Saturday, February 10, 2007

Pollards Hill fun day

With Pollards Hill in the process of having a Neighbourhood plan produced by the council in order to regenerate the area, an fun-day took place today in the New Horizons centre in order to hear the views of local people.

This involved a range of different community organisations coming together including the youth centre, Safer Merton, Groundwork Merton, Commonside Trust and the local PCT. A number of surveys were also filled out by local residents about what improvements they wanted to see in the local area.

The day was useful as I got to meet a range of different organisations and also hear the views from a range of local residents. One of the main issues raised by resident was the lighting on Donnelly Green which I'm now pleased to say that progress is at last happening. Many other improvements that people wanted so see made included improved public transport, more CCTV, more play facilities and improvements to the local environment.

In terms of the next stage, it will involve a multi-agency approach and a report that will take into account residents and partner organisations views which will then be fed into the Neighbourhood plan. Within Pollards Hill, we already have excellent multi-agency working and the neighbourhood plan will hopefully improve this further. Pollards Hill is an area of high deprivation with many challenges, however the area has improved significantly over the last 10 years. This has been mainly due to the Single Regeneration Budget between 1998 and 2002 which invested £5 million into a range of community schemes. Likewise the rebuilding and modernisation of housing on the estate has significantly improved housing in the area. Hopefully the Neighbourhood plan will allow further improvements to be made and to build on the progress made locally.

I would also to thank Jacqui Ceyenne from Merton Council and Naomi from the Commonnside Trust for helping to organise the day at short notice and making it a great success.

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