Councillor Alambritis provided an anonymous case study of a 93-year-old man who lives independently but on his own. After a fall, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and already had Type 2 Diabetes. Merton Council’s Reablement team has worked with the resident to create a Reablement Plan including four visits a day, with new equipment to make his home accessible, a MASCOT alarm, and referred him to Age UK Merton for support. The resident is now regaining his confidence attending Wimbledon Guild to reduce his isolation. 45% of Merton Council controllable income goes on Adult Social Care and also supports groups like Wimbledon Guild and the Warm and Well project.

A Brexit Task Group is looking at the implications especially of a no deal Brexit, and is meeting monthly. We have also updated our Risk Register and have been supporting EU residents in Merton to access Settled Status, through funding a support worker Merton and Lambeth CAB, based in Morden. We are also monitoring Hate Crime incidents and looking at challenge for social care in terms of recruiting staff.

MyLondon rated Merton as 4^th best borough for families, based on quality of schools, housing costs and services for families.

Merton Council has decided to keep all libraries open, with a new library in Colliers Wood. Thanks to volunteers to are essential to providing services and keeping libraries Wimbledon is the busiest in borough with more than 200,000 visitors to Arts Space last year. 95% of schools in Merton are good or outstanding. 23 Primary schools expanded to address demand and a new secondary school in South Wimbledon is already oversubscribed. Four of our care leavers went on to University this year. Merton Council is looking at how we support students with special needs and lobbying the government to help fund this work. You can get involved in the consultation before 16 October.

St Helier – government has announced more money for capital works trust but will it be used to build a new hospital in Belmont rather than keeping emergency services at St Helier. MP and Council will continue to fight to keep those services at St Helier.

Merton Council has allocated over £1m to community projects, revenue from developments like the AFC Wimbledon stadium development at Plough Lane.

A resident asked about nodal points for Harris Wimbledon Secondary School and Cllr Alambritis said one of these would benefit Colliers Wood

Residents raised a number of issues about street cleaning and refuse collection including why there had been no Veolia contract deductions to date; there were still problems with fly tipping and dealing with complaints; and investigating and enforcing fly tipping will help reduce the frequency. Cllr Alambritis replied that Merton Council is still in dispute with Veolia over deductions but doing all we can to resolve those issues, and have withheld payments. He also said that there were problems with street cleaning and missed collection still need addressing but good news with recycling rate now up to 45% and satisfaction with wheelie bins service improving. We are doing our level best to improve Veolia’s performance and have invested more in enforcement and will continue to publicise successes but we have to balance pressure on resources.

A resident asked about a house swap for those in properties due to be demolished under regeneration if they want to move away, Cllr Alambritis said we could facilitate that conversation between different housing providers.

Residents asked about proposed changes to permitted development rules and Cllr Alambritis said planning is regulated by Government so Merton Council has to work within the rules but permitted development is a significant problem. We will be looking into the proposed changes and their impact. A resident also asked about comments on planning applications not being posted online. Cllr Alambritis said that due to GDPR issues we have had to respond with a short-term fix but longer term solutions are being explored.