Lancaster Gate Surgery Date Change

From next month onwards, your Labour Lancaster Gate surgery times will be changing slightly. There will still be the same number of surgeries, but the Hallfield Estate surgery will move from the 1st Saturday of the month to the 1st Thursday of the month. The new days and times will now be:

• Every 1st Thursday of the month 5:30pm-7pm – Pickering House, Hallfield Estate

• Every 3rd Saturday of the month 11am-12:30am – Italian Gardens Cafe, Kensington Gardens

We are arranging for all posters to be replaced with the new timings. As always, surgeries do not require an appointment, and we encourage anyone to come along to talk to us.

Hallfield Major Works x115

Cllr Jude attended the last Hallfield Residents’ Association meeting to listen to concerned residents, and both Cllr Ormsby and Cllr Jude ran a drop-in session to support residents with formulating their Section 20 Observations. We want to thank Hallfield residents for organising and coming together so successfully to challenge these costs. The deadline for formal observations has now passed. We will be pushing for council to provide full and proper responses to all residents impacted, as well as organise an independent chartered surveyor to review the proposed costs.

St James Paddington Vandalism

We were appalled to see the vandalism committed against the St James’ Church Paddington. We have been working with policing colleagues and our neighbourhood coordinator to discuss next steps and bringing those who committed this hate crime to justice.

Hallfield Age UK Senior Citizens Lunch Club

We are delighted to again be funding the much-loved bi-monthly lunch clubs in Pickering Hall, being run by Age UK, over December-April. We hope all residents that enjoy the lunch club will be pleased, and if you are interested in attending and do not have the details, please do reach out to us.

Winchester House Burst Water Pipe 

We were very worried to hear about the impacts of a burst water pipe in a private property in Winchester House over the festive period, which caused flooding to the property and a property below. We are thankful to London Fire Brigade for attending swiftly and isolating the incident, helping workers to repair the pipe and turn the water back on. We requested officers contact all properties impacted, and provide support on emergency accommodation, repairs and more, as needed. We are also thankful to the residents in the block who were keeping us updated throughout the day of the incident. Please reach out to us if you were impacted and not contacted, or if the support has not been adequate.

Hallfield Abandoned Vehicle

We were very concerned to hear about a seemingly abandoned vehicle that was using a residents’ parking space. We instigated an investigation, and we were able to determine the vehicle could be removed – as it happily now has been. We are supporting the resident with installing a bollard for the space now too. If you see suspicious vehicles that look abandoned, please do inform us.

FA Plaque Update

Last year, Cllr Jude wrote to the CEO of the Football Association to ask for their support to install a Westminster Green Plaque at 22 Lancaster Gate, the old site of The FA’s headquarters. We are pleased that listed building consent has now been approved, with no objections received during consultation. This brings us one step closer to installing the Green Plaque, and we ill provide an update in due course.

Upbrook Mews

Residents have raised concern over the lack of road cleaning of Upbrook Mews, flagging that the expected cleaning schedule is not being kept to. We queried this with officers, who have informed us that although there is no definition under statutory requirements as to how often roads should be cleaned, Westminster has dedicated schedules and days for cleaning – which we as Councillors have said we expect to be met. We requested that officers contact the residents and are pleased a site visit is being arranged to ensure the street is cleaned to the standards expected. We will keep following this closely.

Chilworth Mews Public Realm & Highways

Cllr Jude was pleased to arrange a meeting in December to discuss the proposed public realms work and linked highways concerns, with officers from both the public realm and highways teams and residents. We are following up with officers to ensure the actions from this meeting are noted and being implemented, and residents being kept up to date. We have been told to expect the Craven Road loading bay to be reinstated early this year, and will confirm as soon as this has occurred. We will continue to provide updates on the actions relating to these discussions, ongoing planning enforcement and more.

Hallfield Youth Club

One of the first things we enacted as your Labour councillors was to reinstate the youth club on the Hallfield Estate and have been grateful for support from the Whiteley Community Foundation and Westbourne Park Family Centre in making this a reality. During the winter months, the provision will continue and be combined with the provision on the Brunel Estate until Spring. Please reach out if you need further details or would like to join the next session.

Closure of Lancaster Gate Station 

Between January 2022 and August 2023, Lancaster Gate station experienced 111 closures. That’s why we launched our petition earlier in the year to Stop the Closure which amassed over 1000 signatures in the space of a few weeks. We took our petition to TfL and urged them to change approach and reconsider how it determines the importance of Lancaster Gate station remaining open vs other stations during staff shortages. We had been pleased to see over the last few months a great improvement in service and closures reduced, but we are concerned to see a pattern of closures re-emerging. We have been in constant correspondence with the Mayor’s Office and TfL to work to resolve this.

Nevertheless, we mustn’t forget the ultimate cause of this problem – the Conservative Government’s political choice to underfund TfL and plunge it into financial jeopardy. If the Government funded TfL properly, like all other major global city transport networks, we simply wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Action on Short-Term Lets

We thank residents for their proactivity in reporting short-term lets on the Hallfield Estate. While we cannot share details on specific cases, the council is pursuing several cases with legal action and working directly with Airbnb to gain access to data to help shutdown additional instances.

Crisis at Christmas

We were pleased this Christmas again to play host to Crisis at the Corus Hotel, Lancaster Gate. Crisis does a fantastic job of supporting those who otherwise would be rough sleeping over the Christmas period. They don’t just provide a bed and a hot meal, but also a multitude of facilities to help people to get their lives back on track. We want to thank all the staff and volunteers who made this a success this year.

Dockless e-bike Parking Bay Trial

We welcome the action taken by the Labour administration to get a grip on the blight of dockless e-bike parking across our city. Nevertheless, some residents had raised concerns about the locations and use of the dockless e-bike parking bays in Lancaster Gate. We’d like to remind residents that the dockless e-bike parking bays trail is running for the next 18-months. All of the bays are being first trialed under the powers of an Experimental Traffic Order (ETO) which means we want to hear from you whether the bays are suitable in practice, or otherwise. We would encourage residents to send comments and photos to tmo.westminster@wsp.com who will be evaluating and modifying, where necessary, the locations of the bays.

Home Office Contingency Hotels

As we have mentioned in previous editions of this newsletter, Lancaster Gate is home to 3 Home Office contingency hotels housing families and individuals seeking refuge and asylum in the UK. We have been supporting several residents who have been granted residency with their onward housing.

Inverness Terrace Bus Stop 

We have previously received complaints about anti-social behaviour in and around the bus stop on Inverness Terrace. We are working with police and our neighbourhood coordinator to identify the miscreants and push for action. We would encourage all residents impacted to report any ASB or suspected criminality to the police either online or via 101.

Westbourne Crescent Waste Wrongful Presentation 

On our ward walkabouts, we spoke with several residents who flagged poor waste presentation on Westbourne Crescent. We have asked our City Inspector to include this street on his daily patrols to see if he can identify which properties are culpable.

Westbourne Terrace Recycling Bins 

Residents reported consistently overflowing recycling bins on Westbourne Terrace. We flagged this issue to our City Inspector who worked with our Veolia contractor to repair the bins, with fixed lids, to prevent them being overfilled.

Final IT Support Session on the Hallfield 

We held our final free IT Support Session on the Hallfield in December with Paddington Partnership. We have been delighted to support this initiative and welcome feedback from those who used the service to feed into any future provision.