous issues within a complex London area - prone like all of London to the difficulties of resolving drug taking and organised criminal behaviour. Theirs is an impressive list of achievement that has taken guts despite naysayers to make Harringay a better place for everyone. Thank you and also good luck to their new prospective candidate - Olly Bennathan - in your quest to serve too.
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Haringey could easily make the Borough a much better place to cycle, which would reduce car use, improve peoples health/well-being, and cut emissions.
But the people in charge of Haringey don't really want change, they want to keep the status quo of "car use"
And you can't blame TFL as ALL the neighboring boroughs have much better cycling provision.
And asking cyclists to use complicated "zig zag" routes through residential areas is just saying "keep off bigger roads, they are for cars". Cyclists need to access high street shops like everyone else.
This is why I am not voting labour, as they have had FOUR years to improve the borough for cyclists and virtually nothing has been done. (The LTNs were provided with TFL money by the way)
I know there is a lot of "anti-cyclist" sentiment caused by reckless cyclists/delivery riders, but I note that the Councillors on here are very quick to reply about other issues (eg saving trees, tube stations entrances, smoke on green lanes) but they never mention cycling at all. Why is that? Is it deemed "too difficult" to address? Or is it that Councillors don't actually cycle, so they don't care?
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter
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I can't agree! "they" have had longer than just "four years to improve the borough for cyclists …'. Do you know of the Haringey Cycling Action Plan and its date of publication?
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Permalink Reply by Barrie Birch
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I am curious to know what pragmatic improvements for cycling you would want in Harringay Ward. As you acknowledged TfL have a duty to keep traffic moving, especially along such a major artery as Green Lanes. A separate cycle lane would either take space from cars or from pedestrians.
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Hi Barry, you've heard me moan about cycling too in the pub and LCSP.
Cyclists amongst us would cherish a bus/cycle lane perhaps 7 to 7 on Green Lanes each side. Dodging parked cars that can't read the NO PARKING signs 16.00 - 19.00 weekdays as we are trying to get home is not fun, it's dangerous.
The Endymion and Arena road junctions are horrible for cyclists, we getting these made less dangerous would be another priority.
Maintaining parking for the sake of people who work in Green Lanes seems wrong. Every other high-end german car / SUV seems to have a blue badge in the window.
Labour's track record on delivery cycling, well they've not managed to do a thing. It's frustrating.
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The Haringey Cycling Action Plan was published in 2004.
Not a typo. Not 2014.
Two thousand and four.
The council's ultra-conservative, hidebound HighwayMen have no interest in active travel and have never taken cycling seriously.
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So do you mean cyclists would share the bus lane? TfL would never agree that.
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Stop people parking on major routes and make them cycle lanes instead. It's really not hard. The Council needs to be bold.
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At LSCP we've pleaded with the police to try to do traffic operations and try to get some of these illegal electric bikes and their drivers off the roads. There are no resources we keep being told. I think this issue needs to be dealt with at London Assembly and Westminster level.
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I can personally attest to the hard work and dedication of Coucillors Abena and Brabazon. They have worked hard on our behalf.
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Thanks Zena and Anna for all the work you have done over the last four years.
You almost always manage to come to LSCP, and those of us who attend regularly get an idea of all things you have done for Harringay be in objections to egregious planning applications, working to solve the pollution to opposing extensions of gambling licenses on Green Lanes. Plus so much more.
In Harringay Gardens we're grateful for bringing the council ASB team, SNT and locals together to deal with the anti-social behaviour of patrons associating with the Corner Cafe, and asking the council housing team to persuade a run-down HMO to fix a broken wall and get the properly painted.
I'm sorry I've sent so many emails about annoying things like piles of , crack-dealing neighbours (!), rubbish, demolished walls and so on. You've always responded with patience and good humour, and I really appreciate that.
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