Karen Buck MP

Our longstanding MP, Karen Buck, has announced she won’t be seeking re-election at the next General Election. Karen has served the local community so diligently over the years and set the standard for integrity in politics. She will be sorely missed as our MP, but we know she’ll still play an active role locally, including campaigning for the election of Joe Powell in the new constituency of Kensington and Bayswater (see below).

Kensington and Bayswater Parliamentary Constituency

By now you have hopefully received a letter explaining the boundary changes that mean Bayswater and Lancaster Gate will be part of a new Kensington & Bayswater parliamentary constituency at the General Election later this year. This is one of the most marginal Conservative-Labour seats in the country, and will help decide if we have a change of government. Labour’s parliamentary candidate is Joe Powell, and he has already been out and about in Bayswater and Lancaster Gate talking with residents about their priorities. You can find out more about Joe’s campaign at http://www.joepowell.org.uk and get in touch with him via his website or his survey https://www.joepowell.org.uk/survey.

Deep Cleaning Schedule

Since Labour took control of the council high streets and high footfall areas are being hot washed every 3 months, up from just once per year. Here are some of the local streets receiving deep cleaning between February and April

• Queensway

• Porchester Road

• Moscow Road

• Westbourne Grove

• Eastbourne Terrace

• Praed Street

New Bayswater Housing Office Opened

Maggie and James were pleased to attend the opening of the new Housing Office at Bayswater Children’s Centre on Shrewsbury Road.  Westminster tenants and leaseholders can now visit the offices Monday to Friday, 9 to 5pm, no appointment necessary.  There are also Play and Stay sessions on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays for pre-school children. Read more about it here.

Westbourne Park Road AGM

Maggie attended a busy AGM of the Westbourne Park Road Residents Association.  She was able to bring residents up to date on a number of planning matters and advise on energy conservation in the home.  There were lively discussions about crime in the area and residents were pleased to hear of the roll out of CCTV cameras in addition to the 8 cameras already around the church, Westbourne Passage and Westbourne Gardens.

Defibrillator

In January a new publicly accessible defibrillator was installed in January on Porchester Road, near the service entrance to Waitrose. Thank you to Clean Air Bayswater for securing the funding for the defibrillator, and to Hanna from ColumbiaThreadneedle who agreed to the siting of the defibrillator after Max provided an introduction between the two. Pictured below L to R are Hanna Corney from ColumbiaThreadneedle, Nicky Hessenberg from Clean Air Bayswater and Cllr Max Sullivan.

Kildare Terrace

After receiving a complaint from a resident that the single yellow line outside Kildare Court was leading to the entrance to the car park being blocked by parked cars, we are happy that the council has implemented a double yellow line.

Westbourne Grove

We are pleased that TfL have listened to the concerns of resident’s associations and us councillors and introduced a new temporary bus stop for the number 36 outside the Taqueria restaurant.

Gloucester Terrace Voids

We have written to the council’s housing service about a number of void basement properties on Gloucester Terrace with sitex security doors. The housing team have responded that these are a mixture of council owned and leaseholder properties which have had issues with break ins and squatting while void. We have asked for regular updates from the service on bringing these properties back into use as quickly as possible.

Ledbury Road

We are delighted that after repeated appeals to Kensington & Chelsea Council – who have responsibility for the road – additional “passing space” has been introduced to alleviate the issue of congestion at the northern end of Ledbury Road.

Alexander Mews

Max raised a number of issues with housing on behalf of an Alexander Mews leaseholder, including unusually high service charges for communal electricity, and incorrect charges for flytipping. Officers say of the charges for flytipping:

I will arrange for the charge applied to the service charge for invoice 2223FT74 to be removed from the service charge and we will write to all residents to apologise and advise of the reversal.

And of the unusually high electricity bills for communal areas:

With respect to the communal electricity charges one of our electrical engineers from the M&E team visited Alexander Mews today (13/02/2024) to undertake a visual pre inspection of the mews and to ascertain if he can establish which garages are connected to which electricity meter and to gather information to instruct Oakray. There are four separate electricity meters at Alexander Mews. 

Following the inspection today the engineer will be raising a works order to instruct Oakray to determine which meters serve which service and which garages are connected to which meter.

Should it transpire that the garages and the communal electricity supply are being drawn from the same meters, and therefore if residents have been overcharged, we will calculate credits to our residents and write to all residents explaining the position and the methodology for the credits. We will know more once Oakray have been to site. I will keep you update in due course.

Durham Terrace

We are working with residents of Durham Terrace regarding charges to leaseholder for major works (Section 20 notices).

Hereford Road

We’ve raised an issue with discarded Lime bikes near the junction of Westbourne Grove with officers who cleared the location and are working with the operator to deter users from discarding the bikes improperly at this location.

Funding for ‘The Cold Can Kill’

Bayswater councillors have provided funding to The Connection at St Martin’s in addition to the support provided by the council under the SWEP (Severe Weather Emergency Protocol):

This project aims to ensure people are equipped to survive their time on the streets in winter. In the next few months, we anticipate supporting individuals who do not have the essentials to manage freezing temperatures.