Grass Cutting service.

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The grass cutting service was out in full force earlier today around the PHRA catchment area.

Its fair to say it was needed. The PHRA will continue to press for a better service and we hope that the proposed 6 week cutting cycle is achieved by the council, as soon as possible.

It is hard to believe that only two years ago the grass cutting service was completely removed !

Maggie's Garden Opened with special guest Sir Trevor McDonald

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The opening of Maggie’s Garden on the 2 of September was attended by many residents and councillors including Mayor Perry, Civic Deputy Mayor Srinivasan and special guest Sir Trevor McDonald OBE, all three speakers gave wonderful tributes to Maggie.

Sir trevor mcdonald obe speaking at the grand opening of Maggie’s garden

mayor Jason Perry speaking at the grand opening of maggie’s garden

The late councillor Maggie Mansell, served the residents of Norbury and Pollards Hill for 26 Years. She lived on Pollards Hill East and was a strong advocate for the PHRA and ALL Pollards Hill residents. She was our very own councillor and she was our champion.

Another notable in attendance was former councillor Andrew Pelling, who ran against Maggie for the GLA assembly member for Croydon and Sutton, way back in the noughties. Their friendly competition spanned 13 years and they both worked in public life for over two decades.

A huge Thanks must go to Tony Hooker of Litter Free Norbury and all of the organisers involved in this wonderful tribute garden for Maggie.

Maggie’s Garden is located on Green Lane, behind bus stop P-Hermitage Lane.

Street briefing on prevention of motor vehicle theft

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Norbury and Pollards Hill SNT is holding an informative street briefing aimed at preventing motor vehicle theft in our community.

Location: Norbury Court Road with the junction with Beech Road

Date/time: Thursday 24th August 2023 at 19:00

What can you expect from this briefing? SNT will

  • discuss tips and tricks to prevent and deter thieves, as well as ways to protect your vehicle and belongings

  • offer ways that motor theft can be reported to the police.

Mayor Jason Perry puts Norbury First !

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Mayor Jason Perry puts Norbury first on the list for a spruce up.

Details can be found here - Norbury first to benefit as Croydon launches ‘blitz’ clean ups to restore pride – Newsroom

“Norbury High Street will be the first to benefit as Croydon Council launches the first in a series of ‘blitz’ clean ups, helping to restore pride in the borough’s district and town centres.

Over the next fortnight, the council and its contractors will be carrying out a range of targeted activity along Norbury High Street, to help make the area feel cleaner and safer, including:

  • Tackling fly-tipping – using data to identify and clean up hotspots in public spaces, and working with landowners to ensure they remove fly-tipping on private land;

  • Cleaning graffiti and fly-posting, including supporting small businesses with a first clean free of charge, and tips to keep their shops looking great and to fight vandalism in the long term;

  • Mechanically washing pavements where necessary;

  • Gully cleansing to remove leaves and dirt that can cause flooding.”

Street briefing on prevention of  motor vehicle theft

Norbury and Pollards Hill SNT is holding an informative street briefing aimed at preventing motor vehicle theft in our community.

Location: Norbury Court Road with the junction with Beech Road

Date/time: Thursday 24th August 2023 at 19:00

What can you expect from this briefing? SNT will

  • discuss tips and tricks to prevent and deter thieves, as well as ways to protect your vehicle and belongings

  • offer ways that motor theft can be reported to the police.

ULEZ - Ultra Low Emission Zone \ URGENT information

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It is important to note that from the 29th of August 2023 the ultra-low emission zone is being extended to encompass our homes in Norbury and the wider area - details of which can be found here - https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/ulez-expansion-2023

The Tax for driving in the activated zone with a non-compliant vehicle is £12.50 per day.

To avoid unwanted penalty charges or worse, find out you now have the huge cost burden of replacing your vehicle/s. Please use the vehicle checker. Link provided here - https://www.tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/check-your-vehicle/  

A finite fund has been set aside and agreed by the Mayor of London, to provide grants that are available on a first come first serve basis, so be quick, if you are eligible, as this may help to reduce your costly vehicle replacement/s.

It has become apparent that the second-hand car market is now highly inflated due to the surge of demand for ULEZ compliant vehicles and the residual value of non ULEZ compliant vehicles has tumbled, exacerbating the cost of upgrading non-compliant vehicles for Londoner’s. Annoyingly, C’est la vie.

This article is intended for information purposes only. The PHRA is a non-political entity.

 

18 Pollards Hill West - The Brambles - Goes to Appeal

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18 Pollards Hill West was once a large detached habitable dwelling and after years of neglect, the unfortunate outcome is likely to be full demolition of the existing dwelling and a new development, although many residents would love the house to be restored to its former glory. The site had approval for 5 detached houses, granted by the local authority, back in 2017. The planning committee at the time, choose to ignore the warnings presented by ward councillor Mansell (deceased 2019), PHRA and local residents. The developer then decided to come back with another Planning Application for 9 dwellings in 2019, with the subsequent planning permission for 5 houses expiring in 2020. Evidently the developer must have realised there wasn’t enough profit in building just 5 houses when coupled with the costly inherent issues associated with developing the site. The current and ongoing proposed in-fill development, may cause harm to the existing housing stock, in its current format. Please tap the following link for more information - Planning Applications — Pollards Hill Residents' association (PHRA). There will be an article regarding the chequered planning history of this site, coming soon. You can also go to the Planning Applications tab, to read more.

Update - The time for the submission of comments to the inspectorate has now lapsed. The PHRA would like to thank all residents who gave up their personal time to assist with the pubic consultation process and provide robust comments (in some cases more than once) to the local authority and the inspectorate. This is now the end of the road for PHRA involvement and the final decision will be provided via the appeals case officer, in due course.

Norbury Street Safety Walk – actions update

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A street walk was organised by our local ward councillors and held on the 16th March. Its aim was to focus on the safety aspects of inadequate street lighting and the subsequent threat posed to women and girls. You can read further details of this walk posted in an earlier bulletin plus the outcome of one of the actions on street lighting. We now await the publishing by our ward councillors of the remaining actions and their outcomes in the near future.

Safer Neighbourhood Team (SNT) Quarterly Ward Meeting - May 2023

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Points of note:

• The Norbury and Pollards Hill ward is listed about halfway down in the table of Croydon wards of recorded crimes by volume – similar in position to the last quarterly report

• Top reported crimes for March:

Violence and sexual offences

Anti-social behaviour

Public order

Vehicle crime

The statistics presented showed the different types of crime within the ward, along with the comparison to previous months within a rolling 12-month period. These are used so that SNT can spot trends and create an action plan about how to organise patrols.

The top three priorities set for SNT as voted by the ward members are listed below:

1. Violence Related, more specifically against a person. This was expanded to include Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), with walk in sessions being offered for those affected to speak to a female officer specifically.
2. Theft of and from Motor Vehicles
3. Drug offences, Possession and Possession with Intent to Supply (PWITS)


A new priority – Speeding was added. This one is caveated as SNT may need to use their connections with the Traffic unit.

SNT aim for the Ward meetings to be community led. However, attempts to elect a panel chair were unsuccessful and the selection/election of Ward panel members was deferred - to another date tbc in August. 

The Mayor turned up to help pick litter !

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a special thanks to tony hooker and the litter free norbury team

The litter free Norbury event was a resounding success with many turning up to pick litter around our catchment area. A keen resident even turned up with his lawnmower to mow a path around the old allotment’s site (side field) for his morning dog walks, a selfless act that will be appreciated by many. The mayor turned up to help pick litter and restore pride in our area. We took the opportunity to show him around our beautiful green spaces and enjoy the stunning panorama vista, from our extra special viewpoint. A huge thank you must go to the Litter Free Norbury Team for their unrelenting good work and to everyone that participated.

the mayor listening to Pollards hill residents

selfless act ! resident taking pride

 

 

Speed monitoring in Pollards Hill

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At our recently held AGM, there was a lively discussion between our PHRA members and the local police Safer Neighbourhood Team (SNT) about excessive speed observed on some roads at certain times of the day. SNT requested volunteers to nominate roads where they have excessive speed concerns and to participate with SNT in speed monitoring sessions .

Volunteers should contact PHRA via the website and our PHRA/SNT liaison committee member will co-ordinate with the SNT. SNT will contact the volunteers to organise these sessions.

SNT in attendance at PHRA AGM Q&A session

Please use the form below to contact us about volunteering for the speed monitoring sessions

PHRA AGM 2023 a huge success !

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A turn up for the books ! With the venue being the Norbury Library Community Room, doors opened at 6:30pm, a queue formed to get in and we reached the maximum venue capacity by 7:00pm, far exceeding our expectation’s. A fantastic evening, enjoyed by all - Tea, Coffee and biscuits provided and guest speakers on the night Mayor Jason Perry, Ken Hume of James Alexander (local estate agents), Local Safer Neighbourhood Team and an impromptu bonus guest speaker, Cllr Roche Cabinet member for Streets and Environment. Pollards Hill, is once again a buzzing community. A lot of ground was covered on the evening by our guest speakers - the feedback has all been positive. Thanks must go to all of the amazing guest speakers on the night, to the PHRA Committee for making it happen and most importantly our members.

Norbury Street Safety Walk

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A street walk was organised by our local ward councillors and held on the 16th March. Its aim was to focus on the safety aspects of inadequate street lighting and the subsequent threat posed to women and girls. Apart from mainly women attendees, also participating was the principal Croydon Street Lighting officer, the Croydon Street lighting contractor, Skanska, and members of the local SNT team plus the attendance of the specialist dedicated Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) officer.

Interestingly, as an experiment one of the streetlights was reduced to half power but its brightness was considered acceptable by most of the group.

Actions agreed were recorded by our local councillors with the aim to both publish them and their outcomes. One of the major actions was for the lighting team to carry out light level tests in the Pollards Hill East and Semley Road areas. Both areas were passed as being compliant and therefore Croydon plan no further action.  A concern is that when trees are in full leaf, they can reduce light levels. Our councillors will be requesting Croydon to carry out the same tests during summer.

Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Safer Neighbourhood SN unit

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Many of us, whilst familiar with the SNT role, will be unaware of the VAWG role. The SN BCU area covers Bromley, Croydon, and Sutton boroughs and consisting of a dedicated Violence against women and girls (VAWG) unit with a dedicated engagement officer. Their role is to work with local partners, key community stakeholders and the local community to prevent violence against women and girls. They run various initiatives such as Walk and Talks (a walk around with local officers about where you do not feel safe) and have set up new ways of reporting where you do not feel safe through Streetsafe (an anonymous non-crime reporting tool: www.met.police.uk/notices/street-safe/street-safe/

 Contact details for VAWG mailbox: SNMailbox-.VAWG@met.police.uk

Safer Neighbourhood Team (SNT) and PHRA February 2023

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PHRA resumed participation with the local SNT police quarterly ward meetings by attending an on-line meeting on Wednesday 8th February.

Points of note:

• PHRA ward listed about halfway down in table of Croydon wards recorded crimes by volume

• Fraud is mainly internet related and dealt with by a specialist team

• Violence – much consists of domestic abuse and is handled by a specialist team

• Sexual offences peak in summer time but no rapes recorded

• Speeding – SNT suggested selecting two 20mph roads (not located in Pollards Hill ward) for monitoring by MPS trained residents to capture volume of offences committed.

No date set for the next quarterly update.


Data Protection Regulations

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PHRA  has updated its privacy policy, in line with the new regulations =regarding data protection..

The only data we hold on members is as follows:

  • ·         Address

  • ·         Name(s) of householder(s)

  • ·         Telephone number

  • ·         Email address

  • ·         Membership card number (varies annually)

We do not hold any sensitive personal information or any financial details about members

Our email list is valuable to us as the main method of communication between newsletters.  However, you can unsubscribe from it at any time if you do not wish to receive our emails.

You can read the complete policy (currently still in draft awaiting ratification) on the membership page of this website